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"jan 21 2010 - dr alex sprintson assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher in the tees electrical and computer engineering division has received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) sprintson received his career award for his proposal ""wireless network coding: analysis complexity and algorithms"" sprintson who joined the department in 2006 received the bsc degree (summa cum laude) msc and phd degrees in electrical engineering from the technion-israel institute of technology from 2003 to 2005 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the california institute of technology sprintsons research interests are in the broad area of communication networks with a focus on algorithmic and information-theoretic aspects of networking network coding and its applications in communication networks and quality of service (qos) routing honors include receiving the 2003 prof andrew viterbi post-doctoral fellowship the 2003 wolf award for his phd studies the 2002 miriam and aaron gutwirth fellowship for special excellence in graduate studies and numerous academic awards of excellence the nsf established the career program to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning"
the tees texas center for applied technology (tcat) along with the city of san antonio the san antonio independent school district alamo colleges san antonio youth centers cps energy and the san antonio water system celebrated the grand opening of the mission verde center@cooper jan 25 the city will spend $1 million of its federal energy efficiency and conservation block grant toward energy improvements and retrofits at the center which will be designed and monitored by tcat the center is the first-of-its-kind education training and research center for renewable and energy-efficient technologies tcat is a center of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) its engineers and scientists apply research to develop and insert technology to provide practical solutions to critical state and national needs
"feb 4 2010 - a new method for manipulating the molecules of liquid crystals in ways previously unachieved could result in more effective industrial sealants improved food packaging and even enhanced electronic displays says zhengdong cheng member of a team of researchers whose recent findings hail a significant advancement in working with liquid crystals cheng is a researcher in the tees chemical engineering division and a texas a&m university assistant professor of chemical engineering the findings which appear in the scientific journal physical review e detail how cheng and his colleagues were able to orient the disc-shaped molecules of liquid crystals into distinct and separate layers — a phenomenon labeled by scientists as a ""smectic phase"" this layering phase cheng explains is common with rod-shaped liquid crystal molecules but had never been recorded with their disc-shaped counterparts — until now before this no discotic smectic phase was known to exist cheng said ""for some time people have been really puzzled as to why the discs dont form layers"" the discovery could mean expanded possibilities for the already popular material liquid crystals are a state of matter between that of a conventional liquid and that of a solid crystal possessing inherent properties that are ideal for working with light as well as a molecular structure that can be easily controlled by electric fields liquid crystals are commonly used in the electronic displays of televisions cell phones and portable gaming devices liquid crystals are also found in soaps and detergents as well as in the proteins and cell membranes within the human body these areas as well as many more that employ liquid crystal technology cheng says stand to benefit from the new finding key to chengs discovery is the shape of the liquid crystal molecules he used the disc-shaped nature of the platelets in combination with the layered structure they form help to create a near-impermeable sealant integrating such a sealant into food packaging would translate into foods staying fresher for longer periods of time cheng says whats more utilizing this liquid-crystal technology in materials such as paint and industrial sealants could produce more effective protections for pipelines safeguarding them from corrosion even fuel-cell technology could be enhanced cheng adds a problematic aspect of fuel-cell technology occurs when methanol passes through a polymer membrane inside of the cell but if these discs can be added to the makeup of this polymer film a membrane can be created that does not allow the methanol to escape through it instead forcing the methanol to pass through the desired area cheng says and because these layered liquid-crystal molecules are easier to manipulate and more sensitive to electric fields than the rod-shaped liquid crystal molecules currently used in television displays cheng speculates that future lcd televisions might boast improved visual properties while being more energy efficient if this liquid crystal technology is utilized in chengs experiment each disc composed of millions of atoms is a single layer of inorganic crystals with an identical thickness of 268 nanometers and a diameter around 2 000 nanometers as a matter of perspective the width of a human hair is about 100 000 nanometers these discs cheng explains are created by exfoliating crystals of compound of zirconium phosphate which is a type of synthetic crystal that is manufactured to help remove nuclear waste because of its chemical properties its also used in the manufacturing of fuel cells placing the discs suspension between two light polarizers cheng was able to first confirm that the suspension was indeed in a liquid crystal form then using x-ray technology he observed how the discs arranged themselves through a process called self-assembly through self-assembly these individual discs move around and interact with their neighboring discs due to collisions with surrounding water molecules after some time the discs reach a stable state — usually aligning to form column-like structures cheng says however in chengs experiment the discs behaved in an atypical manner assembling themselves into separate layers its a behavior that chengs team has attributed to the three main factors the first of those is the thickness of each liquid crystal disc each disc he notes must have an identical thickness in this case 268 nanometers the second factor cheng says is that the diameter of the discs must vary the final factor he says is that the aspect ratio between disc diameter and disc thickness must be large previous studies have synthesized discs with ratios that were too small possibly accounting for a lack of layer formation"
feb 10 2010 - mariah hahn assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has been awarded a faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) as a recipient of the prestigious award hahn will receive $400 000 throughout the next five years for her research which combines a novel class of gels based on collagen-mimetic proteins with gene silencing techniques to identify key environmental stimuli driving mesenchymal stem cell differentiation results from these studies have the potential to transform researchers ability to dictate cell behavior in organ regeneration applications hahn who completed her undergraduate career at the university of texas at austin conducted her phd at the massachusetts institute of technology with robert langer and post-doctoral studies at rice university under jennifer west as part of her research at texas a&m hahn focuses on understanding cell-cell and cell-material interactions at a more fundamental level to rationally guide tissue regeneration in her laboratory hahn uses cardiovascular and skeletal tissues as model systems for probing cell response to controlled external stimuli the career award was established to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning
"feb 11 2010 - a newly designed system of identifying molecules for treating hepatitis c should enable scientists to discover novel and effective therapies for the dangerous and difficult-to-cure disease of the liver says zhilei chen who helped develop the screening system chen is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher in the tees chemical engineering division the system chen explains enables researchers to study the effects of molecules that obstruct all aspects of the hepatitis c virus (hcv) life cycle thats a significant milestone in hcv research says chen noting that previous methods of developing drug treatments for the virus have been limited by the fact that researchers were only able to study one aspect of the hcv life cycle chens findings appear in the most recent edition of the scientific journal proceedings of the national academy of sciences first identified in 1989 and responsible for hepatitis c an infectious disease affecting the liver hcv has infected an estimated 180 million people worldwide spread by blood-to-blood contact hcv can cause chronic infection that leads to dangerous scarring of the liver liver failure liver cancer and death although new infections resulting from blood transfusions are rare thanks to screening measures that began in 1990 the overall number of people facing death or serious liver disease from hcv is steadily rising because people often live decades with the virus before showing symptoms chen says in addition injection drug users are at high risk for infection from contaminated needles the only existing therapy for hcv is a physically and emotionally taxing 48-week course of treatment that cures less than half of all patients who undergo it chen says the particularly grueling nature of the treatment — its been compared to chemotherapy — as well as the high financial costs associated with it often result in many patients opting to forego the therapy because chens newly developed screening system enables the discovery of small low-cost molecules that block the hcv life cycle she believes it could contribute to new more affordable and more effective therapies for hepatitis c the screening system uses an innovative way to ""see"" cells that are infected with hcv typically when a virus infects a cell its not obvious to detect; its not easy to distinguish an infected cell from an uninfected cell chen says ""much in the same way a person who is infected with hcv does not initially feel anything when a cell is initially infected nothing really observable happens this makes it difficult to distinguish hcv infection in cells"" to address this challenge chen ""tweaked"" the cells she was studying by inserting a gene into them that triggers cell death if hcv enters that cell this allowed chen to easily measure the extent of infection in her genetically engineered cells by quantifying the degree of cell death within the cell cultures she was examining these engineered cells were grown in miniature compartments in the presence of infectious hcv and a different chemical was added to each compartment we could then look and see which cells were able to survive because if you have chemicals that dont inhibit hcv the cells will die but if you have a molecule that blocks the hcv life cycle the cells will grow chen says ""and because we were able to look at the complete life cycle of the virus with our system we discovered inhibitors of the virus across three different stages: entry into cells reproduction within cells and final escape from infected cells to attack new cells"" testing about 1 000 different chemicals chen found several that strongly inhibited the hcv life cycle some of the inhibitors she said obstruct virus entry into a cell others inhibit virus replication meaning that infected cells wont be able to support the reproduction and growth of the virus as much chen also found effective inhibitors that keep the virus from escaping the cell even if it grows well inside the cell since this virus changes all of the time you really want to hit it across multiple aspects simultaneously chen says ""nevertheless most current efforts to block the hcv life cycle focus only on its replication within cells due to the long-time absence of a system that allows for convenient screening of molecules blocking other aspects of the virus life cycle such as entry into cells and release from cells our system is well-suited to large-scale drug screening efforts because the technology is simple to use and can be easily scaled up to test extremely large collections of compounds using a robotic system chen says ""we anticipate that this system will enable the discovery of many more new and more potent hcv antivirals"" working with chen to develop the system were karuppiah chockalingam and rudo simeon postdoctoral associate and graduate student respectively from texas a&m and charles rice professor from rockefeller university"
"west texas a&m university is leading a pair of national science foundation grants that will add up to gains for science and engineering in texas and the nation in partnership with the texas engineering experiment station (tees) west texas a&m is targeting expanding the student pool in science engineering and math and strengthening the pathway to science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) baccalaureate programs at the university ""the aim is to recruit freshmen and transfer students with high academic potential and high financial need the two projects blend scholarships with recruitment activities and student support services to increase academic achievement and allow for a successful university experience "" said dr emily hunt assistant professor of mechanical engineering at west texas a&m nationally research indicates west texas a&m is right on target the pew research center reports the number of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the us was the highest ever in 2008 an increase driven by a surge in community college enrollments as more students begin their higher education at community colleges they add to an ever-growing pool of potential students for bachelors degrees in engineering technology and the sciences these two grants to west texas a&m are funded under the nsf scholarships in science technology engineering and mathematics program (s-stem) hunt leads the s-stem project ""teaming engineering and mathematics students"" (teams) for entering freshmen dr pamela lockwood-cooke associate professor of mathematics at west texas a&m leads ""connecting community college transfers for stem success"" (c3) together the projects have awarded more than 75 scholarships so far the motivation for c3 was to make it easier to recruit qualified transfer students lockwood said ""the transfer students already have been holding down jobs as well as attending school and they have been able to keep up good grades in spite of it all the comments we most often hear from the students are that the c3 scholarships help because they dont have to work as much and can spend more time on their studies of course this increases their chances to achieve even more academically our plan is to have the transfer students also help mentor the teams freshmen "" she said as part of its mission to enhance the states science and technology educational systems tees worked with west texas a&m to develop the s-stem proposals tees also presented two workshops the university hosted for six regional community colleges to assist them in starting development on their own s-stem proposals in the face of rising tuition costs this partnerships targeting of community college students is timely ""we appreciate the support tees has given through workshop presentations and assistance with proposal development that helped us secure federal funding to provide scholarships for talented high school and community college students in the panhandle our university recognizes the need for engineers and scientists not only in our region but across the state and nation and we are excited about the opportunities these projects provide our stem students "" said dr james hallmark provost/vice president for academic affairs and wtamu tees regional division director ""we were glad the workshops gave us the opportunity to assist our regional community colleges in their pursuit of scholarship funds for their students and look forward to future partnership efforts with them"" west texas a&m and regional community college instructors worked together to develop the recently funded s-stem proposal for transfer scholarships three of the colleges have submitted s-stem proposals themselves and are awaiting results of the nsf review the s-stem projects also will help increase the number of students from groups who are traditionally underrepresented in science and technical fields seventy percent of wtamu students come from 26 largely rural counties in the texas panhandle and about half are first-generation college students the student population of k-12 public schools in the region is 44 percent minority with 37 percent hispanic"
"feb 26 2010 - dr guofei gu a tees researcher and an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has received a 2010 national science foundation (nsf) career award for his research in computer and network security the nsf awards the prestigious career grants to outstanding junior faculty members to help them advance their research and teaching activities gus project ""coordination- and correlation-based botnet defense"" will continue through 2015 in recent years automated and massive internet-scale malware attacks have become the main concern for internet security in particular botnets have distinguished themselves from previous generations of malware as the primary platform for most internet attacks and illegal activities gu said a botnet is a network of compromised computers also called ""bots "" that are under the control of an attacker or ""botmaster"" with the magnitude and the potency of attacks afforded by the bots combined bandwidth and processing power (the number of compromised computers in a single botnet can run into the millions) botnets are now considered as the greatest single threat to internet security gus project aims to create a coordination- and correlation-based framework for botnet defense that improves on the detection prevention and attribution of botnets the proposed work will develop a new cooperative detection system that will efficiently detect and monitor botnets as well as develop new community-based collaborative prevention techniques in order to prevent malware from attaching itself to your computer gu said ""i also plan to explore several new directions to provide an effective botmaster attribution solution in order to better identify system attackers for prosecution this research will not only significantly advance the field of malware defense by providing fundamentally new techniques but will also have a broad impact in providing new foundations for building a defense-in-depth security architecture the results from this research are likely to foster new research directions in several areas of computer and network security"" gu received his phd from the georgia institute of technology in 2008 and joined the faculty at texas a&m shortly thereafter his teaching and research interests include network security system security and intrusion detection as well as malware detection analysis and defense the nsf established the career program to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance of the early development of academic careers dedicated to simulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning for more on the nsf and the career program visit http://wwwnsfgov"
"the city of san antonio moved forward with its plan to become a 21st-century sustainable energy leader and the texas engineering experiment station (tees) will play a role in helping it achieve its goal the mission verde center at cooper is a multipurpose education training and research center as a regional asset the centers objectives are to accelerate the development and deployment of existing and new renewable energy and sustainable water technologies to create new business and job opportunities centered on renewable energy and sustainability and to facilitate private/public investment to build new economic generators driving job growth the city of san antonio has allocated $1 million of its energy efficiency and conservation block grant funds toward energy improvements at the mission verde center a comprehensive energy and water audit will be conducted on the cooper campus to establish a baseline for energy and water efficiency retrofits the audits will be conducted by the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a center within tees tcat will design implement and monitor these improvements this exciting regional project will help introduce new green technologies to the inner-city while at the same time training a workforce to install and maintain it said skip mills director of tcats san antonio operations ""it is a truly collaborative effort with support and assistance from not only the city of san antonio alamo colleges san antonio youth centers texas a&ms college of architecture san antonio isd but also from private enterprises including raba-kistner consulting cram roofing and h&e equipment tcat is proud to be the technology integrator to bring this together and to support this new initiative for san antonio"" at the center students will learn about weatherization techniques and will get on-the-job training in sustainability including using the texas a&m solar decathlon grohome an aggie residence powered by the sun the house which has been dubbed ""su casa"" for sustainable urban center for the advancement of san antonio was originally built as the texas a&m university college of architectures entry in the 2007 solar decathlon competition sponsored by the department of energy tcat and the college of architecture saw enormous potential in relocating this architectural and technological icon to the cooper campus in san antonio where it will take on a new life the mission verde center will also offer an opportunity for consumers to observe and understand how to interact with new technologies to provide feedback on how to better insert ideas such as smart meters it will also provide an opportunity for graduate students at local universities in san antonio to observe and test the technologies about tees: the texas engineering experiment station is a member of the texas a&m university system with a mission to identify and conduct research in areas critical to the states economic development and quality of life promote new technology and entrepreneurship leverage and network human physical and financial resources and enhance and strengthen education in texas about tcat: the texas center for applied technology part of the texas engineering experiment station promotes economic growth and enhanced quality of life by implementing a spectrum of activities including basic and applied research development and prototyping and application to enable economic benefit and technology development throughout texas and the nation"
"tees and texas a&m engineering are playing a role in a technological breakthrough that could clean up the contaminated water recovered from drilling natural gas wells in shale deposits through the process of ""hydraulic fracturing"" david burnett of texas a&ms global petroleum research institute - in partnership with the texas engineering extension service (teex) and carl vavra of the tees food protein r&d center separation sciences laboratory developed the membrane filtration technology - which has been licensed to a major oil field service company for commercialization burnett and his partners have developed a lab protocol and analytical methodology for technicians who will be field-testing and analyzing the ""frac"" water after it has been recaptured and processed to determine if it is clean enough to reuse or recycle a pilot class was recently conducted at teexs water and environmental training laboratory on the texas a&m riverside campus the natural gas resources in shale are ubiquitous and the oil and gas industry has learned how to tap into these burnett said ""there is 10 times more gas in shale deposits but it takes a lot of wells and uses a lot of water each well can use a three-month supply of water for a city of 4 000 people a lot of the water comes back contaminated and the companies have to dispose of it water is at the center of the problem he added ""we have to find a way to treat and re-use this water if the water is to be used for purposes other than reinjection into the oil or gas field then we need to purify the contaminated water and we need credible proof that the filtered water doesnt have environmental contaminants and meets the epa standard for fresh water"" thats where teex comes in during a 32-hour customized intermediate water laboratory course recently teexs keith mcleroy and a cadre of other water experts trained 10 technicians in the analytical techniques needed to verify the purity of the water they got hands-on experience and demonstrations of various instrumentation said mcleroy associate training specialist with teexs infrastructure training & safety institute recycling and treating the frac water would not only eliminate the expense of hauling the wastewater away for disposal but it would reduce the total water consumption since the water could be reused again and again in the frac drilling process burnett said pilot studies have shown that proper pretreatment of water used to fracture new gas wells could save an average of $40 000 per well according to a report by the us department of energys office of fossil energy"
"march 21 2010 - dr raymundo arroyave researcher in the tees mechanical engineering division and an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university has received the prestigious 2010 career award from the national science foundation the award will fund the project ""ab initio calculations for design of high temperature materials"" originally from mexico arroyave earned his b sc degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from the instituto tecnologico y de estudios superiores de monterrey after working at a steel making company for about a year arroyave joined the graduate program in materials science and engineering at mit where he focused on the development of efficient high-temperature ceramic/metal seals his doctoral dissertation was on the investigation of the physical chemistry of ceramic/metal interactions at high temperatures through experimental and computational approaches currently arroyaves main research thrust has been the development of self-consistent thermodynamic models for multicomponent multiphase systems using the calphad approach; alloy theoretical investigations of high-temperature materials and their defect structures; prediction of structural thermodynamic and kinetic properties of crystalline materials through ab initio calculations; development of thermodynamically consistent phase field models for the investigation of solid/liquid interactions"
the texas a&m university system board of regents approved the establishment of the wind energy center during its meeting friday (march 26) the center which will be part of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) is being established with the vision to position texas a&m engineering and the state of texas as global authorities on all facets of wind energy including major advances in research technology development and technology demonstration and deployment along with innovative educational advances related to wind energy according to the energy report of 2008 by susan combs texas comptroller of public accounts wind energy is among the worlds fastest growing sources of energy wind energy is expected to be a key growth area particularly in texas the wind energy center will be established as one at least five planned energy-type specific research centers within the energy engineering institute which is also a center within tees the center will also examine economic and policy implications related to wind energy production particularly as it relates to the placement of wind turbines both on and off shore under the comprehensive energy umbrella of the energy engineering institute the wind energy center will align its wind energy research activities with the other research focus areas of the energy engineering institute to create robust and synergistic solutions to our nations long term energy needs
"the texas a&m university system board of regents today voted to begin construction on the flexible-by-design national center for therapeutics manufacturing a revolutionary bio-pharmaceutical research development training and production facility that will be under the management of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) when completed it will provide rapid cost-effective and scalable manufacturing and enable an array of new products to enter clinical trials ""the nctm will set the standard for a new generation of multi-product multi-technology flexible pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities "" said dr brett giroir vice chancellor for research and executive director of the institute for innovative therapeutics (iit) the newly established institute representing the partnership between the systems multiple state-of-the-art research facilities the facilitys flexible-by-design architecture and reconfigurable clean rooms will allow for continuous operation and surge capacity while accommodating multiple production technology platforms and products in addition to the eventual ability to mass-produce in the case of an epidemic or bioterrorist attack this development model also will make possible the creation of drugs and vaccines on a smaller targeted scale providing protection against so-called orphan diseases whose reduced prevalence often has made further study cost-prohibitive ""the partnership of the nctm with the other iit facilities (the texas a&m institute for preclinical studies and texas a&m institute for genomic medicine) creates an unmatched comprehensive biomedical research enterprise capable of taking products from the fundamental research stage through to the production process "" giroir said ""it will serve as a global hub for research into biologics manufacturing process optimization and other disciplines that will change forever the way drugs and vaccines are produced"" the nctm initially will focus on therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer the recently announced project greenvax funded through the defense advanced research projects agency will utilize the nctms state-of-the-art flexible manufacturing capabilities to accelerate the nations ability to develop and produce vaccines the center will serve as the operational prototype for a new generation of manufacturing facilities producing required vaccines antibodies and therapeutic proteins to protect against naturally emerging pathogens and intentional biological attacks ""the nctm exemplifies the texas a&m systems commitment to public service through education and research "" said dr michael pishko head of texas a&ms artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering who will lead the nctm team ""this facility will not only serve as a global leader in pharmaceutical research and production but as the cornerstone for undergraduate and graduate training of the future professionals to lead this new biotechnology revolution"" construction of the nctms headquarters facility funded as a core strategic program by the texas emerging technology fund is scheduled for completion in december 2011 the center will operate under the management of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) a state of texas research agency that is a member of the a&m system about the a&m system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $32 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates nearly 115 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $730 million and help drive the states economy"
"james a wall deputy director of the texas center for applied technology (tcat) and keith e biggers a researcher with tcat were members of the team that was awarded the 2010 science & technology impact award from the department of homeland security (dhs) the team from the national center for foreign animal and zoonotic disease defense (fazd) that consisted of wall and biggers along with john t hoffman and neville p clarke was honored for its online ""information dashboard"" that can improve the nations response to a major disease outbreak the system which is known as the bio-surveillance common operating picture or bcop was developed by the fazd center to enhance the work of the dhs national bio-surveillance integration center (nbic) fazd was honored for rapidly deploying the technology for dhs during the global h1n1 flu pandemic of 2009 fazd researchers built tested and launched the bcop in weeks rather than months as originally scheduled bcop enable dhs to track organize and share information about outbreaks of contagious disease from around the world on a daily basis this allows dhs to more rapidly prepare its response to outbreaks that may threaten the united states the bcop uses information dashboard technology to provide real-time access to multiple web sites live data feeds news feeds streaming video maps images key documents information banks and other information resources as needed to enhance surveillance response and training for biological crises such as contagious disease outbreaks planning is currently under way to increase access within nbic to 20 000 bcop users other government agencies and commercial customers have asked the fazd center about developing specific dashboards for their needs wall and hoffman who is a senior research fellow both at the dhs national center for food protection and defense (university of minnesota) and the fazd center were the principal investigators on the project biggers was an investigator on the project and clark is the former director of the fazd center about tcat the texas center for applied technology part of the texas engineering experiment station promotes economic growth and enhanced quality of life by implementing a spectrum of activities including basic and applied research development and prototyping and application to enable economic benefit and technology development throughout texas and the nation about fazd the fazd center is headquartered at texas a&m and is a dhs center of excellence representing seven major universities 10 minority serving institutions and five national laboratories"
nine student teams from the space engineering institute (sei) presented their spring 2010 nasa projects the week of april 19 at nasa johnson space center five of the presenting sei teams - advanced antenna space based solar power integrated thermal management system smart materials for robotic space applications and urine pretreatment - were from texas a&m university students from these five teams and the other four teams from texas a&m-kingsville texas a&m-commerce and prairie view a&m carried out research related to various nasa mission needs the program included 20-minute presentations from each student team individual team meetings with the nasa sponsor and a tour of various laboratories at nasa jsc sei is established under the texas engineering experiment stations space engineering research center sei was established in 2002 to engage undergraduate students in interdisciplinary and multilevel team projects with mentors from nasa and industry to improve student retention in engineering and enhance their engineering skills to meet the needs of the us workforce since 2002 more than 75 percent of entering freshman who participate in sei have graduated with an engineering degree which is about 50 percent higher than the national retention average in addition more than 20 percent of sei students pursue advanced degrees
"may 7 2010 — long hampered by high manufacturing costs and durability issues fuel cell technology could overcome those obstacles and take a significant step towards mainstream adoption thanks to a finding by a chemical engineering researcher investigating the use of alternative materials as catalysts in fuel cells perla balbuena — professor in texas a&m universitys artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and a researcher in the tees chemical engineering division — has found a class of composite materials that show early indications of being just as effective and even more durable than the costly platinum catalysts typically used in fuel cells the findings from her work which is funded by the us department of energy (doe) appear in the january edition of the journal of physical chemistry letters because of their potential as a clean source of virtually continuous energy fuel cells are a chief area of interest to a wide variety of entities including automobile manufacturers and the us government which has invested nearly a billion dollars in research and development of the technology in a basic fuel cell balbuena explains the platinum takes the form of incredibly small but expensive particles that are deposited on an electrode within the fuel cell the electrode helps to trigger complex chemical reactions that ultimately result in the conversion of oxygen and hydrogen into water and electrical energy previous attempts to find more affordable alternatives for pure platinum catalysts have been unsuccessful balbuena says noting that the nickel and iron-based alloy substitutes used were less durable dissolving inside the fuel cell at a faster rate than even the traditional platinum catalysts this dissolution occurs balbuena notes because of an acidic polymeric membrane located next to the catalyst within the fuel cell ""this membrane although necessary creates another problem with regard to the design of the catalyst "" balbuena says ""when nanoparticles of platinum or platinum alloys come into contact with this acid medium they can dissolve the less ‘noble the metal the easier to dissolve and in that scale platinum is the most ‘noble metal when this happens the catalyst can be negatively affected rendering the chemical reaction less efficient ""this is the issue we are trying to address — trying to understand the reasons behind the dissolution of these metals and the possible solutions for this problem "" balbuena says looking to overcome that problem balbuena an authority on materials and catalytic processes employed computational chemistry methods to investigate viable catalysts that would show enhanced performance as well as improved durability in contrast to experimental models computational chemistry makes use high-performance computers to find numerical solutions of fundamental equations involving interactions among atoms and electrons these computational results translate into finding out the best materials for the desired task its a pivotal first step in a process that saves scientists from costly trial-and-error approaches in the lab through that approach balbuena and her research group at texas a&m were able to demonstrate the potential durability and activity properties of a new ""core-shell"" composite material that can serve as a catalyst within a fuel cell the material she explains still uses platinum but less of it meaning its cheaper whats more in its core the material uses other key elements in a way that ensures the core particles will not segregate to the surface and dissolve in the polymeric membrane ""in essence we anchor less-expensive core elements that play a supportive role and let the ultra-thin platinum film on the surface exert its catalytic effect that is to accelerate the desired reactions "" balbuena explains its a finding with significant implications for the widespread adoption of fuel cell technology the does solid state energy conversion alliance estimates fuel cells will need to cost $700 per kilowatt to serve as a viable energy alternative current technology however costs nearly 10 times that amount per kilowatt a more affordable durable catalyst could help lower the cost of fuel cell production says balbuena who notes the composite material she has found meets a set of standard properties that doe has set for the durability and makeup of such catalysts having successfully met those criteria the next step for the composite material balbuena says is actual production and laboratory testing — aspects of the research that she is planning on exploring with potential experimental partners who have taken note of her findings and hope to begin building the new electrode catalysts in the near future ""it is superb because as a researcher you not only want to contribute basic fundamental knowledge but you also want such knowledge triggering practical applications "" balbuena says ""when you discover something like this it is very exciting because we see that we can convert this study into something practical and useful — bringing fuel cell technology a step closer to realization"""
"governor rick perry recognized the palacios high school power set (powerful opportunities for women eager and ready for science engineering and technology) program on thursday (may 13) and presented a grant of nearly $176 000 to support a similar program that will include both young men and women named power set wit or workforce in training the workforce development grants are given annually to organizations providing workforce training programs the wit program was developed as a result of the success of the original power set program that was created by the nuclear power institute (npi) at the texas engineering experiment station (tees) dr lee peddicord npi director noted that power set wit was expanded to include male as well as female students who are interested in pursuing careers related to science technology engineering and math (stem) but who seek two-year technical degrees or certificates ""like the original power set wit programs will give students the exposure encouragement and knowledge to not only meet their goals and industrys needs but also give them confidence to consider further education "" said peddicord ""there is a growing need for people with these skills and qualifications and programs are now available at several community colleges in south texas including wharton county junior college brazosport college victoria college and texas state technical colleges"" the power set program was initiated at palacios high school by the npi in conjunction with the south texas nuclear operating company additional power set groups including power set wit will be in place this fall in bay city louise sweeny and van vleck more than 100 young women have completed or are enrolled in power set programs among those attending the governors presentation were representatives from npi the south texas project county city and palacios school district administrators power set members and their parents power set mentors from stp and the student body of palacios high school joining governor perry on the palacios high school stage were peddicord matagorda county judge nate mcdonald; ed halpin president and ceo south texas nuclear operating company; dr betty mccrohan president of wharton county junior college; texas workforce commissioner andres alcantar; and texas education agency commissioner robert scott the current members of the phs power set program were also on the stage including elizabeth castandon a senior at phs who spoke on behalf of the group in his remarks governor perry noted that texas is on track to build new nuclear plants which makes this program even more important ""the power set wit program will help keep texas nuclear industry moving forward "" he said ""and were not just investing in these students who have such high potential; were also investing in the future of our state and country"""
"the texas a&m university system and gamesa technology corp recently announced an agreement with the intention to install a new generation of wind turbine at west texas a&m university coordinated jointly by the energy engineering institute (eei) and the alternative energy institute of the a&m system eei is a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) with the signing a&m system and gamesa officials have initiated a long-term agreement in which the system through its multiple members eei alternative energy institute and the texas transportation institute will conduct ongoing research and testing for gamesas energy-related projects ""providing the innovations necessary to secure an efficient high-volume energy supply for our future is one of the most critical tasks before the worlds researchers today "" said dr theresa maldonado associate vice chancellor for research of the a&m system and director of eei ""great strides are being made in renewable energy resources but the greatest challenge to their widespread use remains the limited capacity they currently generate the a&m system is uniquely configured through its long history in energy research and its specialized facilities to address challenges in the wind energy industry the energy engineering institute is positioned to coordinate these r&d activities"""
"may 28 2010 — dr james caverlee has received a 2010 defense advanced research projects agency young faculty award (darpa yfa) for his research on the social web and the technical challenges associated with realizing a new generation of applications suitable for monitoring analyzing and distilling information from massive-scale social systems caverlee is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher in the tees computer science and engineering division darpa presents the young faculty award to outstanding junior faculty whose research will enable revolutionary advances in the areas of the physical sciences engineering and mathematics the yfa program will fund caverlees research through 2012 ""in the past few years the web has transformed into a fundamentally social platform for dynamic and ubiquitous real-time information"" says caverlee ""hundreds of millions of users are actively engaged with social systems placing huge demands on traditional approaches how do we make sense of this deluge of social information"" caverlees work proposes that crowd-sourcing holds the key to effective dissemination of interesting and relevant real-time web information and that efficient use of this information requires personalized crowd discovery based on an automated approach to identifying crowds and their significant characteristics in real time ""complementary to traditional web information applications that have focused on expensive off-line analysis of web data our research goal is to fill the need for a new class of real-time web applications that must consume and process massive amounts of web data on-the-fly to provide users with important and relevant real-time information"" potential defense applications include the automatic discovery of actionable information based on open source data (via social web mining) identification and tracking of online ""hotspots"" as they arise in real-time (eg disasters terror attacks civil uprisings) and adversarial network analysis for detecting clusters of coordinating attackers among many other emerging social and mobile applications caverlee received his phd from the georgia institute of technology in 2007 and joined the faculty at texas a&m shortly thereafter his teaching and research interests include web-scale information management distributed data-intensive systems information retrieval databases and social computing"
"june 4 2010 — understanding how thin-film coatings react to temperature changes could lead to more effective and durable sensors solar-energy converters safer medical implants and a host of other applications says jodie lutkenhaus a researcher in the tees chemical engineering division and an assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university lutkenhaus has found that heating some of these films can increase their stability the findings which appear in an upcoming issue of soft matter a scientific journal published by the royal society of chemistry represent a significant step forward in the study of multilayer polymer thin-film coatings — material gaining increased interest for its potential versatility in a number of applications ranging from biomedical to industrial much like how a person uses saran wrap to cover a dish scientists envision utilizing these ultra-thin coatings to encompass a wide variety of sensitive and very small materials — for example drug molecules being delivered to a target area within the human body the electrostatic properties of the films would allow the coating to stay intact until the drug reaches the precise area inside the body at that point the coating could be deconstructed allowing the drug to reach the targeted area this structural manipulability also makes the films attractive options for use in fuel cells sensors and even solar energy cells but before researchers can proceed with these applications they need to know more about the material properties of these films says lutkenhaus who conducted the research with graduate student lin shao ""if people want to use these films for applications in the real world where temperature is a factor then weve got to understand the films thermal properties "" lutkenhaus says isolating a sample of these thin films lutkenhaus found that as these films are heated they react by undergoing a curing process in which they form nylon-like linkages these linkages she explains help to enhance the films stability warding off long-term degradation conversely this crosslinking that results from heating would not be beneficial in instances where a film is required to possess more flexibility she says understanding this reactivity lutkenhaus says is critical in advancing the technology which is still in its infancy for instance she notes if this type of film is going to be used in the desert for solar energy applications it is important to understand how it behaves in desert-like conditions this knowledge is also valuable in terms of designing other types of technology that could make use of a thermally responsive thin film armed with her latest findings lutkenhaus says she hopes to develop a thermally responsive film that can switch between hydrophobic and hydrophilic states with a shift in temperature such a film would attract water at one temperature and repel it at another temperature making it useful in heating and cooling applications she notes characterizing the thermochemical properties of these films required isolating them from the material which they coat but thats not an easy thing to do given how these films are manufactured lutkenhaus explains made from a technique known as layer-by-layer assembly these incredibly small films consist of alternating layers of polymers — long chains of atoms that have been linked together think of it as a strand of spaghetti on a molecular level a single polymer can be less than 10 nanometers in size (a human hair is about 100 000 nanometers wide) each polymer layer has either a positive or negative charge as a layer surrounds the surface of the particular material it is coating a new oppositely charged layer is then added on top of it so that the layers adhere to one another until a relatively thick film is formed lutkenhaus explains although these films have been traditionally difficult to separate from the material which they coat lutkenhaus developed a technique whereby she was able to achieve separation isolating large quantities of the film for study soon after she began testing the films against changes in temperature ""we can now characterize a model system for free-standing electrostatic layer-by-layer assemblies "" lutkenhaus says ""with this system we have been able to characterize the thermochemical properties of these films measuring their response to changes in temperature"""
"mark m ellison former associate vice chancellor for economic development for the texas a&m university system has been named director for corporate relations for the texas engineering experiment station (tees) the appointment effective june 1 was announced by kenneth r hall tees deputy director ellison will serve as the primary point of contact for industry members interested in developing collaborative projects with tees and work to develop new relationships ""the engineering program of the texas a&m university system serves the public by educating our future engineering leaders conducting relevant research to address societal needs and enhancing life through key outreach initiatives "" said dr ken hall tees deputy director ""mark will be instrumental in developing a corporate relations program that provides a conduit for industry and the private sector to engage in with texas a&m engineering to form partnerships that more efficiently allow collaborative approaches toward solving the most-crucial problems facing society"" ellison received his bachelor of science degree in agriculture from texas a&m university prior to serving as associate vice chancellor for economic development for the a&m system ellison served as director for the texas emerging technology fund ellison has also served as director of the office of employer initiatives for the texas workforce commission he has been a partner in a specialty investment banking firm in dallas and was assistant commissioner of marketing and agribusiness development for the texas department of agriculture ellison also has served as international trade specialist for us wheat associates in washington dc and casablanca morocco he is a member of the texas economic development council and the international economic development council about tees the texas engineering experiment station is a member of the texas a&m university system with a mission to identify and conduct research in areas critical to the states economic development and quality of life promote new technology and entrepreneurship leverage and network human physical and financial resources and enhance and strengthen education in texas"
"tiffiny britton has been named assistant vice chancellor for external affairs for the engineering program of the texas a&m university system in this position britton will handle external affairs for three agencies the texas engineering experiment station (tees) the texas engineering extension service (teex) and the texas transportation institute (tti) ""this position is our key liaison to our state and federal policy makers responsible for framing our educational research and service initiatives and needs in context with the priorities of our legislative leaders "" said dr g kemble bennett vice chancellor and dean of engineering ""tiffiny brings a broad experience of having worked with these key constituents and will be a tremendous asset for maintaining our strong working relationships"" britton has more than 15 years experience working in texas government she spent eight years in the capitol working in the house and senate for senator steve ogden serving as his chief of staff and director of the committee on infrastructure development and security she has managed and raised money for several state and federal campaigns during the 2005 legislative session she worked for a national public relations firms and developed advocacy and grassroots campaigns to promote the interests of the firms clients she spent the last four years representing a variety of organizations before the texas legislature and state agencies britton is a graduate of texas a&m university with a degree in speech communication and journalism"
"dr john poston professor of nuclear engineering and associate director of the nuclear power institute at the texas engineering experiment station will be in the white house rose garden on tuesday june 29 poston and his colleagues on the advisory board on radiation and worker health are among those invited to a reception hosted by president and mrs obama honoring individuals who assist the government through service on advisory boards and commissions poston was appointed to the board in 2006 by president george w bush he is the only texan on the 14-member board which advises the secretary of health and human services on the energy employees occupational illness compensation act (eeoic) the act was passed in 2000 and is implemented by the national institute of occupational safety and health (niosh) the eeoic law was passed to address the exposure of men and women engaged in building the nations nuclear defenses to radiation and other hazards unique to nuclear weapons and testing the compensation program is designed to provide for timely uniform and adequate compensation for employees or their survivors who have suffered from illnesses incurred while working for the department of energy or its contractors ""the advisory board on radiation and worker health advises the secretary of hhs on which employees at nuclear facilities can be considered for compensation in the event of radiation exposure and also oversees all aspects of the compensation program "" poston said ""other members of the board include physicians academics labor representatives representatives of nuclear engineering and health physics as well as industrial hygienists and epidemiologists "" he added poston has been at texas a&m since 1985 and previously served as head of the department of nuclear engineering"
july 2 2010 - a team of researchers has been awarded a grant to to develop a sketch recognition software that enhances engineering learning by providing intelligent and immediate feedback dwight look college of engineering faculty members julie linsey and tracy hammond will work with erin mctigue assistant professor in the department of teaching learning and culture on the two-year $199 769 project the sketched-truss recognition tutoring system is software in which students can draw in a free-hand style mimicking natural drawing using the software students can draw their solutions for truss diagrams and receive immediate feedback and guidance mctigues role will be to translate the software into an educational application and assess the learning through qualitative and quantitative means
"july 2 2010 two graduate students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university received $1 000 stipends from the federal government to present papers at the 2010 aircraft airworthiness & sustainment (aa&s) conference nirmal sigamani presented his paper ""characterization of polyurethane at multi-scales for erosion mechanisms under sand particle impact"" sourav banerjee presented his paper ""durability of polymer films for erosion protection of helicopter rotor blades impacted by sand particles"" both papers stemmed from sigamani and banerjees work on the helicopter rotor blade erosion project which brings together resources from texas a&ms aerospace engineering faculty researchers graduate students and post docs; the texas engineering experiment stations (tees) texas center for applied technology (tcat) managers; the university of dayton research institute; and the united technologies research center as well as donations from 3m blade erosion in helicopters continues to be an area of concern in particular in severe environments of sand and rain the current approach to assuring safe performance relies upon frequent inspection repair and replacement of protection films without sound and reliable procedures the consequences are costly new erosion resistant coatings are being developed but there are no physics based models available to guide their development in short the current state of affairs employs situation-specific reaction without a clear strategy to advance the industry to a knowledge-based plan for cost-effective safe performance the helicopter rotor blade erosion research program systematically addresses the erosion problem this program now in its third year is focused on polyurethane films that are mounted on the leading edge of blades to provide protection from erosion caused by sand particles a comprehensive strategy has been devised to accomplish three interrelated objectives: determine the impact conditions for particles in the airflow field interacting with the rotor blades; clarify the deformation and failure mechanisms leading to erosion of polyurethane films under the particle impact; and develop a predictive modeling methodology for erosion of polyurethane films mounted on a rigid substrate undergoing particle impact the overall goals are to provide guidelines for maintenance (ie inspection repair and replacement) of polyurethane protection systems (films and coatings) for safety against blade erosion; to help designers of rotor blades to incorporate erosion in blade design; and to provide directions for developing erosion resistant films and coatings this project has supported numerous texas a&m graduate students pursuing their degrees in aerospace engineering to date two students have received their master of science in aerospace engineering (msae) three students are completing their msae three have completed their phd degrees and one will be entering into the phd program the aa&s conference formerly known as the aging aircraft conference brought together leaders from government industry foreign nations and academia to exchange perspectives and information about critical areas of interest such as wiring corrosion structures space avionics obsolescence and airworthiness ""to promote student participation in aa&s this year nasa sponsored 23 full-time students from 12 universities to present at the conference sigamanis and banerjees research in rotor blade erosion was selected for presentation because it addresses a relevant sustainment issue confronting the rotorcraft community "" said nasas dr richard young a member of the conference organizing committee conference sponsorship is rotated between nasa the federal aviation administration and the us department of defense (dod); this year the dod was the host for its 13th annual conference the federal government looked beyond the classical focus on older aircraft adding new topics that are intended to anticipate and position the community to proactively deal with airworthiness and sustainability issues in existing and future systems there were more than 100 different speakers presenting in five individual technical tracks"
"july 20 2010—the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and the tees nuclear science center were awarded $737 136 in grants from the us department of energy (doe) the grants were part of approximately $182 million awarded to help educate the next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers and to strengthen nuclear research and education capabilities at us universities and colleges the department will receive $286 000 for ""general scientific infrastructure"" monies from the grant will be used to purchase new equipment to integrate with existing pieces to create a portable imaging suite consisting of a high-speed camera two thermal imagers (one for research one for classroom) and an ultrasonic imaging system the imaging suite will be available for use by the entire nuclear engineering department and will promote advances in curricular enhancements develop undergraduate research experiences increase faculty research capabilities and promote public outreach the funding given to the nuclear science center was part of the ""major reactor upgrades"" projects the $451 136 grant is earmarked for a cooling tower replacement new fire alarm system whole body exit monitor airborne material control and facility air monitoring system at the reactor the upgrade will provide necessary enhancements so the facility can continue its commitment to research safety and security through its nuclear energy university program (neup) the doe is providing $5 million in scholarships and fellowships to 117 us nuclear science and engineering students and nearly $132 million to 39 us universities and colleges to purchase new equipment or to upgrade their research reactors scholarship and fellowship recipients will be announced in august"
aug 2 2010 — the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and the center for applied technology (tcat) a center within tees were part of an event held july 30 in laredo to announce the benefits of a groundbreaking water treatment project that will purify 50 000 gallons per day of brackish water for potable use in laredos water supply system texas governor rick perry also awarded $275 million from the texas emerging technology fund to terrabon inc for its innovative work in biofuel technology development laredos santa isabel water treatment plant will utilize terrabons adve technology developed in partnership with tees the adve process will remove impurities using advanced vapor compression evaporation to produce drinkable water for laredo further the project will demonstrate the commercial viability of the desalination technology that also reduces the capital and operating costs of water purification tees and tcat are the technology integrator and analyst for this project
"as the nations need for technology grows so does the need for recruiting talent to provide cutting-edge research and discovery to fuel the us economy with technological advances one of the most promising means of recruiting talent into graduate school is to give undergraduate students a taste of graduate school through participation in research tees supports such endeavors through its partner campuses a number of texas a&m university system institutions which are all tees partners provide opportunities for undergraduate science and engineering students through summer research experiences giving them a head start with the graduate school environment and encouraging them to apply several of these have programmatic efforts through their partnership with tees at west texas a&m university biology faculty drs raymond matlack and rocky ward have run a successful summer program for undergraduate research under the national science foundation-funded research experiences for undergraduates (nsf reu) site: ecology and environment of the southern high plains all told the three-year program provided 24 undergraduate students with summer research experiences on regional ecological and environmental issues students also had opportunities to participate in activities expected in the academic world such as making conference presentations and submitting articles to technical journals eight student abstracts and papers have been published or accepted so far and more than half of the students who participated in this reu are either enrolled in or applying to graduate school ""one of the goals in the universitys strategic plan is by 2014 to have at least 20 percent of our bachelors students participate in research programs such as this reu contribute toward that goal "" said dr james hallmark provost and vice president for academic affairs at west texas a&m at texas a&m university-kingsville undergraduates have a chance to work alongside graduate students and faculty at the $10 million nsf center for research excellence in science and technology--research on environmental sustainability of semi-arid coastal areas in another of the universitys projects the nsf-funded step (science technology engineering and mathematics talent expansion program) an innovative feature the may-mester research opportunity brings in community college students from the region to take part in undergraduate research through these programs more than 160 undergraduate students have conducted research projects in the laboratories of texas a&m-kingsville engineering faculty for more than 20 years the undergraduate summer research grant (usrg) program at texas a&m universitys dwight look college of engineering annually has engaged about 35 to 40 undergraduate engineering students to work on graduate-type projects under the supervision of texas a&m faculty researchers usrg activities complement the nsf reu program providing program support for the colleges existing nsf reus a gre preparation course and other professional development seminars are mandatory students follow professional research practice from writing a research plan proposing what they will do to presenting their research findings at the 10-week programs closing conference which takes place this year august 6 the usrg is open to students from the a&m system schools as well as from other institutions this year two texas a&m-kingsville seniors and one tarleton state university student (see photos) are participating in the program dr robin autenrieth associate dean for graduate programs and professor of civil engineering who oversees the program intends to have even more students from system engineering programs where there are not opportunities for students to enroll in graduate programs in engineering disciplines ""in the past several years more than 50 percent of usrg students have gone on to attend graduate school "" she said ""students who participate in cutting-edge research are much more likely to continue their studies into a graduate program we want even more usrg participants to pursue advanced degrees and are working to encourage us citizens to consider advanced degrees"" a&m system vice chancellor for engineering dr g kemble bennett has a funded nsf grant to look at promising practices with undergraduate engineering education a topic of these discussions has been undergraduate research ""undergraduate research is one area where the texas a&m university system can work together to promote graduate school an undergraduate research program is a great mechanism for allowing these students to have a research experience that can cement their commitment to an advanced engineering degree"""
aug 18 2010 — the energy systems laboratory will host its 7th annual clean air through energy efficiency (catee) conference aug 24-26 at the at&t conference center on the university of texas at austin campus in austin this policy conference brings together government leaders businesses researchers and policy makers with energy and environmental advocates to discuss current energy and emissions reductions issues in texas this year hud-dot-epas interagency partnership for sustainable communities will co-host the event and will have a major presence in several panel discussions session tracks will focus on regulatory matters sustainability institutional and commercial strategies and residential issues the conference will feature opening remarks from lee leffingwell mayor of austin; c donald babers regional administrator for the us department of housing and urban development; and chairman barry smitherman of the public utility commission through a series of interactive forums and presentations attendees will have the opportunity to exchange their ideas concerns and initiatives with fellow energy stakeholders representatives from epa texas state energy conservation office environmental defense fund texas transportation institute and texas commission on environmental quality are slated to anchor various sessions catee will be also be staged alongside the 17th symposium on improving building systems in hot and humid climates interested persons are encouraged to visit the event website at http://cateetamuedu where they can register more information on the at&t conference center can be found at http://wwwmeetattexascom
the energy systems laboratory at texas a&m university presented its annual clean air through energy efficiency (catee) conference awards tuesday (aug 24) at the at&t conference center in austin texas honorees were recognized in five different categories: outstanding government organization; outstanding non-profit organization; outstanding government official; outstanding commercial enterprise; and the gregg cooke award for excellence in environmental leadership each year the catee conference recognizes individuals organizations and companies that have demonstrated outstanding and/or unique contributions to clean air through energy efficiency and/or renewable energy actions or programs the gregg cooke award is given to an individual who has inspired others through creative and cooperative problem solving and brought both passion and reason to the pursuit of environmental protection the recipients were: outstanding government organization - dallas-fort worth international airport outstanding non-profit organization - texas business for clean air outstanding government official - senator kirk watson outstanding commercial enterprise - hilton hotels corporation gregg cooke award - james marston director of the energy program texas regional office of the environmental defense fund
"sept 10 2010 its not often that freshmen at a major research institution find themselves in a class taught by the universitys president but that is just what is happening at texas a&m this fall for students participating in the first year seminar (fys) program such sessions apply seminar-style teaching to a learning community setting focused around a particular topic one class that texas a&m president r bowen loftin will be teaching is ""simulation and gaming: transforming society"" the class will be taught with dr james wall who is the director of the computing and information technology division of the texas center for applied technology (tcat) which is a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) the course will examine how gaming technology is transforming society with respect to decision-making activities for both military and civilian applications ""im looking forward to getting to know the students in the first-year seminar in simulation and gaming that ill be teaching this semester with dr james wall "" said loftin the seminars at texas a&m are taught by a variety of professors many of whom are among the universitys top faculty and have won awards for their teaching and research"
john pappas has joined texas a&m engineering as the vestas director for the texas a&m wind energy center in his new role pappas will lead efforts to build a wind center of excellence and propel texas a&m engineering as a leader in offshore and onshore wind power technology the wind energy center will cultivate wind-related research within the texas a&m university system leveraging tamu capabilities in the energy sector to create a collaborative and crosscutting r&d organization pappas who also serves as the academic chair of the wind alliance technical committee began his role in august pappas holds a masters degree in electrical engineering from the university of texas at austin and is a registered professional engineer he previously was part of the executive management team of the center for electromechanics one of the largest research institutes at the university of texas pappas served as program manager and director of business development as well as a principal investigator on numerous projects attracting tens of millions of dollars in external funding his previous positions in private industry in the federal government and as a principal in a successful start-up company have led to a wide range of experiences including research and development organization management and business development pappas helped develop multi-gigawatt generators for electric accelerators novel high-power converter systems controls and measurement systems for high voltage power supplies and advanced manufacturing processes for the oil and specialty materials industries additionally he has served on national dod advisory panels served as a subject matter expert for the jason advisory panel chaired sessions at ieee conferences and taught seminars on electromagnetic launch technology and pulsed power he is a member of the american wind energy association and the ieee he is the author of 25 refereed papers in ieee and other publications about the wind energy center the mission of the wind energy center is to cultivate wind-related research within the texas a&m university system and to promote its unique capabilities across the wind energy spectrum from nanostructured materials for next-generation blades and civil infrastructure to turbomachinery power aeroelasticity studies cfd wind forecasting logistics testing and evaluation and other areas critical to the wind power industry the wind energy center was formally launched in march 2010 and is part of the energy engineering institute a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) about vestas vestas the worlds leading supplier of wind power solutions has delivered more than 40 000 wind turbines in 65 countries vestas north american headquarters is located in portland ore and its growing us operations include several manufacturing plants in colorado the directors position is named for vestas in recognition of the companys vital contribution to development of the texas a&m wind energy center and its support of wind technology r&d and professional development in texas and the us
"the search for alternative fuels is an ongoing quest and a group of houston high school students has taken the first steps toward turning cafeteria food scraps into gasoline using the mixalco process developed by texas a&m chemical engineering professor and texas engineering experiment station (tees) researcher mark holtzapple the students who are part of the alternative energy program at booker t washington/high school for engineering professions (btw-hsep) that is led by engineering teacher nghia le revealed their success in converting trash to gasoline to holtzapple during a recent presentation at the high school that was attended by more than 50 people ""actually it makes a tear come to my eye "" holtzapple said ""to take waste materials and turn it into gasoline has been my career objective and now to see high school students doing that is fantastic"" holtzapple and le first met during the 2009 science engineering technology and math teacher summit a conference for high school teachers hosted by texas a&m university holtzapple was making a presentation and one hand in the back of the room kept shooting up the hand belonged to le le who along with the other teachers was there to get information and material to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers was fascinated with holtzapples presentation on the star rotor engine a more efficient car engine and wondered if there was a way the project could be attempted by students in his alternative energy program at the high school holtzapple was appreciative of les enthusiasm but he was quick to temper it pointing out that the star rotor engine project probably was not the best for the high school classroom there was however another pet project of holtzapples that he felt could be beneficial to the students in dr les class - his mixalco project which converts biomass to biofuels ""out of the 200 teachers that were in the audience he was the one that showed a lot of interest and enthusiasm "" holtzapple said their meeting almost two years ago began what has turned into a mentorship between holtzapple and le and the students in the alternative energy program who have worked to turn food waste from their high school cafeteria into gasoline ""he is a great mentor for me and for my students "" le said ""for my students i could not find a better mentor we call him and he has time to answer questions for my students a lot of times university professors are not very readily accessible but he is"" the amount of gasoline the students made was minimal but that did not temper the enthusiasm of those involved with the project the students were proud of their achievement even asking members of the crowd if they would like to smell it to assure them that it was gasoline ""i was very excited "" said glenda reyes who is one of the students involved in the project ""i started jumping around"" the presentation given by the students didnt just focus on the successful outcomes it also brought to light some of the failures and obstacles involved from condensers not getting cold enough to calcium acetate being too fine there was plenty of trial and error involved but with perseverance and some advice from holtzapple the students were able to overcome ""we had some problems and we used him as a reference "" said steven benitez ""failure is always there and it gets you down but you always know you have to get up and try more experiments the hardships were worth it in the end"" holtzapples mixalco process is just one of the projects the students in les class are working on they also presented their work in rocketry propulsion and wind turbines many of the members of the mixalco project are also involved in the other areas in fact one of their goals is to use the gasoline from the mixalco project in the rockets used in the propulsion project which is a step toward les dream of having a student rocket orbit the earth having taken the first step of converting waste to gasoline les students have set themselves up to continue to move forward they have also helped prove that it is possible to obtain gasoline from sources other than oil ""if high school students can turn waste material into gasoline why cant adults do it"" holtzapple asked dr mark holtzapple at the booker t washington high school for engineering professions [video]"
"nov 19 2010 - james a wall deputy director of the tees texas center for applied technology (tcat) has been appointed to a 26-member blue ribbon panel to conduct a security review of los angeles international airport (lax) and recommend improvements on nov 18 mayor antonio r villaraigosa announced the appointment of the panel after a top-to-bottom security review the panel will provide recommendations for staying on the cutting edge of best practices in airport security such as homeland security/counterterrorism law enforcement fire emergency management and the available resources for safety enhancements ""this panel will have full authority to review and inspect all aspects of security at lax which is a top terrorist target in the nation "" villaraigosa said ""we have continually made improvements to security at lax but we must ensure our facility and protocols remain state of the art to prevent and disrupt potential threats"" the panel includes high caliber professionals from diverse fields including homeland security law enforcement academia anti-terrorism technology and emergency management and it will be chaired by lourdes baird a retired federal judge n a unique partnership security experts from israels ben gurion airport will return for their third visit to lax to advise the panel in 2008 villaraigosa negotiated a first of its kind cooperative agreement with the israeli experts who conducted a study of laxs security measures and recommended areas of improvement the israelis will again review the airports security and meet with the panel and offer their insights on improving the public safety at the airport the panel is expected to convene meetings later this month and to provide a summary of its findings by spring 2011"
dec 8 2010 dr jeff froyd the tees director of academic development will participate in an invitation-only meeting to help the presidents council of advisors on science and technology (pcast) jan 5 in the white house conference center in washington dc pcast will undertake a study that will make recommendations to president barack obama on how to enhance science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) education from a student¹s transition from high school through earning a technical community college or bachelor¹s degree to create a stem-capable workforce froyd is also the director of academic development in the office of the dean of faculties and associate provost at texas a&m university he previously served as project director for the foundation coalition an nsf engineering education coalition among six institutions that systematically renewed their undergraduate engineering curricula assessed their renewed curricula institutionalized many of their innovations and extensively shared their results with the engineering education community and specifically with a number of schools froyd has authored or co-authored more than 50 papers on curriculum innovation curriculum integration assessment of curricular innovations and the process of curricular change in addition he offered more than 30 workshops on curriculum development course design assessment and faculty development he has also served for seven years as an abet program evaluator in both electrical engineering and computer engineering pcast is an advisory group of the nations leading scientists and engineers appointed by president obama to augment the science and technology advice available to him from inside the white house and from cabinet departments and other federal agencies pcast is consulted about and often makes policy recommendations concerning the full range of policy issues in the domains of science technology and innovation
"lifebot a company that provides exclusive patented emergency telemedicine and home telehealth personal survival life-support solutions recently announced that it has executed an option agreement to pursue world-wide exclusive licensing rights to dreams the $14 million advanced ems ambulance developed by the texas engineering experiment station (tees) ut health and the united states military the software hardware and telecommunications aspects of the dreams (disaster relief and emergency medical services) program are led by james a wall director of computing and information technology at the texas center for applied technology (tcat) and texas a&m researcher larry flournoy tcat is a center within tees the digital ems program has developed and deployed wireless video communications and combining avl/gps (automatic vehicle location/global positioning system) technology and advanced software to enable ambulances and helicopters to reach the victim sooner begin triage diagnosis and treatment on the scene it also coordinates helicopters and ambulances to minimize transport time to the nearest appropriate facility using continuous ""live"" communication with the facilities considered by many to be the most highly developed ambulance to hospital ems telemedicine communications system ever developed dreams is the first and only system to provide fully interactive simultaneous ""live"" transmissions of video and critical patient data"
"dec 14 2010 - the us environmental protection agency (epa) has recognized dallas area habitat for humanity (dahfh) and dallas sustainable skylines initiative (dssi) for building 40 energy-efficient homes the organizations found innovative ways to provide quality housing using standardized construction templates while working under a tight budget dssi paid for energy-efficient upgrades in the homes dssi partners texas a&m university the tees energy systems laboratory and texenergy solutions conducted a study to gauge energy savings and cost-effectiveness the efficiency upgrades would provide the results showed that the families will use 10-12 percent less energy for three bedroom homes and 21-22 percent less energy for two bedroom homes when compared to the standard building code in effect at time of construction the homes located in frazier courtyard in dallas are part of dssis affordable green homes initiative that began in 2008the homes were among the first habitat for humanity homes in the country built to leed silver standards the us green building councils certification for environmentally friendly projects dahfh dssi epa chase dallas dallas mayor tom leppert innercity community development corporation (icdc) and jcpenney unveiled the final five homes to the frazier community dec 11 in the fair park area of dallas the celebration ""look whos home for the holidays"" marked the culmination of the public and private sector joint venture for sustainable housing the dallas sustainable skylines initiative is a voluntary partnership between the city of dallas epa and the north central texas council of governments (nctcg) to promote sustainability and air quality improvements dallas area habitat for humanity transforms neighborhoods by engaging families and community partners in creating quality affordable housing dallas area habitat for humanitys vision is that all individuals and families live in thriving neighborhoods where hopes and dreams are realized for generations to come because poverty housing is socially politically and spiritually unacceptable for more information visit https://dallasareahabitatorg community sustainability is a partnership at the private and public level epa continues to encourage communities to take action to bring together diverse plans for a more sustainable community through programs such as sustainable skylines communities can reduce public exposure to pollutants and improve respiratory health to enhance their residents quality of life more about activities in epa region 6"
"studying how bacteria incorporate foreign dna from invading viruses into their own regulatory processes dr thomas wood a tees researcher and professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is uncovering the secrets of one of natures most primitive immune systems his findings which appear in nature communications a multidisciplinary publication dedicated to research in all areas of the biological physical and chemical sciences shed light on how bacteria have throughout the course of millions of years developed resistance to antibiotics by co-opting the dna of their natural enemies: viruses the battle between bacteria and bacteria-eating viruses wood explains has been going on for millions of years with viruses attempting to replicate themselves by - in one approach - invading bacteria cells and integrating themselves into the chromosomes of the bacteria when this happens a bacterium makes a copy of its chromosome which includes the virus particle the virus then can choose at a later time to replicate itself killing the bacterium - similar to a ticking time bomb wood says however things can go radically wrong for the virus because of random but abundant mutations that occur within the chromosome of the bacterium having already integrated itself into the bacteriums chromosome the virus is subject to mutation as well and some of these mutations wood explains render the virus unable to replicate and kill the bacterium with this new diverse blend of genetic material wood says a bacterium not only overcomes the virus lethal intentions but also flourishes at a greater rate than similar bacteria that have not incorporated viral dna ""over millions of years this virus becomes a normal part of the bacterium "" wood says ""it brings in new tricks new genes new proteins new enzymes new things that it can do the bacterium learns how to do things from this ""what we have found is that with this new viral dna that has been trapped over millions of years in the chromosome the cell has created a new immune system "" wood says ""it has developed new proteins that have enabled it to resists antibiotics and other harmful things that attempt to oxidize cells such as hydrogen peroxide these cells that have the new viral set of tricks dont die or dont die as rapidly"" understanding the significance of viral dna to bacteria required woods research team to delete all of the viral dna on the chromosome of a bacterium in this case bacteria from a strain of e coli woods team led by postdoctoral researcher xiaoxue wang used what in a sense could be described as ""enzymatic scissors"" to ""cut out"" the nine viral patches which amounted to precisely removing 166 000 nucleotides once the viral patches were successfully removed the team examined how the bacterium cell changed what they found was a dramatically increased sensitivity to antibiotics by the bacterium while wood studied this effect in e coli bacteria he says similar processes have taken place on a massive widespread scale noting that viral dna can be found in nearly all bacteria with some strains possessing as much as 20 percent viral dna within their chromosome ""to put this into perspective for some bacteria one-fifth of their chromosome came from their enemy and until our study people had largely neglected to study that 20 percent of the chromosome "" wood says ""this viral dna had been believed to be silent and unimportant not having much impact on the cell ""our study is the first to show that we need to look at all bacteria and look at their old viral particles to see how they are affecting the bacterias current ability to withstand things like antibiotics if we can figure out how the cells are more resistant to antibiotics because of this additional dna we can perhaps make new effective antibiotics"""
dr katy kao a tees researcher and assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) as a recipient of the prestigious award kao will receive $511 609 throughout the next five years for her research which will examine the evolutionary processes associated with how microbes adapt to their environments this will be accomplished kao notes via the development of the visualizing evolution in real-time (vert) method which uses genetically identical but differently colored cells to identify when adaptive evolution has occurred in laboratory cultures vert will be used to engineer escherichia coli for enhanced tolerance to a biofuel (1-butanol) and genomic tools will be used to determine the underlying evolutionary processes and molecular mechanisms involved kao explains kao completed her undergraduate career at the university of california irvine and earned her phd at the university of california los angeles before joining texas a&ms chemical engineering department in 2008 at texas a&m kaos research focuses on genomics systems biology and biotechnology her laboratory is interested in using genomic and system biological tools to study microbial adaptation in various environments specifically kao is focusing on evolving microorganisms such as yeast and e coli for enhanced tolerance to the toxicity of desired bioproducts such as biofuels she also is utilizing ultra-high throughput sequencing technology along with related tools to study the transcriptome and the metabolism in an effort to identify the cellular components responsible for the selected traits the career award was established to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning
jodie lutkenhaus a tees researcher and assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has been awarded a faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) as a recipient of the prestigious award lutkenhaus will receive $500 000 throughout the next five years for her research which will examine the materials properties of ultra thin polymer films specifically lutkenhaus will be studying a class of films called layer-by-layer (lbl) assemblies made from the alternating layers of oppositely charged molecules lbl films have applications in energy storage and production biomaterials self-cleaning surfaces and more however little is known regarding whether these films melt soften or crosslink at a given temperature such knowledge she notes is important to discern if lbl assemblies are to be commercialized the lutkenhaus laboratory has expertise in measuring and identifying thermal phenomena in thin solid films and is the first to observe crosslinking in lbl assemblies using calorimetry and temperature-controlled ellipsometry these techniques will be applied to various kinds of lbl assemblies to identify other thermal phenomena previously unknown in lbl assemblies if successful this information will be used to design thermally responsive thin films lutkenhaus says lutkenhaus who completed her undergraduate career at the university of texas at austin earned her phd at the massachusetts institute of technology in 2007 before joining texas a&ms chemical engineering department in 2010 at texas a&m lutkenhaus focuses on designing organic thin films and nanostructures to enable the development of novel organic energy systems and smart-coatings areas of her research include learning how polymer thin films behave in confinement; fabrication of polymer nanowires and nanotubes; polyelectrolytes and layer-by-layer assembly; designing lithium-ion battery electrode and electrolyte materials; and understanding electrochemical processes within these materials the career award was established to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning
"dr kamran entesari a tees researcher and assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) entesari received his award for his proposal ""versatile integrated platforms for broadband microwave dielectric spectroscopy"" his proposal describes low-cost small-size microwave spectroscopy systems that could significantly enhance the capabilities for point-of-care medical diagnosis bio-threat detection agriculture and food and drug safety the objective of this research is to address the need for versatile broadband microwave dielectric spectroscopy systems based on fully integrated silicon platforms entesari received the bs degree in electrical engineering from sharif university of technology (iran) in 1995 the ms degree in electrical engineering from tehran polytechnic university (iran) in 1999 and the phd degree from university of michigan in 2005 in 2006 he joined the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university his research interests include the design of rf/microwave/millimeter-wave integrated circuits and systems microwave biological/chemical sensors rf micro-electromechanical systems (mems) and medical electronics he is a previous co-recipient of the 2009 semiconductor research corporation (src) design contest second project award for his work on dual-band millimeter-wave receivers on silicon nsf established the career program to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning"
"a ceremony at the khalifa university of science technology and research in abu dhabi united arab emirates was held feb 20 to commemorate the official signing of a memorandum of understanding (mou) between khalifa university the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and sandia national laboratories to jointly operate the gulf nuclear energy infrastructure institute (gneii) located in abu dhabi gneii will be a khalifa university institute housing a regional education program offering both classroom instruction and hands-on experience in topics related to nuclear energy safety security safeguards and nonproliferation dr raymond juzaitis who heads tees nuclear engineering division and the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university signed the mou on behalf of tees high-ranking officials from the us department of state the us embassy in abu dhabi and the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) were also in attendance the mou-signing ceremony also marked the official beginning of gneiis initial pilot course a 12-week educational program focused on nuclear power safety safeguards and security sponsored by the us state department and nnsa the course is being developed by the tees nuclear security science and policy institute and sandia national laboratories each of whom will provide course materials and instructors for gneiis pilot operation gneii aims to promote international interests in developing a nuclear energy security and safety culture increase collaboration between the nuclear energy security and safety communities and help to enhance global standards for nuclear energy technology in the middle east the institute was recognized by the white houses office of science and technology policy as number 5 on a list of the ""top 17 science and technology activities"" in terms of ""science and technology engagement with the muslim world"" for the period of june 4 2009 through june 4 2010 tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"dr robin r murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and director of the center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) was named one of the 2011 most influential women in technology by fast company crasar is a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) which is a member of the texas a&m university system murphy was one of five women named in ""the brainiacs"" category of the list other categories included ""the entrepreneurs "" ""the gamers "" ""the advocates "" ""the media "" and ""the executives"" fast company began the list of most influential women in tech in 2009 and this years list highlights 30 women in the six different categories murphy joined the faculty at texas a&m in 2008 and is best known for her work with search and rescue robots which have been used in the rubble of the world trade center following the attacks on sept 11 2001 as well as in mud slides caved-in-mines and collapsed buildings around the world she has been honored with the 2010 motohiro kiosoi award from the international rescue system institute for her outstanding academic contributions in establishing a new research field in rescue engineering additionally in 2009 she was named an alpha geek by wired magazine and in 2008 she was awarded the al aube outstanding contributor award by the auvsi foundation the first time the award has been given to an academic she was also profiled in the june 14 2004 issue of time magazine as an innovator in artificial intelligence murphy received a bme in mechanical engineering and ms and phd degrees in computer science from georgia tech where she was a rockwell international doctoral fellow her basic research focuses on artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction for unmanned systems these efforts are/have been funded by doe (rim) darpa onr nasa nsf and industry and have led to more than 100 publications in the field including the textbook ai robotics (mit press) fast company is the worlds leading progressive business media brand with a unique editorial focus on innovation in technology ethonomics (ethical economics) leadership and design"
"bryan texas feb 24 2011 - lisam systems of belgium and the texas a&m university system have announced the joint formation of lisam america inc with lisam systems holding a majority stake in the new venture headquartered in bryan texas lisam america will provide exess(r) software sales services and support to companies operating in the united states that manage workplace environmental health and safety (eh&s) for energy chemicals cosmetics paints and coatings and special chemicals industries lisam america is also expected to become the primary platform for lisam systems to commercialize process safety research and data from the mary kay oconnor process safety center a joint center of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m universitys artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering ""we created this joint venture with lisam systems based on their flexible global and scalable eh&s software and technology and their proven industry track record evidenced by more than 500 customers around the world "" said brett cornwell associate vice chancellor for the office for technology commercialization at the texas a&m system ""with exess(r) we now have a global platform to commercialize process safety research and data gained from extensive collaboration with the chemical energy and other process industries"" lisam america immediately increases the operational capabilities of lisam systems to license and support exess(r) software in north america the us subsidiary also strengthens lisam systems preparedness to deliver compliance solutions for the us market including the upcoming us adoption of the global system for harmonization and classification of hazardous chemicals (ghs) volume tracking and reporting for hazardous chemicals and others ""by launching lisam america with the texas a&m system we gain a us partner with a strong reputation for collaborating with the chemical energy and other process industries of our customers "" said michel hemberg chairman and ceo of lisam systems ""we are especially impressed by the quality of research and leadership at texas a&ms mary kay oconnor process safety center and look forward to a close relationship with them as we develop eh&s solutions for the us and global marketplace"" about the texas a&m university system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $33 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 120 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $772 million and help drive the states economy about the mary kay oconnor process safety center the mary kay oconnor process safety center which is a part of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and located in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was established in 1995 through the generosity of t michael oconnor his goal and the centers mission is to improve safety in the chemical process industry - to make safety second nature the center seeks to develop safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies that will minimize losses in the process industry about lisam systems for more than 20 years lisam systems has provided software and service solutions for environmental health and safety compliance management of the chemical energy cosmetics detergent paint and coverings and special chemicals industry sectors with over 500 customers served from offices in asia europe and the americas lisam systems delivers software for chemicals management inventory management (m) sds authoring and distribution ghs/clp and ghs/jis compliant shipping and labeling reach management and other hazardous chemicals volume tracking and reporting workplace safety and waste management through its telegis subsidiary lisam systems also offers sds authoring and other compliance services about exess(r) developed in microsoft net with microsoft sqlserver exess(r) is lisam systems flagship software for global regulatory compliance solutions in environmental health & safety over 100 lisam systems customers use exess(r) for ghs/clp ghs/jis and reach compliant sds authoring and distribution labeling and classification of hazardous chemicals exess(r) also delivers strong eh&s solutions in the areas of chemicals management inventory management waste management and workplace safety exess(r) provides api integration with erp and other systems and an open strategy with regulatory content providers to support every phase of the product life cycle"
"march 4 2011 - texas a&m engineerings turbomachinery laboratory presented the first middle east turbomachinery symposium (mets) in doha qatar in february qatar petroleum (qp) was the primary sponsor qp said they were pleased at the success of the first mets and announced in the feb 20 gulf times that they would be please to sponsor a second mets in 2013 the first mets saw more than 1 000 participants and guests from 35 countries it attracted more than 560 experts and specialists who gave and attended its presentations the mets program was organized by an advisory committee representing major oem and support manufacturers of turbomachinery and major turbomachinery users the committee was co-chaired by dr dara childs director of the turbomachinery laboratory and abdul aziz al naimi lead specialist engineer (ees) technical services department qp an international exhibition took place within mets and attracted over 60 exhibiting companies representing 35 countries childs said ""the exhibitors displayed their latest products and services and their top engineers manned the booths many exhibitors want to take an expanded role in a next mets exhibition"" he the minister of energy and industry dr mohamed bin saleh al-sada accompanied by exxonmobil corporation executives and senior officials from qp and rasgas visited the exhibits the gulf times stated ""the minister was impressed with the exhibition and the number of people who visited the symposium he suggested regional universities must take advantage of future mets as it will provide a great learning opportunity for young engineers to meet with world-class experts that attend this event"" qp served as the host sponsor; exxonmobil the platinum sponsor; qatar electricity and water co the gold sponsor; and rasgas the silver sponsor texas a&m university at qatar - particularly dr mark weichold dean and ceo - has supported mets from the outset the mets symposium was modeled after the turbomachinery symposium in houston the turbo lab will host its 40th turbomachinery symposium in september at the george r brown convention center in houston in conjunction with the pump users symposium and cheminnovations the turbomachinery laboratory is part of the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and the texas engineering experiment station an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"march 11 2011 - john pappas has been named associate director of the texas a&m energy engineering institute (eei) institute director dr stephen a holditch announced recently ""john has a solid grasp on the issues involving energy supply demand and distribution "" said holditch ""with johns leadership i expect eei to become a major force in the development and deployment of energy technology globally"" pappas who holds a master of science degree in electrical engineering from the university of texas is also the vestas director of the texas a&m wind energy center the first center formed under the eei pappas is a registered professional engineer and was previously employed as a principal investigator program manager and director of business development at the center for electromechanics one of the largest research institutes at ut-austin holditch also announced several other changes in the structure of the organization including the appointment of dr marcelo laprea as assistant director supply and mark m ellison as assistant director corporate and government relations laprea spent 24 years in academic positions as a faculty member of the petroleum engineering department at universidad de oriente in puerto la cruz venezuela he also spent 13 years with petroleum consulting and service companies as an independent consultant he was director of curriculum for the network of excellence in training (next) for schlumberger texas a&m university university of oklahoma and heriot-watt university prior to joining eei laprea received his master of science and phd in petroleum engineering from texas a&m ellison previously held the position of director corporate relations for the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and associate vice chancellor for economic development for the texas a&m university system he also served as director of the texas emerging technology fund for the office of governor rick perry ellison received his bachelor of science degree in agriculture from texas a&m the organizational changes are part of an effort to increase the eeis profile within the texas a&m system the state of texas and among industrial partners maintaining eeis relevance by being in touch with industry needs is critical to the success of the institute eeis goal is to be the go-to place for industrys needs in fundamental research applied research demonstration and implementation eeis offices are located in suite 710 of the richardson building on the texas a&m university campus more information is available at http://energyengineeringorg or by calling 979-458-1644"
march 31 2011 - dr kenneth r hall professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and deputy director of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has accepted the positions of associate vice chancellor and associate director of tees and associate dean for research and graduate studies at texas a&m university at qatar in these roles he will report to the vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees in college station and the dean and chief executive officer of texas a&m at qatar respectively hall assumes the post april 1 relocating to doha qatar where he will serve a four-year term hall is an inventor or co-inventor in 12 patents including four that support the gas to liquids process that is licensed to synfuels inc his research includes thermophysical fluid properties obstruction flowmeters and gas to liquid processing in addition to his administrative duties hall is an active researcher and a professor in the chemical engineering department where he holds the jack e and frances brown chair he also served as the head of the department for four years
april 1 2011 - the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has appointed charles h (chip) hill director of the space engineering research center (serc) effective may 1 2011 serc performs research and development of space technologies in cooperation with academia industry and government agencies hill has a broad background in technical program development and execution he was a career air force officer who directed national-level programs including the $100 million survivability technology program at the strategic defense initiative organization he was the us department of defense lead for space debris research served on a national committee on high-power microwaves and on the electromagnetic effects advisory board and coordinated programs with congressional oversight committees he led a number of test programs at government simulator facilities and national ranges such as the national test site and kwajalein missile range he briefed programs to senior government officials including the secretary of defense and the presidents science adviser in industry he was a vice president at jaycor inc and titan inc and manager of a multiple-contractor team at the boeing co he led interdisciplinary teams developing and testing hardware and software for government customers coordinated programs with the office of science and technology policy and other government agencies and managed organizations at the group and department level since 2005 hill has been an associate director at serc with responsibilities for project management and business development he has led a serc-texas a&m faculty team in a significant effort developing space situational awareness technologies for the air force research laboratory
"april 15 2011 - laura ortiz and benjamin garza were civil engineering majors at texas a&m university-kingsville when they participated in the 2010 tees-sponsored undergraduate summer research grant (usrg) program at texas a&m universitys dwight look college of engineering annually the program gives high-achieving engineering students system-wide the chance to conduct research in a faculty lab because undergraduates who have the opportunity to do research are much more likely to continue their studies toward a doctoral degree thats exactly what happened with ortiz and garza who decided a phd was the path for them and are now enrolled as engineering graduate students at texas a&m as a graduate student in structural engineering ortiz is continuing her summer research with dr mary beth hueste professor of civil engineering at texas a&m under the usrg program ortiz developed a framework for ranking older bridges that takes into account historical significance structural condition and functionality to guide engineers in deciding whether a historic bridge (those more than 50 years old) should be rehabilitated or replaced her research is particularly relevant to texas considering the state has 384 bridges that are 50 years or older additionally ortiz has been selected to receive a 2011 national science foundation graduate research fellowship one of the most prestigious awards a graduate student can receive ""the usrg program gave me the tools to accomplish my goal of graduate school and encouraged me to apply for fellowships "" ortiz said ""dr hueste introduced me to the subject of historic bridges and i feel my research will make an impact by helping to preserve our nations historic bridges and ensure their structural and functional adequacy i would recommend a summer research program for anyone interested in graduate school"" for his summer research garza investigated carbon nanotubes and nanofibers as reinforcement materials for portland cement the substance that binds concrete together reinforcing concrete with carbon nanotubes could eliminate the need for steel reinforcement bars making concrete stronger lighter and more economical since concrete is the worlds most popular structural material now that garza is a graduate student at texas a&m he will be meeting with his faculty mentor for the usrg program dr rashid abu al-rub assistant professor of civil engineering on the next research steps ""although i had already made my decision to attend graduate school the usrg program provided me with a glimpse into engineering research that otherwise i would not have had because my experience was so great i knew that texas a&m was the right school for me i highly recommend the usrg program to any student who is considering attending graduate school "" garza said"
"april 25 2011 - aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) director dr david redman has announced that embraer (embraer - empresa brasileira de aeronáutica sa) has joined the avsi cooperative ""we are pleased that embraer one of the largest airplane manufacturers in the world has chosen to join the cooperative "" redman said ""they bring their impressive capability and experience with cutting edge technologies to the table working on common issues with the other leading aviation industry companies that are already avsi members will enhance the value that avsi projects can deliver to the participants"" embraer is a brazilian aerospace conglomerate that produces commercial military and executive aircraft and is headquartered in são josé dos campos brazil ""avsi has had an european presence for some time with member companies including smiths aerospace [now ge aviation] bae systems and most recently airbus "" redman said ""embraers membership expands our international outreach to south america as the major aircraft original equipment manufacturer on the continent i am hopeful that this will provide opportunities to collaborate with additional south american organizations"" avsi provides a forum for aerospace industry organizations to collaborate on common pre-competitive issues avsi addresses issues that impact the aerospace community through international cooperative research and collaboration conducted by industry government and academia a division of tees avsis membership includes airbus bae systems boeing the us department of defense embraer the us federal aviation administration goodrich ge aviation honeywell lockheed martin nasa rockwell collins and the united technologies corp ""initially embraer will be working with seven other members on our system architecture virtual integration [savi] project and with several other members and associate members on our wireless avionics intra-communication [waic] project "" redman said ""these are the two largest current avsi projects ""savi is focused on developing the technologies necessary to enable virtual integration of complete aircraft while waic is performing the work necessary to enable the development of avionics that can interoperate without the traditional data cabling that adds weight and reliability issues to aircraft systems i look forward to working with embraer to identify additional projects that can help them develop safer and more reliable aircraft"""
april 27 2011 - dr g kemble bennett vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has appointed dr dennis oneal associate dean for research and interim deputy director of tees oneals appointment is effective may 1 oneal the holdredge-paul professor and head of the department of mechanical engineering joined the texas a&m engineering faculty in 1983 he was appointed department head in 2004 he is a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers and the american society of heating refrigeration and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) oneal has held various ashrae leadership positions and received the societys distinguished service award oneal is previous holder of the ed brockett professorship and has received the texas a&m association of former students distinguished teaching award in the dwight look college of engineering he was among the first named a look college faculty fellow and has earned the texas a&m mechanical engineering departments outstanding undergraduate teaching award and the tees senior fellow award oneal holds a bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m he earned a masters degree from oklahoma state university and his phd from purdue university both in mechanical engineering
"may 10 2011 - a research team from the tees texas center for applied technology (tcat) has been awarded a us army certificate of networthiness (con) for the teams universal audit tool (uat) the tool is a cross-platform desktop software application that allows fort hoods central technical support facilitys configuration management department to unobtrusively gather state information on a particular computer and then compare that to an existing baseline this state information is used to validate that a computer is authorized to participate in official army software certification and integration testing the universal audit tool will replace the ctsf developed interrogator tool which has been in use since 1999 deputy director of the ctsf configuration management department and the applications primary user langston carter said ""this software will improve our process greatly and will benefit the ctsf as well as the entire army"" the army networthiness (nw) program was created out of an army need to address compliance and mitigate risks the program aims to determine whether an application or system is worthy to go on the armys enterprise network with the con the uat software can be loaded and used on any army computer located at fort hood texas the central technical support facility (ctsf) is the us armys strategic and central testing facility responsible for interoperability engineering executing army interoperability certification (aic) testing maintaining configuration control for all operational through tactical-level information technology and national security systems and supporting the digital needs of deployed warfighters the universal audit tool was fielded to the ctsf in september 2010 and was the culmination of a two-year software development effort the first years effort resulted in the identification of a set of unique metrics that could be used to determine what software is present on a computer year two resulted in the development and fielding of the uat software application an eight year tcat employee and project technical lead during both years of the project deepa narayanan said ""the uat software provides the ctsf the means to easily build new baselines and extend existing baselines this application provides the flexibility to support ctsf needs for years to come"" larkin ohern texas a&m class of 1980 and a retired army officer was the tcat project manager ""i really like how this project came together to support a real requirement in the army the end product is the result of an outstanding development team working in close cooperation with army sponsors "" he said the universal audit tool is the second application produced by the texas center for applied technology to successfully undergo the rigorous army certificate of networthiness process in november 2009 the process oriented data visualization (prodv) tool received a con the prodv application provides interactive visual analysis capabilities to both analysts and data collectors by combining data transformation processing and visualization capabilities within an easy-to-use visual programming environment this allows analysts to both detect the expected and discover the unexpected in extremely large and diverse collections of data prodv is currently being used by the united states army operational test command the texas center for applied technology was formed in september 1994 and has done significant software development work in support of army and department of defense programs tcat is part of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) a member of the texas a&m university system"
"may 20 2011 - the texas engineering experiment station (tees) a research agency within the texas a&m university system has joined the edge® innovation network a collaborative open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia with government input to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to warfighters and first responders ""membership means that we can connect our research development and training expertise in disaster response to an almost unimaginably large and diverse set of companies "" said dr robin murphy a professor in the department of computer science and engineering and leader of the multidisciplinary emergency informatics community at texas a&m sponsored by general dynamics c4 systems there are seven edge innovation centers worldwide and more than 180 edge members recent new members include general dynamics land systems (sterling heights mich); raytheon bbn technologies corp (cambridge mass); windtamer corp (rochester ny); information is power (houston); and sherborne sensors (wyckoff nj) more information can be found online at http://wwwedge-innovationcom ""the edge provides a new military and government acquisition paradigm by using both physical and virtual environments where edge members and users can collaborate and innovate together to deliver gap-filling capabilities in months rather than years "" said pete palmer edge innovation network director about tees the texas engineering experiment station is a member of the texas a&m university system with a mission to identify and conduct research in areas critical to the nations economic development and quality of life; promote new technology and entrepreneurship; leverage and network human physical and financial resources and enhance and strengthen education about texas a&m university texas a&m university is a state land sea and space grant college and the world leader in research development and training in emergency response it is the sixth largest university in the united states (48 000 students) with the second largest undergraduate and fourth largest graduate programs in engineering texas a&ms dwight look college of engineering is third only to mit and georgia tech in national research expenditures emergency informatics expertise is reflected in the bush school of government and public service the center for robot-assisted search and rescue the hazard reduction and recovery center the internet 2 technology evaluation center (next generation 9-1-1) the mary kay oconnor process safety center and the nuclear security science and policy institute"
may 17 2011 - the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a center in the texas engineering experiment station was recognized by the us army training and doctrine command (tradoc) deputy chief of staff for intelligence (g-2) for its role as the system integrator for a federated training system designed to counter improvised explosive device (ied) networks ben jordan director of the tradoc g-2 operational environment laboratory presented the award april 19 to joe r gonzalez who led the system integration effort with blake stoker and christopher kocmoud the hybrid irregular warfare (iw) improvised explosive device (ied) network-defeat toolkit known as hi2nt federation is in the completion stages of spiral 2 development and is on track to begin its next development spiral later this year the hi2nt is designed to train army service members to develop specific counter ied network tactics techniques and procedures at the tactical level; to interact in diverse cultural settings including afghanistan and iraq; to understand the consequences of various force activities upon the population; and to hone negotiating skills required to earn the trust of the local population tcat as the system integrator led the development this past year and achieved federation level interactions last october which enabled the use of the system as a hybrid federation of models this version of hi2nt was demonstrated at the december 2010 interservice/industry training simulation and education conference (i/itsec) held in orlando fla and has been subsequently demonstrated to government and military decision makers as a first of its kind training system the hi2nt federation is composed of four key models that are linked together into a hybrid model framework: the one semi-automated force (onesaf) simulation developed by the us army provides a constructive entity-based kinetic ground model enabling unit movements activities and kinetic events the first person cultural trainer (fpct) developed by the university of texas at dallas provides a first person virtual environment in which culture specific interactions can take place the joint non-kinetic effects model (jnem) developed by the nasa jet propulsion laboratory (jpl) monitors and adjudicates all activities and the resulting changes to civilian group satisfaction mood and cooperation and can initiate situational environmental and other actions that affect the mood of the population the process-oriented data visualization (prodv) visual analytics toolkit developed by tcat monitors and visualizes jnem calculated satisfaction mood and cooperation effects
june 3 2011 - the tees energy systems laboratory hosted its 33rd annual industrial energy technology conference (ietc) may 17-19 in new orleans historic french quarter conference hosts were energy systems laboratory and the louisiana department of natural resources sponsors included the us department of energy electric power research institute txu energy american chemistry council and spirax sarco ietc is the second longest running technical conference at texas a&m this years conference saw a 52 percent increase in attendance from 2010 mainly from industry and energy engineering students with an unprecedented 18 sessions 90 technical paper presentations and a one-day energy managers workshop keynote speakers included james crites vice president of operations at dallas-fort worth international airport and clark gellings with the electric power research institute in california who both stressed the importance of sound engineering to solve tomorrows energy challenges the ietc is a one-of-a kind conference that focuses on a wide variety of topics of current importance to industrial energy managers utility experts government program managers and vendors the latest technologies and expertise on combined heat and power smart manufacturing energy opportunity analysis and case studies of successful real-world industrial efficiency projects are presented
"july 22 2011 - texas engineering experiment station continues to be recognized as a world leader in creating a path to green sustainable buildings through enhanced operations and a licensed retro-commissioning process known as continuous commissioning® malcolm verdict associate director of the tees energy systems laboratory was an invited speaker at the sixth asia clean energy forum 2011 ""new business models and policy drivers - building the low-carbon future "" in june in manila philippines the international event was organized by the asian development bank (adb) the united states agency for international development (usaid) and the world resources institute (wri) to promote best practices in clean energy policy and programs innovative business models and affordable energy access in the asia pacific region more than 550 participants from more than 50 countries representing governments financial institutions civil society academia international organizations and the private sector gathered in daily plenaries breakout sessions and parallel side events to discuss innovative and creative methods to encourage large-scale clean energy development and deployment according to the conference organizers verdict was the only invited academia speaker from the us in his presentation ""building low carbon generation through smart buildings & smart grid "" verdict provided an overview of how smart [operated] commercial buildings connected to a smart electrical grid can lower electrical consumption significantly while lessening the demand for power generation and helping sustain the climate through lower air emissions"
"nuclear engineering professors and tees researchers marvin adams and paul nelson were awarded three research grants of more than $22 million from the us department of energy (doe) dr paul nelson professor emeritus of nuclear engineering and current associate director for international programs of nuclear security science and policy institute received two grants with dr marvin adams receiving the third the grants were part of the $39 million awarded to support up to 51 projects at colleges and universities across the country through the nuclear engineering university program (neup) the projects selected for award cover four nuclear energy research fields including fuel cycle research and development; reactor concepts research development and demonstration; nuclear energy advanced modeling and simulation; and transformative research nelsons projects were awarded under the transformative research mission his projects ""improved safety margin characterization of risk from loss of offsite power"" and ""correlates of sensitive technologies"" were granted $600 000 and more than $500 000 respectively adams project ""phenomena-based uncertainty quantification in predictive coupled-physics reactor simulations"" was granted more than $1 million and is part of the nuclear energy advanced modeling and simulation mission through the neup the doe is working to leverage the research and development capabilities of american universities and colleges to enhance us leadership in the global nuclear energy industry"
"the engineering program of the texas a&m university system (texas a&m engineering) announced today it has joined the edge® innovation network a collaborative open-environment initiative enabling industry and academia with government input to work together to enhance the delivery cycle of new technologies and innovative capabilities to first responders and warfighters ""becoming a member of the edge innovation network connects the dots between emergency professionals industry and academia this will smooth the way for rapid transfer of advanced defense technologies and products that will revolutionize how disasters big and small are handled worldwide "" said dr robin murphy professor of computer science and engineering ""focusing on emergency infomatics the new edge center will bring together texas a&m engineerings unique testing and training facilities subject matter experts and leading researchers to help edge members to deliver critical data-to-decision capabilities that will save lives reduce economic downtime from catastrophic events and create new jobs by leveraging the most advanced unmanned systems wireless networks computing and decision-making systems currently available"" pete palmer director of the edge innovation network said ""the edge provides a new military and government acquisition paradigm by using both physical and virtual environments where edge members and users can collaborate and innovate together to deliver gap-filling capabilities in months rather than years"" sponsored by general dynamics c4 systems there are seven edge innovation centers worldwide and over 200 edge members recent new members include simulation and training systems inc orlando fla; raytheon bbn technologies corp cambridge mass; abrams learning and information systems arlington va; cognitive engineering research institute mesa ariz; and sporian microsystems inc lafayette colo about texas a&m engineering texas a&m engineering encompasses four main components of the texas a&m university system: dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university texas engineering experiment station (tees) texas engineering extension service (teex) and texas transportation institute (tti) with missions of teaching research training and response texas a&m engineering is a cornerstone of one of the states premier institutions of higher education and is uniquely positioned to leverage the capabilities each possesses in research development and training in emergency response its world-class facilities include the 279 acre emergency preparedness campus which houses disaster city® the emergency operations training center brayton fire field and riverside complexes teex a member of texas a&m engineering is the sponsor for the states elite urban search and rescue team texas task force 1 which is also one of the 28 fema federal response teams nationwide emergency informatics at texas a&m university texas a&m university is the sixth largest university in the united states with enrollment of more than 49 000 students with the second largest undergraduate and fourth largest graduate program in engineering its top-10 dwight look college of engineering is third only to mit and georgia tech in national research expenditures multidisciplinary emergency informatics expertise is reflected in the dwight look college of engineering bush school of government and public service center for robot-assisted search and rescue hazard reduction and recovery center internet 2 technology evaluation center (next generation 9-1-1) mary kay oconnor process safety center and the nuclear security science and policy institute"
"sept 16 2011 - texas a&m university and the texas engineering experiment station (tees) have received $15 million from the us department of energy (doe) to train the next generation of industrial energy efficiency experts us energy secretary steven chu has announced more than $30 million for 24 universities in 23 states across the country to train undergraduate- and graduate-level engineering students in manufacturing efficiency each school - including texas a&m - will receive $200 000 to $300 000 per year for up to five years to help university teams to gain practical training on core energy management concepts through does successful industrial assessment center (iac) program the industrial assessment center program enables promising engineering students around the country to conduct energy assessments in a broad range of manufacturing facilities providing skills and experience that prepares the students to compete in todays economy while helping local companies and factories to reduce energy waste save money and become more economically competitive ""this industrial efficiency training program opens the door to good jobs in a growing global sector for thousands of energy-savvy students while promoting real boots-on-the-ground progress toward our transition to a clean energy economy "" chu said ""the centers will provide a boost to the next-generation of american workers as well as to the businesses with which they work"" through these university-based industrial assessment centers engineering students will receive extensive training in industrial processes energy assessment procedures and energy management principles which will be put to use working directly with small and medium-sized industrial and manufacturing facilities in the surrounding communities under the program each industrial assessment center will be expected to train at least 10 to 15 students per year conduct approximately 20 energy assessments annually and perform extensive follow-on reporting tracking implementation and management-improvement activities in addition to conducting assessments at industrial plants each industrial assessment center will be expected to promote interaction with private sector partners that could provide valuable workforce development support such as scholarships and internship opportunities since its inception 25 years ago texas a&m engineerings iac has educated more than 200 engineering students on how to successfully apply energy conservation techniques in real-world situations the center which on average has about 15 aggie engineering students working for it each year provides no-cost studies of manufacturing plants within 150 miles of college station analyzing a plants energy waste and productivity issues dr bryan rasmussen assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m currently directs the center students visit various businesses and conduct a one-day walkthrough analysis and then prepare a report for the company making specific recommendations to the plants concerning energy cost reduction waste cost reduction and productivity enhancing practices the plant can implement while plants benefit from the possible cost reductions students who do the analysis benefit from hands-on training and gain valuable industry experience iac gives student workers conservation-based attitudes and skills and when they graduate many go to work in conservation the students work for wages not grades and their schedules are based on a government contract not directly on their semester beginning and end to date the iac has made more than 600 site visits iac has conducted visits to most of the industries in bryan and college station but the majority of its work has been done in the houston area to date the center has recommended conservation projects with savings of more than $64 million per year with data showing that plants have realized about $32 million per year in cost savings does office of energy efficiency and renewable energy invests in clean energy technologies that strengthen the economy protect the environment and reduce americas dependence on foreign oil learn more about does efforts to contribute practical solutions for some of the nations top energy challenges through a combination of transformative research and development and targeted education and assistance in the industrial and manufacturing sectors"
"the deaths of technicians medical personnel and even graduate students who are burned in laboratory accidents might be prevented by a flame-resistant coating jaime grunlan has developed grunlan a tees researcher and an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university works with polymer nanocomposites that have properties similar to those of metals and ceramics -- conducting electricity for instance -- while maintaining properties of polymers such as low density his development of a flame-resistant polymer coating has certainly gotten some attention as the sole researcher in the use of this technique for flame retardancy he has fielded calls from the united states military to the cotton industry to mattress manufacturers to the federal aviation administration and from companies around the world grunlans technology involves covering every microscopic fiber in a fabric with a thin composite coating of polymer and clay to enhance the flame-retardant properties of the fabric (and other forms of protection too including uv thermal and abrasion resistance) the thin films are about one-tenth of a micron thick or about one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair and are created with the layer-by- layer assembly technique in which the coating is deposited onto the surface of the fiber being coated this layer-by-layer process allows grunlan to control the thickness of the coating down to the nanometer level ""its like were creating a nano-brick wall around each fiber "" grunlan says and the coating is so thin that it adds only 1 to 2 weight-percent to the fabric and does not negatively alter the fabrics color texture or strength ""a lot of anti-flammables degrade fabric and cause it to tear "" grunlan says but with grunlans technique each thread can be individually coated and still remain soft and flexible in fact his coating could potentially strengthen fabric in tests virgin cotton fabric is burned using an industry-standard ul94 test also known as the vertical flame test in the test the treated and untreated fabrics are exposed to 12 seconds of flame grunlan and his students measure how long it takes for the fabric to catch fire and then how long the fire burns after the flame is extinguished after the vertical flame test only wisps of untreated cotton fabric remain (top) by comparison the fabric treated with grunlans polymer coating (bottom) shows less destruction and even retains some properties of fabric despite its layer of black soot the flame gets up to 700 degrees celsius and untreated cotton completely degrades at 600 degrees celsius but the fabric treated with grunlans coating still maintains the qualities of the fabric remaining soft and flexible ""this polymer coating buys time and protection "" grunlan says grunlan says he expects the technology will be suitable for clothing including childrens clothing; lab coats; and medical clothing for both doctors and patients it can even be used in military camps where a fire in a single tent can wipe out an entire camp but the technologys applications go far beyond just clothing and fabric the coating could be used in foams such as those found in sofas mattresses theatre and auditorium seats airplane seat cushions and building insulation the nanocomposite clay-polymer mixture coats the interior walls of foam the result is that when burned the treated foam keeps its shape instead of puddling at high temperatures like untreated polyurethane foam does this quality eliminates the melt-dripping effect that further spreads fires in fact the technology is so promising that one company has funded the patent which is filed in the united states and europe and several others have been in touch with grunlan ""anywhere you want to make fabric or foam anti- flammable you can use this technology "" he says"
"it is an all too familiar sight after tragedies such as earthquakes hurricanes or mudslides: people furiously digging through the rubble in the hopes of locating survivors a similar scene drove robin murphy into rescue robotics murphy is director of the tees center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) and a professor in texas a&ms department of computer science and engineering it was 1995 and having watched news reports on both the oklahoma city bombing and the kobe city earthquake murphy - who had conducted her phd research in robotics - decided it was time to focus her work on rescue robotics ""rescue robotics was strictly an emotional response "" says murphy ""artificial intelligence for robotics had been focusing on small robots with the thought of sending dozens of them up to mars"" it then became so clear to her that those same robots could be exploring under the rubble of a disaster and helping find victims ""at some point i thought i could be one of 200 people doing planetary robots i could be one of 200 people doing health care but somebody needs to step up and do this idea of rescue robotics"" and that is exactly what murphy did seeing an opportunity to make a difference she seized it and immersed herself in rescue robotics a field where she has become an international leader and one of the few women involved a rarity in her field robotics and even more so rescue robotics is dominated by men and when murphy is on the site of a disaster she is usually the only woman ""at crandall canyon utah the 2007 mine collapse i think there were 40 guys on this mountain and we were a two-hour drive from anything "" murphy says ""we were way up in the mountains and i was the only woman"" but murphys work is starting to open the eyes of young women helping them to realize that they too can break into the male-dominated field an april 2010 episode of the pbs show scigirls titled ""robots to the rescue"" featured murphy a female graduate student and four junior high girls the show which is aimed at getting young girls interested in science technology engineering and math had the girls work with murphy and her team to develop a personality for a rescue robot ""it is a real exciting thing for me to be considered a mentor "" murphy says ""i think it is that big moment when you realize ive got something to offer these young women between robotics and search and rescue there are just not a lot of women"" from the beginning robotics much less rescue robotics wasnt always on the radar for murphy when she was a youngster the big question was whether she would become a nuclear physicist or a mechanical engineer like her father although she didnt know which field of engineering she would choose she was sure engineering was the discipline she would study ""my dad was a mechanical engineer "" she says ""i was an only child so i was my dads only son of course i was going to be an engineer; i always wanted to be"" murphy made the choice to follow her fathers profession earning her undergraduate degree from georgia tech in mechanical engineering when it came time to pursue her graduate degree murphy went another route electing to get her phd in computer science also from georgia tech after working in industry for several years during her work toward the graduate degree she became interested in artificial intelligence (ai) despite initially thinking the field was a joke ""when i went to grad school in computer science i had a fellowship that required me to work with somebody in computer science that was a member of the computer integrated manufacturing program "" murphy says ""there was a new guy who did artificial intelligence for robots and i believed that was totally ludicrous but i needed a mentor ""i thought ai was a joke and the robots you see for manufacturing that i was exposed to from mechanical engineering were very stupid and you would never use them for anything interesting of course i was wrong ""within a month i fell in love with ai -- making things smarter duplicating some of the wonderful things we know about biological intelligence combining that with the differences of silicon-based systems i just totally fell in love with it and never looked back"" getting her start after completing her phd murphy joined the faculty at the colorado school of mines in golden colo the major focus at the school of mines was on planetary robots because of ties to colorados space community murphy fell in line and was working in the field of planetary robots but the 1995 bombing at the alfred p murrah federal building in oklahoma city shifted her focus she says she realized the same small rugged agile and lightweight robots being proposed for mars could be used to dive into the rubble where rescuers could not go the switch in focus carried risks because administrators and ai researchers viewed rescue robotics the way most people view robots - futuristic and too hard to be practical undeterred murphy made the drastic switch beginning what would turn into a pioneering career with a change in focus came a change in universities as well murphy moved to the university of south florida where she was encouraged to devote herself to the fledgling field of rescue robotics despite skepticism from traditional ai researchers murphy and her students were mentored by florida task force 3 starting in 1999 and eventually became technical search specialists while at south florida murphy participated in an event that is still special to her - the response to the collapse of the world trade center ten days earlier a former graduate student and defense advanced research program agency program manager had founded crasar when the planes struck he and murphy began coordinating crasars first mission: how to get robots to assist in finding the black boxes from the planes then the buildings collapsed and getting the robots to new york to assist in searching the rubble became even more urgent by noon murphy had packed her husbands new van with robots batteries tools and three graduate students following the new york state emergency offices invitation she drove to new york city and met with other members of the crasar team ""in many ways it is so hard to describe 9/11 if you were not there "" murphy says ""the interesting thing was we knew at the time that it was going to be the pearl harbor for our generation ""what we really didnt understand was how significant it was going to be for rescue robots we knew it was going to be the first time rescue robots had ever been used for any disaster anywhere thats been recorded"" the utility of small robots to penetrate deep in the rubble in voids too small or too hot for search dogs or people was a major surprise to the japanese robotics community which had favored larger more construction-like robots that could remove the rubble the robots also gained added credibility for their use in afghanistan by the us department of defense a new type of robot the world trade center disaster has had a lasting effect on rescue robotics serving as a learning experience for those involved and helping them to fine-tune the robots being used as well as making the robots more friendly and comforting to victims one such robot ""survivor buddy "" is murphys pet project and her efforts are paramount in the creation of what is considered the first robot built specifically for interacting with a trapped victim waiting to be extricated ""the survivor buddy project has its roots in 9/11 "" murphy says ""for several years we had been discussing how we would use the robots to find survivors as we were driving up there we realized we hadnt gotten beyond that point: what would we do if we found one that persisted with us and we started looking at things like a protocol"" they also began to look at the physical attributes of the robots everything from their color to the amount of noise they make ""most rescue robots or robots that get sold for these things are black and loud "" murphy says also most victims would be in the dark and having something with bright lights coming at them would more than likely add to their panic or fear this concern was confirmed when murphy and her colleagues took turns playing victims in test runs and later by a phd thesis she directed ""as we took turns being victims we realized the robots were scary "" murphy says so murphy and her colleagues at stanford university set out to design a robot that would not only be able to find victims but also help to comfort survivors as they waited for rescuers to reach them ""whenever you have an mri they give you your choice of music anything to keep you comforted and from being bored "" murphy says ""not only can we do two-way audio but we can do full web streaming you can watch your favorite tv show; you can talk to your friends you can do whatever why not make it two-way video and streaming web services ""we pitched this to microsoft as part of its initiative on how to use the web and web-enabled robots and they loved it we called the project the survivor buddy because it was going to be your buddy the national science foundation has since picked up the project as it offers real insight into eldercare and other situations where you might be using the robot as your connection with the larger world"" popular science also gave survivor buddy a ""best 100 of 2009"" award another move in 2008 murphy along with crasar moved to the texas a&m university systems engineering program in what could be considered a coup for the university the move allowed murphy to take full advantage of disaster city a 52-acre training facility created by the texas engineering extension service (teex) an agency in the a&m system teex delivers the full array of skills and techniques needed by emergency response professionals and a large staff that includes state and federal response teams and instructors the facility which is a mock community features full-scale collapsible structures offering murphy the perfect setting to test her rescue robots murphy also pointed to the people of texas a&m as another reason for her move to college station ""the facilities here are incredible "" murphy says ""but better yet we have real users with a true spirit of collaboration this is a group of people on campus and at teex working on emergency informatics that really wants to work together already were in the finals for an $18 million nsf engineering research center on our first try ""texas a&m is a wonderful place and i can do more here in the next 10 years than i can do in 20 years in any other place in the united states actually the world"""
"malcolm verdict associate director of the tees energy systems laboratory (esl) and a certified energy manager (cem) has been selected for admission into the association of energy engineers (aee) energy managers hall of fame aee is an international organization of more than 15 000 professionals in 84 countries and is widely recognized for its energy certification programs this high honor is reserved by aee for those individuals who have distinguished themselves with a lifetime of achievement in the energy engineering profession verdict was inducted into the aee hall of fame at the 2011 world energy engineering congress on friday (oct 14) at the navy pier convention center in chicago verdicts career spans three decades of implementing visionary highly effective energy management policies and programs with lasting significant impacts at the state national and international levels he is known for his ability to recognize an opportunity obtain stakeholder buy-in garner political support and funding and implement effective energy-efficiency programs verdict joined the texas a&m university system in 2002 after 10 years in washington dc as an energy efficiency advocate and works closely with federal state and local governments on energy efficiency and environmental policy issues representing the esl and its team of technical experts in energy efficiency technologies verdict has more than 30 years in the energy efficiency and sustainable development arena and has been widely recognized by the western governors association the texas governors energy management office and others as an expert on these matters in the early 1990s he helped establish the largest state-funded loan program at the time for financing energy efficiency improvements for state and local governments which has grown to a $200 million fund today he received the state energy managers award in texas from the industrial energy technology conference in 1989 and served as deputy director of the texas state energy office in 1991 where he created the $98 million loanstar energy loan program helped craft the first energy demand side management rules for regulated utilities in texas and implemented the states first energy-efficient building standards for state buildings from 1992 to 2001 verdict served as co-founder and chair of the national home energy rating council in washington dc that was composed of states homebuilders energy raters federal agencies and mortgage lenders in 2001 he served as a representative of the energy efficiency and renewable energy communities on president george w bushs ""transition team"" for the us department of energy verdicts lifetime achievements in the field of energy management have resulted directly or indirectly in over $225 million in documented savings; the creation of the first national home energy labeling standard and energy efficient mortgage program at fannie mae; the adoption of the first epa energy star guidelines for habitat for humanity one of the nations largest homebuilders; and helping establish ground breaking procedures for monitoring energy retrofits in commercial buildings verdict holds a bachelor of science in math and engineering sciences from the us air force academy a masters degree in business administration from louisiana tech university and a commercial banking certificate from southern methodist universitys graduate school of banking he also holds a commercial pilot license and was a usaf f-4 fighter pilot in vietnam"
"dr mladen kezunovic the eugene e webb professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m university and his team received the $49 million dollar grant from arpa-e for their research on robust adaptive topology control (ratc) kezunovic also a researcher with the texas engineering experiment station (tees) was among 14 principal investigators whose research teams received a total of $156 million from the department of energys advanced research projects agency-energy (arpa-e) for their ""cutting-edge research projects"" increasing the use of renewable generation and avoiding cost associated with mitigating the intermittency blackouts and brownouts as well as mitigating malicious attacks is a goal across the nation kezunovics research will provide new methods for controlling the power grid and associated electricity markets during sudden interruptions caused by the intermittent availability of non-dispatchable renewable generation (wind and solar) cascading faults caused by extreme operating conditions and malicious attacks their project provides robust adaptive topology control that allows real-time transmission asset switching to reconfigure or restore the topology of the grid in response to random events with detrimental impacts the new concept uses an adaptive control strategy which will reduce the time to correctly detect classify and characterize the contingencies and respond to mitigate problems in the power grid ""these innovative projects are at the forefront of a new technological frontier that plays a critical role in our future energy security and economic growth ""said arun majumdar director of arpa-e in a press release ""it is now more important than ever to invest in game-changing ideas that will build the technological infrastructure for a new clean energy economy"" kezunovic said ""the current arpa-e award and two more awards one from the department of energy on smart outage management for distribution systems and the other from the national science foundation for studying impact of electrical vehicles on transportation and electricity convergence will enhance the smart grid research portfolio that i would like to manage under a smart grid center to further enhance visibility of tees research capabilities"""
"researchers and responders from the texas a&m university system have received a grant from the national science foundation (nsf) to create a visual ""common ground"" between operators and responders who use micro and small unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) for search and rescue following principles in how people know what other people are talking about in conversations visual common ground will allow responders to easily express where they want the uav to fly and what angle to examine collapsed structures using an ipad or other tablet the responders would also be able to review imagery and video while the uav continues its mission rather than waiting for the uav to land response professionals from the texas engineering extension service (teex) disaster preparedness and response division (dpr) will fly weekly at disaster city® with researchers from the texas engineering experiment stations (tees) center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) speeding the development and refinement of the natural user interface disaster city® is a 52-acre facility featuring full-scale collapsible structures that replicate community infrastructure the site includes simulations of a strip mall office building industrial complex assembly hall/theater single-family dwelling train derailments three active rubble piles and a small lake the grant is the first direct partnering of emergency responders with university professors/researchers for uav research bob mckee dpr director and agency chief for texas task force 1 serves as a principal investigator with dr robin murphy texas a&m university professor and crasar director the partnership leverages the capabilities of top academic researchers and the preparedness and response expertise of teex all existing within the a&m system ""being able to work directly and routinely with responders under conditions as near to a real disaster as one can get will allow the research to progress faster this could only happen at texas a&m "" murphy said ""normally wed have to try to condense a year of work into one week of trials and if something went wrong wed have to wait months for another opportunity for responders or a demolished building to become available"" mckee said ""teex has been actively involved in efforts to develop and adapt robots for search and rescue applications through working with the national institute for standards and technology project to develop standard test methods for emergency response robots to collaborating with scientific researchers and commercial developers at our unique disaster city® facility were hoping to someday use small uavs and other unmanned systems to help save lives"" the grant will help enable emergency responders to take advantage of small ""personal"" uavs being developed for the us department of defense urban search and rescue operations can be more challenging than military peacekeeping operations as they can require assessment and analysis of damaged structures hazardous areas and other unique situations the idea for creating shared displays is a result of more than a decade of research on rescue robotics by murphy who was recently named one of the most influential women in technology by fast company magazine she has led uav deployments at numerous disasters starting with hurricane katrina her work with dr jenny burke (a former graduate student currently with boeing) based on crasar experiences with ground robots at the world trade center showed that search and rescue specialists were nine times more effective if two responders-not one-worked together using a shared visual display the team expects to have an open source tablet interface for airrobot and dragan uavs within 24 months that leads to a significant measurable improvement in team performance as well as high user acceptance"
"former congressman lee h hamilton who served as vice chairman on the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the united states known as the 9/11 commission is scheduled to speak about energy-related issues and the protection of the nations chemical infrastructure tuesday oct 25 as part of a three-day symposium aimed at making the process industry a safer place the annual symposium ""beyond regulatory compliance making safety second nature"" is scheduled for oct 25-27 at the hilton conference center and is attracting authorities on safety from throughout the world sponsored by the texas a&m university systems mary kay oconnor process safety center the symposium will feature a wide variety of safety-related lectures and presentations including issues related to inherent safety and chemical security risk and hazard assessment reactive chemicals as well as safety climate and culture in addition select companies will be on hand to demonstrate the latest products technology and software related to process safety the process safety center is a center within tees hamilton who served for 34 years in congress representing indianas ninth district headlines a distinguished list of presenters speaking throughout the three-day span he is scheduled to deliver the annual frank p lees memorial lecture at 8 am on tuesday establishing himself as a leading figure on foreign policy intelligence and national security hamilton has continued to play a significant role in public affairs since leaving public office in 1999 he is director of the center on congress at indiana university one of the nations foremost experts on congress and representative democracy he also co-chaired the iraq study group a bipartisan panel that assessed the situation in iraq and in 2006 made recommendations on us policy there in addition hamilton served as chair of the dow independent chemical security panel he is co-chairman of the us department of energys blue ribbon commission on americas nuclear future among his published works are two books on the legislative branch ""how congress works and why you should care"" and ""strengthening congress"" hamilton also writes twice-monthly commentaries about congress and what individuals can do to make representative democracy work better a leader in the growing national movement to expand and improve civic education hamilton also serves as a co-chairman of the campaign for the civic mission of schools the following day edward j calabrese professor of toxicology in the school of public health at the university of massachusetts amherst is scheduled to present the keynote lecture for wednesdays session at 8 am calabreses research includes assessment of hormesis a dose-response concept that is characterized by low-dose stimulation and a high-dose inhibition he traces the historical foundations of hormesis its quantitative features and mechanistic foundations and its risk assessment implications hormesis calabrese says provides a framework for the study and assessment of chemical mixtures incorporating the concept of additivity and synergism because the hormetic biphasic dose response represents a general pattern of biological responsiveness it is expected that it will become progressively more significant within toxicological evaluation and risk assessment practices as well as having numerous biomedical applications this symposium organizers note serves as the crossroads for process safety where industry academia government agencies and other stakeholders meet to discuss critical issues of research in process safety it is co-sponsored by aveva one of the leading engineering software providers to the plant power and marine industries for more than 40 years for more information about the symposium including a full schedule visit http://psctamuedu/ and click on ""2011 symposium "" or contact donna startz at (979) 845-5981 or via email: donnas@tamuedu"
"msnbcs future of technology featured tees rescue robotics work as well as a unique training facility that is part of texas a&m engineering dr robin murphy a pioneer in the field of rescue robotics has been working on developing technology -- including underwater robots -- to help emergency responders during a disaster murphy is the raytheon professor in computer science in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university in the video murphy director of the center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) discusses underwater robots she has developed murphy led a team of research and industry experts and robots to the minami sanriku and rikuzen takata areas of japan after that countrys disastrous earthquake earlier this year she also assisted in the use of aerial vehicles used for inspecting the fukushima reactors nsf co-funded the joint japan-united states team that worked for five days in april using three different types of suitcase-size underwater robots called remotely operated vehicles (rovs) two of the robots have advanced imaging sonars that can penetrate the murky water along with video cameras the robots were deployed at six locations along the coast north of sendai working in areas that were unsafe for japanese coast guard divers in another video murphy discusses her so-called ""mommy"" robots -- larger robots that can carry and deploy smaller robots that can go places people cant go murphy was named one of the 2011 most influential women in technology by fast company magazine she joined the faculty at texas a&m in 2008 and is best known for her work with search and rescue robots which have been used in the rubble of the world trade center following the attacks on sept 11 2001 as well as in mud slides caved-in-mines and collapsed buildings around the world also featured is the texas engineering extension services (teex) disaster city a unique training facility for emergency responders the 52-acre facility delivers the full array of skills and techniques needed by todays urban search and rescue teams teex is a member of the texas a&m university system and part of its engineering program"
"a powerful topical preventative for hiv the virus that causes aids could soon be in the works thanks to a newly discovered molecular compound that research at texas a&m university tees and the scripps research institute shows dissolves the virus on contact the ability of the synthetic compound known as ""pd 404 182"" to break apart the aids-causing virus before it can infect cells was discovered by zhilei chen assistant professor in texas a&ms artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and her team of researchers their findings appear in the november online edition of ""antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy "" a journal of the american society for microbiology chen is also a researcher in the chemical engineering division of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) a research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system ""this is a virucidal small-molecule compound meaning that it has the ability to kill a virus; in this case that virus is hiv "" chen says ""basically it acts by breaking the virus open we found that when hiv comes in contact with this compound it breaks open and loses its genetic material in a sense the virus dissolves and its rna becomes exposed since rna is pretty unstable once it is exposed its gone very quickly and the virus is rendered non-infectious"" in other words the compound works by quickly ripping open the virus before it can inject its genetic material into a human cell whats more - and perhaps even more important -- the compound chen explains achieves this by acting on something within the virus other than its viral envelope protein meaning that the virus cant alter its proteins to bolster its resistance -- something thats made hiv notoriously difficult to treat ""we believe this compound is not working on the viral protein of the viruses but on something else common in all the viruses on which we tested it -- some cellular material common in these viruses "" chen notes ""because this compound is acting on a component that is not encoded by the virus it will be difficult for the virus to evolve resistance against this compound"" while not a cure for hiv the compound demonstrates significant potential for use as a preventative specifically in the form of a topical gel that could be applied in the vaginal canal chen explains ""we conducted a number of tests to demonstrate that this compound remains active in vaginal fluid and is not rendered ineffective "" chen says ""in the form of a vaginal gel the compound would serve as a barrier acting almost instantaneously to destroy the virus before it could infect a cell thereby preventing hiv transmission from one person to another"" surprisingly chen and her team did not set out to discover an hiv preventative instead they were conducting screenings of molecules for use in potential drug therapies targeting hepatitis c virus which causes the dangerous and often fatal disease of the liver employing a screening system developed by chen the team screened thousands of molecular compounds in search of those that could block aspects of the hcv life cycle during the course of the screenings the team made an interesting discovery: not only was pd 404 182 an hcv inhibitor it also worked on lentiviruses (the groups negative control in its experimental procedures) intrigued by that finding chen then tested pd 404 182 on hiv which itself is a lentivirus and found the compound to be even more effective on hiv than on hcv ""we believe pd 404 182 acts through a unique and important mechanism "" chen notes ""most of the known virucidal compounds interact with the virus membrane but our compound does not appear to interact with the virus membrane instead it bypasses interaction with the membrane and still compromises the structural integrity of the virus"" the ability of the compound to avoid interaction with the virus membrane is important because human cells have similar membranes chen notes if the compound were to disrupt the structure of the virus membrane it could also disrupt and ultimately kill human cells pd 404 182 doesnt interact with these membranes and is therefore a more attractive option for clinical treatment chen says as is the case with any potential pharmaceutical several key steps are still needed before it winds up on drug store shelves in addition to several rounds of animal studies to ensure the compound is safe for humans further collaborations with chemists are needed to continue to improve the efficiency of the compound chen says whats more chen also plans to further explore the mechanism by which pd 404 182 breaks apart hiv this work is collaboration between chens team consisting of graduate students ana maria chamoun and rudo simeon postdoctoral associate karuppiah chockalingam and professor philippe gallays team at the scripps research institute contact: zhilei chen at (979) 862-1610 or via email: zchen4@tamuedu or ryan a garcia at (979) 845-9237 or via email: ryangarcia99@tamuedu"
"the texas a&m university system hosted a one-day workshop of key industry experts to discuss how to reduce the environmental impact of operations in the eagle ford shale recently at the caesar kleberg wildlife institute on the campus of texas a&m university-kingsville the meeting was aimed at landowners operators public officials and the general public and its purpose was to discuss new technology designed to protect ground water resources keep track of emissions and reduce impact of oil field lease roads attendees of the workshop learned how environmental engineering plays a role in gas shale drilling such as how to drought-proof south texas communities the workshop was a collaboration between several a&m system entities including: the texas engineering experiment station (tees) the texas center for applied technology (tcat) the global petroleum research institute (gpri) the energy engineering institute (eei) the texas engineering extension service (teex) and the institute for sustainable energy and the environment at tamu-kingsville ""the environmentally friendly drilling program at texas a&m is an example of a successful interdisciplinary project extending through multiple colleges "" said david burnett director of technology of the gpri ""all have a common aim to bring science-based solutions to oil and gas field operations"" members of the environmentally friendly drilling system program at the houston advanced research center displayed a mobile water treatment and desalination laboratory and a mobile ""micro-grid"" providing electrical power from alternative energy sources to support field operations"
"dr marlan o scully holder of the hershel e burgess 29 chair in physics and a distinguished research chair with the texas engineering experiment station (tees) knows that his son jim an american airlines pilot has to expect the unexpected on any of his flights in november 2001 amidst the tumultuous post-9/11 atmosphere jim scully was piloting a routine flight to chicago when he received a gut-wrenching phone call from the flight crew a passenger had been checking her mail when she discovered a suspicious powder in one of the envelopes; passengers were in a panic after several days of testing officials determined it was a hoax concerned for his passengers safety the pilot did the only thing he knew to do: he challenged his pioneering-physicist father to find a faster way to detect potential bioterrorism agents never one to back down from a challenge dr scully approached the situation the same way he always did -- applying existing knowledge he put together a team of top physicists from texas a&m and princeton university and he established labs at both universities in hopes of uncovering a swift solution ""anthrax was a big problem then and we found we couldnt get an immediate response when testing [the substance] for identification "" dr scully recalls ""texas a&m is the place where we finally broke the problem and we nicely developed it at princeton now we could get an immediate answer"" fast cars to the rescue the team came up with a revolutionary new technique that emitted a powerful signal known as femtosecond adaptive spectroscopic techniques via coherent anti-stokes raman scattering or fast cars first two lasers are aimed at the object causing a molecular vibration a third laser pulse is sent in on a time-delay just long enough for ""false-alarm"" molecules with a smaller oscillation to cease their movement allowing molecules that are still vibrating to become the true target which amplifies the signature scully likens the laser beam to music: the steady rhythm of the beam disrupts molecules by creating a molecular ""melody"" specific to that material the entire process takes only a fraction of a second putting to bed the older slower methods of anthrax detection it also opens new doors for laser technology they can be used to identify numerous other materials such as glucose in blood which could one day be beneficial to diabetics or to determine moisture levels in crops taking the guesswork out of when and how much to water for farmers lasers in the sky dr scully is now applying those lessons to his current research dubbed ""ghost lasers in the sky"" -- a laser system capable of detecting threats from poisonous gas to pollutants in the upper atmosphere without ever opening an envelope or even leaving the ground ""one kilogram of anthrax in an airplane applied upwind could do a lot of damage "" dr scully notes ""one hundred kilograms could kill more people than an atomic bomb our sky laser technique can detect poison gas in the atmosphere at very low levels tens of kilometers away right now we have techniques for measuring pollution gases and other formerly untraceable substances while lidar [light detection and ranging] looks at backscattered light were getting much bigger results with the sky laser ""because of quantum physics we have the potential for computers that are exponentially faster microscopes that are more precise and lasers that produce results almost without limits "" scully says ""that texas a&m is doing world-class research in quantum physics is already understood everywhere for sure"" a bright future although hes received an ample amount of praise during his entire career dr scully says he is most excited to be working with a group of colleagues in texas a&ms institute for quantum science and engineering (iqse) who personify the fact that its the sum of each part which makes for such a greater whole as director of the iqse scully leads a research-based effort that spans the gamut of quantum physics and engineering and focuses on the study of new lasers quantum computing nonlinear optics and more -- technologies that will impact any number of fields from national security and bioscience to navigation and refinery safety its no great surprise that scully sees a bright future both for texas a&m and for iqse research and development"
"a start-up company led by a tees biomedical engineering researcher has received a prize for innovation from the houston technology center texas largest technology incubator and accelerator shape memory therapeutics inc -- led by dr duncan maitland associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and a researcher in the biomedical engineering division -- was awarded second place for the goradia innovation prize which recognizes the best innovations from leading texas gulf coast universities and research institutions and encourages bringing those innovations to the marketplace the second-place prize comes with a $25 000 award ""shape memory therapeutics is commercializing a game-changing device for treating cerebrovascular aneurysms "" maitland said ""our technology has the potential to treat more patients than can be treated with current devices further we believe that smp scaffolds are safer and more effective than existing devices"" housed in the texas a&m bioscience business accelerator shape memory therapeutics was founded in 2009 to commercialize innovative medical devices based on shape memory polymer materials developed at lawrence livermore national laboratory and through tees the houston technology centers selection of awardees for the goradia prize was based upon the commercial potential of a companys innovation the soundness of its business plan the potential for job growth within the region and the likelihood of significant long-term success"
the energy systems laboratory (esl) a division of the texas engineering experiment station and a member of the texas a&m university system announced awards to be presented at its annual clean air through energy efficiency (catee) conference to be held in dallas november 7-9 2011 catee is a premier educational conference aimed at government development and civic leaders its purpose is to heighten awareness and facilitate implementation of successful policies and investments that reduce energy and water intensity and reduce emissions the conference awards recognize leadership efforts and exemplary achievements in helping to reduce harmful air emissions through policies programs or projects that increase energy efficiency or the use of renewable energy sources award categories and 2011 honorees are: - outstanding government organization - city of san antonio - outstanding government official - state senator john carona - outstanding commercial enterprise - clearesult - outstanding non-profit organization - dallas area habitat for humanity - gregg cooke award for excellence in environmental leadership - state representative rafael anchia all conference events will be held at the sheraton dallas north hotel 4801 lyndon b johnson freeway events include several free pre-conference workshops on monday november 7 and two full days of conference and exhibits on november 8 and 9 the awards will be given at a luncheon beginning at noon on wednesday november 9 catee 2011 is presented in cooperation with the epa/dot/hud partnership for sustainable communities and with the north central texas council of governments (nctcog) about esl and catee: esl began hosting an annual conference in 2004 as a forum for sharing information on how to implement building energy performance standards raise awareness of their impacts and highlight the range of successful local policies and practices being implemented to achieve emissions reductions through energy efficiency in the built environment the conference has become a leading venue for gathering local government air quality and energy efficiency stakeholders to discover and advocate sustainable community strategies and energy efficiency improvement opportunities
"dr m katherine banks has begun her tenure as vice chancellor for engineering for the texas a&m university system and dean of the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university - the first woman to ever hold the position banks also holds the harold j ""bill"" haynes deans chair in engineering and is director of the texas engineering experiment station an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the a&m system she is looking forward to the opportunity to serve ""i am honored to be selected as the vice chancellor of engineering for the texas a&m system dean of the dwight look college of engineering and director of the texas engineering experiment station position "" she said ""the dedication of the texas a&m community to excellence in research teaching and engagement is quite remarkable i look forward to collaborating with a&m system institutions and state agencies to develop new educational and research initiatives as dean of the college of engineering i am excited to work closely with the internationally recognized faculty and staff to produce a strong workforce of engineering graduates enhance innovative research opportunities and develop new partnerships through unique engagement programs"" she also expressed enthusiasm for working closely with two nationally and internationally renowned state agencies also members of the a&m system and based in college station the texas transportation institute (tti) and the texas engineering extension service (teex) banks was previously the bowen engineering head for the school of civil engineering at purdue university and the jack and kay hockema professor at purdue she received her bse from the university of florida mse from the university of north carolina and phd in civil and environmental engineering from duke university banks has received research funding from the national science foundation the us environmental protection agency the us department of defense the us department of energy and nasa as well as industry and state government she served as director of the epa hazardous substance research center associate director of the nasa center for advanced life support and co-director of the 21st century center for phytoremediation research all headquartered at purdue banks is a fellow of the american society of civil engineers and is a licensed professional civil engineer in indiana and kansas she received a number of awards including the american society of civil engineers (asce) petersen outstanding woman of the year award asce rudolph hering medal and the sloan foundation mentoring fellowship she is the author or co-author of more than 150 journal articles proceedings papers book chapters and has given more than 200 scholarly or technical presentations before professional groups banks served as editor-in-chief for the asce journal of environmental engineering and associate editor of the international journal of phytoremediation"
"with budgets being tightened and funds being slashed energy efficiency has been thrust to the forefront and one entity of the texas a&m university system is doing its part to help system members as well as other government agencies save money and increase energy efficiency in their buildings through a program known as the continuous commissioning® process the energy systems laboratory (esl) a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has worked to produce more than $100 million in savings in more than 300 buildings throughout texas the united states and the world the continuous commissioning® process uses an ongoing effort to resolve operating problems improve comfort and optimize energy use for existing commercial and institutional buildings and central plant facilities the process has been trademarked by tees and is being commercialized through the office of technology commercialization ""when i was growing up we tuned our cars up pretty often and that could make a significant difference in gas mileage "" said dr david e claridge director of esl and a mechanical engineering professor at texas a&m university ""the continuous commissioning® process is a structured process for providing that kind of tune-up to building operation ""it is a systematic way of looking at buildings and locating problems and then working with the building operators to correct them"""
"the origins of continuous commissioning® saving money at texas a&m date back to 1995 when the idea was first brought to then president ray m bowen after bowens financial vice president was briefed on the process he was significantly impressed and scheduled a meeting with bowen and individuals from esl bowen who has an engineering background was duly impressed and told his financial vice president to find the money to make continuous commissioning® happen on the texas a&m campus a decision was made to take money from the campus utilities budget giving the process its start but also putting pressure on then-esl director dr dan turner claridge and their colleagues to produce results somewhat quickly ""knowing that the utility budget was a biennial budget we knew we had to save enough in two years to pay for the work we were doing "" claridge said before they could even begin to study the energy efficiency of the buildings on campus heating and cooling meters had to be installed leading to an initial output of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars ""a key aspect of this is you need to have measurements of the energy going into the building before you can effectively see what you are accomplishing "" claridge said after installing meters in the first 20 buildings data was analyzed and a decision was made to focus on the kleberg building which at the time was just under 20 years old and was using extremely large amounts of heating and cooling what the esl group found was that in an effort to fix humidity problems in the building the air coming into it was being heated to 110 degrees then immediately being cooled to 55 degrees the coils that were being used to heat the air were designed to only come on if the outside temperature was near freezing this would keep the outside air warm enough to prevent freezing in any part of the ventilation system but in the effort to combat the humidity in kleberg the coils were continuously left on ""it was one of those things where you have a very vexing problem and you are trying to figure out how to fix it "" claridge said ""somewhere along the way someone thought of this and those problems seemed to go away"" the coils that were left on were turned off and that simple act led to savings of nearly $200 000 per year according to claridge upon going through the rest of the building finding other problems and making modifications additional savings of about $200 000 per year were realized the total savings in just the kleberg building were almost enough to recoup the initial startup cost of the meters for the program ""the savings in that building were significantly more than the total operating cost of many similar buildings on campus "" claridge said ""we immediately saved essentially enough to pay for the metering on the whole campus in two years in just that one building"" the savings were also enough to completely sway bowen who admitted some years later he was initially skeptical of the concept ""a number of years after the program was started president bowen said when i first heard of this i thought it had about as much chance of working as room-temperature fusion did "" claridge said the program has expanded on the a&m campus and continues today in more than 80 buildings on the flagship campus in conjunction with a&ms utilities & energy management department several other campuses in the a&m system have also implemented the program including texas a&m international university in laredo where claridge says they have done the most work cutting campus consumption by between 15 and 20 percent it has also spread throughout the state to such entities as the brooke army medical center in san antonio - where it produced 10 percent savings in a brand new building - the alamo colleges in san antonio dallas/forth worth international airport and ibm additionally through licensees it is being used in more than 30 military hospitals worldwide and a dozen veterans administration hospitals recently a new project was started with the texas facilities commission in austin continuing esls efforts in an area where it is also using the continuous commissioning® process in austin independent school district buildings and in conjunction with austin energys building tune-up program ""the continuous commissioning® process ended up being significantly more successful than our initial estimates "" claridge said ""you can say we hoped it would be successful but we certainly had no idea how much it would save ""i wouldnt have said we are definitely going to be able to save an average of 15 or 20 percent there is no way i would have said that people would have laughed us out of the building"" for more on the energy systems laboratory visit http://esltamuedu/"
"dr akhil datta-gupta a researcher in the petroleum engineering division of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has been elected a member of the national academy of engineering (nae) datta-gupta is regents professor and lf peterson 36 chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university the academy honors those who have made important and significant contributions to engineering theory and practice as well as unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new fields of technology ""on behalf of our faculty students and aggies worldwide i would like to congratulate dr datta-gupta on this tremendous honor "" said dr r bowen loftin texas a&m president ""his work is an excellent example of the impact that land-grant universities such as texas a&m have on finding solutions to problems that we face now and well into the future dr datta-guptas service to our students his faculty colleagues and external partners has been truly remarkable"" datta-gupta was recognized ""for developing the theory and practice of streamline simulation for fluid flow in heterogeneous reservoirs"" 3-d streamline simulation is widely considered as one of the major developments in petroleum reservoir simulation and performance forecasting in the last decade the technology has been rapidly assimilated by the industry for highly detailed flow simulation reservoir management model calibration and uncertainty assessment with the advancement in high-resolution data acquisition and seismic technologies geologic models now routinely consist of multimillion cells this resulted in a widening gap between geologic modeling flow simulation and uncertainty assessments streamline simulation has effectively bridged this gap datta-gupta manages one of the most active industrial research consortium related to streamline simulation and its applications ""election to the national academy of engineering is among the highest distinctions an engineer may receive and on behalf of the engineering program at texas a&m university i congratulate dr datta-gupta for inclusion in this most prestigious body "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering ""academy members represent the most accomplished engineers in the world and dr datta-guptas contributions to petroleum engineering have influenced the theory and practice of streamline simulation for fluid flow in heterogeneous reservoirs we are very proud of dr datta-guptas achievements and look forward to his continued contributions to the engineering and academic community both nationally and internationally"" among his numerous honors are the 2009 john franklin carll award from the society of petroleum engineers (spe) for distinguished contribution in the application of engineering principles to petroleum development and recovery; the 2003 spe lester c uren award for significant technical contributions in petroleum reservoir characterization and streamline-based flow simulation; and two spe cedric k ferguson certificates for the best peer-approved paper in 2000 and 2006 he has been named an spe distinguished member distinguished lecturer distinguished author and outstanding technical editor in addition to his spe awards he is a recipient of the aime rossitter w raymond award the tenneco meritorious teaching award from the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m and served as a member of the polar research board of the national academy of sciences (2001-2004) he is also the recipient of the us department of energy award for outstanding contributions to basic research in geosciences in 2008 he is a co-author of the spe textbook streamline simulation: theory and practice datta-gupta earned his masters degree and phd from the university of texas at austin and his bs from the indian school of mines in dhanbad all in petroleum engineering with datta-guptas election texas a&m university now has 19 members of the national academy of engineering 13 current faculty members and six emeritus election to the national academy of engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to ""engineering research practice or education including where appropriate significant contributions to the engineering literature "" and to the ""pioneering of new and developing fields of technology making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education"" tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
the work of the texas center for applied technology (tcat) was recently featured on krhd the abc affiliate in bryan-college station
"dr le xie assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and a researcher in the electrical and computer engineering division of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) xie received his career award for his proposal ""career: systematic multi-scale integration of physics-based and data-driven models of distributed resources for enabling ubiquitous energy storage services in power systems"" xies award is the second in the department this year in his proposal xie explained how the electric energy industry is undergoing profound architectural changes as society increasingly emphasizes more sustainable utilization of energy the objective of his project is to investigate a novel modeling paradigm which seamlessly integrates physics-based and data-driven models of distributed resources for provision of ubiquitous energy storage services in power systems xie said once successfully pursued his project will have transformative impact on engineering sustainable electricity services of the future a multidisciplinary course on engineering and economics of complex electric energy systems will be offered to students at texas a&m and prairie view a&m university as the founding advisor of the texas a&m energy club xie also will actively participate in outreach activities organized by the club xie is affiliated with the electric power and power electronics group in the department he received his be in electrical engineering from tsinghua university (china) in 2004 he received sm in engineering sciences from harvard university in june 2005 he obtained his phd from the electric energy systems group in the department of electrical and computer engineering at carnegie mellon university in 2009 his industry experience includes an internship in 2006 at iso-new england and an internship at edison mission energy marketing and trading in 2007 his research interest includes modeling and control of large-scale complex systems smart grid applications in support of renewable energy integration and electricity markets in addition to his recent honor xie received another nsf grant for his project ""look-ahead coordination of variable resources for providing electric energy and regulation services"" he was an invited participant to 2011 japan-american frontiers of engineering symposium his first phd student yingzhong gu received third prize in the competitive poster contest at the 2010 institute of electrical and electronic engineers (ieee) power and energy society general meeting the premier conference in his professional community the nsf established the career program to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning"
"the republic of colombia is interested in a technology developed by texas engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m engineering researchers that could clean contaminated water recovered from drilling and production operations colombian officials are also interested in training provided by the texas engineering extension service (teex) for the technicians inspectors and engineers that would use the technology keith mcleroy of teexs infrastructure training & safety institute (itsi) accompanied david burnett of texas a&ms global petroleum research institute (gpri) on a recent trip to neiva colombia to discuss the texas a&m technology and the training teex could provide they met with officials from the national oil company ecopetrol universidad surcolumbiana and the national authorities of environmental licenses (anla) of the environment and sustainable development office of colombia the officials wanted to learn more about the membrane filtration technology developed by burnett and carl vavra of the tees food protein r&d center separation sciences laboratory following the meeting anla indicated that the colombian government planned to join the environmentally friendly drilling (efd) program and would work with gpri and teex with the ""intent of reducing significantly the environmental impact"" further anla officials said the goal of becoming active members of the efd was so ""efforts may be joined for the improvement of the technologies that are utilized in the processes of perforation and production of hydrocarbons"" burnett said colombia is becoming more environmentally responsive and could become a showcase of the new technology for a global audience colombian officials have indicated they want to hold an international workshop demonstrating their technological advances in colombian oil and gas production fields texas a&ms partner in the efd program the houston advanced research center (harc) is working to get an international cooperative agreement in place to promote all forms of low-impact drilling technology throughout south america the immediate goal of an texas a&m-colombia venture is to prevent contaminated water from going into the public water supply burnett said instead the water could be treated to make it available for sustainable agriculture he added officials are interested in working with teex on methods for testing and operating water facilities and setting up labs to analyze treated water mcleroy previously developed a lab protocol and analytical methodology for determining if treated water is clean enough to reuse or recycle currently mcleroy is developing a training workshop on analytical methods for a new water treatment lab at surcolumbiana that would support the countrys water re-use effort he is developing a two-day course for water inspectors that could be taught at the teex water and environmental lab at the riverside campus or in colombia teex could also offer its four-day membrane technology course for colombia mcleroy said teex and texas a&m are going beyond borders to provide a link to research opportunities water treatment workforce training soil remediation and an opportunity for texas a&m students to work in colombia burnett said"
"more than 100 high school teachers from across the state participated in the 2012 teacher summit hosted by texas a&m universitys college of science and dwight look college of engineering with support from the texas engineering experiment station (tees) the look college and the college of science have hosted the annual event for the past five years teachers representing more than 60 school districts across the state of texas attended the conference held at the college station hilton and conference center jan 27 the focus of the event is to increase awareness of science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) in high schools; provide high school teachers with materials that can be implemented in their high school curriculum; educate high school teachers counselors and administrators about how to best prepare their students for success in engineering and science at texas a&m ; and provide participants opportunities to interact with texas a&m faculty and staff involved in stem outreach programs teachers attending the event receive eight hours of valuable continuing education credit while being exposed to hands-on engineering and science that is relevant to their curriculum the summit started with presentations by dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and dr karan watson provost and executive vice president for academic affairs both administrators encouraged the teachers to join texas a&m in its efforts to increase the number of stem graduates to address the needs of our country the daylong conference offered each participant three hours of hands-on workshops that included a robotics demonstration from concept to prototype offered by dr joe morgan from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution; math demonstrations on functions offered by dr jennifer whitfield and dr sandra nite from the department of mathematics; physics demonstrations by dr tatiana erukhimova from the department of physics and astronomy; and carlos montalvo director of the innovation academy of engineering environmental and marine science at foy h moody high school who presented on his experience using the engineering design process in high school curriculum developed from his participation in the research experiences for teachers program participants also visited resource tables from vendors and resource tables from all texas a&m colleges on programs of interest to high schools finally the program included student presentations and presentations on how to best prepare high school students for success in stem majors at texas a&m the conference was offered at no cost to the teachers through the generous donations of the nuclear power institute conocophillips and the subsea tieback foundation and the support of tees ""the reputation of the summit has spread among the 9-12 stem community of teachers as one of the most valuable and enjoyable continuing education programs available to them "" said dr robin autenrieth senior associate dean for academic affairs in the look college ""the summit in conjunction with our other outreach activities is bringing to our campus highly qualified and diverse students"" tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"xcor and the texas engineering experiment stations (tees) space engineering research center (serc) have signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) concerning future microgravity experiments on the xcors lynx rocket plane the mou will enable serc to fly microgravity experiments on lynx and also provide third-party services for other microgravity experimenters the agreement was announced at the suborbital researchers conference in palo alto calif in late february this is the first of what the serc plans to be several such agreements with the emerging commercial space flight community serc is a space engineering center under tees and operates an applied research business model in which the center provides technology and services to government and industry clients serc is a leading practitioner of near-space micro and micro g experimentation having designed developed and flown 55 space experiments involving more than 15 000 parabolas on nasa-sponsored micro g aircraft the so-called ""vomit comet"" continuing that association serc participates in the nasa flight opportunities program which will be flying technology payloads on commercial suborbital launch vehicles serc has developed methods and practices that leverage this tremendous body of flight experience and uses that to provide consultation services to various groups on microgravity testing the opportunity to fly a space experiment in a microgravity environment is growing especially through new commercial providers like xcor developing unique launch and return vehicles these suborbital flight vehicle programs will offer brief periods (seconds to minutes) of microgravity for extremely small cost compared to traditional space programs serc experience has shown however that these limited microgravity exposure periods drive unique experiment design requirements increasing partial or total experiment failure rates for first time experimenters space experimenters need access to microgravity experiment payload design/integration expertise to optimize their data return versus cost for these future space flights to address that need serc is developing a business model to provide a broad range of microgravity experiment services these will connect the science to the test environment to establish experiment payload performance requirements and experiment desired outcomes example services will include developing test plans developing functional and physical experiment payload designs ensuring the payload meets the flight service provider flight vehicle environmental requirements (including ground testing) developing experiment payload safety analysis/risk assessment and other documents and providing serc flight test engineers to monitor experiment payload operation the lynx is xcors entry into the commercial reusable launch vehicle (rlv) market this two-seat piloted space transport vehicle will take humans and payloads on a half-hour suborbital flight to 100 km (330 000 feet) and then return safely to a landing at the takeoff runway like an aircraft lynx is a horizontal takeoff and horizontal landing vehicle but instead of a jet or piston engine lynx uses its own fully reusable rocket propulsion system this approach is unique compared to some other rlvs in development such as conventional vertical rocket launches and air-launched winged rocket vehicles ""dropped"" at altitude from a jet powered mothership the lynx aircraft-like capabilities will allow high-tempo operations (up to four flights per day) rapid call-up fast turnaround between flights low cost operations and maintenance and a focus on safety and reliability the advent of commercial space providers to complement the traditional government and industry satellite launch business will bring an exciting new component to space operations and more importantly the opportunity for many more people to experience space serc is evaluating how it can support this emerging market and is initially leveraging its experience in microgravity science and engineering experiments contact serc at 979-845-8768"
dr zhilei chen a researcher in the chemical engineering division of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has been awarded a faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) chen is also an assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university as a recipient of the prestigious award chen will receive $400 000 throughout the next five years for her research which will develop a novel protein polymer hydrogel as a general scaffold for the immobilization of enzymes and bioactive proteins enzymes are versatile catalysts and are playing an increasingly prominent role in modern biotechnology chen notes however poor long-term stability and difficulties in recovery and recycling of enzymes in solution have greatly hampered their usefulness in biotransformation she says immobilization of enzymes on solid supports can significantly enhance their stability and enable convenient recycling and recovery chens proposed protein hydrogel takes advantage of intein-mediated protein splicing/ligation to form an inter-connected network of protein polymers successful completion of this project will provide a general method for the synthesis of protein hydrogels that densely and efficiently incorporate multiple bioactive proteins with a highly controlled molecular architecture chen says insights from these studies she adds will benefit several industries employing biocatalytic processes; advance the ability to assemble efficient enzymatic pathways for biotransformation and enzymatic fuel cells; and facilitate the creation of new bioactive protein hydrogel scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug delivery applications chen completed her undergraduate studies at east china normal university in shanghai china in 2000 and earned her phd at university of illinois urbana-champaign in 2006 she went to the rockefeller university for postdoctoral studies before joining texas a&ms chemical engineering department in 2008 at texas a&m chens research focuses on applying protein engineering principles for biotechnology applications one of her interests is to develop new proteinaceous material for use in tissue engineering and biofuel cells such as protein hydrogels as protein/enzyme immobilization scaffolds she is also working on engineering agents for the treatment of various viral infections including hepatitis c virus and hiv and the identification of novel drug targets the career award was established to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense through this program the nsf emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system
"dr dennis oneal deputy director of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) has been selected to receive two awards from the american society of heating refrigeration and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) for a paper published in 2011 oneal and co-authors jacob l edmonson dr john a bryant and dr michael a davis will receive the ashrae crosby field award for their paper ""performance of series fan-powered terminal units with electronically commutated motors"" the award is presented to the authors of the best paper published by the society during 2011 the group will also receive a 2011 technical paper award for their paper they will be recognized at the societys annual conference in san antonio june 23 oneal is a researcher in the tees mechanical engineering division he is also associate dean for research in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and the holdredge-paul professor in the department of mechanical engineering which he headed from 2004 to 2011 he is a fellow of ashrae and the american society of mechanical engineers oneal has held various ashrae leadership positions and received the societys distinguished service award oneal is previous holder of the ed brockett professorship and has received the texas a&m association of former students distinguished teaching award in the dwight look college of engineering he was among the first named a look college faculty fellow and has earned the texas a&m mechanical engineering departments outstanding undergraduate teaching award and the tees senior fellow award oneal holds a bachelors degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m he earned a masters degree from oklahoma state university and his phd from purdue university both in mechanical engineering"
"texas a&m international university in laredo celebrated its ongoing commitment to a ""green"" campus with its observance of earth week 2012 april 23-25 tamiu student clubs and organizations joined together to offer a broad spectrum of activities to underscore tamius commitment to its green campus initiative and representatives from texas engineering experiment station (tees) energy systems laboratory (esl) were on hand as partners in the universitys green campus initiative students participated in a naming contest for two new solar-powered golf carts and coordinated a guest panel discussion for a film they produced tracing the journey of trash to the laredo landfill among other earth week activities students hosted a fun ""hug-a-tree"" event an on-campus paper recycling drive and the construction of a ""tree"" from recyclable materials students were joined by congressman henry cuellar (mba 82) who secured $500 000 in federal funding in 2008 that helped to accelerate tamius green campus initiative (right: juan j castillo tamiu vp for finance and administration holds an oversized symbolic check for $634 322 tamius accumulated energy savings using the green campus initiative also pictured are from left to right malcolm verdict associate director research engineer and senior project manager for continuous commissioning® at the energy systems laboratory; castillo; congressman henry cuellar; dr ray keck tamiu president) congressman cuellar said he was impressed with how tamiu has realized the intent of the federal appropriation dollars ""i fought to secure these federal dollars for tamiu because i knew this funding would be in good hands at this visionary university as it works toward its important goal to convert to a green energy-efficient campus im impressed with the initiative undertaken here and believe it offers a local state and national model that others should follow "" cuellar said tamiu president dr ray keck said the universitys green leadership is part of its investment in its campus and its students ""our tamiu classrooms nurture the mind but our environment nurtures our heart and soul weve dedicated considerable research and resources to making that environment as green-focused as possible by thinking green now we are encouraging our students and graduates to think green for generations to come "" keck said keck said the shining star of tamius campus sustainability initiative is its university success center (usc) constructed to leeds silver standards and which includes an active solar panel array ""were tremendously proud of the usc which most are probably unaware is one of the areas leading examples of energy-efficient design and architecture its partly powered by solar panels on its west side and able to maintain a 175 percent energy optimization with an energy-star rated roof double tinted windows centralized hot water heater system and building construction featuring low-emitting materials ""its parking lot is made of white concrete which makes it cleaner and cooler it also includes complimentary electric car-charging stations for those students who may drive electric hybrid vehicles we have bike racks for students and faculty traveling to campus on green bicycles "" keck continued he noted that anyone can log on to the campus web site and see a real-time monitor for the tamiu solar array ""the monitor provides emissions savings a total power summary current performance and cumulative results for the array 24-7 "" he said the green campus initiative is already paying off in a big way keck said presenting an oversize symbolic check to congressman cuellar featuring the savings the university has realized ""tamiu has accumulated energy savings of $634 322 based on current energy rates from its continuous commissioning® green campus initiative which began in 2009 weve basically saved 13times the original federal appropriation dollars "" he said malcolm verdict associate director of the tees energy systems lab and green campus initiative project manager suggested in 2008 that keck and tamiu create a green team to assess their current environmental renewable and energy management activities and define a path forward the esl researchers wrote a grant proposal to implement the recommendations of the tamiu green team submit to congressman cuellar for $500 000 for a green campus initiative which was ultimately awarded by the us department of energy in 2009 verdict said that for the past 28 months esl has provided engineering and renewable energy planning assistance consisting of identifying leed design features for their new 60 000 ft2 student success center; engineering design assistance for a 4 kw photovoltaic solar array and monitor for their new student success center; optimized building energy use in all 15 campus buildings and central power plan; and documented energy savings of $634 000 the past 28 months as result of continuous commissioning® building improvement efforts ""tamiu its leaders students and staff are all setting an excellent example of energy environment and renewal resources for the laredo community and all the texas a&m university campuses to follow "" verdict said the green campus initiative can be seen throughout tamiu in on campus housing clubhouse lighting has been changed to lower energy usage lights and solar screens have been installed to reduce heat gain testing of screens at university village is being undertaken to see if it should be extended to screen all housing rooms tamiu physical plant director richard gentry said tamiu has reduced utility expenses improved air quality reduced air land and water impacts on environment and improved students learning environments ""tamiu incorporates numerous eco-friendly practices into all its daily operations including an automated irrigation control system ongoing water conservation research drought-tolerant vegetation low-flow faucets toilets and showerheads and active recycling of all paper metal cardboard and plastic as well as batteries lights and phones tamiu is a 100 percent asbestos-free campus and maintains a no-smoking policy around buildings "" gentry explained ""among our recently added green initiatives is the collection of condensation through the universitys air-conditioner system by recapturing and reusing the collected condensation of the air-conditioning units on campus about 1 000 000 gallons of water are collected and reused a year "" he noted ""as a community we can all do something in our daily lives to reduce our impact on our environment we lessen our carbon footprint on the world by conserving our resources on our campus as an institution of learning tamiu wants to help create energy-conscious graduates the university is committed to providing greener options for our students "" gentry continued tamiu was a recent recipient of the green community award presented by kgns the cw and telemundo laredo natalia rodríguez president of the new tamiu green club said students have jumped on the ""green"" wagon at tamiu (see more photos on facebook) ""we have been lucky that there are many tamiu students who are very passionate about recycling and making our campus and community a cleaner place so far we have purchased new recycling bins for tamiu and weve worked on cleanup efforts for a local river the tamiu green club has plans to continue spreading awareness on campus especially for our earth week we encourage all students faculty and staff to join in our week-long observance "" rodríguez said keck said the involvement of tamius student body in tamius green initiatives has been pivotal ""students have been not only vocal but involved in this ongoing initiative theyve lead community cleanup efforts along the rio grande river and slaughter park in march some 250 tamiu students participated in the big event our signature student volunteer event and helped clean the eistetter park area "" he explained"
"john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system made his first official visit to the texas engineering experiment station (tees) april 24 the chancellor spent the afternoon learning about tees mission to serve the citizens of texas through engineering and technology research and education as well as taking part in hands-on demonstrations of engineering research technologies (including tcats dreams ambulance pictured right) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees provided the chancellor an overview of the nearly 100-year-old state agency ""tees fills a unique role for the texas a&m university system "" banks said ""one that is complementary to higher education by facilitating engineering and technology-oriented research and development through its laboratories research capabilities and support of industry and workforce development across the state"" sharp learned how tees partners with the universities and agencies of the a&m system to establish unique engineering labs and research; enhance engineering research capacity and workforce development statewide; and support and assist the technology industry in creating the workforce of the future by developing academic and outreach programs in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) sharp heard from several tees research engineers representing biomedical computer science and engineering and industrial and systems engineering divisions within the agency ""tees has been fulfilling its land-grant mission in the state of texas since 1914 "" banks said ""engineering and technology needs in texas have changed significantly since then and so has tees as we look to a rapidly changing technology-driven world tees is more relevant now than ever before in its century of service"" about the texas engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas"
"nasa has selected vectornav technologies llc for a phase 1 sttr contract to develop a model for space debris removal technology through a partnership with the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and faculty at texas a&m university the research will combine advanced robotic technologies developed by texas a&ms land air and space robotics laboratory (lasr) along with vectornavs inertial sensing and dynamics modeling expertise to achieve accurate sensing required both for high-fidelity simulation and autonomous proximity operations the problem of debris in low earth orbit is an issue of rising concern among nasa and other organizations seeking to launch successful space missions as ground-based modeling and simulation of missions to remove space debris are notoriously difficult nasa has enlisted vectornav technologies in partnership with tees to develop a ground-based simulation platform that will model space debris removal missions the approach proposed by vectornav and tees significantly increases the capability of such testing operations and improves the chance of successful active debris removal missions as the principal investigator for the project dr john l junkins distinguished professor of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and a member of the national academy of engineering will play a key role in establishing supporting robotic platforms with the omnidirectional and six degree of freedom robot homer as well as providing resources for hardware-in-the-loop testing at lasrs facilities ""were looking forward to leveraging our extensive in-house expertise in sensing and dynamic systems to address this pressing global issue of space debris in low earth orbit "" said jeremy davis vectornavs director of engineering and project manager for the contract ""especially so in that this work will be conducted with two great partners in nasa and tees"" the nasa sttr program provides opportunities for high technology companies and partnering research institutions to participate in federal government-sponsored research and development efforts in key technology areas being investigated by nasa the contract is the first of its kind awarded to vectornav technologies by nasa about vectornav technologies: vectornav technologies specializes in manufacturing high-performance navigation and orientation sensors using the latest miniature solid-state mems inertial sensor technology since its founding by five graduates of texas a&m university in 2008 vectornav has been providing customers worldwide access to high quality fully calibrated orientation sensors with state-of-the-art digital filtering technology with a strong background in aerospace engineering and experience in the development and testing of spacecraft launch vehicles and micro-aerial vehicles vectornav brings high-performance aerospace filtering and calibration techniques into the world of low-cost industrial grade mems sensors expanding the possibilities of todays navigation technologies"
the water desalination work of tees researcher dave burnett has been featured in the battalion texas a&m universitys student newspaper the research has sparked the interest of colombian officials in the market for clean water researchers offer water-cleaning technology called membrane filtration which purifies water contaminated from oil and natural gas production burnett director of technology at the global petroleum research institute said more than 15 years of research lie behind tees and texas a&ms water filtration technologies and the demand for water filtration is not limited to colombia
"san antonio - texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp recently announced the formation of a new a&m system center to address multiple water issues in and develop solutions for texas texas agrilife research texas agrilife extension service texas engineering experiment station and texas a&m university-san antonio are collaborating on the development of the water conservation and technology center that will support high priority projects that focus on texas water issues ""the state of texas has a rich history that has always been linked to water - rights conservation and control this unique agency collaboration will lead to development of more efficiency and effectiveness in managing this vital resource "" sharp said administered by the texas water resources institute an entity of the texas a&m system the center will increase the systems ability to meet existing and emerging statewide needs in water conservation and technology according to dr neal wilkins the institutes director ""the center will accelerate the development and adoption of new and innovative technologies to solve emerging water problems and meet future water supply needs "" wilkins said the center includes a collaborative relationship with the texas engineering experiment station through the texas center for applied technology and will be located at the texas engineering extension services south presa campus in san antonio cindy wall the applied technologys executive director said the center will target its work on four high priority efforts: water conservation water reuse groundwater desalination and energy development and water use ""the center will establish a team of scientists engineers and water professionals dedicated to applied research and development testing and validation technology transfer and training and extension education in these four areas "" wall said the center will work with industry state and federal agencies municipalities trade associations and other research institutions to undertake projects and develop solutions within these four areas"
"the tees biomedical engineering division will host the inaugural biomedoptex symposium at texas a&m university may 23-25 the three-day symposium -- sponsored by tees the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and spie the international society for optics and photonics -- will be held at the annenberg presidential conference center at the george bush presidential library the program will highlight new trends and progress made in biomedical optical technologies and applications in diagnostics and therapeutics to improve public health worldwide a student development workshop at the emerging technologies building will feature a session with author peter fiske and an entrepreneurial panel discussion with industry leaders and university researchers tours of the facilities and biomedical optics labs round out the three-day event and are open to all symposium participants rebecca richards-kortum the stanley c moore professor of bioengineering professor of electrical and computer engineering at rice university and founder of beyond traditional borders and lihong wang the gene k beare distinguished professor of biomedical engineering at washington university and author of biomedical optics: principles and imaging will give invited talks robert nordstrom from the national cancer institute sohi rastegar from the national science foundation and ramesh raghavachari from the food and drug administration will lead a panel discussion on the future direction of biomedical optics ""we hope this inaugural symposium will become an annual event "" said dr kristen maitland (pictured) a biomedical engineering researcher and assistant professor and chair of the biomedoptex symposium ""optical techniques play a critical role in biomedical studies ranging from basic biological science to in vivo imaging and therapies we have a high concentration of researchers in biomedical optics at texas a&m and at other institutions across texas this symposium will showcase cutting edge research in the region provide an opportunity for students to interact with experts in the field and foster collaborations"" presentations and a panel discussion will feature academic researchers and industry leaders from across the region to showcase research and promote knowledge exchange between institutions and industry a student poster reception will provide a venue for students to present their research and interact with the experts student poster award recipients in each student category (undergraduate and graduate) will be presented at the completion of the conference"
"dr dimitris c lagoudas has been appointed interim deputy director of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering announced recently lagoudas appointment as interim deputy director of tees will be effective july 1 and he will assume the position of deputy director upon approval of the texas a&m university system board of regents additionally banks announced that lagoudas has been appointed senior associate dean for research and associate vice chancellor for engineering research ""dr lagoudas is internationally known for his work on shape memory alloys and has provided significant leadership for many major research initiatives funded by nasa nsf and afosr "" says banks ""in addition to outstanding contributions to research dr lagoudas has demonstrated effective leadership of the aerospace engineering department and will be integral to enhancing and advancing our organization into the future"" lagoudas will be replacing dr dennis l oneal who has accepted the position of dean of engineering and computer science at baylor university lagoudas currently serves as head of the department of aerospace engineering and holds the john and bea slattery chair of aerospace engineering he also serves as the director for the texas institute for intelligent materials and structures (tiims) his research involves the design characterization and modeling of multifunctional material systems at nano micro and macro levels with averaging micromechanics methods developed to bridge the various length scales and functionalities including mechanical thermal and electrical properties of nanocomposites he has authored or co-authored more than 340 scientific publications (140 in archival journals) he also served as the co-chair of nasas roadmap panel for nanotechnologies he was the inaugural recipient of one of the two ford motor company professorships he is a tees fellow a tamu faculty fellow and an associate fellow of aiaa and a fellow of asme he was selected as an ses fellow in 2009 he served as an associate vice president for research for texas a&m university from 2001-2004 and as the first chair of the materials science and engineering program at tamu about the texas engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas"
dr jeffrey e froyd has been elected a fellow of the american society for engineering education (asee) froyd is a research professor in the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and director of faculty climate and development at texas a&m university he will be recognized at the 2012 asee annual conference and exposition in san antonio june 10-13 froyd previously served as project director for the foundation coalition an nsf engineering education coalition in which six institutions systematically renewed assessed and institutionalized their undergraduate engineering curricula and extensively shared their results with the engineering education community he co-created the integrated first-year curriculum in science engineering and mathematics at rose-hulman institute of technology which was recognized in 1997 with a hesburgh award certificate of excellence he also served as project director for changing faculty through learning communities which was intended to create compelling learning experiences for faculty members on gender equity he has served for as an abet program evaluator for electrical and computer engineering since 1999 and authored or co-authored more than 70 papers on curriculum innovation curriculum integration assessment of curricular innovations and the process of curricular change froyd is an ieee fellow and a senior associate editor for the journal on engineering education he has served as a program co-chair for the 2003 2004 and 2011 frontiers in education conferences and the general chair for the 2009 frontiers in education conference
"the texas a&m university systems office of technology commercialization recently presented patent awards to individuals and teams who are currently employed by the a&m system and whose inventions were granted patent protection from the united states patent & trademark office in 2011 ""this event gives us the chance to formally recognize the researchers within the a&m system whose work has significant real-world applications "" chancellor john sharp said ""through commercialization of their inventions research that began in a lab now has the chance to extend its reach and make a difference in peoples lives"" patent award winners from tees were: dr andrew r mcfarland mechanical engineering dr b don russell electrical and computer engineering carl l benner electrical and computer engineering dr charles h culp iii energy systems laboratory dr david e claridge energy systems laboratory and mechanical engineering dr jeff haberl energy systems laboratory dr john c criscione biomedical engineering karthick muthu-manivannan electrical and computer engineering dr mark holtzapple chemical engineering dr mehrdad ehsani electrical and computer engineering dr saurabh biswas biomedical engineering and office of technology commercialization dr sunil p khatri electrical and computer engineering dr william d turner energy systems laboratory and mechanical engineering dr zixiang xiong electrical and computer engineering"
"dr calvin finch has been named the director of the water conservation and technology center in san antonio the texas center for applied technology (tcat) in partnership with the texas water resources institute will administer the center tcat is a center housed within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) ""his knowledge and understanding of priority texas water issues along with his leadership in obtaining numerous grants and projects are assets he will bring to the center "" said cindy wall executive director of tcat ""the center will target its work on four high priority efforts: water conservation water reuse groundwater desalination and energy development and water use the center will establish a team of scientists engineers and water professionals dedicated to applied research and development testing and validation technology transfer and training and extension education in these four areas"" neal wilkins director of the water institute said finch has extensive experience in water conservation issues not only in san antonio but throughout texas ""and with the relationships he has developed in his work through the years calvin is the ideal person to lead the center in developing and testing innovative water conservation technologies "" he said finch has been involved in texas water conservation efforts for 22 years most recently as director of regional initiatives and special programs director of water resources and director of conservation for the san antonio water system he was responsible for obtaining the water resources necessary for meeting the water needs of san antonio a community of 12 million people growing at the rate of 3 percent per year ""i look forward to being involved in directing and developing this center "" finch said ""as the 2011 drought has shown the urgency and importance of water conservation and technology advancement cannot be underestimated or ignored ""applied research and education are an essential part of texas making the state water plan a reality with the creation of the water resources and technology center the texas a&m system is stepping forward to play a leadership role in addressing the challenges of having adequate future water supplies for texas i am pleased to be a part of that effort"" he also directed the systems water conservation education and rebate programs including the community challenge program that enlisted nonprofits to convert 25 000 high water use toilets to high efficiency toilets a year he served as san antonio water systems representative on the edwards aquifer recovery implementation program that recently completed a habitat conservation plan to manage water use from the edwards aquifer and protect the endangered species at the comal and san marcos springs finch was formerly county extension director for travis county and county extension agent for horticulture for texas agricultural extension service (now the texas agrilife extension service) for bexar county finch writes a horticultural and environmental column for the san antonio express-news and other suburban newspapers in the san antonio area and appears frequently in local television and radio broadcasts finch received his doctorate in horticulture from texas a&m in college station and his masters in agriculture from stephen f austin university in nacogdoches texas agrilife research the texas agrilife extension service texas engineering experiment station and texas a&m university-san antonio are collaborating on the development of the center currently located at the texas engineering extension services south presa campus in san antonio the center will move to the texas a&m-san antonio campus in the future the center includes a collaborative relationship with the texas engineering experiment station through the texas center for applied technology and will be located at the texas engineering extension services south presa campus in san antonio"
"making commercial buildings more energy efficient is the goal of a new training program offered by the texas engineering extension service (teex) energy efficiency for commercial building technicians is a training program designed to help technicians identify areas of improvement and implement applications and techniques that optimize energy performance in new and existing commercial buildings development of the course was a collaborative effort by teex and the texas engineering experiment station (tees) and sponsored by the us department of energy the blended learning course offers a prerequisite online introduction and overview followed by 32 hours of classroom sessions and practical applications topics include building codes and system components test equipment safety tools and measurements building assessment options for energy efficiency and project planning the course concludes with students conducting an on-site building assessment ""were very excited to be offering this new program which could help businesses save money on energy costs "" said bill stansbury program director for utilities training with teexs infrastructure training & safety institute he said the first open-enrollment course will be offered aug 20-24 at the teex campus in san antonio at 9350 s presa"
"more than 230 engineers from 28 countries recently met in san francisco to discuss the latest technologies and future practice of high voltage direct current (hvdc) transmission of electric power in an event organized by the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university the high voltage dc colloquium was hosted by the united states national committee of the international council of large electric systems (cigré) the us cigre secretariat is under contract with texas engineering experiment station (tees) the program included a broad range of tutorials paper sessions and working group meetings on the latest hvdc and high voltage power electronic applications to electric power transmission ""the engineering program is privileged to host the usnc secretariat offices of cigré "" said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""cigré provides an opportunity for universities and industry to collaborate on developing new technologies and practices to improve the efficient delivery of electric power electric power engineering has been a significant research and education emphasis at texas a&m university for more than a hundred years"" dr b don russell distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering manages the usnc secretariat and serves as vice president of administration of the usnc cigré he also is a member of the cigré us executive committee russell is an a&m system regents professor and holds the bovay chair in the dwight look college of engineering he is a member of the national academy of engineering and is former president of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers power and energy society conference planning and coordination was handled by sharon loe program coordinator for the usnc secretariat cigré is an international organization of more than 80 countries headquartered in paris it is dedicated to the development and dissemination of the best practices and new technologies to improve electric power generation transmission delivery and utilization throughout the world"
"a beryllium oxide (beo) nuclear fuels research collaboration between texas a&m university the texas engineering experiment station (tees) purdue university and ibc advanced alloys corp has been selected to receive the significant contribution award from the materials science and technology division of the american nuclear society (ans) the research team members are dr sean mcdeavitt (pictured) dr jean ragusa michael naramore and robert miller from texas a&m and tees; shripad revankar and alvin solomon from purdue; and james malone from ibc advanced alloys corp the team is being recognized for its paper ""introducing a high thermal conductivity uo2-beo nuclear fuel concept"" ""i am honored to receive this award from the american nuclear society "" said mcdeavitt texas a&ms lead researcher ""it is gratifying to receive peer recognition and affirmation for the quality and direction of our nuclear fuels research the whole team at texas a&m and purdue is looking forward to continuing our relationship with ibc as we advance this exciting technology to the next phase and hopefully closer to a commercial reality"" ibc says the company is committed to its beo enhanced nuclear fuel research with purdue and texas a&m which is focused on developing a high thermal conductivity nuclear fuel for both current and future nuclear power reactors the aim of the research is to develop a commercial application of the fuel that is more efficient and safer than existing nuclear fuels and also to increase downstream demand for beryllium oxide"
cindy wall has been appointed assistant agency director for operations for the texas engineering experiment station (tees) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering announced recently walls appointment will be effective august 1 she currently serves as executive director of the texas center for applied technology in her new position wall will coordinate and manage operations of tees divisions develop and maintain processes for teess resource allocation in accordance with the strategic plan and coordinate and implement technical assistance to small businesses she will also oversee activities of the compliance office payroll human resources and contract negotiations it and strategic initiatives
dr jim wall has been appointed executive director of the texas center for applied technology (tcat) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering announced recently walls appointment will be effective aug 1 he currently serves as the deputy director and director of computing and information technology for tcat a center within the texas engineering experiment station (tees) in his new position wall will be responsible for establishing the direction goals agendas implementation strategies and policies for the center additionally he will be instrumental in the implementation of workforce development technical assistance to small businesses and new programs and services designed to meet state needs including seeking funding from state and national agencies industry and foundations
a research team led by dr richard j malak jr a researcher in the mechanical engineering division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) was recently awarded a national science foundation (nsf) grant through the emerging frontiers of research and innovation (efri) program the grant which is for four years is for nearly $2 million malak is also an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the research team consists of malak who is the principal investigator; co-principal investigators dr dimitris lagoudas (aerospace engineering) dr nancy amato (computer science and engineering) dr ergun akleman (department of visualization at texas a&m); dr daniel mcadams (mechanical engineering); and senior personnel dr darren hartl (aerospace engineering) the research objective of the award is to discover new techniques for synthesizing complex 3d structures from programmable self-folding 2d elements this will be made possible by the incorporation of active shape memory layers that provide actuation capabilities elements will be programmed by specifying the locations and sequences of localized folding operations fold characteristics and locations will be of near-infinite variety and not limited to pre-engineered folds or joints the research team will create new theories and methods for multi-scale and multidisciplinary systems analysis and optimization; active materials modeling and structural analyses; computational folding algorithms for design synthesis; geometric modeling and visualization and bio-inspired folding-based design synthesis methods the combined design theory and methods will address a class of design problems -structures made from programmable self-folding active material elements -for which no methods presently exist if successful the results of this research will constitute a substantial leap forward in engineering technology and knowledge allowing engineers to design complex systems in fundamentally new ways additionally underrepresented students from the sixth through 12th grades will learn about science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) topics through a robotics competition organized in partnership with national instruments the research team in partnership with the center for puppetry arts in atlanta will produce origami-themed lessons about stem subjects that will reach more than 10 000 elementary-age school children across the country annually
"dr arum han a researcher in the electrical and computer engineering division of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) received a $2 million award from the national science foundations (nsf) emerging frontiers in research and innovation (efri) office to lead a multidisciplinary team of investigators for developing technologies for next-generation microalgae-based biofuel han is also an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university collaborators include dr tim devarenne from the department of biochemistry and biophysics at texas a&m dr david stern from the boyce thompson institute for plant research dr jefferson tester from cornell university and dr tzachi samocha from texas a&m-corpus christi the team received the award for their proposal ""microalgae lab-on-chip photobioreactor platform for genetic screening and metabolic analysis leading to scalable biofuel production "" under the photosynthetic biorefinary topic in his proposal han says microfluidic lab-on-chip devices have the capability to precisely manipulate many samples in parallel down to single cell resolution and integrate various functionalities into a single user-friendly platform all in a high-throughput manner application of these devices to photosynthetic microorganisms such as microalgae could rapidly reveal critical information needed for improving the production of transportation grade hydrocarbons their proposed strategy is to transfer the valuable hydrocarbon synthesis pathway of the slow-growing alga botryococcus braunii to to faster-growing algae with commercial potential b braunii hydrocarbons are of particular value because they can be readily converted into petroleum-equivalent fuels this strategy will be achieved by developing microfluidic lab-on-chip devices that permit high-throughput screening and analyses of algal growth and oil production; modifying the faster-growing algae chlamydomonas reinhardtii and chlorella so that they produce the hydrocarbons normally found in b braunii; rapidly screening through large numbers of c reinhardtii genetic variants to select the highest performing cells; performing scaled-up growth of the best performers; and performing life-cycle assessment which will provide guidance for optimization of economically and environmentally sustainable production han says the proposed research will have broad scientific impact because the microfluidic platforms will accelerate research and development across the broad area of biofuel and biomolecule production in a range of microbes as well as training the next generation of microbial bioenergy engineers and scientists han director of the nanobio systems lab and an expert in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies joined the bio­ area of the electrical and computer engineering de­partment in august 2005 he received his bachelors degree from the seoul na­tional university in 1997 and his masters degree from the university of cincinnati in 2000 in august 2005 he received his phd in electrical engineering from the georgia institute of technology hans research interests lie in the devel­opment of microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip systems for applications in cellular and molecular analysis particular focus areas are in developing high-throughput screening systems and portable detection systems for applications in developmental neurobiology cancer metastasis infectious diseases and microbe-mediated bioenergy solutions the office of emerging frontiers in research and innovation (efri) has been established as a result of strategic planning and reorganization of the nsf engineering directorate (eng) motivated by the vision of eng to be the global leader in advancing the frontiers of fundamental engineering research efri serves a critical role in helping eng focus on important emerging areas in a timely manner more information about efri grants is available online"
"the board of regents of the texas a&m university system established two new centers in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) at its august meeting a&m system chancellor john sharp said ""the creation of these groundbreaking tees centers is what develops from the unique blend of academic excellence and creative application: new solutions for todays challenges"" the center for emergency informatics (cei) brings together 30 engineering faculty members at texas a&m university and tees researchers who have been working together since 2008 to create unmanned systems new sensors wireless networks data mining simulation and visualization social networking and other technologies that can revolutionize response and recovery the center is unlike any other in the united states because it focuses on how new and evolving information technologies can be improved integrated and put to use for disaster prevention preparedness response and recovery said cei director dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m murphy said that texas needs the economic resilience to handle disasters such as hurricane ike which cost more than $22 billion to recover from she said the technology exists to get better information to the responders cities and citizens in an emergency cei will serve to connect members of the texas a&m family including the texas engineering extension service (teex); the tees center for robot-assisted search and rescue; hazards reduction and recovery center; institute for science technology and public policy; internet2 technology evaluation center; and the rfid/sensor lab the cei will absorb the emergency informatics edge® innovation center which is the nucleus for the 275-member industry consortium led by general dynamics also approved in august was the tees smart grid center (sgc) which will be led by dr mladen kezunovic the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and a researcher in the tees electrical and computer engineering division the sgc will aim to transform the electrical grid infrastructure in the united states to meet the demands of the 21st century the formation of this center is vital at this time given the importance of the electricity grid to the us economy and to national energy security the center brings together several smart grid electric energy efforts already under way in the a&m system and will position the system as a leader in education research and public service in the modernization of the electricity system the center will bring together interdisciplinary research teams to develop more innovative and effective smart grid solutions kezunovic said the center will further the systems research and capabilities in renewable energy computational intelligence and complexity electric vehicles and cyber security the center will also address important economic and policy issues related to the electric grid additionally the center will partner with industry government and other universities to address and improve electricity systems worldwide ""the engineering program at texas a&m is one of the strongest in the nation and the establishment of these two centers broadens the depth of services that a&m and tees provide to the state of texas as well as the nation "" said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees"
"the board of regents of the texas a&m university system established the texas engineering experiment stations (tees) center for emergency informatics (cei) at its aug 3 meeting recognizing the faculty effort in radically changing disaster response through advances in technology thirty faculty members in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university have been working together since 2008 to create unmanned systems new sensors wireless networks data mining simulation and visualization social networking and other technologies that can revolutionize response and recovery the center is unlike any other in the united states as it focuses on how new and evolving information technologies can be improved integrated and put to use for disaster prevention preparedness response and recovery ""the time is now "" said cei director dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m ""texas needs the economic resilience to handle disasters such as hurricane ike which cost more than $22 billion to recover from ""the technology exists to get better information to the responders cities and citizens information technologies are literally springing up overnight with more than 1 000 new apps being created every day and emergency informatics can create jobs; returning veterans for instance are already highly skilled and they need jobs"" cei will serve to connect members of the texas a&m family including the texas engineering extension service (teex); center for robot-assisted search and rescue; hazards reduction and recovery center; institute for science technology and public policy; internet2 technology evaluation center; and the rfid/sensor lab the cei will absorb the emergency informatics edge® innovation center which is the nucleus for the 275-member industry consortium led by general dynamics activities will commence with a seminar series throughout the academic year and a summer institute at teexs disaster city ® is being scheduled for may 2013"
the center for the advancement of science in space inc (casis) announced july 25 that it has named the space engineering research center (serc) an implementation partner serc is a tees engineering center that specializes in providing space-related services and technologies to government and industry clients often in close collaboration with texas a&m university faculty and students casis was chosen by nasa in 2011 to be the sole manager of the international space station us national laboratory the mission of casis is to maximize use of this unique platform for innovation to benefit all humankind and inspire a new generation to look to the stars the casis organization has the responsibility of inciting the imagination of entrepreneurs and scientists accelerating and facilitating space-based microgravity research as well as creating public awareness of national lab activities and making space science more accessible to the world casis acting in partnership with nasa has the charter to select research and fund projects; by connecting investors to scientists with great ideas and by making access to the station faster and easier; enabling groundbreaking new technologies and products that will tangibly affect our lives to facilitate its mission casis is partnering with a number of experienced organizations as implementation partners these partners have the capability to provide a wide range of services to experimenters to help them build microgravity experiments and get them placed on the international space station these services include mission planning experiment design ground testing safety and risk assessment and other experiment payload integration tasks serc was selected after a series of interactions with casis including a visit to center by casis chief operation officer duane ratliff and discussions at the international space station research and development conference the serc is only one of two university-centered organizations named as an implementation partner serc director chip hill said that this selection follows the announcement earlier this year that xcor had chosen the serc as a payload integrator for its suborbital lynx space plane enhancing sercs position for providing microgravity and zero-gravity space payload integration services serc is currently teamed with nasa johnson space center on a payload that will undergo parabolic flights on the zero g corporation aircraft in september followed by suborbital flights on virgin galactics spaceshiptwo space plane
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university have been selected to participate in a new science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) outreach program administered by the national aeronautical and space administration (nasa) the electronics engineering technology program (eet) at texas a&m will team with the project management institute clear lake-galveston (pmi-clg) to provide an innovative approach to project management education and training for students at three high schools - cypress woods cypress ranch and conroe high through its high school students united with nasa for the creation of hardware (hunch) program nasa sponsors high school teams for projects that fabricate training and flight hardware support for nasas international space station national laboratory education projects one teacher at each of the three high schools has been selected by nasas hunch program to do a project and texas a&m was chosen to teach project management to their students ""project management is one of the most important aspects of education "" said dr joseph a morgan a professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m ""the nasa award will allow us to develop and teach project management tools and processes to the high school teams participating in the hunch projects"" morgan along with other texas a&m engineering faculty members will begin working with the students on friday (sept 21) the professors will meet with the students at their high schools on fridays to provide training in project management additionally four student volunteers from texas a&ms eet program who are currently working on their capstone design project will serve as mentors to the high school students the volunteers who are working on their own product design and development projects will work with the high school teams in using project management tools to better manage their projects pmi-clg will serve as advisors to both the texas a&m student mentors and the high school teams ""introducing project management principles within engineering projects is a great way to motivate high school stem students while teaching them the importance of these processes for project success "" said dr wei zhan associate professor and co-principal investigator"
what can a state concerned with resource adequacy learn from an army general with a plan for energy security it turns out plenty the clean air through energy efficiency (catee) conference offers community leaders from around the state a forum for discussing new changing standards and exploring solutions for a healthy built environment serving a growing urbanizing population the energy systems laboratory (esl) at texas a&m university will host catee 2012 in galveston texas october 9-11 2012 catee is a premiere educational conference and energy-related business expo aimed at government development and civic leaders its purpose is to heighten awareness and facilitate implementation of successful policies and investments that reduce energy and water intensity and reduce emissions an outstanding array of speakers will include: major general dana jh pittard commanding general of fort bliss on sustainability leadership and legislative insights from state representatives jim pitts wayne smith and lyle larson a complete program and registration information are available on conference website http://cateetamuedu all conference events will be held at the historic hotel galvez in galveston events include several free pre-conference workshops on october 9 and two full days of conference and exhibits october 10 and 11 2012 rotating annually among texas metropolitan air quality non-attainment and near-non-attainment areas the conference includes both local/regional emphasis and broad state/national relevance the core participants of catee include: community leaders development and design professionals government and school district officials and staff business owners and executives facility managers utility and energy services representatives researchers and energy and air quality advocates and thought leaders this group is defining the pathways to a healthy future for our cities the energy systems laboratory is a division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) esl began hosting an annual conference in 2004 as a mechanism for sharing information on how to implement related policies raise awareness of their impacts and highlight the range of successful local policies and practices being implemented to achieve emissions reductions through energy efficiency in the built environment the conference has become a premiere venue for gathering air quality and energy efficiency stakeholders to discover and advocate sustainable community strategies and energy efficiency improvement opportunities schedule of events tuesday oct 9 10:00 am - 5:00 pm pre-conference workshops (times vary) wednesday oct 10 8:30 am - 5:00 pm conference & exhibits; 5:00-7:00 pm reception thursday oct 11 8:30 am - 5:00 pm conference & exhibits; noon awards luncheon
two researchers from the aerospace engineering division are part of a team led by the boeing co that has been awarded $12 million from nasa dr rodney bowersox and dr edward white who are also faculty members in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university will receive $590 000 to use the oran w nicks low-speed wind tunnel for experiments on how active flow control can mitigate dynamic stall on helicopter blades the experiments will focus on blades operating in the transonic regime the flow control actuators will be designed by advanced fluidics llc and integrated by texas a&m and boeing the project will include substantial improvements to the low-speed wind tunnel to increase its maximum speed to mach 05 (385 mph) the tunnel typically operates up to mach 025 and its current speed record is mach 033 higher speeds are necessary to explore why helicopter rotors fatigue quickly in high-speed forward flight and how active flow control might prevent this measurements will include dynamic pressure readings for unsteady lift and pitch moment and high-resolution particle image velocimetry for off-body flow visualization achieving the higher speed will make use of the newly installed 3 000 horsepower wind-tunnel motor and will require other mechanical and electrical upgrades in the next 18 months
"texas a&m university system vice chancellor brett giroir md today announced that the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has been approved by the department of health and human services and awarded a $227 million subcontract by the a&m system to lead and manage the therapeutics manufacturing and advanced development workforce training programs for the texas a&m center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing (ciadm) through its comprehensive consortium of academic private and industry partners the a&m system is committed to developing and implementing interdisciplinary training and education programs that will recruit prepare train and produce the next-generation workforce to meet the needs of existing and developing biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries in the united states as an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the a&m system tees is uniquely qualified to develop these critical training programs in collaboration with industry ""this is a great example of why we are so enthusiastic about the barda award and development of the ciadm we are already seeing direct benefits to our community and state "" said john sharp a&m system chancellor ""a well-trained fully capable workforce for the emerging biomanufacturing industry is a critical component for continuing economic development in texas and for a nimble and agile manufacturing capability here in the united states "" said giroir principal investigator for ciadm giroir made the announcement at a workforce development event at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary pharmaceutical workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station special guests included texas workforce commission chairman andres alcantar research valley partnership ceo todd mcdaniel an economic development partner of texas a&m system and biomanufacturing employers and other interested stakeholders tees has led a team of educational partners to develop the core biomanufacturing training programs of the nctm which will be leveraged to support the ciadm project ""to fulfill the comprehensive needs of the ciadm we have assembled a top-notch team of partners with expertise in technical training through graduate education in the subject matter areas "" said dr michael pishko (pictured above) associate principal investigator for ciadm and director of the national center for therapeutics manufacturing specific aims of the ciadm workforce training program include: developing and providing therapeutics manufacturing education and training programs to produce technical and professional-level staff proficient in process development production systems cgmp standard operating procedures quality assurance and regulatory guidelines developing and providing advanced development education and training programs to support technical and professional-level staff related to assay development and validation preclinical product development cglp clinical development regulatory science and compliance providing comprehensive workforce outreach that includes advisory committees internship and scholarship programs and stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) and dual credit initiatives including student and teacher workshops the tees workforce training program will be led by dr pishko and jenny ligon executive director the management team will directly oversee education and training on behalf of ciadm and develop a committee of leading experts from academia industry and government with varied technical expertise to advise on strategy and implementation of the program about the texas a&m center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing the texas a&m center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing (ciadm) was founded on an initial $2856 million public-private partnership with the us department of health and human services and is designed to enhance the nations emergency preparedness against emerging infectious diseases including pandemic influenza and chemical biological radiological and nuclear threats about the texas a&m engineering experiment station the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) promotes new technology education and investigates problems in health and the environment and is currently sponsoring more than 4 000 ongoing research projects 800 collaborations 40 patent applications and more than 1 000 students in research activities about the texas a&m university system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $35 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 120 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $780 million and help drive the states economy"
"a recent research article co-written by dr dimitris lagoudas and dr darren hartl from the department of aerospace engineering was recently featured as the cover article in the journal smart materials and structures which is the leading journal for the active materials and adaptive structures community lagoudas holds the john and bea slattery chair in aerospace engineering and is the senior associate dean for research in the dwight look college of engineering; the deputy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees); and associate vice chancellor for engineering research of the texas a&m university system hartl is a tees assistant research professor with the department together they lead the texas institute for intelligent materials and structures (tiims) a tees research center lagoudas has been working in the area of smart material modeling and analysis for the past 20 years and has been working with hartl since 2002 their research team continues to develop new and enhanced methods for addressing the behavior of smart and multifunctional materials at the nano- micro- and macro-scales including implementation into aerospace applications stephen oehler a recent masters graduate and current structures analyst for boeing research and technology was lead author the paper which demonstrates a new framework for the optimized design of morphing structures also includes contributions from dr richard malak of the department of mechanical engineering this work represents the initiation of a new collaborative effort between the two departments related to the design of morphing aerostructures the paper highlighted specifically considers the design of morphing chevrons for installation in jet engine exhaust flows for the purposes of selectively mixing fluid streams and reducing aircraft noise the journal ""is dedicated to technical advances in smart materials systems and structures including materials sensing and actuation optics and electromagnetics structures control and information processing"""
the tees space engineering research center (serc) recently participated in reduced gravity aircraft flights as part of the nasa flight opportunities program nasa johnson space center led a team of researchers from serc the jet learning laboratory and advanced cooling technologies to evaluate a gas-liquid separator designed by serc researchers under microgravity conditions dr cable kurwitz and dr frank little supported flight activities by providing the test platform and data logging as well as directing flight operations the aircraft flight is part of a larger suborbital program to qualify the separator for future space system applications and will be scheduled for a future flight by one of the commercial suborbital flight providers
"leading robotics researchers from 10 countries will meet in college station nov 5-8 for the annual ieee symposia on safety security and rescue robotics the nearly 100 scientists will share findings on how rescue robots are being used throughout the world and discuss advances needed to help responders address disasters such as hurricane sandy land sea and aerial robots were first used at the world trade center disaster and have been used in at least 26 disasters since most recently they were used at fukushima after the japan tsunami the conference will produce a roadmap of additional advances needed to get these tools into the hands of more emergency workers ""the timing with hurricane sandy is particularly meaningful "" said dr robin murphy director of the tees center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) and the raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m ""rescue robotics really took off because of 9/11 and here at the 10th anniversary of our conference we are once again focused on new york"" murphy has participated in 15 disasters including the world trade center collapse hurricanes charley wilma dennis and ike and the tohoku tsunami unlike purely academic symposia the majority of the 43 papers report on practical results from responders and police who used new types of robots sensors and human-robot interfaces in the field one set of papers describes how military and commercially available robots have been used for underwater and aerial inspection of bridges and roads damaged by flooding hurricanes or tsunamis others present results on using ground robots for exploring rubble and helping to care for and extract victims the symposium also includes emerging technologies such as sophisticated snake-like robots and ""soft robots"" which use fluids and shape alloys to flow through rubble this years symposia will feature dr satoshi tadokoro and dr hajime asama who were active in the use of robots for fukushima and the tokohu earthquake and tsunami dr gill pratt the darpa program manager for the darpa robotics challenge which was inspired by the inability of workers at fukushima to enter key areas of the facility to vent hydrogen in time to prevent an explosion will also be featured attendees will tour the 279-acre emergency preparedness campus of the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) which that includes disaster city® and will meet with responders tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system for more on the center for robot-assisted search and rescue visit wwwcrasarorg and for more on the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) and disaster city® visit wwwteexcom"
"the role of research universities in nuclear science energy and policy was the topic of a panel and reception dec 11 in washington dc where panelists and speakers recognized the importance of higher education to ensuring the us remains a global leader in nuclear research and development the event was co-sponsored by texas a&m university the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the nuclear energy institute a washington dc-based policy organization for the nuclear technologies industry panelists included researchers from texas a&m university of california berkeley and university of wisconsin-madison us representative william h ""bill"" flores (r-texas) and us deputy secretary of energy daniel poneman delivered remarks at the post-panel reception poneman applauded texas a&ms efforts to help fill the nations ""need for the next generation of researchers and phds"" rep flores also recognized texas a&ms vast capabilities in nuclear engineering while celebrating the role of federal funding for basic research as the ""seed corn"" for helping grow new technological innovation at research universities both speakers acknowledged nuclear energy research and workforce development as vital to us competitiveness and praised texas a&ms leadership in these areas echoing these sentiments on the panel dr k lee peddicord (pictured left) nuclear engineering professor and director of the tees nuclear power institute (npi) discussed the adaptation of several npi workforce-development programs as international models peddicord stated that the workforce-focus of these programs represents a new frontier for us leadership ""the united states has led the way in conveying best standards and practices and in emphasizing the critical importance of safety security and safeguards in the use of nuclear power "" peddicord said ""but now international engagement for human resource development is taking on even broader dimensions beyond education and research"" npi workforce-development programs have been launched in junior colleges and high schools across texas students teachers and faculty from these programs presented posters at the reception and have traveled overseas with dr peddicord as part of npis international engagement initiative texas a&m also has played a prominent role in reshaping the landscape of nuclear engineering education in the us said dr william s charlton (pictured right) associate professor of nuclear engineering and director of the tees nuclear security science and policy institute charlton said that post-9/11 a select number of academicians recognized the need to ""bring to bear the full capabilities of the us nuclear community"" to properly address potential threats of nuclear terrorism and nonproliferation ""i and a very small number of other academics were heavily in favor of nuclear security and nonproliferation being added as a fundamental pillar of nuclear engineering education "" charlton said ""today every major nuclear science and engineering program within the us has some level of nuclear nonproliferation or nuclear security educational and research activities"" ""the inclusion of academics allowed for the formation of new knowledge in this area and the development of critical human capital educated specifically for this mission "" charlton concluded dr charles hermann professor and brent scowcroft chair in international policy studies at texas a&ms bush school of government and public service served as the only non-engineer on the panel he too recognized the essential relationship between science and policy ""attention to one without consideration of the other invites trouble "" hermann said ""in the 21st century the well being of our country and planet will be enhanced if we can produce more renaissance experts who bridge the policy communities and in our finest science and engineering laboratories"" each panelist recognized the important role of federal funding agencies and policymakers to maintaining us leadership in nuclear-related issues through the funding of university-based research and the passage of policies not restrictive to new innovation the panel and reception took place in the rayburn house office building on capitol hill dec 11 about texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system tees performs quality research performs quality research driven by real-world problems; strengthens and expands the states workforce through education and training; and develops and transfers technology to industry to learn more visit about research at texas a&m university as one of the worlds premier research institutions texas a&m is a leader in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge in many fields including rigorous scientific and technological disciplines research conducted at texas a&m represents an annual investment of more than $705 million; the university ranks in the top 25 of us universities and third nationally for universities without a medical school according to the national science foundation research at texas a&m creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit http://tamuedu/research"
"dr robin murphy a pioneer in the area of rescue robotics spoke to the new energy and industrial technology development organization (nedo) dec 11 in tokyo murphy directs the center for robot-assisted search and rescue in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and is the raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university nedo is a new japanese agency focusing on increasing japans industrial competitiveness the agency is considering creating an international rescue robot team for disasters murphy provided a unique perspective as the leader in robot deployments having participated 15 disasters including the world trade center collapse hurricanes charley and katrina and fukushima daiichi ""life saving activities are effectively over after three days "" murphy said ""but robots arent being used on average until four days after the disaster - too late to make a difference"" in the case of the fukushima daiichi nuclear event suitable japanese and us robots were already in japan and could have been used immediately but due to a lack of information trust in the robots and other concerns the first aerial and ground robots were not used until a month after the event money has not been the barrier murphy said she described how companies have consistently donated robots and experts with no charge for disasters the through the crasar roboticists without borders program murphy made three recommendations first the us and japan should work together to establish relationships between countries and agencies in order to improve the understanding of rescue robots and to enable rapid deployment second governments should provide funding for transportation logistics and preparatory activities such as training and vetting robots third there should be clear mechanisms to provide feedback to the robotics industry and to research so they can continue to improve designs for more on the center for robot-assisted search and rescue visit wwwcrasarorg tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recognized faculty and staff at texas a&m engineerings annual holiday reception dec 6 on campus honored with the deans staff achievement awards were helen hastings master of industrial distribution graduate program specialist in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution; kaye matejka business administrator in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and the thomas and joan read center for distribution research; tammy persky program assistant in the tees energy systems laboratory; austin riddle tees research engineering associate in the texas center for applied technology; barbara slusher business associate i in the department of biomedical engineering; and kathy waskom engineering organizational services manager in the department of computer science and engineering hastings is described as the ""centralizing and harmonizing force"" in her department where she is the lone support staff for a large demanding distance education program hastings supervisor says the program has grown rapidly because of her great quality of work from planning to managing admissions to marketing the program her leadership role has made a real impact and her personal touch is key to success for example after planning a huge alumni reception the event had to be cancelled the evening before due to heavy rain she stayed late personally calling all the alumni email wouldve been easier but alumni were impressed that she cared enough to reach out and make sure they got they got the cancellation message matjeka has a long history of service to texas a&m engineering for more than 30 years she has handled budgets human resources faculty tenure and promotion packages accreditation faculty and staff awards and administrative support to the department head and administrative team praised for her professionalism she is an advocate for her coworkers and has encouraged them to advance their careers through certifications and professional organizations in 2010 the staff presented her with a boss of the year award says a coworker ""a leader knows the way goes the way and shows the way no one embodies this ideal more than she does"" persky is praised for quickly transforming the work environment with ""sparkling professionalism and efficiency"" not only does she handle staff travel expenses student workers assisting with project proposals and reports this ""go-to"" person is also the dedicated administrative assistant to the associate director of the lab known for stepping up when needed she took on an enormous responsibility as coordinator for a key conference and learned on the job how to master the many aspects of the project it required a lot of extra time but the event was a huge success her coworkers praised her for being a ""true professional of the highest standards with a great attitude and dedicated to customer service"" riddle has served tees for 11 years and in that time established himself as a consummate professional whos described as an ""excellent problem solver loyal and willing to take on any task large or small"" his primary focus is software development and the development of user interfaces willing to mentor new team members and open to the ideas of others he is known for balancing and managing multiple tasks and recently has stepped forward to help with customer engagement says his supervisor: ""he promotes positive morale is always upbeat and displays a can-do attitude he believes in his work and he inspires others to be their very best"" thanks to her values of hard work dedication to excellence slusher is credited by her supervisor for making her department function ""infinitely more smoothly"" she has the widest range of work responsibilities of all staff members: managing the front office handling teaching and research supply orders scheduling meetings and the first to volunteer to assist anyone with anything she makes a point to learn as much as she can about the department so that shes ready to jump in wherever shes needed coworkers say she infuses a spirit of service and teamwork into the department says one coworker: ""its extremely uplifting to work with someone who always has such a positive outlook"" waskom makes it her personal responsibility to ensure her department put its best foot forward an exceptional problem solver and relationship builder her supervisor says she leads by example and doesnt hesitate to take on the tough jobs after the sudden passing of a key staff member she stepped up and reorganized staff duties and developed efficient processes to cover the tasks to help support a stronger working relationship with the advising staff she now works two days a week in another building says a faculty member ""shes never grumpy or short with people and works hard to help in any way which promotes positive morale in the office"" joel james client/server system administrator in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering received the safety excellence award which recognizes outstanding safety in the classroom workplace and engineering labs james is said to wear many hats in his department and safety is just one of many where he excels he led the effort to restructure processes for handling chemical waste in his department last spring a fire occurred outside the building and he put himself between students and the fire until help arrived and after the incident placed additional fire extinguishers around the area his supervisor said james respectful and friendly demeanor with faculty staff and students is appreciated saying ""nobody likes to be the bad cop pointing out safety concerns but he has a special talent of helping others realize safety compliance is important"" banks also recognized faculty and staff for their years of service to the college and/or tees celebrating five decades of employment with texas a&m was lee lowery from the zachry department of civil engineering also from civil engineering re bartoskewitz was honored for 45 years of service and harry jones was recognized for his 40 years (pictured: lowery bartoskewitz and jones) recognized for 35 years of service were: dennis allen industrial and systems engineering charles glover chemical engineering thomas lalk and gerald morrison; mechanical engineering thomas pollock aerospace engineering elizabeth robbins petroleum engineering recognized for 30 years of service were: kalyan annamalai mechanical engineering maria barrufet petroleum engineering harvey hawkins and mary urbanovsky civil engineering vikram kinra aerospace engineering deborah kucera fiscal office sai lau mechanical engineering randy marek chemical engineering judy meeks industrial and systems engineering randy shirley engineering budgets and payroll exa york donor relations recognized for 25 years of service were: janice allen carl benner mladen kezunovic and krzystztov michalski electrical and computer engineering tina broughton and walter daugherity computer science and engineering sherry escalante office of the dean kay ison risk and compliance; cesar malave industrial and systems engineering cheryl malone information systems paul nelson nuclear engineering karen pilant strategic research development jeff polasek chemical engineering from mechanical engineering: taher schobeiri and dori wilson rudy schultz petroleum engineering jun zhang civil engineering"
"the texas center for applied technology (tcat) was recently awarded a $17 million us energy department grant through the departments advanced research projects agency (arpa) the arpa grant will be used to develop a way to generate electricity from low-temperature waste heat the project was one of 66 across the country selected for funding tcat is a center housed within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system ""as the largest research university in the state it is critical that we attract life-changing research opportunities like this grant from arpa "" said john sharp a&m system chancellor each project needed to address the challenges imposed by the rapidly evolving global energy market to include all areas of energy research and development including resource identification extraction transportation and use and energy generation storage transmission and use in both the transportation and stationary power sectors ""these projects represent swinging for the fences and trying to hit home runs to support development of the most innovative technologies and change whats possible for americas energy future "" said energy secretary steven chu the scope of tcats project involves developing a system to generate electricity from low-temperature waste heat the system will cycle between heating and cooling a metal hydride to produce a flow of high-pressure hydrogen this hydrogen flow is then used to generate electricity via a turbine and generator michael martin interim director for tcats energy and environmental division conveyed his excitement over the prospect of promoting future research and development in the san antonio area ""the grant selection process was competitive and we are fortunate to have captured funding from the doe "" martin said ""we are excited to have an opportunity to investigate and demonstrate this emerging technology in san antonio we look forward to close collaboration with partners and to bringing future research and business to the local community"" the project team includes tcat texas a&m university-san antonio which owns the site where the work will be performed and erra inc a clean technology company based in san antonio general charles g rodriguez texas a&m university-san antonios chief of staff & vice president for strategic initiatives and military affairs expressed his pleasure at the coupling of two of the texas a&m university system parts working side by side on a project of this magnitude ""texas a&m-san antonio is pleased to be an important part of this public-private energy research effort "" rodriguez said ""we look forward to hosting the activities on our property and for the benefit of our university community and the public"""
five faculty members in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university have been recognized by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as tees fellows the tees fellow designation recognizes established faculty members with a history of continuous performance tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system texas a&m engineering faculty hold joint appointments as tees researchers selected as tees fellows are dr tahir cagin chemical engineering; dr arum han electrical and computer engineering; dr hisham nasr-el-din petroleum engineering; dr haiyan wang electrical and computer engineering; and dr xinghang zhang mechanical engineering dr tahir cagin joined the texas a&m faculty in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in 2005 he earned bachelors and masters degrees from the middle east technical university and a phd from clemson university his research focuses on computational materials science and nanotechnology with emphasis on design characterization and development of multifunctional nano-structured materials for device and sensor applications; fundamental studies on transport phenomena (heat mass and momentum) at nanoscale and in confined media; thermal mechanical electronic and magnetic properties and phase behavior of materials; materials for thermal management power generation and energy harvesting; and development and application of multiscale simulation methods in 1999 he received the feynman prize in nanotechnology (theory) and has been the william keeler faculty fellow at texas a&m dr arum han is an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and director of the nanobio systems lab an expert in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies han joined the faculty in august 2005 he received his bachelors degree from the seoul na­tional university in ko­rea in 1997 and his masters degree from the university of cincinnati in 2000 in august 2005 he received his phd degree in electrical engineering from the georgia institute of technology hans research interests lie in the devel­opment of microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip systems for applications in cellular and molecular analysis particular focus areas are in developing high-throughput screening systems and portable detection systems for applications in developmental neurobiology cancer metastasis infectious diseases and microbe-mediated bioenergy solutions dr hisham nasr-el-din is the john edgar holt chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering he joined the faculty in 2007 after more than 15 years with saudi aramco oil co during his 35-year career he has been a prolific researcher and developer of new technologies that have led to important advances in the drilling fluids field and petroleum engineering operations nasr-el-din is a member of the society of petroleum engineers (spe) and has received numerous awards from spe including outstanding associate editor in 2008 and 2009 the spe productions and operations award in 2009 and the outstanding technical editor in 2008 he has published 129 papers in peer-reviewed journals presented at 267 conferences and meetings and currently hold two us patents nasr-el-din received a bachelors and masters degrees in chemical engineering from the university of cairo egypt and his phd in chemical engineering from the university of saskatchewan saskatoon canada dr haiyan wang is an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering she joined the texas a&m faculty in january 2006 from los alamos national laboratory as a director-funded post-doctoral fellow and a permanent staff member she holds a bachelors degree from nanchang university (china) and a masters degree from the institute of metal research (china) and earned her phd from north carolina state university among her honors are the asm silver medal award 2011 national science foundations career award in 2009 the presidential early career award for scientists and engineers (pecase) in 2008 the office of naval research young investigator award in 2008 and the air force research offices young investigator research program (yip) in 2007 her research interests lie in the area of functional oxide and nitride thin films for microelectronics optoelectronics high-temperature superconductors solid oxide fuel cells solar cells and advanced nuclear reactors her expertise is thin-film growth and characterizations dr xinghang zhang is an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering chair of the interdisciplinary materials science and engineering graduate program at texas a&m and a tees researcher in the mechanical engineering division zhang joined the faculty in january 2005 and earned the prestigious nsf career award he has supervised more than a dozen graduate students among them 10 phd students he has graduated four ms students who work for industry and three phds who are all postdocs at los alamos national laboratory he has written more than 100 journal articles that have received more than 1 200 citations his h-index has exceeded 15 he has delivered numerous invited talks at national and international conferences and has given graduate seminars in the us and prestigious chinese universities his research group has the expertise on nanotwinned metals radiation tolerant nanostructured metals for nuclear energy applications and hydrogen storage materials for automobile applications
seven faculty members in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university have been recognized by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as tees select young faculty the award recognizes outstanding young faculty members who have demonstrated their talents for research tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system texas a&m engineering faculty hold joint appointments as tees researchers selected as tees young faculty are dr elizabeth cosgriff-hernandez biomedical engineering; dr kristen maitland biomedical engineering; dr zhilei chen chemical engineering; dr jodie lutkenhaus chemical engineering; dr devesh ranjan mechanical engineering; dr david staack mechanical engineering; and dr choongho yu mechanical engineering dr zhilei chen assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering joined the texas a&m faculty in 2008 she completed her undergraduate studies at east china normal university in shanghai china and earned her phd at university of illinois urbana-champaign in 2012 she was named a recipient of the young investigators research program award (yip) by the air force office of scientific research and the national science foundation career award chens research focuses on applying protein engineering principles for biotechnology applications she also is working on engineering agents for the treatment of various viral infections including hepatitis c virus and hiv and the identification of novel drug targets dr elizabeth cosgriff-hernandez is an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering she received her bs in biomedical engineering and phd in macromolecular science and engineering from case western reserve university her laboratory specializes in the development of hybrid material systems that combine the advantages of synthetic and natural polymers (eg collagen) to advance tissue engineering design in addition to providing improved scaffolds for tissue repair these innovative biomaterials provide new tools to probe the complex process of tissue remodeling dr jodie lutkenhaus assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering focuses on designing organic thin films and nanostructures to enable the development of novel organic energy systems and smart-coatings areas of her research include learning how polymer thin films behave in confinement; fabrication of polymer nanowires and nanotubes; polyelectrolytes and layer-by-layer assembly; designing lithium-ion battery electrode and electrolyte materials; and understanding electrochemical processes within these materials lutkenhaus who completed her undergraduate career at the university of texas at austin earned her phd at the massachusetts institute of technology in 2007 before joining texas a&ms chemical engineering department in 2010 dr kristen maitland assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering maitland is a senior member in spie the international society for optics and photonics she received her phd in biomedical engineering from the university of texas at austin as a research fellow in the nsf integrative graduate education and research traineeship (igert) program in cellular and molecular imaging for diagnostics and therapeutics her current research interests include confocal microscopy along with other optical imaging and spectroscopy techniques for disease detection diagnosis and treatment; and endoscope and miniature optics development for improved access for in vivo applications dr devesh ranjan is an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering having joined the texas a&m faculty in 2009 he was previously a postdoctoral research associate and a directors research fellow at los alamos national laboratory he earned a bachelors degree from the national institute of technology trichy (india) and masters and phd degrees from the university of wisconsin all in mechanical engineering his research interests are in experimental fluid mechanics (hydrodynamic instabilities) turbulent mixing and supersonic combustion impulsive unsteady phenomena shock tube applications experimental thermal hydraulics and laser diagnostics design of thermal systems and shock wave lithotripsy dr david staack is an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering he received his bs and ms from the university of virginia and his phd from drexel university and is the author or co-author of more than 20 peer-reviewed journal publications his research interests include non-equilibrium plasmas; micro- and nano-scale plasmas; electric propulsion for spacecraft; plasma enhanced materials processing and synthesis; plasma enhanced fuel conversion and combustion; biological and medical plasma applications; and laser and spectroscopic diagnostics staack received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation in 2011 dr choongho yu joined the texas a&m mechanical engineering faculty in 2007 he was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the university of california berkeley and the lawrence berkeley national laboratory yu earned bachelors and masters degrees from korea university and a phd from the university of texas at austin all in mechanical engineering his research interests are in energy harvesting and cooling (thermoelectric fuel cell and photovoltaic energy conversions); thermal and electrical transport behaviors; energy storage (li-ion battery materials and supercapacitors); and thermal management
"dr nicole zacharia a researcher in the tees mechanical engineering division has received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) for her proposal ""electric field processing of polyelectrolyte complex"" the work to be conducted under this award is to examine phase behavior of solutions of synthetic polyelectrolyte complexes and to then use an electric field to manipulate these complexes in solution with the goal of depositing them as solids onto substrates synthetic polyelectrolytes both strong and weak that are typically used in layer-by-layer (lbl) assembly of polyelectrolyte multilayers (such as polyacrylic acid sulfonated polystyrene polyallylamine hydrochloride and polyethylene imine) will be examined the first part of the work will be to determine phase diagrams for the complexes of different pairs of polyelectrolytes as a function of ph solution ionic strength molecular weight and concentration the thermodynamic behavior of these complexes is generally masked by kinetic considerations and unraveling these components will be one goal the next phase of the work will be to look at adsorption of complexes of different stoichiometries onto charged surfaces the third phase of the work will be to compare this equilibrium adsorption to deposition onto charged surfaces under the influence of an electric field factors including ionic strength dielectric constant of the solvent and addition of other components such as metal nanoparticles will be examined this process will eventually be generalized to look at the electrophoretic deposition of other types of soft matter such as micelles or hollow polyelectrolyte capsules the last phase of the work is to examine the solid materials created by this process it is hypothesized that different stoichiometries and properties can be achieved through electric field manipulation as compared to equilibrium adsorption onto a surface zacharia is also an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering and the materials science and engineering program at texas a&m university she joined the materials division in the department of mechanical engineering in 2009 she received her phd from massachusetts institute of technology in 2007 from 2007 to 2009 zacharia worked at the university of toronto as a postdoctoral fellow in the departments of electrical engineering and chemistry"
"mechanical engineering researcher dr devesh ranjan has been awarded the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award for his five-year project ""transition turbulence and mixing in shock-accelerated variable density flows at extreme conditions"" the career program is nsfs most prestigious award for junior faculty members the scientific goal of ranjans career project is to produce diagnose and simulate shock-driven turbulent flows in a compressible system the outcomes of ranjans work may contribute to developing more efficient designs for fuel pellets which are essential for the success of the inertial confinement fusion as a method to provide energy from fusion in a commercially viable manner ranjan who is also an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m also has a well-documented impact on undergraduate education by involving several undergraduate students in research work in his laboratory these efforts will be continued and recruitment of ""first-generation college"" and women students will be emphasized additionally he proposes to develop an educational online game (heats) an innovative approach to help students better understand the design of thermal fluid systems all these efforts will contribute to providing a steady supply of trained scientists for the nation this nsf career award is ranjans third major research grant in six months from three different federal agencies a rare feat for an assistant professor ranjans streak started with a $438 000 contract from the us department of energys (doe) national nuclear security administration (nnsa)to obtain detailed measurements of turbulent rayleigh-taylor driven mixing in a multilayer icf capsule ranjan also received the air force office of scientific research young investigator research program (afosr-yip) grant for his research project ""breaking with tradition: turbulence with memory"" in the past four years his research efforts have been funded by several federal agencies including two programs and the los alamos national laboratory and livermore national laboratory in addition to the research awards ranjan has received the student led teaching excellence award (slate) in 2009 morris e foster faculty fellowship in 2010 and being named tees select young fellow in 2012 ranjan joined the department of mechanical engineering in january 2009 he received his phd from the university of wisconsin-madison in 2007 by 2008 ranjan was a directors research fellow at los alamos national laboratory his fields of interest include experimental fluid mechanics impulsive unsteady phenomena and experimental thermal hydraulics and laser diagnostics"
"the design of objects requiring a battery is often limited because batteries are usually flat or cylindrical in shape but what if the power supply could be any shape or be part of the objects structure or better yet be the object itself thanks to a recent grant awarded to tees chemical engineering researcher dr jodie lutkenhaus that technology might soon be reality as part of the us air force office of scientific research young investigator research program lutkenhaus received a $350 000 grant to develop organic electrodes for structural energy and power or in simple terms ""bullet-proof"" batteries lutkenhaus said ""while conventional batteries such as lithium-ion produce plenty of power relative to their size they lack the mechanical properties required for structural applications as both ground and aerial vehicles increase in complexity multifunctional materials become ever more critical to reduce the size and mass of system components one such example is the integration of energy storage and power systems with structural or armor elements for such a concept to be viable the proposed system must store and deliver electrochemical energy as well as bear a structural load and dissipate mechanical stress"" lutkenhaus said she believes this is possible due to the unique properties of graphene ""because of several groundbreaking advances the future for structural electrodes is very promising "" she said ""researchers have observed excellent mechanical properties in graphene and reduced graphene oxide in addition to its electrochemical energy storage"" graphene is made of pure carbon and is similar to the graphite found in pencil lead but graphene differs in that it is a sheet of carbon atoms only one atom thick making it extremely conductive very light and very strong because of these properties lutkenhaus thinks it can be castable moldable and sprayable; allowing a graphene power supply to fit anywhere in the equipment or be part of the structure for which its supplying power one practical military application could be in the power supply for uav drones or unmanned aerial vehicles this would allow for less material in the building process reducing the drones weight allowing it to stay in flight longer and increasing its operational range lutkenhaus who is also an assistant professor in the artie artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university is one of only 40 scientists who received this prestigious award the grant will last for three years and will support one graduate student and one undergraduate student dr nazmul karim head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m said ""dr lutkenhaus receiving the afosr grant is just an affirmation of what i already believe that we have the best faculty here at texas a&m university i am extremely proud of dr lutkenhaus for receiving this level of recognition for her research"" this award will support lutkenhaus larger research efforts in developing flexible organic energy storage she received her bs in chemical engineering in 2002 from the university of texas at austin and her phd in chemical engineering in 2007 from the massachusetts institute of technology following graduate school she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the university of massachusetts amherst in 2008 she joined the department of chemical engineering at yale university and moved to texas a&m university in 2010 she won an nsf career and the acs prf doctoral new investigator award in 2011 her current research areas include organic thin films electrochemical energy conversion and thermal analysis"
texas a&m engineering will host a smart grid workshop april 17 in college station texas the workshop is organized by the smart grid center part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and faculty members in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university dr mladen kezunovic the eugene e webb professor and the smart grid center director said the workshop will bring together faculty staff and students to increase awareness facilitate scientific exchange leading to collaborative proposal teams and improve the teaching research and development activities across disciplines in electric transmission alternative generation sources storage grid monitoring policy economics and other related fields the program will feature presentations by texas a&m faculty and tees researchers highlighting existing research and development initiatives; a national perspective from dr george w arnold national coordinator for smart grid interoperability at the national institute of standards and technology; and the texas perspective from texas a&m former students and opinion leaders in electric energy and smart grid transformation for more information about the workshop visit http://smartgridcentertamuedu/sgc/
"dr darren hartl has been named assistant director of the aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) avsi director david redman has announced hartl (pictured on the left) is a tees research assistant professor in the aerospace engineering division and in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university he is also director of operations for the tees texas institute for intelligent materials and structures (tiims) hartl received his phd from texas a&m in 2009 and has more than 10 years of experience working with shape memory alloys (smas) and morphing structures his efforts have included both experimental and theoretical studies and he has worked collaboratively with both public and private sponsors hartl has been co-author on three textbook chapters eight refereed journal publications and nearly 30 conference proceedings and won numerous best paper prizes for his work on the analysis of sma components and structures hartl took the reins from dr fred fisher who has been with avsi in a variety of roles since the institute was formed in 1999 fisher was tasked with assisting the inaugural avsi director david lund with the first avsi project which focused on virtual private networks fisher remained an integral part of avsi until lunds departure in 2006 fisher was named interim director and remained in that capacity until june 2008 when the current director was hired at which time fisher was appointed assistant director redman said he recognized the valuable contributions that fisher made in service to the institute ""fred stepped up and maintained avsi as a vital institute that continued to serve the needs of its aerospace industry members to the benefit of tees and texas a&m university during his tenure as interim director fred launched one of several avsi projects that have been contracted to texas a&m researchers"" redman added that avsi will miss fishers experience and relationships with industry and that hartls talents will help fill the gap and bring new potential to avsi tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"dr devesh ranjan a researcher in the tees mechanical engineering division and an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university is one of 40 scientists and engineers who will receive approximately $15 million in grants from the air force office of scientific research through its young investigator research program (afosr-yip) the grant was awarded for ranjans research proposal ""breaking with tradition: turbulence with memory"" the research questions the orthodox assumption that turbulent mixing involves rapid loss of memory between two fluids mathematical turbulence models are based on the assumption of memory loss and equilibrium flows these constraints make it hard to predict the development of turbulence the new findings will provide useful insights in shock-induced mixing and non-uniform combustion in scram engines climate prediction and free-flowing jets and plumes ranjan joined the texas a&m faculty in 2009 after receiving his phd in 2007 from the university of wisconsin-madison ranjan was a postdoctoral research associate and directors research fellow at los alamos national laboratory he was awarded the alexander von humboldt fellowship for postdoctoral research in 2008 his research interests include experimental fluid mechanics (hydrodynamic instabilities) turbulent mixing and supersonic combustion shock tube applications experimental thermal hydraulics and laser diagnostics design of thermal systems and shock wave lithotripsy among the awards he has received in his short time at texas a&m university are the student led teaching excellence award (slate) in 2009 and the tees select young fellow in 2012 his current research efforts are funded by several federal agencies including doe-nnsa doe-neup los alamos national laboratory and lawrence livermore national laboratory the objective of the afosr-yip program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the air force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering major research areas include aerospace chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics information and life sciences the recipients selected will receive the grants over a three- to five-year period"
"dr guofei gu a researcher in the tees computer science and engineering division and an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has received an award from the air force office of scientific research (afosr) through its young investigator research program (yip) gu was selected for his proposal ""go ahead of malwares infections and controls: towards new techniques for proactive cyber defense"" summarizing his research project gu said ""we are currently witnessing a sea change in cyber crimes carried out by malware from fun/fame driven to profit driven with strong economic incentives cyber criminals are writing much better malware even worse the attack-defense arms race actually favors attackers because they are more proactive in designing/testing new attacks while defenders are reactive and need to defend all possible attacks at all places at all times it is clear that we need to develop some game-changing approach to address challenges we currently face"" gus research will focus on investigating such an approach particularly designing novel techniques to defend against current and next-generation malware proactively in particular to prevent threats the researchers propose to investigate the root cause of the infections and design new vulnerability detection techniques to automatically identify unknown vulnerabilities in current systems and networks so that vulnerabilities can be fixed before attackers can exploit ""this research will not only significantly advance the field of malware defense by providing fundamentally new strategies and techniques but also have a broad impact in providing a new game-changing paradigm for building a proactive cyber security framework which is particularly critical for military cyber infrastructures "" gu said gu is interested in all aspects of network and system security to solve practical security problems he uses networking and system techniques as well as applied cryptography machine learning probability/statistics and information theory gus specific research interests include internet malware/botnet detection defense and analysis; web and social networking security; cloud and software-defined networking (sdn/openflow) security; and intrusion detection and anomaly detection shortly after receiving his phd in computer science from the georgia institute of technology in 2008 gu joined the computer science and engineering faculty at texas a&m gu directs the secure communication and computer systems (success) lab at texas a&m he is a 2010 nsf career award recipient the objective of the afosr-yip program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the air force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering major research areas include aerospace chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics information and life sciences the recipients selected will receive the grants during a three- to five-year period"
"the texas a&m energy institutes wind energy center will lead the texas offshore wind farm innovation team as part of the gulf offshore wind (gowind) project which will be the most innovative wind farm built to date and will generate power at peak demand and a high capacity factor the wind energy center is housed in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a member of the texas a&m university system as part of the project baryonyx corporation of austin has been invited to negotiate a contract with the us department of energy for an award under the wind and water energy program subject to the outcome of environmental and feasibility assessments a future phase of the project would see a three-turbine 18mw wind farm installed offshore texas ""this project represents an exceptional partnership between texas universities and industry "" said john pappas associate director of the energy institute and director of the wind energy center ""the award recognizes texas continued leadership in wind and offshore energy production as well as its ability to innovate and bring real-world solutions to the market ""the combined know-how and assets of texas wind and offshore industries and its research universities along with strong community support uniquely positions this project for success"" baryonyx brings first-hand experience in offshore wind development to gowind its management team conceived undertook environmental impact assessment obtained permits and developed the industry-leading ormonde project located off the west coast of the united kingdom ormonde an exemplar of the next generation of offshore wind farm development is comprised of large capacity 5 mw turbines mounted on jacket structures baryonyx was also partnered then with offshore design engineering ltd who ensured that ormonde was delivered safely on-time and on-budget texas a&ms role in the project will include performing applied research in blade structure and design for hurricane conditions developing advanced wind farm control algorithms support resource environmental and geotechnical survey and analyses and developing comparative economic models the university team led by the wind energy center includes texas a&ms harold vance department of petroleum engineering texas a&ms department of electrical and computer engineering texas a&ms department of aerospace engineering as well as the university of texas at austins center for electromechanics and civil engineering department texas tech universitys national wind resource center texas a&m university corpus christis conrad blucher institute and the university of texas at brownsvilles school of business and department of environmental sciences the gowind projects wind farm will bring more power to an underserved area without the need for new long-distance transmission the technologies developed and demonstrated will increase the output capability of the wind farm facilitate grid integration and decrease operations and maintenance costs to help allow continued growth of texas wind power industry in a time of uncertainty over the production tax credit subsequent to the agreement of a contract with the doe the next key step for the gowind project will be to initiate the environmental assessment studies under the supervision of the us army corps of engineers ""the public consultation process for the project was recently completed by the usace constructive feedback from many interested organizations and individuals was received and this information will be used to shape the assessment studies needed before a decision to install the gowind demonstration project can be made"" baryonyx ceo ian hatton said"
"the robotics research of dr aaron ames has been featured in design news the magazine also named ames one of its ""rising engineering stars"" ames is a researcher in the mechanical engineering division of tees and an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university science fiction has long promised two-legged humanlike robots that can walk among us but those are not yet reality ames a self-described sci-fi buff is building the robots himself he and his students in the a&m bipedal experimental robotics lab (amber) are working on the design simulation and fabrication of a robot that will walk like a human writer deb setters from maxon precision motors says that ""making a human-like bipedal walking robot will advance robotics beyond that of toys or novelty and into the area of high-level use for a variety of applications including space exploration disaster response military operations elderly assistance rehabilitation and prosthetics"" read setters article here design news is the leading technical resource both in print and online providing technology news opinion analysis end-user examples and tutorials for engineers and engineering managers who design consumer and industry-specific products and systems that range in application from planes trains and automobiles to cellular phones industrial machinery medical devices and more"
"dr phillip hemmer a researcher in the electrical and computer engineering division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) had a perspectives paper published in the prestigious research publication science the paper ""toward molecular-scale mri "" can be found online hemmer is also a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university in his paper hemmer discusses magnetic resonance imaging (mri) which is a mainstay of medical diagnostics allowing nondestructive imaging inside opaque objects with high resolution there have been many attempts to use mri to image small objects such as living cells because the resolution can be well below the optical diffraction limit however he says the detection sensitivity of conventional mri falls rapidly for smaller feature sizes making it impossible to resolve features smaller than a few micrometers with this method in his paper hemmer discusses different molecular-scale magnetic resonance imaging methods designed for these smaller sizes these methods are published in the same issue of science hemmer joined the engineering faculty at texas a&m in january 2002 he received his bachelors degree from the university of dayton in 1976 and his phd in physics from the massachusetts institute of technology in 1984 his interest areas are in solid materials for quantum optics especially ""dark resonance"" excitation materials and techniques for resonant nonlinear optics phase-conjugate-based turbulence aberration and compensation spectral hole burning materials and techniques for ultra-dense memories and high temperature operation quantum computing in solid materials quantum communication and teleportation in trapped atoms holographic optical memory materials smart pixels devices optical correlators photorefractive applications atomic clocks and laser trapping and cooling honors include being elected fellow of the optical society of america receiving the ruth and william neely 52/dow chemical fellowship an outstanding faculty award from the electrical and computer engineering department an nsf fellowship the air force research laboratory chief scientists award and the air force office of scientific research star team award three times he also is a member of the optical society of america spie and american physical society founded in 1880 by thomas edison science has grown to become the worlds leading outlet for scientific news commentary and cutting-edge research with the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general-science journal through its print and online incarnations science reaches an estimated worldwide readership of more than one million in content too the journal is truly international in scope; some 35 to 40 percent of the corresponding authors on its papers are based outside the united states its articles consistently rank among worlds most cited research"
dr mike mcshane a researcher in the biomedical engineering division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has been named recipient of the 2012 national institutes of health (nih) directors transformative research award mcshane is also associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university mcshane along with natalie ann wisniewski of profusa inc are working to develop highly miniaturized injectable sensors for continuous and simultaneous monitoring of multiple body chemistries that would allow physicians to remotely monitor a patients vital health markers the nih directors transformative research award initiative supports exceptionally innovative and/or unconventional research projects that have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms the primary emphasis of the transformative research awards initiative is to support research on bold paradigm-shifting but untested ideas mcshanes work involves embedding sensor molecules into specially engineered tissue-like biomaterials that become part of the tissue in which they are injected and do not cause the typical foreign body rejection response the sensors are injected under the skin and monitored optically using a miniaturized wireless reader for continuous measurement or a hand-held wand for periodic self-measurement depending on the clinical need mcshane says eventually the data will be viewable via cell phone or at a remote location allowing the individual physician or other care providers to access medical data without the need for in-person examination until a critical point mcshane adds at texas a&m mcshane conducts research focusing on the modeling design fabrication and testing of small-scale analytical devices particularly photoluminescent biosensors his research and educational activities cover many areas of biomedical engineering including biomaterials molecular biology biomedical optics biotransport bioinstrumentation signal processing and medical device design mcshane received his bachelors degree and phd in biomedical engineering from texas a&m
"the board of regents of the texas a&m university system has approved the establishment of the institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) as a joint entity within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university the ieei will create an organization dedicated to advancing the practices of engineering education and contribute to the national need for a well-prepared engineering workforce john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system said ""this joint entity is a prime example of our systems commitment to addressing the need to produce graduates ready to contribute to society from the day they leave our campuses and while they are in the economy - a dual approach to a better results and performance"" additionally the ieei will serve as a focal point for initiatives in engineering education within the dwight look college of engineering and will be available to the a&m system engineering programs the institute will synthesize research and practice on learning teaching and educational technology to help faculty keep pace offer leadership to clarify intent and find space for transformative learning environments it will also foster advances in engineering education through four foundational pillars: multidisciplinary design experimental learning systems thinking and professional development ""our engineering faculty are among the best in the nation in teaching and conducting research in their respective fields "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""the ieei will be instrumental as we transform and redesign the engineering curriculum to meet the state and national need for more engineers through the 25 by 25 initiative"" in addition to tees the college of engineering and the a&m system other partners include the colleges of science liberal arts and business at texas a&m university"
"the board of regents of the texas a&m university system has approved the establishment of a new center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the national corrosion center (ncc) will function in the general areas of corrosion science and technology through research training education testing and outreach texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp said ""this center is a shining example of our systems unique ability to solve substantial problems and serve the needs of the nation"" corrosion is the natural deterioration that occurs with all materials because of a reaction of the material with its environment this degradation process affects the assets of nearly every industrial sector and government agency and has direct impact on the economy health safety infrastructure environment and national security the most recent congressionally mandated us federal highway administration (fhwa) study showed that metal corrosion had a total direct cost of $276 billion per year or 31 percent of the us gross domestic product but it is estimated that approximately 30 percent of the annual costs of corrosion could be eliminated through the implementation of sound engineering practices the demand for corrosion professionals particularly in certain industrial sectors (such as oil and gas) has exceeded the supply provided by existing centers and programs existing corrosion research and training centers have limited experience and facilities capable of addressing complex corrosion issues encountered in texas largest industrial sector - oil and gas ""there is a clear need for an internationally recognized corrosion center in texas that educates and trains the next generation of corrosion experts and assists industries and agencies in materials infrastructure needs "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m a national corrosion center (ncc) was established in 2008 through an initiative at rice university in houston bringing this center under the tees banner will allow ncc to leverage the ongoing advancements in materials research in the texas a&m university system ncc will bring a focus on corrosion research and technologies that will add another dimension to the developing multidisciplinary programs in material science and engineering the center will harness the technical and academic strength and breadth of the a&m system and rice the training and workforce development capability of houston community college and the technological expertise and financial resources of houstons industrial base ""this fits precisely within the tees mission to foster innovation in research education and technology transfer that support and aid business and industrial communities and enhance the economic development of texas and the nation "" said banks"
"the tees space engineering research center (serc) recently participated in a series of zero-gravity aircraft flights out of ellington field in houston (pictured left: dr frank little top and dr rube williams left weightless on a recent zero-gravity flight) these flights sponsored by nasa fly a parabolic flight profile to provide brief periods of weightlessness that simulate the environment of space for both human and experimental payloads serc has participated in a number of these flights in the past two decades logging thousands of these weightless parabolas they require particular expertise to design systems especially those that involve fluids to operate properly in space this latest experiment called microgravity multiphase flow experiment for suborbital testing (mfest) relies on a gas-liquid separation system developed by texas a&m university engineers all principal test objectives for payload operations and data collection were met in the zero-gravity test series mfest is sponsored by nasa/johnson space center and conducted under nasas flight opportunities program plans are to fly this experiment on one of the new commercial space planes that will begin flights late next year taking passengers and payloads on a suborbital trajectory for a longer-duration near-space experience the recent flight had a number of texas a&m connections aggie graduate dr cable kurwitz was the serc technical lead on the project and another aggie dr katy hurlburt of the crew and thermal systems division at johnson space center was the nasa engineer in charge dr frank little of serc was the primary test engineer on the flights and flying with little was aggie graduate and former employee dr rube williams director of the jet learning laboratory a technical leaning center in houston another collaborator and aggie graduate was mike ellis of advanced cooling technologies inc serc director is chip hill another aggie graduate in addition to carrying out the mfest flight test objectives little - a volunteer firefighter in wheelock texas - wore a bryan fire department patch on his flight suit to pay tribute to the bryan fire department firefighters killed and injured in february in addition a sign carried on the aircraft honors lieutenants gregory pickard and eric wallace and firefighters rickey mantey and mitch moran of the bryan fire department it was a small gesture but little said he hoped the families and friends of the firefighters can take some comfort from their loved ones names ""flying high"" with the serc space engineers (pictured right: bryan fire department sign on recent nasa zero-gravity flight) tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"texas a&m university at qatar signed an agreement recently to bring an extension of texas-based mary kay oconnor process safety center to doha the extension will replicate all academic programs and activities of the center at texas a&m university in college station texas the document was signed during the annual qatar process safety symposium march 11-12 at the qatar national convention center the centers mission is to promote safety as a second nature in industry around the world with goals to prevent future accidents it is set to be an international leader in minimizing losses within the process industry through safer processes management equipment and procedures the center (mkopsc-q) will provide good science based counsel develop and disseminate best practices through consulting and short courses provide benchmarking for process safety management systems and practices and conduct research it will also provide industry with a forum to exchange ideas and advance technologies to keep competitive dr kenneth hall associate dean for research and graduate studies at texas a&m at qatar said ""the qatar process safety symposium has become a showcase for the commitment of the university to improving the quality of life in qatar ""this year the symposium contained an event of special significance "" hall continued ""the mary kay oconnor process safety center the premier academic program addressing this crucial issue elected to establish an extension of itself in texas a&m university at qatar at the qatar process safety symposium dr sam mannan executive director of the center and i signed an mou to dr m katherine banks dean of the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m requesting her approval to establish the extension we have proposed dr luc véchot to be the managing director of the extension texas a&m university at qatar is proud to have gained the confidence of dr mannan and the mkopsc and we pledge that mkopsc-qatar will strive to instill the goal of mkopsc ""making safety second nature"" dr sam mannan executive director of the mkopsc said ""the establishment of the mary kay oconnor process safety center in doha represents a major step forward in bringing all the successful programs and activities that have been developed at the main campus in college station to texas a&m at qatar these programs will lead to the integration of process safety into curriculum in the education research and service programs of texas a&m at qatar this will be of tremendous mutual benefit for the university and the industry in qatar"" dr luc véchot managing director of the mkopsc-qatar said ""we are very pleased by the establishment of the mary kay oconnor process safety center here in doha such a structure which brings together academia industry and regulatory institutions was needed in qatar and we look forward to working with industry on process safety issues very importantly together with our colleagues from the industry the center will actively contribute to educate new generations of engineers for whom safety is second nature"" about the mary kay oconnor process safety center the mary kay oconnor process safety center was established in 1995 in memory of mary kay oconnor an operations superintendent killed in an explosion oct 23 1989 at a petrochemical complex in pasadena texas mary kay oconnor graduated from the university of missouri-columbia with a degree in chemical engineering and received a mba from the university of houston-clear lake dr sam mannan because of his reputation as a world-renowned expert in process safety was appointed director of the center in 1997 the centers mission is to promote safety as second nature in industry around the world with goals to prevent future accidents in addition the center develops safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies to minimize losses within the processing industry however the center realizes that it is necessary to advance process safety technologies in order to keep the industry competitive other functions of the center include that it serves all stakeholders provides a common forum and develops programs and activities that will forever change the paradigm of process safety the funding for the center comes from a combination of the endowment consortium funding and contract projects the center is jointly operated by the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system about texas a&m university at qatar texas a&m university recognized as having one of the premier engineering programs in the world has offered undergraduate degrees in chemical electrical mechanical and petroleum engineering at qatar foundations education city campus since 2003 and graduate courses in chemical engineering since fall 2011 more than 300 engineers have graduated from texas a&m at qatar since 2007 in addition to engineering courses texas a&m at qatar provides classes in science mathematics liberal arts and the humanities all four of the engineering programs offered at texas a&m at qatar are accredited by abet the curricula offered at texas a&m at qatar are materially identical to those offered at the main campus in college station texas and courses are taught in english in a co-educational setting the reputation for excellence is the same as is the commitment to equip engineers to lead the next generation of engineering advancement faculty from around the world are attracted to texas a&m at qatar to provide this educational experience and to participate in research activities now valued at over $135 million and that address issues important to the state of qatar"
"the nuclear power institute (npi) at texas a&m university along with the international atomic energy agency (iaea) is hosting a three-week nuclear energy management school (nems) for young professionals working in nuclear energy and related fields npi is a center housed within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the nems which runs through april 5 includes participants from 11 countries from africa asia europe and south america the school features lecturers from the united states government us industry the iaea and other international experts in nuclear related fields ""we are delighted to be able to host the nuclear management school which is the first time it has been held in the western hemisphere "" said dr kenneth l peddicord director of npi ""this is an excellent collaboration with the international atomic energy agency in vienna austria ""this activity is having a significant impact especially for newcomer countries that are considering the use of nuclear energy for the first time this school is important in highlighting the strategies to use nuclear power in a safe and effective way we are pleased to be able to share our experiences here in the us and in texas"" the purpose of the nems is to provide a unique international educational experience aimed at building future leadership to manage and support nuclear energy programs and projects in the nuclear energy field it targets professionals with managerial potential who show promise as future leaders in the nuclear industry academia government agencies and public sector entities in the country participants will be able to share and transfer knowledge from internationally recognized experts in a wide range of activities critical to a sustainable nuclear energy program the nems consists of a series of keynote presentations and discussions on topics relevant to managing nuclear energy programs case studies practical sessions group projects and visits to nuclear facilities subject matter that will be covered includes: world energy balance and geopolitics energy planning energy economics and nuclear power economics and finance nuclear industry from planning to decommissioning nuclear safety and security nuclear law international conventions and relevant mechanisms nuclear nonproliferation regime safeguards and related international arrangements human resources development and knowledge management leadership and management in the nuclear industry networking and stakeholders outreach to communities schools and students participants will also have the opportunity to travel to atlanta to meet with representatives of the institute for nuclear power operations (inpo) and the world association of nuclear operators (wano) they will also visit the nuclear power plant construction site of plant vogtle units 3 and 4 in waynesboro georgia"
"dr sam mannan director of the tees mary k oconnor process safety center and the mike oconnor chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has accepted an appointment as distinguished honorary professor at the rajiv gandhi institute of petroleum technology in india ""i am very honored for the appointment by the president and board of governors "" mannan said ""it is truly an honor to receive this sort of recognition by such a prestigious institute"" mannans research interests include abnormal situation management aerosol research inherently safer design quantitative risk assessment reactive chemicals modeling of silane releases liquid-to-natural-gas safety and design and flammability research as director of the mary kay o connor process safety center part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station mannan has served as a consultant to numerous entities in the private sector he also has testified before the us congress on multiple occasions lending his expertise on matters of national security as it relates to chemical safety and infrastructure the rajiv gandhi institute of petroleum was founded as part of the 2007 technology act its objective is to provide world class education training and research to roll out efficient human resources to meet the growing requirements of the petroleum and energy sector"
"ultrasound technology could soon experience a significant upgrade that would enable it to produce high-quality high-resolution images thanks to the development of a new key material by a team of researchers that includes biomedical engineering researcher vladislav yakovlev the material which converts ultrasound waves into optical signals that can be used to produce an image is the result of a collaborative effort by yakovlev and researchers from kings college london the queens university of belfast and the university of massachusetts lowell their findings appear in the current issue of advanced materials yakovlev is also a professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university the engineered material known as a ""metamaterial "" offers significant advantages over conventional ultrasound technology which generates images by converting ultrasound waves into electrical signals yakovlev explains although that technology has advanced throughout the years -- think of the improvement in sonogram images -- it is still largely constrained by bandwidth and sensitivity limitations he says these limitations he adds have been the chief obstacle when it comes to producing high-quality images that can serve as powerful diagnostic tools the metamaterial developed by yakovlev and his colleagues is not subject to those limitations primarily because it converts ultrasound waves into optical signals rather than electrical ones the optical processing of the signal does not limit the bandwidth or sensitivity of the transducer (converter) -- and thats important for producing highly detailed images yakovlev says ""a high bandwidth allows you to sample the change of distance of the acoustic waves with a high precision "" yakovlev notes ""this translates into an image that shows greater detail greater sensitivity enables you to see deeper in tissue suggesting we have the potential to generate images that might have previously not been possible with conventional ultrasound technology"" in other words this new material may enable ultrasound devices to see what they havent yet been able to see that advancement could significantly bolster a technology that is employed in a variety of biomedical applications in addition to being used for visualizing fetuses during routine and emergency care ultrasound is used for diagnostic purposes in incidents of trauma and even as a means of breaking up tissue and accelerating the effects of drugs therapies while yakovlevs research is not yet ready for integration into ultrasound technology it has successfully demonstrated how conventional technology can be substantially improved by using the newly engineering material created by his team he notes the material he notes consists of golden nanorods embedded in a polymer known as polypyrolle an optical signal is sent into this material where it interacts with and is altered by incoming ultrasound waves before passing through the material a detection device would then read the altered optical signal analyzing the changes in its optical properties to process a higher resolution image yakovlev explains ""we developed a material that would enable optical signal processing of ultrasound "" yakovlev says ""nothing like this material exists in nature so we engineered a material that would provide the properties we needed it has greater sensitivity and broader bandwidth we can go from 0-150 mhz without sacrificing the sensitivity current technology typically experiences a substantial decline in sensitivity around 50 mhz ""this metamaterial can efficiently convert an acoustic wave into an optical signal without limiting the bandwidth of the transducer and its potential biomedical applications represent the first practical implementation of this metamaterial"" yakovlevs collaborators are wayne dickson and anatoly zayats of kings college london; john mcphillips antony murphy and robert pollard of the queens university of belfast; and viktor podolskiy of the university of massachusetts lowell"
dr m katherine banks director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has announced two new administrative appointments dr costas n georghiades has been appointed assistant agency director in this position he will oversee strategic initiatives facilitate large-scale proposals submitted to funding agencies and pursue funding opportunities for tees and its centers dr teri reed-rhoads has been appointed assistant agency director for workforce development and will oversee the workforce-development efforts of tees and its divisions and centers georghiades associate dean for research and professor and holder of the delbert a whitaker chair in electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m he joined the dwight look college of engineering faculty in 1985 as an assistant professor in the department his general research interests are in the application of information communication and estimation theories to the study of communications systems previously he led the departments telecommunications and signal processing group and was co-director of the vlsi-telecommunications research center a registered professional engineer in texas georghiades is a fellow of ieee he holds a bachelors degree from the american university of beirut and masters and doctoral degrees from washington university in st louis over the years georghiades served in editorial positions with the ieee transactions on communications the ieee transactions on information theory the ieee journal on selected areas in communications and the ieee communications letters for which he served first as an associate editor and then as editor-in-chief he has been involved in organizing a number of conferences including recently as general co-chair for the 2010 ieee international symposium on information theory and has served as chair of the ieee communication societys communication theory technical committee and in various committees of the ieee communications and information theory societies he currently serves as a member of the ieee hamming medal committee the ieee communication societys awards committee and as chair of the ieee wireless communication letters steering committee reed-rhoads also is assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs for engineering assistant dean of academic affairs for the dwight look college of engineering and associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engi­neering at texas a&m she received her bs in petroleum engineering from the university of oklahoma and spent seven years in the petroleum industry during which time she earned her mba she subsequently received her phd in industrial engineering from arizona state university reed-rhoads teaching interests include statistics interdisciplinary and introductory engineering diversity and leadership her research interests include statistics education concept inventory development assessment and evaluation of learning and programs recruitment and retention diversity and equity she has received funding from the national science foundation the us department of education various private foundations and industry she is a member and fellow of asee and a member of the institute of electronics and electrical engineers the institute of industrial engineers and the american society for quality she serves as an abet engineering accreditation council evaluator for asee and is the co-chair of the undergraduate experience council reed-rhoads served as a reviewer of the us national academy of engineerings (nae) 2008 report changing the conversation: messages for improving public understanding of engineering and 2010 report standards for k-12 engineering education she was an invited participant in naes committee on curriculum reform and the nae workshop curriculum: understanding the design space and exploiting opportunities she joined the texas a&m university from purdue university where she received the one brick higher award one of purdues highest honors given by the university president
the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) and the texas a&m energy institute (ei) will be jointly operated by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university nctm focuses on research and development of therapeutic agents and vaccines specifically targeted to respond more quickly to outbreaks such as swine flu and bird flu nctm aims to provide therapeutics manufacturing education training and outreach programs to support the development of an educated and skilled pharmaceutical workforce proficient in process development production systems standard operating procedures and regulatory guidelines the centers educational partners provide a broad spectrum of educational opportunities including degrees and certificates in topics ranging from quality assurance and control good manufacturing practices regulatory affairs and facilities management center partners also offer pharmaceutical manufacturing laboratory instrumentation industrial safety and other contemporary areas of study and training applicable to therapeutics manufacturing nctm also offers an internship program with industry partners allowing students to link theory with practice and gain important engineering skills that cannot be taught in the classroom internships provide students with experience in actual biotech and pharmaceutical companies before entering the job market the texas a&m energy institute was established to engage in basic applied and applications research and technology development demonstration and deployment across the entire spectrum of energy-specific resource domains that will be required to guarantee that our nations energy future is secure ei will conduct research both within specific energy resource domains and at the connected boundaries of multiple energy resource domains to exploit the enormous benefits inherent in an integrated approach to the production and utilization of our countrys vast energy resources ei brings together all energy-related activities in the a&m system under a single umbrella organization the institute fosters energy education and training and is the portal for those outside of the university to find and engage those inside the university to help solve energy-related problems the vision of the energy institute is to be the best in the world working with industry to define and solve energy problems tees is and engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system
the nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) at texas a&m university recently conducted the 2013 nuclear facilities experience (nfe) in japan the event was co-coordinated with the integrated support center for nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security (iscn) of the japan atomic energy authority the nsspi is a center housed within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) participants in the nfe included students and professors from texas a&m the tomsk polytechnic university of russia and the hanoi university of science of the vietnamese national university nsspi director and william charlton director of nsspi and an associate professor in texas a&ms department of nuclear engineering and nsspi associate research engineer claudio gariazzo led the group on tours of facilities and historically significant sites throughout japan the nfe served as a unique opportunity for university students to visit nuclear fuel cycle facilities in japan and discuss applied safeguards and security measures with actual practitioners and facility operators the first days activities included visiting the historically significant hiroshima peace park and the peace memorial museum as well as hearing 84-year-old keijiro matsushimas account of the aug 6th 1945 bombing of hiroshima it was a truly inspiring moment for all in attendance and properly conveyed the importance and gravity of the nuclear nonproliferation problem the world faces today the technical visits began at the monju fast breeder reactor (fbr) r&d center and the fugen decommissioning center on the tsuruga peninsula where nfe participants met with facility operators and material control and accounting practitioners of both facilities and toured various areas open only for the nfe the monju visit was to learn the unique implementation of the safeguards system for sodium-cooled fbr and convey the safety challenges of a sodium-based coolant system the visit to fugen was focused on the plutonium nondestructive assay system being installed and to understand the requirements of applied safeguards and safety measures for decommissioning an advanced thermal reactor (atr) facility participants also visited the mihama nuclear power plant (npp) and met with the applied safeguards specialists tours included visits to the fresh and spent fuel ponds as well as the containment vessel the group visited the host organization iscn and other facilities at the site namely the plutonium fuel production facility (pfpf) and the tokai reprocessing plant (trp) while at the iscn participants witnessed current research and development activities in physical security and met with the director of the center masao senzaki (board member inmm-japan) charlton presented senzaki with a plaque thanking the iscn for its substantial contributions to the nfe and nuclear safeguards/security education international atomic energy agency (iaea) inspector georges duhamel presented work completed by the iaea on implementing safeguards to the fukushima daiichi npp accident and how the agency plans to meet the needs of long-term accounting of melted spent reactor fuel the pfpf and trp visits aimed to educate the nfe participants on the safeguards implementation on a mox (mixed-oxide) fuel production facility and a reprocessing facility students and professors at the tokyo institute of technology hosted the nfe participants for a cultural excursion and a lunch during this activity students representing the united states russia vietnam japan china and france interacted and held lively discussions from their own perspectives on nuclear energy nonproliferation global politics sports and cuisine on the final day of the event the nfe participants visited the rokkasho uranium enrichment plant the vitrification storage facility and the reprocessing plant here students were able to step through the entire reprocessing process as well as discuss the applied nuclear security and safeguards measures with the facility practitioners
safety officers in texas a&m engineering have received the spring 2013 environmental health and safetys safe laboratory award texas a&ms environmental health and safety recognized the efforts of engineering safety officers in contributing to the safe environment in engineering laboratories the engineering safety officers were honored with a certificate and a luncheon today (april 12) the engineering safety council works to identify hazards reduce risk and implement appropriate controls to facilitate a safe healthful sustainable and secure work environment in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and in labs and facilities of the texas a&m engineering experiment station council members are: david breeding office of the vice chancellor for engineering and interdisciplinary engineering rodney inmon aerospace engineering julie king and barry jackson biomedical engineering doug white joel james and louis muniz chemical engineering dave cote and jeremy stewart computer science and engineering larry john civil engineering jessie hernandez and robert atkins electrical and computer engineering frank cervantez and wayne hung engineering technology and industrial distribution mark hopkus and dennis allen industrial and systems engineering daniel theiss and mitch wittneben mechanical engineering chris crouch and troy stepan nuclear engineering john maldonado petroleum engineering josh kading tees energy systems laboratory chris mack and rich clough tees food protein research and development center robert atkins institute of solid state electronics jeff hustetler and cecil rhodes flight mechanics laboratory william rogers tees mary kay oconnor process safety center jan gerson materials science and engineering jim remlinger and debra arrington tees nuclear science center chris felderhoff tees offshore technology research center chip hill space engineering center michael schuller spacecraft technology center peter keating and matt potter high bay structural and materials testing laboratory linda huff tees texas center for applied technology ray matthews tees turbomachinery laboratory ed white and john kochan oran w nicks low-speed wind tunnel bill charlton and dave boyle tees nuclear security science and policy institute
"the smart grid center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) will host a workshop ""smart grid research: opportunities and challenges "" april 17 at the annenberg presidential conference center at texas a&m university featured speakers include george w arnold phd director of the standards coordination office of the national institute of standards and technology who will present a national perspective on smart grid research john d mcdonald pe director of technical strategy and policy development at ge energy-digital energy will present an industrial perspective and pat wood iii 84 principal at wood3 resources and chairman of the board of dynegy will present a state perspective the workshop will highlight existing research and development initiatives of more than 50 texas a&m faculty members the workshops purpose is to bring together faculty staff students and industry to increase awareness facilitate scientific exchange leading to collaborative proposal teams and improve teaching research and development activities across disciplines in electronic transmission alternative generation sources grid monitoring policy economics and related fields the tees smart grid center was brought together to form a competitive interdisciplinary environment to advance efficient use of electric energy and modernization of the electricity grid; to promote collaboration and creation of multidisciplinary research teams to investigate smart grid problems and deliver more innovative and effective smart grid solutions the centers vision is a seamless integration of power system infrastructure with the transportation and built environment to create 21st century energy ecosystems capable of solving pressing energy issues while meeting the needs of future generations for more information about the workshop or the smart grid center visit http://smartgridcentertamuedu/sgc/"
"the tees space engineering research center (serc) and students from the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have partnered with citizens in space a project of the united states rocket academy to build a payload integrator to be flown on the xcor lynx space plane the lynx cub payload carrier as it is known will enable xcor to efficiently fly scientific payloads for suborbital experimentation the carriers addition to the lynx payload will help reduce the cost of suborbital experimentation and increase experimenters accessibility to test in zero g (gravity) serc is no stranger to zero g testing having logged thousands of weightless parabolas on nasas reduced-gravity aircraft in contrast to the 30 second intervals of weightlessness offered through nasa the xcor lynx space plane will provide more than minutes of zero g on its suborbital flight plan these added minutes make a world of difference in the small materials-processing fluid-physics life-sciences and engineering experiments that will inhabit the lynx cub payload carrier the capability offered by the lynx cub payload carrier will be of direct benefit to university teaching and research k-12 education industry government and interested citizens all of whom are potential fabricators of these small-scale zero g experiments tasked with creating the lynx cub payload carrier are four industrial and systems engineering undergraduates under the supervision of assistant professor justin yates the students responsibilities include everything from conceptualization to delivery with xcor test flights on the lynx (in development) scheduled for late summer 2013 the team has a wealth of experience to support them in charles hill serc director; dr frank little serc principal investigator; edward wright chairman of the united states rocket academy; and the xcor lynx contact khaki rodway ""designing the lynx cub carrier presents a challenging and unique problem we are extremely excited about the opportunity to apply our studies to a real world application "" said team member cress netherland a senior industrial and systems engineering major development of the carrier will require the students to integrate fundamental concepts in project management engineering economic analysis optimization and experimental design from their curriculum in addition to building/expanding essential knowledge and skills in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering in addition to expanding their academic experiences the students are learning valuable lessons in team building product integration time management and communication regular conference calls are held with all involved stakeholders to assess project progress and reaffirm project assumptions yates said ""this is a great experience for our students because they are learning how to operate in a dynamic and uncertain environment the initial milestone will be the delivery of a lynx cub payload carrier mockup to the xcor exhibit at the next generation suborbital researcher conference in colorado this june a paper on the project will also be presented"" serc is part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
"the tees turbomachinery laboratory wrapped up another successful event last month in doha qatar the second middle east turbomachinery symposium (mets2) took place march 17-20 at the qatar national convention center and was held under the patronage of his excellency dr mohammed bin saleh al-sada minister of energy and industry for qatar the symposium combined a world-class technical conference with an international exhibit hall attracting attendees from all over the world texas a&m university at qatar dean and ceo dr mark weichold attended the event along with representatives from the qatar ministry of energy and industry executives from leading middle eastern petrochemical companies and hundreds of international engineers speaking at the opening ceremony turbo lab director dr dara childs told of the events educational value to the industry ""mets is the premier turbomachinery event in the middle east it offers an exciting occasion for industry leaders to share ideas exchange technical knowledge and to discuss ongoing industry-related issues "" childs said delegates attended and engaged in a combination of 12 lectures eight tutorials eight discussion groups and 21 sessions of case studies led by 133 authors from around the world topics included: compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gear boxes dry gas seals and annular seals in the exhibition hall there were more than 65 leading companies from the middle east north america asia and europe with booths featuring full-sized equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends the turbomachinery laboratory is a part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas a&m university system in addition to planning mets the turbo lab works year round to organize the program and ensure the overall success of the annual international pump users & turbomachinery symposia mets was closely patterned after the turbomachinery symposia that have been developed and presented in houston texas for more than 40 years (pictured right: norihito fujimura from the mitsubishi heavy industries compressor corp leads a technical session)"
"the tees space engineering research center (serc) delivered an innovative star field simulator to technical personnel at nasas marshall space flight center (msfc) in huntsville ala in march the simulator provides a realistic simulation of what a nasa space-based telescope would see when viewing the night sky under a variety of conditions for use by nasa to test star trackers and other space cameras the simulator was a collaboration between serc and texas a&m universitys department of aerospace engineering with dr tom pollock leading the design and development of the system and sercs dr christian bruccoleri leading the software development the star field simulator delivered to nasa is an adaptation of a capability developed at sercs sensor test laboratory in which flat panel displays are used to present the simulated space scenes to the camera this makes use of a sophisticated model developed by texas a&m engineering researchers called virtual sky imager in which all camera orbit and noise parameters are accurately modeled; and sensor test lab software that corrects for all errors associated with presentation and testing the nasa configuration was especially challenging in that a star catalog of millions of stars was required; a collimating lens baffles and reflecting mirror were needed to simulate stars at ""infinity"" for the actual nasa telescope that was part of the setup; and a state-of-the-art medical monitor was needed to achieve the high resolution required the simulator was set up and tested at the sensor test lab before delivery undergraduate students peter mack grubb (computer engineering) taylor dowlen (applied mathematical sciences) and john mayo (mechanical engineering) all had key roles in the star field simulator development pollock and serc director chip hill drove the equipment to huntsville and set it up in nasas facility this high bay facility has historical significance as the original redstone rocket processing facility during the period of time it was overseen by dr werner von brauns rocket team the telescope collimating lens and baffles were installed on an optics table the monitor was mounted to a plate on the opposite side of the building and the computer installed at a nearby station set up and initial testing was accomplished in a day the serc/tamu team will complete other software refinements as the nasa personnel check out their new simulator and provide those as required although several industry cameras have been tested in sercs lab this is the first instance of exporting this capability to another user serc is a research center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station a member of the texas a&m university system"
texas a&m university the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the food protein research & development center are hosting the 23rd annual practical membrane/filtration & separations technologies short course april 14-18 the course fundamentals new developments applications and daily pilot plat demonstrations will be held at rudder tower on the texas a&m campus attendees will review basic principles of membrane filtration and separations processing learn about new product formulators and will be given a chance to view demonstrations in the pilot plant facilities at the food protein research & development center for more information contact yongjae lee (yongjaelee@teestamusedu 979-845-2758) or cyndi casanova (clcasanova@neotamuedu 979-847-8997)
"the industrial distribution program at texas a&m university conducted a two-day short course ""distributor profitability and growth strategies "" in shanghai china may 27-28 the program was offered by the thomas and joan read center for distribution research and education a center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the course was held at east china university of science & technology in shanghai the course was taught by dr f barry lawrence director of the read center leonard and valerie bruce endowed chair professor in industrial distribution at texas a&m along with senior research staff members pradip krishnadevarajan and senthil gunasekaran the course covered topics in optimizing distributor profitability sales and marketing optimization and optimizing distributor growth and market share the course was attended by sales operations and management professionals from various distribution companies for more than 30 years the read center has been the leader in wholesale and industrial distribution research and education the read center is the only distribution focused research center on any university campus in the us the center has been offering distributor sales operations and finance courses since the early 1980s each year the center conducts more than 25 professional development programs at both on-campus and off-campus locations all over the us the center has been conducting both open-enrollment and custom programs internationally since the 2000s in mexico el salvador guatemala uk and the united arab emirates currently the center offers three open-enrollment programs in el salvador per year and plans to offer two open-enrollment courses in qatar in september 2013 the read centers professional development programs are designed to increase distributors competitive advantage and profitability they focus on relevant and actionable education through proven methods and tools the read centers educational programs are based on research consortia and applied industry projects in various lines of trade the knowledge generated by these industry-funded consortia projects and professional development programs enhances the undergraduate and graduate education by bringing real-world distribution problems case studies and examples to the curriculum for more information please visit http://readcentertamuedu"
the texas a&m energy institute has again received funding from conocophillips to provide graduate fellowships in recognition of outstanding research in energy the broad objectives of the fellowships are to reward excellence in energy research promote future research that is important to our energy future and encourage students to pursue careers in energy the fellowships are open to any graduate student engaged in energy research in any part of texas a&m university and enrolled at the college station galveston or qatar campuses the texas a&m energy institute will award up to eight $5 000 fellowships for a one-year term beginning sept 1 the deadline for application submission is june 7 for more information contact robyn pearson at rlpearson@tamuedu the texas a&m energy institute was established to engage in basic applied and applications research and technology development demonstration and deployment across the entire spectrum of energy-specific resource domains that will be required to guarantee that our nations energy future is secure ei will conduct research both within specific energy resource domains and at the connected boundaries of multiple energy resource domains to exploit the enormous benefits inherent in an integrated approach to the production and utilization of our countrys vast energy resources ei brings together all energy-related activities in the a&m system under a single umbrella organization the institute fosters energy education and training and is the portal for those outside of the university to find and engage those inside the university to help solve energy-related problems the vision of the energy institute is to be the best in the world working with industry to define and solve energy problems the texas a&m energy institute is jointly operated by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university
the turbomachinery laboratory part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station hosted the 33rd annual turbomachinery research consortium (trc) meeting this week at pebble creek country club in college station texas trc is an organization of major turbomachinery developers and users who have joined with the turbo lab to find answers to important questions about turbomachinery performance and reliability the consortium was organized in 1981 to provide a framework for turbomachinery developers and users to combine to support research into important research questions that affect their businesses acting together its members support research into problems of internal flow (fluid mechanics heat transfer gas dynamics) and structural reliability (materials structures vibrations) -- that affect turbomachinery performance and efficiency there are currently more than 30 member companies that make up trc during the annual meeting researchers staff and students from the turbo lab and the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university present research reports and proposals based on these presentations trc members choose the direction of trc-funded research they get advance access to the results of that research and to valuable turbomachinery-testing software developed for trc members through this support trc enhances undergraduate and graduate education in turbomachinery-related engineering at texas a&m for more information on trc or other turbomachinery laboratory events visit turbolabtamuedu
dr dale a cope has been named director of industry assistance announced dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) in this position cope will coordinate assistance activities for tees by identifying industry needs developing proposals and managing the delivery of assistance to individual companies additionally he will lead the technical assistance program (tap) a program in which tees forms partnerships that encourage innovation and economic growth in texas cope joined tees after spending six years as program manager in the aerospace structures section at the southwest research institute in that role he managed large multidisciplinary projects in support of the us air force aircraft structural integrity program cope was also a research laboratory director for the national institute for aviation research and an aircraft structures engineer for the boeing company cope earned a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from texas a&m in 1982 a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the air force institute of technology in 1988 and a phd in aerospace engineering from wichita state university in 2002 he is a retired air force officer having served on active duty as an aeronautical engineer on the kc-135 and as an assistant professor in the aeronautics department at the us air force academy he also served in the kansas air national guard as an aircraft maintenance officer on the b-1b and kc-135r about the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas
"one obstacle to growth for small technology-based businesses is not having access to affordable assistance to solve technical problems the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is expanding its technical assistance program (tap) to link texas small businesses to the broad spectrum of engineering and technology research capital within the texas a&m university system and its partner network statewide ""the texas a&m university system has an enormous amount of expertise within its 11 universities and seven state agencies and as the land grant institute for the state our mission is to serve "" said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp ""for a century tees has helped grow the engineering and technology portfolio in texas this program will make it easier than ever for small business to access solutions with the texas a&m system and ultimately encourage innovation and economic growth in texas"" the technical assistance program (tap) provides low-cost technical assistance for small companies of 500 employees or less based in texas to find solutions to increase efficiency of their operations develop new market strategies for their technologies evaluate and improve manufacturing processes and facilitate partnerships ""tees works with some of the brightest research engineers and has some of the finest engineering laboratories tap can match specific technical problems with expert researchers and provide cost effective solutions for a company "" said dale cope tees director of industry assistance ""the texas a&m engineering enterprise ranks among the best and most comprehensive engineering programs in the nation consisting of three state engineering agencies that provide engineering research and development education and outreach"" specific areas of assistance include: software development; modeling; simulation; energy efficiency and assessment; environmental impacts and analysis; air quality and emissions; heating ventilation and air conditioning; technology transfer; test and validation and process analysis and improvement for more information regarding low cost technical assistance contact cope at (979) 458-7477 about the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas about the texas a&m university system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $33 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities nine state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 120 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $780 million and help drive the states economy"
"texas a&m technology commercialization recently presented patent awards to individuals and teams who are currently employed by the a&m system and whose inventions were granted patent protection from the united states patent & trademark office in 2012 ""our researchers are working diligently behind the scenes developing innovations that will help us in our everyday lives "" said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp ""by commercializing these advancements we are able to take their research to the marketplace where it can help the most people"" texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers honored were: carl l benner electrical and computer engineering dr saurabh biswas office of technology commercialization dr sergio capareda biological and agricultural engineering dr xing cheng electrical and computer engineering dr gerard l cote biomedical engineering dr john c criscione biomedical engineering dr kenneth r hall chemical engineering dr mark t holtzapple chemical engineering shishan hu mechanical engineering dr anxiao jiang computer science and engineering dr andrew r mcfarland mechanical engineering karthick muthu-manivannan electrical and computer engineering dr michael v pishko biomedical engineering dr b don russell electrical and computer engineering dr edgar sanchez-sinencio electrical and computer engineering dr hung-jue sue mechanical engineering sebastian t vasquez chemical engineering about the a&m system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $33 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 120 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $780 million and help drive the states economy"
storm resistant systems (sr systems llc) of linden ala headed by ceo scott drummond and general manager steve zimmerman blew into college station in april with a special request the company manufactures components designed to help structures withstand hurricanes and tornadoes and wanted to test its products in an f5 tornado but who could create a tornado on demand enter the texas a&m engineering extension services (teex) product development center (pdc) and its collaborators across the texas a&m university system after an initial meeting in january sr systems zimmerman explained to pdc coordinator caleb holt that the company needed empirical unbiased testing to validate its product in other words sr systems needed a tornado as part of an agency known for simulating huge fires explosions and destroyed cities for training purposes the request did not seem unusual before long -- through connections with dr dean schneider in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) texas center for applied technology (tcat) and dr peter keating in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university -- plans for a man-made tornado were in the works the site was the tees high bay structural and materials testing laboratory on campus where a tri-directional pressure test the equivalent of an f5 tornado was generated its true dorothy youre not in kansas anymore youre in college station
"a recent survey of texas citizens revealed that contrary to some earlier predictions texans are very interested in and concerned about the quality and quantity of water in the lone star state respondents report being concerned about the increasing number and severity of droughts in texas and about the availability of enough water to serve all the states water needs the survey was led by dr arnold vedlitz (pictured) director of the institute for science technology and public policy (istpp) a joint center of the bush school of government and public service at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the project and survey instrument were designed by him and other researchers at istpp the research effort was supported by the texas sea grant program the texas a&m vice president for research and istpp in the bush school the survey was conducted by the respected online polling company gfk in february and march of this year so the results are scientifically sound and up to date ""this survey revealed that texans are very worried about our states diminishing water resources and that they are willing to see conservation methods put in place "" vedlitz said ""they are also concerned about how our water resources are managed and used dr pamela plotkin director of the texas sea grant program and a co-sponsor of the survey said ""one of the things i find most interesting and important in this survey is how strongly texas citizens feel about keeping water resources available for our natural environmental assets like our bays and estuaries and other environmental life-giving assets so important to our states health natural beauty and economy "" overall water issues ranked fifth among a list of 10 major issues facing the country after government spending health care the economy and national security some 55 percent said they had experienced drought in their region in the past year and of those who had experienced drought more than 95 percent said those droughts are as frequent or more frequent and as severe or more severe than ever and while most believe that short-term changes in annual rainfall are a major cause of water shortages they also cited overuse and inadequate management of water resources increased demand and climate change as additional important factors affecting drought respondents also believe that over the next five years diminishing water resources will result in more conflicts over water use higher water costs greater fire danger increased food prices a loss of recreational opportunities and damage to plant and animal species when asked about how they might personally act to alleviate water shortages a majority stated they were already reducing their water usage by watering lawns less washing their cars less frequently or using appliances more efficiently texans seem ready to accept mandatory lawn watering restrictions if that is necessary to preserve important water resources for other key agricultural economic and quality of life issues several possible policy options to improve water availability for now and the future received strong support including water-related infrastructure improvements such as those now being considered by the texas legislature (64 percent); education and public relations campaigns to encourage greater voluntary conservation (67 percent ); tax incentives and tax cuts to encourage water conservation (67 percent ); and protecting some water resources for environmental needs (71 percent ) vedlitz said ""policy makers need to be aware of the extent of the publics concern about water issues and their willingness to support a variety of measures to help guarantee the security of the texas water supply now and in the future"""
"a select group of high school students from the bryan/college station and austin areas will this summer have the opportunity to train with scientists from the texas a&m university system while learning about careers in the biosciences and pharmaceutical industries as part of a series of academies sponsored by the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) nctm is a center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the a&m system the summer academies known as bioforce are scheduled for june 9-13 and july 15-18 and are intended to spark students interest in pursuing careers in engineering and therapeutics manufacturing as part of the camps students participate in a range of activities including making bacterial cells glow by introducing genes from a bioluminescent jellyfish and touring pharmaceutical companies in the area and in houston ""by role-playing as a lab technician gowning up and doing hands-on projects as well as actually seeing this workforce in action students get early exposure to careers in pharmaceutical research engineering and manufacturing - an exciting and growing field "" says jenny ligon nctm assistant director the bioforce residential academy will host 25 students from austin-area high schools and the bioforce day academy will host 25 students from bryan-college station high schools all who have just completed the ninth grade scholarship funding from the texas workforce commissions summer merit program allows these academies to be free of charge to the students nctm is a first-of-its-kind multidisciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry for more information please visit bioforce website or contact jenny ligon nctm assistant director at (979) 847-5852 or via email at jennyligon@tamuedu"
"the texas a&m engineering and the space engineering research center (serc) received mention in two separate presentations at the recent next-generation suborbital researchers conference (nsrc) june 3-5 in broomfield colo ed wright of citizens in space discussed the experiment payload carrier that the serc is developing with a student team from the texas a&m university department of industrial and systems engineering for the xcor lynx space plane the teams faculty mentor is dr justin yates this presentation ""the lynx cub payload carrier for small suborbital experiments ""discussed the development and operational use of the carrier on the lynx and some of the citizen payloads being considered these payloads built to multiples of the cubesat size standard will allow researchers to perform experiments for a few minutes in near-zero-gravity (weightless) conditions in addition to recognition through this presentation the student team built a mid-fidelity mockup of the carrier that was displayed at the xcor display station serc was also part of the team that developed the multi-phase flow experiment for suborbital testing (mfest) as presented by mike ellis of advanced cooling technologies mfest is a nasa johnson space center project and ellis reported on the recent series of parabolic test flights conducted on zero g corps aircraft serc principal investigator dr cable kurwitz and flight test engineer dr frank little helped to ensure the return of sufficient test data to verify mfests readiness for a follow-on flight test series on one of the commercial suborbital launch providers as part of nasas flight opportunities program because of the size of the mfest payload the suborbital flight provider is expected to be virgin galactics spaceship two spaceship two recently conducted its first powered flight at mojave calif and is hoping to begin commercial flights as soon as a year from now the next-generation suborbital researchers conference brings together launch providers payload developers and new space technology enthusiasts to update attendees on the status of the commercial space industry and to share ideas and opportunities commercial space is loosely defined as pertaining to a business model of providing space transportation for humans or cargo and the associated support industries and generally pursued without government program funding this is the second year that serc director chip hill has attended this conference to develop relationships and ideas for future commercial space projects tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system"
the 35th annual industrial energy technology conference (ietc) one of teess longest-running technical conferences was held may 22-23 in new orleans the conference was hosted by the tees energy systems laboratory and co-sponsored by the louisiana department of natural resources ietc which attracted more than 150 participants from three countries and 26 states provided answers to energy and related environmental concerns affecting industrial facilities and processes more than 50 authors presented papers on topics such as waste heat recovery; establishing and sustaining effective energy management programs; award-winning energy conservation projects from the american chemistry council and from the us department of energy better plants initiative; and conducting successful energy assessments and analyzing the results in addition there were papers presented by mechanical engineering students from texas a&m university highlighting their capstone design class projects in the realm of energy conservation the keynote speaker for a luncheon was albert thumann executive director at the association of energy engineers thumann gave a rousing talk about the past present and future of energy management he showed a recorded meeting he had with president jimmy carter recalling the efforts to form the us department of energy in the late 1970s a ceremony was held during which the us department of energy (doe) recognized their better plants initiative award winners featuring comments by dr david danielson assistant secretary of the doe the program also included the lunchtime ietc energy awards presentations representatives from legrand north america tpc group and the ibm bromont canada complex provided reviews of each companys award-winning efforts to save energy and improve processes the conference also hosted two specialized workshops as well the energy managers workshop may 21 and the boiler mact workshop may 24 these in-depth courses help prepare industrial energy managers with enhanced understanding on current topics in the field ietc will return to new orleans may 21-22 2014 visit ietctamuedu for more information for more information regarding the conference or to submit an abstract for next years ietc please contact jim eggebrecht ietc executive director at 9798451508 or jim@esltamuedu
"while significant strides have been made in health care there are still more than one billion individuals who lack access to health care systems additionally many of those receiving medical care could benefit from improved and more adequate treatment through accurate and frequent monitoring of their condition recognizing this the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has established the center for remote healthcare technology (crht) a center aimed at advancing remote health care technologies and remote health care systems so that people everywhere can be linked to health care providers and receive timely effective and personalized care ""with the advancement in both technologies for personalized medicine and wireless communications i believe this new center for remote healthcare technologies will provide a focal point for the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas a&m university system to make huge advances in these areas "" said dr gerard l coté interim director of the center health challenges of today include chronic medical conditions such as diabetes cancer infectious diseases such as hiv and conditions closely associated with poverty such as malnutrition in addition to chronic and infectious diseases there is a critical need for health status monitoring for the elderly athletes astronauts and field-deployed military personnel to aid with these issues the crht aims to serve the state nation and global community in addressing critical needs in health care in particular in emergency and other situations where physicians are not in close proximity thereby making it essential that timely and effective care is provided remotely the newly established center will help fulfill this mission by promoting fundamental research in medical devices and information systems that efficiently and reliably gather process and convey medical and diagnostic data to physicians so they are able to provide care at a distance to do this the center will not only perform fundamental research in both biomedical sensors and wireless systems to reliably and efficiently communicate information but will also develop prototype systems that incorporate the results of the research and will engage the medical device industry state and federal agencies and the medical community in design development testing and deployment of those systems ""the vision of this new center is focused on not only producing the fundamental discoveries that will advance remote health care but also translating those discoveries in partnership with government agencies and industry into practical systems for deployment in a variety of remote settings "" said coté"
research and development initiatives of more than 50 texas a&m university faculty members were highlighted at the inaugural smart grid workshop sponsored by the university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) to help facilitate team-building and cooperation leading to more effective operations of the nations power grids in transmitting electricity the workshop included presentations by key governmental and private-sector leaders in the smart-grid dr george w arnold national coordinator for smart grid interoperability at the national institute of standards and technology john d mcdonald director for technical strategy and policy development at ge digital energy and pat wood iii principal of wood3 resources and chairman of the board for dynegy inc the goal of the workshop was to bring together faculty staff and students to increase awareness facilitate scientific exchange leading to collaborative proposal teams and improve the teaching research and development activities across disciplines in electric transmission alternative generation sources storage grid monitoring cyber-physical security policy economics and other related fields more than 150 people participated in the workshop which included 58 faculty members from texas a&m the plan is to make this workshop an annual event the workshop is a community of scholars event sponsored in part by the office of the provost and the office of the vice president for research and organized by the smart grid center which is part of tees
"under the patronage of his excellency dr mohammed bin saleh al-sada minister of energy and industry qatar petroleum and the texas a&m university at qatar celebrated july 1 the launching of the extension in doha of the mary kay oconnor process safety center which is based in texas in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the mary kay oconnor process safety center-qatar (mkopsc-qatar) will replicate all academic programs and activities of the center at the universitys main campus in college station texas formed in 1995 it was established in memory of mary kay oconnor an operations superintendent who was killed in an explosion oct 23 1989 at a petrochemical complex in pasadena texas the centers mission is to promote safety as a second nature in industry around the world with the objective of preventing future accidents it is set to be an international leader in minimizing losses within the process industry through safer processes management equipment and procedures in line with this the mkopsc-qatar will provide science-based guidance develop and disseminate best practices through consulting and short courses provide benchmarking for process safety management systems and practices and conduct research that would change the paradigm of process safety it will also provide industry with a forum to exchange ideas and to advance process safety technologies in order to keep the industry competitive in his keynote address during the launching event dr ali hamed al-mulla manager of corporate health safety and environment at qatar petroleum said ""with the patronage of he dr al-sada we have an opportunity to influence the centers activities in a direct and continuous manner to promote safety as second nature in the industry in qatar and to educate a new generation of engineers who are committed to safety the inclusion of process safety in the academic curricula is a foundational element which will sow the seeds of process safety concepts in those aspiring to become future engineers providing them with essential underlying principles to enable appreciation and application of process safety from the very beginning of their professional careers"" dr mark h weichold dean and ceo of texas a&m university at qatar said ""texas a&m university at qatar is proud to bring to the region a center known globally for its work in process safety practice and research process safety is essential to critical industries in qatar and the launch of the mary kay oconnor process safety center will provide resources of best practices and expertise enhancing process safety in qatar and ensuring that its key industries operate safely"" dr nazmul karim holder of the michael oconnor chair ii and head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university said ""the opening of the mkopsc at texas a&m university at qatar is a significant milestone in providing training and education in process safety to the scientists and engineers working in qatar and other parts of the gulf teaching future generation of engineers to design plants which are inherently safe is a goal of any engineering curriculum and this new center will help achieve this goal at texas a&m university at qatar it will allow students to think of process safety as a second nature during design and operation of plants texas a&m university at qatar chemical engineering is strategically placed to carry out this very important mission of the university and the industry"" dr sam mannan executive director of the mkopsc-qatar said ""the establishment of the mary kay oconnor process safety center in doha will provide a regional center of excellence in process safety and help institutionalize a sustainable and strong safety culture impacting qatars society and industry"" dr luc véchot (pictured above) managing director of the mkopsc-qatar said ""we are grateful to he dr al sada for the very strong support he has provided to the mkopsc-qatar this event shows the commitment of the country and its industry to achieve high process safety standards the center has started to educate a new generation of engineers with safety as second nature our students are very motivated and enthusiastic about the idea of performing high quality research and collaborating closely with the industry we really look forward to developing a vibrant process safety program through the centers activities"" about qatar petroleum qatar petroleum (qp) is a state-owned public corporation established by emiri decree no 10 in 1974 it is responsible for all phases of the oil and gas industry in the state of qatar the principal activities of qp its subsidiaries and joint ventures are the exploration production local and international sale of crude oil natural gas and gas liquids refined products synthetic fuels petrochemicals fuel additives fertilizers liquefied natural gas (lng) steel and aluminum the operations and activities of qp and its affiliates are conducted at various onshore locations including doha dukhan and the mesaieed and ras laffan industrial cities as well as offshore areas including halul island offshore production stations drilling platforms and the north field thriving on a spirit of enterprise each of our joint ventures is underpinned by transparency innovation and high standards of quality and service at qatar petroleum we are committed to one thing above all: excellence for more information please visit wwwqpcomqa about texas a&m university at qatar texas a&m university recognized as having one of the premier engineering programs in the world has offered undergraduate degrees in chemical electrical mechanical and petroleum engineering at qatar foundations education city campus since 2003 and graduate courses in chemical engineering since fall 2011 almost 300 engineers have graduated from texas a&m at qatar since 2007 in addition to engineering courses texas a&m university at qatar provides classes in science mathematics liberal arts and the humanities all four of the engineering programs offered at texas a&m university at qatar are accredited by abet the curricula offered at texas a&m university at qatar are materially identical to those offered at the main campus in college station texas and courses are taught in english in a co-educational setting the reputation for excellence is the same as is the commitment to equip engineers to lead the next generation of engineering advancement faculty from around the world are attracted to texas a&m at qatar to provide this educational experience and to participate in research activities now valued at over $135 million and that address issues important to the state of qatar visit wwwqatartamuedu"
"the turbomachinery laboratory (turbo lab) a center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) committed $23 million to the texas a&m foundation in july to support faculty and students in the department of mechanical engineering gifts from the turbo lab will create the following: two endowed faculty chairs for experts in lubrication related to turbomachinery; an endowed fellowship for mechanical engineering graduate students; an endowed scholarship for mechanical engineering undergraduate students; and an endowed lecture series in the area of turbomachinery funds donated were raised at past turbomachinery and pump symposia events organized by the turbo lab every fall in houston this event which draws more than 5 000 attendees combines a cutting-edge exhibition hall featuring more than 300 leading companies with a world-class technical program for working engineers throughout the more than 40-year history of the symposia hundreds of companies have supported the event and ultimately supported this financial contribution by sponsoring members of the advisory committees sending engineers to attend the event and exhibiting at the symposia at an appreciation event on aug 21 dr dara childs director of the turbo lab and holder of the leland t jordan 29 chair in mechanical engineering was honored for his leadership and vision which inspired this generous donation during the event childs thanked advisory committee members for their dedication to the symposia and explained the impact of the founders scholarship which is designated for a mechanical engineering student in good standing who experiences unforeseen financial trouble ""there are heartfelt thoughts behind this money and out of all of the things this group [advisory committee] has accomplished youve touched more hearts with the founders scholarship than anything else youve done; this money is going to make a big difference in students lives at texas a&m "" childs said hari shrestha 14 a recent founders scholarship recipient described his familys financial struggle when his father a real estate agent in nepal was affected by the global recession ""all his investments were frozen to the point at which i had to decide whether i should continue my education thats when i got the founders scholarship im really thankful to dr dara childs and the foundation for this scholarship which gives hope to students like me who are from foreign countries or any other students who are trying to get their degree "" shrestha said dr andreas polycarpou head of the department of mechanical engineering acknowledged the 10 endowments that will benefit texas a&m engineering in perpetuity ""these endowments span across all the essential elements of a preeminent engineering department: the students the faculty and visibility to the outside world "" he said the turbo lab conducts basic and applied research into important problems of reliability and performance of turbomachinery for more information on research initiatives or how to participate in the turbomachinery and pump symposia visit turbolabtamuedu for more about the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university visit engineeringtamuedu/mechanical"
"the texas a&m university system board of regents on thursday (aug 8) approved establishment of the center for bioinformatics and genomics systems engineering a joint center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m agrilife research texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp said ""this is a tremendous example of our systems commitment to new discovery and serving the people of texas as well as the nation"" the center will conduct research in bioinformatics computational biology genomics and systems engineering as they relate to human and animal health medicine and agriculture serving communities across the state of texas and beyond ""the center for bioinformatics and genomics systems engineering brings together two significant strengths within the engineering and agriculture programs to use bioinformatics and genomics to directly improve the health of animals and humans"" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""with the combined strengths in agrilife and tees this center is poised to become the global leader in the application of bioinformatics computational biology and systems engineering"" ""joining teams of agriculture and engineering researchers together can only hasten the discoveries that will yield results to improve the lives of people worldwide "" said dr craig nessler texas a&m agrilife research director the center will feature 7 000 square feet of state-of-the-art laboratory space a greenhouse and offices for faculty and graduate students dr edward r dougherty holder of the robert m kennedy 26 chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m will direct the center dougherty is currently the director of the genomic signal processing laboratory (gsp) ""our aim is to expand our existing strength in the mathematical formulation of molecular-level medicine and to translate that theoretical capability into diagnostic and therapeutic applications for human and animal health "" dougherty said"" dr charlie johnson director of genomics and bioinformatics at texas a&m agrilife research will serve as the centers associate director johnson who has more than 20 years of scientific research and leadership in the biotech industry launched the agrilife research genomics and bioinformatics service core in 2010 ""one of the greatest challenges facing mankind is feeding its ever-growing population "" johnson said ""this center will play a critical role in developing the basic underpinnings and analytical tools to empower the development of improved food and fiber around the globe"" the overall mission of the center is to utilize the strengths in contemporary engineering systems theory and life sciences to perform fundamental and translational research that impacts human and animal health and agriculture and life sciences a major component of the center will be training doctoral and post-doctoral students within a two-year period the center should have between 25 and 30 phd students additionally officials said the center will: -establish a rigorous scientific/mathematical basis of biology to improve understanding of biological systems and apply this knowledge to patient diagnostics and treatment and to animal and plant sciences; -formalize long-term relations within the agricultural and animal science communities in the a&m system as well as further develop interactions with medical institutions and industry within and outside of texas and; -secure significant funding for agricultural and life science research in particular as it relates to industry within the state of texas under the joint agreement tees will hire two tees research faculty trained in bioinformatics computational biology or systems biology while agrilife will hire two research faculty who will have research appointments within the college of agriculture and life sciences at texas a&m"
"high school science teachers from around the region will have the opportunity to get a firsthand look at the high-tech practices taking place at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) aug 12-15 as part of a professional development program designed to help them incorporate those concepts into their classrooms nctm is a joint center of texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system the four-day workshop ""protein is ca$h: an introduction to biomanufacturing "" is a hands-on training event for ninth-12th-grade science teachers intended to help them more effectively teach technical concepts related to biochemistry such as protein production and purification as well as general lab practices the workshop is free to all participants and is funded by the national science foundation (nsf) and sponsored by the nctm teachers also will receive a $275 stipend and continuing education units from texas a&m for their participation a team of experts headed by sonia wallman executive director and principal investigator of nbc2 an advanced technological education center of the nsf will lead the workshop along with performing technical laboratory activities participants will have the opportunity to hear from industry experts of the biomanufacturing field and tour local pharmaceutical companies registration for the workshop is limited and applications are due aug 5 individuals interested in participating in the workshop should contact brooke schneider at (979) 458-8506 or via email at brookes@tamuedu"
"dr dara childs has recently completed the book ""turbomachinery rotordynamics with case studies"" childs is director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) turbomachinery laboratory and leland t jordan chair professor in the department of of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university childs research has changed the way engineers look at machinery particularly in regard to the previously underappreciated impact of seals impellers and other fluid-structure interaction forces his research has made major contributions to the improvement of the analysis and design of vibration of rotating machinery today the use of seals to favorably influence turbomachinery is common but prior to dr childs research in the mid-1970s it was simply not done under his leadership the turbomachinery laboratory has gained an international reputation and the laboratorys two major symposia are the meetings of choice for users and manufacturers of commercial turbomachinery childs is an innovative and dedicated teacher the junior-level course he developed on dynamics and vibration is a major departure from past practices and has been remarkably effective in preparing students for careers in engineering childs has been a longtime contributor to the american society of mechanical engineers and has served on multiple advisory committees for nasa and the us department of energy the book is currently in print and will be available on amazoncom in november inspection copies will be available at the turbo lab booth (1407) at the pump and turbomachinery symposia oct 1-3"
"dr xingfu wu associate research professor in the computer science and engineering division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas a&m university department of computer science and engineering has been awarded a three-year grant from the national science foundation (nsf) he is the co-principal investigator with dr faming liang from the texas a&m department of statistics on the collaborative project "" efficient parallel iterative monte carlo methods for statistical analysis of big data"" wu stated in his grant abstract that he and liang ""propose a general principle for developing monte carlo algorithms that are feasible for big data and workable on parallel and distributed architectures; that is using monte carlo averages calculated in parallel from subsamples to approximate the quantities that originally need to calculate from the full dataset this principle avoids the requirement for repeated scans of full data in algorithm iterations while enabling the algorithm to produce statistically sensible solutions to the problem under consideration ""the project will have also significant impacts on education through direct involvement of graduate students in the project and incorporation of results into undergraduate and graduate courses in addition the package distributed iterative statistical computing (disc) that will be developed under this project is designed to provide a platform for phd students and researchers like the investigators with network-connected computers to experiment new ideas of developing efficient iterative monte carlo algorithms in parallel or more exactly grid computing environments"" wu has worked with dr valerie taylors research group prophesy since joining texas a&m engineering in 2003 his research interests are performance evaluation and modeling parallel and cloud computing scientific computing parallel programming and power and energy modeling and analysis in hpc systems he is a senior acm member his monograph ""performance evaluation prediction and visualization of parallel systems "" was published by kluwer academic publishers (isbn 0-7923-8462-8) in 1999 he won the best paper award in the 14th ieee international conference on computational science and engineering in 2011 to date he has been author or co-author on more than 60 papers in his field wu received his phd degree from beijing university of aeronautics & astronautics in 1997"
"john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system announced thursday (sept 19) that the national center for foreign animal and zoonotic disease defense (fazd) received $2 million in federal funds from the department of homeland securitys science and technology directorate to develop a disease-surveillance technology designed to protect us animal agriculture from potentially catastrophic outbreaks of infectious pathogens the project has the potential for a total $9 million investment over a three-year period the fazd center technology - known as the enhanced passive surveillance (eps) system - captures field information from veterinarians about livestock and poultry health in real-time the information is then organized into an easy-to-use computer display for monitoring and analysis combining it with other data coming from veterinary diagnostic laboratories wildlife testing and livestock markets during a disease outbreak the eps system will improve the ability of emergency managers state animal health officials and veterinarians to respond to situations as they develop ""ultimately the eps system will help to defend our food supply and to protect our animal agriculture industries and public health "" sharp said ""this technology also demonstrates how highly targeted university-level research can lead to practical products that benefit our economy and our security"" the newly funded effort will roll out the eps system to all major us animal industries:beef cattle dairy cattle small ruminants (sheep and goats) poultry swine and equine in addition the eps system will collect data about wildlife (eg deer feral swine and wild birds) from veterinarians veterinary and wildlife diagnostic laboratories wildlife biologists and wildlife organizations the system is planned for expansion to 15 us states based on the geographical distribution of each industry to obtain a representative cross-section of participants the system is currently being utilized in texas new mexico colorado and arizona mark a hussey vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences said ""the expansion of the eps system is a major milestone for the fazd center by taking the eps system to 15 us states the fazd center cements its reputation as an innovative and productive organization with a truly national scope"" funding comes from the homeland security advanced research products agency (hsarpa) a pillar within the science and technology directorate of the us department of homeland security (dhs s&t) the project builds upon a nine-month pilot program in new mexico and texas that was funded by hsarpa and resulted in a prototype eps system that was deployed on a small scale the united states department of agriculture animal and plant health inspection service (usda aphis) also funded an expansion of the pilot program to include the state of colorado ""the eps seedling project succeeded because so many parties came to the table to collaborate "" said dhs s&t agriculture defense branch chief michelle colby dvm ""because we were able to see concrete results in such a short time frame we were able to expand the project"" the beauty of the eps system is that it captures information about more than just foreign animal diseases fazd center director tammy beckham said ""this system has the potential to have a major impact on the detection of and response to endemic and emerging diseases helping to meet the daily herd and flock health needs of our livestock and poultry industries "" dr beckham said the eps system is based on agconnect the fazd centers suite of customizable data integration and analysis products designed to enhance real-time data awareness in the event of emerging zoonotic and/or high consequence diseases fazd center investigators worked with the texas center applied technology (tcat a member of the texas a&m engineering experiment station) to jointly develop the agconnect suite this partnership between agriculture and engineering has been a successful collaboration between two agencies under the texas a&m university system through a suite of customized ipad apps the eps system allows veterinarians in the field to capture vital health information about the animals under their care the app then transmits the information to a common operating picture called the eps analyst workstation where agconnect technology integrates and aggregates the data into a real-time interactive highly visual display that may be shared among veterinarians industry personnel and analysts at multiple locations data are analyzed using automated visual geospatial and temporal analysis tools within the workstation that aid in early disease detection or changes in animal health status the eps system also provides valuable information back to veterinarians regarding animal health in their state or geographic region providing access to a unique information source that enhances their situational awareness and aids in animal disease diagnosis and treatment ""we plan to develop new apps on multiple mobile platforms that are customized to serve specific industries as we continue to incorporate tools to support and enhance industry production practices with the cooperation of participating state animal health officials the fazd center plans to deploy eps analyst workstations in participating states and train the designated analysts who will use the system "" beckham said headquartered at texas a&m the fazd center performs research and develops products to defend the united states from high-consequence foreign animal and zoonotic diseases that may harm the animal agriculture economy damage the food supply and threaten public health these diseases may be introduced intentionally or through natural processes examples include avian influenza foot-and-mouth disease african swine fever and rift valley fever the fazd center is a dhs science and technology center of excellence founded in 2004 through the dhs office of university programs within the texas a&m system the center reports to texas a&m agrilife research the states premier research agency in agriculture natural resources and life sciences as a component of agrilife research the center conducts basic and applied research and education to protect the nations livestock and public health sectors ""this is a significant example of the success that can be achieved when two agencies combine the talents of their researchers "" said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering ""through the delivery of precise timely information to key stakeholders they are able to make a better decision faster which is crucial in mitigating the impact of an emerging animal disease outbreak"""
"valerie segovia director of outreach and development with the nuclear power institute (npi) at texas a&m university was a keynote presenter at the 57th international atomic energy agency (iaea) general conference held recently in vienna segovia explained to conference attendees how npi helps young people particularly women pursue technical and scientific careers especially in the nuclear field npis program has markedly increased interest in science and technology among the students it mentors more than 80 percent of the students mentored through npi are interested in a career in science technology engineering or mathematics (stem) while only 15 percent of the total united states high school population expresses an interest in those career paths ""dont underestimate the power of your influence "" segovia said to companies and organizations on hand at the conference ""by building partnerships with community leaders and teachers powerful connections are created with students the students are grateful for your encouragement a clear direction for their future and the acknowledgement that they have the talent for a scientific or technical career"""
"the tees mary kay oconnor process safety centers research in developing new technologies aimed to prevent and mitigate industrial disasters recently received five new grants furthering the centers mission of ""making safety second nature"" the national science foundation (nsf) awarded the center two different grants for its research in the use of nanocomposites as flame-retardants and improved testing methodologies associated with the explosion risks of nanomaterials the center is working in collaboration with assistant professor qinsheng wang from oklahoma state university to develop nanocomposites that when exposed to fire char very quickly creating a physical barrier of new polymers that reduces the original materials flammability understanding the explosion mechanisms of engineered nanomaterials is the focus of the second nsf grant the centers research looks to establish more reliable testing methodologies to quantify the explosion risks of nanomaterials one of two grants the center received from the qatar national research foundation (qnrf) looks at the hazardous and explosive vapor cloud that quickly forms above a liquefied natural gas (lng) spill the research is a collaboration between the center and assistant professor luc vechot from the mary kay oconnor process safety center at texas a&m university at qatar new research data will come from large-scale experiments carried out at the ras laffan emergency and safety college at the ras laffan industrial city qatar developing systematic tools for the entire industrial supply chain for qatar is the objective of the second qnrf grant using a life cycle integrated approach the center will incorporate safety in the design operation and optimization of all aspects of existing processes and applications for industrial cities in qatar the petroleum systems integrity office (psio) from the alaska department of natural resources in response to an ageing petroleum infrastructure and quality assurance concerns created by an increase in the number of new operators has awarded the mkopsc a grant to develop new oversight activities and specific standards to help minimize the risks associated with identified challenges as part of the grant the center will establish an offshore platform surveillance program for alaska state waters that will focus on addressing oversight issues of different state agencies in order to provide coverage in all relevant areas established in 1995 and headquartered in the jack e brown engineering building at texas a&m university the mary kay oconnor process safety center is dedicated to enhancing safety in the chemical process industry the center conducts various educational programs aimed at ""making safety second nature"" to everyone in the industry in addition center researchers work to develop safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies to minimize losses"
"the number of citizens of the state of texas who live in colonias along the texas-mexico border continues to grow on a daily basis currently almost a half-million people call an estimated 2 000 colonias home among the major concerns facing these inhabitants is the lack of water wastewater or electrical service due to unscrupulous developers to help with this problem the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is partnering with t-stem academies and other high schools to develop a local power micro-grid for use in the underserved communities along the texas-mexico border six schools have taken part in the program two from san antonio two from austin and one each from pleasanton and waco the capstone-engineering project which is funded by the us department of energy (doe) provides experiences for the students in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) education the project integrates educational concepts in engineering design and analysis problem solving engineering project management and social responsibility to create a design that can provide electrical service to a group of homes not currently served by the electrical grid ""students are provided a problem statement based on a real world application for their completed device or system "" said michael martin interim director of energy and environmental sustainability for tcat and the lead pi of the program ""the student engineering teams design and build a working prototype and then scale up that solution to meet the goals outlined in the problem statement "" under the program students will be partnered with a trained engineering mentor to provide guidance and advice as they design their system to meet community needs the students will implement a small generation system in the laboratory and carry out experiments to validate their design to help them with their design students are provided with solar panels solar change controllers generators inverters transfer switches a laptop with labview® computer interface devices and batteries ""we had already deployed micro-grids into the colonias but we wanted to challenge these students to see how they would approach the problem "" said martin ""they did all the research learning about renewable energy energy storage and conversion and basic mechanical and electrical engineering principles"" in 2010 tees researchers received a $200 000 grant from the texas state energy conservation office (seco) to deploy micro-grid systems in areas along the border that did not have electrical utilities the current stem project is a follow-on project consisting of two parts -designing and building a micro-grid trailer for training education and demonstration and then engaging high schools throughout texas getting them to design and build a power device (micro-grid) based on the problem statement of delivering power to residents of the colonias the stem program is available to school districts with an on-going stem program and can be either class-based or extracurricular the goal is to connect secondary school students to technical careers in the renewable energy field ""i have been amazed at the young talent we have in our schools "" said martin ""in talking to and working with the students i have observed their creativity first hand we hope that programs like this serve to enlighten the students about engineering and science in practice and propel them into future opportunities in higher education and the workplace"""
"the engineering program at texas a&m university gathered 70 deep water industry leaders on its campus october 18 to discuss the how to best develop a program in subsea engineering a field dealing with the challenges related to oil and gas to the exploration drilling and development of oil and gas fields in underwater locations deeper than 600 feet ""offshore oil and gas reserves are increasingly important sources of energy and subsea engineering is an area of extreme importance to our nation that is not being adequately addressed in higher education "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""because the a&m system is uniquely capable of meeting this challenge we are formalizing our plans to create the premier subsea engineering program in the nation"" hosted by the dwight look college of engineering and the texas a&m engineering experiment station the invitation-only discussion with executive-level leaders sought industry perspective on how academics and research could best prepare a subsea engineering workforce ""we are well positioned to make a significant impact in this area with a breadth and depth in our engineering program related agencies and a&m system institutions that is unmatched in academia "" said katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering ""the timing is perfect as we are growing our program significantly and incorporating new teaching technologies that will facilitate distance learning certificate programs and masters level courses"" society of petroleum engineers president and schlumberger vice president jeff spath provided a snapshot of the subsea engineering industry and projections for growth ""with over 10 000 subsea wells projected by 2025 it will be crucial to have enough trained engineers as half of the engineering workforce will be eligible to retire when people think of texas a&m they think of quality engineers and the ability to deliver education to engineers working in the field is a tremendous advantage"" next steps include outlining an action plan to address academic programs workforce development and research collaboration course offerings at the masters degree and certificate level in subsea engineering are tentatively planned for fall 2014"
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has signed a memorandum of agreement with the translational genomics research institute (tgen) in phoenix to relocate the dynamic imaging laboratory a computational biology division of tgen to become a part of the recently established center for bioinformatics and genomics systems engineering in college station ""this is a wonderful example of how partnerships between academia and the private sector can leverage the capabilities of both to accelerate discovery "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""this is the first of what we expect will be many biotechnology enterprises to relocate operations to work with our world-class faculty researchers and students"" researchers in the dynamic imaging laboratory will utilize computational mathematics to translate variations in human genes to discover the underlying cause of disease progression and resistance to therapy and why some individuals encounter debilitating diseases and others live healthy lives ""a hallmark of tgen is our belief in the strength and importance of collaborative partnerships "" said jeffrey m trent president and research director tgen ""such relationships provide tgen unmatched access to expertise and technology to accelerate its research goals the fusion of modern medicine with the power of translational research fuels the next wave of treatments for disease"" dr michael bittner an internationally recognized computational biologist and director of tgens computational biology division along with two of his research scientists will move here immediately for the first phase of the partnership ""as research funding continues to become more competitive partnerships like this one will be critical to building our program "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""a lab of this quality and caliber elevates our program enhances opportunities for our researchers and students and accelerates the potential for making life-changing discoveries in the texas a&m system"" about the translational genomics research institute (tgen): tgen is a non-profit 501(c)(3) research institute research at tgen is focused on helping patients with diseases such as cancer neurological disorders and diabetes tgen is on the cutting edge of translational research where investigators are able to unravel the genetic components of common and complex diseases since its formation in june 2002 tgen has established a solid administrative and facilities infrastructure in addition to its headquarters location in downtown phoenix arizona tgen occupies laboratory space at the mayo clinic collaborative research building in scottsdale arizona which houses tgens pharmaceutical genomics division and tgen drug development llc about the center for bioinformatics and genomic systems engineering (cbgse):the center for bioinformatics and genomic systems engineering (cbgse) conducts research in bioinformatics computational biology genomics and systems engineering as they relate to human and animal health medicine and agriculture serving communities across the state of texas and beyond"
"a paper by dr m sam mannan a world-renowned expert on safety in the chemical processing industry is one of computers & chemical engineering journals most-cited papers for 2010-2012 mannan is co-author of the paper ""optimal facility layout under toxic release in process facilities: a stochastic approach "" which also lists r vazquez-roman as lead author and j-h lee and s jung as co-authors mannan is regents professor and holder of the mike oconnor chair i in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a professional engineer and certified safety professional mannan is a fellow of the american institute of chemical engineers and a member of the american society of safety engineers international institute of ammonia refrigeration and national fire protection association in addition to his many professional honors and achievements mannan has served as a consultant to numerous entities in both the academic and private sectors including the columbia accident investigation board the mary kay oconnor process safety center mission is to lead the integration of process safety - through education research and service - into the education and practice of all individuals and organizations involved in chemical operations the center aims to serve as the premier process safety resource for all stakeholders so that safety becomes second nature for managers engineers and workers as progress continues toward zero injuries and lost lives the center seeks to develop safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies that will minimize losses in the process industry the journal computers & chemical engineering is published by elsevier"
"dr robin r murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering and director of the center for robot assisted search and rescue (crasar) was named one of the 25 women in robotics that everyone should know about by robohub the list which was compiled in celebration of ada lovelace day includes macarthur genius award winner daniele russ and irobot co-founder helen greiner as well as professors from the massachusetts institute of technology and georgia tech institute of technology ""the list highlights both that women are and always have been part of robotics and that women are focusing on applications that will change the world "" said murphy according to the robohub website the women on the list are all leaders in their field with a huge impact on robotics regardless of their gender murphy joined the faculty at texas a&m in 2008 and is best known for her work with search and rescue robots which have been used in the rubble of the world trade center following the attacks on sept 11 2001 as well as in mud slides caved-in-mines and collapsed buildings around the world she has been honored with the 2010 motohiro kiosoi award from the international rescue system institute for her outstanding academic contributions in establishing a new research field in rescue engineering murphy was one of five women named in ""the brainiacs"" category of the of the 2011 most influential women in technology by fast company other categories included ""the entrepreneurs "" ""the gamers "" ""the advocates "" ""the media "" and ""the executives"" fast company began the list of most influential women in tech in 2009 and this years list highlights 30 women in the six different categories additionally in 2009 she was named an alpha geek by wired magazine and in 2008 she was awarded the al aube outstanding contributor award by the auvsi foundation the first time the award has been given to an academic she was also profiled in the june 14 2004 issue of time magazine as an innovator in artificial intelligence murphy received a bme in mechanical engineering and ms and phd degrees in computer science from georgia tech where she was a rockwell international doctoral fellow her basic research focuses on artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction for unmanned systems these efforts are/have been funded by doe (rim) darpa onr nasa nsf and industry and have led to more than 100 publications in the field including the textbook ai robotics (mit press) ada lovelace was the worlds first computer programmer and in spite of her undoubted mathematical brilliance she was reluctant to publish herself and made do with publishing ""commentaries"" on the works of others her commentaries were far longer far longer and more original than the originals and in the process she demonstrated the future applications for the universal computing machine that charles babbage proposed but never built now in its fourth year ada lovelace day is about sharing stories of women in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) and the aim is to create new role models for girls and women in the male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in stem"
"the 42nd turbomachinery and 29th international pump users symposia (pump & turbo 2013) was held recently at the george r brown convention center in houston posting a new record for attendance as 5 857 people took part in the four-day event the number of attendees was almost 400 more than the 2012 event and the annual symposia featured a record-number of countries represented international attendees and booths filled in the exhibit hall the symposias technical program included 90 sessions led by accomplished industry leaders from around the world topics covered included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals more than 300 of the leading companies from the turbomachinery and pump industries displayed full-size equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends symposia chairman dr dara childs spoke highly of the excitement during the event ""the growth and energy surrounding the symposia is remarkable "" said childs ""this year we saw remarkable company displays and increased foot traffic in the exhibit hall overflow seating in technical sessions and an increase in overall attendance"" the turbomachinery symposium began in 1971 and the pump symposium began in 1984 in 2011 the symposia were combined and are now held jointly every fall in houston the pump & turbo symposia has become a staple event for industry professionals and leading companies built on a history of success this annual event promotes professional development technology transfer peer networking and information exchange among industry professionals the event was organized by the turbomachinery laboratory part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m university system for more information on pump & turbo 2013 including the full technical program list exhibiting company list post-event profile and more email info@turbo-labtamuedu proceedings from previous symposia are available free to download online the technical content from pump & turbo 2013 will be added to this collection in march 2014"
"the space engineering research center (serc) the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) hosted the texas commercial space workshop at rudder tower and memorial student center oct 2 to discuss the development of commercial space operations in texas and their impact on the states economic prosperity amid space company representatives investors aerospace experts faculty and students from around the nation ""the purpose of this workshop was to engage participants representing a broad cross-section of constituencies across texas to determine the needs and visions of commercial space companies "" said charles hill serc director ""until this point in history the operations of spacecraft and humans in space have primarily been the purview of government organizations instead a wide array of new space initiatives sponsored by private companies are emerging and along with them bringing a large boost to the texas economy"" the workshops panel discussions consisted of representatives from xcor aerospace space exploration technologies (spacex) blue origin deep space industries silicon valley space center nanoracks and space services inc discussion focused on the acceleration of commercial space activities inside texas ways to facilitate the growing industry and a statewide effort to establish commercial space as part of texas economic sphere ""the legislatures last two sessions actively opened the door to commercial space in texas "" said andrew nelson coo of xcor aerospace ""it is this sort of leader that will continue to attract companies like xcor"" keynote speakers included rep john davis from district 129 of the texas house of representatives and dr s alan stern a planetary scientist space program executive and president and ceo of the golden spike company a commercial space corporation planning human lunar expeditions rep davis said ""we should be constantly working to entice new commercial space companies to come to texas and to incentivize those already here to grow their existing businesses recognizing that this is the direction the industry is headed the legislature has taken some preliminary steps to help ensure that texas remains a leader in the commercial space industry"" hill concluded ""ongoing changes to government space programs coupled with the emergence of entrepreneur-driven commercial space programs indicates that there will be a significantly different space industry a decade from now this is only the first of many events we will be facilitating for texas to help those who are passionate about the commercial space industry and to also position texas as home to commercial space and at the forefront of the industry"" about the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas"
"dr jeffrey e froyd tees research professor presented a webinar ""developing a 5-7 year career plan ""nov 15as part of the ieee global early career faculty development virtual mini-conference series approximately 340 faculty members and future faculty members from around the world were logged into the virtual mini-conference when it was offered in his talk froyd presented four elements that are at the center of every faculty members career plans: a networking plan a mentoring plan a research plan and a teaching plan he first focused on the importance of developing an individual and effective networking plan that builds a network of people who can support the faculty member froyd provided suggestions to identify the best type of plan for a faculty members networking style these included attending conferences on- campus seminars submitting research to journals and having an online presence when froyd addressed the mentoring plan he stressed the importance of need-based mentoring plan rather than a people-based mentoring plan froyd said it is a common misconception for a faculty member to think they only need one mentor and encouraged the audience members to seek multiple mentors to meet multiple needs while discussing the research plan froyd told his audience that research is not just about doing research research is about communication: writing papers writing proposals and preparing presentations recruiting graduate students and more improved research plans are not just about more papers more proposals or more graduate students an improved research plan is about a better process froyd suggested some methods to improve a faculty members research plan including focusing on a few major themes; reviewing the plan with multiple mentors to solicit improvements and having mentors who flood your plan with ideas and suggestions rather than just approve; and constructing a plan to recruit graduate students lastly froyd addressed the teaching plan he said the key attributes to a teaching plan are efficiency (research shows that new faculty members often teach inefficiently) and effectiveness (by using instructional strategies appropriate to the course learning outcomes) froyd suggested outlining a teaching plan by addressing the following areas: deciding which courses you would like to teach in the next five to seven years and why finding a process to efficiently develop and improve a course identifying teaching mentors and resources froyd concluded the webinar with a discussion on synergy ""you should not develop the elements independently "" froyd said ""instead you should intentionally look for opportunities to make one or more of the elements work together so that one activity addresses multiple elements"" he provided ideas to achieve a career plan that is efficient and effective using these ideas faculty members can accomplish more than one area of a career plan at a time: designing synergy by being intentional about making elements of the career plan work together starting with two of the elements of your career generating options that will address both elements concurrently froyd said that one of the best ways for faculty members to achieve synergy is simply by preparing and scheduling time for the activities to make them happen froyd is an ieee fellow american society for engineering education fellow editor-in-chief of ieee transactions on education and senior associate editor of the journal of engineering education"
"the aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) has executed a memorandum of understanding with the aerospace valley association in toulouse france that will greatly enhance its presence within the european aerospace community avsi is a texas a&m engineering experimentation station (tees) center organized under the aerospace engineering division and an important partner of the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university avsi addresses issues that impact the aerospace community through international cooperative research and pre-competitive collaboration among industry government and academia first established in 1998 by a team of original industrial members that included only us-based companies the center expanded to include the us department of defense and the federal aviation administration in 2003 international collaboration began with the participation of researchers from european business units of existing avsi members and later grew to include the first international partner airbus which joined in 2008 brazilian airframer embraer followed in 2011 rolls royce in 2012 and most recently saab in 2013 this fall avsi has moved to further grow its partnership with european companies at its annual executive board meeting in toulouse france director dr dave redman formalized the relationship between the center and aerospace valley a ""world competitiveness cluster"" located in toulouse the objective of the cluster is to foster relationships and promote collaborative research among its 625 member companies according to avsi assistant director dr darren hartl ""by teaming with aerospace valley avsi greatly increases its visibility and access to new research among the many aerospace companies located in southern france"" in a separate development at the same meeting the role of avsi executive board chair was passed by unanimous vote to pascal joly director of engineering at airbus north america this is the first leadership appointment of a representative from an internationally based company moving forward avsi is exploring the possibility of establishing a new position ""assistant director-europe "" to more directly support european participation given our global and interconnected economy avsi will continue to promote new aerospace research partnerships to address issues shared by aerospace industry stakeholders worldwide"
"petroleum engineering distinguished alumnus bill von gonten and his business partners dr lee raymond and john raymond are building a world class rock physics lab in cooperation with faculty members from the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university von gonten heads his reservoir engineering consulting company wd von gonten & co lee raymond is the former longtime chairman & ceo of exxonmobil and his son john raymond is managing partner and ceo of the energy & minerals group through a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) research cooperation agreement faculty and students will help in designing and creating the lab in return faculty and students will have access to the lab for research projects named the w d von gonten laboratory (wdvglab) the new facility will be equipped with more than $15 million of equipment that will be able to evaluate properties of oil- and gas-containing shales and other unconventional reservoir rock ""this public/private partnership between the texas a&m system and industry is another great example of the benefits of leveraging capabilities to advance energy research and testing while providing quality education to the future oil and gas workforce "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""the lab is a win-win for our state"" the lab will be a resource for industry clients by performing sophisticated tests of rock samples from wells around the world ""we are pleased to announce the creation of the wdvglab a new commercial lab created to support the exploration and production industry in analysis of low permeability reservoirs to better understand the hydrocarbon flow system and the geomechanical properties "" said bill von gonten founder of the lab ""we are also pleased to be located in the texas a&m university research park and excited to have the support of the texas a&m petroleum engineering department and the tees facilities the wdvglab is committed to providing state of the art equipment and scientific staff to provide the industry with a unique laboratory with a goal to enhance the understanding and increase the productivity of low permeability ""unconventional"" reservoirs which are mostly drilled with horizontal wells throughout north america and expanding globally our link with top industry scientists and the academic talent thru texas a&m university is just another advantage that the lab and facility will provide"" as the premier facility of its kind worldwide the wdvglab will also provide a unique learning environment for faculty and students of texas a&m ""through partnerships such as this we are able to provide a world-class learning environment for our students faculty and researchers while helping advance technologies that ultimately serve the public "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m ""through collaboration we maximize the positive outcome for everyone involved"" dr dan hill noble chair and head of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering stated that the creation of this innovative laboratory for tight-rock physics will provide texas a&m faculty and students access to a world-class facility for the study of unconventional petrophysics ""our partnership will allow us to participate in research using unparalleled experimental equipment that will enable the discovery of fundamental properties of unconventional reservoir rocks with applications from the molecular level to the scale of basin analysis "" hill said ""we are thrilled to have this laboratory being created on the texas a&m campus and to be able to collaborate in the rock-physics and engineering studies to be conducted there"" an initial staff is already in place and most major pieces of equipment are arriving the facility is located in the texas a&m research park and is expected to be fully operational by fall 2014"
"the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement (bsee) announced today that a team of texas institutions led by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) mary kay oconnor process safety center has been selected to manage the ocean energy safety institute united states congressman bill flores (r-texas) attended the press conference and praised the collaboration between government and academia ""the offshore energy industry has significant impact upon our energy security and the national economy "" flores said ""and it is imperative that government industry and the scientific community work together to address challenges and encourage innovation through technology risk management safety and environmental protection any government oversight must be rooted in evidence-based research to ensure a sound decision-making process and i believe by including academic partners this initiative will succeed"" the five-year agreement with $5 million in total funding from bsee will provide a forum for dialogue shared learning and cooperative research among academia government industry and other non-government organizations in offshore-related technologies and activities that help ensure environmentally safe and responsible offshore operations tees is partnering with texas a&m university the university of texas at austin and the university of houston to manage the institute ""we are tremendously proud that tees and the other texas university partners have been recognized for their significant contributions to deep water technology and safety by being chosen to manage the institute "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""i am confident that this team will lead offshore-related activities into a period of transformation"" bsee director brian salerno traveled to college station for the announcement and toured facilities and spoke with university professors tees researchers and officials from the university of houston and university of texas ""i look forward to working closely with our partners at the institute on finding ways to improve safety offshore "" said salerno ""the institute will develop a program of research technical assistance and education that serves as a center of expertise in offshore oil and gas exploration development and production technology including frontier areas such as high temperature/high pressure reservoirs deepwater and arctic exploration and development"" the institute stems from a recommendation from the ocean energy safety advisory committee a federal advisory group comprised of representatives from industry federal government agencies non-governmental organizations and the academic community the institute will be an important source of unbiased independent information and will not have any regulatory authority over the offshore industry it will be a collaborative venture that will also include involvement on science and technology issues from the bureau of ocean energy management ""the three partner universities represent a unique combination of capabilities and resources needed to address the needs for the institute "" said dr m sam mannan director of the mary k oconnor process safety center and pi for the project ""we applaud bsee for supporting this major undertaking of national importance that will impact ocean energy safety for the nation and world for years to come"" the institute will provide recommendations and technical assistance to bsee related to emerging technologies and the best available and safest technologies (bast) in addition it will develop and maintain an equipment failure monitoring system and train federal employees to enable them to remain current on state-of-the-art technology the institute will also promote collaboration among federal agencies industry standards organizations academia and the national academy of sciences (nas) information on issues related to offshore research and best practices will be shared with industry government and the public through institute held forums"
"the energy systems laboratory (esl) and the texas chapters of the us green building council (usgbc) announced the annual clean air through energy efficiency (catee) awards at a ceremony held recently in san antonio esl is a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station the awards were presented to individuals and organizations whose actions or programs were exemplary in contributing to clean air and a more sustainable environment through energy efficiency and renewable energy actions or programs the categories and honorees selected for recognition this year were: outstanding individual gary g olp principal ggo architects outstanding government official the hon james ""jim"" keffer texas state representative district 60 outstanding government organization - educational institution alamo community college district outstanding government organization - state agency texas workforce commission outstanding government organization - local government city of san antonio outstanding commercial enterprise dell inc ""legacy of good"" plan renewable energy leadership award william ""bill"" sinkin the awards ceremony was held during the clean air through energy efficiency (catee) conference on dec 18 at the hyatt regency san antonio riverwalk the awards were presented by dr david claridge director of the energy systems laboratory and pam losefsky executive director of the central texas-balcones chapter of the usgbc gary olp was presented his award to start the program the award to representative keffer was accepted on his behalf by bernice espinosa committee clerk for the energy resources committee which keffer chairs in the texas house of representatives the award to alamo colleges was accepted by john strybos associate vice chancellor of facilities the award to texas workforce commission was accepted by jeanette bradfield director of infrastructure planning & budget the award to the city of san antonio was accepted by philip gates energy manager in the office of sustainability the award to dell was accepted by john pflueger principal environmental strategist for dell the award to bill sinkin age 100 was accepted by mr sinkin accompanied by his son lanny sinkin executive director of solar san antonio to a standing ovation the elder sinkin thanked the crowd for the work they were doing for the environment and said ""your work is not done"""
"researchers from the texas a&m energy institute and saint-gobain proppants have begun a collaborative effort to better understand the behavior of proppants in hydraulic fracturing operations the collaboration will initially involve research into the ""down hole"" performance of proppants in fractured wells the collaboration will consist of two research projects the first is an exploration of geochemical interactions between formation fluids and minerals with fracturing fluid and proppants to better understand how different materials are affected by bore and fracture ambient conditions the work led by hisham nasr-el-din professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m is expected to lead to better understanding of how to improve proppant stability and performance the second research effort--led by zoya heidari and john killough professors in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m--involves the application of enhanced well-logging signals and borehole imaging techniques to capture time-lapse degradation of proppants after they are placed in the fracture to track the proppant changes in situ and over time the outcome of the project will be a new method to quantify changes to sedimentary rock due to the presence of propping agents in the induced fractures ""the research is a unique collaboration between petroleum and materials experts from both teams and provides the hydraulic fracturing industry with greater understanding of proppant behavior "" said tim stephens director of research and development for saint-gobain proppants according to john pappas interim director of the texas a&m energy institute the project is a great example of the institutes mission ""we are increasing our collaborations with industry to solve energy problems that are relevant and multidisciplinary "" pappas said ""this project is in line with our goal of establishing long-term relationships that leverage industry resources and expertise with texas a&ms research capabilities and broad capabilities across the energy sector"" about saint-gobain saint-gobain the world leader in the habitat and construction markets designs manufactures and distributes building materials providing innovative solutions to meet the challenges of growth energy saving and environmental protection with 2012 sales of $555 billion saint-gobain operates in 64 countries and has nearly 195 000 employees saint-gobain proppants manufactures ceramic proppants such as versalite® versaprop® and ultraprop® that meet and exceed the rigorous requirements of hydraulic fracturing and contribute to successful hydraulic fracturing in oil and gas wells around the globe for more information visit http://wwwproppantssaint-gobaincom/ about texas a&m energy institute the texas a&m energy institute (ei) supports texas a&m universitys goal of becoming a world leader in all areas of energy research scholarship and creative work and contributing to cutting-edge solutions for grand scientific engineering and societal challenges the institute matches researchers and world-class facilities with internal and external partners to define and solve energy problems and turn those solutions into useful global products the texas a&m energy institute is jointly operated by texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system for more information please contact: john pappas pe interim director texas a&m energy institute johnpappas@tamuedu tim stephens saint-gobain proppants timstephens@saint-gobaincom"
faculty and students from gadjah mada university in yogyakarta indonesia spent a week at the tees nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) in november to discuss nuclear security education and experience the nsspi curriculum firsthand their stop at nsspi was part of a longer trip to prominent university programs in nuclear security throughout the us meant to expose the students and educators to the state-of-the-art in the field gmu is the only university in indonesia offering a nuclear-engineering curriculum the universitys nuclear engineering study program was established in 1977 in order to fulfill the demand for nuclear engineers who could develop nuclear technology in indonesia especially in the form of nuclear power the program boasts approximately 230 current students and 1 100 alumni working in the nuclear industry nuclear research institutes the nuclear regulatory body and more while at nsspi the indonesian delegation attended presentations on current nsspi courses and distance education modules they also visited nsspis teaching laboratories where they completed an exercise in the radiation detection lab they met with the local student chapter of the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) and discussed the steps required to form a similar student chapter at gmu the participants were also able to speak with students and faculty members in a casual setting at the inmm barbecue at lake bryan
the smart grid center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) held the inaugural meeting of its advisory board dec 19 at the memorial student center at texas a&m university in 2012 tees established the smart grid center to promote creation of interdisciplinary research teams for modernization of the electrical grid the center director is dr mladen kezunovic the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m the smart grid center advisory board includes national leaders working in the smart grid area of industry education and standardization including dr george arnold national institute of standards and technology (nist); dr miroslav begovic georgia tech and president-elect of the ieee power and engineering society; jorge a bermudez president and ceo of the byebrook group and texas a&m former student; john d mcdonald ge energy management digital energy; michael g oquinn vice president for government relations at texas a&m; dr j martin scholtz executive associate vice president for research and professor of molecular and cellular medicine biochemistry and biophysics at texas a&m; dr le tang vice president and head of the us corporate research center abb inc; and pat wood iii principal of wood3 resources the board reviewed the achievements of the first year since the smart grid center was established and discussed strategic future plans more about the smart grid center can be found at http://smartgridcentertamuedu/sgc/web/
"the texas a&m energy institute in conjunction with the research valley partnership (rvp) has been awarded a clean energy incubator grant by the state energy conservation office (seco) as the state energy office seco partners with texas public higher education institutions public k-12 schools local governments county governments and state agencies to reduce energy costs and maximize efficiency the texas a&m clean energy incubator (tamcei) will offer global entrepreneurs a best-in-class business incubation environment for the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies john pappas interim director of the texas a&m energy institute and tamcei principal investigator said ""the texas a&m clean energy incubator provides entrepreneurs with the potential for close access to texas a&m resources intellectual property and expertise and will be a portal for those wanting to partner with texas a&m researchers and facilities our partnership with rvp gives tamcei the ability to combine world-class r&d capabilities with experienced and proven business leadership the seco grant gives the incubator the seed it needs to get started and become a sustainable organization for the texas a&m and brazos valley communities"" tamcei will be located in college station and function as a hub-and-spoke incubator touching all corners of the state of texas the effort will be led by the energy institute and aided by a suite of value-added business services managed in conjunction with stakeholders and a principal subcontractor the research valley partnership (a public-private non-profit economic development corporation) tamcei will bring together a substantial network of clean energy scholars university research labs test bed facilities as well as strategic partnering energy corporations investors international clean energy mentors and bottom-line focused consultants to support top-flight clean energy companies in their going to market todd e mcdaniel rvp president and ceo said ""the research valley partnership is honored to be working with texas a&m energy institute on this important program as the primary service provider to the texas a&m clean energy incubator the rvp will offer business mentoring and investment capital strategies to early stage clean energy companies working with the incubator the rvps objectives for this program are to attract global entrepreneurs and emerging clean energy companies to our community we want them connected with texas a&m researchers utilizing world-class texas a&m engineering test bed infrastructure in place here in the research valley and across the great state of texas we also desire to see positive social and environmental impact locally and globally as a result of the commercial application of these clean energy technologies"" clean energy ventures matched with tamcei will be offered a comprehensive range of mentoring commercialization and real-world testing services the incubator will follow proven methods of working with ventures to strengthen their business proposition and provide them with broad access and individualized introductions to key industry players including strategic investors that could help build exposure partnerships and in-kind resources needed to grow a company to the next level tamcei will also collaborate with other texas clean energy incubators to help the state of texas attract and retain clean energy companies that are commercially viable or in a new commercial stage of development anticipated membership with the clean energy alliance a national organization of non-profit cleantech incubators having a us department of energy small business partnership would expand tamcei resources the texas a&m energy institute is jointly operated by texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station"
the texas a&m university system board of regents on thursday approved a ground lease for construction of an engineering laboratory building in texas a&ms research park the lease consists of 37 acres for construction of an engineering research laboratory that will be privately developed and leased back to the a&m system on behalf of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) for use by the engineering nano laboratories at texas a&m completion of the building is expected to be december 2014 the laboratories are currently located in the zachry engineering center which is expected to be vacated by december 2014 to allow for construction of the engineering education complex as part of the dwight look college of engineerings 25 by 25 initiative the 25 by 25 initiative is a transformational program to increase access for qualified students to pursue engineering education at texas a&m university to an enrollment of 25 000 engineering students by 2025
"the texas a&m university system and ibm (nyse: ibm) today announced an agreement that is the beginning of a broad research collaboration supported by one of the largest computational sciences infrastructure dedicated to advances in agriculture geosciences and engineering as a premier engineering research agency of texas texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) which conducts research to provide practical answers to critical state and national needs will be heavily involved from the texas a&m university system and according to katherine banks director of tees and vice chancellor of engineering ""this is a unique opportunity to meet the needs of engineering geosciences and agriculture and life sciences researchers to expand in areas not feasible before with small-scale hpc systems"" tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance the educational systems of texas it is intimately connected with the college of engineering of texas a&m university which is undergoing an unprecedented growth to become a college with 25 000 students by the year 2025 and hire a new generation of faculty who will be addressing the nations needs for research and technology development the collaboration will leverage the power of big data analytics and high performance computing (hpc) systems for innovative solutions across a spectrum of challenges such as improving extraction of earth-based energy resources facilitating the smart energy grid accelerating materials development improving disease identification and tracking in animals and fostering better understanding and monitoring of our global food supplies ""combining the incredible intellectual and technological resources of texas a&m university and ibm will further position texas as a leader in identifying and solving some of the most complex challenges we face "" texas gov rick perry said ""the work that will be done here will change lives and potentially save lives not just in our state but our nation and around the world"" ibm will provide the infrastructure for the joint research consisting of blue gene/q technology power and system x servers and general parallel file systems (gpfs) storage systems a test of the blue gene/q on campus found that it ran a material sciences problem that previously took weeks to solve and produced a solution in ""a fraction of an hour"" with much greater analytical depth ""the texas a&m system and ibm share a passion and a commitment to research that identifies practical solutions to global challenges "" said chancellor john sharp texas a&m university system ""as the largest research university in the state this agreement is a major step forward for the a&m system in research computing power this brings together the best computer scientists and technology in the world to focus on issues so important to our role as a leading research institution and to our land-grant mission of serving the state while also providing resources to serve the greater good throughout the world"" ibm research and the a&m system intend to align skills assets and resources to pursue fundamental research applied development educational reach and sustainable commercial activities with projects that may include: sustainable availability of food: efficiently providing sufficient food for a growing global population disease spread tracking modeling and prediction: early and accurate detection and prediction of infectious disease spread to allow the design testing and manufacturing of medical countermeasures energy resource management: responsibly explore extract and deliver energy resources new materials development: atomic-level modeling design and testing of new materials for advanced applications in energy aerospace structural and defense applications ""ibm and the texas a&m system have crafted a unique collaboration that could apply computational science and big data analytics to some of the most daunting problems in agriculture geosciences and engineering "" said william lafontaine vice president of high performance analytics and cognitive markets at ibm ""with the combined research capabilities of both institutions and ready access to state-of-the-art computing technology we feel this collaboration could produce significant scientific insights leading to industry-changing solutions and material economic impact we are extremely pleased to be engaged with such extraordinarily capable institutions in the a&m system and look forward to years of discovery and innovation"" in support of the long-term research effort ibm will supply to the a&m system cutting edge technical computing technologies which will be cloud-enabled the a&m system will deploy a research computing cloud that will comprise of ibm hardware and software including: blue gene/q: serving as the foundation of the computing infrastructure a blue gene/q system consisting of two racks with more than 2 000 compute nodes will provide 418 teraflops (tf) of sustained performance for big data analytics complex modeling and simulation of molecular dynamics protein folding and organ modeling power systems: a total of 75 powerlinux 7r2 servers with power7+ microprocessors will be connected by 10gbe into a system optimized for big data and analytics and high performance computing this complex includes ibm biginsights and platform symphony software ibm platform lsf scheduler and ibm general parallel file system system x: the solution will contain an estimated 900 ibm system x dense hyperscale compute nodes as part of an ibm nextscale system some of the nodes will be managed by platform cluster manager advanced edition (pcm-ae) as a university-wide hpc cloud while the others will be managed by platform cluster manager standard edition (pcm-se) and serve as a general purpose compute infrastructure for the geosciences and open source analytics initiatives platform computing: platform computing software will be used to manage and accelerate various computational workloads platform symphony will drive big data and analytics and platform lsf will drive traditional hpc and technical computing workloads platform computing will also power the creation of an hpc cloud allowing users within the a&m system access to the system general parallel file system (gpfs): five ibm system x gpfs storage servers (gss) will provide five petabytes (pb) of shared storage for use by the compute building blocks using high-speed networks gpfs will also include an ibm flashsystem 820 tier with 10 terabytes (tb) of flash storage delivering performance to accelerate computation for use primarily by texas a&m agrilife research geosciences and university hpc as a part of the research computing infrastructure furthermore ibm will work with researchers at the a&m system to assess new computing technologies that will be necessary to advance data-driven science discovery and innovation over the next several years about ibm for more information on ibm research visit wwwresearchibmcom for more information on ibm technical computing visit wwwibmcom/systems/technicalcomputing/ about the a&m system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $35 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies two service units a comprehensive health science center and a system administration office the a&m system educates more than 125 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $780 million and help drive the states economy"
"after successful piloting in four states-arizona colorado new mexico and texas-the enhanced passive surveillance (eps) system will be piloted in all major animal industries and at least 15 states over the next three years the national center for foreign animal and zoonotic disease defense (fazd center) a department of homeland security (dhs) center of excellence hosted the official project kick-off meeting on november 19 2013 in fort collins colorado with officials from the dhs and united states department of agriculture (usda) animal health professionals state animal health officials and other stakeholders researchers from the texas center for applied technology (tcat) were also on hand to present the customized suite of tools they developed for the eps project tcat is part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and is working on this project in partnership with the fazd center the eps system developed by the fazd center is designed to provide early detection of potential disease outbreaks or changes in animal health status the system currently captures animal health information on both healthy and sick animals from mixed-animal poultry and equine veterinarians in real-time through the use of mobile technologies the information is then organized into an easy-to-use computer display for monitoring and analysis where it is integrated with data from veterinary diagnostic laboratories wildlife biologists and livestock markets during a disease outbreak the system could provide timely surveillance information to emergency managers state animal health officials and veterinarians allowing them to respond to situations as they develop in addition documenting the number of animals observed or examined by veterinarians for clinical signs compatible with certain endemic and high consequence animal diseases and documenting healthy animals will assist usda in identifying geographic areas that are absent of a disease event during an outbreak to assist in demonstrating disease freedom to us trading partners the expansion of the eps system builds on the success of the two smaller pilot projects: a proof-of-concept pilot funded through the dhs science and technology directorate that focused on cattle and small ruminants (sheep and goats); and an expansion of this pilot funded by the usda animal and plant health inspection service (aphis) that focused on the equine and poultry industries for the cattle and small ruminants pilot ipad users in three states have submitted more than 13 000 surveillance reports since july 2012 this information represents the health status of more than 930 000 animals in those states ""the collaboration between the fazd center dhs usda state animal health officials veterinarians and industry stakeholders was crucial for the success of the initial eps pilot projects "" saidtammy r beckham dvm phd and fazd center director ""eps allows us to put mobile technologies in veterinarians hands and collect animal health data at local regional or national levels this allows the integration of surveillance data into a common display for early detection of emerging and high consequence disease outbreaks"" the ease-of-use of the mobile technology for reporting animal health information from veterinarians in the field significantly impacted the success of the program the eps system also provides valuable information back to veterinarians regarding animal health in their state or geographic region providing access to a unique information source that enhances their situational awareness and aids in animal disease diagnosis and treatment in addition the fazd center identifies and builds incentives into the system to encourage user participation and support the day-to-day use of these tools and technology phase ii of the project an expanded pilot to 15 states is funded through $2 million in federal funds from the dhs science and technology directorate to protect us animal agriculture the project has the potential for a nearly $9 million investment over the next three years of implementation subject to availability of federal appropriations more than 40 participants gathered in colorado to discuss the phase ii project structure organization and the implementation plan for the expanded pilot of the eps system dr beckham welcomed the attendees and led discussions on the meeting objectives and project goal: to expand the pilot of the eps system in all major commercial livestock industries in key regions of the us and further demonstrate the efficacy of the overall approach while maximizing the coverage and representation across each industry lindsey holmstrom dvm and fazd center research scientist and keith biggers phd and tcat director of computing and information technology presented the eps pilot system results and discussed future goals with attendees ""eps leverages veterinarians in the field for reporting on animal health at the time they are observing or treating animals "" said dr holmstrom ""this is a unique and critical data source for supporting animal health and disease surveillance that we previously did not have available in real-time the system also provides information back to veterinarians from others reporting into the system based on established data sharing protocols which increases their awareness of the disease status in their geographic area whereas the proof-of-concept pilot included data from veterinarians livestock markets and diagnostic laboratories phase ii the expanded pilot of eps includes increasing the user base adding producers agriculture company veterinarians and production managers and wildlife sources such as wildlife biologists and organizations the main focus of the phase ii expanded pilot effort is to continue to enhance the system and develop a sustainable system that is nationally accepted and supports the agriculture industries with the funding provided by the dhs and usda the eps system allows producers and veterinarians access to real-time data for evaluation of animal health status changes in this status and tools to manage overall herd health ""ultimately this project will demonstrate the power of data integration and aggregation through the eps technology and working closely with our federal partners the us will ultimately have a tool that will allow them to have real time situational awareness and ultimately defend our food supply from disease outbreaks through low-cost technology and real-time reporting "" said dr beckham for more information on the enhanced passive surveillance technology visitwwwfazdtamuedu/2013/09/4997"
"in 2011 texas experienced around 31 453 fires that burned more than 4 million acres during that time 2 947 homes were lost and more than 2 700 other structures were lost or damaged the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) product development center coordinated the testing of a product called tetrako in partnership with the texas a&m forest service and texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) texas center for applied technology (tcat) tcat a center housed within tees was responsible for setting up the test and measurement for the wildfire test and reducing and evaluating/analyzing the data additionally tcat developed the test protocol for the testing and validated it with the product development center and the client tetrako is the only epa-approved designed for the environment fire suppressant the test will evaluate this new high-impact water efficient fire chemical for use in the state of texas teex conducted the first phase of testing in college station in 2013 determining tetrakos compatibility with fire apparatus on the ground and during aerial application this second phase of testing will evaluate the products ability to retard a fires progress during a wildfire scenario ""this is an exciting opportunity for three texas a&m university system members to work together to find new solutions for wildfires in texas us and the world ""said caleb holt teex product development center manager"
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and tenaris sa which has its north american headquarters in houston signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) jan 7 to establish a framework for increasing collaboration among the researchers and engineers associated with the two entities ""the signing of this agreement ushers in a new era of university and industry collaboration "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""there will be tremendous opportunities for collaboration and significant opportunities for our students and faculty to have valuable experience working with a partner such as tenaris"" tees and tenaris have many areas of common interest in oil and gas energy and mechanical industries and in some of the areas a considerable advantage may be gained from innovation partnerships ""we look forward to combining tenariss practical knowledge and expertise with the resources and fresh perspective of the faculty and students of texas a&m university "" said germán curá president tenaris north america ""tenaris has always believed that no matter how much we invest in technology whats important is how much we invest in the human element and in the communities where we operate this agreement is a logical step forward in our commitment to education and innovation and we look forward to continued partnership with texas a&m"" the general area of this collaboration will include research development innovation education and employment opportunities and will involve two primary groups -a senior steering committee and sub-committees established by the senior steering committee ""we are extremely grateful and fortunate to have a partner like tenaris involved in this effort "" said phil adams chairman of the board of regents ""we appreciate the tremendous leadership of germán curá and have the highest regard for his depth and understanding of the importance of industry and university collaboration in creating value for the citizens of texas our land grant roots run deep and this should be a shining example of texas a&m making a positive difference"" in addition to research projects tenaris will sponsor student educational activities and will accept texas a&m university students into the tenaris global internship program ""transforming engineering education will require partnerships with industry "" said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering ""the connection between industry and academia will insure our students are prepared to address the technical challenges that will be faced in the future"" tenaris practitioners may also teach adjunct classes at texas a&m and/or host educational events at tenaris facilities in order to convey practical business knowledge and field expertise to texas a&m students tenaris has initiated a comprehensive university outreach program and is pleased with the development of this cooperative program with texas a&m and tees dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees and dr costas georghiades associate dean for research will oversee research and development projects with their tenaris counterparts while dr terri reed assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs will oversee education and workforce training with tenaris employees about tenaris: tenaris is a leading supplier of tubes and related services for the worlds energy industry and certain other industrial applications its mission is to deliver value to its customers through product development manufacturing excellence and supply chain management tenaris seeks to minimize risk for its customers and help them reduce costs increase flexibility and improve time to market tenaris has approximately 4 000 employees at its 10 us facilities as well as a new seamless pipe production plant under construction in bay city texas tenariss approximately 27 000 employees around the world are committed to continuous improvement by sharing knowledge across a single global organization"
"texas has been named a test site for unmanned aircraft systems (uas) by the federal aviation administration (faa) based on a statewide proposal led by texas a&m university-corpus christi the university partnered with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and is one of six entities throughout the nation that were selected as test sites aerospace electrical and mechanical engineers and computer scientists at tees will be designing reconfigurable antennas and security systems for the drones additionally a new facility is planned at the riverside campus in bryan that will specialize in the development and testing of unmanned vehicles including the aerial drones the new facility could be created within a year ""we are proud to be a part of this historic moment in aviation history "" said dr flavius killebrew president and ceo of texas a&m university-corpus christi ""together with our partners we will lead the way for the research and development of this new age in aviation technology"" the test sites will facilitate testing and research of unmanned aerial systems (uas) technologies to provide scientific data on the future integration of these aircraft safely with other air traffic congress mandated that the uas be integrated into the national airspace by 2015 one of the main research goals is finding the safest methods for unmanned planes to sense other aircraft and take measures to avoid collisions texas a&m university-corpus christi has been doing uas research for about two years looking at ways to use uass for mapping sea grass detecting oil spills and hotspots in wild fires monitoring hurricanes and herd counting for ranchers for high resolution photos go to http://wwwflickrcom/photos/80429560@n03/sets/72157638735429104/ the universitys lone star unmanned aircraft systems center (lsuasc) proposal was the only one from texas being considered by the faa and had the backing of texas governor rick perry ""texas has a long and distinguished history in the aerospace industry and this test site is an important opportunity to create jobs and grow the industry in our state "" gov perry said ""this technology will not only protect our country but has the potential to advance other industries as well and this test site will play a role in ensuring it is used in a way that benefits our citizens while protecting their privacy and safety"" this historic decision will have huge financial implications for the entire state of texas especially south texas the association of unmanned vehicles international published an economic impact study in march projecting once airspace is opened to uas the economic impact would be about $8 billion statewide and $260 million in south texas over the next 10 years; creating about 1 200 jobs ""texas earned the faa designation partly as a result of efforts by two texas a&m system institutions who brought together their industry-leading knowledge and research "" said chancellor john sharp texas a&m university system ""we are proud to grow the texas a&m systems reputation for excellence in research to the unmanned aircraft field"" much of the expected economic benefit would center on the coastal bend the city of corpus christi recognizes the importance of bringing this type of research to the area and has been very supportive of the proposal ""this is good news for the university for corpus christi and for the entire state "" said nelda martinez mayor of corpus christi ""the faa recognizes what our community has to offer in its expertise and immense airspace that cannot be found anywhere else"" the lsuasc has been designated as a research center affiliated with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) by the texas a&m system board of regents a&m-corpus christi and tees collaborated with private-sector partner camber corporation and other research institutions and private-sector companies to form the statewide team that produced the competitive proposal accepted by the faa ""this is a unique opportunity for tees to connect its research divisions from corpus christi and college station into a powerful coalition and help develop a test site that will benefit from the research and technology expertise within tees in several key areas associated with the design communications and the command and control of unmanned aerial vehicles "" said dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees camber is a leader in unmanned technology and was approached by several states to help in developing test sites but chose texas because of what the university has to offer ""the intellectual energy and intellectual capital this university brought to the table along with the leadership and the vision of both university president dr flavius killebrew and dr luis cifuentes makes us very excited about our partnership with texas a&m-corpus christi "" said joe henry camber corporation a&m-corpus christi is also collaborating with the top engineering research and technology experts in the state including those at the university of texas at arlington research institute and the southwest research institute (swri) in san antonio ""the university of texas at arlington research institute (utari) and our uta-affiliated faculty are proud to be part of such a momentous effort for the state of texas "" said lt general rick lynch us army (retired) executive director of utari ""were looking forward to working with our statewide partners in the coming months to bring all of our hard work and planning to fruition"" the swri is one of the oldest and largest independent nonprofit applied research and development organizations in the united states and has designed and operated uas vehicles and payload systems since 1993 utilizing numerous texas sites ""this designation will help make south texas and the gulf coast the home of future generations of unmanned aerial systems "" said richard somers vice president of swris aerospace electronics systems engineering and training division ""good flying weather year-round varied terrain and the possibility of overwater testing above the gulf of mexico add up to an attractive locale for developing new designs and new capabilities"" now that the sites have been announced the university will have six months to get the test site fully operational in preparation for this lsuasc opened the uas command and control center at the coastal bend business innovation center in october that will manage the 11 texas test ranges"
"herb richardson director emeritus of the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) was inducted as the 39th member of the texas transportation hall of honor during a feb 19 ceremony at tti established in 2000 to recognize those individuals who played significant roles in the development and advancement of texas transportation the hall of honor is located in the main conference room of ttis gibb gilchrist building on the campus of texas a&m university each inductee is represented by a plaque that bears his or her likeness ""we have a state that has been blessed to have an outstanding transportation system a system that has served the state well "" tti agency director dennis christiansen said during the ceremony ""its attracted economic growth to texas and provided texans with a high quality of life its widely recognized that the development and sustainment of that kind of system is the result of visionary leadership by a relatively small group of individuals"" richardson became director of tti in 1993 and oversaw a vast expansion of its mission to include all modes of transportation during his 13-year tenure numerous centers of excellence were established and research expenditures grew significantly which solidified ttis reputation for expert transportation research around the world transportation is the prominent thread that has run throughout richardsons stellar career which included three degrees from the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) and his appointment as the nations first chief scientist of the us department of transportation at the texas a&m system and texas a&m richardson held leadership roles including vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station prior to being named director of tti richardson was chancellor of the texas a&m system ""herb is truly a remarkable person innately bright very well educated remarkably intuitive dedicated personable explicitly honest and honorable "" said erle nye chairman emeritus of both txu corp and the texas a&m system board of regents ""he is one of the most accomplished persons i have ever met or been around it is hard to imagine anyone in the field of transportation that has made more comprehensive and positive impacts than dr herb richardson and it is equally as hard to separate his accomplishments from the man his intellect integrity good humor and endearing personal manner have contributed mightily to his success"" several other colleagues spoke at richardsons induction into the hall of honor including: david cain chair of the tti advisory council and president of david cain consulting; john junkins distinguished professor of aerospace engineering and director of the texas a&m institute for advanced study; and penny beaumont tti associate director emerita richardson received a standing ovation before addressing the crowd in his acceptance remarks he credited others for his accomplishments ""as i accept this place in the hall of honor with great humility i do so on behalf of all those at tti and elsewhere who worked tirelessly with exceptional competence to make texas transportation more efficient safer and more accessible for everyone "" he said ""looking to the future tti is in good hands under dennis christiansens clearly effective leadership"" richardson joins other hall of honor inductees that include raymond stotzer dolph briscoe hb zachry and lady bird johnson"
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) smart grid center is organizing the second smart grid workshop on april 8 2014 the overall goals of this workshop are to strengthen partnerships between faculty industry end-users and government agencies; to expand on-going projects; and to develop white papers leading to collaborative research proposals specific objectives and expected outcomes: • discuss smart grid-related potential advances in the following areas: 1) energy management for buildings and other facilities; 2) big data visualization data analytics and optimization; 3) synchrophasors gps and signal processing; 4) communications cyber-physical security and embedded systems; 5) transmission distribution and renewables interfacing electricity markets; 6) flexible load energy storage on-site generation and demand-side management • identify means of partnerships within specific research areas above focusing on formulation of research problems demonstration projects technology evaluation student internships and joint proposal for selected solicitations detailed information on the program and the open registration site can be found athttp://smartgridcentertamuedu/sgc/
"the national academy of engineering (nae) has named m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m university director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and harold j haynes deans chair professor among its 2014 class of new members chairman of the texas a&m university system board of regents phil adams said ""dr banks has been a thoughtful and determined champion for engineering throughout her distinguished career this high honor is well deserved and we are grateful for her leadership in one of americas top engineering programs"" members are elected to nae membership by current nae members members have distinguished themselves in academic and technical positions as university faculty leaders in government and private engineering organizations of more than one million engineers in the united states only about 65 are elected to the academy annually and only half of these are from academic institutions for its 2014 membership the nae has elected 67 new members and 11 foreign associates as announced today nae president cd (dan) mote jr this brings the total us membership to 2 250 and the number of foreign associates to 214 ""election to the nae is the highest honor an engineer can receive and indicates recognition by the leaders in the field of significant society-impacting contributions to the profession "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ""we are tremendously proud of her for this prestigious honor and are pleased of our affiliation through her leadership of one of the largest engineering enterprises in the nation and a cornerstone of the a&m system"" banks becomes the eighth faculty member in the nae at texas a&m and the first to be named while serving as the chief executive of the engineering program ""election of dr banks to the academy is a singular honor particularly at such an early stage in her career "" said dr b don russell nae member and chair of the texas a&m distinguished professors ""dr banks is being recognized for seminal technical contributions but also for exceptional leadership and innovation in engineering education our profession will hear a great deal from dr banks in the future and we welcome her to the academy"" banks election citation is for contributions to phytoremediation of petroleum contamination and for leadership in engineering education through engineering design plant biology and environmental chemistry banks research led to the development of a new low-cost treatment approach for removal of petroleum contamination from soil without significant site disturbance as vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering banks has garnered national attention for an unprecedented controlled growth plan to expand enrollment to 25 000 engineering students by 2025 known as ""25 by 25"" the initiative seeks to transform engineering education through innovative instructional methods while enhancing top-ranked research programs and to do so in a cost-effective manner banks has served as principal investigator for multidisciplinary research grants and received funding from the national science foundation environmental protection agency us departments of defense and energy and nasa as well as industry and state government she served as director of the epa midwest hazardous substance research center as associate director of the nasa center for advanced life support and as co-director of the 21st century center for phytoremediation research in addition to her administrative role banks currently is a professor of civil engineering at texas a&m and previously served on the faculty at purdue university and kansas state university banks received her bachelors degree in environmental engineering from the university of florida in 1982 a masters degree in water resources engineering from the university of north carolina in 1985 and a doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from duke university in 1989 she is a licensed professional civil engineer in texas indiana and kansas and has received numerous awards"
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university at qatar (tamuq) held an international research meeting on the campus of texas a&m university to discuss and plan research collaborations between the faculty at the qatar campus and those within the dwight look college of engineering attendees also discussed developing plans for the establishment of extensions of research centers at tamuq one of which the mary k oconnor process safety center has already been established at the middle east campus the process safety center gives tees and texas a&m a footprint in the middle east that no other agency or university has ""the a&m system is uniquely positioned to facilitate international opportunities through its branch campus in qatar and because the degree program is engineering expanding and enhancing research partnership opportunities with tees is a natural fit "" said dr m katherine banks tees director and vice chancellor of engineering for the texas a&m university system ""the collaboration between tees researchers with their counterparts in qatar provides both an opportunity for important joint research projects as well as global experiences for our students at texas a&m"" building on that successful endeavor tees is currently looking to establish an extension of the smart grid center at tamuq as a branch to the center currently established in college station and housed within tees ""i am encouraged by the discussions and the potentials brought forward for faculty and students to engage in collaborative activities at levels never before experienced "" said mark h weichold dean and ceo of tamuq ""this reflects the core reasons for the establishment of the branch campus in doha in the first place"" texas a&m qatar was established in 2003 and has offered undergraduate degrees in chemical electrical mechanical and petroleum engineering and graduate courses in chemical engineering since the fall of 2011 more than 400 engineers have graduated from tamuq since 2007"
"texas a&m university at qatar led the gas and fuels research initiative (gfri) and hosted a workshop on natural gas monetization at la torretta lake resort and spa in montgomery texas march 26-28 gfri is envisioned to be a multidisciplinary research center involving 17 professors from texas a&m universitys main campus in college station and the universitys qatar campus and represents different engineering programs including chemical engineering petroleum engineering and mechanical engineering the centers key objective is to lead the integrated research activities and the resources of texas a&m university to support shale gas and natural gas exploration production and monetization activities ""this initiative will lead to the establishment of a world-class research center advancing natural gas exploration production treatment and processing "" said dr nimir elbashir (pictured left) director of texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) gas and fuels research initiative and associate professor of chemical engineering at texas a&m at qatar ""several members of this initiative are world-leading scientists in their field the center will also support the united states shale gas evolution and will be a part of texas a&m at qatars research strategic plan to support qatar national vision 2030"" the workshop sponsored by the us national science foundation (nsf) aims to explore possible collaborations between academia and industry in this field that is so important to the future of energy in the states and worldwide major energy corporations such as shell and sasol have also provided funds and support for junior researchers from qatar to participate in this important workshop and to learn about the potential key role natural gas may play in the energy market ""besides the tutorials this workshop will be leading scientists and researches from industry and academia to share their insight and expertise on the future of natural gas in the energy market and its potential to become a major source of ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals "" elbashir said maha al mannai university collaboration manager at the qatar shell research and technology centre (qsrtc) said ""it is with great pride that qatar shell supports young researchers through collaborations with top-class academic institutions such as texas a&m at qatar we are proud to support the next generation of researchers and uphold our commitment to the qatar national vision 2030 that aims to establish a sustainable knowledge-based economy by unlocking the potential of its people"" this workshop will also highlight the importance of qatars successful experience in natural gas utilization and the lessons to be learned while boosting the us natural gas role in the fuels and energy market specifically after the shale gas discovery two short courses in the form of tutorials on the first day will cover topics such as ""natural gas monetization: technology fundamentals and the potentials"" and ""theoretical and experimental evaluation of natural gas properties"" marjo louw country president of sasol qatar said ""were pleased to support texas a&m at qatar on this initiative that highlights the strategic importance of diversifying the monetization of natural gas sasol is pleased to be a pioneer in this area working with qatar petroleum on the oryx gtl plant in qatar which is delivering value to the state of qatar and its people additionally we are delighted to support the attendance of young qataris who will benefit from access to world-leading scientists and research"" this international endeavor was co-organized by elbashir and his colleagues dr mahmoud el-halwagi (pictured right) mcferrin professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m at college station and dr kenneth hall the jack e and frances brown chair in chemical engineering and associate dean for research and graduate studies at texas a&m at qatar during the two days event the proposed tees gas and fuels research center will be launched and lessons learned from qatars experience in natural gas monetization will also be discussed qatar is home to the worlds largest facilities in gas-to-liquid (gtl) and liquefied natural gas (lng) production in addition to a well-integrated supply chain of chemicals and petrochemicals tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system about texas a&m university at qatar texas a&m university recognized as having one of the premier engineering programs in the world has offered undergraduate degrees in chemical electrical mechanical and petroleum engineering at qatar foundations education city campus since 2003 and graduate courses in chemical engineering since fall 2011 over 400 engineers have graduated from texas a&m at qatar since 2007 in addition to engineering courses texas a&m at qatar provides classes in science mathematics liberal arts and the humanities all four of the engineering programs offered at texas a&m at qatar are accredited by abet the curricula offered at texas a&m at qatar are materially identical to those offered at the main campus in college station texas and courses are taught in english in a co-educational setting the reputation for excellence is the same as is the commitment to equip engineers to lead the next generation of engineering advancement faculty from around the world are attracted to texas a&m at qatar to provide this educational experience and to participate in research activities now valued at over $159 million and that address issues important to the state of qatar"
"dr duncan j maitland has been appointed assistant agency director for commercialization for the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering announced recently ""dr maitland has a broad background as a successful faculty member and experience in developing and commercializing biomedical devices "" said banks ""his service in this capacity for tees will enhance our commercialization efforts by helping our researchers identify promising technologies and pursue their commercialization which ultimately contributes to economic development for the state of texas"" maitland currently serves as an associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and is also the director of graduate programs for the department his research focuses on novel treatments of cardiovascular disease with a focus on strokes maitlands research projects include endovascular interventional devices microactuators optical therapeutic devices and basic device-body interactions/physics including computational and experimental techniques maitland also is the group leader of the biomedical device laboratory that develops a number of interventional devices including those based on shape memory polymer (smp) smps have attracted increased attention from the scientific community for numerous applications ranging from aerospace applications to the biomedical industry"
"texas a&m technology commercialization recently presented patent awards to individuals and teams who are currently employed by the a&m system and whose inventions were granted patent protection from the united states patent & trademark office in 2013 our researchers are working diligently behind the scenes developing innovations that will help us in our everyday lives said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp ""by commercializing these advancements we are able to take their research to the marketplace where it can help the most people"" dr yue kuo the dow chemical professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering was a recipient of the 2104 innovation award while 13 individuals from tees were named patent award winners texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers honored were: dr b don russell electrical and computer engineering dr karthick muthu-manivannan electrical and computer engineering dr peng xu electrical and computer engineering dr gwan s choi electrical and computer engineering dr john c criscione biomedical engineering dr charles h culp energy systems laboratory dr david e claridge energy systems laboratory dr mark t holtzapple chemical engineering dr jun kameoka electrical and computer engineering dr hung-jue sue mechanical engineering carl l benner electrical and computer engineering sebastian taco-vasquez chemical engineering dazhi sun energy systems laboratory about the a&m system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $38 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 131 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $820 million and help drive the states economy"
the texas a&m university system offers engineering services that can help companies bring their technologies to market and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is starting a new program to provide low-cost technical assistance for small businesses in texas to address their technical challenges unlike other institutions that focus on developing their own technologies tees mission is to assist companies with technology development and commercialization as part of this technical assistance program (tap) tees and other organizations within the a&m system are offering workshops across texas for companies to learn how to use available engineering services to expand their business during the half-day workshop companies learn about the vast resources and expertise available within but not limited to the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) local small business development centers (sbdcs) and the regional centers of innovation and commercialization (rcics) along with other available resources each workshop is tailored to the surrounding area and the local available resources february 28th began the kickoff of the series of workshops and the first workshop was held in college station at texas a&m university at the end of the day companies were provided the opportunity to visit personally with subject matter experts on topics such as technical assistance intellectual property and contract agreements and small business assistance each of the companies represented made a connection with one or more of the provided resources upcoming tap workshops are scheduled for may 13th in weslaco may 14th in corpus christi and may 15th in san antonio additional workshops and locations will be available late 2014 individuals and companies interested in participating please contact dale cope at (979) 458-7477 dalecope@teestamusedu or ande brenckman at (979) 458-7552 andreabrenckman@teestamusedu
the thomas and joan read center for distribution research & education a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and part of the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university launched an industry funded large research consortium with a kick-off meeting on april 11 seventeen companies to date fund the optimizing human capital development consortium that is focused on the distribution industry each member pays a membership fee of $25 000 to participate in the consortium dr f barry lawrence leonard and valarie bruce chair and director of the read center stressed the importance and significance of the development of human capital for distributors at the consortium meeting he added that the speed at which most distribution firms can grow (profitably) doesnt solely depend on the distributors geographic reach physical assets product selection access to capital or innovative services it depends on its human resources human resources are the most significant factor in distributor success not on the balance sheet and only listed on the profit and loss statement as an expense the value of human resources within a company is often underestimated distributors have expended tremendous energy in optimizing operations with information technology facility development inventory control transportation management and so forth human resources are often left behind due to a lack of resources for training a poor understanding of the return-on- investment (roi) for human resources development and the perception that people are more expendable than other assets within the business the consortium will conduct a second kick-off meeting on august 15 2014 for companies joining between now and august this will be followed by company specific workshops between august and january 2015 the research team will then develop tools and methods for human capital assessment development and linking it to return-on-investment these tools will be delivered to the companies along with their confidential assessment during the closing meeting in april 2015 the consortium is conducted in partnership with the national association of wholesaler-distributor institute the largest distribution association in the world with more than 40 000 members this consortium is preceded by successful distribution focused consortia on pricing optimization optimizing distributor profitability optimizing sale & marketing optimizing distributor growth and market share and optimizing channel compensation the research team includes industrial distribution faculty dr f barry lawrence dr kris rana mark johnson norm clark dr jia wang (department of educational administration & human resource development within the college of education) and bharani nagarathnam associate director of the read center for more than 30 years the read center has been the leader in wholesale and industrial distribution research and education the read center is the only distribution focused research center on any university campus in the us the center conduct applied research projects consortia and technical services to the distributor and manufacturing community the center has been offering distributor sales operations and finance courses since the early 1980s each year the center conducts more than 25 professional development programs at both on-campus and off-campus locations all over the us
"the texas emerging technology fund (etf) has announced a $22 million research grant match award to a texas a&m-led consortium of texas universities the etf funds will support emerging-technology research and development activities that are directed toward the creation of an offshore wind energy industry in texas the university team is led by the texas a&m energy institutes wind energy center and includes the texas a&m dwight look college of engineerings department of electrical and computer engineering and department of aerospace engineering and the college of geosciences geochemical and environmental research group the other partner universities are the university of texas at austins center for electromechanics and department of civil engineering; texas tech universitys national wind resource center; texas a&m university - corpus christis conrad blucher institute; and the university of texas at brownsvilles school of business and department of environmental sciences ""as we move forward wind power will play a significant role in fulfilling the energy needs of the state of texas as well as the united states the consortium led by researchers at texas a&m university and the texas a&m energy institutes wind energy center is taking steps to be at the forefront of the efforts to meet the needs of the citizens of the us and this grant will help it to continue in its efforts to be the leader in wind energy technology "" said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system the etf award will be matched with a more than $1 million total investment from texas a&m the texas a&m engineering experiment station texas tech university and the university of texas as well as up to $51 million from the us department of energy (doe) to baryonyx pursuant to the us offshore wind advanced technology demonstration project in addition to the doe award and university investments the etf funds will also be matched by an approximately $133 million investment from industry members of the gulf offshore wind (gowind) consortium these partners include leading offshore wind turbine manufacturer siemens ag south texas offshore fabricator keppel amfels and uk-based offshore design engineering ltd overall more than $32 million will be invested in offshore wind energy technology development commercialization and increased capacity at the consortiums universities background information: baryonyx corporation is currently developing gowind a commercial scale offshore wind energy project to be located in cameron county texas approximately five miles off the coast of south padre island the gowind project which is slated to be online in 2016 would be the first offshore wind energy project in the united states the project will generate power during peak demand and will bring more power to a historically underserved area without the need for new long-distance transmission lines given the regulatory uncertainty surrounding tax credits for renewable energy the goal of the consortium of texas universities baryonyx and their commercial partners is to make technological advancements in offshore wind energy that will reduce the overall cost of power thereby allowing continued growth of texas wind power industry texas leads the country in onshore wind energy generation and the goal of the gowind project is to make texas the leader in offshore wind energy"
"the tees smart grid center will bring together experts in smart grid issues for a workshop april 8 at the texas a&m university memorial student center registration will open at 7:30 am tuesday in msc room 2400 the workshop will begin at 8 am with an introduction by mladen kezunovic smart grid center director and a welcome by glen a laine texas a&ms vice president for research the workshop aims to strengthen partnerships between faculty industry end-users and government agencies; expand on-going projects; and develop white papers leading to collaborative research proposals kezunovic said workshop presentations will include: ""smart grids for improved grid performance and reliability"" walter r bartel director of grid performance & reliability center point energy ""the advanced smart grid: edge power driving sustainability"" andres carvallo ceo compass management group ""doe r&d initiatives"" gilbert bindewald project manager office of electricity delivery and reliability doe energy management for buildings and other facilities four focus group sessions will be held topics are big data visualization data analytics optimization synchrophasors gps signal processing wampac communications cyber-physical security sensors embedded systems transmission distribution & renewables interfacing electricity markets: flexible load energy storage on-site generation demand-side management two panel discussions also will be held topics are: ""research needs: industry/government/university collaboration"" chair: george arnold nist; co-chair: mladen kezunovic director smart grid center tees; panelists: shay bahramirad comed; liang min lawrence livermore national laboratory; pr kumar texas a&m university ""large-scale smart grid test beds: research education training "" chair: john mcdonald ge digital energy; co-chair: chanan singh texas a&m university; panelists: haitham abu-rub texas a&m university-qatar; mark bruckner oak ridge national laboratory; slavko vasilic dnv gl energy; paul wattles energy reliability council of texas"
"the inaugural engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to three texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their research teams during the tees inaugural advisory board meeting held may 29 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more was given to dr richard j malak dr arum han and dr m sam mannan malak a tees assistant research engineer and an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering was awarded a national science foundation (nsf) grant through the emerging frontiers of research and innovation (efri) program malak and his team are working to discover new techniques for synthesizing complex 3d structures from programmable self-folding 2d elements malaks research team includes co-principal investigators dr dimitris lagoudas (aerospace engineering) dr nancy amato (computer science and engineering) dr ergun akleman (department of visualization) dr daniel mcadams (mechanical engineering) and senior personnel dr darren hartl (aerospace engineering) han also was awarded a nsf efri award for his teams proposal ""microlage lab-on-chip photobioreactor platform for genetic screening and metabolic analysis leading to scalable biofuel production hans collaborators include dr tim devarenne (department of biochemistry and biophysics at texas a&m) dr david stern (boyce thompson institute for plant research) dr jefferson tester (cornell university) and dr tzachi samocha (texas a&m-corpus christi) mannan the director of the mary k oconnor process safety center and regents professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering is the principal investigator on a five-year agreement with the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement (bsee) to lead a team of texas institutions to manage the ocean energy safety institute the group will provide a forum for dialogue shared learning and cooperative research among academia government industry and other non-government organizations in offshore-related technologies and activities that help ensure environmentally safe and responsible offshore operations tees is partnering with texas a&m university the university of texas at austin and the university of houston to manage the institute"
"experts from the national weather service texas task force 1 the texas a&m forest service the national guard american red cross the texas commission on environmental quality emergency management and the insurance industry will spend june 3-4 2014 with texas a&m researchers and partner industries to create a roadmap for using information technology to prevent prepare respond and recover from all types of flooding ""flooding is costing the us over 80 lives and $8 billion in damages each year and those numbers dont include storm surge from hurricanes "" said dr robin murphy director of the center for robot-assisted search and rescue ""texas is especially vulnerable and the texas a&m system has the right mix of engineering social science and geospatial researchers along with industry partners to make a difference"" the resulting roadmap will identify existing technologies that can be used immediately by agencies and citizens and prioritize additional research and development needs the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for emergency informatics (cei) is hosting the summer institute at disaster city® the summer institute combines invited talks with hands-on demonstrations and a mini-exercise faculty and industry participants will show off innovations in wireless technologies multi-touch devices unmanned marine vehicles and computer simulations along with unmanned aerial vehicles and 3d reconstruction software used at the washington state sr350 mudslide about the center for emergency informatics (cei): cei serves to connect members of the texas a&m family such as the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex); tees center for robot-assisted search and rescue; hazards reduction and recovery center; institute for science technology and public policy; internet2 technology evaluation center; and the teex product development center it includes emergency informatics edge® innovation center which is the nucleus for the 300-plus member industry consortium led by general dynamics the cei holds summer and winter institutes to facilitate research and development and accelerate technology adoption this will be the sixth summer institute previous institutes have been on chemical and radiological hazards terrorism and urban search and rescue"
"dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recognized staff award winners during the 2014 faculty and staff awards banquet banks presented seven staff excellence awards a new employee award a key contributor award and the inaugural engineering team award ""it is important to recognize the contributions of our staff "" said banks ""these award recipients exemplify the core values that make our university and our state agencies so special -excellence integrity leadership loyalty respect and selfless service"" receiving the staff excellence awards were: lori cardenas (engineering academic & student affairs); phaedra hopcus (harold vance department of petroleum engineering); joseph martinez (energy systems lab); sybil popham (department of computer science and engineering); theresa roberts (department of computer science and engineering); bruce veals (department of computer science and engineering); and dori wilson (department of mechanical engineering) ramona aly and bharani nagarathnam both with the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution received the new employee award and the key contributor award respectively the engineering team award was presented to the tees personnel services team of ann perez chantale deuel ninette portales nicole pottberg connie clarno and katie cates"
"dr david e claridge director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) energy systems laboratory and the leland jordan professor of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university has joined the board of directors of the continental automated buildings association ""the addition of dr claridge and texas a&m to the caba board of directors is a great asset to our organization "" said ronald j zimmer president and ceo of caba ""caba has had an enduring tradition of working with universities dedicated to commercializing energy efficient building technologies we feel the addition of texas a&m in addition with dr claridges knowledge and expertise will greatly enrich the value of the association and its membership"" claridge is internationally known for his work on energy efficiency particularly for pioneering development of existing building commissioning by leading the development of ""continuous commissioning"" which has improved energy efficiency in hundreds of large buildings including universities hospitals offices and airports with a typical payback of two years he was also a major contributor to the methods used to measure energy savings in the international performance measurement and verification protocol and ashrae guideline 14 claridge holds eight patents is author of more than 350 journal and conference papers is a fellow of asme and of ashrae and in 2011 was named an honorary international member of the society of heating air-conditioning and sanitary engineers of japan in recognition of his contributions to energy efficiency in buildings he received his bachelors degree from walla walla college and masters and phd degrees from stanford university ""i am excited to have the opportunity to represent tees and texas a&m on the caba board "" stated claridge ""caba offers an excellent forum to collaborate and share research information trends and analysis cabas goals align well with the energy system labs commitment to improving energy efficiency and the instances of building commissioning"""
"the thomas and joan read center for distribution research and education part of the industrial distribution program at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recently offered short courses in el salvador and panama a two-day short course customer stratification & pricing optimization was conducted in el salvador and panama in association with texas a&m former students from el salvador foundation the courses were attended by46participants in el salvador and31participants in panama the course was taught by dr f barry lawrence and dr esther rodriguez-silva lawrence is the leonard & valerie bruce chair professor in industrial distribution and director of the thomas & joan read center for distribution research & education rodriguez-silva is a tees assistant research professor attendees included professionals and management representatives from large medium and small national and multinational companies in these countries attending companies in el salvador included c imberton puma energy diana distribuidora zablah distribuidora nacional banco davivienda and banco agricola attending companies in panama included chevron energy agencias motta cable and wireless panama banco general credicorp petroleos delta grupo goly and industrias express ""our partnership with the industrial distribution program from texas a&m has allowed us to bring excellence in education to central america and panama "" said felipe torres president of the texas a&m former students from el salvador foundation ""we have impacted more than 350 executives over the past four years and will continue to do so in a much broader range in the years to come"" the thomas and joan read centers professional development programs are designed to increase distributors competitive advantage and profitability read center faculty and researchers focus on relevant and actionable education through proven methods and tools the read centers educational programs are based on research consortia and applied industry projects in various lines of trade the knowledge generated by these industry-funded consortia projects and professional development programs enhances the undergraduate and graduate education by bringing real-world distribution problems case studies and examples to the curriculum for more information please visit http://readcentertamuedu"
the turbomachinery laboratory part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station hosted the 34th annual turbomachinery research consortium (trc) meeting this week at pebble creek country club in college station texas during the annual meeting researchers staff and students from the turbo lab and the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university present research reports and proposals based on these presentations trc members choose the direction of trc-funded research they get advance access to the results of that research and to valuable turbomachinery-testing software developed for trc members through this support trc enhances undergraduate and graduate education in turbomachinery-related engineering at texas a&m during the 2013-2014 school year trc membership dues funded 19 research projects and are expected to fund the same for 2014-2015 project funding includes support for one graduate research student per project trc is an organization of major turbomachinery developers and users who have joined with the turbo lab to find answers to important questions about turbomachinery performance and reliability the consortium was organized in 1981 to provide a framework for turbomachinery developers and users to combine to support research into important research questions that affect their businesses acting together its members support research into problems of internal flow (fluid mechanics heat transfer gas dynamics) and structural reliability (materials structures vibrations) -- that affect turbomachinery performance and efficiency there are currently more than 40 member companies that make up trc for more information on trc or other turbomachinery laboratory events visitturbolabtamuedu
"a $100 million fund at the texas a&m university system known as the chancellors research initiative (cri) is credited for successfully attracting four world renowned scholars and researchers to elevate the engineering research portfolio: christodoulos a floudas professor of engineering and applied science princeton university; en pistikopoulos professor of chemical engineering imperial college of london; alan needleman professor of materials science and engineering in the college of engineering university of north texas; and peter m rentzepis professor of electrical engineering and computer science university of california at irvine ""these are superstars in the academic community in engineering research respected by their peers as members of the prestigious national academies and the caliber of scholar that every university aggressively courts "" said chancellor john sharp ""the cri seeks to find outstanding researchers who can not only produce amazing work but also bring in some much needed funding to support that work"" leveraging vast experience in developing and implementing large multi-investigator federally funded programs each brings strength in key areas: floudas and pistikopoulos in the area of process control and optimization; needleman in computational materials and rentzepis in ultrafast spectroscopy and x-ray lasers ""the impact that these scholars will have on our program is far-reaching "" said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering ""each brings expertise in key research areas which will attract other influential scholars and high quality students to our program the cri is an investment in our future that will pay enormous dividends in ways we cannot even calculate at this point"" dr christodoulos a floudas will join the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university as a chair professor in february 2015 also he will be appointed as the director of the texas a&m energy institute dr floudas is a member of the national academy of engineering floudas is among the top leaders in the world in the area of process control and optimization and conducts interdisciplinary research including contributions in energy healthcare and other areas relevant to the texas economy ""dr floudas will anchor our efforts to create an excellence cluster in multi-scale systems engineering for energy and the environment "" said dr nazmul karim head of the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering ""building this excellence cluster will require hiring several faculty with specific expertise in addition to dr floudas and one of these senior faculty has been identified as dr en pistikopoulos who is currently a faculty member at imperial college in london"" dr en pistikopoulos also among the top leaders in the world in the area of process control and optimization and conducts interdisciplinary research including contributions in energy and healthcare he will join the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering in november 2014 as a chair professor dr pistikopoulos is a fellow of the royal academy of engineering ""their presence in the department will elevate its stature in the academic community making the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering one of the best departments in the country and perhaps in the world their presence will attract the very best students to the campus and the intellectual conversation will be elevated to levels not seen before "" said karim dr alan needleman will join the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university as a tenured chair professor with a joint appointment as distinguished research professor in the texas a&m engineering experiment station in 2015 dr needleman is an internationally known researcher in the area of computational modeling of materials dislocation dynamics structure mechanics and theoretical and applied mechanics he is a member of the national academy of engineering ""dr needlemans accomplishments and agenda are synergistic with several strategic initiatives at texas a&m: national security transportation and energy which have been identified among the grand challenge areas for the university "" said dr ibrahim karaman materials science and engineering department head ""in addition dr needlemans emphasis on computational materials science with strong links to the materials genome initiative will take texas a&ms high performance computing environment to new horizons"" dr peter m rentzepis joined the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m in may 2014 and holds the title of professor and holder of the tees distinguished research professorship he is a member of the national academy of sciences and has many honors to his credit including the irving langmuir award in chemical physics rentzepis is a pioneer in the field of ultrafast spectroscopy especially its use in the study of transition states in chemical and biological reactions including photosynthesis he also developed an ultrafast table-top x-ray laser which will have numerous applications to biology chemistry and material science ""we are fortunate to have dr rentzepis join our faculty as he brings tremendous experience and leadership from his tenure as department head at bell labs and presidential chair and professor of chemistry and electrical engineering at the university of california irvine "" said chanan singh interim head of electrical and computer engineering ""his wealth of knowledge and experience from industry and academia will greatly enhance our research efforts in lasers and life sciences"" about the a&m system the a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $38 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies two service units and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 131 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $820 million and help drive the states economy contact: steven b moore (979) 458-6023 syscomm@tamusedu about the dwight look college of engineering with more than 360 tenured/tenure-track faculty members and more than 12 000 students the look college is one of the largest engineering schools in the country ranking third in undergraduate enrollment and ninth in graduate enrollment the college is ranked seventh in graduate studies eighth in undergraduate programs and second in research expenditures among public institutions by us news & world report with seven of the colleges 13 departments ranked in the top 10 about the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as an engineering research agency of texas tees performs quality research driven by real-world problems; strengthens and expands the states workforce through educational partnerships and training; and develops and transfers technology to industry tees partners with academic institutions governmental agencies industries and communities to solve problems to help improve the quality of life promote economic development and enhance educational systems tees a member of the texas a&m university system is in its 100th year of engineering solutions contact: pam green (979) 845-4960 p-green@tamuedu"
"the institution of chemical engineers (icheme) and texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) have signed an agreement paving the way for a suite of new process safety products and services the memorandum of understanding (mou) which was signed in april will see both organizations commit to collaboration in process safety education cpd products and strategic leadership and direction the texas a&m engineering experiment station is home to the mary kay oconnor process safety centre which houses one of the worlds biggest process safety libraries and is regarded as a leader in process safety education the mou was signed at the american institute of chemical engineers 2014 spring meeting in new orleans by icheme chief executive david brown and sam mannan director of the mary kay oconnor process safety centre ""this is good news for icheme and good news for texas a&m but importantly this is good news for chemical and process engineers with an interest in process safety "" said mannan added brown ""texas a&m and icheme are both recognized as international leaders in the provision of process safety products and services this new agreement will help us to share information more freely and cooperate on a range of new projects"" the collaborations projects and priorities were announced at ichemes hazards 24 which is widely recognized as the worlds leading process safety conference"
"the institute for infectious animal diseases (iiad) a department of homeland security (dhs) science and technology center of excellence in partnership with the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station has developed a mobile certificate of veterinary inspection (cvi) application to support veterinary practitioners submitting animal health certificate records from the field the technology was developed as part of the institutes dhs funded business continuity project and in close coordination and collaboration with state animal health officials (sahos) in colorado and kansas the mobile application was modeled after and builds upon the ecvi pdf form developed by the sahos in these states the ""icvi"" ipad app is currently available for free download from apples app store and provides an easy-to-use touch-screen interface for digitally entering animal health certificate data iiads icvi strives to expand the toolbox of capabilities available to veterinary practitioners allowing them to easily submit electronic animal health certificates or store that information within the application for forwarding when data connectivity becomes available this real-time information sharing is an alternative to email or web-based systems and helps improve communication between veterinarians and state animal health offices by supporting certificate submission from the field in addition to providing a mobile interface for cvis the end-user has the ability to print paper-based forms directly from the mobile application submitted cvis can also be automatically and/or manually imported into state animal health information systems click here to read the original story"
texas a&m engineering had a strong presence at the 3rd annual national innovation summit and showcase june 16th - 18th the event was held in conjunction with the national sbir/sttr conference and the 17th annual techconnect world conference the national innovation summit is the worlds largest showcase of industry-vetted new technologies that are ready for commercialization; the summit is in support of the white house and congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives as a university partner representatives from the texas a&m engineering experiment station texas a&m transportation institute texas a&m engineering extension service and the texas a&m system technology commercialization office were able to attend one-on-one meetings with industry representatives from around the world in order to discuss future partnerships and collaboration opportunities the national innovation summit also provided an opportunity for companies to showcase their ideas for new technologies texas a&m engineering also had an exhibit booth at the showcase allowing for industry representatives to connect with and learn more about each of the agencies that were present as a university partner up to 20 texas a&m innovators had the opportunity to submit their technologies into the overall innovation database where they were reviewed by corporate and federal agency partners prior to the show thermal expansion solutions llc represented by dr james monroe and dr ibrahim karaman was selected to attend the summit and give an oral presentation about its new technology known as allvar more than 15 companies expressed interest in meeting with monroe and karaman to learn more about their innovation thermal expansion solutions llc is a startup organization focused on creating scalable and stable allvar (all-variant) thermal expansion alloys that may be used in a wide variety of industries at an affordable rate to learn more about allvar visit wwwallvarnet companies or individuals interested in learning more about the state engineering agencies or the technology commercialization office within the texas a&m university system should contact dr dale cope at (979) 458-7477 dalecope@teestamusedu or ande brenckman at (979) 458-7552 andreabrenckman@teestamusedu
"the food protein research and development center a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is hosting the 10th annual practical short course the course ""water issues & technologies: process water wastewater and desalination "" is scheduled for oct 15-17 at the hilton college station & conference center the objectives of the three-day course include: training attendees in basics principles characteristics and operations of system technologies costs case studies and cleaning and sanitizing techniques; establishing a network of academia and industry experts; and demonstrating equipment in operation and familiarizing attendees with practical aspects of pretreatment technologies membrane filtration processes and post treatment technologies and new technologies"
"president barack obama recently announced that dr kenneth l peddicord was one of four individuals nominated to serve as a member of the nuclear waste technical review board peddicord who is the director of the nuclear power institute and a professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has served on the board since being appointed in 2012 ""our nation will be greatly served by the talent and expertise these individuals bring to their new roles "" obama said ""i am grateful they have agreed to serve in this administration and i look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead"" peddicord has held a number of positions at texas a&m including director of the texas engineering experiment station (tees) which has since been renamed the texas a&m engineering experiment station senior associate dean for research and vice chancellor for research and federal relations"
"dr narasimha reddy electrical engineering professor and tees research engineer has been named assistant agency director for national and global initiatives for the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering announced recently ""it is crucial in todays global economy for tees and the state of texas to position itself as a leader in technology development and implementation "" said banks ""dr reddy has a long history of successful collaborations with industry partners and i know he will be able to contribute greatly to tees success in the future"" reddy is currently the holder of the jw runyon jr 35 professor i in the department of electrical and computer engineering he earned his phd in computer engineering from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign in 1990 his research interests focus on computer networks storage systems multimedia systems and computer architecture reddy has received numerous awards and honors including the prestigious national science foundation (nsf) career award and he is a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee)"
"the inaugural texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) external advisory board texas a&m university system met recently on the texas a&m campus vice chancellor and dean of engineering dr m katherine banks has charged the 39-member board to: advise tees on its strategic direction; serve as a focus group for tees program direction and opportunities; provide expertise in the current economic landscape to help tees understand trends drivers and priorities shaping customers operations; and collaborate on shared business issues strengthening the relationship between tees and its customers the board will meet again in october members of the board are:alok das (air force research laboratory); brad beitler (fmc technologies); pascal joly (airbus); warren ""pete"" miller (former undersecretary of energy); todd grove (american bureau of shipping); gerry griffin (golden spike company); ernest leyendecker (anadarko petroleum); gregory powers (halliburton); john pellegrino (army research laboratory); mark potter (hewlett packard); mario ruscev (baker hughes); hal hornburg (hmh associates llc); leo christodoulou (boeing); zachary lemnios (ibm); ram shenoy (conocophillips); steve altemus (intuitive machines); deborah wince-smith (council on competitiveness); michael beck (lockheed martin); larry graviss (eagle engineering group); jay schnitzer (mitre corporation); richard meserole (fluor corporation); bob chalker (nace international); james phillips (nanomech); dennis koehl (south texas project nuclear operating co); lauri hansen (nasa/johnson space center); susan crumrine (southwest research institute); david fuller (national instruments); jim osullivan (technip usa); morad atif (national research council canada); germán curá (tenaris); peter matic (naval research laboratory); andres alcantar (texas workforce commission); keith graf (office of the governor of texas); jeff trent (translational genomic research institute); cindy taylor (oil states international); stephen mcnair (pioneer natural resources); brian stoner (rti international); stein rasmussen (sbm offshore); najib abusalbi (schlumberger)"
"the zero robotics middle school summer program held its final competition aug 15 on board the international space station (iss) at the johnson space center in houston the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the dwight look college of engineering and the texas partnership for out of school time were the statewide sponsors for the inaugural year of participation in the state of texas kealing middle school in austin was named regional winner and placed second in the national competition guest speakers for the event included astronauts michael fossum 80 and dr gregory chamitoff professor of practice in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m texas was one of nine states selected to participate in the zero robotics middle school summer program which was initially developed as part of a partnership between the massachusetts institute of technology nasa and the massachusetts afterschool partnership the final competition and the statewide summer program were coordinated by co-directors dr dave hyland professor in the department of aerospace engineering and dr joseph morgan professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and program manager katharine leysath with educational outreach programs can you imagine the impact on a middle school student to be told she is receiving specialized training so she can someday be involved in designing and testing software for space exploration said jean hall a robotics leader from the spacebots team from wichita falls texas and then to be given not just a long-term dream but also the immediate gratification of standing in the space center in houston and watching a code she helped develop actually operate a satellite on the space station her ambitions are going to quickly outgrow the boundaries of earth"" zero robotics is a programming competition in which the robots are spheres (synchronized position hold engage and reorient experimental satellites) inside the international space station the competition begins online as teams program the spheres to solve a challenge finalists are selected to compete in a live championship aboard the iss following several phases of virtual competition in a simulation environment that mimics the real spheres"
a member of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations polymer technology centers research consortium has opened a flagship oil and gas material technology center in houston element materials technology a member of the advancing performance polymers in energy applications (appeal) consortium is the nations largest independent materials testing and product qualification testing provider the polymers lab portion of the houston facility will promote further close collaboration with the polymer technology center which is led by dr hung-jue sue linda and ralph schmidt professor and a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the sites state-of-the-art testing facilities offer clients significantly extended capabilities in fracture mechanics engineering critical assessment nondestructive testing and corrosion testing of ferrous metals non-ferrous metals alloys thermoplastics composites and elastomers (pictured from left: dr tim bremner tees research engineer co-director of appeal research consortium and chairman of the board of directors for the center for advancement of non metallics in energy sectors; charles noall president and ceo of element; and dr rod martin executive vice president--oil & gas of element)
today the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) celebrates a century of engineering innovation and public service since its establishment on august 25 1914 reaching this 100 year milestone is exciting and significant as few of the traditional experiment stations still exist today said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees the key to tees longevity and relevance has been its ability to remain flexible and adapt to the constant evolution of technology and remain committed to a culture of innovation tees mission has changed little since its inception and today focuses on performing quality research to address societys needs supporting the states workforce through education and training and developing and transferring technology to industry tees research first focused on building roads for the newly created automobile but rapidly expanded to meet the growing needs of society today tees has established leadership engineering innovation in energy systems and services safety and security healthcare materials and manufacturing information systems and sensors and education and training tees administers more than 4 600 research projects with more than 2 700 industry partners supports small businesses with technology challenges and contributes to the development of a trained technology workforce the agency also has 17 regional partners at institutions of higher education in texas and affiliations with community colleges tees operates a statewide network of more than 30 research centers across the state of texas to find out more about more read more about tees history related link: coverage from the eagle
dr mladen kezunovic director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station smart grid center recently gave a briefing on capitol hill before key members of the appropriations energy and commerce homeland security and science committees as well as a texas delegation that attended the event during the briefing kezunovic was able to highlight texas a&ms expertise in smart grid research and discussed the need for the united states to execute a large-scale test bed kezunovic is the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m as well as the site director of the power engineering research center
"a proposal submitted by dr mladen kezunovic was selected for seed grant funding from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) for two years kezunovic the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering received the award for his proposal ""energy cyberphysical systems: experimental open source ecosystem for synchrophasor research"" his co-pis on this project are drs chanan singh (ece) pr kumar (ece) erick moreno-centeno (ise) alex sprintson (ece) radu stoleru (cse) and le xie (ece) the overall objective of the project is offering a realistic research infrastructure named the experimental open source ecosystem (expose) for synchrophasor research for implementation and evaluation of new synchrophasor-based applications the preliminary results are expected to include: creating an initial pool of test data; developing algorithms for precise synchrophasor estimation to be compared with the existing phasor measurement unit (pmu) calculations; and evaluating performance of pmus and quality of synchrophasor data further funding will be attracted by targeting the national science foundation industry (ibm ni alstom) government labs (lawrence berkeley national laboratory (lbnl) oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) national renewable energy laboratory (nrel) and the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m this project has been funded through the ""interdisciplinary seed grants for strategic initiatives"" announced by texas a&m engineering in partnership with the texas a&m university division of research kezunovic who also is the director of the tees smart grid center currently serves as the site director of the power engineering research center (pserc) and before joining texas a&m in 1986 he worked for westinghouse electric corp among his many honors kezunovic has been named an ieee fellow and a cigre fellow he has published more than 450 papers in journals and conference proceedings and was invited to give more than 100 lectures worldwide and is listed as a distinguished speaker of the ieee pes while at texas a&m he has been the principal investigator on more than 100 research projects and supervised more than 40 graduate students"
in july teess nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) graduated its first class of students in the summer certificate in nuclear security program sponsored by the us state departments partnership for nuclear security (pns) the certificate program is an eight-week intensive course designed to produce nuclear professionals who will lead efforts to reduce the security risks associated with nuclear and radiological materials while ensuring the peaceful use of nuclear energy is available to all participants earned academic credit by completing three university courses taught by nsspi faculty the program also included tours of nuclear and radiological facilities executive seminars and security-focused simulations the course is intended to raise the awareness of nuclear security as a key requirement for all nuclear and radiological systems and instill a culture of nuclear security in nuclear professionals working in industry research facilities government or academia this years class included participants from the nigerian nuclear regulatory authority the national atomic energy commission in yemen the jordan atomic energy commission the indonesia nuclear energy agency and pandit deendayal petroleum university in india
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) was recently awarded a $100 000 grant by the texas workforce commission (twc) to invest in summer youth camps focused on science technology engineering and math (stem) tees grant will provide 75 scholarships for three camps including the bioforce academy where campers learn about careers in health sciences biotechnology research medical discoveries and biomanufacturing at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing administered by twc the effort is part of the governors summer merit program which aims to inspire texas youth to pursue stem-related careers the camps introduce campers to one or more of six industry clusters: advanced technologies and manufacturing aerospace and defense biotechnology and life sciences information and computer technology petroleum refining and chemical products and energy these camps allow students to explore stem disciplines outside the classroom while showing them the possibilities of a career in those fields governor rick perry said the texas economy is becoming more and more technologically advanced and our continuing success depends on the skills these bright young scientists and engineers will bring to the workforce
intuitive machines and the center for autonomous vehicles and sensor systems (canvass) which is within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) have created an integrated team through a technical assistance agreement to develop an unmanned aerial system (uas) for agricultural applications this agreement is the first of its kind for tees and it is an excellent example of combining academic research with commercial development efforts the agreement between intuitive machines and tees will allow intuitive machines to test its uas sensor system in an agricultural application as one of tees research centers canvass will integrate the sensor system into its uas platform flight test the sensor system in an agricultural application and provide independent analysis of intuitive machines uas sensor system the uas sensor system has the potential to be used in agriculture applications such as crop health assessment scanning and soil analysis intuitive machines the canvass team and texas a&m engineering resources will be an integrated team working together throughout this project to develop requirements observe/conduct/assess the flight performance review resulting data and analyze results a congressional mandate and compelling industrial market forces are driving the rapid development of the uas industry uas capabilities are universally recognized as the next great step in aviation history with applications across numerous industrial sectors such as agriculture oil and gas wildlife management law enforcement and disaster response as an engineering design and development think tank intuitive machines provide products and solutions that employ a flight proven lean engineering development model their rapid iterative design-build-test capability significantly lowers development costs and shortens the development cycle while increasing the probability of success for any project by leveraging state-of-the-art engineering tools and practices intuitive machines is integrating multiple sensors into embedded systems using a flexible software architecture this architecture can be adapted to both diagnostic and operational instrumentation for real-time data acquisitions on uas platforms in a variety of industries tees technical assistance program (tap) forms partnerships with private industry that encourage innovation and economic growth in texas tap links small businesses in texas to the broad spectrum of engineering and technology research capital within the texas a&m university system and its partner network statewide it provides low-cost technical assistance for small businesses to find solutions to their technical challenges such as increasing operational efficiency developing new market strategies for their technologies evaluating and improving manufacturing processes and facilitating partnerships that encourage innovation intuitive machines is a company that brings to bear a very unique array of talent analytical services and computational tools to solve significant challenges across multiple industries their individual heritage and aerospace expertise forges a corporate dna that is work hardened in problem solving complemented by strong values of commitment technical excellence and serving humanity learn more about intuitive machines at: http://intuitivemachinescom
cementing its reputation as an international leader in research texas a&m university has been invited to become the first international academic partner in siidetey the mexican state of yucatáns expansive research consortium texas a&m is the first university outside of mexico to be asked to join the high-level research consortium and will have a physical presence in the siidetey research park in yucatán siidetey is comprised of national and regional institutions such as the universidad nacional autonóma de mexico cinvestav the mexican aerospace agency the mexican national institute of mathematics and yucatan state university among others we are honored to be the yucatáns first international partner in siidetey said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system it is a testament to our world-wide reputation for research excellence the governor of the state of yucatán rolando zapata bello announced the invitation in college station during the signing of a memorandum of agreement (mou) between yucatán and texas a&m the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m agrilife dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees said this unique collaboration will benefit students researchers and industry partners we have been engaged in promising dialogue with the yucatán leaders and continue to discover new areas for collaboration initial collaborations between yucatán and texas a&m were limited to engineering areas such as water use and coastal dynamics logistics and energy but target areas in the future will expand to include agriculture education architecture veterinary medicine geosciences and marine biology we chose texas a&m to become our first international partner because of their tradition of excellence in academics and research said governor zapata bello having a strong relationship with a university of the reputation of texas a&m is a win-win situation we have great students and researchers to share and we look forward to many high impact discoveries by our joint research teams texas a&ms partnership with yucatán known as the yucatán initiative has evolved into a multidisciplinary binational and cross-college collaboration supported by texas a&m and yucatáns secretary of education to expand on the success of the partnership dr zenon medina-cetina associate professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m was announced as director of the yucatán initiative which will be housed in texas a&ms research park the governors visit is the result of a partnership that has developed over the past year between texas a&ms dwight look college of engineering and the state of yucatán as part of the canieti-yucatán program 250 yucatán-sponsored students will attend texas a&m next summer to conduct research with faculty members to further build partnerships with mexico the texas a&m system has created a new office of mexico relations the director of this new program will focus on creating and enhancing collaboration with mexico for texas a&m system universities and agencies dr maria hernandez-ferrier who served as the inaugural president of texas a&m university-san antonio since 2008 will assume the role of director in january 2015
"dr tracy anne hammond a researcher with the texas a&m experiment station (tees) associate professor and charles h barclay jr 45 college of engineering faculty fellow in the department of computer science and engineering and director of the sketch recognition lab in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and other university collaborators are establishing the texas a&m university coalition for healthy active living (tamu-chal) the planned coalition has garnered support from clinical partners at baylor scott & white health in temple and a seed grant from tees tamu-chal will engineer technologies and techniques for data collection and analyses facilitate new forms of health research and analyses and enable novel lines of health interventions monitoring and promotion for targeted populations of at-risk individuals "" said hammond tees the college of engineering the texas a&m university division of research the college of geoscience and the texas a&m health science center school of public health have joined forces in this effort hammond said she envisions that tamu-chal and the new coalition will provide the perfect opportunity to integrate multiple perspectives and disciplines to improve public and individual health health care system and delivery and the value of health care solutions several pilot studies are currently in development including testing the efficacy of health tools for assessing health behaviors improving patient-physician interactions and enhancing healthy lifestyle behaviors another project attempts to automatically recognize a users exercise patterns and suggest specific changes to a persons daily activity a third study is examining innovative ways of testing environmental impacts on the spatial and temporal patterning of physical activity the multidisciplinary team includes hammond; co-pi dr marcia ory dr yan hong and dr samuel towne school of public health; dr daniel w goldberg department of geography; and dr samuel forjuoh director of research in the department of family and community medicine baylor scott & white health"
former navy captain james pettigrew has been named director of operations for the ocean energy safety institute (oesi) oesi is a collaborative initiative between the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) mary kay oconnor process safety center partnering with texas a&m university the university of texas at austin and the university of houston the institute provides a forum for dialogue shared learning and cooperative research among academia government industry and other non-government organizations in offshore-related technologies and activities that help ensure environmentally safe and responsible offshore operations jim pettigrew comes to us with three decades of worldwide maritime experience including operations risk assessment and program management said dr m sam mannan oesi principal investigator as we develop and mature oesi while striving toward environmentally safe and responsible offshore operations i believe jim has the experience drive and leadership abilities to be a great asset to the oesi team and our partners in the navy pettigrew worked predominantly in operational oceanography surface warfare and information dominance he served most recently as chief of staff for the commander of naval meteorology and oceanography there he was responsible for the direction and leadership of a team of 150 people executing a $300 million annual budget the operations of 4 000 personnel worldwide the nations master clock two world-class supercomputing facilities and six military oceanographic survey ships pettigrew graduated from texas a&m in 1983 with a bachelors degree in ocean engineering he received his master of science degree from the naval postgraduate school find more information about oesi visit: http://oesitamuedu/
the texas a&m university system board of regents recently approved the establishment of the center for autonomous vehicles and sensor systems (canvass) the center which was established in response to the ubiquitous future of unmanned autonomous systems will be part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) canvass will enable interdisciplinary research to solve issues of significant importance to texas and the united states including: networked operations health adaptive mission management and on-board decision making in complex gps-denied outdoor environments navigation in global navigation satellite system denied environments operations in space field-based and large-scale human-machine interactions and agricultural cyber-physical systems the mission of canvass is to unify research and development of autonomous vehicles and systems for the purpose of better serving our state and country research by canvass will follow a progression from basic research at technology readiness level (trl) 1 (basic technology research) to trl 7 (technology demonstration) canvass will initially be composed of researchers from 18 laboratories throughout tees aligned within three technology areas integrated autonomous systems; sensors information and controls; and test and evaluation canvass will connect the relevant research talents from these labs to develop multidisciplinary teams that pursue large integrative research projects in addition canvass will develop a new test site and demonstration capability the riverside range the 900-acre riverside range will make tees one of only a handful of major university systems worldwide with a large-scale instrumented outdoors laboratory located on campus canvass complements the lone star unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence and innovation a joint texas a&m university-corpus christi and tees center by focusing basic research and testing for all types of unmanned systems (air land and water)
the ocean energy safety institute (oesi) will convene top academic and research experts from various companies universities and organizations throughout the world for an unprecedented think-tank workshop to address the development of an ocean energy safety research roadmap for the 21st century the workshop will be held october 7-8 at the memorial student center on the campus of texas a&m university one of the primary missions for the institute is to identify gaps that may be present within and between areas of ocean energy research now and into the future said jim pettigrew oesi director of operations this workshop will be a great opportunity to bring together diverse members of the ocean energy research realm and candidly discuss how to identify and address these gaps areas expected to be discussed include emerging technologies risk management and safety management systems and operating in the arctic environment presenters will include the center for offshore safety and the national academy of sciences as well as a number of companies from the offshore oil and gas industry additional information on the workshop can be found on the oesi website
"dr mladen kezunovic director of texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university recently published a book as part of an initiative funded by the department of energy (doe) kezunovic along with co-authors sakis meliopoulos (georgia tech) vaithianathan venkatasubramanian (washington state university) and vijay vittal (arizona state university) wrote the book application of time-synchronized measurements in power system transmission networks the focus of the book is an overview of the new most critical power system applications during disturbances: state estimation voltage stability oscillation monitoring transient stability and fault location the book which was published by springer in the series of power electronics and power systems was created through the ""future grid initiative"" funded by the doe under a grant to the national science foundations power systems engineering research center (pserc) kezunovic currently serves as the site director of pserc"
texas a&m university at qatar has established a new center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) after approval of the texas a&m university system board of regents on sept 4 the tees gas and fuels research center (gfrc) is a multidisciplinary research center led by texas a&m at qatar involving 19 professors from texas a&ms main campus in college station and the qatar campus and represents different engineering programs including chemical engineering petroleum engineering materials engineering and mechanical engineering dr mark h weichold dean and ceo at texas a&m at qatar said texas a&m at qatar is proud to launch this center in qatar because it will create new knowledge that has direct bearing on one of the pillars of qatars energy and industry sector the state-of-the-art gas and fuels research conducted at this center will integrate key qatar industries and internationally respected faculty from both the branch campus here in doha and texas a&ms main campus in college station through this collaborative effort with tees texas a&m at qatar will utilize its world-class doha-based laboratory facilities and expertise to export knowledge created here to the us and beyond the centers key objective is to lead the integrated research activities and the resources of texas a&m to support shale gas and natural gas exploration production and monetization activities both in the united states and in qatar the center of excellence involves leading scientists and researchers utilizing state-of-art research labs and facilities it will also support the us shale gas evolution and will be a part of texas a&m at qatars research strategic plant to support qatar national vision 2030 dr nimir elbashir gfrc director and associate professor of chemical engineering at texas a&m at qatar said the gas and fuels research center is a major initiative from texas a&m university to take the lead in the natural gas era texas a&m at qatar played a critical role in the establishment of this center because of the tremendous support received from the industry and from qatar foundations research funding agencies to build world-class research facilities and infrastructure that supports natural gas exploration treatment and processing the center provides a unique opportunity for leading researchers from the two campuses of texas a&m university to collaborate in supporting qatar and us industry and governmental institutions to build the future natural gas utilization technologies elbashir continued one of the centers main objectives is to train highly skilled engineers and technical staff to support the future of gas processing technologies and to educate the community about the role natural gas will play as a clean source of energy and fuels the launch of gfrc was envisioned during texas a&m at qatar gas and fuels research initiative (gfri) and a two-day workshop on natural gas monetization that took place at in montgomery texas in march 2014 dr eyad masad executive associate dean at texas a&m at qatar said texas a&m university at qatar continues to contribute to qatar national vision 2030 and this center supports qatars efforts in diversifying the economy by creating high value products from natural gas it will help foster the oil and gas industry diversification through the development of by-product industries such as polymers plastics recycling industrial polyolefins natural fibers and packaging it is set to become a training hub for researchers and graduate students in research areas of significant interest to qatars economy from the state of qatar we will be leading scientists and researches from industry and academia to share their insight and expertise on the future of natural gas in the energy market and its potential to become a major source of ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals dr mahmoud el-halwagi gfrc managing director and mcferrin professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m said this is a critical time for the gas and fuels industry the recent substantial discoveries of shale gas in the us are creating numerous opportunities and needs it is expected that the growth in shale-gas industry in the us will lead to investments exceeding $100 billion over the next decade the state of texas is regarded as the ‘energy capital of the world and the state of qatar is considered to be the ‘gas capital of the world therefore it is a great advantage to have texas a&m university both in qatar and college station to provide leadership through gfrc especially in areas such as research education and outreach for the gas and fuels industry el-halwagi added that the center will play a unique role in developing and adapting basic science and engineering to creative state-of-the-art pathways for gas and fuels processes that are economically attractive environmentally friendly and safer to operate we look forward to collaborating with talents and leaders in academia industry and government in a true partnership to achieve advancement and make a difference in technology and to help educate the next generation of leaders in the field of gas and fuels he said tees gas and fuels research center has just started and lessons learned from qatars experience in natural gas monetization will be a major focus as qatar is home to the worlds largest facilities in gas-to-liquid (gtl) and liquefied natural gas (lng) production in addition to a well-integrated supply chain of chemicals and petrochemicals
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system and the japan atomic energy agency (jaea) a comprehensive research and development institution in nuclear energy have signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) with the purpose of exchanging information about robotics for the decommissioning of the fukushima daiichi nuclear power station representatives from jaea were in college station aug 13 to sign the mou with tees which could pave the way for collaborative work on creating facilities for the test and evaluation of robots sensors and other cyber-physical systems as well as training robot operators for the decommissioning of the fukushima daiichi nuclear power station three tees research centers were involved in the initial collaboration with jaea: the center for robot assisted search and rescue (crasar) the nuclear security science and policy institute and the mary kay oconner process safety center the idea for the facility originated from a visit to college station that dr robin r murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering and director of crasar arranged for japans vice minister of the ministry of economy trade and industry in february 2013 she recommended that they create a facility similar to the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city which is what jaea is working to accomplish
wonmuk hwang texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher and associate professor in texas a&m universitys department of biomedical engineering is shedding light on how collagen grows at the molecular level and helps form a diverse set of structures in the body ranging from bone tendon blood vessels skin heart and even corneas employing a computational model as well as a newly developed computer program has been able to distinguish molecular-level differences in complex collagen networks formed under different conditions his findings are featured as the cover story for the scientific journal physical review letters collagen while popularly known for its cosmetic uses is the most abundant protein in the human body as the main structural protein in connective tissues it is found in tendons ligaments and skin its also abundant in corneas cartilage bones blood vessels and teeth hwangs research is investigating how collagen forms such a diverse range of materials specifically hes examining how collagen fibrils assemble into ordered networks on surfaces the surface assembly of collagen he says is particularly relevant to biomedical engineers who are looking to use collagen-based coatings on implantable medical devices in order to prevent the devices from being rejected by the bodys immune system we are comparing the differences in collagen-formed structures hwang said what are the real differences between these molecules from different parts of the body what differences exists in collagen that has formed bone and collagen that has formed the cornea if you study this at the molecular level you can begin to see the differences our research aims at providing a quantitative detailed analysis of these differences as part of his research hwang found that collagen fibrils assemble into an intricate network of triangular shapes in which larger shapes are filled with smaller ones iteratively this type of structured network is characterized by scientists as fractal he explained fractal patterns he says arent unique to collagen; in fact they occur throughout nature such as in river networks clouds seashore lines and mountains similar networks even occur among the light-carrying nanofibers of optical-based electronics to explain this widely observed phenomena hwang developed a theory and computational model for the network formation process that allowed him to accurately predict and simulate the growth process hwang tested his models against actual collagen networks with the aid of a computer program he developed known as cafe or computer-aided feature extraction cafe can recognize individual fibrils in images of complex collagen networks hwang explains by combining both the model and cafe it is possible hwang says to precisely distinguish different networks formed under slightly different experimental conditions similar to distinguishing between two paintings that may look alike but have subtle differences thats an important milestone in scientists efforts to understand collagen and its versatility with this program [cafe] we can measure filament lengths and orientations in a complex image hwang explained this is important because once we have this quantitative information we can have a direct comparison with simulations we can simulate a network with the parameters and qualities of a real collagen network when it comes to collagen formation we need to understand what happens at the molecular level and we need to be able to do this in a measurable way quantitatively to better understand how collagen grows and differentiates the guided framework that has resulted from both this theory of collagen growth as well as the validation of our simulations provided by the cafe program is helping achieve this goal
dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr debjyoti banerjee the leland t jordan career development professor in mechanical engineering in recognition of his many accomplishments and future potential the endowed development fellowship appointment was effective sept 1 banerjee is an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering banerjee received his phd in mechanical engineering from the university of california los angeles he received three masters degrees and was invited to four national honor societies he attended the indian institute of technology (iit) kharagpur for his bachelors degree he received the morris foster fellowship (2007-2008) from the department of mechanical engineering the tees select young faculty fellowship (2008-2009) from the dwight look college of engineering and was designated as a faculty fellow at the mary kay oconnor process safety center at texas a&m university
dr sunil chirayath associate director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute traveled to universitas gadjah mada (ugm) in yogyakarta indonesia to speak at the workshop on the enhancement of nuclear engineering curriculum with nuclear security subjects the workshop was sponsored by the us state departments partnership for nuclear security and was aimed at enhancing ugm educators understanding of nuclear security ugms department of engineering physics is the only university in indonesia offering a nuclear engineering curriculum therefore they are ready to play an important role in the development of nuclear security and nuclear security culture in indonesia especially in human resources development the workshop also had three participants from one of the hospitals in indonesia that handles a large number of radioactive sources for diagnosis and treatment workshop sessions focused on introducing nuclear security issues to these faculty members so that the design of their nuclear engineering courses can be informed by a basic knowledge of nuclear security topics covered included inter alia threats legal framework nuclear security culture information security integration of nuclear safety security and safeguards (3s) planning nuclear security at state and facility level and also best practices in nuclear security education
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and tech mahindra ltd have signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) to open a joint innovation center for computer science in houston the mou will enable texas a&m university to expand its presence in the computer science industry the initial focus will be on big data analytics and cloud and mobile computing research tech mahindra will spearhead development of the center as well as provide funding for potential research ""we are excited to partner with texas a&m university in building the innovation center and leveraging the local talent pool as they take a leadership role in the global computer science industry "" said bk mishra senior vice president of tech mahindra ""between the talent at texas a&m and our strong commitment to state-of-the-art research and development i strongly believe that this collaboration can help develop the next level of solution offerings for our customers especially in the rapidly developing areas of big data analytics and cloud and mobile computing"" the partnership will provide students at texas a&m an opportunity to develop industry skills through involvement in tech mahindra research and development projects and allow tech mahindra to build a local pool of trained computer science developers researchers and engineers to service its global network of clients as well as facilitate cooperative initiatives and innovative computer science research projects ""this is a great development for both texas a&m and tech mahindra said dr nk anand associate director of tees as a research-focused university we are always looking for new research opportunities for our computer science students especially in big data analytics and cloud and mobile computing this center will allow them to gain real-world experience in a global industry setting while allowing tech mahindra access to our brightest stars and our lab capabilities"
"dr perla balbuena a researcher with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) holder of the gpsa professorship and a professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering has been awarded $990 000 from the department of energy balbuena will lead a project to research design improvements and optimization of lithium-sulfur batteries in their application as plug-in electric vehicles (pev) batteries her research will explore a phenomenon called the internal shuttle effect within the li/s battery and evaluate a multitude of other impacts to the batterys chemistry balbuenas research project is one of 19 sponsored by president obamas ev everywhere grand challenge that seeks to equalize affordability and convenience in pevs for consumers in comparison to current gasoline-powered vehicles our faculty members are consistently at the forefront of emerging technologies and cutting-edge research said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system dr balbuenas research is an important step in developing more efficient methods to power electric vehicles which can in turn lower the cost so that more people can afford to drive these environmentally friendly vehicles balbuena offered more background information on the complexities of li/s batteries and an analysis of why such a study is helpful economically and environmentally during a recent question and answer session q: how do li/s batteries differ from batteries in electric vehicles balbuena: currently electric vehicles are mostly powered by li-ion batteries which are very expensive and provide a limited driving range (approximately 100 miles based on a single charge) li/s batteries are attractive due to their low cost and high theoretical specific energy density which would significantly extend the driving range and make the cost of the vehicle affordable compared with that of gasoline q: are li/s batteries better for the environment balbuena: li/s batteries hold a significant promise due to their high theoretical specific energy density in addition [sulfur] is an attractive option because it is inexpensive and has low toxicity it also has low weight and is relatively abundant in the earths crust meaning that li/s batteries would be neither prohibitively expensive nor take a large toll on the environment q: describe the internal shuttle effect you indicate will be at the center of your research how does this effect support li/s batteriesbalbuena: a battery is composed of three parts with very different chemistries: two solid electrodes each in contact with a liquid (electrolyte) phase and the liquid electrolyte phase at the interface between each of the solid electrodes and the liquid electrolyte there is an electrochemical reaction taking place that ultimately releases electricity on the other hand the liquid electrolyte is the medium where lithium ions (charged particles) travel from one electrode to the other during charge and discharge of the battery in the lithium-sulfur battery in addition to lithium ions other products of the reactions shuttle from one electrode to the other when the battery is working this effect is characteristic of the li/s electrode/electrolyte interfacial chemistries and needs to be understood and controlled in order to ensure efficient and long-lasting battery performance q: the goal of the ev everywhere grand challenge is to ""make the us automotive industry the first to produce pevs that are as affordable and convenient as todays gasoline-powered vehicles by 2022 how will your research impact this end goal balbuena: development of the li/s couple into a commercially viable battery has been hampered by poor reversibility during discharge/recharge this means that the electrode materials and their storage capacity suffer a degradation effect this is in part due to low electronic conductivity in the sulfur electrode another problem is the shuttle effect of the reaction subproducts that modifies the chemistries in both electrodes our research will tackle these problems in two ways: first a detailed theoretical analysis at the atomistic and mesoscopic levels will provide a detailed understanding of the reactions and the effect of the microstructure of the materials on the battery performance; second this knowledge will allow us to guide our synthesis experiments to develop improved electrode and electrolyte materials and a much more efficient battery this is a team effort where the theoretical computational components investigated by my group and that of dr partha mukherjee (assistant professor in texas a&ms department of mechanical engineering) will be integrated with the experimental studies and tests from the group of dr vilas pol (associate professor in purdue universitys department of chemical engineering) q: what are other ways li/s batteries can be utilized balbuena: if successful these batteries may be utilized in other applications thus substituting the current li-ion technologyq: what are you most looking forward to in this project balbuena: it is very exciting to contribute with theoretical/computational analysis to the development of practical technologies that may help society in many ways q: do you have any other thoughts to add balbuena: it is important also to emphasize the educational aspects of the project: a formation of new generations of scientists and engineers [that are] able to use theoretical/computational tools as the basis of design of materials that provide effective solutions to crucial areas such as energy water medicine and environment"
dr robin r murphy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for robot assisted search and rescue (crasar) and raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering has identified nine ways robots can protect ebola workers murphy also cautions that military and civilian robots often do not directly transfer to disaster situations and more work is needed to identify the use cases for robots murphy who is a pioneer in the field of rescue robotics has been trained for biological response and has participated in medical disaster exercises with the us marines corps chemical biological incident response forces making her a perfect fit for the project which she has been working on since september murphy has deployed ground aerial and marine robots to 16 disasters including the world trade center hurricane katrina the japanese tsunami and the fukushima daiichi nuclear accident crasar will be hosting one of four concurrent workshops with the white house office of science and technology policy/national robotics initiative on safety robotics for ebola workers on nov 7-8 the texas a&m workshop will focus on learning from medical and humanitarian relief experts and the invitation-only workshop will have a second day focused on developing use cases and requirements suitable for industry to better understand how their technologies might be used the workshop will also identify what technological barriers require further research investments the real issue to me is what are the real needs that robots can play in such a complex event said murphy according to murphy the ways ground aerial and marine robots can protect ebola workers include: mortuary robots to respectfully transport the deceased reducing the number of health professionals within the biosafety labs and field hospitals detection of contamination disinfection telepresence robots for experts to consult/advise on medical issues train and supervise worker decontamination to catch accidental self-contamination and serve as rolling interpreters for the different languages and dialects physical security for workers waste handling humanitarian relief reconnaissance about crasar: crasar is a tees center whose mission is to improve disaster preparedness prevention response and recovery through the development and adoption of robots and related technologies its goal is to create a community of practice throughout the world for rescue robots that motivates fundamental research supports technology transfer and educates students response professionals and the public crasar is a dynamic mix of university researchers industry and responders for more information contact dr robin r murphy by email: murphy@csetamuedu or by phone: 979-845-8737
finding solutions to todays complex problems in areas such as energy health and manufacturing requires researchers to think outside the boxand move outside their comfort zonesto collaborate with colleagues in other disciplines to support and encourage faculty to engage in interdisciplinary research the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has awarded $15 million in seed grants to 10 research teams at texas a&m university the work we are doing at texas a&m is transforming lives but in order to tackle the engineering challenges before us we must first change our view of how we approach our research said dr dimitris lagoudas associate vice chancellor of engineering and deputy director of tees these seed grants are our way of helping our faculty build outside relationships and support interdisciplinary teams so they can start work on creating mechanisms to solve the large-scale problems facing the world today the tees seed grants provide researchers with enough funding to build a team and gain momentum so they can move forward with their research as part of the proposal process research teams were required to explain the big problems their research would address and how they planned to attract outside funding once the seed grants two-year period ended historically faculty prefer to work within their own discipline said dr costas georghiades associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers for tees but there is much we can learn from our colleagues in other disciplines and by working together we can use our collective expertise to find solutions to some of the most complex problems facing the world today these seed grants are intended to incentivize faculty to work on such multidisciplinary projects a cross-university team reviewed 47 submitted proposals and selected 10 for funding the funded research projects are: collaboration for modeling and characterization of cementitious materialsprincipal investigator (pi): dr zach grasley department of civil engineering co-principal investigators (co-pis): dr kr rajagopal department of mechanical engineering; dr eyad masad texas a&m university at qatar; dr jay walton department of mathematics; and dr philip park civil engineering research focus:the team is focusing on one of the engineering grand challenges for the 21st century: restoring and improving urban infrastructure at the heart of this infrastructure is cementitious materials (building materials) which are the most widely consumed material in the world after water however these materials for infrastructure have not changed much in over 200 years the objective of this project is to generate proof of concept for the application of computational material science and fundamental material model development to transform cementitious materials development ultimately enabling the design of sustainable civil infrastructure collaboration for microbiosystem innovation design and science (midas) pi: dr arum han department of electrical and computer engineering co-pis: dr arul jayaraman department of chemical engineering; dr byung-jun yoon electrical and computer engineering; dr thomas a ficht college of veterinary medicine and biological sciences; and dr paul de figueiredo dr james e samuel dr robert c alaniz and dr koichi kobayashi texas a&m health science center (tamhsc) research focus: researchers have long recognized the importance and economic impact of microbial communities but the understanding of the principles underlying their formation and sustenance is limited namely because existing technologies cannot adequately address the formidable technical challenges associated with investigating these unique and rich biological resources midas researchers hope to advance the study of microbial communities through the development and use of microsystems technologies (eg microbial-communities-on-a- chip lab-on-a-chip) that enable high-throughput accurate flexible and low cost analysis and control of microbial communities in the laboratory materials genomics of phase transforming multi-functional materialspi: raymundo arroyave department of materials science and engineering co-pis: dr ed dougherty electrical and computer engineering; dr ibrahim karaman materials science and engineering; dr rodolfo aramayo department of biology; and dr turab lookman los alamos national laboratory research focus:the materials genome initiative (mgi) proposes the reduction in cost/time associated to materials development through the integration of high-throughput experiments simulation and informatics the team will develop preliminary research on the development of novel informatics tools information infrastructure advanced high‑throughput computational methods and state‑of‑the‑art experimental synthesis and characterization to understand the relationships between the structure and the properties in phase‑transforming multi‑functional materials for sensing actuating and energy conversion applications energy cyberphysical systems (ecps): experimental open source ecosystem (expose) for synchrophasor researchpi: dr mladen kezunovic electrical and computer engineering co-pis: dr chanan singh dr pr kumar dr alex sprintson and dr le xie electrical and computer engineering; dr erick moreno-centeno department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr radu stoleru department of computer science and engineering research focus:the development of the smart grid requires new technologies and techniques be integrated with existing infrastructure for monitoring control and protection of the electric grid however these solutions must be tested before being integrated into our electric grid this project will create a testbed for this integration at a level that does not currently exist this testbed housed in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center will be available to researchers around the world both for onsite and virtual use establishment of a cytotherapeutic discovery pipelinepi: dr roland kaunas department of biomedical engineering co-pis: dr carl gregory tamhsc; dr jun kameoka electrical and computer engineering; dr akhilesh gaharwar dr melissa grunlan and dr daniel alge biomedical engineering; and dr brian saunders veterinary medicine and biological sciences research focus:the research team is looking at bone and cartilage repair and will establish collaborations between biomedical and electrical engineering regenerative and veterinary medicine and orthopedic surgery to explore the development of advanced manufacturing of injectable materials that mimic the osteogenic niche for bone regeneration currently of the 13 million yearly bone fractures in the united states about 10 percent fail to repair this is caused by many reasons including widespread diabetes or osteoporosis which interferes with healing of bones or joints after injury nanomaterials and devices in extreme environmentspi: dr xinghang zhang mechanical engineering co-pis: dr haiyan wang electrical and computer engineering; dr lin shao department of nuclear engineering; dr indranil roy schlumberger research focus:the mission of this team is the revolutionary design and discovery of nanostructured metallic ceramic and semiconductor materials that can be applied in extreme environments the three major research thrusts are: nanomaterials and devices under highly corrosive environments in collaboration with schlumberger; nanomaterials and devices under extreme radiation environments in collaboration with two of doe national labs; and nanomaterials under high magnetic field this research will have application to local oil and gas industries which tend to reply on advanced materials for high pressure high temperature corrosive environments big data enabled proactive alarm management of power control equipmentpi: dr yu ding department of industrial and systems engineering co-pis: dr erick moreno-centeno industrial and systems engineering; dr pr kumar and dr narasimha reddy electrical and computer engineering; and dr bani mallick and dr jianhua huang department of statistics research focus: the electric power grid is more than 100 years old with the increase of technology electricity demand has increased and integration of renewable generation sources has added complexity to the system these and other factors have led to the move to a smart grid to provide the electricity power needs for the 21st century however in a system this complex many problems which trigger alarms can occur alarm management is about detecting anomalous events as early and as accurately as possible however current alarm management is reactive in nature and suffers from the so-called alarm flood problem: the simultaneous activation of many alarms most of them false overwhelming the decision function of the alarm management system this problem requires an interdisciplinary team with big data capability to address challenges in alarm management of mission critical power control equipment design and implication of novel in situ techniques for studies of advanced functional materials for energy applicationspi: dr hayian wang electrical and computer engineering co-pis: dr xinghang zhang and dr andreas polycarpou mechanical engineering; dr ibrahim karaman materials science and engineering research focus:the development of new materials for energy harvesting and storage applications is at the forefront of scientific research the ability to study materials in situ at nanoscale or at atomic scale under various environments will lead to breakthrough in understanding of fundamental materials mechanics physics and chemistry issues in these materials the materials of interest in this proposal include metallic materials of interest to oil and gas industry phase transforming materials such as shape memory alloys and multiferroic materials; materials for battery applications and tribological coatings in silico modeling of microbiota-gut epithelial cell interactions for predicting dietary supplement impact on gut healthpi: dr ulisses braga-neto electrical and computer engineering co-pis: dr xianoning qian electrical and computer engineering; dr robert chapkin department of nutrition; and dr ivan ivanov veterinary medicine and biological sciences research focus:this project seeks to generate a co-regulatory model of gut microbial actions by looking into the microbial communities and their interactions with gut epithelial cells such a model would be a valuable tool in identifying critical dietary risk factors in colorectal cancer (crc) which several epidemiology studies have suggested is an important risk factor this team will develop the theoretical framework for modeling the complex gut ecosystem; implement this framework as a software package in the proposed in silicostudies; and validate the models using real data sets from an ongoing human diet supplementation trial collaboration for healthy active livingpi: dr tracy hammond computer science and engineering co-pis: dr samuel towne dr yan hong and dr marcia ory tamhsc; dr daniel goldberg department of geography; and dr samuel forjuoh scott and white health temple research focus:the collaboration for healthy active living will develop test and deploy new techniques and strategies that exploit this new ecosystem of data services and sensors to improve public and individual health the core mission is to engineer technologies and techniques for data collection and analyses facilitate new forms of health research and analyses and enable novel lines of health interventions monitoring and promotion for targeted populations of at-risk individuals
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center has announced an alliance with petrotechnics the leading provider of operational performance and predictive risk management solutions we are looking forward to petrotechnics contribution to the centers strategic direction said dr sam mannan director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center members such as petrotechnics bring technical experience and extensive knowledge of process safety best practices and are instrumental to advancing the centers vision the mary kay oconnor process safety center develops and promotes safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies with the goal of minimizing losses within the processing industry for more than 25 years petrotechnics has helped companies in hazardous industries around the world reduce operational risk and improve the productivity of their operations petrotechnics north american president mike neill will sit on the centers steering committee bringing more than 35 years of oil and gas and petrochemical engineering experience petrotechnics will also participate in the annual mary kay oconnor process safety centers international symposium hosted in association with the institution of chemical engineers which will be held oct 26-30 in college station texas it is an honor to support the mary kay oconnor process safety center said neill at petrotechnics we believe connecting the impact of process safety management performance to daily operations in a practical manner is essential for hazardous industries our goal in working with the mary kay oconnor process safety center is to provide practical ways to see understand and manage the impact of operational risk across the chemical processing industry this enables organizations to change the safety-productivity dynamic in all levels of their organization to make the right decisions in terms of the effectiveness efficiency and safety of their operations
"dr john valasek director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for autonomous vehicles and sensors and professor in the department of aerospace engineering and dr thomas ferris assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering have been awarded a two-year research project by the federal aviation administrations (faa) weather technology in the cockpit (wtic) program titled general aviation weather alerting the project is one of four under the wtic program that are being researched by member universities of the faas center of excellence for general aviation called the partnership to enhance general aviation safety and sustainability (pegasas) the six-university wtic team is led by valasek with four separate projects being conducted by team members texas a&m university purdue university the ohio state university western michigan university southern illinois university and kent state university valasek says that this is a classic problem of the role and proper use of technology general aviation (ga) is currently the least safe segment of aviation "" he said ""and while there are usually a number of causal factors which combine to cause most accidents weather is a significant causal factor many accidents and incidents that occur in weather are preventable ""despite the recent availability of low cost but high-performance hand-held devices with a near real-time weather data capability such as the myradar app for android and apple devices and the foreflight program for ipad the ga accident rate per 100 000 flight hours are either flat or trending upward within certain segments of the community in recent years ga pilots are taking these devices with them but are still getting into trouble so clearly the weather information is there but there is a problem with how pilots are interpreting it using it or not using it this issue is what the faa wants to get to the bottom of and fix what this means is refining and demonstrating resolutions to develop specification parameters for part 91 wtic minimum weather service (minwxsvc) that will hopefully reduce the accident rate due to weather the goal of the wtic general aviation weather alerting research project is to assess the feasibility of developing agile low latency and intuitive cockpit weather alerts to identify hazardous weather prior to encountering it the focus is on meteorological (met) information gaps and shortfalls that contribute to the safety risk that may be mitigated through the use of a more effective weather alerting functions the project will be executed in two 12-month phases in conjunction with researchers lori j brown geoff whitehurst and william g rantz at western michigan university a simulator study is being conducted during phase i this fall using the real-time engineering flight simulator in valaseks vehicle systems & control laboratory (vscl) in the aerospace engineering department the study will use a group of 50 ga pilot participants of varying skill levels and experience ranging from those who have just earned their private pilot license to those with thousands of flight hours the results of the phase i study will lead to a more extensive flight training device assessment in phase ii using low medium and high time pilots throughout 2015 at western michigan university human factors are the heart of this study according to ferris this project offers an exciting opportunity to apply human factors engineering design to make a real impact in the quality and timeliness of pilot decisions regarding navigation prior to encountering adverse weather conditions "" he said ""in addition to improving access to reliable and useful weather information the effective design of weather alerts and associated displays – which must capture attention appropriately and be accurately interpreted by pilots while they conduct several other concurrent tasks – is critical to aviation safety both in current flight operations and as we look ahead to nextgen air transportation systems"" ga pilots are being solicited as participants in the flight simulator study funded by the faa the study involves studying the decision-making processes of pilots and how mental workload affects those processes individuals are eligible to participate in this study if they are at least 18 years old and have a valid private pilots certificate and have flown in the last six months participants will fly two scenarios in the vscl flight simulator during which they will verbally enunciate their thought processes as they make flight-related decisions mental workload will be assessed through physiological measurement techniques (such as heart rate measures and galvanic skin response) as well as standard subjective workload surveys individuals who have questions or are interested in learning more about this research should contact dr thomas ferris at pilotstudytamu@gmailcom or 979-458-2340"
in september the nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) hosted a delegation of students and faculty from the tokyo institute of technology (tokyo tech) the visit was the second academic exchange held at texas a&m university between students at texas a&m and the dojo nuclear security education program at tokyo tech who are studying nuclear nonproliferation and security issues texas a&m students have previously attended two international symposia on nuclear safety security and safeguards conducted by tokyo tech in japan the visit consisted of a series of student presentations on relevant research projects being conducted at both institutions they also toured laboratory facilities at texas a&m including the fuel cycle and materials laboratory the nsspi nuclear security and emergency response laboratory the department of nuclear engineerings undergraduate teaching laboratories and the nuclear science center tokyo tech faculty and students participated in a radiological event exercise at the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city facility under the guidance of nsspi faculty member dr craig marianno in this exercise a 30 mille-curie size cs-137 source was placed on rubble pile 1 (rp1) a pile of concrete and rebar containing a series of interior tunnels that is part of the disaster city training compound using health physics instrumentation the students had to map out the radiation field and determine the best entry point into the pile the source was then placed inside the tunnel network of rp1 the students had to determine the safest tunnels to use in the pile to locate an area of low but elevated activity once in this area students used radio-isotopic identifiers (riids) to locate and identify a set of hidden sources the exercise exhibited the actions a similarly equipped emergency response team must achieve in order to safely address such a radiological event tokyo tech faculty discussed future research and academic activities with faculty and staff from nsspi and faculty in the department of nuclear engineering they discussed the possibility for joint research projects and hosting future tokyo tech doctoral students at texas a&m during their required 12 month-long internships
texas a&m engineering experiment station researchers are part of a team working on a national science foundation-funded project researching asynchronous partial differential equations (pde) algorithms for turbulent flows at exascale the principal investigator is dr diego donzis assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering co-principal investigators are dr raktim bhattacharya associate professor and dr sharath girimaji professor aerospace engineering; and dr nancy amato unocal professor and dr lawrence rauchwerger professor department of computer science and engineering future exascale computing systems will be available to study important compute-intensive applications such as multi-physics multi-scale natural phenomena and engineering systems typically modeled accurately by pdes a prime example is turbulence at high reynolds numbers typically found in natural and engineering systems which comprise an extremely wide range of spatial and temporal scales and has thus became a grand challenge in scientific computing however many challenges exist that must be overcome before exascale systems can be utilized effectively these include communication between processing elements as well as global synchronizations both of which will likely be a main bottleneck when millions of billions of processing elements are utilized in a simulation for this project the team will develop novel exascale numerical schemes for pdes especially those describing turbulent flows that exploit asynchrony from the mathematical to the software level these will be based on widely used finite differences compact differentiation and spectral schemes asynchrony offers better performance but also introduces errors in the solution the teams schemes will be able to trade-off accuracy and performance in a quantitative and predictable manner a feature thought to be critical at exascale their approach includes rigorous mathematical studies of stability and accuracy which will also provide a framework for the development of new schemes and quantify its uncertainty as well as the development of specific elements in a scalable library for parallel computing to enable portable implementations on current and future machines the tools techniques and simulation data in this project will be integrated in the principal investigators educational efforts through graduate mentoring undergraduate research and as material for courses they teach in high-performance computing fluid dynamics and dynamical systems
a record-breaking 6 200 people registered for the recent 43rd turbomachinery and 30th international pump users symposia which was organized by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations turbomachinery laboratory and the texas a&m university system the event was held sept 22 – 25 at the george r brown convention center in houston registered attendance exceeded the 6 000 mark for the first time in event history since 2012 the number of attendees has increased by 13 percent the annual symposia also attracted a record-number of exhibiting companies and booths more than 340 leading companies from the turbomachinery and pump industries displayed full-size equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends the symposias technical program included of 13 short courses 18 lectures 22 tutorials 27 discussion groups and 21 case studies led by industry experts from around the world topics included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals the turbomachinery symposium began in 1971 and the pump symposium began in 1984 in 2011 the symposia were combined and are now held jointly every fall in houston the pump & turbo symposia has become a staple event for industry professionals and leading companies built on a history of success this annual event promotes professional development technology transfer peer networking and information exchange among industry professionals for more information on pump & turbo 2014 including the full technical program list exhibiting company list and more email info@turbo-labtamuedu proceedings from previous symposia are available free to download online http://turbolabtamuedu/proc/ the technical content from pump & turbo 2014 will be added to this collection in march 2015
the aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) a research center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station recently renewed a memorandum of agreement with the us federal aviation administration (faa) the agreement authorizes funding for faa participation in avsi projects for an additional five-year period avsi is an international research cooperative of leading aircraft manufacturers systems suppliers government organizations and research universities the faa has been a liaison member of avsi since 2003 avsi projects supported by the faa include research into the challenges posed by use of modern complex microprocessors and other commercial off the shelf (cots) electronic devices in safety critical aerospace applications and reliability of avionics in severe aerospace environments the faa also actively participates in the avsi system architecture virtual integration (savi) project this project is investigating technologies necessary to enable virtual integration of aircraft systems in order to reduce the errors traditionally found during physical integration the project is developing a standard virtual integration process that will allow integrators and multiple suppliers to integrate and test models in an architecture-centric system-modeling environment such technologies are necessary to manage the development of increasingly complex aircraft the faas participation ensures that certifiers will understand these technologies as they are being developed and continue to assure the safety of the aircraft they certify
its never too early to engage children in science technology engineering and math (stem) in fact studies show the earlier the better an innovative program is training prekindergarten through fifth grade educators in school districts in the valley how to do it in an easy to use hands-on series of classroom modules that appeal to children while meeting and exceeding state-mandated educational requirements to remain competitive in the global marketplace we must significantly increase the number of stem graduates we produce said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) early exposure to engineering as a career path is critical and this particular approach ignites the imagination through hands-on experiential learning while helping students of all ages understand how engineering is at work in everything we touch in the world around us during two separate workshops 85 assistant superintendents math science and stem coordinators and teachers experienced hands-on standards (hos) stem in action learning modules designed and packaged to appeal to kids and developed by early education experts in engineering mathematics and science teachers are given tools to enable the students to develop critical problem-solving skills in even the earliest learners said dr johannes strobel director of educational outreach programs dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and tees one of the co-developers of hos stem in action for instance one module has first graders design shoes that have stronger grip students explore the connection between the natural and the human-made worlds by designing better hiking shoes using nature for inspiration teachers are able to engage students in a real-world stem experience that is easy to implement and fun to teach young children are naturally inquisitive about the world around them said belinda hinojosa coordinator for elementary science in the mission consolidated independent school district and a participant in the workshop they touch feel experiment and create; attempting to make sense of how things work the hand2mind learning modules presented by dr strobel provide active learning opportunities that satisfies the curiosity of the young mind at a pivotal stage this active learning results in the building of confidence and the belief that they (children) are capable learners and designers of their world
a newly developed material that molds itself to fill gaps in bone while promoting bone growth could more effectively treat defects in the facial region says a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researcher who is creating the shape-shifting material the research by dr melissa grunlan tees faculty fellow and associate professor in texas a&m universitys department of biomedical engineering is detailed in the scientific journal acta biomaterialia working with colleagues at texas a&m and rensselaer polytechnic institute grunlan has created a polymer foam that is malleable after treating with warm saline allowing it to precisely fill a bone defect before hardening into a porous sponge-like scaffold that promotes new bone formation the team envisions the material as a treatment for cranio-maxillofacial bone defects – gaps in bone occurring in the head face or jaw areas these defects which can dramatically alter a persons appearance can be caused by injuries birth defects such as cleft palates or surgical procedures such as the removal of tumors grunlan says in order to repair these defects the polymer foam developed by grunlan her team acts as a scaffold a temporary structure that supports the damaged area while promoting healing by allowing bone cells to migrate into the area and repair the damage tissue ultimately the scaffold dissolves leaving behind new bone tissue she explains try as hard as we do to create artificial materials to replace damaged or diseased tissues it is nearly impossible to match the properties of native healthy tissue – and so the whole idea behind tissue engineering is that if we can restore native-like healthy tissue that will be better than any artificial replacement grunlan said a problem she adds is directing that process in these areas where there is a critical bone defect in these types of instances where large gaps exist the body doesnt have the ability to heal the defect with new bone tissue growth; we have to help it along and that is what our material is designed to do key to grunlans material is its malleability after brief exposure to warm saline (140 degrees fahrenheit) allowing surgeons to easily mold the material to fill irregularly shaped gaps in bone once a defect is filled the material cools to body temperature and resumes its stiff texture locking itself in place she says this self-fitting aspect of the material gives it a significant edge over autografting the most common treatment for these types of bone defects grunlan notes autografting involves harvesting bone from elsewhere in the body such as the hip and then arduously shaping it to fit the bone defect in addition to its obvious limited availability the bone harvested through autografting is very rigid making it difficult to shape and resulting in a lack of contact between the graft and the surrounding tissue grunlan says when this occurs complications can arise for example a graft can inadvertently dissolve through a process known as graft resorption leaving behind the defect she says another therapy involves filling the defect with bone putty but that material can be brittle once it hardens and it lacks the pores necessary for bone cells to move into the area and repair the tissue grunlan notes by tweaking the polymer scaffold through a chemical process that bonds individual molecular chains grunlan and her team overcame that issue and produced a sponge-like material with interconnected pores they also coated the material with a bioactive substance that helps lock it into place by inducing formation of a mineral that is found in bone she adds the coating grunlan explains help osteoblasts – the cells that produce bone – to adhere and spread throughout the polymer scaffold think of it as a sort of boost to the materials healing properties thus far the results have been promising; after only three days the coated material had grown about five times more osteoblasts than uncoated versions of the same material grunlan says in addition the osteoblasts present within the scaffold produced more of the proteins critical for new bone formation the team plans to continue studying the materials ability to heal cranio-maxillofacial bone defects by moving testing into preclinical and clinical studies
internal bleeding is a leading cause of death on the battlefield but a new injectable material developed by team of researchers from texas a&m university and the massachusetts institute of technology could buy wounded soldiers the time they need to survive by preventing blood loss from serious internal injuries the potentially life-saving treatment comes in the form of a biodegradable gelatin substance that has been embedded with nano-sized silicate discs that aid in coagulation once injected the material locks into place at the site of the injury and rapidly decreases the time it takes for blood to clot – in some instances by a whopping 77 percent says akhilesh gaharwar assistant professor of biomedical engineering at texas a&m and member of the research team the teams findings are detailed in the scientific journal acs nano and supported by the us army research office though its still in early testing gaharwar envisions the biomaterial being preloaded into syringes that soldiers can carry with them into combat situations if a soldier experiences a penetrating incompressible injury – one where it is difficult if not impossible to apply the pressure needed to stop the bleeding – he or she can inject the material into the wound site where it will trigger a rapid coagulation and provide enough time to get to a medical facility for treatment he says the time to get to a medical facility can take a half hour to an hour and this hour is crucial; it can decide life and death gaharwar says our materials combination of injectability rapid mechanical recovery physiological stability and the ability to promote coagulation result in a hemostat for treating incompressible wounds in out-of-hospital emergency situations gaharwar says unlike some injectable solutions which pose the risk of flowing to other parts of the body and forming unintended and potentially harmful clot formations the material designed by gaharwar and his colleagues solidifies at the site of the wound and begins promoting coagulation in the targeted area whats more it accomplishes this gaharwar explains without the need for applied pressure separating it from other types of wound treatments such as tourniquets patches and sealants most of these penetrating injuries which today are the result of explosive devices rupture blood vessels and create internal hemorrhages through which a person is constantly losing blood gaharwar notes you cant apply pressure inside your body so you have to have something that can quickly clot the blood without needing pressure in order to engineer the material gaharwar and his fellow researchers went about modifying a substance known as a hydrogel hydrogels are biodegradable materials used in a number of biomedical applications because of their compatibility with the body and its processes by inserting two-dimensional nanoplatelets into the hydrogel the team was able to tweak the mechanical properties of material essentially they manipulated the material so that it could be injected into the body and then regain its shape once inside the body – something necessary for locking itself in place at the wound site gaharwar explains the use of two-dimensional materials gaharwar says represents a new direction in biomedical engineering two-dimensional materials are ultrathin substances with high surface area but a thickness of a few nanometers or less think of a sheet of paper but on a much smaller scale for example a sheet of paper is 100 000 nanometers thick; gaharwars nanoplatelets are one nanometer thick
gaharwar and his colleagues employ two-dimensional disc-shaped particles known as synthetic silicate nanoplatelets because of their shape these platelets have a high surface area he explains the structure composition and arrangement of the platelets result in both positive and negative charges on each particle these charges gaharwar explains cause the platelets to interact with the hydrogel in a unique way specifically the interaction causes the gel to temporarily undergo a change in its viscosity when mechanical force is applied much like ketchup being squeezed from a bottle this change allows the hydrogel to be injected and regain its shape once inside the body gaharwar explains in addition to changing the mechanical properties of the hydrogel these disc-shaped nanoplatelets interact with blood to promote clotting gaharwar says noting that animal models have shown clot formation occurring in about one minute as opposed to five minutes without the presence of these nanoparticles animal model he adds also have demonstrated the formation of life-saving clot formations when the enhanced biomaterial was used these 2d silicate nanoparticles are unprecedented in the biomedical field and their use promises to lead to both conceptual and therapeutic advances in the important and emerging field of tissue engineering drug delivery cancer therapies and immune engineering gaharwar says encouraged by its results the team plans on further enhancing the biomaterial so that it can initiate regeneration of damaged tissues through the formation of new blood vessels gaharwar says the result he adds could be a two-pronged wound treatment – one that not only aids in damage control but also assists the bodys natural healing process contact: akhilesh gaharwar assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university at (979) 458-5540 or via email: gaharwar@tamuedu or ryan a garcia at (979) 847-5833 or via email: ryangarcia99@tamuedu
"the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for robotic-assisted search and rescue (crasar) with funding from the center for emergency informatics and the texas a&m engineering extension services (teex) product development center recently held two days of robotics workshops specifically geared toward medical disasters the first days activities were hosted by crasar and held at the national center for therapeutic manufacturing the day was separated into two portions the first was a simulcast of shared presentations with the other three sites and brainstorming as part of the planning workshops on safety robotics for ebola workers for the white houses office of science and technology policy national robotic initiative the texas a&m workshop on robotic automation and cyber physical systems for medical response to disasters was held during the second portion of the day and provided additional discussions and brainstorming on general domestic medical response these covered the state of the practice in department of defense robots and casualty evacuation systems that can be repurposed lessons learned so far in using robots at the fukushima daiichi decommissioning (university of tokyo) and opportunities for community recovery (texas a&m hazards reduction and recovery center) the day concluded with a reception and a keynote talk by andrew natsios from texas a&ms bush school of government and public service who served as administrator of usaid for several years the infectious disease response workshop hosted by caleb holt and the teex product development center was held at the teex emergency operations training center/disaster city® complex the second day various aspects of medical response were the emphasis of the day and are included in many of the teex courses taught a major portion of the day was spent demonstrating the current practices in medical response by walking participants through various scenarios including a field hospital and showing how contaminated waste is stored and over-packed and how first responders equipment and vehicles are decontaminated the major takeaway was that robots do exist that could be immediately repurposed now to protect ebola health workers but how robots fit into the medical response enterprise is as important as what the robots can actually do said dr robin murphy raytheon professor and director of crasar ""it was an honor to be one of the four sites hosting a workshop with the white house office of science technology and policy and it is another example of how texas a&m is a leader in emergency informatics and field robotics murphy said"
texas a&m university at qatar launched the smart grid center extension in qatar at an event for local industry and stakeholders on nov 12 the smart grid center extension in qatar enables making smart grid a reality in qatar and worldwide electric energy is key to every economy and for societal prosperity across the globe the smart grid effort aims to transform this critical infrastructure using computer-based remote control and automation the smart grid integrates electricity and information and communication infrastructures to produce electricity more efficiently and reliably as well as cleanly and safely for the environment the center strives to become a reference point and a key player in the field of smart grid in the community and in the region working toward ensuring energy security the center trains engineering students and professionals in electric energy-related concepts and technologies in qatar and helps with technology transfer in qatar to benefit the economy it will help integrate electricity and information and communication infrastructures to produce electricity more efficiently and reliably as well as cleanly and safely for the environment the smart grid center is working to solve pressing energy issues while meeting the needs of future generations his excellency engineer essa bin hilal al- kuwari president of qatar general electricity & water corporation (kahramaa) attended the event at texas a&m at qatar engineering building the event was also attended by a number of experts faculty students and governmental dignitaries speaking at the occasion he al- kuwari said that the establishment of such specialized focused center is aligned with qatar national vision 2030 and a step ahead in implementing kahramaas vision and strategy the center will work to incorporate all efforts related to the field to build a platform for the smart infrastructure not only in the electricity grids but also for water telecommunication and transportation as well he said the center is very much aligned with the part related to performance technological innovation and environmental sustainability in kahramaas mission statement he added dr mark h weichold dean and ceo at texas a&m at qatar said texas a&m at qatar is happy to celebrate another milestone with the launch of the smart grid center as a part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station the smart grid center works toward the goal of transforming the electrical grid infrastructure to meet the demands of the 21st century and the centers interdisciplinary team will work to make smart grid a reality in qatar as well as worldwide this center is a part of texas a&m at qatars efforts to meet the pressing challenges of qatars growth and development by providing research facilities and expertise available nowhere else in the region we are grateful to our industry partners in qatar and to our texas a&m colleagues in college station texas for their invaluable support dr mohammad khaleel executive director of qatar environment and energy research institute (qeeri) said the qatar environment and energy research institute performs research and technology development in solar energy energy storage and smart grid qeeri will work with texas a&m university at qatar in close partnership with kahramaa to develop solutions for a smart grid in qatar by enabling reliable resilient cost effective efficient and flexible integration of solar energy with the grid and providing solutions for off-grid farms kahramaa has already joined hands with one of the worlds leading utilities in the smart grid field (iberdrola the spanish utility) as a pilot project to analyze kahramaas network and study the opportunity in applying smart grid during his speech he eng al- kuwari thanked the institution for their efforts and being given the opportunity to chair the steering committee of the center he vowed full support to the center in achieving its goals and objectives the event also featured a detailed presentation on the center by dr haitham abu-rub managing director of the center and chair of the electrical and computer engineering program at texas a&m at qatar abu-rub said the smart grid is a way of handling energy independence global warming and security of supply the smart grid center will help facilitating qatar with the latest technology developments in smart electric power distribution grids efficient use of electric energy and modernization of the electricity grid; generate new knowledge and develop exemplary engineers and leaders by conducting advanced researches disseminating results and organizing conferences and workshops; promote collaboration and creation of multidisciplinary research teams to investigate smart grid problems and deliver more innovative and effective smart grid solutions; serve the needs of the state of qatar and the region through broad expertise training and education the establishment of this center is in line with kahramaas strategy and with qnv 2030 vision the center will be the nucleus to lead direct and coordinate the research development and innovation needed for smart grid promotion and implementation within the state of qatar and the gcc region about kahramaa the qatar general electricity & water corporationkahramaa is a state-owned corporation funded fully by the state of qatar kahramaa has the privilege of being the sole transmission and distribution system owner and operator for the electricity and water sector in qatar kahramaa was established in july 2000 in terms of law #10 to regulate and maintain the supply of electricity and water to customers since its inception kahramaa has operated as an independent corporation on a commercial basis
"the mary kay oconnor process safety center drew record attendance at its 17th annual international symposium held oct 28-30 in college station more than 640 participants from industry and academia including representatives from 31 countries attended the symposium which serves as the conduit for process safety research and networking the symposium ""beyond regulatory compliance making safety second nature "" was held in association with the institution of chemical engineers the three keynote lecturers included brian salerno director of the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement; eamonn naughton group head of risk learning and hse at bp; and dwight johnston vice president of safety environment and social performance in shells deepwater business unit in addition to the highlighted keynote addresses nearly 100 presentations were given on various safety-related topics including safety culture/ operational discipline risk analysis process management for safety and inherent safety the symposium also featured exhibits from more than 38 companies that demonstrated products technology and software related to process safety the next symposium is scheduled for oct 27-29 2015 in college station the call for papers is open with abstracts due march 13 2015 for more information call 979-845-5981 or 979-845-6884"
two faculty members from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been recognized by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as tees fellows dr diego donzis has been selected as a tees select young faculty fellow and dr sharath girimaji has been selected as a tees senior faculty fellow the tees fellow designation recognizes established faculty members with a history of continuous performance tees is an engineering research agency of the state of texas and a member of the texas a&m university system texas a&m engineering faculty hold joint appointments as tees researchers dr diego donzis is an assistant professor in the department his research interests include large-scale high-performance computing fluid dynamics turbulence and turbulent mixing he joined the aerospace department in fall 2009 he received his bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering from universidad tecnologica nacional argentina in 2001 his masters degree in aerospace engineering from georgia institute of technology in 2004 and phd in aerospace engineering from georgia institute of technology in 2007 in addition to this award he has received the francois frenkiel the nsf career award a previous tees select young faculty award two incite awards by doe and best graduates from argentina by the national academy of engineering of argentina dr sharath girimaji is a professor in the department he teaches general dynamics of aerospace engineering and maintains one of the top producing research programs in the department in addition to teaching and mentoring high level graduate students he provides extracurricular activities within the college of engineering including the high-altitude balloon club space propulsion and air-swimmers he is also involved in outreach to the high school programs such as project aether and camp soar girimaji received his bachelors in mechanical engineering from iit madras india and his masters and phd in mechanical and aerospace engineering from cornell university he has been a member of the aerospace faculty for 14 years
the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) a workforce development center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station has received a wagner-peyser grant from the office of the governor to help launch a new program called military veterans manufacturing vaccines (mvmv) nctm will provide scholarships to military veterans accepted into the program which will train them to be upstream and downstream manufacturing technicians for the growing biopharmaceutical industry in texas and in particular for the research valleys rapidly growing biocorridor the high-tech pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities within the research valley biocorridor require a dedicated highly-specialized and trained workforce to produce vaccines and therapeutic products used for treating preventing or curing disease or injury in humans combining the mission of this crucial program with providing jobs to our military veterans is another reminder of the tremendous emphasis the texas a&m university system places on supporting our veteran success in both higher education and career paths in further service to the state and the nation said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system through the mvmv program veterans will complete the nctms biomanufacturing technical certification a four-week blended learning program encompassing online curricula and intensive hands-on labs and exercises that ensure trainee learning through experience nctm will assist graduates of the certification program in identifying and obtaining job opportunities within the biotechnology community of texas the grant is a part of the texas a&m systems multi-faceted efforts to aid veterans in achieving success through education and job placement initiatives all 11 universities within the a&m system follow the military and veterans guidelines of the servicemembers opportunity colleges a program offered by the department of defense and also participate in the college credit for heroes initiative a statewide program that seeks to maximize the award of college credits to veterans and service members for their military training resumes letters of interest and general inquiries can be emailed to: programs@nctmmailtamuedu about nctmthe national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is an interdisciplinary workforce education institution of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) providing one of the most interactive and realistic pharmaceutical manufacturing training environments available on the market today with the mission to develop a highly-skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical manufacturing industry nctms curricula incorporates principles of engineering and science in a variety of focus areas including bioprocess equipment operations; process development optimization and scale-up; monitoring analysis and testing; glp gmp quality regulatory and much more to learn more visit nctmtamuedu about the a&m systemthe a&m system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $38 billion through a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies two service units and a comprehensive health science center the a&m system educates more than 131 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $820 million and help drive the states economy
norman roy garza jr has been named assistant vice chancellor for government relations with texas a&m engineering dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering announced today (nov 10) garza comes to texas a&m engineering from texas farm bureau where he has served as associate legislative director since december 2008 while with texas farm bureau he was responsible for influencing public policy affecting agriculture production in texas and landowners who are members of the largest agricultural organization in the state as assistant vice chancellor garza will be responsible for growing a state legislative program and a federal congressional program for the texas a&m engineering agencies that coordinate with the overall texas a&m university system legislative agenda garza will represent texas a&m engineering agencies on the a&m system state and federal relations team with responsibility for the subject areas of workforce development transportation environment energy technology homeland security and emergency response garza earned a bachelors degree in political science from saint edwards university in austin and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in business administration
texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher dr b don russell has been named a fellow of the national academy of inventors (nai) russell is the harry e bovay jr chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering as well as a regents professor and distinguished professor at texas a&m university nai fellows are academic inventors and innovators who are named on us patents and were nominated by their peers for outstanding contributions to innovation russell holds 13 us patents and is a member of the national academy of engineering he is also a fellow of five other societies including the institute of electrical and electronics engineers the national society of professional engineers the national academy of forensic engineers and the british institution of engineering and technology russell and dr darwin j prockop stearman chair in genomic medicine and a professor in the department of internal medicine at the texas a&m health science center college of medicine are among 170 new fellows to be inducted during the nais 4th annual conference on march 20 at the california institute of technology in pasadena california i am pleased and excited that these outstanding faculty members have been recognized for their applied research which contributes to our mission as a land grant institution said dr glen a laine texas a&m vice president for research
texas a&m engineering experiment stations turbomachinery laboratory is organizing the 3rd annual middle east turbomachinery symposium (mets 2015) which will be held feb 16-18 2015 in doha qatar short courses will also be held feb 15 in conjunction with the event the symposium was launched in 2011 and in previous years the event attracted more than 1 000 attendees and 60 exhibiting companies representing up to 27 countries mets 2015 will feature a world‐class educational forum for turbomachinery engineers with a total of eight discussion groups 10 tutorials 12 lectures and 18 case studies on various topics such as liquefied natural gas wet gas vibration gas turbines surge and cavitation technical sessions will also cover topics on maintenance design and troubleshooting as well as short case studies describing in‐the‐field problems and their real‐world solutions the technical program is being developed and overseen by the mets technical advisory committee a group comprised of highly respected engineers from both regional and international companies in the industry dr dara childs turbo lab director and abdulaziz al‐naimi manager (joint interest) at rasgas serve as co-chairs of the committee mets 2015 will also include a free exhibition for the public feb 16-17 from 10 am to 6 pm and feb 18 from 9 am to noon for more information contact bethany womack marketing director at marketing@turbo-labtamuedu
the mary kay oconnor process safety center will be hosting the 70th annual instrumentation and automation symposium for the process industries on jan 27-29 2015 at the memorial student center on the texas a&m university campus in college station the symposium is aimed at presenting the latest instrumentation and automation systems developments in order for attendees to continually improve their knowledge of this highly specialized field as in previous years attendance is expected to reach nearly 300 practitioners and researchers in addition to listening to the variety of presentations attendees have opportunities for networking and interacting with attendees from around the world the three feature keynote speakers will include dr bernd schrörs functional safety head at bayer technology services; chuck miller gas processing global director at emerson process management; and john genovesi vice president of information software and process business at rockwell automation texas a&m faculty and staff qualify for free registration
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and blinn college have signed a formal affiliation agreement that will strengthen their ability to address the state and nations shortage of students in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) the partnership will create more opportunities for collaboration between the two to support their efforts one of our main objectives is to strengthen and expand the pathway into stem fields to prepare students to compete and perform well in the marketplace said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees we must also ensure that those entering the stem fields more closely reflect the rich diversity of our population this partnership formalizes a critical bridge between two-year and four-year stem education a 2012 report by the presidents council on science and technology projected that one million more stem degrees would be needed in the next decade in texas alone the projected need for engineers in the workforce is 43 000 by 2020 to meet this need universities and community colleges have been working together to bridge the gap and attract and retain students who are interested in stem fields blinn provides more transfer students to texas a&m than any other community college in the state and the two institutions have worked together closely to open the pathways for blinn students to more easily transition into a four-year college environment blinns academic transfer rate regularly ranks among the highest in the nation and is approximately 20 percent higher than the state average this partnership will allow us to continue to expand our efforts in supporting economic development in texas by training students in science technology engineering and math said sylvia mcmullen president of blinn college brazos county campuses about blinn college founded in 1883 blinn is a comprehensive community college committed to educational excellence and to individual and community enhancement with an enrollment of 19 317 students blinn ranks among the nations leaders in transferring students to leading four-year universities and has received national recognition for its affordable educational excellence about tees for 100 years the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has served the citizens of texas through engineering and technology-oriented research and educational collaborations tees research has made significant impact on the health safety and quality of life of texas citizens and has contributed to the states economic growth and development
"the center for exascale radiation transport (cert) at texas a&m university is one of six centers of excellence funded by the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) under the predictive science academic alliance program (psaap-ii) cert led by texas a&m with participation from the university of colorado will be funded at $10 million over a period of five years ""our college of engineering continues to innovate and improve on its status as one of the top programs in the country "" john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system said ""this designation of a center of excellence by the nnsa is evidence of the momentum"" professor jim morel of the department of nuclear engineering is the cert director and the principal investigator of the project co-principal investigators include: professor lawrence rauchwerger of the department of computer science and engineering and professors marvin adams les braby ryan mcclarren and jean ragusa all nuclear engineering faculty members co-investigators include professor nancy amato from the department of computer science and engineering; derek bingham of simon fraser university; tom manteuffel and steve mccormick of the university of colorado; delia perez-nunez from nuclear engineering; and tom conroy of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) cert will focus on the development of computational techniques for efficiently simulating thermal radiation propagation using extreme-scale or exascale computers planned for the future as well as the development of predictive science techniques to quantify uncertainty in simulated results radiation propagation plays a major role in high-energy density laboratory physics experiments of the type carried out at the nnsas national ignition facility at lawrence livermore national laboratory as well as several other nnsa facilities exascale computers will consist of many millions of processors and be capable of executing on the order of 1 018 floating point operations per second the fastest computers currently in existence execute roughly 1 016 floating point operations per second and use enormous amounts of power in order to achieve affordable operating costs exascale computers must consume far less energy per processor than current computers computing on exascale-scale machines will be very different from computing on existing machines because of this low-power requirement for instance data movement will be far more expensive in terms of energy consumption than floating-point operations and erroneous computations will routinely occur during the course of a simulation thus the entire concept of the ""cost"" of computational algorithms will change and algorithms must have the capability to detect erroneous computation and either correct it or tolerate it in some quantifiable manner the research plan of cert includes uncertainty quantification radiation propagation experiments and simulation algorithmic development and modeling and software development ""i feel this recognition is indicative of the caliber quality and value of our programs here "" said dr yassin hassan head of the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m ""we are fortunate to have strategic administrators dedicated faculty hard-working staff and extraordinary students who are committed to setting our programs apart"" cert at texas a&m was one of six new centers of excellence the nnsa funded each of the centers will focus on the emerging fields of predictive science and extreme-scale computing the six universities were selected for either a multidisciplinary simulation center (msc) or as a single-discipline center (sdc) the six universities include: texas a&m university college station texas ""center for exascale radiation transport "" (sdc) university of utah salt lake city utah ""the uncertainty quantification-predictive multidisciplinary simulation center for high efficiency electric power generation with carbon capture "" (msc) university of illinois-urbana-champaign champaign illinois ""center for exascale simulation of plasma-coupled combustion "" (msc) stanford university stanford california ""predictive simulations of particle-laden turbulence in a radiation environment "" (msc) university of florida gainesville florida ""center for compressible multiphase turbulence "" (sdc) university of notre dame notre dame indiana ""center for shock wave-processing of advanced reactive materials "" (sdc) ""we expect the psaap alliances will continue to help develop the predictive science field and the workforce of the future wherein simulations will be pervasive and instrumental in important high-impact decision-making processes "" said robert meisner director of the nnsa advanced simulation and computing program (asc) ascs academic alliances provide a training ground where graduate students and postdoctoral researchers gain and hone skills necessary to carry out large-scale simulations predictive science is the application of verified and validated computational simulations to predict the behavior of complex systems where routine experiments are not feasible the selected psaap ii centers will focus on unclassified applications of interest to nnsa and its national laboratories the lawrence livermore national laboratory los alamos national laboratory and sandia national laboratories the psaap ii centers will develop the science and engineering models and software for their large-scale simulations utilizing methods of verification and validation and uncertainty quantification with an additional focus on extreme-scale computing the goal of these disciplines is to enable scientists to make precise statements about the degree of confidence they have in their simulation-based predictions established by congress in 2000 nnsa is a semi-autonomous agency within the us department of energy responsible for enhancing national security through the military application of nuclear science nnsa maintains and enhances the safety security reliability and performance of the us nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing; works to reduce global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the us navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the us and abroad"
"since the 1960s researchers around the world have been looking for ways to employ the unique properties of active materials such as shape memory alloys (smas) for the development of morphing aerospace structures dr darren hartl texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) research assistant professor teamed with james mabe of the boeing company last summer and fall to organize a collaborative effort through tees aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) to solve this issue in a unified way the project is co-funded by a number of industrial and federal proponents of sma technologies who are applying their joint technical expertise to the development of standardized experimental methods that have not existed to date boeing has completed multiple full-scale flight tests of such solutions and the benefits of these technologies have been successfully demonstrated repeatedly however the path to production of both military and commercial aerospace morphing applications has been hindered by the lack of a standardized approach toward testing and certification the goal is to develop experimental methods that are both technically effective and universally accepted "" said hartl ""the participation of researchers from seven organizations spanning five countries tells me that we are headed in the right direction this first sma actuator standardization effort includes the funded participation of industrial partners ati specialty metals boeing embraer rafael defense systems rolls-royce and saes getters as well as the participation of nasa researchers the kick-off meeting associated with this effort was held in college station texas in early december a series of events on the texas a&m campus allowed the industrial and government visitors to assess the various sma research efforts being performed in the aerospace engineering and material science and engineering departments focused meetings held at tees state headquarters allowed for technical discussion and debate and the initial drafting of the first experimental standards avsi is at the center of something important here "" said hartl ""i believe in the idea of sma-enabled morphing aircraft but now is the time to move these concepts out of the laboratory and into production we have assembled the right team and we are going to make this happen front row from left: frank sczerzenie saes smart materials; frederick calkins boeing; and royi padan rafael defense systems back row from left: brian van doren ati specialty metals; darren hartl avsi; ron noebe nasa-glenn; othman benafan nasa-glenn; james mabe boeing; andrea cadelli saes getters; and bryce conduit rolls-royce"
dr christodoulos floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute was recognized by governor greg abbott at the 2015 state of the state address in austin texas before a joint session of the texas house and senate floudas was welcomed to the event by abbott and introduced for his leadership of the texas a&m energy institute a full-length press release and a video of the event have been released by the governors office floudas is the erle nye 59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university and a member of the national academy of engineering
ryan morton a senior technical safety engineer with anadarko petroleum became the first individual to receive the masters degree in safety engineering through the distance learning program at texas a&m university the degree is administered by dr sam mannan director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center a center housed within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) by pursuing the masters in safety engineering degree ive gained valuable technical knowledge through academia while being able to practice in the workplace said morton the degree is offered via distance learning to professionals employed in industry who cannot enroll and complete their degree by attending on-campus classes by offering this degree more widely texas a&m not only develops and trains the workforce needed to fill the demand for safety professionals over the next 10 years but it is also ensuring an environment for national and public health security engineers with their bachelors of science degree working on the masters degree via distance learning will have the opportunity to integrate course work with real-time industry experience to enhance job performance leadership skills and classroom involvement realizing that my courses were covering the same content and challenges faced at work i quickly gained confidence and credibility with how i approached problems and generated solutions said morton i learned philosophical aspects of engineering safety to be better equipped to influence organizations toward safer engineered products and operations this type of learning is difficult to find on the job another benefit i found was most companies have been interested in supporting this effort financially while working making the argument to pursue very strong for anyone who is interested i suggest starting today and youll be done before you realize it
when the email from the queensland maroons rugby team hit his inbox dr jaime grunlan thought it was another in a long line of spam so he treated it as such when he received it a second time he decided to open it and see why someone more than 9 000 miles away would be contacting him it looked like a phishing email said grunlan a texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher and texas a&m university mechanical engineering professor i asked for more information so that i knew it was real it was a contact from the rugby team in australia which is basically the national football league of australia the email was legitimate and what the eight-time rugby champions were looking for was someone to help them develop a technology that would allow their players to power sensors contained in their jersey the idea behind the sensors is to monitor a players hydration or the level of g-force they experience when taking a hit a key component in determining if a player may have suffered a concussion the nfl college everybody is worried about concussions grunlan said rugby has less protection right now they have sensors in their jersey that monitor those things but they are powered by a battery pack it is intrusive and players do not like it the maroons started working with queensland university of technology a research university in brisbane australia when team officials decided to inquire about furthering the sensor technology they asked researchers at queensland whom they should contact the overwhelming response from the researchers despite none of them ever working with the university was texas a&m grunlan at kylethey asked queensland university if money was no object and we were to work with anyone in the world to make this happen who should it be grunlan said they said texas a&m university that led them to contact grunlan who has conducted research in polymer composites grunlan has also enlisted the expertise of fellow mechanical engineering professor choongho yu who conducts research in energy harvesting and cooling as well as thermoelectrics according to grunlan the sensors they are working to develop are polymer or plastic-based thermoelectric materials that can be applied as coatings to fabrics when the body heats up when working out as long as there is a temperature gradient it can drive electricity grunlan said that electricity could power sensors built into a jersey of an athlete and supply power to transmit information to a computer that can tell you about a persons hydration level or the g-force they experienced from a hit representatives from the rugby team traveled to college station last fall where they were able to experience an aggie football game from the sidelines and tour the newest athletic facilities at kyle field the main objective of the journey however was to meet with grunlan and yu to discuss the project if we can make shirts that power the sensors we have solved their biggest problem grunlan said i hope this is the just the tip of the iceberg
dr nk anand and dr jean-louis briaud were named recipients of the texas a&m university systems regents professor award and regents fellow service award respectively both anand and briaud will be formally honored wednesday (feb 11) at a banquet in the bethancourt ballroom of the memorial student center on the texas a&m university campus anand is the executive associate dean of the dwight look college of engineering the associate director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the james and ada forsyth professor of mechanical engineering anand joined the faculty at texas a&m in 1985 as a tenure-track assistant professor in mechanical engineering after working as a systems engineer with the link division of the singer company in silver spring maryland he became a full professor in 1996 and in 2007 was appointed the holder of the james and ada forsyth professorship since 1998 he has served the department of mechanical engineering look college and tees in several leadership roles briaud is the buchanan chair professor in the zachry department of civil engineering and a tees researcher he is also a distinguished member of the american society of civil engineers and president of the federation of international geoengineering societies briaud came to texas a&m in 1978 and has served the department college and tees and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) with distinction for 36 years he received tenure and promotion to halliburton associate professor in 1983 and in 1986 became one of the youngest faculty members to be promoted to full the rank of full professor in 2002 he was awarded the buchanan chair the regents professor award honors individuals at the rank of professor or equivalent whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service have been exemplary the award is the highest honor bestowed by the a&m system on faculty members the performance of those selected is considered meritorious and worthy of recognition of their achievements that had an impact on not only their institution or agency but also the community the state of texas and/or at the national and international levels the regents fellow service award honors and recognizes extension research and service professionals within the agricultural and engineering agencies health science center and veterinary medical diagnostic laboratory these professionals must have demonstrated a significant commitment and contributions to their respective agency by providing exceptional leadership in educational or program delivery/scholarship research or service that have resulted in significant impact and lasting benefits to the state of texas and beyond
dr jeff haberl associate director of the energy systems laboratory and dr frank shipman associate director of the center for the study of digital libraries have been named 2015 texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center fellows the new award recognizes outstanding individual initiative and performance in support of the tees mission of research workforce development technology development and transfer and international outreach and collaboration haberl is a professor of architecture and associate department head for research in the department of architecture at texas a&m university he has spent nearly three decades performing building energy research his areas of interest are in hvac design energy conservation savings measurement techniques metering and monitoring equipment calibrated building energy simulations building energy data visualization on-line diagnostics for hvac equipment solar energy heating and cooling systems solar energy measurements code compliance calculations and emissions reductions calculations shipman is a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m his research group has developed a range of software environments supporting access to and analysis of a wide range of content types including texts image audio video and scientific and sensor data his current research projects include the design and evaluation of an environment for heterogeneous data analysis games motivating data science skills and digital libraries for sign language content he also is engaged in long-term external collaborations investigating the ownership and reuse of social media content and the design of tools for creating and consuming interactive video
"dr yossef elabd a researcher with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) polymer technology center and a professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has developed two fuel cell vehicle platforms for both present day enhancements and future innovation electrochemical energy and polymer research unite in new ways to deliver best-case power scenarios behind the wheel specifically under the hood environmentalists and road aficionados alike have applauded the production of fuel cell vehicles but to sustain the appeal and increase the market production costs need to fall a fuel cell is a device that produces electric energy as the direct result of a chemical reaction the fuel cell car is powered by the constant chemical interaction of hydrogen fuel from the tank and oxygen that is pulled from the air using positive (anode) and negative (cathode) electrodes protons are moved by an electrolyte and ultimately converted into energy the source and form of the electrodes and electrolytes can vary and this is the basis of elabds findings the fuel cell car manufactured today uses a proton exchange membrane (pem) electrolyte for its platinum-based electrodes the same design that was used in previous gemini space missions elabd has discovered that the amount of platinum needed for electrode manufacturing can be significantly reduced and thus the production costs dramatically minimized his patent-pending research establishes that a fuel cell can perform optimally with only 16 percent of its previous platinum requirements new polymer nanofiber-platinum nanoparticle electrodes are reliable and enduring he said another course of action elabd envisions is the creation of a fuel cell that does not require platinum this would be ""the holy grail of portable power"" the alkaline exchange membrane (aem) fuel cell model uses a polymer material as its electrolyte past developers encountered roadblocks (chemical degradation) in the introduction of a polymer to an aem fuel cell yet elabds research group has achieved patented breakthrough in developing a polymer electrolyte that is chemically stable to the hydroxide ions highly conductive in moving the ions across the fuel cell and very robust the same material if modified a little bit can be used in batteries as a replacement to current lithium-ion charged batteries making it a solid state with the benefit of longer stability and much increased safety elabd said whether the approach is to reduce platinum requirements or to implement a polymer electrolyte both solutions appear to have passed the proof of concept phase i just want to drive my car with water vapor coming out the back of it elabd said environmentalists everywhere agree"
"dr thomas russell director of the united states army research lab recently visited texas a&m university toured the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) research labs and discussed key research partnership opportunities with researchers we are honored to host dr russell and representatives from the army research lab on campus and showcase our researchers and the unique lab facilities available to assist them said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp tees and the faculty of texas a&m university have partnered with arl on many projects such as developing technology to enhance the safety of our soldiers and we look forward to expanding this relationship the army research laboratory (arl) is the armys central laboratory responsible for programs producing advanced technologies that support soldiers in the field today and in the future tees has partnered with the arl since 1997 ""the long-standing relationship we have had with texas a&m is proof that when government laboratories such as arl collaborate with our nations best institutions we open the doors for significant discovery and innovation that is mutually beneficial to the university and the american soldier "" said russell ""we value our relationship and look forward to even deeper engagement and collaboration as we advance our open campus initiative texas a&m through its land grant mission has a long standing relationship with the armed services in the us said texas a&m university interim president mark hussey we produce more military officers than any other university outside of the national service academies and we look forward to enhancing our relationship with the arl through expanded defense related research during the visit members from the arl were able to discuss strategic research needs meet with research experts and tour labs and facilities texas a&m is uniquely configured and many of our research strengths align with the interests of the army said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and tees director the arl has invested tens of millions of dollars into our people and programs to help the army produce advanced technologies that support soldiers and we look forward to expanding this highly collaborative and productive relationship"
dr lawrence rauchwerger assistant director of the center for large-scale scientific simulations has been named a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) senior faculty fellow faculty selected as tees fellows for a third year receive the senior faculty designation the principal purpose of the senior award is to recognize long-term outstanding research performance the tees fellows program encompasses the tees select young faculty and the tees fellow/senior fellow awards and recognizes faculty members who have made continuous contributions in research for their department rauchwerger is an eppright professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university co-director of the parasol lab and deputy director and researcher of the institute of applied mathematics and computational sciences his research interests are in compilers for parallel and distributed computing parallel and distributed c++ libraries adaptive runtime optimizations and architectures for parallel computing he has been honored with several awards for his work in computer science including the halliburton fellowship award the tees select young faculty and tees fellow awards (2002 2005) an ibm faculty award an intel faculty award and the nsf faculty early career development (career) award he also is an ieee fellow and acm distinguished scientist
dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m university engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and representatives from tees and texas a&m visited yucatán last week during the visit the delegation toured the states research facilities and attended a formal ceremony where tees was inducted into the mexican states research consortium siidetey by governor rolando zapata bello members of the tees and texas a&m delegation also attended its first siidetey meeting to discuss current and future research collaborations currently there are about 20 faculty in college station and 20 in the yucatán working on projects in the areas of sustainable energy aquifers coastal dynamics early warning systems and logistics/supply chain management tees is also in the process of expanding the collaboration opportunities among other texas a&m system members and invited representatives from texas a&m agrilife and texas a&m to yucatán the visit was a result of governor zapata bellos visit to college station last september when he invited tees to become the first international academic partner in siidetey tees was the first university research organization outside of mexico to be asked to join the high-level research consortium and will have a physical presence in the siidetey research park in yucatán siidetey is comprised of national and regional institutions such as the universidad nacional autonóma de mexico cinvestav the mexican aerospace agency the mexican national institute of mathematics and yucatan state university among others we are honored to become the first international member of siidetey a collaboration that will generate significant benefits for the academic and research communities of both yucatán and texas said banks the caliber of research is impressive and includes representation from agriculture engineering geoscience and architecture this relationship may be new but it is growing quickly and generating significant interest across texas a&m and the other universities and agencies under the texas a&m university system
dr robin r murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university gave an invited talk to the public forum of the united nations world disaster risk reduction conference in sendai japan murphys talk current state and achievement of disaster robots reported that ground aerial or marine unmanned systems had been used for mitigation response and recovery in 43 disasters in 13 countries between 2001 and 2014 with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) participating in 17 of those events murphy was part of a session that was organized by dr satoshi tadokoro president-elect of the ieee robotics and automation society murphy and tadokoro are recognized as the co-founders of disaster robotics the speakers at the conference consistently spoke of the need for roboticists to engage responders and industry in order to produce reliable and useful robots the speakers also called on governments to create regional teams and caches and to smooth the regulations and policies that lead to an average delay of 47 days for robots to be used at a disaster
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is co-sponsoring the inaugural texas new ventures competition which will award $150 000 in monetary prizes to provide seed funding for texas companies with high-growth potential and innovative product development ideas the competition is hosted by the texas a&m university system and the research valley and is open to all texas-based companies that meet eligibility requirements participants will have the opportunity to network with potential investors and venture capitalists experienced entrepreneurs non-profit founders legal professionals patent experts and banking/investment professionals they will also receive personal coaching and access to mentor strategists as they develop their competition business plans and presentation pitches completed entry forms must be submitted by 5 pm april 13 through the online portal for more information about the texas new ventures competition please visit http://texasnvcorg/
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) nuclear power institute (npi) hosted a group of 15 undergraduate students and two faculty members from harbin engineering university (heu) in china on a three-week study tour at texas a&m university the students were all nuclear engineering students in their final year of undergraduate studies the international atomic energy agency (iaea) sponsored the tour through the division for asia and the pacific in the department of technical cooperation nuclear engineering students and faculty from texas a&m have had the opportunity to participate in a study abroad summer program at heu for the past three years this was the first time that heu students have been given a similar opportunity to come to texas a&m and complete the exchange the event was opened by remarks from dr kl peddicord npi director judge michael ford of somervell county in texas mr oscar acuña section head for the division for asia and the pacific at the iaea dr yassin hassan department head for the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m and professor qiang zhao associate dean of the nuclear science and technology college at heu the students attended a reception at the end of the opening day which gave them the opportunity to re-connect with texas a&m nuclear engineering students who went to heu in the summer of 2014 the second week of the visit was spent touring facilities and locations across texas in glen rose texas they visited the comanche peak nuclear power station and met with senior elected officials of somervell county the group went to glen rose high school where it met students and teachers who are involved in npis outreach programs and experienced life in a us high school a favorite cultural experience for the students was a morning spent at the ft worth stockyards before travelling to waco texas to visit the nuclear training facilities at texas state technical college they also traveled to austin texas where they visited the texas state capitol met with state nuclear waste control specialists and toured the bullock texas state history museum the heu students and faculty spent part of their tour in a professional seminar where they attended lectures on many topics related to the us commercial nuclear power industry including: the us nuclear regulatory structure; risk-informed analysis for nuclear power plants; radioactive waste storage; nuclear safety culture; nuclear communications; and human resource development all of these lectures were presented by prominent current and former industry government and agency leaders as well as professors and npi staff the students were also able to participate in an experiment in the department of nuclear engineerings accelerator laboratory led by dr lin shao nuclear engineering associate professor and to visit the texas a&m nuclear science center the university power plant and the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city facility where they participated in an emergency response activity some of the research groups within the texas a&m department of nuclear engineering also made presentations on their current research efforts the end of the official study tour coincided with the beginning of the 2015 american nuclear society student conference being hosted by texas a&m and the heu students were able to participate in the conference through support from westinghouse this was a great opportunity for them to interact with american students in nuclear engineering from around the united states the heu students were asked to complete group projects with the help of texas a&m professional mentors on various topics related to the presentations made during the professional seminar and the program culminated in the students group presentations following the presentations dr zhijiang zhang dean of the nuclear science and technology college at heu spoke about the ongoing collaboration between the nuclear engineering programs at heu and texas a&m and conferred certificates on the participants
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m university system hosted a roundtable discussion on the role of cybersecurity in protecting the nations infrastructure tuesday (april 21) in washington dc the roundtable featured discussion on how research universities can contribute to cybersecurity solutions and train a workforce capable of defending vital resources cybersecurity is a challenge that affects us all impacting our personal bank accounts transportation infrastructure power grid and enhances the protection that we need from those who would do us harm said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees it is critical that we raise public dialogue on this topic by bring together our engineering experts with public policy leaders us rep john ratcliffe chairman of the subcommittee on cybersecurity infrastructure protection and security technologies also attended the discussion which featured cybersecurity experts from texas a&m and other government agencies dr valerie taylor senior associate dean for academic affairs regents professor and the royce e wisenbaker professor of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university moderated the panel panelists from texas a&m were dr pierce cantrell associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and dr daniel j ragsdale professor of practice with the department of computer science and engineering other panelists were dr john launchbury program manager for defense advanced research projects agency and dr victor p piotrowski program director for the national science foundation tees also celebrated its 100th anniversary at a reception on april 20 tees research was on display at the event which drew people from federal agencies capitol hill the non-profit sector and industry groups tees researchers receive funding from a variety of federal agencies including the department of defense the department of energy the national science foundation and nasa
twenty nuclear forensics students and faculty from prairie view a&m university (pvamu) visited the texas a&m university (tamu) campus april 10 as part of the nuclear forensics for minority serving institutions program sponsored by the us department of homeland securitys domestic nuclear detection office (dndo) the students are currently enrolled in a nuclear forensic analysis course being taught by pvamus dr irvin osborne-lee dr richard wilkins and dr brad gersey dr royal elmore a research assistant with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) and a guest scientist with los alamos national laboratory organized the visit the students began their tour at the analytical chemistry laboratory in the department of chemistry where doctoral student aaron clubb from dr emile schweikerts research group introduced them to the labs multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (mc-icp-ms) system the presentation covered the theory behind mc-icp-ms a comparison of other mass spectrometry tools and the advantages of mc-icp-ms for nuclear forensics the pvamu students then participated in an informal lunch seminar with dr john kelly from the us department of energys office of nuclear energy kelly is the deputy assistant secretary of energy for nuclear reactor technologies and he addressed several policy and technical issues related to nuclear energy and forensics specifically the pvamu students learned about generation iii iii+ and iv reactors and nuclear fuel cycles from a proliferation resistance standpoint kelly also discussed how nuclear forensics is a later line of protection and deterrence for global nuclear security the students then visited the nsspi radiation detection laboratory with dr craig marianno visiting assistant professor with the department of nuclear engineering and research engineer with nsspi who explained the nuclear forensics applications of the different radiation detectors the pvamu students will be using the detectors in an upcoming hands-on field exercise at the texas a&m nuclear science center and texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city® facility
in may the pvamu students will join students from texas a&m at the 4th annual nuclear facilities experience where they will visit the urenco uranium enrichment plant sandia national laboratories and the los alamos national laboratory all in new mexico and the pantex nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in amarillo texas the nuclear facilities experience is being conducted by nsspi through the sponsorship of the texas a&m college of engineering and the department of nuclear engineering the students from pvamu are being sponsored through the nuclear forensics for minority serving institutions dndo established the nf-msi to strengthen the engineering and science programs at minority serving institutions (msi) located throughout the us and to enhance the partnerships between these institutions and other us universities with established academic programs in scientific disciplines relevant to nuclear forensics the objective is to increase the participation of msis in the national nuclear forensics expertise development program of which this initiative is a part and accelerate the involvement of minorities in the us government nuclear forensics mission
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) smart grid center will host the third smart grid workshop at the memorial student center at texas a&m university on april 21 previous workshops were attended by more than 150 professionals faculty and students as well as visitors from brazil qatar and mexico the theme of this years workshop is challenges in evaluating smart grid solutions: metric testing certification modeling and simulation and testbeds invited speakers will elaborate on the topic two panel sessions on testbeds will include one on the existing modeling simulating testing and calibration facilities and another one on future developments of testbeds representation is expected from industry such as abb alstom austin energy centerpoint energy esri honeywell ibm incsys national instruments oncor osisoft and siemens and from several federal labs (ornl lbnl pnnl and llnl) in break-out sessions the following topics will be discussed: big data weather impacts asset and outage management; ems dms cybersecurity and substation automation; demand-side management ancillary services and electricity markets; building energy management smart meters and sensors; synchrophasor systems pmus and pdcs and gps; microgrids evs distributed generation and energy storage in addition texas a&m students will present posters associated with their research more information on the workshop and the online registration are available on the smart grid centers website
more than 100 years of texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) innovation was on display march 30 at the texas state capitol in austin researchers from myriad disciplines demonstrated technologies that will lead tees into its next century of discovery tees researchers joined their colleagues from the agencys regional divisions at texas a&m university prairie view a&m university texas a&m university-corpus christi and texas a&m university-texarkana in providing visitors and legislators with first-hand demonstrations of their innovations the engineering technologies on display represented innovations that will impact the medical field homeland safety and security the energy industry and space exploration to wrap up the celebration of tees anniversary chancellor john sharp presented representative charlie geren with a certificate honoring his great-grandfather dr frederick giesecke giesecke served as director of tees from 1928-1939 he was noted for leading tees through the great depression as well as overseeing construction on some of texas a&m universitys most iconic buildings such as the academic building and williams administration building
duncan maitland the stewart & stevenson professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has been named recipient of the 2015 innovation award presented by texas a&m system technology commercialization (ttc) in addition to his research and teaching duties maitland is the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) assistant agency director for commercialization and entrepreneurship the award recognizes individuals whose research and accomplishments exemplify the spirit of innovation within the texas a&m university system maitland received the award during the annual patent and innovations awards luncheon held this month at the annenberg presidential conference center dr maitland was recognized with an innovation award because he not only is a great scientist but he has taken the leap into entrepreneurship by founding shape memory therapeutics to commercialize his innovations noted brett l cornwell associate vice chancellor for commercialization for the ttc he has also applied his passion for commercialization to his work in tees assisting researchers with their commercial ideas maitlands research focuses on novel treatments of cardiovascular disease with a focus on stroke his research projects include endovascular interventional devices microactuators optical therapeutic devices and basic device-body interactions/physics including computational and experimental techniques he earned a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from cleveland state university a masters in physics from cleveland state and his phd in biomedical engineering from northwestern university it is the mission of ttc to encourage broad practical application of system research for public benefit; to encourage and assist those associated with the system in the protection licensing and commercialization of their discoveries; to ensure the equitable distribution of royalties and other monetary benefits resulting from the commercial application of intellectual property; and to see that commercialization activities benefit the research education and outreach missions of the system into the future
dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recognized faculty and staff award winners during the 2015 faculty and staff awards banquet i believe that excellence should be recognized and rewarded said banks this year 50 faculty and 17 staff members were honored for their contributions their passion and commitment to elevating our programs staff awards key contributor award nicole pottberg engineering human resources new employee award amber muenzenberger engineering academic & student affairs staff excellence award chantale deuel engineering human resources blake dworaczyk computer science adam farmer engineering technology & industrial distribution faye greenwade engineering technology & industrial distribution sharon loe electrical & computer engineering dedra nevill office of the vice chancellor & dean larissa pschenitchnaia chemical engineering engineering team award texas center for applied technology michael atkinson paul bilnoski graham booker joshua cook eric gonzalez larkin ohern austin riddle thomas schneider faculty awards college of engineering teaching awards tenneco meritorious teaching award dr sandun fernando (biological and agricultural engineering) dr erick moreno-centeno (industrial and systems engineering) lockheed martin teaching excellence award dr kelly brumbelow (civil engineering) dr richard malak (mechanical engineering) george armistead jr 23 faculty excellence dr jodie lutkenhaus (chemical engineering) instructional faculty teaching award dr fred dupriest (petroleum engineering) dr ray mentzer (chemical engineering) dr kristi shryock (aerospace engineering) dr jeffrey otey (civil engineering) college of engineering service awards charles crawford distinguished service award dr victor ugaz (chemical engineering) dr richard furuta (computer science and engineering) dr scott miller (electrical and computer engineering) college of engineering contribution awards ed brockett professorship dr arum han (electrical and computer engineering) william keeler memorial award dr daniele mortari (aerospace engineering) dr zhengdong cheng (chemical engineering) dr anastasia muliana (mechanical engineering) tees young faculty fellows dr diego donzis (aerospace engineering) dr zoya heidari (petroleum engineering) dr jodie lutkenhaus (chemical engineering) dr david staack (mechanical engineering) dr richard malak (mechanical engineering) tees fellows dr shuguang cui (electrical and computer engineering) dr jaime grunlan (mechanical engineering) dr yue kuo (chemical engineering) dr michael mcshane (biomedical engineering) dr lin shao (nuclear engineering) tees senior fellows dr sharath girimaji (aerospace engineering) dr duncan maitland (biomedical engineering) dr binayak mohanty (biological and agricultural engineering) dr lawrence rauchwerger (computer science and engineering) tees center fellows dr jeff haberl (energy systems laboratory) dr frank shipman (computer science and engineering/center for the study of digital libraries) association of former students college level distinguished teaching award dr sharath girimaji (aerospace engineering) dr javier jo (biomedical engineering) dr john keyser (computer science and engineering) dr arun srinivasa (mechanical engineering) texas a&m engineering faculty fellows william keeler faculty fellow dr elena castell-perez (biological and agricultural engineering) dr samuel palermo (electrical and computer engineering) dr jean ragusa (nuclear engineering) dr elizabeth cosgriff-hernandez (biomedical engineering) dr yucel akkutlu (petroleum engineering) herbert h richardson faculty fellow dr daniele mortari (aerospace engineering) dr vladislav yakovlev (biomedical engineering) dr daniel mcadams (mechanical engineering) dr scott schaefer (computer science and engineering) william brothers construction co faculty fellowdr moo-hyun kim (civil engineering)dr dominique lord (civil engineering) william o and montine p head faculty fellowdr amine benzerga (aerospace engineering)dr hong liang (mechanical engineering)dr raymundo arróyave (materials science and engineering)dr sheng-jen hsieh (engineering technology and industrial engineering)dr jean-francois chamberland (electrical and computer engineering) dean of engineering excellence award assistant professors dr le xie (electrical and computer engineering) dr david staack (mechanical engineering) associate professors dr anastasia muliana (mechanical engineering) dr miladin radovic (materials science and engineering) full professors dr jaime grunlan (mechanical engineering) dr krishna narayanan (electrical and computer engineering) montague center for teaching excellence scholar dr jodie lutkenhaus (chemical engineering) regents fellow dr jean-louis briaud (civil engineering) regents professor dr nk anand (mechanical engineering)
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) smart grid center hosted its third annual smart grid workshop april 21 to discuss challenges in evaluating smart grid solutions including metrics testing certification modeling and simulation and testbeds the workshop included invited talks by kenneth mercado (senior vice president centerpoint energy electric operations) on evaluation of business cases for smart grid solutions and by robin podmore (president and ceo incsys) on the future synergy of large-scale testbeds and training simulators panel sessions discussed the state-of-the-art technology of existing modeling simulating testing and calibration facilities and the future developments of testbeds focus groups facilitated discussions on targeted themes: big data weather impacts asset and outage management; ems dms cybersecurity and substation automation; demand-side management ancillary services and electricity markets; building energy management smart meters and sensors; synchrophasor systems pmus and pdcs and gps; microgrids evs distributed generation and energy storage
the more than 110 participants included 22 faculty members 53 students and 27 industry experts from abb alstom austin energy centerpoint energy ercot iai incsys ni nrg energy oncor opal-rt osisoft siemens and the non-profit electric reliability council of texas (ercot) and southwest research institute (swri) government agencies such as the national institute of standard and technology national renewable energy laboratory lawrence berkeley national laboratory and pacific northwest national laboratory were also represented visitors came from qatar china brazil and chile cutting-edge research projects were featured in a poster session prior to and following the workshop further opportunities for enhancing partnerships with companies were explored in thematic meetings with incsys nrg energy opal-rt osisoft and pg&e the workshop was sponsored by tees the smart grid center the office of the vice president for research the department of electrical and computer engineering and the texas a&m energy institute as well as centerpoint energy national instruments nrg energy opal-rt and osisoft more information on the program including abstracts and slides are available at https://smartgridcentertamuedu/
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) dedicated its newest research building the frederick e giesecke engineering research building on thursday april 30 the 70 000-square-foot integrative research facility focuses on three areas: nanofabrication materials characterization and energy research the facility includes nanofabrication laboratories the corrosion science and materials reliability laboratory and research space for texas a&m university faculty staff and students working for the texas a&m energy institute this facility will foster an environment that attracts the best and brightest minds to develop solutions for societys biggest challenges said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m and director of tees naming this building for a former student and professor based on his scholarly merit and significant contributions to this university and tees is fitting the building was built as part of a p3 contract in which the facility was privately developed by ddm texas group llc and biorealty inc and leased back to the texas a&m university system on behalf of tees for use by the engineering nano laboratories at texas a&m
the building is named after dr frederick e giesecke class of 1886 who served as director of tees from 1928-1939 he was also a professor at texas a&m and was involved in the design and construction of some of the campus most iconic buildings including the academic building and williams administration building giesecke is also the great-grandfather of rep charlie geren who was in attendance at the ceremony gieseckes family has a long history at texas a&m and many of his family members are aggies this building will be a place of innovation and it is fitting that is named after a man whose innovative thinking can be seen throughout the texas a&m campus said john sharp chancellor of the a&m system we want to support researchers who have the vision and dedication that dr giesecke had and by providing them with state-of-the-art facilities such as this new building we are doing that the new building is located at 1617 research parkway in research park on the texas a&m university campus in college station texas for more information visit the frederick e giesecke engineering research building page
the turbomachinery laboratory (turbo lab) a research center in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) signed an international research and scholar-exchange agreement with korean turbocharger industry leader keyyang precision co ltd the formal signing was attended by sang-jick yoon korean minister of trade industry and energy as part of the us-korea business forum held at the hilton houston post oak it secures a critical international partnership during the centennial anniversary of tees dr costas georghiades tees associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers along with byung kee chung keyyang ceo signed for their respective organizations also serving as representatives were greg gammon turbo lab director of operations and gyung won chung keyyangs director of strategic planning since 2012 keyyang has supported the turbo labs industrial research as a member of its turbomachinery research consortium a group comprising 40 industrial firms that jointly provide more than $500 000 of funding each year for industry-specific research the signing will see further research collaborations with keyyang whose design and production initiatives in turbochargers for the automotive industry have yielded significant advancements over traditional turbomachinery since the companys founding in 1994 these novel configurations offer improved thermal efficiency rotordynamic stability and environmental advantages that will make a substantial difference in the passenger vehicle market said dr luis san andrés professor and holder of the mast-childs chair in mechanical engineering at texas a&m university and turbo lab researcher beginning fall 2015 keyyang will send its engineers to pursue advanced graduate studies in turbomachinery at texas a&m they will learn under turbo lab faculty whose expertise surrounds education and research in both performance and reliability of high performance machinery research projects undertaken in the turbomachinery lab a state-of-the-art 35 000 square foot facility will involve empirical validation of theoretical and computational developments this research and exchange agreement comes at a time when the turbo lab is making larger forays into asia in february 2016 the turbo lab will hold the inaugural asia turbomachinery and pump symposium (atps) in singapore atps is the sibling of the longstanding turbomachinery and pump symposia in houston whose attendance last year exceeded 6 200 registrants and 340 exhibiting companies this year we [tees] are celebrating 100 years of service to the state of texas and beyond it is very fitting that we are formalizing an international relationship such as this during our centennial celebration i believe it signifies our commitment to collaboration and advancing the development of technology in the area of high speed turbomachinery said georghiades
"students from the texas a&m university department of nuclear engineering and prairie view a&m university (pvamu) participated in the 4th annual domestic nuclear facilities experience (nfe) may 17- 23 this was the first year that the nfe included students from another texas a&m university system partner this years nfe included visits to an extensive range of nuclear sites throughout new mexico and texas including the urenco uranium enrichment plant sandia national laboratories los alamos national laboratory and the pantex nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility ""the nfe was a wonderful opportunity that gave students the chance to go out and see what the nuclear engineering field is really about said pvamu senior dahvien dean who participated in the tours texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) organized the event jointly with faculty from the texas a&m department of nuclear engineering and pvamu the students were accompanied by pvamu faculty and texas a&m coordinators dr craig marianno nsspi senior research engineer and visiting professor in the department of nuclear engineering and dr royal elmore nsspi research assistant texas a&m students participation in the nfe was funded through support from the department of nuclear engineering pvamu students and faculty attended the nfe as part of a nuclear forensics for minority serving institutions grant which was awarded to pvamu by the us department of homeland securitys domestic nuclear detection office nsspi and los alamos have been key collaborators on this project the nfe began at the urenco usa uranium enrichment facility in eunice new mexico where the sites president gave the group a short welcome before their tour of the facility urenco provided an array of managers across its functional areas to interact with the students during their visit participants saw the uranium hexafluoride feed and withdrawal stations cascade hall support equipment and control room ""urenco provided a wonderful opportunity for nuclear engineering students to experience the inner workings of a uranium enrichment facility "" said steven horowitz a texas a&m graduate student on the tour the group then visited sandia where they toured the museum and visited the reactor the cobalt irradiation system the critical experiments site and the centrifuge center ""the sandia museum and facility tours were great and led by very dedicated and engaging sandia staff and scientists "" marianno said the sites visited at sandia covered a range of interests from power systems to health physics to chemical engineering and appealed to a wide student audience sandia and in particular integrated military systems director david keese and his staff have been strong ongoing partners in the nfe the los alamos visit began at the bradbury museum with a talk by a lab historian dr joseph martz then gave an insightful account of the los alamos site and took the group on a guided bus tour pvamu coordinator dr richard wilkins said ""to have someone of dr martzs experience and stature spend the time that he did with our group was tremendous and it was fascinating listening to his narration during the museum visit and bus tour"" the group attended lectures by los alamos staff members on post-detonation nuclear forensics the goiania incident nuclear policy student opportunities at los alamos and the international atomic energy agency inspection process the students then participated in the institute for nuclear materials management (inmm) taos technical meeting where students were able to experience a technical conference on a smaller scale the graduate students who participated in the nfe presented their research at the meeting this experience was valuable to the undergraduate students from both pvamu and texas a&m the last stop for the nfe was the pantex nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility near amarillo texas students had access to experts across multiple pantex operational areas who answered questions from the students pantex is a unique facility in the us ""its not every day you get to touch a nuclear weapon mock-up while talking to the relevant subject matter expert but the nfe students had the opportunity when visiting pantex "" horowitz said leadership also spoke with the students about opportunities for internships co-ops and careers at pantex overall the students who participated in the nfe found it a rewarding and fruitful experience texas a&m graduate student robert zedric said ""the site tours resonated with students and often inspired new coursework focuses and research interests"" additionally elmore noted ""the nfe helped build camaraderie friendship and educational exchanges between texas a&m university system faculty and staff"""
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) external advisory board held its spring meeting may 29 at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing building in college station texas the 37-member board established in 2014 was given the charge by dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees to advise the agency on its strategic direction; serve as a focus group for tees program direction and opportunities; provide expertise in the current economic landscape to help tees understand trends drivers and priorities shaping customers operations; and collaborate on shared business issues strengthening the relationship between tees and its customers advisory board members shared updates from their subcommittees and also heard updates from tees administrators about research and commercialization initiatives corporate relations efforts workforce development programs seed grant funding regional division partnerships and national and global initiatives banks addressed the board members about tees goals moving into its next century of service: connecting with the world; partnering with industry and establishing tees as the quarterback of cutting-edge technology education the input we receive from this board is invaluable said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees we want to build and nurture relationships with industry research agencies and institutions of higher education having this advisory board helps us do that while also gaining fresh perspectives from some of the top minds in industry and research
"photo (right): dr rusty harris (far left) associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering gave board members a tour of the labs within the giesecke building following the meeting board members toured the recently dedicated frederick e giesecke engineering research building the next advisory board meeting will be held in october members of the board are alok das (air force research laboratory); pascal joly (airbus); warren ""pete"" miller (former undersecretary of energy); todd grove (american bureau of shipping); gerry griffin (golden spike company); ernest leyendecker (anadarko petroleum); gregory powers (halliburton); john pellegrino (army research laboratory); mark potter (hewlett packard); mario ruscev (baker hughes); ram shenoy (conocophillips); steve altemus (intuitive machines); michael beck (lockheed martin); larry graviss (eagle engineering group); jay schnitzer (mitre corporation); bob chalker (nace international); james phillips (nanomech inc); dennis koehl (south texas project nuclear operating co); lauri hansen (nasa/johnson space center); susan crumrine (southwest research institute); jim osullivan (technip usa); germán curá (tenaris); peter matic (naval research laboratory); andres alcantar (texas workforce commission); keith graf (office of the governor of texas); jeff trent (translational genomic research institute); cindy taylor (oil states international); stephen mcnair (pioneer natural resources); brian stoner (rti international); stein rasmussen (sbm offshore); stephen rottler (sandia national laboratories); brian rogers (schlumberger); gail hahn (boeing); edward mcgruder (elanco); james turner (fluor corporation); zach kokel (fmc technologies); and kevin nowka (ibm)"
the engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to three texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their research teams during the tees external advisory board meeting may 29 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more was given to dr john killough dr duncan maitland and dr arul jayaraman killough the michael and heidi gatens development professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university was awarded a grant for $32 million from the skolkovo institute of science and technology for his proposal advanced computational and numerical modeling techniques for hydrocarbon recovery his research team included co-pis dr eduardo gildin dr zoya heidari dr berna hascakir and dr yucel akkutlu all from petroleum engineering and dr vivek sarin from the department of computer science and engineering the research activities of killoughs group involve enhanced reservoir simulation from the nanoscale to the scale of large fields with thousands of producing wells and with the goal of creating realistic simulations to improve hydrocarbon recovery from the complex reservoirs currently being produced
maitland is the stewart & stevenson professor in the department of biomedical engineering and assistant agency director for commercialization and entrepreneurship for tees his collaborators included dr fredd clubb from the college of veterinary medicine and biological sciences and dr elizabeth cosgriff-hernandez from biomedical engineering the team received the award for their proposal shape memory polymer embolic foams for treating cerebrovascular aneurysms to develop a shape memory polymer (smp) foam embolic device for treating cerebrovascular aneurysms that will acutely clot faster and more completely throughout the aneurysm jayaraman is a professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and holder of the ray nesbitt professorship jayaraman was awarded a $19 million grant from the department of health and human safety/national institute of health/national institute of allergy and infectious diseases his co-pi is dr robert alaniz from the texas a&m health science center his research project modeling and analysis of the role of microbiota metabolites in t-cell differentiation seeks to understand the role that the microbiota metabolites play in mediating an anti-inflammatory environment in the gut which will potentially improve treatment for inflammatory bowel disease
new medical technology that enables monitoring of a babys brain oxygen levels during labor and delivery is a step closer to reality after its startup company noninvasix inc was awarded $100 000 in funding as the top company at the 2015 texas new ventures competition (tnvc) at texas a&m university the competition which attracted more than 90 young companies promoted the commercialization of emerging technology by recognizing companies with high growth potential it was hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and sponsored by the texas a&m university system the texas a&m division of research the center for new ventures and entrepreneurship the aggie angel network texas a&m system technology commercialization and the research valley this is important; its important for texas a&m for the texas a&m system for the region and i have never heard of an argument built that says this is not one of the core elements that makes this country strong and great said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system noninvasix a galveston-based company headed by president and ceo graham randall received $50 000 as a first-place winner of the competition and an additional $50 000 from the research valley partnership via the texas emerging technology fund (tetf) funding randall said was important to companies attempting to make their ideas into realities were still very early stage randall said weve got pretty hefty patent expenses coming up so this will help us lots of eyes have looked at us and said that theres something here and this will help us get through the door to potential investors in addition to noninvasix seven other companies were recognized and received prize money scribesense an online service aimed at reducing the time it takes teachers to grade tests earned second-place honors and received $30 000 thermal expansion solutions llc ranked third and received $20 000 for its alloy technology intended for the opto-electronics industry in addition the company also received $30 000 in tetf money fourth-place honors and $15 000 in prize money were awarded to brevitest technologies for its point-of-care device that performs clinical laboratory tests in 10 minutes tevido biodevices a company that uses 3d bio-printing of a womans living cells to build custom grafts for breast reconstruction was awarded fifth place and $10 000 it also received $15 000 in tetf money sano chemicals was ranked sixth and also was awarded $10 000 for its antifungal compound as part of the tnvc elevator pitch competition guardian sensors inc took top honors winning $10 000 for its one-minute pitch of its solution for vital sign monitoring of inpatients ecm technologies earned second place and $5 000 for its one-minute pitch of biomaterial dressing for chronic wounds addressing the companies vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees dr m katherine banks lauded their work and the efforts of the event sponsors we are here to help close the gap between the lab and the marketplace tees works to ensure entrepreneurs like you successfully transform your innovative ideas into reality and ultimately into the hands of the public the daylong competition which was open to all texas-based companies seeking to bring new or enhanced technology to the marketplace required 20 companies in the pre-seed/seed start-up or early growth stages to pitch their ideas to judges that included angels and venture capitalists experienced entrepreneurs non-profit founders legal professionals patent experts and banking/investment professionals the esteemed group of companies was previously selected from a pool of more than 90 tnvc applicants in the days leading to the competition participants received personal coaching and access to mentor strategists as they developed their competition business plans and presentation pitches for james monroe whose company thermal expansion solutions earned a total of $50 000 in prize money the competition was his first exposure to the fast-paced environment of business plans and pitches and he said it provided some validation of the personal investments hes already made in his company this is the first competition ive ever done first competition for the company and honestly the first influx of cash for the company monroe said this is tremendously helpful really good companies competed today and i feel lucky to be in the top tier of them to win this money it will really kind of launch us into the next stage the next level i really believe in the technology and thats why im investing a lot of my time a lot of my effort into trying to make it a reality funding for tnvc was made possible by tees the texas a&m system and the texas a&m division of research additional funding was provided by the research valley partnership through the texas emerging technology fund for more information on the texas new ventures competition including a full list of the days competitors visit wwwtexasnvcorg contact: duncan maitland tees assistant agency director for commercialization at 9794583471 or via email: djmaitland@tamuedu or ryan garcia at 9798475833 or via email: ryangarcia99@tamuedu
nuclear engineering faculty members from the universidade federal do rio de janiero (ufrj) in brazil visited the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) to learn about the nuclear security courses being taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university the visit was sponsored by the us department of states partnership for nuclear security the faculty members professors su jian paulo frutuoso and fernando carvalho all have interest in incorporating nuclear security education into the traditional nuclear engineering curriculum at ufrj nsspi staff and faculty shared information on the courses currently being taught in the area of nuclear security at texas a&m as well as other nsspi activities contributing to the practical education of students in nuclear security and research projects produced by graduate students in areas relevant to nuclear security these were conveyed through presentations discussions and tours of texas a&m and tees facilities the faculty members from ufrj are looking to incorporate nuclear security topics discussed in this visit into their curriculum in the near future as well as implementing a new nuclear security research area at their university based on the interactions between nsspi and ufrj during this visit the two institutions plan to work together to hold a nuclear security week event at ufrj in the fall of 2015 this event will consist of a one-week 10-hour-long course for graduate students and faculty members on nuclear security concepts two undergraduate lectures in nuclear security-safety integration and a 20-hour workshop for brazilian participants from across the country in nuclear security principles and culture
first responders and researchers braved scorching temperatures this week to demonstrate the latest in life-saving technologies at the summer institute on flooding hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) center for emergency informatics (cei) in conjunction with the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) it is the 8th summer institute held at teex facilities and the second one focused on flooding which is the number-one type of disaster in the world the summer institute brought together 60 practitioners academia and industry for concept experimentation with informatics technologies for preventing responding to and recovering from flooding and to discuss lessons learned from the recent texas floods as well as to evaluate existing and emerging technologies generate mission protocols and try them out through field experimentation participants included researchers from the tees center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) the center for autonomous vehicles and sensor systems and the hazards reduction and recovery center at texas a&m along with the lone star unmanned aircraft systems center of excellence and innovation (lsuasc) based at texas a&m university-corpus christi discussion topics included how effective crowd sourcing computer vision map-based visualization packages mobile phone apps and unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) were used for real-world search and rescue situations as well as how they could be used for assessing damage to power lines roads homes and critical infrastructure
with parts of texas experiencing devastating flooding this past spring the summer institute was a timely review of what was used at the floods and a look ahead to new and developing technologies that can help first-responders in emergency situations where quick response time is vital one session focused on uavs that were used to assess damage due to devastating flooding earlier this year throughout the state wimberley fire department austin fire department lsuasc and crasar flew uavs in the wimberley texas area and discussed how they helped responders see into areas in which they couldnt in order to look for survivors the uavs also reported back data about the water levels and debris fields the take-home message for researchers was that the emergency response community needs advances in organizing and visualizing data they are comfortable with social media smart phones and uavs but are drowning in data thats where the center for emergency informatics can help said dr robin murphy the ceis director while uavs conducted four exercises in the field (missing person search power infrastructure assessment storm surge assessment and home damage and debris estimates) the data was routed to situmap a new mapping software created by dr richard smith a professor at a&m-corpus christi situmap is an easy-to-learn multi-user multi-touch software which acts as a tablet-like digital command center that shows emergency managers maps of crisis areas situmap is being commercialized along with the geosuite common operational picture mobile app and the skywriter visualization app that have also been tested and refined at previous summer institutes situmap was unveiled at last years summer institute and with the feedback we received last and this year we are able to validate existing features and walk away with great ideas for future situmap development smith said three undergraduate computer science students from the national science foundation computing for disasters research experiences for undergraduates program won $900 in prizes for their work in creating computer vision apps to detect signs of missing persons in images and to display where uavs canine teams and ground searchers have collected data other students presented technologies such as an expert system app for allocating wilderness search and rescue teams advising on how take better photos of home damage and a robot airboat representatives from 12 agencies including texas task force 1 los angeles county fire department fort bend county office of emergency management texas parks and wildlife law enforcement division south east texas regional advisory council texas a&m forest service and the texas insurance commission participated along with 15 universities and five companies
today 18 texas high school seniors will be the first-ever cohort to graduate bioforce a stem summer program provided by the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) a joint center of texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) over the last three summers these students have performed bacterial transformation toured world-class pharmaceutical companies and research labs across the state and even trained on the same type of bioprocess equipment used to manufacture vaccines worldwide bioforce is a hands-on stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) summer program created by the nctm that introduces high school students to the field of pharmaceutical manufacturing and the process of how cutting-edge research and medical discoveries become new drugs and therapeutics through a three-year series of increasingly advancing curriculum provided during the summers of their freshman sophomore and junior years bioforce prepares students for college programs in engineering and science and ultimately to pursue a career in the biotech or pharmaceutical industries programs like bioforce gives us a chance to engage students and spark their interest in stem fields in ways textbooks just cant said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system we hope these outstanding young people will carry that excitement into their college careersand become the science and technology thought leaders of tomorrow students from around the state of texas have participated in the program including elena gehle from george ranch high school in richmond texasattending bioforce last summer was an amazing experience it was very interesting to meet people who are living ‘the dream of a science geek like me i believe that talking to these professionals and being able to experience what their professions are like gave us all the chance to really see who we could potentially become in the future as well as motivate us to continue our hard work in school since its beginning in 2013 nctms bioforce program has served more than 300 texas high school students from as far away as el paso mcallen the texas panhandle and practically every community in between for the 2015 summer academies alone which collectively provide only 150 available spots nctm had nearly 320 applicants during the competitive selection process some people didnt believe i was capable of being accepted into the program the first time around so being able to attend again will show i do genuinely care about my education especially my passion for engineering and science said enrique ruiz from lehman high school in kyle texas this experience can help be a catalyst for my future bioforce was designed to encourage traditionally underserved students to take on the challenges of a rigorous math and science curriculum to pursue higher education in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields and to enter the high-tech workforce grants received from the texas workforce commissions (twc) summer merit program and financial contributions from corporate partner cognizant technology solutions have allowed nctm to offer scholarships to this target audience through this program we are able to inspire students to pursue a career in a high-demand high-tech field said twc chairman andres alcantar students are given the unique opportunity to receive hands-on experience that will prepare them for future success nctms bioforce program has captured the spirit of cognizants making the future stem education initiative by providing a program of experiential learning where students learn by doing solving real-world problems in a state-of -the-art laboratory said kathryn nash associate director of educational affairs at cognizant we are proud to partner with texas a&m to provide opportunities that inspire our next generation of change makers nctms goal is to have 100 percent of its bioforce graduates enter a stem-related higher education program upon their high school graduation this will ensure a continued stream of younger generations to fill the pipeline of the pharmaceutical industry including groundbreaking research to life-saving medical discoveries therapeutics and treatments
texas a&m universitys dwight look college of engineering and the indian institute of technology kharagpur (iitkgp) have signed a formal affiliation agreement to promote institutional collaboration in education and research the primary objective of the agreement is to promote interaction and collaboration between faculty staff and students of the two institutions carry out academic and research programs and provide joint supervision of doctoral and masters students collaboration is the key to innovation in engineering said dr nk anand executive associate dean of engineering regents professor and associate agency director for the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) working with an exceptional international partner like the indian institute of technology kharagpur enables us to increase research and learning opportunities for our faculty and students while gaining valuable input from international colleagues dr debjyoti banerjee associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering will serve as coordinator for texas a&m and professor souvik bhattacharyya deputy director and professor of mechanical engineering at iit kharagpur will serve as coordinator for iitkgp ares of cooperation identified under this agreement include: exploring opportunities for interaction among members of faculty as well as creating visiting faculty positions; hosting short-term visiting students at the respective institutions; collaborating on joint research projects (including researchers from the texas a&m engineering experiment station); and joint academic activities and events such as short courses seminars workshops or conferences based on mutual interests and available expertise at both institutions iitkgp is a public engineering institution located in kharagpur india the institute was established in 1951 and is recognized as an institute of national importance by the indian government nearly 9 000 undergraduate and graduate students are enrolled at the institute
nine students from the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university were named recipients of the 2015 kaneka scholarship given by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) polymer technology center the scholarship awards $1 000 in tuition to graduate and undergraduate students who display academic excellence and research interest in the polymers industry kaneka americas holding inc a japanese bioplastics and organic technologies company established the scholarship fund in 2013 it partnered with the university to launch a new research and development facility on campus we appreciate kanekas contribution to our students conducting research in materials science or organic chemistry said dr hung-jue sue director of the center and a tees professor in the department of materials science and engineering it helps us attract top talent in the field we are grateful for the scholarship and hope to continue building our relationship with kaneka the polymer technology center is a cooperative program of the departments of aerospace engineering chemical engineering chemistry mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering the center features seminars for students faculty and industry partners and an educational component with an emphasis on polymers 2015 kaneka scholarship recipients: ying-pin chen graduate student department of materials science and engineering peng liu graduate student department of mechanical engineering anna kristen means graduate student department of materials science and engineering parvin karimineghlani graduate student department of materials science and engineering xiaosong liu graduate student department of materials science and engineering morgan plummer graduate student department of materials science and engineering yasheng liu graduate student department of materials science and engineering jose leonardo gomez graduate student department of chemical engineering kevin dong undergraduate student department of chemical engineering
"a smart device that translates sign language while being worn on the wrist could bridge the communications gap between the deaf and those who dont know sign language says a texas a&m university biomedical engineering researcher who is developing the technology the wearable technology combines motion sensors and the measurement of electrical activity generated by muscles to interpret hand gestures says roozbeh jafari associate professor in the universitys department of biomedical engineering and researcher at the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) center for remote health technologies and systems although the device is still in its prototype stage it can already recognize 40 american sign language words with nearly 96 percent accuracy notes jafari who presented his research at the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) 12th annual body sensor networks conference this past june the technology was among the top award winners in the texas instruments innovation challenge this past summer the technology developed in collaboration with texas instruments represents a growing interest in the development of high-tech sign language recognition systems (slrs) but unlike other recent initiatives jafaris system foregoes the use of a camera to capture gestures video-based recognition he says can suffer performance issues in poor lighting conditions and the videos or images captured may be considered invasive to the users privacy whats more because these systems require a user to gesture in front of a camera they have limited wearability – and wearability for jafari is key ""wearables provide a very interesting opportunity in the sense of their tight coupling with the human body jafari says because they are attached to our body they know quite a bit about us throughout the day and they can provide us with valuable feedback at the right times with this in mind we wanted to develop a technology in the form factor of a watch in order to capture the intricacies of american sign language jafaris system makes use of two distinct sensors the first is an inertial sensor that responds to motion consisting of an accelerometer and gyroscope the sensor measures the accelerations and angular velocities of the hand and arm jafari notes this sensor plays a major role in discriminating different signs by capturing the users hand orientations and hand and arm movements during a gesture however a motion sensor alone wasnt enough jafari explains certain signs in american sign language are similar in terms of the gestures required to convey the word with these gestures the overall movement of the hand may be the same for two different signs but the movement of individual fingers may be different for example the respective gestures for please and sorry and for name and work are similar in hand motion to discriminate between these types of hand gestures jafaris system makes use of another type of sensor that measures muscle activity known as an electromyographic sensor (semg) this sensor non-invasively measures the electrical potential of muscle activities jafari explains it is used to distinguish various hand and finger movements based on different muscle activities essentially its good at measuring finger movements and the muscle activity patterns for the hand and arm working in tandem with the motion sensor to provide a more accurate interpretation of the gesture being signed he says these two technologies are complementary to each other and the fusion of these two systems will enhance the recognition accuracy for different signs making it easier to recognize a large vocabulary of signs jafari says in jafaris system both inertial sensors and electromyographic sensors are placed on the right wrist of the user where they detect gestures and send information via bluetooth to an external laptop that performs complex algorithms to interpret the sign and display the correct english word for the gesture as jafari continues to develop the technology he says his team will look to incorporate all of these functions into one wearable device by combining the hardware and reducing the overall size of the required electronics he envisions the device collecting the data produced from a gesture interpreting it and then sending the corresponding english word to another persons smart device so that he or she can understand what is being signed simply by reading the screen of their own device in addition he is working to increase the number of signs recognized by the system and expanding the system to both hands the combination of muscle activation detection with motion sensors is a new and exciting way of understanding human intent with other applications in addition to enhanced slr systems such as home device activations using context-aware wearables jafari says jafari is associate professor in texas a&ms department of biomedical engineering associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering and the department of electrical and computer engineering and researcher at tees center for remote health technologies and systems his research focuses on wearable computer design and signal processing he is director of the embedded signal processing laboratory photo: a prototype of jafaris sign language recognition technology that he aims to scale down to the size of a watch about the center for remote health technologies and systems (crhts) the center for remote health technologies and systems is designing and developing advanced health technologies and systems to enable healthy living through health monitoring and disease diagnosis management and prevention the centers mission is to identify and overcome the unmet needs of patients and health care providers through the development of breakthrough remote health care devices biosignal mapping algorithms remote health analytics and information systems that will improve access enhance quality and reduce the cost of health care"
answering the nations call for viable solutions to its energy and manufacturing needs requires the input and collaboration of experts from a variety of disciplines those experts were on the texas a&m university campus monday (aug 17) as part of the council on competitiveness dialogue series the focus was to identify common challenges and opportunities in the areas of clean energy and advanced materials manufacturing in the united states the event is the third in a series of themed dialogues the council and us department of energy (doe) are hosting this year to engage thought leaders from industry academia national laboratories and non-profit organizations on the topic of accelerating the production of advance materials the discussions are part of an overarching partnership between the council and doe to enhance the countrys energy and manufacturing competitiveness we are honored to host these discussions in college station said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station bringing together top experts from industry and academia is critical to solving todays challenging technology problems the future of us manufacturing depends increasingly on the novel research deployment and commercialization of advanced materials said deborah l wince-smith president and ceo of the council on competitiveness bringing together the nations top leaders from academia industry national laboratories and government to uncover the steps to partner and accelerate advanced materials development in the united states is a critical step to boosting americas long-term productivity potential and prosperity the event was hosted by the council on competitiveness us department of energy office of energy efficiency and renewable energy (eere) and office of fossil energy and texas a&m engineering the series is part of the american energy and manufacturing competitiveness (aemc) partnership a three-year effort between the council and eere to increase american competitiveness through advanced clean energy manufacturing and increased energy productivity
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) hosted the first part of the 2015 nuclear security training series (nsts) for indian university faculty and students at texas a&m university june 20-30 the nsts is sponsored by the us department of states partnership for nuclear security (pns) and is the fourth in its series the participants included 25 nuclear engineering students and five faculty members from nine universities across india: amity university (noida) delhi university delhi technological university the indian institute of technology in mumbai the indian institute of technology in kanpur jadhavpur university (kolkata) mody university (rajasthan) pandit deendayal petroleum university (gandhinagar) and the university of petroleum and energy studies (dehradun) half of the participants in this years program were female dr costas georghiades associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers for tees officially welcomed the group to texas a&m at the nsts inaugural event and priya sethi pns program manager gave the nsts opening remarks dr sunil chirayath nsspi interim director gave the keynote address on nuclear security and nuclear security culture instructors for the nsts at texas a&m included nsspi faculty members chirayath dr craig marianno and claudio gariazzo former texas a&m nuclear engineering students dr james miller dr matthew sternat chris ryan and current phd student julia eigenbrodt gave presentations of their student research to the group as a means of generating ideas for future student research projects in the area of nuclear security and stimulating discussion on nuclear security research the aim of the nsts was to inculcate the tenets of nuclear security as a research best practice and to interweave discussions of nuclear security culture into the presentation discussions while at texas a&m the participants attended lectures on nuclear security and nuclear security culture attended nuclear security related thesis and dissertation presentations from former nuclear engineering students participants visited the nuclear science center took part in an outdoor radiation source recovery exercise at the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city facility and toured nasa and the george h w bush library and museum dr yassin hassan head of the department of nuclear engineering gave the concluding remarks and distributed the nsts participation certificates on the final day of the texas a&m portion of the nsts after their time at texas a&m the group continued their training series at oak ridge national laboratory and sandia national laboratories the nsts participants also attended the 56th annual meeting of institute of nuclear materials management held in indian wells california
the 44th turbomachinery and 31st international pump users symposia (tps 2015) was held at the george r brown convention center in houston texas sept 14-17 2015 the turbomachinery laboratory part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m university system organized the event which saw 5 542 unique attendees representing 48 countries and a record-breaking 350 exhibiting companies as with previous installments tps 2015 proved to be a high-quality event for everyone involved the exhibit hall comprised 71 100 net square feet of exhibit space which hosted 350 leading companies from the turbomachinery and pump industries (up from 343 companies in 2014) companies displayed full-size equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends highly qualified technical personnel were on hand to address business needs of attendees and exhibitors enjoyed the opportunity to support current customers as well as form positive business relationships with new clients during the event exhibit space selection took place for next years event; the tps 2016 floor plan is currently 85 percent booked in addition to visiting the exhibit hall symposia attendees participated in a combination of 16 short courses 20 lectures 19 tutorials 27 discussion groups and 18 case studies led by industry experts from around the world topics covered included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals attendees engaged in industry related topics leading to a quality exchange of technical knowledge the turbomachinery symposium began in 1971 and the pump symposium began in 1984 in 2011 the symposia were combined and are now held jointly every fall in houston tps has become a staple event for industry professionals and leading companies built on a history of success this annual event promotes professional development technology transfer peer networking and information exchange among industry professionals for more information on tps 2015 including the full technical program list exhibiting company list and more please visit http://tpstamuedu/ or email info@turbo-labtamuedu proceedings from previous symposia are available to freely download online at turbolabtamuedu/proc/ the technical content from tps 2015 will be added to this collection in march 2016 next years event will be held sept 13-15 2016 with short courses running in conjunction with the event on sept 12
the state of texas has appropriated billions of dollars over the next biennium to address the states aging transportation infrastructure recognizing the need for better solutions to meet this challenge the texas legislature appropriated $5 million for debt service for a joint venture between two state agencies the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) for the construction of the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) the world-class facility will house researchers who are developing advanced and sustainable materials and structural systems that will reduce cost and extend infrastructure life safety resiliency and durability roadways and bridges are aging at a faster rate than they can be repaired the us power grid is more than 130 years old and vulnerable to natural disasters and terror attacks there is also a concern regarding the integrity of the nations oil gas water and wastewater pipeline systems modernizing these infrastructures will require interdisciplinary research teams 21st century technologies and innovative solutions for the demands from a growing population the potential for this facility is immense in terms of both innovative research opportunities and cost savings for the state of texas said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system we need viable solutions for solving our infrastructure needs without putting more burden on the taxpayers of texas by investing in new technology development now we could save hundreds of millions of dollars in construction expenses over the long term the $5 million from the state is the first year of debt service to allow $65 million to be used for the construction of the cir another $35 million is being raised from the private sector for equipment and program enhancements our legislators are to be commended for their support of the center for infrastructure renewal the research and training to be conducted in this facility will address infrastructure challenges resulting in unprecedented savings to the state of texas said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m university and director of tees we expect cir research to address issues such as developing new methods to repair and replace infrastructure at a lower cost in less time and with new materials that will have a longer lifespan the research testing and training facility will be located in research park on the campus of texas a&m researchers in the facility which will be shared between tees and tti will also look to develop partnerships with industry to help address texas infrastructure needs the 200 000-square-foot testing facility will be one of the largest in the world connecting researchers and experts from the field so that they can work together to find solutions to challenging infrastructure needs in our mission to train the next generation workforce that will plan develop and maintain our roads bridges pipelines and electrical infrastructure into the future this facility offers a living laboratory said dennis l christiansen tti agency director researchers faculty students and industry partners will collaborate to find best practices and approaches to rehabilitate our present infrastructure and define the future state-of-the-practice a nationwide search is underway for a director of the cir chaired by dr robin autenrieth department head of the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university the facility is expected to be completed in 2018
texas a&m university has established two new interdisciplinary graduate programs in energy: the master of science in energy and the certificate in energy the master of science in energy and the certificate in energy are designed to introduce students and professionals to a broad spectrum of important energy issues ranging from energy technologies based on fossil and non-fossil resources to sustainable energy technologies as well as their interactions with energy economics entrepreneurship law and policy programs like this simply do not exist outside texas a&m said texas a&m president michael k young by bringing together partners from a broad spectrumincluding industry government and public policy arenasand providing intensive interactions with these graduate students we are helping create cutting-edge solutions to some of todays most pressing global challenges related to economic stability national security and other critical areas in just 10 months students and professionals can earn a master of science in energy on campus or online in either a thesis or non-thesis track through modules taught by energy experts from eight colleges and schools at texas a&m these programs will offer a holistic view of the entire energy research landscape said dr christodoulos a floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute and the erle nye 59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering students and professionals will come together to discuss important energy challenges and opportunities and interact with energy leaders from academia industry and government our students will be the new generation of energy-educated students and professionals broadly educated on all components of energy in ways that have never been done before the professional master of science in energy degree will be offered in two tracks track 1 will require a research thesis and track 2 will require only coursework track 1 requires 16 modules thesis and seminars and results in 32 student credit hours track 2 requires 23 modules and seminars and results in 365 student credit hours this track is offered to researchers or professionals who may be in residence or complete the training online via distance learning the certificate in energy will be offered by taking 10 modules of the professional master of science in energy degree program either in residence or online the in-residence programs are slated to begin in fall 2016; both programs are accepting applications and more information is available at energytamuedu/education about the texas a&m energy institute the texas a&m energy institute pursues and supports new approaches for multi-disciplinary energy research education and external partnerships these approaches cross departmental and college boundaries and address all facets of the energy landscape that naturally connect engineering sciences technologies economics law and policy decisions more than 225 world-class faculty members and researchers from texas a&m university system member institutions are texas a&m energy institute faculty affiliates texas a&m university affiliates represent nine colleges and schools including the following: college of agriculture and life sciences dwight look college of engineering college of architecture college of geosciences college of liberal arts college of science bush school of government and public service mays business school and the school of law
from sept21-23 the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) hosted students and faculty from the tokyo institute of technology for the third annual academic exchange held at texas a&m university between students from texas a&m and the dojo nuclear security education program at tokyo tech who are studying nuclear nonproliferation and security issues the team from tokyo tech consisted of seven students two faculty members and two staff members on the first day students from the two universities participated in group discussions over current nuclear issues the topics covered were: 1) learning from fukushima and three mile island; 2) communicating with the public as a nuclear community; and 3) iran deal or no deal: joint comprehensive plan of action the discussions culminated in each group developing a presentation that was given at that evenings meeting of the texas a&m student chapter of the institute of nuclear materials management the following day nsspis radiological emergency response research group lead a field exercise for the visiting students at the texas a&m engineering extension services (teex) disaster city training facility working with nsspi students the tokyo tech students used vehicle detection systems health physics instrumentation personal radiation detectors and radio-isotope identification devices to execute a consequence mission students were asked to locate identify and map radiation areas around the disaster city rubble pile 1 (rp1) prop using a 30 mci cs-137 source once they identified a low radiation entry point students entered the rp1 tunnel system in teams to locate and identify sealed radioactive sources that had been hidden within the pile this exercise was meant to provide student hands-on experience with field detector systems and executing a field mission safely as a team the group also toured various other facilities at texas a&m including the triga research reactor at the nuclear science center the teex brayton fire training field the thermal hydraulics laboratory the simulator laboratory and the nsspi nuclear security nuclear forensics and emergency response laboratories this exchange is part of a larger program of cooperation between toyko tech and texas a&m-nsspi texas a&m students have previously attended three international symposia on nuclear safety security and safeguards conducted by tokyo tech in japan plans are also underway for tokyo tech to sign a memorandum of understanding with tees nsspi and the department of nuclear engineering and for nsspi to host tokyo tech graduate students as interns in the near future
"texas a&m university at qatar (tamuq) in collaboration with founding supporter oryx gtl has launched the oryx gtl – gas-to-liquid excellence program to prepare the highly skilled engineers and technical staff needed to lead and operate qatars world-class industrial facilities globally this is the first specialized university-industry program in gas-to-liquid (gtl) technology and is supported by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) gas and fuels research center both in qatar and the united states this is also the first tamuq initiative to address all three pillars of the academic institution in one program combining elements of teaching research and community outreach oryx gtl will fund the program for five years beginning in 2015 with the option to continue its support beyond 2020 oryx gtl has supported several initiatives at texas a&m university at qatar in its efforts to support the mission of preparing highly skilled engineers and technical staff to lead and operate qatars world-class industrial facilities abdulhadi barqan chief administration officer at oryx gtl said and we are very proud to become the founding supporter of a gas-to-liquid excellence program at texas a&m university at qatar which shall be known as the oryx gtl excellence program valuing people is a core business principle of oryx gtl it is a principle which governs our actions both internally and externally whilst interacting with the wider community we believe empowering people to make the most of their abilities enables them to take ownership of their individual destiny education is a central theme of qatars national vision 2030 to which the company is wholeheartedly committed the new program will educate the public in qatar starting from school students to college students to working engineers and technical staff about the role of gtl in qatars economy and in the future of global energy for the production of ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals it will also support oryx gtl outreach activities and public programs besides supporting the recruitment of highly qualified qatari and other students to join the company the program has been developed by tamuq in consultation with oryx gtl and has been signed by dr mark h weichold dean and ceo of the branch campus; dr karan watson provost and executive vice president at texas a&ms main campus in college station texas; and abdulrahman m al-suwaidi ceo of oryx gtl we are proud to partner with oryx gtl to pursue human development that will provide valuable expertise for qatars growth and prosperity and contribute to qatars goal of being a knowledge-based economy said weichold we are grateful to our partner oryx gtl and for the vision oryx gtls leadership has shown in supporting qatars industry and its workforce the countrys future and achieving the goals set forth in qatar national vision 2030"" dr nimir elbashir will chair and coordinate the oryx gtl – gas-to-liquid excellence program elbashir is associate professor of chemical engineering and petroleum engineering and director of the tees gas and fuels research center his research group of 25 researchers (including postdoctoral researchers research associates phd and masters students and undergraduate students) has a research fund that has exceeded $12 million in the past six years elbashirs team handles many projects of critical interest to qatars natural gas-processing technologies and his team collaborates with both national and international energy corporations the fuel characterization lab and the applied catalysis lab of texas a&m qatar will support this program both labs are equipped with multimillion-dollar equipment run by highly skilled researchers and technical staff i have witnessed many major accomplishments in the establishment of strong relations between academia and industry but this step is unique in the form of its academic research service and community outreach programs said elbashir oryx gtl has been a strong supporter of our branch campus this collaboration goes further to partner with us to build knowledge in a field of critical interest to qatars economy and the future of global energy objectives of the oryx gtl are to advance qatars leading role in the gas-to-liquid (gtl) field and build teaching training and research excellence in natural gas processing for value-added chemicals and fuels; enhance collaboration between oryx gtl and tamuq in terms of service research training and recruitment programs; facilitate the training of highly skilled engineers and technical staff to lead the gtl field within qatar; provide professional services and training courses within qatar in areas relevant to gtl; develop courses and programs for training highly skilled engineers technicians and other staff in the area of gtl; as well as synthetic fuels characterization and processing and support qatar national vision 2030 in building human and research capital in the clean energy field"
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university-central texas have signed a formal affiliation agreement that will foster and strengthen research collaborations between the two institutions as members of the texas a&m university system both tees and a&m-central texas have missions focused on research and providing outreach and educational opportunities to the state of texas and beyond this collaboration is a perfect example of how texas a&m system members can work together to strengthen opportunities for faculty and staff that will also have positive outcomes for the state of texas said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system tees and a&m-central texas are also committed to supporting groundbreaking research collaborations among researchers at both institutions this new agreement establishes a&m-central texas as one of tees 19 regional divisions which includes academic partners from across the state of texas and parts of new mexico the partnership will increase research opportunities for a&m-central texas faculty and enhance research experiences for undergraduate and graduate students the impact of this partnership for the state is enormous collaboration between universities not only advances innovation in the lab but contributes to the state economy through commercializing those discoveries and preparing the technology workforce of the future said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees a&m-central texas with its strong ties to the killeen and ft hood communities is a strong partner and a welcome addition to our regional tees divisions throughout texas said cindy wall assistant agency director for regional divisions at tees we look forward to developing a long-term relationship with the faculty and researchers at the university and supporting them in their educational and research endeavors texas a&m university-central texas is excited to have been designated as a regional division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station said dr marc nigliazzo president of a&m-central texas our partnership with tees will not only assist us in building applied research capability as our university grows but it will support our commitment to community engagement by enhancing regional access to tees and to its remarkable capabilities beyond the immediate research enhancements that the mou provides with an example of our nsf solar research proposal that includes faculty members from both texas a&m university and a&m-central texas conducting collaborative research with the university of texas at austin and colorado state university we are now in a position to tap more resources within the entire texas a&m university system through tees said dr russ porter associate provost/associate vice president for research of a&m-central texas that new position includes significant research opportunities and resources for community businesses commercial public-private enterprise ft hood our connection with community colleges and residential improvements the tees connection creates a whole new level of research opportunity and economic development for the central texas area texas is well positioned in the renewable energy sector as there is not only an abundance of sunshine but also a strong technical workforce and an entrepreneurial spirit said dr robert balog director of the renewable energy and power electronics research lab at texas a&m this mou facilitates seamless collaboration and solidifies the mission of tees as the go-to destination for research and subject-matter expertise for industry and policy leaders alike i am excited that we will be able to now offer services to the industry from basic and applied research through deployment test and validation as an educational partner tees will offer its expertise in areas such as workforce development and continuing education as well as technology development and commercialization the partners have mutual interests in research areas such as computing and information systems photovoltaic systems and renewable energy research as well as workforce development opportunities including the enhancement of veterans employability photo from left: lagoudas wall nigliazzo and porter
faculty and staff from the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) at texas a&m university organized the second nuclear facilities experience (nfe) for american students and young professionals through a grant from the national nuclear security administrations next generation safeguards initiative this experience which took place in the united kingdom from sept 13-18 included students from five us universities (texas a&m the university of michigan the university of new mexico the university of tennessee and penn state university) faculty from texas a&m and the university of utah and young professionals from three national laboratories (argonne savannah river and pacific northwest national laboratories) the five-day tour of the uk included visits to the urenco uranium enrichment plant in capenhurst the thermal oxide reprocessing plant at sellafield the worlds first commercial nuclear power plant at calder hall (consisting of four magnox reactors) and the heysham nuclear power plant (consisting of four advanced gas-cooled reactors) the nfe also included a stop at kings college london where participants interacted with faculty and students from the centre for science and security studies in the department of war studies at kings college both host faculty and visitors presented lectures on nuclear security topics over the course of the nfe the participants traveled more than 900 miles by rail and had the opportunity to see some of the best examples of operational nuclear science security and safeguards the world has to offer this years international nfe is the latest in a series of similar experiences organized by nsspi since 2006 past nfes took students and faculty to facilities in france the uk and japan photo: nfe group prepares to tour the sellafield facilities
six faculty members in the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university have received a $15 million grant from the national science foundations (nsf) designing materials to revolutionize and engineer our future (dmref) program to speed up the development and application of high temperature shape memory alloys (htmas) the project dmref: accelerating the development of phase-transforming heterogeneous materials: application to high temperature shape memory alloys is led by dr raymundo arróyave associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering collaborators on the project include: dr ibrahim karaman head and chevron professor i in materials science and engineering; dr amine benzerga associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering; dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and associate vice chancellor for engineering; dr theocharis baxevanis tees assistant research professor in aerospace engineering and dr edward r dougherty robert m kennedy 26 chair and distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering the nsf in support of the multi-agency federal materials genome initiative (mgi) seeks to target one of the primary mgi goals to halve the current time and cost for transitioning breakthroughs from the laboratory to the marketplace a process that can take as long as two decades texas a&ms project attempts to accelerate the development of htsmas for compact and efficient solid-state actuation devices with applications in the aerospace and automotive industry it combines ideas from informatics and design with experimental and computational materials science the project aims to shorten the time necessary for the development of htsmas equipped with tailored properties it builds from the past and current research projects with nasa the air force office of scientific research and other leaders in the aerospace industry
"the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university has received the research for undergraduates (reu) grant from the national science foundation (nsf) over a period of three years the $365 000 grant will enable the department to offer research experiences in multiscale experiments and modeling of material systems to 10 undergraduate students enrolled in universities across texas dr terry creasy associate professor in materials science and engineering and dr ibrahim karaman materials science and engineering head and chevron professor i collaborated with dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and associate vice chancellor for engineering on texas a&ms program titled reu site: multifunctional materials"" the program is jointly funded by the department of defenses awards to stimulate and support undergraduate research experience (assure) program in partnership with the nsf reu program the materials science and engineering program has a long history of incorporating undergraduate research both through previous reu programs and through involvement in individual pi labs said dr patrick shamberger assistant professor and undergraduate degree program director in the materials science and engineering department this grant enables our department to scale up support for these activities and in the process develop a strong cadre of undergraduate researchers many of which we hope will chose to continue their graduate research here in this department texas a&ms program offers opportunities for undergraduate students to engage in materials science research early in their undergraduate careers despite having no access to materials science as a major in their home institutions it also promotes success of more senior students particularly underrepresented minority students who have already developed an interest in materials science but would benefit from a research experience undergraduate research is a phenomenal opportunity for students to integrate course material that they learn in the classroom with the practical process of materials discovery and engineering said shamberger it is also an ideal chance for students to discover the research process itself and plays a key role in many students decisions to follow the path of graduate studies during the 10-week program students will get hands-on experience in various materials synthesis and characterization techniques different types of multifunctional materials and materials modeling methods such as molecular dynamics to continuum scale constitutive modeling optimization advanced finite element-based micro-mechanics and macroscopic finite element modeling they will learn how research is conducted develop experimentation and modeling skills and learn how to conduct property characterization analysis testing and optimization of multifunctional materials and components the students will be mentored by materials science and engineering faculty and a trained graduate student at the end of the program students will present their research results in a poster symposium and participate in an reu students invent experience in collaboration with the aggies invent program"
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) external advisory board held its fall meeting nov 13 at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing building in college station texas advisory board members shared updates from their subcommittees and also heard updates from tees administrators about research and commercialization initiatives corporate relations efforts workforce development programs seed grant funding regional division partnerships and national and global initiatives our advisory board members are very involved and provide us with insightful input on how we can better serve our partners and the state of texas through our research technology transfer workforce development initiatives and opportunities said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees dr daniel ragsdale director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center and dr christodoulos a floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute gave presentations on their respective centers and discussed current and future research and outreach initiatives following the meeting board members viewed a demonstration at the texas a&m engineering extension services brayton fire field and also toured disaster city the next advisory board meeting will be held in may 2016 members of the board are pascal joly (airbus); warren pete miller (former undersecretary of energy); todd grove (american bureau of shipping--abs); gerry griffin (golden spike company); ernest leyendecker (anadarko petroleum); gregory powers (halliburton); john pellegrino (army research laboratory); mark potter (hewlett packard); ram shenoy (conocophillips); steve altemus (intuitive machines); michael beck (consolidated nuclear security); larry graviss (eagle engineering group); bob chalker (nace international); james phillips (nanomech inc); dennis koehl (south texas project nuclear operating co); lauri hansen (nasa/johnson space center); susan crumrine (southwest research institute); jim osullivan (technip usa); germán curá (tenaris); peter matic (naval research laboratory); andres alcantar (texas workforce commission); keith graf (office of the governor of texas); stephen mcnair (pioneer natural resources); stein rasmussen (sbm offshore); steve rottler (sandia national laboratories); brian rogers (schlumberger); edward mcgruder (elanco); james turner (fluor corporation); zach kokel (fmc technologies); and kevin nowka (ibm); rustom mody (baker hughes); chad evans (council on competitiveness); norm byrne (dow chemical company); adam berg (fmc technologies); bill hanson (great lakes dredge & dock company); alan gatherer (huawei); whitney kilgore (idesignedu); ron bessire (lockheed martin); rich staats (mitre corporation); jeff nichols (oak ridge national laboratory); brian lukoff (perusall); grant swartzwelder (petrogrowth advisors); jana bell (rmg networks); joe cunningham (sante ventures); luis cifuentes (texas a&m university-corpus christi); lance kinney (texas board of professional engineers); dave rintoul (us steel)
the master of science in safety engineering degree conferred by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) has been recognized by the institution of chemical engineers (icheme) as satisfying the requirements to register as a professional process safety engineer it is considered a preferred pathway to obtaining the qualification
icheme presented the program certification to dr m sam mannan director of mkopsc and regents professor at the 2015 mkopsc international symposium we are excited to have our degree program certified mannan said this provides a new and recommended avenue for engineers to become recognized as process safety experts in addition to the program certification icheme conferred the title of professional process safety engineer on mannan at the event he joins a pool of less than 100 engineers who have achieved this qualification im honored to be the first professional process safety engineer from mkopsc mannan said im looking forward to working with many students as they go through our program professional process safety engineers are globally recognized the title holds the same level of status as chartered engineer and professional engineer icheme established the program to distinguish practitioners as professionals in process safety mkopsc has worked with icheme the leading professional engineering organization in europe since 2014 they have collaborated on process safety education chemical product design and strategic leadership and direction for more information about the mary kay oconnor process safety center please visit the website
dr m sam mannan and researchers in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university were featured on the cover of the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) journal
mannan director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center and regents professor was assisted by olga reyes-valdes a graduate student in the department and drs sonny sachdeva hao chen yi liu and delphine laboureur all former postdoctoral researchers with the center the research article titled trends and challenges in process safety was featured in the november issue of the peer-reviewed aiche journal in addition to the publication of the article and being chosen as the cover story their research was highlighted in a summary article in the november 2015 issue of the chemical engineering progress which highlights the importance of this article chemicals play a key role in todays high-tech world mannan wrote the chemical industry is linked to every technologically advanced industry; only a handful of the goods and services we enjoy on a daily basis would exist without essential chemical products the focus of the research process safety is a concept that is applicable across various industries it introduces base knowledge of chemical interactions into everyday engineering procedures this understanding assists experts working with complex and dynamic chemical interactions the research brings together the science of material characteristics and behaviors human-machine interfaces and management systems to assist with equipment design sustainability reliability engineering and organizational science the researchers suggest a systematic approach to process safety is needed to ensure safety of the public researchers and the environment such an approach would ensure safety not only during normal production but also during abnormal and disaster situations an engineer must function as a member of the global community mannan wrote this means not only competing in a global marketplace but also acting as a professional who shares global responsibilities for more information about the mary kay oconnor process safety center and process safety please visit the centers website
two researchers from the texas center for applied technology (tcat) have been named 2015 texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center fellows dr keith biggers director of computing and information technology and dr dean schneider director of manufacturing operations were recognized for their outstanding individual initiative and performance in support of the tees mission of research workforce development technology development and transfer and international outreach and collaboration biggers research focus is on the development of simulation to support large-scale training exercises tools for supporting command and control and the decision-making process and visual analytics he has led the development of the emergency management exercise system (em*es) a constructive simulation that has been used to train more than 10 000 responders from around the united states he has also led the development of various information dashboards helping to provide decision support and enhance situational awareness of end-users customized dashboards have been developed for the department of defense department of homeland security department of agriculture and other organizations schneiders research projects include process improvements for various industry sponsors development and implementation of water and power distribution technologies to improve conditions in border communities along the texas/mexico border as well as teaching high school students about engineering by helping them design and build eight-foot wind turbines previously schneider was chief of the technology requirements branch for the us air forces air education and training command leading a team of information and training technology experts in the evaluation of existing and emerging training and educational technologies and evaluated them for inclusion into the air forces learning processes photo from left: dr jim wall executive director of tcat; biggers; schneider; dr costas georghiades associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers; and dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees
extreme weather conditions increased demand and changing technologies are fueling researchers to search for near-term solutions to modernize and secure the united states aging power grid dr mladen kezunovic director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center and his co-authors have released a report on the outcome of the executive forum and workshop on physical and cyber infrastructure to support the future grid held in may the event which focused on the 10-year horizon for improvements to the power grid was organized by the power systems engineering research center (pserc) with support from the national science foundation attendees included thought leaders from the utility and manufacturing industries as well as government non-profits and academia the diverse group of researchers engaged in discussions on emerging research issues and how to resolve them in the next decade this forum was an excellent opportunity for researchers from a variety of backgrounds to bring their perspectives to the table and brainstorm ideas for upgrading the power grid said kezunovic who is also the texas a&m university site director for pserc by working together we can better meet the challenge of providing research deliverables within the next 10 years that will improve the functionality and security of the power grid
the final report includes input and viewpoints from more than 100 participants key takeaways included the need for the future power grid to move toward incorporating real-time technologies in order to address resiliency challenges as well as the need for resilience metrics with weighted indicators based on economical electrical and social factors report authors were kezunovic coordinator; jay caspary southwest power pool (vice chair pserc industry advisory board); flora flygt american transmission co (chair pserc industry advisory board); george gross university of illinois at urbana-champaign; ward jewell wichita state university; mirrasoul j mousavi abb; and dennis ray pserc a full copy of the report is available online top photo from left: panel moderator flora flygt strategic planning and policy advisor american transmission co; a wade smith president and chief operating officer aep texas; tony montoya executive vice president and chief operating officer western area power administration; bob mitchell ceo atlantic wind connection and trans-elect development co; and h b trip doggett president and ceo ercot
after serving 10 years in the reserves and active duty as a supply sergeant and chemical operations specialist tanya nixon was honorably discharged in 2010 while in the army nixons primary responsibilities involved chemical disposal and decontamination her postgraduate studies in counseling educational administration and psychology led her to a career in education that spanned from assistant principal to dean although she was quite successful at it nixon felt that being an educator was not her true passion in life so she sought change when she learned of the military veterans manufacturing vaccines (mvmv) program offered by the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) a joint center of texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station she immediately jumped at the opportunity and applied for a scholarship nixon was accepted into and recently completed nctms biomanufacturing technical certificate program which is comprised of 180 continuing education hours of online instruction and hands-on training in upstream and downstream manufacturing processes sterile environment protocol bioprocess equipment operations quality unit operations good documentation and manufacturing practices regulatory compliance and standard operating procedures common in the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry the nctm is an interdisciplinary education institution that provides multi-generational technical training and professional development programs for the biopharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing industries the mvmv program was made possible by a grant received from the governor of texas office which allows nctm to offer texas military veterans cost-free professional development and training to enter the biopharmaceutical industry immediately following completion of the program nixon was hired at lonza one of the worlds leading pharmaceutical contract manufacturing organizations nixon reports that the training she received at nctm provided a foundation to understand the big picturewhere it came from and where it is going she feels the program is not only rewarding but also lucrative in one month i was marketable! nixons supervisor finds tremendous comfort in the fact that tanya brought to the company the necessary skills to get the job done; and the biopharmaceutical industry is ready for more employees just like her nixon is convinced that the principles learned during her military serviceincluding attention to detail timeliness and integrityare equally important in the biomanufacturing field soldiers are perfect candidates for [the biomanufacturing] field because they are keenly skilled with thinking on their toes and are very flexible nixon said nctm is currently enrolling for the spring 2016 cohort of the mvmv program interested military veterans can learn more at nctmtamuedu
a new study by researchers in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and los alamos national laboratory has led to a new principle to control macroscopic thermal expansion response of bulk materials including obtaining zero thermal expansion metals currently researchers rely on manipulation of either the materials composition and/or complex fabrication of composites to reduce thermal expansion to obtain tailored thermal expansion change in temperature can cause almost any material to change shape area and/or volume this can be a problem when dimensional stability of structures and devices is desired in applications that undergo a temperature fluctuation a possible solution is an alloy with controlled thermal expansion or zero-thermal expansion the research teams manuscript tailored thermal expansion alloys was published in acta materialia a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of the structure and material properties the study demonstrates the possibility of tailoring thermal expansion response of a single material without manipulating its composition researchers include dr james monroe entrepreneur in training at texas a&m engineering experiment stations office of commercialization and entrepreneurship; dominic gehring phd student in materials science and engineering; dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the department of materials science and engineering; and dr raymundo arroyave associate professor in materials science and engineering collaborators from los alamos national laboratory include dr donald brown and dr bjorn clausen the thermal expansion characteristics for these new tailored thermal expansion alloys can match those of polymers ceramics and other metals and even be made perfectly zero which means the alloys do not change shape with temperature the key to obtaining a tailored thermal expansion coefficient is the alignment of the alloys atoms to harness the natural thermal expansion and contraction at the atomic level this new approach can provide a means to control a metals thermal expansion response without the tradeoffs associated with changing materials composition or complex composite fabrication the study was supported by the national science foundations division of materials research metals and metallic nanostructures program the us air force office of scientific research and the international materials for multi-function materials for energy conversion at texas a&m photo: dr james monroe in the mesam lab
the aerospace vehicle systems institute (avsi) a center in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university successfully achieved a worldwide radio frequency spectrum allocation for wireless avionics at the 2015 world radio communication conference (wrc-15) held in geneva switzerland seven years of effort by members of the avsi wireless avionics intra-communications (waic) project team culminated in the decision by the conference that will positively impact future aircraft systems design by allowing sensors actuators and other critical aircraft functions to be integrated wirelessly the complexity of aircraft is growing exponentially due in large part to the increasing use of software-intensive systems to add functionality that improves performance and safety said dr david redman director of avsi integrating these systems currently relies on miles of redundant wiring that adds significant weight and increases the complexity of manufacturing these aircraft wireless interconnection is an alternative that addresses the complexity of aircraft wiring until now the use of wireless communications for onboard safety-related aircraft functions was impossible because international regulations did not permit this use a group of aerospace industry stakeholders determined in 2007 that these international regulations needed to be changed to achieve the benefits of wireless interconnectivity they recognized this was an eight-year process through the international telecommunications union (itu) the united nations specialized agency coordinating the global shared use of the radio frequency spectrum since it hosted the wrc once every four years the group further recognized that avsi was uniquely positioned to quickly organize a cooperative effort between international industry government and academic stakeholders to support promotion of waic through the itu process the avsi waic team included researchers from airbus boeing embraer honeywell and united technologies aerospace systems with support from bae systems bombardier ge aviation gulfstream and texas a&m team members performed the necessary studies and provided input contributions to the relevant regulatory bodies to support the preparatory efforts for wrc-15 the combined efforts led to strong global support for the waic proposal by itu member administrations the waic proposal was one of the first issues approved by the conference demonstrating the excellent preparation by the avsi team to achieve technical consensus while protecting and optimizing existing aviation radio frequency spectrum usage the decision by wrc-15 clears the way for developing the necessary aeronautical standards to support the airworthiness certification process for the first waic-enabled aircraft systems the avsi waic team continues its work to support the development of such standards and to define technical details in order to accelerate the development of waic systems and the availability of the benefits of onboard wireless communications the decision also opens opportunities for researchers at texas a&m to pioneer new waic technologies and applications proposals for waic applications in propulsion and flight control are being considered in the aerospace engineering department and for waic protocol development and testing in the electrical and computer engineering department this project really illustrates how avsi can achieve global impact by delivering our mission of addressing issues that impact the aerospace community through international cooperative research and collaboration it also positions texas a&m to become a leader in wireless avionics said redman for more information about waic or avsi contact redman via email at dredman@tamuedu or visit http://avsiaero
dr christodoulos a floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute and the erle nye 59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been named a fellow of the national academy of inventors (nai) election to nai fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life economic development and the welfare of society the nai fellows will be inducted on april 15 as part of the fifth annual conference of the national academy of inventors at the united states patent and trademark office (uspto) in alexandria virginia uspto deputy commissioner for patents andrew hirshfeld will provide the keynote address for the induction ceremony fellows will be presented with a special trophy medal and rosette pin in honor of their outstanding accomplishments floudas is a world-renowned authority in mathematical modeling and optimization of complex systems he has received numerous awards and honors for teaching and research including election to the national academy of engineering in 2011 being named a siam fellow in 2013 a tias fellow and eminent scholar for 2013-14 and aiche fellow in 2013 a thomson reuters highly cited researcher and recipient of the constantin caratheodory prize in 2015 floudas earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from carnegie mellon university in 1986 and joined the faculty at princeton university as an assistant professor later that year prior to coming to texas a&m floudas was a professor of chemical and biological engineering at princeton and served as the stephen c macaleer 63 professor in engineering and applied science a total of 168 individuals were named nai fellows bringing the total number of fellows to 582 representing more than 190 prestigious research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions the 2015 fellows account for more than 5 300 issued us patents bringing the collective patents held by all nai fellows to more than 20 000 these academic luminaries have made a significant impact to the economy through innovative discoveries creating startup companies and enhancing the culture of academic inventions included among all nai fellows are more than 80 presidents and senior leaders of research universities and non-profit research institutes 310 members of the other national academies (nas nae nam) 27 inductees of the national inventors hall of fame 32 recipients of the us national medal of technology and innovation and us national medal of science 27 nobel laureates 14 lemelson-mit prize recipients 170 aaas fellows and 98 ieee fellows about nai: the national academy of inventors® is a 501(c)(3) non profit member organization comprised of us and international universities and governmental and non-profit research institutions with over 3 000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 200 institutions and growing rapidly it was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the us patent and trademark office enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation encourage the disclosure of intellectual property educate and mentor innovative students and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society the nai edits the multidisciplinary journal technology and innovation published by cognizant communication corporation (ny)
students from texas a&m university and the university of sydney in australia participated in the aerial international robotic racing of unmanned systems (airus) where teams were able to successfully demonstrate remote piloting of an unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) more than 8 000 miles away pilots in texas used a joystick to control a uav (also known as a quadrotor or drone) in australia while at the same time pilots in sydney controlled a uav in texas a camera mounted on the front of the uav captured video which was sent over the internet to the pilot on the other side of the world the top pilots achieved an international landing they controlled the sideways movement to land the uav on a small target additionally everyone in attendance at the event had the opportunity to pilot the uav by controlling the spinning motion (yaw) of the uav they also gained an appreciation for the difficulty of dealing with the half-second delay through the international communications despite this delay it is believed to be the lowest latency (delay) achieved for controlling an aircraft internationally having successfully demonstrated the international piloting airus members have applied for a world record for the longest distance remote piloting of a uav which is now pending assessment at the texas event there was also a showcase of uavs with students in attendance given the opportunity to test their skills in a race of small uavs this first successful event is a stepping stone to the full plans for airus to involve many more universities around the world each having local pilots controlling and racing uavs at the different international locations
the immediate plans for the coming year are to further develop the control systems to grant the international pilot a higher level of control and to build towards being able to race the uav around an obstacle course on the other side of the world this work also will lead to research on enhancing long distance remote control of aircraft and robotics at both universities the texas a&m team is comprised of aerospace engineering students who are members of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics the competition was funded in part by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations aerospace technology research and operations center (astro) and center for autonomous vehicles & sensor systems (canvass)
dr nancy m amato and carol a huff were named recipients of the texas a&m university systems regents professor award and regents fellow service award respectively
amato is the unocal professor in the department of computer science and engineering senior director of engineering honors programs co-coordinator of the computer science and engineering track of engineering honors and co-director of the parasol lab amato joined the faculty at texas a&m in 1995 as an assistant professor in computer science she became a full professor in 2004 and was appointed the unocal professor in 2011 she received undergraduate degrees in mathematical sciences and economics from stanford university and her master of science and phd in computer science from the university of california berkeley and the university of illinois at urbana-champaign
huff is the assistant agency director of financial operations for the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) over the past 26 years she has held several fiscal positions within tees and the texas a&m system with 23 of those years being with tees huff joined the texas a&m system in 1981 as an accounting systems analyst she quickly moved up to the coordinator of systems policies and procedures where she was responsible for the preparation of the systems annual financial report her most notable roles at tees were serving as the assistant vice chancellor for finance for six years and serving as the controller for 16 years the regents professor award honors individuals at the rank of professor or equivalent whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service have been exemplary the award is the highest honor bestowed by the a&m system on faculty members the performance of those selected is considered meritorious and worthy of recognition of their achievements that had an impact on not only their institution or agency but also the community the state of texas and/or at the national and international levels the regents fellow service award honors and recognizes extension research and service professionals within the agricultural and engineering agencies health science center and veterinary medical diagnostic laboratory these professionals must have demonstrated a significant commitment and contributions to their respective agency by providing exceptional leadership in educational or program delivery/scholarship research or service that have resulted in significant impact and lasting benefits to the state of texas and beyond
dr m sam mannan director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconner process safety center and regents professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was named the first holder of the ma naser chair by bangladesh university of engineering and technology (buet) mannan was introduced during a ceremony to mark the launch of the chair by rahman murshed president of the buet chemical engineering association and professor maa shoukat choudhury department head of chemical engineering at buet the chair was established by the buet chemical engineering alumni association to recognize the contributions made by professor ma naser former vice chancellor of buet and a pioneer in the field of chemical engineering education in bangladesh dr toufiq ali ceo of karnaphuli fertilizer company ltd professor nooruddin ahmed and professor iqbal mahmud both former vice chancellors of buet gave presentations at the ceremony also in attendance were representatives from the bangladesh national authority of chemical weapon convention the armed forces division chevron and dutch-bangla bank
dr stratos pistikopoulos associate director of the texas a&m energy institute and tees distinguished research professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been named editor-in-chief of the journal computers & chemical engineering computers & chemical engineering is primarily a journal of record for new developments in process systems engineering and the application of computing and systems technology to chemical engineering problems serving as an editor of the journal since 2010 pistikopoulos has handled manuscripts in the areas of modeling control and optimization of process and energy and systems engineering applications he earned a phd in chemical engineering from carnegie mellon university under the supervision of professor ignacio e grossmann in 1988 and he worked for shell chemicals in amsterdam until 1991 for the next 24 years (1991-2015) he was at imperial college london where he was a professor of chemical engineering and the director of its centre for process systems engineering between 2002 and 2009 he has authored or co-authored more than 350 major research publications in the areas of modeling control and optimization of process energy and systems engineering applications and he has co-edited 10 books and holds two patents he is co-founder of process systems enterprise (pse) limited and a founder of parametric optimization solutions (paros) limited pistikopoulos research interests lie in the field of process and multi-scale systems engineering with particular emphasis on the developments of model-based optimization theory and computational tools for multi-parametric programming and explicit model predictive control and an integrated framework for design control and scheduling of complex multi-scale networks with applications in sustainable energy systems smart manufacturing and personalized healthcare systems engineering he is a fellow of the royal academy of engineering uk he is a fellow of the institution of chemical engineers co-editor of the book series in computer aided chemical engineering (elsevier) and process systems engineering (wiley-vch) and he is on the editorial boards of the journal of global optimization energy systems and the journal of computational management science
the ability to gather and analyze large and complex data sets is driving progress in many disciplines in an effort to increase the level of activity in big data research at texas a&m university the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) in partnership with the texas a&m division of research texas a&m agrilife research texas a&m health science center (tamhsc) and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) has awarded nearly $350 000 in seed grant funding to seven interdisciplinary research teams for big data seed grants were also awarded for research in the increasingly important field of cybersecurity in an effort to encourage high-impact research within texas a&m and to help foster lasting collaborations and long-term engagement with industry almost $250 000 was given out to five research teams in cybersecurity to be eligible proposals had to include principal investigators or co-principal investigators from at least two different academic disciplines teams selected received up to $50 000 each these seed grants will provide funds to facilitate the formation of research teams and produce preliminary results leading to peer-reviewed publications most importantly the funds should lead to the development of highly competitive research proposals to federal funding agencies and commercial industry partners forty-eight proposals were submitted and seven were selected for funding for big data while 14 were submitted and five were selected for funding for cybersecurity the funded research projects are: awarded seed grants for interdisciplinary research in big data virtual social genome data library: a secure data infrastructure for population informatics principal investigator (pi): dr hye-chung kum texas a&m health science center (tamhsc) co-principal investigators (co-pis): dr michael morrisey tamhsc; dr dilma da silva department of computer science & engineering; and dr mark fossett department of sociology understanding multi-scale hydrology: fusion of big data from ground networks and space-based satellites pi: dr binayak mohandy department of biological & agricultural engineering co-pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering personalized risk assessment through genomic and clinical data integration: a big data approach pi: dr arun sen department of information and operations management co-pis: dr aniruddha datta department of electrical & computer engineering and dr nancy dickey tamhsc learning material properties from in-situ transmission electron microscopy video data pi: dr yu ding department of industrial & systems engineering co-pis: dr tahir cagin department of materials science & engineering and dr lan zhou department of statistics mining satellite measurements to construct a statistical parameterization of rainfall for use in climate models pi: dr ramalingam saravanan department of atmospheric sciences co-pis: dr courtney schumacher department of atmospheric sciences and dr mikyoung jun department of statistics improving understanding of travel behavior and transportation systems through big data analytics pi: dr shawn turner texas a&m transportation institute (tti) co-pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering development of ‘big data scientific workflow management tools for the materials genome initiative: materials galaxy pi: dr rodolfo aramayo department of biology co-pis: dr raymundo arroyave department of materials science & engineering and dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna department of computer science & engineering awarded seed grants for interdisciplinary research in cybersecurity investigating the effects of cyber-attacks on safety and mobility in a connected driving environment pi: dr alireza talebpour department of civil engineering co-pis: dr srinivasa sunkari tti; dr srinivas shakkottai and dr narasimha reddy department of electrical & computer engineering boosting attack identification through correlated system & network monitoring pi: dr nick duffield department of electrical & computer engineering co-pi: dr guofei gu department of computer science & engineering detection classification and mitigation of cybersecurity attacks on synchrophasor systems pi: dr mladen kezunovic department of electrical & computer engineering co-pis: dr jyh-charn liu dr dilma da silva and dr guofei gu department of computer science & engineering fly over wire: coordinated power grid and unmanned aerial system cyber attacks pi: dr robin murphy department of computer science & engineering co-pi: dr le xie department of electrical & computer engineering securing our critical infrastructure networks pi: dr narasimha reddy department of electrical & computer engineering co-pis: dr riccardo bettati department of computer science & engineering and dr pr kumar department of electrical & computer engineering
navigating the challenging path from research lab to marketplace was the topic of a deep-dive experiential learning workshop during the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) first commercialization and entrepreneurship boot camp hosted by the tees office of commercialization and entrepreneurship (c&e) the event held on jan 13 at the emerging technologies building at texas a&m university focused on providing texas a&m and tees researchers with valuable training on the commercialization process including ip basics licensing and sponsored research as well as new company and venture formation to help faculty acquire the information and experience needed to successfully market their intellectual property the c&e office employed a boot camp model comprised of one day of intensive training followed by 16 weeks of one-on-one sessions with tees entrepreneurs during the full-day boot camp participants were divided into five teams and each team was provided with a real piece of intellectual property that had been disclosed through the texas a&m university system in the morning session teams were guided through the steps they would take to pitch their technology to potential industry sponsors in the afternoon they learned how they could form their own start-up companies around their research at the end of the training over the next 16 weeks participants will have created a personalized business and commercialization strategy and will pitch their commercialization plans to judges at the tees emerging entrepreneurs competition on may 19 which is a mock competition to give researchers real-world experience pitching their ideas more than 30 tees and texas a&m researchers post-docs and students took part in round-table team sessions and one-on-one discussions with tees entrepreneurs from the office of commercialization and entrepreneurship the c&e office was established in 2014 to bring together a staff with experience in commercialization and industry to facilitate a culture of commercialization among tees faculty we found that our facultys incredible research was creating significant intellectual property but an internal analysis showed that they did not have the resources or the training they needed to commercialize their inventions said dr balakrishna haridas program manager and head of entrepreneurship programs and professor of practice at texas a&m a lot of faculty once they have their intellectual property created rely on the patent to sell itself in the licensing marketplace in reality with the current economic climate and investor behavior we need to be a lot more proactive by bringing in sophisticated business and techno-commercial tools from industry to coach researchers on the methodologies for commercialization and help them enhance industry-sponsored research toward licensing or in those situations that demand it create start-up companies around tees inventions the tees c&e staff is the industry resource with many of them already with decades of industry experience as corporate executives and serial entrepreneurs industry-sponsored research can be the fastest path to commercialization you have a mature company that supports your research and intellectual property and is ready to license it through the relationship you have created the timeframe to the marketplace for a start up is more fluid to build a successful company can take three years or it can take five to 10 years you just never know but in some situations this is a useful path and may be the only venue if the value proposition is highly disruptive our office recognized this very early and decided to pursue both paths as part of our training and offerings the new reality is that the country wants us to realize the investment that we all make by contributing our tax dollars toward research we can only do that if we have a cultural shift among faculty and we also put systems in place that chaperone entrepreneurial faculty along the path to commercialization tees researchers who are interested in learning about intellectual property disclosures and filing procedures generating industry sponsored research or starting companies are invited to contact kristen duckworth or balakrishna haridas with the tees office of commercialization & entrepreneurship
solving global energy problems will require a collaborative effort across disciplines as well as across institutions as part of an initiative to encourage multidisciplinary collaborations and cross-institutional partnerships the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the texas a&m university dwight look college of engineering and texas a&m university-kingsville have awarded $150 000 in seed grants to researchers from texas a&m and texas a&m-kingsville the grants of $50 000 each represent the first jointly funded projects of this kind between texas a&m and texas a&m-kingsville to be eligible for the grants proposals were required to include investigators from both institutions the seed grants provide researchers with enough funding to generate preliminary results and foster the collaborations needed to facilitate the pursuit and development of future center level multidisciplinary projects the three proposals selected for funding are: graphene embedded porous conducting polymers as a binder to improve energy density specific power and cycle life of li-ion batteries investigators: dr dervis demirocak department of mechanical and industrial engineering texas a&m-kingsville; and dr micah green department of chemical engineering texas a&m nanotechnology based selective heavy metal and petroleum hydrocarbon removal of wastewaters generated in energy production processes investigators: dr jianhong-jennifer ren department of environmental engineering texas a&m-kingsville; dr jingbo louise liu department of chemical engineering texas a&m-kingsville; and dr li ying department of mechanical engineering texas a&m adding income to the unconventional revenue stream: recovering geothermal energy and strategic elements from hydrocarbon wells investigators: dr ruud weijermars department of petroleum engineering texas a&m; dr lee clapp department of environmental engineering texas a&m-kingsville; dr david burnett department of petroleum engineering texas a&m; and dr lucy camacho department of environmental engineering texas a&m-kingsville
dr bonnie j dunbar retired nasa astronaut engineer and educator has joined texas a&m engineering as a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research professor in the department of aerospace engineering she also has a joint appointment as the director of the tees institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) dunbar who is a member of the prestigious national academy of engineering comes to texas a&m from the university of houston where she provided leadership in the development of a new integrated university science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) center she was an md anderson professor of mechanical engineering and she developed a new innovative course for the introduction of engineering to freshmen students she also directed the sicsa space architecture graduate program she has devoted her life to furthering engineering engineering education and the pursuit of human space exploration dunbar worked for the rockwell international space division company building space shuttle columbia and worked for 27 years at nasa first as a flight controller; then as a mission specialist astronaut where she flew five space shuttle flights logging more than 50 days in space; and then as member of the senior executive service (ses) her executive service included assistant nasa jsc director for university research; deputy director for flight crew operations; and as nasa headquarters deputy associate administrator for the office of life and microgravity sciences and applications (olmsa) after retiring from nasa dunbar became president and ceo of the museum of flight in seattle where she established a new space gallery and expanded its k12 stem educational offerings she has also consulted in aerospace and stem education as the president of dunbar international llc and is an internationally known public speaker dunbar holds bachelors and masters degrees in ceramic engineering from the university of washington and a phd in mechanical/biomedical engineering from the university of houston she is a fellow of the american ceramic society the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics and the royal aeronautical society she has been awarded the nasa space flight medal five times the nasa exceptional leadership medal and the nasa distinguished service medal dunbar was inducted into the royal society of edinburgh and in 2002 was elected to the us national academy of engineering in 2013 she was selected into the astronaut hall of fame
the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a research center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the institute for infectious animal diseases (iiad) a department of homeland security science and technology center of excellence have expanded their mobile certificate of veterinary inspection (cvi) application to multiple platforms to allow compatibility with both ios and android devices with the platform expansion also comes a new name mcvi and look in june 2014 tcat and iiad created the pilot application icvi to bring everyday utility to veterinarians who also use their mobile devices for iiads enhanced passive surveillance (eps) program veterinarians and state animal health officials (sahos) across the country started utilizing the application almost immediately as they saw utility in the ability to supporting animal health certificates from the field within the first year 16 states had launched pilot programs 500 verified accounts had been created and more than 7 000 cvis had been submitted through the app demonstrating a reach far beyond the initial eps pilot veterinarians today those numbers have risen to 500 verified accounts and 14 000 cvis submitted through the app the original icvi app was only available for ipads said dr keith biggers tees center fellow tcat director for computing and information technology and iiad information analysis systems theme leader however from the beginning we had inquiries from potential users about the possibility of expanding the app to other devices and operating platforms throughout the entire process weve worked closely with sahos and veterinarians in participating states to continue refining and optimizing the app to fit stakeholders needs we found that expanding to multiple platforms was a major priority in july 2015 tcat and iiad announced that further development funding to adapt the ipad application to multiple platforms had been secured and work began on the new app with the expansion we wanted to convey the operability across multiple mobile platforms – not just ios said dr matt cochran dvm agconnect® program director in addition to a new name the mcvi application and agconnect® also have a new updated logo to better reflect the nature of these forward-thinking technologies and how they are of benefit to veterinarians and sahos in the field with an easy-to-use touch screen interface the mcvi app extends the toolbox of capabilities for veterinary practitioners allowing them to easily submit electronic animal health certificates store that information within the application when they are not connected to the internet or print paper-based forms directly from the app this real-time information sharing is an alternative to email or web-based systems that require full-time internet connectivity and helps improve communication between veterinarians and state animal health offices by supporting certificate submission from the field the creation of mcvi aligns with the progressive nature of the agconnect® suite said dr gerald parker dvm iiad interim director with an expansion of the user base the people who historically dealt with paper files in the field or in the office now create real-time geo-referenced movement records with one simple point of data entry on a mobile device this not only enhances animal disease traceability but it also ultimately safeguards animal and human health in addition to automatically and/or manually importing submitted cvis into state animal health information systems submitted cvis can also be made available within iiads agconnect® suite agconnect® is a suite of customizable data integration and analysis products designed to enhance real-time animal health situational awareness enable permissioned data sharing and support decision-making in the event of emerging zoonotic and/or high consequence diseases with permissions state veterinarians are able to visualize the cvi data along with other data through the agconnect® suite (eg additional animal movements premises surveillance diagnostic test results and other emergency response data) allowing for greater situational awareness agconnect® provides everyday utilities that make for a seamless transition to detection and response the mcvi app is available for free download on the apple app store® and google play store® for tablets and smartphones quick start guides for ios and android devices can be found here
six current faculty members of texas a&m universitys dwight look college of engineering have been named fellows of the institute for electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) those receiving the prestigious honor include: dr timothy davis (computer science and engineering); dr anthony guiseppi-elie (biomedical engineering); dr jiang hu (electrical and computer engineering); dr peng li (electrical and computer engineering); dr daniele mortari (aerospace engineering); and dr xi zhang (electrical and computer engineering) guiseppi-elie who joined the texas a&m faculty in august of last year is on the list under his previous university clemson university the ieee fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of the ieee and it is bestowed upon a very limited number of senior members said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering having so many texas a&m engineering faculty members named fellows in one year speaks to the excellence we have within our ranks the ieee fellow distinction is bestowed upon a very limited number of senior members who have contributed importantly to the advancement or application of engineering science and technology bringing significant value to society the number of ieee fellows elevated in a year is no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total ieee voting membership davis professor in the department of computer science and engineering was honored for contributions to sparse matrix algorithms and software guiseppi-elie tees professor and head of the department of biomedical engineering was honored for contributions to organic electronic materials in biotechnology and biomedicine hu professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was honored for contributions to gate interconnect and clock network optimization in vlsi circuits li professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was honored for contributions to the analysis and modeling of integrated circuits and systems mortari professor in the department of aerospace engineering was honored for contributions to navigational aspects of space systems zhang professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering was honored for contributions to quality of service in mobile wireless networks ieee is the worlds leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity through its 400 000 members in 160 countries ieee is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering electric power and consumer electronics dedicated to the advancement of technology ieee publishes 30 percent of the worlds literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields and has developed more than 900 active industry standards the association also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 400 international technical conferences each year for more information about ieee or the ieee fellow program visit the ieee website
"this article is the first in a series highlighting the research and educational endeavors happening at the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) regional divisions by building and nurturing relationships with its academic partners tees continues to assist in increasing their research capacities and enhancing research experiences for undergraduates when dr donald peterson packed up his life in connecticut and headed 1 500 miles south to texas one of his intents was to expand research opportunities for students and faculty and for himself by joining the faculty at texas a&m university-texarkana but once he began to settle into his new academic home he discovered another beneficialand unexpectedresearch advocate in the form of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) peterson joined the university in august 2014 as a professor of engineering and dean of the college of stem with degrees in aerospace biomedical and mechanical engineering he has published over 115 peer-reviewed scholarly works (including full-length articles short articles and abstracts and editing of textbooks and a major handbook) and developed devices for real-world use that are currently in the commercialization pipeline or have assisted in the design of spacesuits for nasa when he came to texarkana from the university of connecticut in 2014 a loyal group of graduate students followed him to texas to the stem innovation laboratory to complete their thesis and dissertation projects meanwhile many of his former students are working at companies such as medtronic a global leader in biomedical engineering research design and manufacturing i have been truly in awe of the support and opportunities provided to me through tees and have had the opportunity to make many solid connections i otherwise wouldnt have made peterson said tees also has been invaluable in helping him rapidly navigate the patent process and provided guidance on licensing his technologies to companies that resource will also benefit his undergraduate and graduate students who are currently working on more than half a dozen initiatives that are likely to be supported with patent applications cooperative business pursuits with industrial partners or funding for additional research and development one such project involves the development of robotic exoskeletons for use by stroke survivors to restore proper function in those with neuromuscular impairments and localized injury about 800 000 people in the us suffer from strokes each year eight in 10 stroke survivors are affected by hemiparesis or hemiplegia that causes partial or full inability to move one side of the body "" peterson explained ""our clinical partners expressed a tremendous need for practical low-cost solutions for their patients which led to the development of a robotic exoskeleton that we believe can be produced for less than $100 weve seen the evolution of the project through three generations of development and we continue to enhance its functionality without impacting cost for example its currently in a stage that incorporates brainwave (or thought) control using electroencephalography (eeg) which we are very excited about other applications for the robotic exoskeletons include controlled and closely monitored exercises in microgravity environments to prevent muscle atrophy in astronauts which is of interest to nasa ""were now a part of the texas space grant consortium which gives our faculty and students access to grants nasa internships and other activities "" said peterson who served as a campus director for the space grant program at his former institution ""we hope that membership to the consortium will further encourage collaboration on and off our campus in and outside of stem as faculty and students explore and engage in new research and development opportunities"" peterson is working to strengthen an infrastructure that inspires and nurtures undergraduate and graduate student research and development in the past year our design classes have evolved from a one-semester capstone course to a full-year senior design experience where students have the time needed to tackle significant design challenges and we also encourage independent research credits for students who want to pursue research opportunities that are not embedded in their coursework such as working with the advanced development of the exoskeletons peterson said in the stem innovation laboratory student researchers will continue to use the 3-d printers to develop models that will be used to study cellular responses to fluid flow and to develop lost-cost medical devices some of which are currently in the patenting process i relocated to a&m-texarkana because i see tremendous potential and i believe that this university has the best real estate in terms of our location and the easy access to texas and our neighboring states peterson said our students are able to become involved in experiential learning from the day they step foot on campus and with tees support i hope to be able to further my work and provide even more research opportunities to our undergraduate and graduate students and faculty through cooperative programs with the college station campus opportunities that would otherwise not have been open to them about texas a&m university-texarkana:as a member of the texas a&m university system texas a&m university-texarkana is a comprehensive regional university that provides students with academically challenging engaging and rewarding educational experiences through quality teaching scholarship student support services co-curricular programming research and service"
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) at texas a&m university and pandit deendayal petroleum university (pdpu) co-hosted a two and half-day nuclear security training workshop for the indian academics from feb 10-12 the workshop was held at the pdpu campus in gandhinagar (gujarat state) india and was sponsored by the us department of states partnership for nuclear security (pns) with support from crdf global the audience for the workshop included 21 faculty members and 43 students from ten different universities in india the workshop covered 16 lectures on nuclear security fundamentals nuclear security culture insider threat and insider threat mitigation the us team included pns program officer priya sethi along with nsspi interim director dr sunil chirayath and nsspi senior research engineer and assistant professor of nuclear engineering dr craig marianno both of whom lectured at the workshop indian faculty delivered approximately half of the lectures at the workshop these faculty were trained through various pns-sponsored programs including the nuclear security training series an annual summer program for indian academics that takes place at texas a&m and the us national laboratories and the advanced nuclear security workshop for indian universities a four-day workshop in india led by nsspi faculty indian faculty and technical experts from sandia national laboratories all of these activities are intended to promote the integration of nuclear security topics into the normal course of study for students in indian nuclear engineering programs (top photo: dr sunil chirayath lectures at the workshop)
the 2015 clean air through energy efficiency (catee) awards were handed out during the texas a&m engineering experiment stations energy systems laboratorys annual catee conference in december the awards were presented by texas rep tony dale the annual catee awards recognize individuals organizations and companies that have demonstrated outstanding or unique contributions to clean air through energy efficiency and renewable energy actions or programs brian yeoman was awarded the gregg cooke award for excellence in environmental leadership a new award the energy systems laboratory partner of the year was awarded for the first time the inaugural award went to the houston airport system the categories and honorees selected for recognition were: outstanding government organization travis county texas outstanding non-profit organization the south-central partnership for energy efficiency as a resource (speer) energy systems laboratory partner of the year houston airport system city of houston gregg cooke award for excellence in environmental leadership brian yeoman city advisor houston c40 the cities climate leadership group the awards ceremony was held dec 3 2015 at the hotel galvez & spa
researchers at the nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) in conjunction with the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and professor charles m folden iii at the cyclotron institute have developed a new method in nuclear forensics research to determine the reactor origins of weapons-grade plutonium this methodology gives investigators and other government entities the ability to track the production source of black market nuclear materials specifically plutonium the goal is forensics said dr sunil chirayath the projects principal investigator and interim director of nsspi if somebody is smuggling plutonium to the united states and if it is confiscated we need to attribute who did this and we have to put together several pieces of this puzzle one of the pieces of the puzzle we specifically deal with is determining which type of nuclear reactor produced the confiscated plutonium in the neutron spectrum of nuclear reactors chirayath explains that there are two extremes: thermal reactors and fast reactors with some variants between based on a number of variables different reactor types leave different signatures in the plutonium that is created from spent nuclear fuel once investigators are able to determine what kind of reactor the material came from it becomes a game of elimination between the different countries where these reactor types operate using this information government agencies will look at possible countries in which the material could have been produced and attempt to track how the plutonium may have been transported and illegally acquired according to chirayath the method for tracing the source of the nuclear material shares some similarity with modern criminal forensics in the same way criminals might leave fingerprints or dna evidence at a crime scene the process for creating the weapons grade plutonium leaves its own type of characteristics on the nuclear material some specific elements when you separate plutonium go with that plutonium as trace contaminants chirayath said when you touch something you dont leave just your fingerprint behind you leave some characteristics behind with that print that leaves an indelible mark we want to know if there is any trace contamination in that plutonium where these specific elements are and we can then tell through that element where this material was created the researchers use a radiochemistry process known as plutonium uranium redox extraction (purex) to separate the plutonium from the trace elements created from spent nuclear fuel this process which has been replicated at texas a&m makes texas a&m the only university within recent times that has the appropriate radiochemistry lab setup to refine irradiated fuel samples through this unique process these trace contaminants that are attached to separated plutonium through the purex process are isotopes that are identifiable to investigators as indicative of specific reactor types there are certain isotopes that we know as trace elements that point directly to specific reactor types chirayath said for example sm-150 is an isotope that is produced in a thermal reactor in a quantity 100 times greater than if this same isotope was produced in a fast reactor when normalized to plutonium production even if we were to somehow mess up by 10 to 20 percent in our measurements its still a factor of 100 which means that if we find this isotope in an abundance as a trace element it leads to certain identification of a thermal reactor the project which is currently in its fourth year has trained six graduate students from the department of nuclear engineering three who work on the experimental purex process and three who work on the computational aspect of the research to model the different reactor types according to folden the project has had a broader impact in helping to increase the number of students who work in radiochemistry which is beneficial because there are so few radio-chemists in the united states in total the project is a six-year endeavor and the team is hoping to get the project funded for two more years with current funding ending in august of this year the team hopes to look at different plutonium separation processes apart from the purex method and to further diversify the method to identify more reactor types across the spectrum i knew that the ability to use radiochemistry in our forensic research is something that has been lacking in nsspi chirayath said our goal is to study this and develop a methodology using this purex process so that the methodology that we develop can be applied like a technology for forensics specialists and others to use we set out to prove both computationally and measurement wise that this methodology is effective we hope it becomes the standard methodology and it can be used by anyone at the lab level *this work is supported by the us department of homeland security domestic nuclear detection office under academic research initiative (dndo-ari) grant award number nsf grant no eccs-1140018 and dndo-2012-dn-077-ari1057-02&03 the views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the researchers and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies either expressed or implied of the us department of homeland security
dr alan needleman tees distinguished research professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university chaired the program committee for the 2016 annual conference of the academy of medicine engineering and science of texas (tamest) the program was held in dallas and the theme was challenges and opportunities in materials science and engineering in the 21st century founded in 2004 and with 260-plus members tamest is composed of the texas-based members of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine and the states nobel laureates tamest brought the states top scientific academic and corporate minds together to further position texas as a national research leader this years event marked the 10th anniversary of the edith and peter odonnell awards established in 2006 to recognize the states most promising young researchers the odonnell awards have honored a total of 44 individuals for their achievements in medicine engineering and science following welcoming remarks by kenneth arnold tamests 2015 president and dr cd mote jr president of national academy of engineering needleman a member of national academy of engineering introduced the program the 2016 tamest annual conference highlighted recent developments in materials science and engineering that are and will be leading to qualitative changes in the way products are manufactured in the way medicine is practiced and the way energy is provided to our society said needleman it provided a window into materials science and engineering developments that will affect how we will live and how we will do business in 21st century texas the program highlighted advances in the fundamental understanding of the behavior of materials and in transitioning that understanding into products and processes that people can use to meet 21st century grand challenges in health care in providing energy in improving environmental quality and in providing a robust economy there were presentations by individuals whose work is defining the frontiers of materials science and engineering on new manufacturing technologies novel materials system design and performance on earth and in space materials for sustainable energy advances in biomaterials including drug delivery and tissue engineering and computational modeling that is making the virtual design of materials an emerging possibility texas a&m attendees associated with the department of materials science and engineering included dr dimitris c lagoudas deputy director of tees associate vice chancellor for engineering research and university distinguished professor; dr ibrahim karaman head and chevron professor i in materials science and engineering; and dr amine benzerga associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering and an affiliated faculty member in materials science and engineering
dr ben zoghi assistant agency director for corporate relations for the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the victor h thompson professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has been appointed editor-in-chief of the international journal of automated identification technology (ijait) ijiat is a peer-reviewed journal that addresses issues of automated identification technology (ait) which relies on advanced computer technology ait is used in disciplines such as medical and health care systems product and asset tracking production and manufacturing streamlining supply chain management access control and criminal identification zoghi joined the faculty at texas a&m in 1993 as an associate professor in 1999 he was named a professor and in 2009 was named holder of the victor h thompson endowed chair professorship he received his bachelors degree in electrical engineering from seattle university and his masters degree also in electrical engineering from the ohio state university he earned his phd in bioengineering/electrical engineering from texas a&m in 1993 his research interests include rfid/sensor system applications and emotional intelligence
dr thomas ferris tees researcher and assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university has developed a new two-day course for the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) that examines the impact of human error on the safety and quality of operations in biomanufacturing systems the course applies well-practiced human factors theory and methods to the emerging and growing field of biomanufacturing ferris course is unique to the field in the way it combines the topics of biomanufacturing systems human cognition human error analysis and systems design human error can be described as a system failure in which a human activity contributes to an unintended system outcome different types of errors tend to occur when humans are operating under different cognitive or behavioral modes for example a person performing well-practiced highly automated tasks tends to have little conscious engagement in those activities and errors are caused by failures in attentional focus when people encounter a relatively unfamiliar set of circumstances they are consciously-engaged in the task to a greater extent than with well-practiced activities and errors tend to be expressed more so in the decisions of which actions to take or how to perform them rather than in a failure in the execution of the selected actions human error and resilience in biomanufacturing systems teaches students how to recognize and analyze errors when they occur and to recognize system design components that may increase the likelihood of an error occurring eventually students learn about cognitive functions such as attention memory and perception and how errors emerge as a result of breakdowns in these functions as when teaching texas a&m engineering students ferris wants the students in this course to acquire knowledge and skills that can be directly applied in the biomanufacturing workplace but also to feed an interest in the workings of human cognition in everyday life my teaching philosophy is to inspire an appreciation for not only what the problems (errors) are but how they occur as a result of basic human tendencies because i think this helps immensely when students then go to try to solve the problems ferris said i also find that the basic science of human cognition illustrated through common examples in familiar contexts is interesting to a lot of people as it is of course to me additionally having deeper insight into how people including the student learners themselves think and act in everyday situations can be advantageous in many types of social interactions the course also teaches how to design a system that can be resilient to human error by first admitting that error is inevitable error proof is a fantasy ferris said as long as a human is involved in either the design or operation of a system there will be sources for error to emerge instead of identifying every possible way errors might be expressed in a biomanufacturing system and designing safety systems to make each individual error less likely ferris champions the approach of building resilient systems that assume human errors will be a natural occurrence and to focus safety design on ways to tolerate human errors weaken their consequences and prevent sequences of cascading errors that could contribute to a catastrophic system failure we received positive feedback from the participants most of whom were from contract biomanufacturing organizations said jenny ligon assistant director of nctm they were excited to implement the resilience engineering tools they learned to mitigate or even eliminate human error in their automated manufacturing systems ferris said he looks to be a pioneer for human factors science as well as practice in the emerging biomanufacturing domain and hopes to make a positive impact on biomanufacturing operations for current and aspiring practitioners in that domain as well as scientists and researchers in bioprocessing fields he is also excited to bring the domain knowledge being gained through interactions with members of the biomanufacturing industry back into his classes for texas a&m students providing a new set of real-world case studies and anecdotes in which to illustrate the concepts tools and techniques he teaches for building stronger more resilient systems and managing human error nctm is a joint center of texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees)
scoliosis is typically defined as the curvature of the spine which in severe cases can lead to severe physical deformity in addition to pulmonary and cardiac problems early-onset scoliosis refers to spine deformity that is present before 10 years of age children with early-onset scoliosis often spend their entire childhood undergoing several surgical procedures to correct the curve in their spine surgeons implant metallic growing rods in the spine and expand them in bi-annual surgeries to keep up with the childs growth as the body moves the screws attaching the rods to the bone become loose increasing the chances of additional complicated surgeries to keep the rod in place dr ji ma texas a&m engineering experiment station assistant research scientist and dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university have designed a growing rod material that can significantly reduce the complications from corrective surgeries the material a superelastic adaptive alloy is five times more flexible than any currently available growing rod implants it allows natural movement of the body and adjusts itself depending on the stress applied by the growing spine this could potentially improve the success rate of the treatment materials composing the implant are required to be biocompatible fatigue and corrosion resistant and they have to be compatible with the biomechanical environment of the patients body and the bone
the bone is a living tissue that responds to the change in forces that arise once an implant is mechanically fixed to the skeleton unfortunately the large mismatch between the mechanical properties of the metallic implants and the bone frequently result in complications such as implant loosening bone atrophy from stress shielding and bone disease near implant extremities these problems become increasingly important in young patients with osteoporotic or immature bones where implant-related complication rates are markedly higher the researchers say using a series of thermo-mechanical processing steps ma and karaman engineered a new titanium shape memory alloy it possesses stress-dependent elastic properties that gradually decrease as the stress on it is increased by modifying these properties to fit the biomechanical environment of the bone it is now possible to create a device that satisfies the seemingly conflicting requirements of rigidity and flexibility required in growing rods said ma the adaptive alloy allows growing rods to bend at the ends and stay stiff in the middle giving the necessary support to the spine the patients natural movements stay flexible due to reduced friction and stress this is not something you can do with all materials said ma we preserve the strength and add flexibility to the implants without compromising the mechanical properties karamans national science foundation grant design and in-vitro characterization of ni-free biocompatible shape memory alloys led to the present-day technology and its application in early onset scoliosis treatment the researchers set out to develop a titanium-niobium alloy as an alternative to nickel titanium shape memory alloy since it has better biocompatibility and corrosion resistance similar to the human bone they later found evidence that nickel titanium alloy offered the same properties as the titanium niobium alloy currently they are using both the alloys as candidates for the application in growing rods the adaptive alloy is designed to have bio-inert constituents less sensitivity to impurities and inclusions better corrosion resistance more stable fatigue response and predictable fatigue life ma and karaman are now working with dr dennis devito at childrens orthopedics of atlanta to get a surgeons perspective on effective application of the technology all children experience at least one complication during their treatment said devito ma and karamans research offers a potential solution to some of the complications the researchers have begun to commercialize the adaptive alloy technology in 2015 they co-founded adallo llc with eric flickinger ceo at meditech spine llc to develop prototype testing top photo: dr ji ma with a sample of growing rod developed with the adaptive alloy technology at the microstructural engineering of structural and active materials (mesam) laboratory
dr satish bukkapatnam and dr cèsar malavè of the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have been selected to receive the fellow award from the institute of industrial and systems engineers (iise) bukkapatnam is a professor in the department and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations institute for manufacturing systems and malavè is the head of the department the fellow award recognizes outstanding leaders who have made significant nationally recognized contributions to industrial engineering this is the highest classification of iise membership
bukkapatnam and malavè are both leaders in promoting industrial engineering and continue to enhance the impact of the industry through promotional activities they have each served in national and international groups relating to industrial engineering and work to enhance the visibility of the industry these qualities among others qualify bukkapatnam and malavè for this honor the pair was selected by the fellows committee to attend a reception and awards banquet at the iise annual conference and expo in may
the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) presented awards for excellence in retention as part of the hispanic serving institutions (hsi) pre-conference on retention and transition on march 30 mountain view college–dallas county community college district dallas; san jacinto college–south houston; and south texas college mcallen were each awarded $1 500 in recognition of their promising practices for innovative retention and transition programs through virtual environments learning communities dual enrollment programs and dedicated faculty and staff the award winners created model programs with proven student success these award-winning programs exemplify what it takes to help students succeed in science technology engineering and mathematicsnot only at their two-year institutions but also in the four-year institutions where the students transfer said dr teri reed assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs for the look college and assistant agency director of workforce development for tees we chose each of these colleges because their ability to inspire students inspired us held the day before the annual mid years engineering experience conference the pre-conference provides hispanic serving institutions from across texas the opportunity to address barriers and challenges for students transitioning from two-year to four-year engineering institutions and is funded by a national science foundation grant elaine mendoza vice chairman of the texas a&m university system board of regents presented the awards during a ceremony at the hilton college station & conference center photo from left: regent mendoza; dr kelli davis interim university relations officer south texas college; andrew vines department chair chemistry engineering geology and physics san jacinto college–south; dr karen duston engineering program coordinator san jacinto college–south; and dr stephen l jones executive dean of the science technology engineering and mathematics division mountain view college
donald bruss a graduate student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university won an outstanding poster award at the national nuclear security administrations (nnsa) 2016 stewardship science academic programs (ssap) symposium in bethesda maryland the ssap symposium serves to highlight the accomplishments of the different academic programs nnsa sponsors through promoting academic interaction between programs and fostering a collegiate and interactive spirit between members of the scientific community and the attending students brusss poster was entitled uq for radiation transport problems with uncertain cross sections bruss and other students in the department were taken to the symposium under the guidance of dr jim morel director of the center for large-scale scientific simulations and professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m morel presented the work the students were doing as a part of the center for exascale radiation transport (cert) at texas a&m a multidisciplinary project within nnsas predictive science academic alliance program sponsored by the advanced simulation and computing program cert is dedicated to the development of computational techniques that simulate the transport of thermal radiation and predictive science techniques to quantify uncertainty in simulated results the center for large-scale scientific simulations which is a joint center of texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station organized the proposal for cert and locally administers the project we are examining uncertainty in radiation transport calculations due to uncertainty in the nuclear data bruss said the problem is challenging because of the sheer size of the uncertain data there are thousands of uncertain correlated cross sections that must be provided as material properties for the simulation our method relies upon a physics-based dimension reduction an uncertainty-based dimension reduction and an adjoint sensitivity method to reduce the dimensionality of the problem to a size we can analyze in a reasonable amount of time the two-day conference featured speakers from nnsa and several partnership universities within the ssap program and other collaborative programs underneath nnsa morel gave a presentation that included an overview of cert and its project components integration methods and more the conference was a fun experience and it was a very pleasant surprise to win the outstanding poster award bruss said
the texas a&m university system water-energy-food nexus initiative (wef nexus) was one of a select group of projects presented march 22 at the first-ever white house water summit dr rabi h mohtar texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) endowed professor in the biological and agricultural engineering and civil and environmental engineering departments at texas a&m university leads the wef nexus initiative mohtar participated in the white house summit which coincided with international water day and included presentations and demonstration activities our wef nexus initiative links science to policy and utilizes holistic approaches and integrative modeling for sustainable water energy and food resources management mohtar said the project brings together broad expertise from engineering agriculture policy geosciences behavioral sciences law and others to help bridge the anticipated water gap in texas it will utilize a set of new analytical tools to aid in municipal water management according to researchers the tools will initially be deployed in the san antonio region with a goal of adapting and expanding their application throughout texas and nationally the initiative will develop a community of practice to identify and respond to national and global opportunities to assist in developing wef management practices the group will develop an educational framework to teach stakeholders about using the nexus approach to achieve the development of new analytical tools for planning and management of water resources in municipal areas and to develop a diverse community of wef nexus-informed leaders the initiative is supported by the texas a&m vice chancellor for research the texas a&m vice president for research 41 institute texas a&m agrilife college of engineering college of agriculture and life sciences college of geosciences george bush school of government and public service and tees mohtar said more than 250 scientists from across the texas a&m system have joined those contributing to the initiatives work wef nexus project leaders include mohtar; dr john tracy texas water resources institute director; dr kevin wagner texas water resources associate director; dr christodoulos floudas texas a&m energy institute director; dr jack baldauf texas a&m executive associate dean for research; dr elsa murano norman e borlaug institute for international agriculture director; dr bruce mccarl texas a&m agrilife research economist; and arnold vedlitz bush school of government and public service executive associate dean director institute for science technology and public policy
the inaugural asia turbomachinery and pump symposium (atps) organized by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations turbomachinery laboratory debuted feb 22-26 2016 at the marina bay sands in singapore asias market center the event serves as an ideal training and networking opportunity for professionals in both turbomachinery and pump industries building on the outstanding success of the longstanding turbomachinery and pump symposia held annually in houston texas the success of atps 2016 notably marks the turbo labs largest foray into asia with more than 900 individuals in attendance 42 companies in 67 booths 90 hand-selected technical sessions and plans for an atps 2018 already underway atps 2016s technical program presented by engineers and selected by an advisory committee of industry experts included topics such as maintenance design and troubleshooting as well as case studies describing in-the-field problems and their real-world solutions the extensive program featured 24 case studies 16 lectures 10 short courses 6 technical briefs 22 tutorials and 12 discussion groups for a total of 90 sessions by attending all or part of the sessions working engineers earned continuing education credit the technical program is neatly coupled with a cutting-edge exhibit hall with booths of leading companies from the oil and gas petrochemical power pumping and turbomachinery industries exhibitors and attendees from 38 countries networked within the marina bay sands exhibit hall a from its inception atps was met with great enthusiasm receiving considerable financial academic and partnering support from a diverse array of institutions including mitsubishi heavy industries ltd elliott group ebara corp the national university of singapore nanyang technological university the korea rotating machinery engineers association the singapore workforce development agency the singapore exhibition and convention bureau and the gas turbine users forum much needed in the region atps has established a vital forum for interchange of ideas among users oems and service providers said dr luis san andrés atps advisory committee chairman and turbo lab associate director there is an obvious interest in the engineering community in the knowledge provided by the atps program content and in the interactive forum of atps since the close of atps 2016 the enthusiasm has not diminished on the contrary plans for a stand-alone technical program in singapore 2017 are currently under discussion and atps 2018 is already confirmed with planning underway
for 20 years industry professionals from across the globe have flocked to college station texas for the process engineering r&d centers (formerly the food protein research and development center) short course snack food processing why do people travel so far for a short course about snack food this is the only course where companies can send their employees to learn about extruded snack and tortilla chips and can see practical demonstration in one place said dr mian riaz center director and head of the extrusion technology program at texas a&m university the course provides an overview about snack food processing from raw material all the way to coating and packaging its a great opportunity for new employees and research and development to learn the practical aspects of snack manufacturing the annual short course has three main objectives: to train production personnel in principles and characteristics of extruders and support systems for effective selection and operation; review current practices for preparation of fried corn chips corn tortilla chips half products and other extruded snacks; and demonstrate equipment in operation and familiarize attendees with practical aspects of snack foods processing technology this year 51 attendees from 12 countries including colombia great britain korea malaysia myanmar and pakistan attended the weeklong short course the course is a blend of classroom lectures and practical demonstrations conducted at the centers facility on the texas a&m riverside campus and on the texas a&m university campus the next scheduled short course is extruded pet foods and treats on july 25-28 photo: short course attendees watch a demonstration of snack food production using a single screw extruder
with more devices connected to the internet homes have become smarter its possible for a refrigerator to send shopping reminders and to control the lights or thermostat while away from home but as the things around us become smarter there is a growing need to ensure that they also become safer texas a&m university has long been a leader in cybersecurity but with the formation of the texas a&m cybersecurity center the university looks to take on a larger role in tackling some of the biggest challenges of the 21st century dr daniel ragsdale a retired army colonel and distinguished texas a&m alumni who received his phd in computer science from texas a&m in 2001 is leading those efforts as the director of the center which is a joint endeavor between the university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) ragsdale joined texas a&m in 2015 as a professor of practice after working for the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) where he was awarded the secretary of defense medal for exceptional civilian service the highest decoration for non-career federal employees we believe that texas a&m can contribute not only to national and economic security but also to the social good and thats the really inspiring vision for our center ragsdale said cybersecurity is a subject that covers a vast array of disciplines with a definition so technical that ragsdale believes the subject has been hard for people to grasp most people understand the data and information aspect of cybersecurity but he believes many dont fully understand what the industry calls the internet of things as more and more components are connected they can have an influence on the physical world he said most people dont fully appreciate what that means through hacking into any one of these systems they can change something in the physical world thats very different from traditional information technology (it) it systems focus almost exclusively on processing transmitting and storing data if the information stored on these systems were stolen modified or deleted that could be highly disruptive but with the internet of things and industrial controls systems weve integrated components that dont just manipulate data they change the physical world around us potentially in scary life-threatening ways
to help explain what has become a quickly expanding field ragsdale defines cybersecurity as a study of the conflict and competition the conflict takes place in code and in systems that people work with on a daily basis but its more than just as he puts it bits and bytes we need to bring academic disciplines that arent only technically oriented into the cybersecurity community he said you can think of computer science information technology computer engineering and information management those are the people that address the software part but to address the conflict and competition aspect of cybersecurity we need to engage with folks that are involved in psychology behavioral science sociology ethics law and business all of them at least in part address inherent conflict or competition that is a part of our human nature that need for an interdisciplinary approach is why he believes tees and texas a&m are perfectly positioned to be at the forefront of cybersecurity research texas a&m has an internationally renowned group of faculty who are already engaged in groundbreaking cybersecurity research he said additionally the university benefits from having great facilities which enable much of this impressive research portfolio and finally it is a well-known fact that texas a&m a premier land-grant institution has absolutely fantastic students the combination of great faculty great facilities and great students give me tremendous confidence that a&m will soon move to the very forefront of cybersecurity research and education with 16 colleges more than 3 500 faculty members and almost $900 million in research annually texas a&m can bring cybersecurity into many disciplines we have always had pockets of excellence in a variety of places around the campus for folks doing cybersecurity research he said now because we have a center we can connect the dots as we have interactions with sponsoring agencies for example theyre seeing theres more of a holistic program in place now the added focus on this field also brings benefits to texas a&m students ragsdale said the cybersecurity industry is expecting tens of thousands of jobs in the near future that it currently doesnt have a workforce to fill he describes bringing a focus on cybersecurity to the students of texas a&m almost a moral obligation going beyond students who may enter the actual cybersecurity field though ragsdale emphasizes that more and more fields require knowledge of cybersecurity earlier this semester texas a&m announced a minor in cybersecurity starting next academic year with a curriculum that involves courses from six different colleges ragsdale said there has already been off-the-charts interest from students we have students that are interested in this he said they are captivated and they know the significance of it they get it they look to us for curriculum offerings that will allow them to pursue something theyre interested in and at the same time prepare them for important work working with those students is why ragsdale decided to give up what he described as a great job that he loved at darpa to come back to college station we were doing important work hanging out with all the cool kids making the world a better place he said but i had very little interaction with students and i missed that so much when this opportunity at texas a&m presented itself i said i could continue to do important work but at the same time i can be engaged with young men and women in classroom settings in lab settings and in club settings much as i expected it has already been a tremendously rewarding and fulfilling experience for me
dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named one of the 30 most innovative women professors alive today by the best masters degrees a website that provides reviews and rankings to help narrow down the field when it comes to selecting which programs to pursue in higher education the female professors on this list are some of the most impressive and innovative in the united states they have been chosen and ranked based upon their individual successes in their respective fields including politics robotics mechanical engineering literature and law to name but a few murphy is director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for emergency informatics which includes the center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) at texas a&m crasar is one of only two centers in the world specializing in disaster robotics she established the field of disaster robotics in 1995 alongside dr satoshi tadokoro of the international rescue systems institute at tohoku university along with directing crasar murphy also founded roboticists without borders a program designed to bring together groups of professionals in ground aerial or marine robots or emergency response to aid in the recovery after an incident occurs at no cost to responders and agencies as stated in her tedwomen talk in may 2015 if you can reduce the initial response by one day you can reduce the overall recovery by 1 000 days or three years she works tirelessly to reach her ultimate goal of saving lives with robotics among her numerous awards murphy recently received the association for computing machinery eugene lawler award for humanitarian contributions within computer science and informatics beyond innovative research murphy has employed innovative means of engaging students and the public she created robot petting zoos which have been held at south by southwest and other venues introducing robots to over 5 000 participants she has a blog and a new book robotics through science fiction which uses classic science fiction stories to explain robotics her research interests include human-robot interaction heterogeneous teams victim management perceptual directed behavior-based control and artificial intelligence as applied to emergency informatics and research especially with tactical land sea and air vehicles
offshore innovation may get easier – and less expensive – with a new online database launched by the ocean energy safety institute (oesi) through its partnership with the university of houston the ocean energy technology portal (oetp) allows companies to search proven technologies developed by federal agencies and other organizations that could address some of their own research problems the database currently includes about 100 000 projects including research by nasa the bureau of safety and environmental enforcement (bsee) the national energy technology labs and the european space agency several other international organizations have expressed interest and more partners will be added said paul robinson program manager for oesi who has directed the project the portal is a great example of how we are bringing together the many stakeholders in offshore oil and gas to further enable safer and environmentally responsible ocean energy operations said jim pettigrew oesi director of operations this project goes directly to our primary focus of creating opportunities for dialogue and developing collaborative research efforts oesi was established by bsee in november 2013 to provide both industry and federal regulators reliable information about safety issues in offshore drilling three texas universities – the university of houston texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin – are partners in the institute which is managed by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center a federal advisory group comprised of representatives from industry federal agencies non-governmental organizations and the academic community recommended forming the institute after the 2010 deepwater horizon oil spill it does not have regulatory authority but is charged with providing unbiased independent and science-based information bsee asked us to review the state of research involving deepwater oil and gas robinson said i found that most companies were working independently with little interaction or input from other industries there was obvious financial resource waste and limited collaboration he said the portal was proposed to allow people to better coordinate making publicly funded research more readily available robinson said private companies can offer their own research catalogues – either complete technologies or just the abstract many of the technologies included in the oetp include contact information for people who want to learn more now with low oil prices forcing producers to cut their capital and research budgets is the perfect time for the project allowing them to keep up with technology without starting every project from scratch robinson said they know they have to keep advancing or theyll be behind when the market comes back for additional information about the ocean energy safety institute visit oesitamuedu
dr bonnie j dunbar director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) institute of engineering educations and innovation has been awarded membership into the international honor society for systems engineering by the omega alpha association board of directors the omega alpha association was organized as the international honor society for systems engineering to recognize and honor truly distinguished individuals though election to membership and to celebrate contributions by individuals to the advancement and practice of systems engineering the objective of the association is to advance the systems engineering process and its professional practice in service to others dunbar a retired nasa astronaut joined texas a&m engineering in january and also serves as a tees distinguished research professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university dunbar who is a member of the prestigious national academy of engineering came to a&m from the university of houston where she provided leadership in the development of a new integrated university science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) center she was an md anderson professor of mechanical engineering and she developed a new innovative course for the introduction of engineering to freshmen students she also directed the sicsa space architecture graduate program she has devoted her life to furthering engineering engineering education and the pursuit of human space exploration
"two texas a&m university students in the department of computer science and engineering ryan vrecenar and zach varnadore completed all four tiers of the third annual national security agency 2015 codebreaker challenge – an impressive feat very few have accomplished more than 2 000 students from colleges and universities nationwide competed in the prestigious challenge which lends students the opportunity to test their creative problem solving abilities in order to solve a fictitious but realistic cyber threat texas a&m ranked fifth in student participation only 54 students solved all four tiers the nsa builds the challenge in a way that each tier becomes progressively more difficult and poses a completely new problem to be solved by the students varnadore said that he has learned a lot of what he used for the challenge through the education he is receiving at texas a&m i was able to complete the challenge using knowledge tactics and intuition that i have learned over the past year or two from studying certain computer engineering topics such as reverse engineering he said the challenge designed to create a platform for students across the nation to develop the mindset required to solve real world problems is anticipated to grow and continually improve in the years to come the codebreaker challenge was a truly intriguing experience vrecenar said i embrace the challenges and entered the phd program to gain advanced training in math modeling and algorithms design it is truly an invaluable experience to better grasp safe programming and have fun taking apart binary in addition to vrecenar and varnadores success the university also performed well as part of a sponsored activity by the recently-formed texas a&m cybersecurity club the university finished seventh overall out of the 329 schools and ranked first as the school with the most level 1 solutions dr dan ragsdale director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center and professor of practice at texas a&m and dr philip ritchey instructional assistant professor are the faculty advisors for the cybersecurity club which serves as an open forum for students to engage in community service projects and to compete against students at other universities in cyber defense and ""capture the flag"" competitions photo left to right: ragsdale varnadore vrecenar and dr steve liu professor department of computer science and engineering"
dr costas georghiades associate dean for research and texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers has been appointed texas a&m universitys new senior associate vice president for research his appointment is effective april 1 we are grateful for dr georghiades many contributions to the texas a&m engineering program during his distinguished career said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering we wish dr georghiades the best in his new position and look forward to continued collaborations and interactions
additionally dr narasimha reddy the jw runyon jr 35 professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering will assume the responsibilities of the associate dean for research and tees associate agency director reddy currently serves as the tees assistant agency director for national global initiatives georghiades joined the college of engineering in 1985 as a faculty member in the department of electrical and computer engineering and served as department head from 2005 until moving to the office of the vice chancellor and dean in 2012 he is the holder of the delbert a whitaker endowed chair reddy earned is phd in computer engineering from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign in 1990 he has received numerous awards and honors and is a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers
two researchers with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) have received research instrumentation awards from the us department of defense (dod) dr ibrahim karaman head of the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and chevron professor i received an award from the air force office of scientific research for his proposal multi-material bulk deposition and characterization system dr i-hong hou assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering received an award from the army research office for his proposal equipment for research in network and systems the awards made under the defense university research instrumentation program totaled $501 million and were handed out to 176 researchers from 96 academic institutions across the united states the program supports the purchase of state‑of‑the‑art equipment that augments current university capabilities or develops new capabilities to perform cutting‑edge defense research and associated graduate student research training the awards are the result of a merit competition jointly conducted by three dod research offices: the army research office office of naval research and air force office of scientific research those offices will make the awards which are subject to the successful completion of negotiations with the academic institutions the program is highly competitive and the three research offices collectively received 622 proposals requesting $209 million in support for research equipment the most meritorious proposals were selected to receive support the defense university research instrumentation program awards will range from $53 000 to $14 million and average approximately $300 000 per award
the tees fellows program has provided the opportunity to annually recognize outstanding engineering faculty for more than 30 years the most recent fellows are all from the department of mechanical engineering
dr anastasia muliana a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university was selected as a tees faculty fellow the principal purpose of the award is to recognize long-term outstanding research performance she will be formally recognized at an awards ceremony later this year mulianas research focuses on nonlinear and time dependent constitutive material modeling thermal stress analyses micromechanics of composite analyses of heterogeneous materials subject to coupled thermal electrical and mechanical stimuli time-dependent degradation of polymers and composites nonlinear analyses of flexible and compliant structures activated by non-mechanical (electric field light solvent and thermal) stimuli large-scale nonlinear structural analyses numerical and finite element methods she received her bachelors degree in civil engineering from the bandung institute of technology in 1997 a masters degree in civil engineering from the georgia institute of technology in 1999 and a phd in structural engineering and mechanics from the georgia institute of technology in 2004 she joined the mechanical engineering department in 2004 dr michael moreno and dr partha mukherjee have been selected as a tees young faculty fellows
moreno is an assistant professor in the department of mechanical engineering with joint appointments in the department of biomedical engineering and the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences he also serves as director of biomechanics research and engineering in the department of orthopedics and sports medicine at houston methodist research hospital his work is focused at the intersection of academic research in experimental and computational biomechanics the medical device industry and clinical practice his currently funded research projects are supported by nih nsf darpa methodist and corporate sponsors these projects include cross-campus interdisciplinary international industry and clinical collaborations he received his bachelors degree in physics from florida international university in 1996 a masters degree in science education from florida international university in 1997 a second masters in biomedical engineering from florida international university in 2003 and a phd in biomedical engineering from texas a&m in 2009 he joined the mechanical engineering department in 2014
mukherjee is an assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department his research focuses on electrochemical energy storage and conversion (batteries fuel cells) he is the director of the energy and transport science laboratory which focuses on developing a holistic approach toward fundamental understanding of the mesoscale physics and stochastics of materials-transport-interface interactions in energy storage and conversion his research is supported by nsf doe nasa and various industrial sponsors mukherjee received his bachelors in mechanical engineering from north bengal university in 1997 his masters in mechanical engineering from the indian institute of technology kanpur in 1999 and his phd in mechanical engineering from pennsylvania state university in 2007 he joined the mechanical engineering department in 2012 prior to joining the department he worked for the united states department of energy laboratories as staff scientist at oak ridge national laboratory (2009-2011) and as a directors research fellow at los alamos national laboratories (2008-2009)
the texas center for applied technology (tcat) a research center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the institute for infectious animal diseases (iiad) a department of homeland security science and technology center of excellence recently released a custom system for the national dairy farmers assuring responsible management (farm) programtm that builds on and further expands the agconnect® technology directed by the national milk producers federation (nmpf) in partnership with dairy management inc the farm program was developed to ensure animal care excellence in the dairy industry by providing consumers with the assurance and knowledge that animals receive the highest standards of care the voluntary program includes a comprehensive certification that consists of education on-farm evaluations and third-party evaluation the national dairy farm programtm is having a tremendous impact across the dairy industry and improving the industry as a whole said dr gerald parker iiad interim director through the integration of agconnect® technology were looking forward to helping the industry with their goal of continuous improvement by improving the efficiency and effectiveness by which the programs data is reported and managed the new system expands the capabilities available to evaluators cooperatives and industry associations allowing them to better manage the program and providing them with greater flexibility said dr keith biggers tcat director for computing and information technology and iiad information analysis systems theme leader it provides a web-based portal for managing organization-specific data cross-platform mobile applications to support on-farm data collection by evaluators and a dashboard interface for monitoring and reporting on aggregate-level trends across the industry iiad has previously partnered with the dairy industry and nmpf on other projects including the development and validation of an assay for detection of foot-and-mouth disease virus in bulk tank milk samples we have a very productive history with the dairy industry and were excited to extend that partnership into agconnect® said parker i have no doubt that this newly developed system will not only meet the growing needs of the farm program but that it will also help the program be more efficient robust and reliable - and will be able to expand in new directions as it continues to evolve iiad and tcat have a proven history in developing mobile applications using the agconnect® technology to support a variety of different animal health domains agconnect® offers a flexible data collection management and sharing architecture that can be used to support a variety of needs this architecture allows for data integration aggregation and sharing/distribution in a fully controlled manner to support shared situational awareness and decision making agconnect® can also support emergency response business continuity biosurveillance and other related areas agconnect® has had an excellent track record in helping take agriculture programs to new heights and we are delighted to partner with them to further advance the farm program said emily meredith vice president of animal care at nmpf and director of the farm program our cooperative members and second-party evaluators had been asking for a mobile application and updated database with greater capabilities agconnect® more than delivered on these requests and were excited to see what the future holds for this partnership the app can be found on both the apple app store® and google play store® only farm program certified evaluators/trainers have account credentials to utilize the app and submit evaluations for questions or inquiries about the national dairy farm program please contact dairyfarm@nmpforg for questions or inquiries about the dairy farm mobile app please contact farm-help@tamuedu headquartered in college station texas iiad was founded in 2004 as a department of homeland security (dhs) science and technology center of excellence the institute focuses on research education and outreach to prevent detect mitigate and recover from transboundary emerging and/or zoonotic diseases which may be introduced intentionally or through natural processes in 2014 iiad was recognized by the world organization for animal health (oie) as a collaborating centre in the specialty of biological threat reduction iiad is the only centre of this kind in oies americas region and the only oie collaborating centre within the texas a&m university system for more information visit iiadtamuedu
more than 300 school children and community members from across the matagorda bay area came to palacios texas to take part in the fifth annual science on saturday event sponsored by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m universitys nuclear power institute (npi) last week science on saturday is a culmination of several of npis annual outreach programs high school students from the powerful opportunities for women eager and ready for science engineering and technology (power set) and workforce industry training (wit) spend the year participating in many activities designed to increase their educational and career awareness and interests in science technology engineering and math (stem) and mentoring middle school students in the girls responding to industry demands (power grid) and boys resourcing technology (brt) programs the power set and wit students from palacios high school hosted the event at the high school gymnasium demonstrating experiments for middle school and elementary school students from across the area many of which are involved in power grid and brt programs at their schools when the event was created five years ago professors and teachers organized and performed the experiments however instead of just observing the high school students wanted to take over that leadership role a couple of years ago according to valerie segovia npi director of outreach and development the results speak for themselves originally we werent expecting that level of ownership from the students she said it truly surpassed all expectations we had for the event science on saturday turned out to be something incredibly empowering and enlightening for everyone involved we have community members and leaders elected officials and industry representatives involved we received a tremendous amount of support for them as well the event is growing and improving each year the 26 interactive demonstrations included a hoverboard marshmallow catapults salt volcanoes bubbles made with dry ice standing inside of giant bubbles and many more the highlight of the event though was when the students divided into teams and were given 20 minutes to create a tower of tape and spaghetti noodles that had to support a full-size marshmallow as high off the ground as possible a group of middle school students from el campo won the challenge with a tower just over two feet seeing the kids excited is the best part said stephanie garcia principal of palacios high school they get to put their hands on everything they get to make a mess and then they get to learn all the scientific principles behind them too i actually had a parent say that she noticed that her daughter is being drawn to certain activities so shes going to encourage her daughter even more to get interested in stem as a career thats super exciting for me superintendent alejandro flores said events like science on saturday are great outreach programs for tees and texas a&m and give students the support they need to reach beyond what they might have previously thought was possible its really all about providing kids the right kinds of opportunities said flores as long as they have the right kind of support system from our end anything is possible to be able to bring their attention to stem that is the key we need to push our best and our brightest and its really up to us to provide them with the right kind of resources so they can reach their full potential matagorda county judge nate mcdonald has attended some of the other science on saturday events and was at palacios in 2010 when former texas governor rick perry presented a grant to the npi power set program almost six years later mcdonald said the impact the programs are having in the area is obvious ive attended many basketball games in this gym and what im witnessing today is kids getting just as excited about science technology engineering and math as they do about athletics mcdonald said thats huge -- thats what a&m does the nuclear power institute celebrates young scientists and thats what were doing today top photo: chasity and charity nguyen make boo bubbles using dry ice
"dr xiaoning qian a researcher with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations agrilife center for bioinformatics and genomic systems engineering (cbgse) has received the prestigious faculty early career development (career) award sponsored by the national science foundation (nsf) qian who is also an assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university received his career award for his proposal ""knowledge-driven analytics model uncertainty and experiment design qian proposes a knowledge-driven analytics framework to solve mathematical and computational issues that exist in high-dimensional network-based systems prediction and intervention problems where the models are uncertain he says this framework has strong potential for translating available diverse large-scale data to create reproducible knowledge for driving life sciences and materials science research if successful it could eventually lead to computational tools for more efficient experimental design to maximize the use of existing big data and speed up the processes for effective disease therapeutics and new materials discovery qian believes that the interdisciplinary nature of his proposal promises to foster cross-fertilization of ideas between engineering life sciences and materials science in both the domains of research and education qian received his bachelors and masters degrees from shanghai jiao-tong university china and his phd in electrical engineering from yale university in 2005 prior to joining texas a&m he worked for four years as an assistant professor at the university of south florida his current research interests include computational network biology genomic signal processing and biomedical image analysis some of his interdisciplinary research efforts at texas a&m have been recently funded by an nsf eager grant a usda grant and a grant from the los alamos national laboratory he recently co-organized the international workshop on computational network biology: modeling analysis and control (cnb-mac) he has been serving on the editorial boards for several journals and on the organizing and technical program committees for several international conferences"
saving lives improving patient comfort and streamlining procedures in dangerous situations were just a few of the topics covered in the latest aggies invent held at texas a&m university the theme for the weekend first responders was sponsored by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) center for emergency informatics during the weekend students created prototypes relevant to first responders search and rescue paramedics firefighters and others in the field aggies invent promotes an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset among students at texas a&m it gathers invited students provides them with the needs statements submitted by sponsors allows them to self-select teams and gives them access to industry mentors and support from the engineering innovation center (eic) to create solutions and prototypes in 48 hours grace duoduo mack ragland and milan pandya took first place with the quadcomm an adapted uav with two-way radio transmission they equipped a quadcopter with a microphone and a two-way radio for first responders to have direct conversation with people in hard to reach areas during a disaster situation ragland said he was drawn to the first responders event because it felt like something that would impact others and could potentially save lives finding out what people need during a disaster rescue is just as important as retrieving them ragland said the second-place team was ez triage a fitbit-like device to track and monitor patients during emergency response triage situations the current system of tracking triage patients is outdated and inefficient hence the need for updating the technology austin isburgh maximiliano ortiz pravir singh gupta sagar samant shikha sinha sujoy saha and swetha sridharan comprised team ez triage third place went to team lift with its airboard to assist first responders placing large patients onto stretchers the needs statement was to help reduce the likelihood of back injuries to first responders and increase patient comfort team lifts students included justin samorajski muhammad aun roshan karna samuel mcconnell and trey newman the panel of judges included dr jon mogford texas a&m vice chancellor for research; don lewis director of startup aggieland; dr jerry livingston clinical assistant professor of clinical and transitional medicine and dr debjyoti banerjee professor of mechanical engineering dr robin murphy from the center for emergency informatics spoke to the students about their success and the centers support for their continued innovation the judging panel was so impressed with the results of the competition that mogford decided to award each team a $250 prize the top three teams received $1 000 $750 and $500 respectively for their awards all teams are invited to continue working on their project and have access to the eic and mentors for guidance and advice they also have the opportunity to work with startup aggieland for additional assistance additional coverage from aggies invent: first responders here to learn more about aggies invent visit https://aggiesinventtamuedu/
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the southwest research institute® (swri) in san antonio texas have signed a formal affiliation agreement that will foster and strengthen research collaborations between the two institutions potential areas of collaboration include cybersecurity unconventionals autonomous systems industrial robotics nuclear technologies student-focused education initiatives water technologies materials and corrosion data analytics manufacturing food-water-energy nexus and smart grid technologies this is a unique opportunity for collaboration between a state agency and a highly regarded research organization said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees we look forward to a productive relationship as we work together on projects of significant impact the collaboration will allow both organizations to tap into additional technical resources and expertise said susan crumrine vice president of swris automation and data systems division it will also facilitate student-focused education initiatives and allow students to expand their education experience by participating in swri research programs the mou also supports efforts in the areas of participation in business development strategies; development of technical management or cost proposals; and related exchanges of information and reviews of such information swri founded in 1947 is an independent research and development organization that provides contract services in a wide range of advanced science and applied engineering arenas the institute has 10 technical divisions with research capabilities in areas such as advanced electronics materials sciences environmental and health sciences and unmanned vehicles and systems tees operates a statewide network of research centers and institutes focused on six research areas: energy systems and services healthcare information systems and sensors infrastructure materials and manufacturing and national security and safety photo (back row from left): dr cindy lawley executive director of academic initiatives at texas a&m university and lagoudas front from left: dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees; ron kalmbach executive director of contracts for swri; and crumrine
"a student team from texas a&m university led by engineering phd students blake teipel and charles brandon sweeney won the grand prize at the rice business plan competition for its startup company trifusion devices the startup has developed customizable 3-d printed prosthetic leg devices that can be manufactured in hours instead of weeks and would cost far less than anything on the market the trifusion devices team included founders teipel and sweeney graduate students in the department of materials science and engineering and britton eastburn a combined medical student at the texas a&m health science centers college of medicine and an mba student at the mays business school they pitched their inexpensive customizable 3-d printed prosthetic device technology to four separate panels of judges that included venture capitalists angel investors entrepreneurs service providers and local business executives the team developed a carbon nanotube-coated printer filament and a microwave welding process to fuse 3-d printed parts together making them strong and durable they can go from scans of a patient geometry to a finished device in less than 48 hours the aggies collected four checks totaling nearly $400 000 at the competition including the $300 000 investment grand prize from the goose society of texas; the $60 000 tie angel investment prize; the $25 000 medical device accelerator prize and the $10 000 pearland spirit of entrepreneurship prize this was the first time a texas a&m team won the competition more than $169 million in prize money was awarded to 42 companies at the event which is the largest student-centered business plan competition in the world the trifusion devices team beat out student startups from harvard university massachusetts institute of technology northwestern university dartmouth college carnegie mellon university the university of michigan and multiple teams from international universities trifusion devices has the potential to transform the biomedical device industry healthcare military and commercial manufacturing sectors said dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and head of materials science and engineering blake and brandon are role models for other students with entrepreneurial aspirations they have set a great example in taking research from labs to commercialization ""we were so honored to present our technology and business idea at the rice business plan competition the world stage for entrepreneurship said sweeney trifusion was especially proud to represent texas a&m and have the chance to prove that aggies can compete with and conquer the worlds best universities everyone should know that at texas a&m we like to break a mental sweat too"" since spring 2015 teipel and sweeney have taken top honors in multiple competitions winning first place at the mays business schools center for new ventures and entrepreneurship raymond ideas challenge the inaugural sec pitch competition in atlanta and the baylor business plan competition in february 2016"
dr teri reed assistant agency director of workforce development for the texas a&m engineering experiment station and assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs for the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university has been elected to chair the american society for engineering education (asee) professional interest council iv (pic iv) and will begin her service at the societys annual conference in june in new orleans founded in 1893 the asee is the only national engineering education organization concerned with all engineering disciplines the asee pic iv promotes encourages and facilitates asee activities pertaining to engineering education with an emphasis on teaching and learning and related research diversity libraries graduate studies and technology reed co-authored two landmark journal of engineering education special reports in 2006 that helped establish engineering education as an academic discipline: the national engineering education research colloquies and the research agenda for the new discipline of engineering education this is quite an honor to serve my professional society in this role said reed an advocate for research-informed approaches to an inclusive engineering education my goal is to support and assist the divisions in pic iv as they continue to do the work of the society asees vision of advancing access as well as excellence in all aspects of engineering and engineering technology education is one we should all be behind as educators reeds asee honors include the 2015 william elgin wickenden award recognizing the authors of the best paper published in the journal of engineering education the 2013 sharon keillor award for women in engineering education the 2013 environmental engineering division best paper award the 2008 educational research and methods division outstanding service award and being elected a fellow in 2010
researchers in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university are working to make life easier through research that is revolutionizing society the long awaited day of 3-d printed replacement body parts may be just around the corner; along with the day of producing metal more quickly and efficiently thanks to the work of those in the advanced manufacturing field a team of researchers comprised of dr satish ts bukkapatnam dr alaa elwany dr dinakar sagapuram and dr shiren wang is working in four core areas: precision and smart manufacturing additive and hybrid manufacturing nano and bio manufacturing and manufacturing enterprise systems advanced manufacturing research assistant during the past two years the core members of this group have together secured or brought with them seven federal grants to address the contemporary challenges in advanced manufacturing said bukkapatnam rockwell international professor in industrial and systems engineering these grants fund the research that takes place in state-of-the-art facilities such as the advanced manufacturing facility part of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) institute of manufacturing systems (ims) this facility promotes cutting-edge interdisciplinary research said bukkapatnam who serves as the director of ims there are four colleges working together in here they are engineering architecture veterinary medicine and science as well as the texas a&m health science center working together with 30 other faculty members across the college of engineering these researchers are changing society securing our world with a rise in competition and security perceptions globally the need for smart manufacturing and continuous round-the-clock monitoring of quality and integrity of our security measures is necessary for the survival of modern engineering systems bukkapatnams team has identified these needs in precision and nano-manufacturing processes for making personalized and custom parts particularly in the medical transportation and defense sectors sensor technologies are becoming available to interrogate any aspect of modern engineering systems at every conceivable scale of a product process or system bukkapatnam said these sensors have the capability to capture a variety of information on the product process or system this poses a new challenge: connecting the large-amounts of sensor data to bring significant improvements to the design and operations of these engineering systems the core of this research is to harness information on the nonlinear stochastic dynamics and the emergent behaviors bukkapatnam said this includes chaos self-organization and long-range dependencies in the form of customized multi-scale representations and formal models and to track features separated from these models to monitor and control the quality and integrity of complex systems bukkapatnam and his team have now expanded this research to the world of cyber manufacturing that is creating a virtual manufacturing set-up that has the ability to translate the clients needs into a product or process that can be implemented immediately they are working collaboratively with support from the national science foundation printing for the future focused on modeling analysis and control of next-generation manufacturing processes with special emphasis on additive manufacturing known as 3-d printing elwany is working to improve the quality of metallic parts produced using 3-d printing the main contribution of my research is to enable the production of 3-d printed parts with high levels of geometric complexity and unique physical and mechanical properties that are simply not possible or extremely expensive to produce using traditional manufacturing methods such as machining or injection molding elwany said three-dimensional printing will change the way the world knows the manufacturing industry in art construction customization energy use medicine product availability sciences and waste reduction elwany is currently working with nasa and the air force office of scientific research to test his methods in the space and defense industries the research today will improve the products produced and make them fully functional by the end user improving lives with more that one million people going through surgery to repair the tear in their meniscus every year wang is exploring the additive manufacturing of synthetic knee cartilage for meeting biomedical requirements by using 3-d printing wang is looking for solutions to eliminate the risk of pathogen transmission immune rejection and tissue mismatch for patients facing meniscus transplantation surgery students in advanced manufacturing lab first the printed material must be compatible with the environment it is placed in around the knee wang said second the material must allow the knee to function properly the leg still needs to be able to kick the ball and run in addition to 3-d printing synthetic materials wang developed a way to scale up nanoparticles and create structured forests that improve the performance of energy storage the discovery of these forests made up of tiny particles could revolutionize the current energy storage technology on the market these nanostructured forests are the future batteries wang said they will greatly enhance the performance of energy storage including cell phone and laptop batteries wang is working with and funded by the national science foundation under the faculty early career development program creating new ideas researchers in the department of industrial engineering are making strides in changing the way manufacturing can easily meet the needs of our instantaneous society while maintaining a quality end product manufacturing essentially involves creating products that have value bukkapatnam said as the nation engages in various manufacturing initiatives including additive smart and nano manufacturing there is a growing opportunity for the industrial community to engage in fundamental investigations combining physical and data science principles to address major future challenges
dean and glenda schneider of college station have been named texas a&m universitys parents of the year for 2016-17 the announcement was made friday (april 9) night during yell practice at kyle field now part of parents weekend activities the schneiders are the 41st couple to receive this honor both are members of texas a&ms class of 1982 all six of their children are aggies so they have coined the phrase 8 ags are we to describe their love for the university dean who retired from the air force in 2002 after serving for 20 years is currently the director of manufacturing operations for the texas center of applied technology glenda has been an educator for 16 years and now teaches science at a&m consolidated high school their youngest daughter hannah nominated her parents to be selected as the parents of the year and said she was overjoyed when she found out her parents would receive the recognition she believes they deserve the committee selecting the parents of the year say one reason the schneiders were chosen was because they share an unparalleled passion for both their family and the aggie spirit my father came from a farm in lockhart and my mother from a modest home in fredericksburg hannah said when nominating her parents after meeting in chemistry class their first year at texas a&m they began their lives together with almost nothing on a very limited military salary despite the odds and due to their consistent perseverance theyve transformed their meager beginning into a wonderful fruitful life with their family being the most important aspect she said she believes it was her fathers time at texas a&m and in the military that reflects his selfless nature and speaks greatly to his character and values that transferred to his children she noted that her mothers strength became apparent when she would often be left alone during the familys military days with the six children and have to move them single-handedly across the country my parents have stayed constant in their faith constant in their love for each other and constant in their devotion to their children it is these three things that allow me despite times of hardship to only reflect on and remember the unconditional love that out-shined it all she added being the youngest hannah said she had the unique vantage point of watching her five older siblings tackle their challenges and celebrate their successes whatever problems she faced she said she had them to help guide her and give her wisdom she also watched her parents support all of them and foster and encourage their dreams and plans joshuas love of knowledge led him to a law career; he is currently working as a criminal prosecutor for the district attorney in houston they fully supported my oldest sister bethanys desire to help others and she now is a neonatal intensive care nurse at a hospital in south houston after graduating from texas a&m my sister raechel attended graduate school at cornell studying the interaction of human psychology and the physical environment she now works in austin as an educational planner helping design schools thomas was constantly allowed to nurture his intellectual pursuits and is now a computer engineer working in the it department at the texas center for applied technology the athletic endeavors of my brother peter led to his interests in the human body and his hopes of attending medical school then here i am at the tail end catering to my own interests by studying event planning and art with hopes of a career celebrating the passion of others through photography proud to be aggies the schneiders have had season football tickets for over 15 years and hannah said it is hard to meet her parents and not have the topic of texas a&m come up in conversation one of the things my father says he likes most about the university is the tradition of family there are no strangers here in aggieland when texas a&m is involved the sparkle in their eyes says it all this past fall hannah said she was able to experience a moment that she had been waiting for her entire life a moment that was close to 35 years in the making long before she was even alive i received my cherished aggie ring as the last in my family and the final piece of my parents legacy i looked down at the shining symbolic piece of gold in honor and pride for all that my parents had created with the help of this university this moment reflected far beyond my own accomplishments at texas a&m; my entire life and the life of my family is encompassed through this ring that i will proudly wear for the rest of my life
educators from across the united states and mexico gathered in college station march 30 -april 1 to explore how to help engineering students successfully make the transition from their sophomore to junior years during which the emphasis shifts from core engineering classes to discipline-specific professional preparation coursework the mid years engineering experience conference (myeec) showcased two keynote addresses and nearly 30 presentationsall focusing on new ways to engage engineering students so they not only survive the typical sophomore slump but also achieve great success as students and professionals the dwight look college of engineering at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) hosted the myeec keynote speaker dr chuck krousgrill a mechanical engineering professor at purdue university introduced his highly interactive teaching approach for large engineering classes called freeform with freeform students create their own textbooks throughout the semester while also interacting with other students and faculty online and accessing hundreds of instructional videos and animations to help guide their studies this creative approach has another benefit: the rate of freeform basic mechanics ii students who received ds and fs or who withdrew altogether dropped from 21 percent in 2009 to 9 percent in 2014 with freeform students are much more actively engaged in learning than they would be by simply listening to a faculty member lecture said krousgrill and when students have to create their own textbooks they have to work together and with faculty to find solutions to the presented problems because there are no formal solution manuals to be found the myeecs second keynote featured dr catherine didion formerly with the national academy of engineering didion encouraged myeec participants to embrace opportunities to be more creative and involved in their work with students cohorts mentors advisors and summer bridge programs are necessary for student success said didion we also need to create safe places for engineering faculty to seek clarity and ask questions we want myeec to be one of those safe places said dr teri reed assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs for texas a&ms college of engineering and assistant agency director of workforce development for tees at myeec we create a safe and engaging environment where engineering educators come together to learn new things ask questions and return to their institutions motivated and prepared to inspire the next generation of engineers
the texas a&m energy institute hosted a one-day conference on monday april 4 2016 to create an opportunity for researchers across the state to share their research and educational developments in the field texas optimization day made possible by sponsorships provided a chance for researchers practitioners and policymakers in the state of texas to collaborate and as a result build a community to promote fundamental and applied optimization research in the region
dr sergiy butenko professor and donna and jim furber ‘64 faculty fellow in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university was one of the organizers of the inaugural event since this is the first year for this event a goal of ours is to decide on the format locations and potential sources of funding for the texas optimization day in the future butenko said dr christodoulos a floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute and erie nye ‘59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m was pleased with the response they received for the event i am excited to see so many people from the various institutions around the state floudas said we were pleased to welcome representatives from the university of texas at arlington prairie view a&m university houston baptist university rice university the university of texas at dallas southern methodist university the university of houston and texas a&m university presentations covered topics from improving the flow of the shipping industry to finding cohesive groups within graphs to social media advertisement costs dr stratos pistikopoulos associate director of the texas a&m energy institute and tees distinguished research professor in chemical engineering was impressed with the vast range of topics that were presented it was very interesting to hear the kinds of things our peers are working on he said i am excited to see the partnerships that develop as a result of the event today floudas is passionate about impacting society through energy research and looks forward to the future of the event the energy institute is focused on important scientific and technological energy challenges that impact our society he said with events like the texas optimization day we are creating relationships among researchers that will help conquer those challenges
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center will host the fourth annual smart grid workshop at the memorial student center on the texas a&m university campus on april 28 this years workshop will focus on smart grids big data big data in smart electric grids comes from many domains associated with power system operation (generation transmission and distribution customers services and markets) as well as other seemingly unrelated yet synergistically intertwined domains such as other energy commodity markets (gas and oil) environment and weather the significance of this type of data is in the diversity of its sources growth rate and spatiotemporal characteristics the workshop will include invited talks panels and focus group discussions as well as a student poster session there will be opportunities to interact with faculty and students from a number of universities as well as with professionals representing industry government/national labs and several other organizations interested in the topic registration includes workshop participation refreshments a post-workshop reception and student poster displays the registration deadline is april 21 after this deadline the registration fees remain the same but registration includes only workshop participation with no lunch or post-workshop reception due to the catering arrangement deadlines for more information on the event visit https://smartgridcentertamuedu/
dr alan palazzolo tees professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently published a book vibration theory and applications with finite elements and active vibration control the book provides extensive coverage of vibration-related topics with particular emphasis on the three basic areas of modeling analysis and applications palazzolo recognizes that a thorough understanding of mathematical and modeling techniques is essential before progressing to methods of analysis and there is a complete section covering the relevant math and programming techniques in matlab and maple by using a wide range of practical examples and exercises palazzolo demonstrates how the math relates to engineering and its applications connecting theory to engineering practice and problem solving palazzolo has taught classes and led research focused in the area of vibration theory these topics include failure models kinematics and modeling unstable vibrating systems rotordynamics and finite element methods utilizing truss beam plate and solid elements the book provides the modeling skills and knowledge required for modern engineering practice plus the tools needed to identify formulate and solve engineering problems effectively including symbolic math codes the book is currently available for purchase and can be found here
the national security agency (nsa) and the department of homeland security (dhs) recently designated texas a&m university as a national center of academic excellence both in education and in research this well-regarded designation places texas a&m among a select group of only 30 universities that have earned both distinctions texas a&m has been dedicated to the advancement of cyber defense since the 1990s when the very first academic course utilizing an active attack-defense laboratory was created since that time the university has continued to build a robust body of cybersecurity research under the direction of a strong faculty and has graduated an impressive number of cybersecurity students this coveted distinction aligns with the cybersecurity centers vision to collaborate with strategic partners and in doing so move to the forefront of cybersecurity research the centers mission in education and research is to develop novel and innovative methods for cybersecurity education and to facilitate the conduct of ground-breaking basic and applied cybersecurity research as stated in the nsa designation letters [texas a&m universitys] ability to meet the increasing demands of the program criteria will serve the nation well in contributing to the protection of the national information infrastructure the texas a&m cybersecurity center is jointly run by the university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) director dr daniel ragsdale was chosen to lead the center in 2015 ragsdale along with deputy director lynn schlemeyer and many faculty and staff have since galvanized the effort for cyber defense within the texas a&m university system the center will be formally recognized by the nsa and dhs at the national cyber security summit in huntsville alabama on june 8
from smart phones to automobile parts virtually everything that we come into contact with has been manufactured in some fashion not only is manufacturing vital to consumers but it is an important component of the world economy so what exactly is manufacturing it is the process of making something of value for people to use and for the last 100 years the united states economy relied heavily on the manufacturing industry and quickly became a leader in the field however in the last 10 years nearly 51 million manufacturing jobs have been lost to companies overseas due to lower labor costs today as the world becomes more technologically advanced so does manufacturing in support of this resurgence in manufacturing the federal government has set a national initiative that is expected to boost manufacturing across the nation with its collective experienced researchers and faculty the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university are poised to lead the industry in providing research and development of new technology to help improve the manufacturing process and bring it back to prominence in the us texas a&m has one of the largest concentrations of core manufacturing subject matter experts in the country the knowledge base is multidisciplinary with approximately 10 percent coming from the college of engineering and the other 90 percent comprised of representatives from various colleges within the university and the texas a&m university system each member of the group is also a researcher with the institute for manufacturing systems (ims) a center within tees that was created to address the immediate and strategic manufacturing needs of industry our job is to take technology and put it in the hands of our citizens so they can be economic powerhouses said dr dean schneider assistant director of the institute for manufacturing systems that is the reason texas a&m university exists it was established as a land grant specifically to set new technologies out to the people so they can improve their lives in keeping with that mission tees researchers work to gain an understanding of what industry problems exist and how to apply the technologies being developed to find solutions currently one of the biggest issues facing manufacturing in the us is the need for customized products according to schneider since every manufacturing company produces something different and uses a different method to create those products it is difficult for manufacturers to customize their products to meet demand this is the number-one problem facing manufacturers today he said so to help solve this problem tees is doing research in cyber manufacturing advanced manufacturing consists of developing new technologies and systems to improve the quality of a product by using the latest advances in information systems and process technologies according to dr satish bukkapatnam director of the ims it allows researchers to control the way the components join and interact to make larger parts and create quality products with a better functionality and performance not seen before cyber manufacturing will allow for those products to be set at an affordable price for consumers and perform better we now have the ability to build components and control the way they interact and come together even at atomic scales to make larger parts bukkapatnam said texas a&m is currently one of the few universities in the country that has two or more ongoing cyber-manufacturing projects from the national science foundation a major focus of research in this subject is the growing need for more highly customized parts to be manufactured texas a&m researchers are currently performing research on smoothing surfaces of biomedical implants and using an origami based process to make more complex shapes faster researchers are also working with sensors to achieve the ability to control the way objects get folded cut and made from a remote cyber (or smart) environment there are also specific manufacturing challenges that are unique to the state of texas as the second largest manufacturing base in the nation there is a need for high value custom manufacturing in the energy market since a majority of the work takes place underground the question of how to make something that will survive extreme temperatures pressure and corrosives arises the ims researchers are looking for feasible solutions to this issue an eventual solution to this issue will not only benefit texas but it will also have a momentous effect on the development of manufacturing worldwide cyber manufacturing has evolved from a place where people built personalized components by hand on an assembly line into a high-tech position that involves humans operating technologically advanced machine to build those custom components it also plays a major role in creating a new generation of workforce professionals in this field the ims will add to the current workforce by training and educating its students to be equipped with the necessary skillset to begin work immediately the center will also develop continuing education for the states current workforce who need further training the less hands-on human involvement in the production of a material the less that material will cost consumers and thats what advanced manufacturing is really about said schneider its integrating new technologies into the way we make things so that we do it more cost effectively with less labor with a higher quality and so then we can compete with the low touch labor rates were trying to make it more advantageous for companies to stay in the united states for manufacturing it is an exciting time and there are many opportunities for tees and texas a&m to really make an impact on manufacturing in this country not only with the technologies we can create but also the impact we can make on the economy and the workforce bukkapatnam said
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) external advisory board held its spring meeting may 20 at the national center for therapeutics manufacturing building in college station texas advisory board members shared updates from their subcommittees and also heard updates from tees administrators about plans for future growth and new research initiatives being pursued by the agency m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees presented tees current initiatives banks also emphasized the importance of receiving input from the board and industry regarding the development of the rellis campus a research and development campus which will help companies move ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace while also offering students a new path toward a college degree three presentations highlighted some of tees current initiatives dr sam mannan director of the mary k oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) talked about the growth of his center from starting with funding over $200 000 at its inception to an annual budget of over $4 million last year the mkopsc will continue to expand with the development of the rellis campus where the center will have new facilities john barton assistant vice chancellor for strategic initiatives presented tees work with autonomous and connected vehicles barton detailed the ways in which texas a&m university is positioned to be a leader in the field including new testing facilities at the rellis campus and a campus initiative to increase collaboration across departments and disciplines dr satish bukkapatnam director of the institute for manufacturing systems gave a presentation that detailed the centers ongoing effort to be a national leader in advanced manufacturing emphasizing what he called an unmatched range of expertise in several facets of the subject the spring meeting concluded with a tour of the recently announced rellis campus the three primary tenants at the new campus are tees the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) each agency currently has facilities at the current riverside campus with plans for new construction the next advisory board meeting will be held in november
"the texas a&m university system is partnering with battelle the boeing company the university of texas system and the university of new mexico in a joint bid to manage the sandia national laboratories one of three doe laboratories responsible for the nations nuclear arsenal battelle is the worlds largest independent nonprofit research and development organization and boeing is the worlds largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense space and security systems the texas a&m university system which will lead the texas research and education partnership that includes the university of texas system joins the university of new mexico to provide research expertise workforce training and independent peer review of the crucial research and development conducted at sandia these academic entities will be members of the board of directors for the laboratories in may 2015 the us department of energy announced that it would seek a request for proposal (rfp) for the management of sandia currently the laboratory is managed by the sandia corporation a wholly-owned subsidiary of lockheed martin and has an operating budget of $3 billion with 10 000 employees the final request for proposals was issued on may 18 2016 and a contract decision is anticipated by the end of the year the idea for creating the team to compete for the sandia contract started at a november dinner hosted by texas a&m system chancellor john sharp battelles ron townsend executive vice president of global laboratory operations and m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering for the texas a&m system among others attended that first meeting ""when rumors about this opportunity arose in 2012 dr banks and i knew we were in a unique position to serve our nation our first call was to battelle and over the last four years this ideal team was created "" chancellor sharp said ""the texas a&m system has the capability and long history of national service that are unmatched by any other university system texas a&ms faculty expertise and our top-ranked engineering graduate programs position us well as a key partner for this opportunity the leadership of governor greg abbott made this partnership possible for the texas university systems"" governor abbott said the texas a&m system approached him almost a year ago about bidding to manage the sandia national laboratories ""from the moment chancellor sharp first approached me about bidding on the sandia national laboratory we have worked hard to build a coalition to take advantage of this unparalleled research opportunity "" abbott said ""todays announcement reflects months of work building a robust coalition that includes the texas a&m university system the university of texas system and the university of new mexico i am grateful to chancellor sharp for spearheading this remarkable effort to [ut system] chancellor [william h] mcraven for working closely with the governors office to ensure that texas fielded a unified and robust research team together texas and new mexico can bring unprecedented research opportunities to our great state universities and would be honored to be entrusted with the management of one of our nations premier national laboratories"" the university of texas system is the second-largest public university system in the nation with an enrollment of 217 000 students across 14 institutions the ut system has a long-standing relationship with sandia national laboratory and has worked closely with the laboratory to supply the skilled scientists and engineers needed to support sandias mission and on numerous science and engineering projects that are important to the nations security ""partnering with industry and academic leaders in research and development areas that ultimately will help safeguard america is a phenomenal opportunity and the ut system is proud to be doing its part "" said ut system chancellor william h mcraven ""this collaboration is a perfect fit leveraging the research power of stellar universities as well as the expertise of battelle and boeing to elevate the already remarkable development coming out of sandia national laboratories"" banks with the texas a&m system said the academic partnership is a critical component ""combined the texas a&m and university of texas systems are among the nations largest research enterprises and include two of the most respected engineering programs "" banks said ""both have been involved in our nations nuclear security enterprise for decades and are deeply familiar with the personnel mission and research at sandia national laboratory"" ""sandia ensures the us nuclear stockpile is safe secure and reliable and can fully support the nations deterrence policy "" said ed dolanski president boeing global services & support ""their mission of service to the nation is directly aligned with our teams mission battelles leadership in national lab management and boeings leadership in weapons and systems engineering will provide new capabilities to help nnsa more effectively meet their nuclear objectives"" about the texas a&m university system the texas a&m university system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a statewide network of 11 universities seven state agencies a comprehensive health science center and a budget of $42 billion the texas a&m system educates more than 140 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year externally funded research expenditures exceed $946 million and help drive the states economy about texas a&m engineering within the a&m system nine of the 11 universities offer engineering degree programs with a combined enrollment of more than 25 000 engineering students and more than 600 engineering faculty members the largest engineering program is at texas a&m university in college station with more than 16 500 students including approximately 12 500 undergraduates and approximately 3 500 graduate students and $308 million in engineering research expenditures annually among the highest in the us the a&m system engineering program also includes three state agencies: texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) which conducts engineering research performs education and workforce development and transfers technology discoveries into the marketplace; texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) which delivers emergency response homeland security and workforce training and exercises; and texas a&m transportation institute (tti) which conducts transportation research and transfers technology to industry and the public the texas a&m engineering enterprise strategic areas have strong alignment with snl: defense systems and assessments; international homeland and nuclear security; informatics/knowledge economy; energy climate and infrastructure security; cybersecurity; transportation and infrastructure; and energy and the environment"
"experienced development engineering and project management group to accelerate project forward new orleans la – louisianas clean energy future received a big boost today as an experienced team of development engineering and project management specialists announce their 150 mw wind farm to provide clean power to the regions growing need to diversify into clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions the wind farm is designed to meet the power needs of any announced request for proposals from multiple utilities in the state louisiana wind llc the local independent developer is a louisiana-based company that has assembled a team of professionals with significant wind energy experience including texas a&m universitys clean energy incubator (tamcei) louisiana wind has also selected ddm group to provide overall project management of the wind farm development the principals at ddm have led the overall program management of land development and facilities valued in excess of $39 billion their experience includes working for an independent power producer (ipp) on more than 500 mw of co-generation plants in three states our collaborative effort advances louisianas transition into clean energy said stephen vial co-founder and managing member of louisiana wind we have been working quietly for the last three years studying the atmospheric physics acquiring landowner participation policy and regulatory comprehension completing preliminary engineering and financial feasibility this project offers a multitude of long-term positive economic impacts for louisiana the region will benefit from the addition of a significant amount of new clean energy and aid in maintaining louisiana as a leader in energy production our project helps stabilize rates generates jobs and additional revenue to the landowners parish and state ""the texas a&m clean energy incubator provides client entrepreneurs such as louisiana wind with the potential for close access to texas a&m resources intellectual property and expertise and is a portal for those wanting to partner with texas a&m researchers and facilities said john pappas of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and principal investigator for the clean energy incubator about louisiana wind llc: louisiana wind llc a louisiana company was formed in june 2013 to develop and build a wind farm to harvest class 3 winds shown to exist in central louisiana when fully implemented the 150 mw louisiana wind farm will have approximately 55 turbines installed over 4 000 acres and provide enough electricity equivalent to power more than 60 000 average louisiana households about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery including that of science and technology research conducted at texas a&m represented annual expenditures of more than $8666 million in fiscal year 2015 texas a&m ranked in the top 20 of the national science foundations higher education research and development survey (2014) based on expenditures of more than $854 million in fiscal year 2014 texas a&ms research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit http://researchtamuedu about the texas a&m clean energy incubator: texas a&m university was awarded a clean energy incubator grant by the state energy conservation office (seco) in 2013 the texas a&m clean energy incubator (tamcei) offers global entrepreneurs a best-in-class business incubation environment for the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies tamcei is located in college station texas and functions as a hub-and-spoke incubator touching all corners of the state of texas and is operated by the research valley innovation center tamcei brings together a substantial network of clean energy scholars university research labs test bed facilities as well as strategic partnerships with energy corporations investors and bottom-line focused consultants to support top-flight clean energy companies going to market about ddm group: the ddm group (ddm llc) headquartered in houston texas is providing development and project management services to louisiana wind ddm brings an extensive network of relationships and the wide range of financial and physical resources to assist in the project for additional information contact: stephen vial louisiana wind (337) 393-6366 donald nevins ddm (281) 300-6591"
an innovative approach to recycling consumer electronics to reclaim the essential elements inside of them is a step closer to reality after startup company reecycle was awarded $50 000 in funding as the top company at the 2016 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) at texas a&m university the houston-based based company headed by co-founder and ceo casey mcneil was named first-place winner of the competition the competition which awarded a total of $150 000 in cash prizes this year promotes the commercialization of emerging technology by recognizing companies with high growth potential it was hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees)
"this competition is important because lack of funding and visibility can be challenging for a fledgling company to move to the next level said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees we must support our faculty students and researchers as they move research ideas into the marketplace reecycle reclaims materials known as rare earth elements from recycled electronics reecycle primarily targets neodymium and dysprosium two rare earth elements essential to the production of consumer electronics clean energy technologies and national defense systems this win for us really means the advancement of a lot of different technologies that we are working on mcneil said there are some really interesting additions that we would like to make to our technology in the way of purifying our materials a little bit further and also expanding on the conversion of our material alloys – so really just advancing some of the research we are working on this funding is absolutely critical towards furthering reecycle is the second company to earn top honors at tnvc which began in 2015 and was won by noninvasix a galveston-based company developing medical technology that enables monitoring of a babys brain oxygen levels during labor and delivery ""the texas a&m new ventures competition helps elevate real companies with credible prospects and win or lose the benefits of competing in such events is invaluable "" said graham randall ceo of noninvasix since participating weve been able to further develop our prototype make inroads with high-level investors and clarify our regulatory path with the fda in addition to reecycle five other companies were recognized as finalists and received prize money trifusion devices earned second-place honors and received $35 000 for its 3-d printing technology aimed at revolutionizing the health care and sports equipment industries voyager biomedical corp ranked third and received $25 000 for its development of better vascular access technologies for use in dialysis and other treatments requiring long-term blood access fourth-place honors and $15 000 in prize money were awarded to nupark inc for its technology to create a virtual parking permit siva therapeutics inc a company developing technology for targeting therapeutic heat to treat melanoma was awarded fifth place and $10 000 cartofusion technologies inc ranked sixth and was awarded $5 000 for its mapping and planning tool for use by public safety and emergency management organizations as one of the first universities to include research commercialization as part of the tenure-granting process texas a&m believes passionately in the transfer of new and innovative technologies that will improve the lives of the citizens of texas and beyond said vice president for research glen a laine the division of research is excited to be a sponsor of the texas a&m new ventures competition – recognizing and helping viable young companies execute their ideas"" as part of the tnvc elevator pitch competition which gave eight companies the opportunity to present their technologies in the format of a one-minute pitch ecm technologies took top honors winning $5 000 for its unique platform technology that enables non-animal bacterial collagens for medical devices acoustic shield earned second place and $3 000 for its one-minute pitch of an acoustic gunshot detection sensor rounding out the honorees astrapi corp ranked third and received $2 000 for its proprietary spiral modulation technology it is exciting for us to see this competition continue to grow and attract such an amazing group of entrepreneurs said dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees its the work of innovators and thought leaders like the ones who took part in this competition that will make it into the marketplace and into the hands of the public the daylong competition which was open to all texas-based companies seeking to bring new or enhanced technology to the marketplace required 16 companies in the pre-seed/seed start-up or early growth stages to pitch their ideas to judges that included angels and venture capitalists experienced entrepreneurs non-profit founders legal professionals patent experts and banking/investment professionals the esteemed group of companies was previously selected from a larger pool of competition applicants prior to the event in the days leading to the competition participants received personal coaching and access to mentor strategists as they developed their competition business plans and presentation pitches mays business school takes very seriously its sustained commitment to support entrepreneurial excellence fueling innovation and collaboration across local state national and global economies said blake petty director of the center for new ventures and entrepreneurship at mays business school in that respect we are proud to partner in and support the texas a&m new ventures competition the distinction this program bestows on its participants and its celebration of entrepreneurial success for societal benefit funding for tnvc was made possible by tees texas a&m division of research mays business school texas a&m health science center the texas a&m university system and spirit of texas bank in kind support was provided by the aggie angel network the center for new ventures and entrepreneurship the department of biomedical engineering and texas a&m technology commercialization we are proud to support the texas a&m new ventures competition an important asset for building the startup ecosystem at texas a&m particularly in bryan-college station said paul ogden md interim senior vice president and chief operating officer texas a&m health science center and interim dean college of medicine this event is helping develop a culture of entrepreneurship and fills the gap that exists locally in providing companies with early-stage non-dilutive funding ensuring the most promising ideas end up in the marketplace for more information on the texas a&m new ventures competition including a full list of the days competitors visit wwwtexasnvcorg contact: duncan maitland tees assistant agency director for commercialization and entrepreneurship at 9794583471 or via email: djmaitland@tamuedu or ryan garcia at 9798475833 or via email: ryangarcia99@tamuedu"
the texas a&m energy institute a joint center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and texas a&m university is joining eight universities to participate in a new six-year $20 million project awarded by the us department of energys national energy technology laboratory (netl) titled university coalition for fossil energy research (ucfer) the goals of the project will be to identify select execute review and disseminate knowledge from research that will improve the efficiency of production and use of fossil energy resources while minimizing the environmental impacts and reducing greenhouse gas emissions led by penn state university the founding members of the coalition team include the massachusetts institute of technology princeton university texas a&m university university of kentucky university of southern california university of tulsa university of wyoming and virginia tech university the founding members of the texas a&m energy institute team include: dr christodoulos a floudasdirector of the texas a&m energy institute and erle nye ´59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering (primary investigator) dr efstratios pistikopoulosassociate director of the texas a&m energy institute and tees distinguished research professor in chemical engineering (co-primary investigator) dr a daniel hilldepartment head professor and noble chair in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering dr akhil datta-guptauniversity distinguished professor regents professor and lf peterson 36 chair in the petroleum engineering dr carlos a dengoexecutive professor and director of the berg-hughes center for petroleum and sedimentary system in the department of geology and geophysics dr m nazmul karimdepartment head professor and holder of the t michael oconnor chair ii in chemical engineering about the university coalition for fossil energy research – ucfer ucfer will engage in both fundamental and applied research for clean and low-carbon energy based on fossil resources outreach and technology transfer to industry will be important components of the coalition with the aim of reducing environmental impacts and minimizing carbon dioxide emission the coalition will explore both research in coal and in natural gas and oil including carbon dioxide capture storage and utilization ucfer will support the mission of the us department of energy through mechanisms that promote collaboration among netl and the universities that are members of the coalition by the coordination of research and the sharing of data its collaborative research will focus on coal natural gas and oil and will involve expertise in one or more of the following five core competence areas – : geological and environmental systems materials engineering and manufacturing energy conversion engineering systems engineering and analysis and computational science and engineering research in gas and oil will also include unconventional resources such as shale gas and environmental impacts natural gas infrastructure – leak detection and smart sensors deep water technology methane hydrates and enhanced recovery about the texas a&m energy institute the texas a&m energy institute engages undergraduate and graduate students postdoctoral associates research staff and faculty members toward the study and development of innovative technologies and policies for energy production and energy conservation special attention is paid to elucidating the complexity among the interacting components of energy economics law public policy and the environment the texas a&m energy institute focuses on three essential pillars: transformation of the energy research landscape education of the next generation of leaders in energy and establishment of a vibrant external partnerships program in energy with 240 faculty affiliates from nine colleges and schools more than 20 texas a&m university departments two texas a&m branch campuses and two texas a&m university system member institutions along with a unique community of more than 400 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in the texas a&m energy research society cutting-edge solutions are being realized through true interdisciplinary collaborations that will address the complexity and challenges of the worlds energy future
the third eng-life workshop a faculty-led workshop designed to increase potential for multidisciplinary research between engineering and the life sciences took place on april 29 in the emerging technologies building at texas a&m university the tagline for the event was at the interface of engineering and life sciences and the presenters at this years event reflected the goal the keynote was delivered by dr ken muneoka a professor in the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences and other speakers represented the colleges of science engineering and agriculture and life sciences as well as the texas a&m health science center at the end of the day a poster session allowed attendees to network and see each others research dr arum han associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and chair of the organizing committee said the purpose of the event is to encourage faculty to engage in multidisciplinary research especially those who are new to the campus or may not be aware of how research in other colleges could relate to their own i wanted to open that opportunity to other people who might not have contacts and i think these types of activities in general are good for the future of our college and our university han said the trend nationally from a funding perspective is toward multidisciplinary research they want to focus on big problems and whole package proposals instead of just one aspect the event had more than 130 attendees from 11 colleges across the texas a&m campus with more than 30 researches presenting posters at the poster session according to han even if the event doesnt directly lead to new collaborations right away there is benefit in having researchers from different colleges become familiar with each others work some of these things are going to take time but its about building contacts he said you might not have an idea now but knowing people with different areas of expertise you keep that in your head you might see a grant opportunity that you would have ignored previously but now that person pops into your head and it opens up the possibility for more collaboration really the purpose is to have an opportunity for engineers to engage much more broadly with the various life science researchers the hope is there will be new collaborations between physical sciences and the life sciences the division of research played a vital role logistically in putting on the workshop this year and the organizing committee chaired by han included dr paul hardin of the college of science dr arul jayaraman from the college of engineering dr allison c rice-ficht from the college of medicine dr won-bo shim from the college of agriculture and life sciences and dr c jane welsh from the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences
"the partnership between kaneka a japanese-based chemical manufacturer and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) polymer technology center (ptc) dates back to 1999 kaneka first approached dr hung-jue sue tees professor and director of ptc about his research on improving the toughness of epoxy resin the collaboration that followed was a success kaneka commercialized the product which led to the partnership the two currently have that partnership led to the establishment of the kaneka us materials research center (kmr) on the texas a&m campus in college station in 2013 it was kanekas first corporate research and development center outside of japan current research includes incorporating nanoparticles to improve polymer functionalities improving nanoparticle dispersion and organization in polymer matrices and finding new functionalities for polymers according to dr masaya kotaki general manager of kmr strengthening the existing relationship between sue and kaneka was the primary reason for establishing kmr in college station that combined with ptcs facilities and capabilities as well as texas a&m universitys proximity to kanekas united states headquarters in pasadena texas made college station an ideal location for their research and development we have many projects kotaki said we need equipment we need people to train to teach the things that were working on and everything we need is on campus the people the information and the equipment are here this is a perfect place for us texas a&m does a very good job of training students and researchers today a little more than two years in the two sides agree that their partnership has been a tremendous success kotaki said kmr started with just two researchers in college station and are now up to 10 he added that this is just the beginning we definitely want to maintain and improve our relationship with the polymer technology center he said at this moment we have a few researchers and we would like to increase the number in that agreement we want to work on many different topics with different professors thats the future plan we have for kaneka the advantage of working with tees and texas a&m is the ability to utilize the universitys personnel and facilities for ptc one benefit of collaborating with a company such as kaneka is the ability to commercialize research sue said the partnership has worked better than he possibly could have hoped for it is as good as you can dream of as a professor he said you have your research being appreciated by a company and its being turned into products and sold globally and youre a member of that contribution team that really allows us to go beyond what we could have done by doing it ourselves when you begin to team up with people in the business world you realize that research is only one factor of success without this experience i wouldnt appreciate how important it is to market and sell and what kind of information you need to provide in order to succeed the collaboration between kaneka and ptc has resulted in several patents and sue also uses the partnership as an example to students about how research can be used to contribute to a company and how those contributions can make their way into the real world kaneka has provided $20 000 in scholarships to texas a&m students annually through ptc in the last three years and has hired several texas a&m graduates sue emphasizes that the partnership goes beyond the financials and serves as an example of how to conduct research and business early on in our partnership i was very clear about our research including the pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages of what we do sue said ""once you make it clear to your sponsors and you get that trust then everything that follows becomes easy i think thats one reason that weve been able to work with kaneka so well and something we can all learn from sue said another benefit of this type of partnership is that it allows for fundamental research this kind of funding allows us to do long-term critical research he said we dont have to look at everything short term as an immediate product or immediate result that kind of relationship allows us to do the best quality research we can kotaki also believes that one of the biggest advantages of the partnership is simply the environment working in a collegiate setting allows for what could be described as competitive collaboration i like the environment of a university; its very different he said i think this environment is good for us we can be very competitive professors at universities work hard on fundamental research they collaborate but they also compete so this kind of environment is very important for us"
dr cable kurwitz and undergraduate researchers aldo sosa juan duran and victor ibarra has completed a successful flight-test program aboard nasas reduced gravity aircraft of the demonstration of a variable heat rejection (dovr) system the experiment served as a demonstration of several fluid handling technologies for an advanced radiator system to be used in future spacecraft kurwitz is a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) associate research engineer and senior lecturer with the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university duran and ibarra are both nuclear engineering majors while sosa is an electrical engineering major according to kurwitz the flight is a major step toward future suborbital testing aboard virgin galactics first research flight kurwitz who is the director of the interphase transport laboratory at texas a&m has been carrying out thermal fluid experiments related to this technology for over 25 years the undergraduate student researchers assisting with this project are part of an undergraduate enrichment program sponsored by the nuclear power institute (npi) the program tasks students with engineering projects that are of interest to industry and government provides them with mentorship opportunities and allows them to develop practical engineering experiences according to kurwitz development of the dovr system will allow future spacecraft to handle a wide variety of thermal loads and conditions
the dovr system builds upon many previous technology programs to vary heat rejection from spacecraft radiators through the change in effective radiator area by modulating liquid between selected radiator lines and a gas-liquid separator kurwitz said kurwitz explains like all vehicles spacecraft generate thermal energy from their onboard electronics payloads and other sources in addition to absorbing it from external sources such as the sun and the earth on earth our machines can be cooled with air or liquid but this is not possible in the vacuum of outer space the dovr technology builds upon current pumped liquid spacecraft radiators but controls where the liquid in the radiator is allowed to flow using a set of valves a gas-liquid separator and an ejector pump this allows spacecraft to reject varying levels of waste heat to different sink temperatures preventing the spacecraft from overheating kurwitz says the process of exchanging the liquid in the radiator with the gas in the separator in space is similar to filling an empty bucket with water from a water tank on earth as the tank is emptied out into the bucket air will be displaced from the bucket and will fill the volume in the tank that once held water while this is a simple process that occurs on earth because of gravity the dovr technology will allow this to occur in a zero gravity setting the gas liquid separator technology was developed at texas a&m and has been licensed to advanced cooling technologies inc in addition to being used on a space mission that is currently in orbit the flight testing and suborbital testing that kurwitz and his students participated in aims to test the exchange of fluids between the radiator and the separator in a zero gravity environment which until now has only been tested on earth its been demonstrated that experiments that fly on the aircraft first have a much higher probability of success when you go to suborbital or orbital testing because something unforeseen or that was assumed to work in a low gravity environment fails kurwitz said since most investigations involving thermal hydraulics are carried out under gravity on earth the relationships that describe fluid flow are developed with the assumption that it is for earth conditions that doesnt take into account the variety of gravity conditions we have to consider however another challenge kurwitz and his students also have to account for are the many changing thermal conditions of space being able to change the radiator capability is very desirable because it allows us to have much more flexibility in the amount of power we have to reject and allows us to work in a variety of different cold and hot environments in space kurwitz said the challenge becomes that traditionally we would build a big radiator to handle the high amount of energy we have to reject in the hot environment in low earth orbit but then the problem is that as we transit out to somewhere like mars where were not rejecting as much energy and its much colder it would essentially cause our spacecraft to freeze kurwitz and his group feel that with these tools the radiators onboard spacecraft will be able to operate more efficiently in different thermal environments were essentially using a lot of technology that we have a lot of experience with in a space environment kurwitz said so we have a high confidence that it will work and that they will be able to work for a long period of time repeatedly
smart grids big data was the focus of the fourth annual smart grid workshop held at texas a&m universitys memorial student center on april 28 big data is characterized by its properties of volume variety velocity and veracity and it is generated in many domains associated with power system operation (generation transmission and distribution customers services and markets) as well as other related domains such as weather other energy commodity markets (gas and oil) and environment dr mladen kezunovic director of the smart grid center and eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering gave the opening remarks and introduced the theme at the workshop as invited speaker dr alireza ghassemian from the office of electricity delivery and energy reliability department of energy (doe) outlined the research needs identified by and opportunities provided by doe a panel on current uses of and technologies for big data smart grids was chaired by john mcdonald and dr miroslav begovic mcdonald is the smartgrid business development leader – north america global smartgrid strategy group at ge grid solutions begovic is the head of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m the panel consisted of dr alberto del rosso (electric power research institute) brian baldwin (esri) dr deepjyoti deka (los alamos national laboratory) and rodolfo bialecki leandro (federal university of santa catarina brazil) future uses of big data in smart grids was discussed in another panel chaired by dr tom overbye from the electrical and computer engineering department at the university of illinois at urban-champaign and dr dilma da silva head of the computer science and engineering department at texas a&m panelists included dr pr kumar (electrical and computer engineering texas a&m) jim orouke (osisoft) dr bri-mathias hodge (national renewable energy laboratory) and dr haitham abu-rub (electrical and computer engineering texas a&m-qatar and managing director smart grid center-qatar) research results were showcased in a posters session presented by graduate students on the south big data regional innovation hub dr renata afi rawlings-goss (co-executive director south bd hub gatech) presented an overview in focus groups the following topics were discussed: big data types and sources in smart grids led by baldwin and dr yu ding (texas a&m) big data analytics and technology for smart grids led by dr mark rice (pnnl) and dr nick duffield (texas a&m) solving the t&d challenges with big data led by jim orouke (osisoft) and dr anita rapp (texas a&m) solving the customer challenges with big data led by dr haitham abu-rub (texas a&m -qatar) and dr le xie (texas a&m) overall more than 100 people attended the workshop including participants from the texas a&m university system the department of energy centerpoint energy ge grid solutions esri knowledge based systems national instruments osisoft the national renewable energy laboratory los alamos national laboratory pacific northwest national laboratory and the electric power research institute as well as 58 students and representatives from universities in brazil and qatar the workshop was sponsored by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the tees smart grid center the office of the vice president for research at texas a&m the department of electrical & computer engineering at texas a&m and the electrical power & power electronics institute at texas a&m more information on the program including presentation slides is available here
dr darren hartl tees research assistant professor at texas a&m university and a team of researchers is using extensive data on avian biological systems in the hopes of creating unmanned aircraft with wings that morph and change during flight much like a bird
a five-year $6 million grant sponsored by the air force office of scientific research teams hartl with engineering researchers from the university of michigan stanford and ucla in hopes of dramatically transforming aerodynamic performance dr daniel inman chair of the department of aerospace engineering at the university of michigan will serve as the principal investigator for the project by delving deeper into avian neurology and musculature the team hopes to create unprecedented efficiency and flight longevity in small aircraft and uavs to this end the team will work closely with bird biologists from the united kingdoms royal veterinary college the university of british columbia and stanford to closely examine the complex systems birds use to alter their wings for flight control research will delve into multiple aspects of bird flight: control aerodynamics structure and adaptive structures looking at the muscular-skeletal structures and how bird wings move and adapt in flight although previously studied morphing wings have been inspired by avian biology the grant will be the first to examine the biological systems in such depth modern airplanes use drag-inducing flaps and slats for control but birds manipulate individual feathers or clusters of feathers on their wings adjusting them to create a fluidly morphing reduced-drag surface suited to their needs it has long been a goal to recreate such a flight system and cutting-edge technology has been developed to examine these mechanisms of flight extending the paradigm of the muscular-skeletal structure of birds the grant will also focus on using distributed multifunctional materials to drive morphing hartl will leverage years of experience in shape memory alloy (sma) aerospace actuators to develop new muscular architectures focusing on the active material that could be used to affect the morphing henry sodano (university of michigan) will explore new piezoelectric material forms and functions piezoelectric materials generally move at higher speeds with lower strengths and smaller motions while smas are slower and have higher strength and larger motions both systems will be needed depending on whether the wing needs to morph slowly versus when it needs to move quickly
new distributed sensing systems (fu-kuo chen of stanford) and neuromorphic computation for control (yong chen of ucla) will also be part of the discovery and implementation process a parallel effort on bio-inspired evolutionary structural design approaches has also been initiated within the air vehicles division of the aerospace systems directorate at the us air force research laboratory where hartl also holds a position as a contracted research scientist it used to be that a biologist would just go out in the field with a pair of binoculars said inman but the technology has advanced drastically in recent years hartl added we plan to go far beyond simple qualitative imitation; we will quantify effects at the platform scale and muscular-skeletal configurations at the structural scale to develop new solutions to the morphing aircraft problem while inman works on the whole bird or the plane hartl will drill down into the bone and muscle and focus on the structure of the wing particularly the parts needed to move the structures using new kinematics and dynamics data from avian researchers the engineering team aims to make small airplanes and uavs lighter faster and more efficient enabling longer flights drawing on bird biology and recent advancements in active materials the team will research a morphing wing structure with distributed actuation and sensing that is capable of independent deflections throughout the wing hartl will start with ideas that are bio-inspired including looking at novel energy circuits for active material actuation much akin to the supply of energy via the bloodstream to the muscles in birds were looking at supplying electrical energy to shape memory alloy muscles using liquid metals and then using that same liquid metal to flow the waste heat away said hartl well start researching that concept as we await the quantitative data corresponding to observation of the birds research will officially begin with a meeting in ann arbor michigan on may 13 hartls research begins in the fall when he joins the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m as a tenure-track assistant professor his team at texas a&m will include two graduate students and three undergraduate students hartl is in the process of building a dedicated space for the project including a new experimental wind tunnel test section in the basement of the hr bright building on the texas a&m campus the test section will allow the team to test the muscular solutions with some kind of wing-type structures before integrating them with testing to be done at michigan ultimately the team of collaborators hopes to create a new morphing wing structure capable of dramatically altering aerodynamic performance allowing for planes that should be lighter faster and dramatically more maneuverable than todays stiff-winged aircraft
"the concept of autonomous cars and connected vehicles is simple enough to understand but the actual implementation of the technology involved raises questions ranging from the technical to the legal and even the philosophical those questions and the quest for their answers were the topic of conversation at the student-industry workshop on connected vehicles & autonomous transportation which was held may 3 on the campus of texas a&m university the student organized workshop part of the texas a&m transportation technology conference was sponsored by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m transportation institute dr pr kumar engineering chair in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m encouraged the students to organize and lead the workshop and said the result was a positive interaction between industry and students ""this workshop serves several purposes kumar said through graduate students who are involved in much of the research output from academia industry can find out firsthand about the excellent research that is being conducted at this university we hope this interaction will lay the seeds for future research collaborations graduate internship possibilities and potential job opportunities also since research in connected and automation vehicles is spread out over a number of engineering departments this workshop is a good opportunity for students to network with each other learn about each others work and explore potential collaborations finally a totally student-run workshop is a good accompaniment to the high profile conference yesterday that featured national leaders in this area"" shyam konduri a graduate student in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m was one of the organizers of the event along with electrical and computer engineering student xi liu and fellow mechanical engineering student kaarthik sundar konduri said the workshop went better than even he expected i think it went really well because we had a lot of industry panelists and students presenting konduri said the main reason we had this was to increase awareness between what industry is doing and what students are doing in other departments this is an interdisciplinary thing and there may be work overlapping or there may be opportunities to collaborate with other departments or students nine students presented on topics ranging from mechanical engineering graduate student serdar coskun discussing the development of lane-changing assistance systems to several students talking about systems that interact with human drivers operation of those systems containing both autonomous and human-driven cars was one of the primary issues since the market will not go from zero autonomous vehicles one day to all autonomous vehicles the next the technology has to be designed to bridge that gap liu said that having industry people hear and give feedback on students research topics was invaluable sometimes we might work on very academic problems and industry reps arent interested liu said but here we can talk face-to-face with industry people and get their opinions on our work and what they would suggest we work on in the future industry speakers included gary duncan chief technology officer for econolite; steve dellenback vice president of research and development for southwest research institute; ravi puvvala chief executive officer for savari inc; and kevin e kautzman director of telecommunications and technology services for bnsf railway the presentations ranged from duncans technical descriptions of traffic control systems and future implementation in cars and infrastructure to dellenback asking the crowd some philosophical questions of how autonomous vehicles would react in life-threatening situations kautzman talked about the impact on the united states rail system which sometimes gets overlooked in the conversation because of the publics fascination with driverless cars i think theres a lot of correlation from automobiles to trains kautzman said theres a lot of development that crosses both boundaries and i think industry to industry we can help each other get those boundaries crossed and hopefully solve additional problems for each other it definitely gives a lot of different perspectives on it in fact there is already a level of autonomy present in the nations railways kautzman talked about positive train control a safety feature in which locomotives can stop themselves without human interaction when a safety threat is recognized the industry has been implementing positive train control or ptc since the us rail safety improvement act of 2008 he said having students focusing on issues in autonomy helps industry keep a fresh perspective one of my takeaways from this is all of the good work the university is involved with to help our industry solve complex problems he said sometimes i think industry gets a tunnel vision on what theyre trying to solve and how theyre to solve it and i think having avenues and having forums like this broadens our industrys mindset and gives us options i think more importantly it gives us the ability to see other developments within a technological challenge john barton vice chancellor for strategic initiatives for the texas a&m university system said he was impressed not only with the students who presented their research but also by the reaction to it the industry people seemed to be very intrigued with our students work but also their intellectual capabilities he said i think it was a great opportunity to showcase that we have some of the best and brightest minds here on campus working on some of the most cutting-edge challenges facing us in the 21st century barton added that bringing texas a&m students who are conducting research into contact with industries where that research could be applied is a critically important role for tees we have the opportunity interact and dialogue with industry on a regular basis barton said we can bridge that gap between the applied applications of the research thats being done and the theoretical aspects that they get in the classroom without tees playing a role in providing those connections there are opportunities that will be lost moving forward i think its something that well continue to do more and more at tees texas a&m graduate students zheren zhou ping-chun hsieh viswam nathan serdar coskun and xi liu"
"texas a&m engineering is expanding its research and education capabilities as part of the recently announced rellis campus the new campus which will be located at a revamped and renamed riverside campus was announced monday by texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp sharp unveiled plans for the texas a&m system to invest $150 million to create a new research and development campus to help companies move ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace while also offering a new path toward a college degree the rellis campus initially will include a cluster of seven new buildings and test beds to encourage the private sector to develop research facilities adjacent to the texas a&m systems site the focus will include robotics driverless and connected vehicles advanced manufacturing large-scale testing as well as smart power grids and water systems we must offer new transformative business models whether we are moving our research from the laboratories into the marketplace or helping more students to achieve a college education said sharp we are extremely excited to be working on this visionary project said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees the facilities will be designed to meet the private sectors needs from creating prototypes to testing"" banks said teex is excited to be a part of this initiative said gary sera director of the texas a&m engineering extension service the rellis campus will significantly enhance our ability to serve our customers and ensure they are training at the very best facilities utilizing the latest technology"
the entire $150 million is committed either from state appropriations or gifts from donors banks said consultants are surveying the site now and $25 million in upgrades should be completed by the end of 2017 construction on the first building could begin as early as september of this year the three primary tenants at the new campus are the a&m systems engineering agencies: the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) and the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) each agency currently has facilities at the current riverside campus with plans for new construction including: the $73 million center for infrastructure renewal authorized by the texas legislature that will develop new methods and better materials for the nations ailing infrastructure and train the private sector in how to apply new techniques and materials a $12 million cyber-physical research and development center that will be dedicated to robotics autonomous and connected vehicle technologies and associated cyber-security facets a $9 million tees headquarters and research center – a centralized office and research facility for tees researchers and staff a $6 million safety process center that will test and develop the safest methods to operate in large chemical operations the facility will house the mary kay oconner process safety center which fosters the development of safer processes equipment procedures and management strategies to minimize losses within the processing industry a $6 million industrial distribution center that will investigate the best way to manufacture and distribute products the center will be home to the thomas and joan read center for distribution research and education the only distribution focused research center in the world as well as the global supply chain laboratory and the talent incubator a $7 million teex training facility primarily for law enforcement a $12 million advanced research in transportation technology building for research design and testing in the growing field of automated and connected vehicles the college of engineering at texas a&m will also be engaged in the proposed education center which will offer four-year degrees to students not admitted to texas a&m university through affiliations with other universities in the texas a&m system the education center would be available for continuing education short courses and other professional development programs details of the proposed $38 million education center are still being formalized and must be approved by the board of regents and reviewed by state authorities companies that take advantage of these incredible opportunities to establish facilities at the revamped riverside campus will be exposed to our outstanding faculty and students creative energy and the students would have the opportunity to experience cutting-edge research in the field said texas a&m president michael young we are extremely excited to be working with the texas a&m system on this endeavor for more information about rellis campus view the brochure
the nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) held an event on april 25 to celebrate its 10th anniversary nsspi students faculty and staff joined with administrators and collaborators from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university the bush school of government and public service and various other departments across the texas a&m university system to mark this milestone as part of the program current nsspi director dr sunil chirayath along with founding nsspi director dr william charlton and nuclear engineering department head dr yassin hassan spoke about the history of nsspi and its success over the past 10 years the texas a&m university system board of regents established nsspi as a joint institute of texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station during their meeting on march 23-24 2006 nsspi was the first university-based institute with a higher-education mission in the us to focus specifically on the technical aspects of nuclear security and the interface between nuclear security science and national and international policy nsspis earliest activities focused on promoting graduate-level education and research in nuclear material safeguards and enhancing national security against nuclear terrorism this was done largely in collaboration with the bush school more recently nsspi has also become very involved in nuclear security workforce development abroad in countries such as india indonesia brazil jordan and nigeria in the past 10 years nsspi students in the department of nuclear engineering earned 49 master of science degrees three master of engineering degrees and 18 phd degrees through sponsored research in nuclear security and related topics these students have gone on to jobs in various national laboratories federal agencies academia and the nuclear industry nsspi research projects have also supported numerous graduate students in other research areas within nuclear engineering as well as other departments across campus including the bush school mathematics industrial and systems engineering electrical engineering political science computer science chemical engineering and statistics not only do nsspi students learn about nuclear security through traditional classes and laboratory exercises on campus but they also get to experience nuclear security through hands-on short courses at national laboratories international and domestic nuclear facilities experiences interactions with other young nuclear security professionals around the world through international workshops and meetings and research projects in nuclear security topics texas a&m also founded the first student chapter of the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) which is advised by nsspi faculty and has led to the creation of similar student inmm chapters in the us and around the world as part of the celebration nsspi compiled a video of interviews from people who were instrumental to the founding and continued success of nsspi as an organization as well as videos from former students current students and collaborators
securing sustainable supplies of fresh water for the states growing economy and population is one of the greatest challenges facing texans in the 21st century to meet that challenge texas a&m university-san antonio with support from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is developing a water resources science program last november a&m-san antonio was given approval by the texas a&m university system board of regents to establish the institute for water resources science and technology to initiate the development of research initiatives in water and water education and science degree programs this work at a&m-san antonio is comprised of three components: service education and research with the assistance of tees and endorsement of local water leaders the university is developing three degree tracks in water resources science and technology: a bachelor of applied arts and sciences a bachelor of science and a master of science texas a&m-san antonios new water institute and degree programs will support the scientific technological outreach and educational needs to solve emerging water resources issues said dr rudolph rosen director of the institute for water resources science and technology our goal is to complete the groundwork for the degree programs and cooperative research to prepare graduates who are fully ready to work within and contribute to texas blue infrastructure the programs will focus on preparing the students to enter basic water treatment and related industry positions while the graduate program will ready students for more advanced positions in water resource management internship opportunities may be available through the southwest research institute the san antonio river authority and other local utilities and corporations in addition to new entrants to the workforce the degree programs will appeal to current employees in the water industries workforce who may need a university degree to move ahead in their current positions training will also be available to students and workforce members through possible collaborations with the hb zachry training center tees teex and northwest vista college along with helping in the development of the degree programs tees has also been a source of guidance in determining which research areas the institute will focus on the needs of the institutes potential partners will ultimately determine the specific areas of investigation that will be explored until then the institute will focus on finding feasible solutions for water availability and distribution across urban and rural san antonio and the beneficial use reuse and recycling of wastewater runoff and brackish water (a mix of salt and fresh water) being able to successfully secure sustainable supplies of water for the state will require four major steps: developing integrated water-energy-land use models for sustainable development; making advances in water treatment storage and distribution; creating the future workforce for managing water supplies; and helping reuse recycle and reduce use of water said rosen a&m san antonio was formally established as a regional division of tees through a memorandum of agreement executed in 2015 addressing the critical water needs of the state is one of the focus areas for this collaboration
texas a&m university-central texas has received a $15 million grant through the texas a&m university systems chancellors research initiative (cri) to bring an aspiring young researcher dr taylor harvey to the campus to engage in a collaborative solar research initiative the award was announced at an event on the a&m-central texas campus on june 28 the cri was created by texas a&m system chancellor john sharp in 2012 for the recruitment and hiring of faculty members who will have a tremendous impact upon the academic and research missions of the schools it has successfully helped to bring nobel laureates and national academy members to the texas a&m system initially only available to texas a&m university and prairie view a&m university last year the program was expanded to other system institutions including a&m-central texas recruiting outstanding researchers like dr harvey is exactly why i started the chancellors research initiative and i am pleased that a&m-central texas is using this resource to grow their research activity said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp this strategic investment is a testament to our ongoing commitment to enable cutting-edge research that fundamentally improves the lives of texans dr harvey is an award-winning founder and chief technology officer at lucelo technologies a texas-based company that builds ultra-lightweight flexible solar cells using solar paint he earned his phd in 2014 from the university of texas at austin where he developed ink-deposited solar cells he received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at brigham young university in 2006 we are looking forward to supporting dr harvey and his research endeavors and also strengthening the relationships among researchers within tees and at a&m-central texas said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees in his new position at a&m-central texas harvey will lead a research team and participate in a collaboration with texas a&m tees and central texas college that will focus on developing transformational solar technologies and exploring new ways to reduce costs ease installation and enhance performance of such technologies this exciting collaborative research initiative will give our campus community – faculty and students alike – access to the best of the best when it comes to research and teaching dr taylor harvey will provide the expertise and the vision to help us become a recognized center for solar technology research said dr marc a nigliazzo a&m-central texas president i am very thankful to chancellor sharp for making this possible through the chancellors research initiative like chancellor sharp dr harvey is a true visionary with the chancellors research initiative funds dr harvey will be able to change solar from an evolutionary to a revolutionary energy source impacting future generations as well as our own said dr russ porter a&m-central texas vice president for research and economic development the event concluded with the signing of an affiliation agreement between a&m-central texas and the center for solar energy the university has been engaged with cse executive director bruce mercy for over five years to create a hub of research evaluation development and testing of emerging solar technologies in central texas this agreement in association with the cri award is expected to dramatically accelerate collaborative research on solar and other renewable energies in the central texas region a&m-central texas is one of 19 regional divisions within tees by building and nurturing relationships with its academic partners tees continues to assist in increasing their research capacities and enhancing research experiences for undergraduates photo (from left): dr jon mogford vice chancellor for research texas a&m system; sharp; jim yeonopolus chancellor central texas college; nigliazzo; harvey; bruce mercy executive director the center for solar energy; lagoudas; and dr russ porter vice president for research and economic development a&m-central texas
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and nasa/johnson space center (jsc) have signed a space act agreement (saa) that establishes a framework for increasing collaboration among the agencies researchers and engineers while tees and nasa have partnered in research for more than 50 years the new agreement will expand research opportunities by enabling tees researchers use of lab facilities at the jsc this historic agreement between the texas a&m university system and nasa will position us at the forefront of space exploration research worldwide said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system tees and nasa/jsc have a strong established working relationship said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees the signing of the space act agreement however introduces a new level of collaboration with tees researchers working side-by-side with nasa researchers in jsc labs we also hope to expand our partnership to include researcher exchanges and other joint projects utilizing the talent and expertise of both organizations the research areas nasa selected for initial collaboration are human-system interfaces to improve efficiencies for future exploration mission operations; guidance navigation and control capabilities for long-duration crewed missions beyond earths orbit; and advanced materials and monitoring for spacecraft structures and shielding tees and jsc researchers have teamed to develop a number of topics in these areas already as well as in existing areas such as improved space suit performance an ongoing review process will evaluate research collaboration ideas as they are developed and assess emerging priorities for technology development within the nasa/jsc engineering directorate for selecting additional projects we look forward to collaborating with tees as we develop the capabilities and technologies needed for human space exploration said kevin window deputy director of the jsc engineering directorate having tees researchers work side-by-side with our personnel on some of our complex engineering problems will be of real benefit to both organizations top photo: kevin window and m katherine banks (photo courtesy of nasa)
texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) will lead the new gulf coast regional manufacturing center one of five regional centers located across the country as part of the $140 million clean energy smart manufacturing innovation institute (cesmii) announced june 20 by the white house the smart manufacturing leadership coalition headquartered in los angeles california will lead cesmii in partnership with the department of energy the coalition brings together a consortium of nearly 200 partners from across academia industry and non-profitshailing from more than 30 statesto spur advances in smart sensors and digital process controls that can radically improve the efficiency of advanced manufacturing in the united states we are very pleased to have the opportunity to lead this regional center said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system it is a testament to the excellence of texas a&m engineering being part of such a large initiative gives us the opportunity to help revitalize the nations manufacturing industry by providing innovative technologies and solutions chancellor sharp thanked the university administrators researchers and faculty as well as lawmakers such as us rep bill flores who recognized the benefits of smart manufacturing it is exciting for us to be part of such an important nationwide initiative said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees with this regional center we will work to help industry implement new smart manufacturing technologies and help train their workforce the work underway at these five regional centers will dramatically change and modernize the current us manufacturing industry the five regional manufacturing centers are each focused on local technology transfer and workforce development tees and the texas a&m energy institute will lead the gulf coast center assisted by industry partners and the university of texas at austin and tulane university and focus on the chemical oil and gas sectors ucla will lead the california regional center in partnership with the city of los angeles harnessing the ability to tap the largest manufacturing base in the us and rensselaer polytechnic institute will lead the northeast center where glass ceramic and microelectronic manufacturing has a strong presence pacific northwest national laboratory will lead a hub in the northwest and nc state university will spearhead a regional center for the southeast we are very excited to lead the gulf region and begin partnering with industry to transform the future of smart manufacturing said professor christodoulos a floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute co-pi and the new director of the gulf coast regional manufacturing center within cesmii combining our efforts with the university of texas at austin and tulane university texas a&ms expertise in multi-scale modeling simulation optimization and control – particularly as it relates to smart manufacturing and clean energy – stand to have a significant impact on the needs of industry and will lead to innovative theories advanced methods practical applications and robust test beds that will benefit society for more information see the white houses fact sheet view president obamas remarks about the institute (starting at 39:50) view the department of energys video on smart manufacturing
gov greg abbott has appointed dr dan hill director of the crisman institute for petroleum engineering and head of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university as one of nine members of the technical advisory committee to the bureau of economic geology at the university of texas at austin the committee will oversee the spending of $447 million for the purchase and deployment of seismic equipment maintenance of this seismic network and modeling of reservoir behavior for systems of wells in the vicinity of faults in texas the committee will advise the bureau on the use of the funding in conjunction with the texnet seismic monitoring program and collaborative research relationships with other universities and education entities in texas including the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the committee is also responsible for the preparation of a status report to the governor and legislature regarding possible induced seismicity in simple terms induced seismicity is man-made earthquakes said hill this is not about hydraulic fracturing per se where tiny seismic events occur routinely but cannot be felt on the surface instead this study will focus on whether or not water injection most commonly disposal water injection into deep aquifers potentially causes earthquakes that could be felt at the surface the bureau of economic geology established in 1909 is the oldest and second-largest organized research unit at the university of texas at austin and is part of the jackson school of geosciences it not only functions as the state geological survey of texas the bureau also conducts research regarding energy the environment and the economy the bureau often works with federal state and local agencies academic institutions industry nonprofit organizations and foundations to conduct high-quality research and disseminate the results to the scientific and engineering communities as well as the general public
from may 15-20 the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) led the 2016 nuclear facilities experience (nfe) in japan for graduate students from us universities and young professionals from us national laboratories the event was coordinated in conjunction with the integrated support center for nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security (iscn) which is part of the japan atomic energy authority support for nsspis coordination of the nfe was granted by the next-generation safeguards initiative (ngsi) of the office of nonproliferation and arms control in the defense nuclear nonproliferation programs office of the national nuclear security administration participants of the 2016 japan nfe included students and staff from six universities and five national laboratories the nuclear engineering graduate students were selected based on their specialization in nuclear nonproliferation-related topic areas and included students from texas a&m university the university of tennessee at knoxville western michigan university the university of cincinnati the university of utah and pennsylvania state university the texas a&m students included two nsspi students and two students from the bush school of government and public service who had previously taken nsspi classes the ngsi sponsors selected the six national laboratory employees which included early-career research staff members from sandia national laboratories los alamos national laboratory lawrence livermore national laboratory pacific northwest national laboratory and argonne national laboratory nsspi research engineer claudio gariazzo and dr sunil chirayath director of nsspi and research assistant professor in texas a&ms department of nuclear engineering led the group on tours of facilities and historically significant sites throughout japan
"the event kicked off with a series of visits to the historically significant hiroshima peace park and the peace memorial museum where hiroshima survivor ms keiko ogura gave her account of the events of august 6 1945 the students and staff members engaged with ms ogura by asking her numerous questions regarding her experience of that fateful day ""we got to speak with a bomb survivor keiko and hear her account of what she experienced that day and also the stigmas she and other bomb survivors have had to cope with their entire lives as a result of surviving "" texas a&m nuclear engineering student lainy cochran remarked ""this was something i had never considered before"" the visit to hiroshima offered participants a living testament to the importance and gravity of the nuclear nonproliferation challenge the world faces today ian schwerdt a graduate student from the university of utah said ""visiting the hiroshima peace memorial definitely put my research efforts and career goals in context hiroshima provided the why behind our nuclear nonproliferation and safeguards efforts it was a humbling experience and demonstrated what can happen if the world community fails to utilize nuclear materials for peaceful purposes"" for the duration of the week the nfe participants visited several advanced nuclear fuel facilities in japan including two reactor facilities one nuclear power plant two reprocessing facilities one mox fuel fabrication facility one uranium enrichment plant and two national research laboratories katrina koehler a los alamos national laboratory staff member who is also pursuing a phd in nuclear physics at western michigan university remarked that there ""are few academic opportunities to fully understand the fuel cycle the nuclear facilities experience provided me with much of the background i was lacking"" according to bush school student kerrie ford one of the main things that she took away from this experience was ""how much care must be taken with security measures in each facility as well as how each facility prepares for iaea safeguards and inspections before entering each facility and between various facility checkpoints we passed through various security systems and badging processes once in the facilities one can see cameras and other security measures in place from a safeguards perspective many facilities had visible iaea cameras seals and equipment storage cabinets allowing us a greater glimpse into how the iaea interacts with these facilities"""
"participants were able to both see the safeguards measures in place first hand as well as discuss applied material control and accounting measures with actual practitioners and facility operators as well as staff members from the international atomic energy agency (iaea) and the japanese atomic energy agencys (jaea) integrated support center for nuclear security and nuclear nonproliferation (iscn) ""this trip was an incredible opportunity to view the safeguards technologies weve learned about at nsspi in action on some of the most famous facilities in the world "" said current bush school student and nsspi graduate steven horowitz ""weve always talked about the reprocessing facilities in japan and how intensive the safeguards were on them so to talk to the japanese individuals directly responsible for this was an irreplaceable opportunity"" beyond their purely educational value programs like the nfe also give students and young professionals entering the area of international safeguards and nuclear nonproliferation essential international travel experience and contact with peers in their same field ford echoed this when she stated ""professionally the japan nfe trip was beneficial because we were traveling with a mix of students and national lab employees whom we were able to network with and ask questions to about their professional experiences"" the nfe program directly supports the ngsi mission of training and retaining the next generation of safeguards professionals through unique experiences zoe gastelum is an early-career professional who works in the international safeguards & engagement group at sandia national laboratories ""this opportunity came at a time when i was feeling like i had reached a plateau in my safeguards education "" she reflected ""though i continue to follow the latest research and news in this area and participate in professional organizations focused on international safeguards activities i had felt as if my understanding of safeguards had stagnated this was a fantastic learning experience for me and i felt as if my safeguards knowledge was both refreshed and greatly expanded"""
in may researchers with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations texas center for applied technology (tcat) attended a knowledge exchange workshop for the new multi-laboratory international collaboration environment (mice) project the workshop was held by the institute for infectious animal diseases (iiad) a department of homeland security science and technology directorate (s&t) center of excellence headquartered at texas a&m university and the commonwealth scientific and industrial research organisation (csiro) australias federal government agency for scientific research the workshop was held over several days at three different csiro locations: sydney canberra and geelong funded by the s&t chemical and biological defense division the two-year mice project aims to investigate implement pilot and evaluate a virtual collaborative environment that will support bringing together animal health diagnostic and research biocontainment laboratories rapid collaborative communication is a key element to containing or controlling the outbreak of high-consequence livestock diseases said dr michelle colby chief of s&ts agriculture defense branch this project is designed to enhance collaboration and coordination among international experts researchers and responders in support of day-to-day operations as well as during an emerging outbreak the project will enable and improve the abilities to facilitate meetings research discussions data analyses training events and formal briefings between researchers and responders ultimately the program will assess different commercial and non-commercial solutions for virtual collaboration and develop and execute an implementation strategy for integrating this technology with other functionality within agconnect® the critical final phases of the project will include fielding the system to several diagnostic and biocontainment laboratories in the us for evaluation on the first day of the workshop the group reviewed tcats disaster relief and emergency medical services (dreams) and mlife medical platforms dreams is an emergency platform designed to expedite access to medical expertise by transmitting video and physiological telemetry to a remote physician the system enables the physicians medical expertise to be extended to the patient by increasing the level of situational awareness of the physician so lifesaving decisions can be made remotely in many cases the mlife platform incorporates technology from the dreams project with the focus on creating a research testbed for investigating this technology as a means to establishing a new paradigm in mobile healthcare mice has many similarities with the dreams and mlife medical platforms in that collaboration among experts who are widely dispersed can be made highly effective said dr jim wall executive director of tcat it is possible if all participants are connected by technology to share a common understanding or gain a level of situational awareness elevated to a degree high enough to support either decisions or research inputs being sought from experts who are not physically present the group also met with the csiro team and reviewed the csiro collaboration platform (ccp) prototype iiads agconnect® suite of tools and the mice program the group then traveled to the australian animal health laboratory in geelong victoria for the second days workshop where tcat and iiad staff members were able to see the ccp in action learn more about its capabilities strengths weaknesses modes of use and the challenges encountered during development deployment and use an initial discussion also identified some of the international operational requirements and uses for the system the third days workshop was in canberra australian capital territory with csiros information management and technology group the workshop discussed some of the security requirements to assure future interoperability with csiro facilities the last days workshop was held again at marsfield to plan and discuss the next steps of the project attending the meeting from and tcat and iiad were: dr jim wall tcat executive director; dr keith biggers tcat director of computing information and technology; christopher kocmoud tcat senior engineer; dr melissa berquist iiad associate director; and dr matthew cochran iiad program director photo (left to right): biggers; berquist; wall; cochran; kocmoud; nerolie oakes data 61 senior engineer; and dr john zic data 61 research group leader
texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) will lead the educational outreach component for the xxxii association of space explorers (ase) planetary congress to be held in houston texas in october 2019 the 2019 congress the largest international gathering of space explorers in the world will honor the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing during the weeklong event the ase planetary congress will engage local educators students and leaders in business science and research in critical discussion on issues of broad interest to the international space community government agencies around the world and the public the only professional association for astronauts and cosmonauts in the world ases event will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon as well as to help inspire the future of space exploration since its founding in 1985 the ase has held its planetary congress in the united states only three times texas a&m and tees will organize a statewide community day during the congress other participants include space center houston the lone star flight museum rice university and the university of houston ase members will make visits to schools universitiesincluding texas a&m university system member campusesand communities throughout texas to generate public awareness for the importance of human space flight and its past and future technological contributions to mankind including the development of computers health technologies; navigation communication agricultural environmental and weather satellites; new materials; solar energy; and much more k-12 and university students/teachers throughout the state will also be invited to participate in various congress activities as part of its ongoing stem education outreach we are thrilled to be part of such an important milestone event said dr bonnie j dunbar director of ieei and tees distinguished research professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m the planetary congress gives us a wonderful opportunity to reach out to students and the public and to share with them the science and engineering behind space exploration we hope to generate excitement and interest not only in space but also about all other stem related careers this prestigious global event gets underway this fall with a three-year stem education outreach initiative designed to engage local students and educators in discovering the challenges opportunities and benefits of space exploration leading up to the congress information will be available through ieei for more information on the ase and its planetary congress visit http://wwwspace-explorersorg/
dr robert skelton a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished professor helped design control systems for skylab nasas first space station now he hopes to design the next one skeltons office in the bright building on the texas a&m university campus is littered with structures created out of wood or metal held together with strings that make the room look a bit like a modern art exhibit the structural paradigm behind them is called tensegrity an amalgamation of the words tension and integrity an internet image search of the word will turn up a number of modern art exhibits skelton believes tensegrity structures which are exceptionally rigid yet lightweight are the solution to some of the biggest problems nasa faces in long-term space flight his tensegrity approaches to in-space construction of a 1g growable habitat proposal was recently selected by the nasa innovative advanced concepts program (niac) as one of eight proposals to receive as much as $500 000 in funding over the next several years to research feasibility this project is trying to solve four space-related problems skelton said first is to figure out how to grow habitats in space second is how to solve the gravity problem--how do we give gravity to astronauts third is how do you shield and protect them from the galactic radiation thats in space fourth is how to manufacture structures in space each of the eight niac proposals are based on ideas that science doesnt yet have the technology to implement others include deep sleep chambers for astronauts and using plasma from a planets atmosphere instead of heat shields to slow down manned spacecraft with this second round of funding the goal is to try and close the gap between the concepts and the technology you see these sticks and strings laying around well this turns out to be the minimum mass way to build structures skelton said pointing to one of the structures in the office so its a new structural paradigm and its a new manufacturing paradigm thats why its on the advanced concepts list its a study about the feasibility for the future its not going to happen overnight it might not even happen in my lifetime but these are the steps you have to take what skelton referred to as the gravity problem is an issue nasa hasnt had to worry much about yet but would as the length of space travel grows astronauts lose bone mass while in space and while exercise equipment aboard the international space station helps slow this process it doesnt stop it thats just the beginning of the problems faced in a zero-g environment i think nasa is finally realizing the need for a 1g program in the space program skelton said there are fundamental questions that we dont have answers to what is the gravitational level thats healthy for human beings can you raise children in 1/3g or 1/2g or do you need 1g we need facilities to study the effects of gravitational environments on the human body to solve this the structure would spin creating artificial gravity due to centrifugal force inside the introduction of gravity into the space program would also help solve another problem food with gravity light and enough space astronauts could potentially grow crops in space a similar problem is radiation for someone in space to have the same protection from radiation that we experience on the earths surface they would have to be surrounded by at least two meters of water the lack of radiation protection hasnt been a huge issue because of the relative short amount of time spent in space so far this is a totally new thing for nasa skelton said theyve never protected their astronauts from radiation before because theyre up there for a relatively short period of time but if you want a permanent presence of humans in space you cant avoid this problem
with his experience working on structures in the past skelton said a common problem is the stove piping of ideas someone would design a structure and someone else would design the controls someone else the navigation systems and so on he believes that the future of space flight and the future of engineering itself is in finding fundamental new ways to integrate and combine the disciplines the potential to break down some of those walls is what drew skelton to texas a&m in the first place engineering has left us with a lot of component technologies without rules about how you put components together to make systems he said so you start at the interface of two disciplines like structure and control design or signal processing and structures you start at those interfaces and you find better ways to pose the problem if you want to integrate two disciplines you cant start at the state-of-the-art of either one you have to find more fundamental ways to pose the question its not just enough to talk to each other because we dont know what to say we dont have the analytical tools to integrate the disciplines i think the university that develops them will be the leader in the future of engineering skeltons team on the project includes tees institute of engineering education and innovation director and former astronaut dr bonnie dunbar; tees texas institute for advanced study (tias) professor dr david hyland; and department of aerospace engineering associate professor dr raktim bhattacharya hes also working with anthony longman a california-based architect who has proposed his own tensegrity structures to nasa and joel sercel ceo of ics associates to bring his proposal into reality skelton will have to scale several hurdles the technology doesnt yet exist for robots to create tensegrity structures which is something necessary since as he says we dont want astronauts out there with bolts and screwdrivers smart manufacturing and robotic technologies are as much a part of the research as the design of the structures themselves to start skelton said the group will focus on the design of the habitat itself and how it will grow in space he says the ability to expand the habitat is a key reason why his proposal is of interest to nasa despite the many challenges still to come skelton said working on something that could help send humans deeper into space than ever before is rewarding for me its satisfying that im working on the last space station at least in my lifetime it will be the last space station he said i designed control systems on americas first space station skylab so its a fun closure for me images provided by dr robert skelton
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) global petroleum research institute (gpri) held its semiannual short course (water and wastewater short course: issues challenges solutions and new technologies) aug 9-10 at the richardson building on the texas a&m university campus the semiannual two-day course attracted representatives from various institutions and industries across the nation as well as texas a&m faculty and engineering students attendees took advantage of one-on-one learning and networking opportunities the focus of the two-day course was the application of treatment technologies for produced water and the use of new analytical technology to provide real-time data for operation and treatment optimization especially emphasized was the advance of rapid microbial testing due to the obsolete industry standard which can take up to a month for test results rapid biological testing can save oil and gas companies money by improving biocide and disinfectant practices and mitigating costly microbial issues (such as microbial induced corrosion and well souring) treatment related presentations included the application of membrane technology to waters for enhanced oil recovery (eor) (holly churman water standard) brine management and handling (dave stewart stewart environmental) bag and cartridge filtration (jason reed hatfield and company) stainless steel membranes (scott witwer graver technologies) and low cost brownfield water treatment and waste-to-value potential (justin love love energy advisors) the second day of the course included analytical demonstrations hach ofi testing equipment (ofite) blue i water technologies retgo labs mycometer luminultra and modern water demonstrated their analytical technologies for attendees with actual oil and gas produced water provided by gpri the short course offers a unique opportunity to interact one-on-one with the companies that provide water cleanup technologyand to actually see demonstrations it is also a good place to learn about the latest new filtration processes and analytical techniques being developed said david burnett director of the global petroleum research institute
when quality and free are combined you cant go wrong the turbomachinery laboratory extends an exclusive invitation to texas a&m university faculty and students to attend the annual turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) the premiere event for turbomachinery pump and related industry professionals for free! tps 2016 will feature an international exhibition combined with a world-class technical program presented by engineers and selected by an advisory committee of industry experts the event will be held sept 13-15 at the george r brown convention center in houston texas with short courses offered on monday sept 12 in conjunction with the symposia symposia attendees may choose to engage in a combination of 19 short courses 17 lectures 24 tutorials 29 discussion groups and 24 case studies led by industry experts from around the world symposia registration is free to texas a&m faculty symposia and short courses are free to all full-time students at texas a&m based on availability students may request university-excused absences for attending tps and free transportation to and from houston is provided tps which began as a small conference hosted in the zachry engineering center in 1971 has exploded into a world-renowned event last year attracting more than 5 500 delegates and 350 exhibiting companies from 48 countries built on a history of success the annual tps promotes professional development technology transfer peer networking and information exchange among industry professionals the 2016 symposia exhibition will feature booths from 359 leading companies from the oil and gas petrochemical power pump and turbomachinery industries inside the exhibit hall companies will display full-sized equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends during a portion of the symposia the exhibit hall will be free to the public upon completion of a free-pass registration form free entry will be available tuesday 2:30 pm – 7 pm; wednesday 2:30 pm – 6:30 pm; and thursday 9:30 am – noon we are pleased to host another symposiathe meeting of choice for users and manufacturers of commercial turbomachinery said dr dara childs director of the tees turbo lab and leland t jordan chair of mechanical engineering at texas a&m this is where the best in the industry come to share their expertise the countless networking opportunities alone make tps worthwhile its an opportunity you cant afford to miss students and faculty can register for their free passes as well as free daily transportation at tpstamuedu/stufac registration remains open online and will be available on site for paid symposia attendees and free pass attendees for more information on tps 2016 including the full technical program event schedule exhibiting company list registration procedures and more please visit tpstamuedu
a multidisciplinary team of researchers at texas a&m university has been awarded an early concept grant for exploratory research from the national science foundation to study the viability of collecting infrastructure monitoring data by volunteer citizen scientists from the general public the principal investigator is texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher dr nasir gharaibeh an associate professor in the zachry department of civil engineering collaborators on the project include dr philip berke and dr shannon van zandt professors in the department of landscape architecture and urban planning in the college of architecture; dr jennifer horney an associate professor at the texas a&m school of public health; and dr michelle meyer an assistant professor of sociology at louisiana state university currently data regarding infrastructure at the neighborhood scale is limited compared to the data available on large-scale infrastructure to solve this the goal of the project is to develop capabilities for collecting infrastructure monitoring data at the neighborhood level by volunteer citizen-scientists the study will focus on two questions to achieve that goal first what factors influence reliability of citizen-generated data at the neighborhood level second can understanding those factors lead to developing protocols for producing high quality data im hopeful that this research will improve the safety and reliability of infrastructure systems in our communities gharaibeh said these systems are essential for peoples quality of life and for the resiliency of communities to future natural disasters and environmental hazards it is eye opening to work on multidisciplinary research that has both technical and social components and involves a truly multidisciplinary team this team is currently working on urban infrastructure and other related issues as part of texas a&ms resilience and climate change cooperative project (rcccp) the study will focus on stormwater infrastructure in neighborhoods in the houston metropolitan area this site was chosen because it contains vulnerable neighborhoods with a long history of flooding and environmental issues
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center for autonomous vehicles and sensor systems (canvass) texas a&m agrilife research and extension (agrilife) and the center for geospatial sciences applications and technology (geosat) at texas a&m university have joined together to work on a multidisciplinary project titled unmanned aerial systems (uas) remote sensing at the texas a&m farm the project led by dr john valasek professor in the department of aerospace engineering and director of canvass dr seth murray quantitative geneticist with agrilife research and dr michael bishop professor in geosciences and director of geosat uses uas intelligent systems and state-of-art sensors in precision agriculture research uas is the term used to encompass what are commonly referred to as uavs or drones precision agriculture is defined as the application of technology that seeks to understand a situation (site specific management) and assist in implementing decisions thus the value of precision agriculture is timely actionable information for better management decisions and improved efficiencies not more data the use of uas enables and enhances precision agriculture for continuously monitoring crops inventorying animal herds and managing irrigation
there are three teams involved in flying the uas for this project the main one being led by valasek the canvass team is comprised of four pilots and 24 engineers conducting flight operations using fixed-wing uas typically one pilot and four engineers are needed for any given mission missions are flown on a twice-weekly basis during the crop-growing season and usually consist of three data collection flights of between 20 to 45 minutes each to date 132 flights have been conducted at the farm the engineers involved in flight operations include undergraduate and graduate students from the department of aerospace engineering as an undergrad this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity said ezekial bowden a senior in the aerospace department i am able to work in a field that i am passionate about and also gain valuable flight test experience we continue to learn and understand how different sensors can be integrated into new vehicles in order to achieve the best results possible its amazing to be able to gain hands-on experience with aviation each time we conduct a data collection flight the federal aviation administration (faa) approved a certificate of authorization (coa) that grants texas a&m researchers permission to fly uas over the 3 200 acre texas a&m brazos bottoms farm located near college station texas the farm supports an array of projects for agricultural scientists the uas project leverages existing research and extension activities that will benefit from uas collected data the goal of the project is two-fold: to investigate and develop new technologies that will take precision agriculture to the next level; and enable breeders to accelerate crop improvements by using uas for high-throughput phenotyping utilizing an airborne hyperspectral imaging sensor multispectral imaging sensors a thermal infrared camera a visible imaging camera and a light detection and ranging (lidar) system the researchers collect systematic surface imagery and sensor data over the farm agricultural field scientists work closely with aerospace and electrical engineers and remote-sensing and geographic information-processing scientists to aid in making timely and informed decisions regarding crop yield prediction weed detection irrigation management and high throughput phenotyping the value precision agriculture brings is not more data but actionable information valasek told attendees at the national academies government-university-industry research roundtable meeting on unmanned aircraft systems: use & regulation information to farmers must be timely because they need to act quickly crop blight and insect infestations for example require a same-day response in the short term uas can contribute to precision agriculture by helping with research on better methods better processes in particular automated data processing to provide actionable data faster and better vehicles in the long term the commercial aspects crop dusting and spraying irrigation and handling risk management will become increasingly important the main objective for valasek and canvass researchers dr gregory huff and dr jean-francois chamberland professors in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m is to research new computational intelligence algorithms long range communication and ground control techniques for autonomous uas in addition to new data processing techniques valasek has prescribed three goals for uas use in precision agriculture moving forward the first is to leverage existing uas technology and turn it into timely actionable information to enable new science precision agriculture currently uses either ground-based vehicles or satellite imagery the ground vehicles lack the height advantage of uas and satellite coverage is usually several days apart and often not at the resolution needed for the science of precision agriculture the second goal is to develop payload directed flight techniques in which the sensor communicates directly with the autopilot and tells it when the uas needs to be flown differently in order to collect high quality data or to collect it more efficiently a new airborne system that canvass is developing will combine a high power lidar sensor with a hyperspectral sensor to generate 3-d images of crops that are displayed to the user with their visible and non-visible light signatures such as infrared these techniques promise to transform precision agriculture and enable new significant science to be conducted finally because there is a long history of manned aircraft in precision agriculture there is a need to address safety issues and competition concerns by developing uas operational procedures and policies right now there is uncertainty about how uas will operate with manned aircraft but it is clear that in the future both types of aircraft will be needed at certain times and sometimes together this project is working with the faa to develop a good database and establish trust in these systems each agency/institution is essential in successfully completing this project and by producing valuable intellectual property and preliminary data that will aid in procuring additional research funding from governmental institutions and private industry the project started in june 2015 and will continue until december 2016 photo: aerospace engineering students damon printz cameron rogers and ezekial bowden operating the ground control station
it does not require a force as powerful as the sun to get texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin to work together but it certainly helps the institutions along with texas a&m university-central texas and the texas a&m engineering experiment station are officially collaborating on a major solar research initiative following the awarding of a new grant from the national science foundation (nsf)the three texas a&m university system members were recently awarded a four-year $400 000 grant from nsf to address the technical and non-technical challenges in the widespread adoption of solar energy this texas a&m collaboration will form a research site in the nsfs center for next generation photovoltaics an existing research and development center that is led by ut austin and includes other university and industry partners the nsf grant also requires a minimum of $800 000 in private funds to help support the researchour system is strongest when our members join forces and this project is a great example of that said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp this same principle holds true for our state and all of its public universities so this collaboration is important and very encouragingthis center for next generation photovoltaics is one of only 80 industry/university cooperative research centers (i/ucrc) supported by the nsf which established the i/ucrc program in 1973 to encourage collaboration and develop partnerships among industry academic and government entities it is the only such center focused on solar research in addition to the texas a&m and ut austin research sites it includes a site located at colorado state university colorado school of mines also supports the center as a partner universitythis is a perfect trifecta said dr robert balog a co-director of the texas a&m site and associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university faculty and students benefit from working closely with industry on application-specific problems; industry benefits from the expertise and research capabilities at the university that add value to their organization; and ultimately society benefits because the collaboration accelerates the cost-effective commercialization of renewable energy technology and enhances education opportunitiesphotovoltaic (also known as solar) technology produces electricity directly from the sun which is a free source of energy the last few years have seen a drastic drop in the commercial cost of photovoltaic cells balog said however the industry is still nascent and requires additional research and development to move the needle on solar-energy conversion technologies from an alternative to a mainstream energy sourcethe research conducted by the center is focused in four areas: photovoltaic materials devices and manufacturing; balance of systems and photovoltaic implementation; photovoltaic integration with storage and electric vehicles; and education and societal impact of photovoltaicsdespite their long-standing rivalry in athletics texas a&m and ut austin often work together on research papers and projects they have numerous synergies when it comes to renewable energy and the collaboration leverages the vast expertise from institutionsthe center for next generation photovoltaics has become a world-leading international portal for solar research fostering close collaboration between academic researchers and industry partners to speed innovation adoption of emerging solar cell technology economic development and job creation said dr brian korgel director of the center and the edward s hyman endowed chair in engineering and t brockett hudson professor of chemical engineering at ut austin its fitting that our states powerhouse universities should work together in this way to benefit texans and others for generations to comethis is an astonishing center with five universities a texas state agency over 100 faculty members and over 300 students at the postdoctoral doctoral masters and bachelors levels all working on solar energy research said texas a&m-central texas vice president for research and economic development russell porter a co-director of the texas a&m site and we have over 20 private companies non-governmental organizations and government organizations providing funds to support the research it is truly an honor to be a part of such an important collaborative effort
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) smart grid center has received a new grant from the department of energy (doe) that will further the centers mission to strengthen and protect the nations power grid the grant is one of 12 given to projects across the united states as part of $34 million in federal funding through the does office of electricity delivery and energy reliabilitys cybersecurity of energy delivery systems (ceds) program the goal is to develop the next generation of cybersecurity solutions and enhance the reliability and resilience of the nations critical energy infrastructure the $44 million project is timing intrusion management ensuring resiliency (timer) and the research group led by smart grid center director dr mladen kezunovic will address vulnerability concerns in the synchrophasor systems of the electrical grid the synchrophasor systems are the new technology for power systems monitoring control and protection that has been recommended for installation after the major northeast blackout that occurred in the united states in 2003 this technology relies on the use of precise time synchronization of the sampling of power system waveforms and as such is vulnerable to any timing issues that may result from the system being compromised by attacks or design errors the timer project will focus on detection of deterioration of the quality of the timing precision requirements texas a&ms specific objective on the project is to develop timing intrusion modules (tims) to detect inaccurate timing signals from the global positioning system (gps) of satellites and whether or not those inaccuracies are being intentionally introduced into the system by detecting the timing intrusions the synchrophasor systems will be kept operationally robust which will contribute to the improved monitoring control and protection if such detection is not available the synchrophasor systems can experience erroneous control actions which in turn can lead to the damage or a major blackout in the power system securing the nations power supply is a critical component of modernizing the power grid said kezunovic part of the smart grid centers mission is to foster collaboration among researchers from different disciplines with this project we have brought together an outstanding team of experts in power systems computer science communication cybersecurity and synchrophasor applications to solve this problem kezunovic will serve as project director and principal investigator of the project the interdisciplinary team includes co-pis dr jyh-charn (steven) liu professor department of computer science and engineering and dr alex sprintson associate professor department of electrical and computer engineering texas a&m university; michael mylrea jeff dagle paul skare chris bonebrake and dr mark rice pacific northwest national laboratory-pnnl; dr milorad papic idaho power company-ipc; and dr manu parashar alstom/general electric grid solutions-alstom/ge grid solutions
dr luis san andrés mast-childs chair professor of mechanical engineering and the associate director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations turbomachinery laboratory just completed a two-week trip to china where he visited various universities with research programs related to high-performance turbomachinery san andrés was the plenary speaker at rotdyn 2016 the 12th biannual national rotordynamics academic seminar held in the city of zhuzhou hunan province he also presented technical seminars at beijing university of chemical technology (buct) harbin institute of technology and hunan university practicing engineers from industries such as shenyang blowers work groups hunan sund industrial and technological co aviac and the chinese aerospace agency attended the lectures san andrés also toured the new facilities of hunan sund a top manufacturer of fluid film bearings located in xiantang as well as the crrc zhuzhou motor co plant that is engaged in manufacturing megawatt-scale electric motors for high-speed trains and generators used in wind turbines according to san andrés both are world-class industries dedicated to continuous innovation
while visiting these industries and universities san andrés also promoted the numerous continuing education activities the turbo lab hosts namely the 2016 turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) to be held sept 12-15 in houston texas and the asia turbomachinery & pump symposium (atps) returning to singapore in march 2018 tps and atps are recognized by industry leaders as the premier venues for educating and training young practicing engineers in the fields of rotating machinery design construction operation and troubleshooting various chinese manufacturers are slated to have exhibits at tps 2016 and several chinese engineering faculty and students are expected to attend photo: attendees at rotdyn 2016 the 12th national rotordynamics academic seminar seated in the first row are the most noted rotordynamicists in china front row center: dr san andrés associate director of the turbomachinery laboratory
m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr ignacio rodriguez-iturbe a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research professor the distinguished research professorship appointment was effective aug 1 rodriguez-iturbe is a distinguished university professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university he earned his master of science from the california institute of technology and his phd from colorado state university his research interests include: coastal ecosystems; hydrogeomorphology; ecohydrology; river basin functioning and organization; and stochastic modeling of natural phenomena
m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr bjorn birgisson a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research professor the distinguished research professorship appointment was effective aug 15 birgisson is a professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university and is the director of the center for infrastructure renewal a shared facility of tees and the texas a&m transportation institute birgisson earned his master of science in civil engineering from cornell university and his phd in civil engineering (geomechanics) from the university of minnesota
"dr christodoulos a chris floudas director of the texas a&m energy institute passed away sunday (aug 14) while on vacation with his family in greece floudas the erle nye 59 chair professor for engineering excellence in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was a member of the national academy of engineering a texas a&m university institute for advanced study (tias) fellow and eminent scholar an american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) fellow a society for industrial and applied mathematics (siam) fellow a fellow of the national academy of inventors and corresponding member of the academy of athens floudas was awarded countless honors for his work in both 2014 and 2015 floudas was named to the thomson reuters highly cited researchers list this list includes 3 125 researchers who have contributed markedly high numbers of top-cited papers over a recent 10-year period according to thomson reuters these papers rank in the top 1 percent most cited for their subject field in 2015 floudas was awarded the constantin caratheodory prize from the international society of global optimization for fundamental contributions to theory algorithms and applications of global optimization in 2013 he was awarded the national award and gold medal of the hellenic operational research society (helors) which recognizes outstanding research contributions in the field of operations research in 2006 floudas was presented the aiche computing in chemical engineering award and in 2001 he was presented the aiche professional progress award for outstanding progress in chemical engineering floudas authored two graduate textbooks was the chief co-editor of the encyclopedia of optimization authored over 325 refereed articles and delivered more than 320 invited lectures seminars and named lectures including the bayer lecture at carnegie mellon the professor roger wh sargent lecture at imperial college and the george t piercy lecture at the university of minnesota floudas was instrumental in the growth of both the energy institute and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m floudas took the helm as the director of the energy institute on feb 1 2015 during his 18 months as director the energy institute took a prominent position in two major us department of energy (doe) initiatives in may it was announced that a nine-university coalition which included the energy institute would participate in a six-year $20 million fossil energy research project in june the energy institute was selected to lead the gulf coast regional manufacturing center one of five regional hubs established as part of the $140 million smart manufacturing innovation institute through the doe the number of faculty affiliates of the energy institute also grew significantly during floudas time as director growing from around 70 associated faculty members to more than 245 floudas joined the chemical engineering department faculty after nearly 30 years at princeton university he was recruited through the chancellors research initiative (cri) a program to recruit exceptional faculty to the texas a&m university system in his 2015 state of the state address texas gov greg abbott cited floudas as one of the great minds that had been recruited to the university through the cri there has been an outpouring of grief and praise from the universitys leadership regarding the sudden passing of floudas in an email alerting faculty and staff texas a&m university president michael k young stated we are deeply saddened to have learned that our dear colleague passed away he was an amazing scholar who demonstrated leadership in discovery in innovative teaching and practice and in serving his discipline and all of society our thoughts and prayers are with his wife fotini and his family at this difficult time texas a&m system chancellor john sharp remarked im saddened to hear of the sudden passing of dr floudas i had the opportunity to meet chris through his recruitment in the chancellors research initiative he was a true scholar and gentleman and hell be missed by the aggie family our thoughts are with his family here and in greece katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering remarked chris was an exceptional scholar and a true visionary in his field this is an immense loss for texas a&m university and the entire engineering community our deepest sympathies are with fotini and the family"" dr m nazmul karim professor and head of the department of chemical engineering provided a statement that succinctly describes the feelings of the department needless to say this is a loss of unimaginable proportion for the department the college the university and the whole chemical engineering community in the country and around the world karim said he was a giant among us i have lost a very personal friend a funeral will be held in greece on wednesday (aug 17) with a memorial service on campus to be held in his honor at a date and time to be announced"
dr zhijian (zj) pei has joined the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) as a professor and researcher pei brings years of experience from working in industry academia and government environments he earned his phd in mechanical engineering in 1995 from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign working under dr placid m ferreira prior to joining texas a&m pei was a professor in the department of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering at kansas state university and holder of the carl and mary ice industrial engineering professorship he also served as the program director of the manufacturing machines and equipment program at the national science foundation (nsf) from 2012 to 2016 pei holds three patents and has published more than 140 journal articles and 90 articles in peer-reviewed proceedings he has received the nsf directors award for excellence program director and nsf career award pei served as an associate editor for three journals and as an editorial board member for seven journals he also initiated and developed the career proposal writing workshop in 2004 and organized this workshop annually with more than 1 400 young faculty members from across the nation in attendance during his first year with texas a&m pei will be working as the assistant director for research partnerships in the national institute of standards and technology (nist)-hosted advanced manufacturing national program office
m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr b don russell holder of a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research chair professorship the distinguished research chair appointment is effective sept 1 russell is a distinguished professor and regents professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university he is also the harry e bovay jr chair professor he received a bachelor of science and master of engineering both in electrical engineering and both from texas a&m he received his phd also in electrical engineering from the university of oklahoma russell has been a faculty member in electrical and computer engineering for 41 years he is a fellow of six technical societies and most recently was elected to the national academy of inventors he serves the university as chair of the executive committee of distinguished professors
more than 120 texas high school students across three age groups participated in this years bioforce summer academy hosted by the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) a joint center of texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) over the course of the summer these students gained invaluable knowledge concerning the biotechnology industry through performing bacterial transformation and multiple quality assurance assays as well as training on the very bioprocessing equipment used daily in pharmaceutical manufacturing bioforce is a hands-on stem (science technology engineering and mathematics) summer merit program shaped by the nctm that allows high school students to experience the rapidly evolving biotechnology industry as the program progresses throughout the summer rising sophomore junior and senior high school students are immersed into curriculum geared toward pharmaceutical manufacturing and the cutting-edge research behind each new drug discovery the curriculum set forth by the nctm encourages students to develop critical thinking skills through the use of stem principles the objective of the bioforce summer academy is to encourage students to pursue an education in a major stem discipline and ultimately a career in the biotech or pharmaceutical industries a diverse pool of texas students from as far south as mercedes to as far north as plano participated in this years offering of bioforce over the course of three weeklong offerings dedicated to each age group students were able to experience all the facets of the biotech industry ranging from small-scale media production to large-scale therapeutics manufacturing the bioforce summer academy takes an unprecedented hands-on approach and provides experiential learning through the use of the nctms fully functional wet labs and mock gmp space to supplement the hands-on curriculum delivery bioforce participants were taken on tours of fully operational pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities biotech incubators for startup ventures and multiple research facilities geared toward the life science field in essence these tours provide a third dimension to the program that pulls together the many facets of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry exposure to facilities such as lonza houston j&j labs the texas institute for preclinical studies (tips) and the pandemic influenza facility (pif) rounds out the education set forth by the program by allowing students to observe drug and therapeutic development from start to finish: from early research to full-scale manufacturing while bioforce has successfully completed its fourth year the programs mission still remains unaltered the intensive summer program was designed to encourage traditionally underserved students to take on the challenges of a rigorous math and science curriculum to pursue higher education in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields and to enter the high-tech workforce grants received from the texas workforce commissions (twc) summer merit program and financial contributions from corporate partner cognizant technology solutions have allowed nctm to offer scholarships to this target audience nctms goal is to have 100 percent of its bioforce graduates enter a stem-related higher education program upon their high school graduation this will ensure a continued stream of younger generations to fill the pipeline of the pharmaceutical industry including groundbreaking research to life-saving medical discoveries therapeutics and treatments for more information please visit https://nctmtamuedu/training/bioforce/
long before she was preparing to defend her thesis on surface plasma nitriding of fuel cladding materials elizabeth castanon joined a new organization her senior year at palacios high school called powerful opportunities for women eager and ready for science engineering and technology (power set) the power set group came at a time when i really didnt know what i wanted to do castanon said i dont know where i would be without them showing us what engineering was all about power set was founded by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) nuclear power institute and the south texas project electric generating station to encourage high school girls to pursue futures in stem related fields castanon credits the group which takes students on facility tours brings in guest speakers and shows opportunities available in stem fields with helping her find her focus as she neared the end of high school its definitely had an impact on getting girls interested in engineering she said after deciding she wanted to be an engineer she considered going to texas a&m university but received a scholarship from texas a&m university-kingsville there she received simultaneous dual bachelors degrees in mechanical engineering and physics before moving on to graduate studies in nuclear engineering at texas a&m where she received a fellowship to work in nuclear engineering associate professor dr lin shaos lab castanon had an interesting route to her fellowship work at a&m-kingsville she assisted physics professor dr wayne kinnison in piecing together a particle accelerator she said the accelerator hadnt been used in more than 30 years and they restored it to working order kinnison moved to texas a&m as a research scientist at npi and told shao about some of the work that castanon had done with him in kingsville as a result shao nominated her for the fellowship
shaos group studies materials as they relate to nuclear engineering and castanons thesis studies the effects of nitriding materials as opposed to plating or vapor deposition nitriding is just implanting nitrogen into the surface of whatever metal you have she said if that metal makes a nitride then you can form this compound that enhances a lot of the surface properties but since its only on the surface it doesnt change the core properties of the material and since it forms inside whatever material you have its near the surface but its inside so it probably wont just come off thats what were looking at inside the lab shes already accepted a position at the south texas project after graduation looking back castanon said that as hard as it is to believe shes mostly stuck to a 10-year plan she had coming out of high school i actually did have a 10-year plan to go to school get my masters and go work at stp she said thats what i said i was going to do at the beginning theres been times i thought about doing something else but thats the way its worked out when she told her parents that she had gotten a job at the nuclear plant she said they could not have been more excited my family was very supportive from the moment i said i wanted to be an engineer she said they were also very excited when i said i was going to work at the south texas project my dad said it was a dream come true castanon has 12 brothers and sisters and said that she hopes she is a good example for them but also for other students from her area she also takes particular pride in being from the palacios area her family lives inside a 10-mile radius of the south texas project nuclear facility and she said she gets to be an example of the positives of nuclear power and research still she does like to have a little fun when people ask her about it i always joke with people that i grew up near there and i dont have three arms or three eyes and its okay she laughed but most people i deal with are younger and have an open mind about nuclear power
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) hosted the first leg of the four-week-long nuclear security training series (nsts) at texas a&m university from july 2-10 twenty-seven students and six faculty members from seven universities in india and one brazilian university participated in the 2016 nsts which was sponsored by the us state departments partnership for nuclear security with logistics coordination by crdf global the nsts aims to further the study of nuclear security best practices at universities in india and brazil and to promote academic research in this field while at texas a&m the nsts participants attended lectures on nuclear security and nuclear security culture by nsspi professional staff members dr sunil chirayath dr craig marianno and mr claudio gariazzo and took part in various practical training exercises these included an in-class table-top exercise on nuclear security and insider threats a radiation detection exercise a radiation portal monitor exercise a lost source search exercise and an outdoor radiation source recovery exercise at the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city facility the participants enjoyed the hands-on activities and tours which exposed them to a number of facilities across texas a&m
nsspi graduate students and recent graduates mr mohammed hawila dr evans kitcher dr manit shah and mr jeremy osborn also presented four thesis and dissertation topics to the group in order to demonstrate the breadth of research in nuclear security being done at texas a&m to complete their experience in texas the participants also took a tour of the nasa johnson space center in houston which was sponsored by texas a&m and attended the us independence day celebration at the george bush presidential library and museum at the end of their week at texas a&m the participants traveled to albuquerque accompanied by nsspi program assistant ms kerrie ford for the next part of the nsts at sandia national laboratories from there they traveled to oak ridge national laboratory with nsspi research engineer mr claudio gariazzo for the last formal part of the series the us tour culminated with the nsts group participating in the 57th annual meeting of the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) in atlanta
sungtae shin a doctoral student in texas a&m universitys department of mechanical engineering has been researching myoelectric interfacing reading the electrical signals from muscles as part of a project designed to create exoskeletons for physical rehabilitation purposes in an important step toward that goal shin has successfully used a myoelectric controller worn like an armband to operate a robotic arm people have seen automatic prosthetics with basic static motion like hands closing or hands opening and thats a good first stage but thats not good enough for typical human activity shin said dr reza langari the head of the laboratory for control robotics and animation (lcra) which is developing the exoskeleton and head of the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution explained the overall goal for the project is for the system to be able to figure out what a person is trying to do and assist where needed you would be able to use the myoelectric signal to detect what the intended muscle activity is langari said even if the person cannot necessarily achieve that you still extract the information and assist the person in moving though the full implementation into a working exoskeleton is farther down the road langari believes that people will be able to see the potential for the technology in the early success shin has had even if the robot is not a true exoskeleton and it isnt attached to the persons arm it can still show that we are successful in interpreting the human motion intent and activating an electromechanical device to operate on that basis langari said
the concept of using myoelectric signals to interface is simple enough the armband reads the electrical signals the brain sends to the muscles to figure out what it is that the muscles are trying to do however developing a system capable of doing that is an extremely complicated process the electromyographic signal is if you look at it just a huge mess said langari it just looks like a bunch of noise he compared it to standing in the middle of a loud factory with a supervisor giving you instructions nearby but in a language you dont understand its taken sungtae almost two years to get to the point where he can command the robot relatively smoothly langari said thats a fairly significant achievement nobody else has been able to do that at this point you have to really use some sophisticated noise-canceling algorithms to eliminate all the unwanted information how you decipher what they say even after you have eliminated all the background noise is not trivial how do you make sure that what youre eliminating is noise and not important information shin did his undergraduate work at sejong university in seoul in his home country of south korea it was there that he first learned about texas a&m from some of the faculty who are former students he also spent some time at the korean institute of science and technology and a year at texas a&m university at qatar before coming to college station now two years into the project shin believes the potential for the technology extends far beyond the original idea he sees the armband-like accessory as a potential input device for a number of systems and says that while there has been significant research into virtual and augmented reality systems not as much work has been done on input devices for those systems i think in five or 10 years this type of technology will be really big shin said i think virtual reality and augmented reality needs an interface device like dynamic motion this system could be used instead of a computer mouse or a controller a system that tracks dynamic motion has several advantages over many input systems most commonly used now they are smoother and more precise than commonly used controllers and have wider capabilities than typed commands some dynamic motion technologies are currently on the market but they rely on visual tracking using cameras like an xbox kinect a myoelectric system would eliminate some of the challenges that those systems have a myoelectric interface comes from the gesture itself shin said all gestures involve muscle activity so if we can catch this signal and recognize this pattern its more valuable than using a vision system vision systems have obstacles you have to use a terminal the lighting can make a difference the size of the hands matters the point of view of the camera matters…but with myoelectric signal you dont have those limits gesturing is universal in addition to being used for input devices and human assistance langari also sees potential in dynamic motion being used to teach new tasks to robots if you teach a child to do something you dont just tell them how to do it you also actually show them how to do it he said we want to have the capability for a robot to do that in factories you might want to show a robot how to do new tasks that have been done by humans to translate what the human does you first have to understand what the human is doing with their arms and hands and then program the robot to do it this way were going directly from human physical motion to robotic physical motion note: as shin is developing the control side other members of the lcras exoskeleton project are working on the exoskeleton itself click here to read a story about their work which was featured recently in the conversation
the texas a&m university college of engineering and texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees)-led research team has been awarded a $1 million award from the national science foundation (nsf) to create an organization that will develop the framework for utilizing vast amounts of data emerging in the nations smart grids the teams project smart grids big data is one of 10 big data spokes announced recently by the nsf the spokes support the four big data regional innovation hubs which reflect the unique priorities and capabilities of the us geographic regions they service the texas a&m team and its collaborators are part of the south big data hub since the american recovery and reinvestment act (arra) of 2009 billions of dollars have been invested to develop new technology for electric power grid monitoring control and infrastructure protection the arra created overwhelmingly abundant big data in smart grids but without a system in place to fully utilize it developing a fundamental framework for extracting knowledge and integrating big data for power system applications is the goal of the smart grids big data spoke this action-oriented organization will enable the south big data hub to meet the societal grand challenge of creating technological solutions that can fulfill the economic potential inherent in big data analytics in the electric utility industry which is expected to reach an annual value of close to $4 billion by 2020 the principal investigator is dr mladen kezunovic director of tees smart grid center and eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m co-pis from electrical and computer engineering are dr pr kumar engineering chair in computer engineering and distinguished professor; and dr le xie associate professor; from the department of computer science and engineering is dr dilma da silva department head and holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii; dr zoran obradovic temple university; and dr santiago grijalva georgia tech being part of this initiative gives us the opportunity to contribute to the great engineering challenges facing the world in terms of securing and modernizing the power grid utilizing unprecedented amounts of data characterizing different aspects of the grid operation said kezunovic the big data hubs announced last year are one way the nsf is addressing this need the nsf established four hubs one each in the midwest northeast south and west regions of the country to foster multi-sector collaborations among academia industry and government each hub is helping to bring together a wide range of big data stakeholders in order to solve regional challenges each big data spoke will work on a challenge that requires big data approaches and solutions in given domains like the big data hubs the big data spokes will take on a convening and coordinating role as opposed to directly conducting research each will gather important stakeholders; engage end users and solution providers; and form multidisciplinary teams to tackle questions no single field can solve alone however unlike the big data hubs which aim to span the full range of data-driven challenges and solutions in a geographic region each big data spoke will have a specific goal-driven mission the big data spokes advance the goals and regional priorities of each big data hub fusing the strengths of a range of institutions and investigators and applying them to problems that affect the communities and populations within their regions said jim kurose assistant director of the nsf for computer and information science and engineering we are pleased to be making this substantial investment today to accelerate the nations big data r&d innovation ecosystem click here to read the complete nsf big data spoke release
the center for robotic assisted search and rescue (crasar) a division of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for emergency informatics recently conducted a mass casualty exercise in coordination with the italian coast guard and interuniversity center of integrated systems for the marine environment (isme) in genoa italy the exercise explored the use of an emily lifeguard assistant unmanned surface vehicle a fotokite tethered unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) and lte cellular communications to prevent drowning of refugees trying to reach italy from africa emily robots were deployed to greece in january 2016 in response to the wave of migrations from turkey theyre currently being used by the hellenic coast guard and the hellenic red cross and have already been credited with saving more than 24 people according to crasar director dr robin murphy this exercise identified key differences between the turkey-to-greece migrations and the africa-to-italy migrations for example the scale of potential rescue events is much different in greece boats of 40-50 people usually ran into problems close to shore in italy the boats can have between 200 and 800 people and rescue operations are taking place much further out those differences affect the unmanned system design resulting in new research directions in autonomous navigation human-robot interaction with victims in the water and the use of uavs when you look at the situation in greece and then scale up to the situation in italy you can see the increased value of having uavs to help assess the situation murphy said we can better identify who needs immediate help from rescuers in the water and who can be helped by emily or perhaps even a basic floatation device the crasar team consisted of murphy graduate students grant wilde and jan dufek and undergraduate rebecca schofield from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university everyone focuses on the robots but texas a&m researchers are leading the way on training our students to think across disciplines in order to consider how sensors wireless networks and visualization tools can be integrated into truly useful systems murphy said the exercise occurred over three days from sept 22-24 in genoa it was arranged by professor gianluca antonelli of the university of cassino and professor pino casalino through isme a consortium of seven italian universities in conjunction with the italian coast guard genova led by commander massimo kothmeir emily creator tony mulligan of hydronalix medical expert lynn marie kelly-mulligan and dr walt magnussen of the texas a&m internet2 technology evaluation center also participated with funding from the national science foundation rapid response research program crasar is accelerating research in robotics sensors and networks for search and rescue operations
texas a&m university system officials broke ground on the new 138 000 square-foot center for infrastructure renewal on the rellis campus sept 26 the building is the first on the new 2 000-acre campus the center for infrastructural renewal is a collaboration among the texas a&m engineering experiment station the texas a&m transportation institute and the private sector texas is at a critical juncture: an aging infrastructure system is costing billions of taxpayer dollars in construction projects using outdated technology said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering this facility will bring together the best engineers to address these challenges in ways that are more efficient effective and economical roadways and bridges are aging at a faster rate than they can be repaired the us power grid is more than 130 years old and vulnerable to natural disasters and terror attacks there is also a concern regarding the integrity of the nations oil gas water and wastewater pipeline systems modernizing these infrastructures will require interdisciplinary research teams 21st century technologies and innovative solutions for the demands from a growing population
the center for infrastructure renewal will bring together the researchers agencies and industry collaborations necessary to greatly accelerate the steep change in new discoveries and innovation needed for texas and the nation said bjorn birgisson director of the center through these collaborations we will achieve more effective and cost-efficient infrastructure renewal solutions than are possible with todays technologies the research testing and training facility is expected to reduce the cost and extend the life of infrastructure with new better materials and construction methods future rellis campus research and testing will include robotics driverless and connected vehicles advanced manufacturing large-scale testing as well as smart power grids and water systems companies will be encouraged to build their own r&d and testing facilities alongside and in partnership with the a&m systems rellis also will offer workforce training professional certificates and associate degrees as well as four-year degrees from the a&m systems universities from around the state the first class of students is expected to begin fall 2018 we are creating an economic and education magnet that will offer the best of our state agencies and universities in one location said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system rellis is a new approach necessary to educate the next generation of texans and expand the state economy through research and innovation
the turbomachinery laboratory a center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center and a member of the texas a&m university system had another record-breaking turbomachinery and pump symposia which was held sept 12-15 at the george r brown convention center in houston the turbo labs 44th turbomachinery and 32nd international pump users symposia (tps 2016) attracted 5 375 unique attendees representing 40 countries and a record-breaking 360 exhibiting companies topping last years number by 10 companies the exhibit hall which spanned 69 600 square feet featured full-sized equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends from leading turbomachinery pump and related companies the symposia were collocated with the roseland oil and gas houston oil & gas convention tps 2017 [office1] will be collocated with roseland oil and gas and insulation expo usa (iex) attendees participated in a number of continuing education sessions a cornerstone program of the event engineers from novice to experienced chose from a combination of 19 short courses 17 lectures 24 tutorials 29 discussion groups and 24 case studies selected by the turbomachinery and pump advisory committees and led by industry experts topics included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals tps is known as the meeting of choice for users and manufacturers of commercial turbomachinery said dr dara w childs director of the turbomachinery lab and leland t jordan chair of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the quality exchange of technical knowledge among delegates at this years symposia has reinforced that reputation were pleased to host a staple event for the industry proceedings from previous symposia are free for download technical content from tps 2016 will be available march 2017 tps 2017 will be hosted at the george r brown convention center in houston sept sept 12-14 with short courses offered on sept 11 visit tpstamuedu or call 979-845-7417 for more information
dr robin murphy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for emergency informatics presented at the white house frontiers conference on the campus of the university of pittsburgh her lightning talk focused on the importance of artificial intelligence for the future of rescue robotics president barack obama also took the stage at the conference and gave what murphy described as an inspiring speech
murphy who is the raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was also recently awarded a national science foundation national robotics initiative grant funded by the department of energy the grant will allow murphy to continue her current research on autonomous robot assistants for this three-year project murphy will be studying the use of autonomous robot assistants which will improve the efficiency of and help overcome the perceptual limitations of just one robot in various situations by providing an external and secondary viewpoint this project will enable co-robots to build more resilience to disasters and public safety incidents although the use of a secondary robot to assist is not a new concept research on assistant robots has been limited because users tend to rule out the use of aerial robots and instead consider only ground robots additionally users often choose suboptimal viewpoints which reasonably diminishes efficiency having the assistant robot act autonomously should reduce the work demands on the operator as long as the operator trusts the assistant and the actual motion of the assistant does not move so quickly so as to distract or disorient the operator trust that an autonomous robot will perform correctly without supervision has not been widely explored the project will create the fundamental principled understanding of perception and control needed to tackle the cognitive demands on co-robot operators which will increase productivity and reduce costly errors this research aims to contribute to practical methods for human supervisory control of multiple robots and quantification of risk murphy was previously awarded the department of energy science of safety grant this summer which was used to develop the prototype of the air-ground collaborative system that will be used for this current project murphys research in this area has the potential to change the landscape of co-robotics by increasing the effectiveness of future ground and aerial robots in turn this can impact our society and economy in a positive way by increasing the countrys resilience in disasters and daily routine emergencies there will be numerous life-saving co-robot applications such as bomb-squads swat teams and disaster robots
two researchers from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees)-agrilife center for bioinformatics and genomic systems engineering (cbgse) and the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university have received a grant from the national science foundation (nsf) that will allow them to explore the use of system theoretic approaches to carry out cancer drug identification dr michael bittners (left) and dr aniruddha dattas (right) grant identification of drug targets and their validation in cancer therapy design is a three-year $400 000 grant their project proposes a novel approach to combine pathway information concerning cancer cell life and death along with data on modes of cell response to drugs to develop models that would allow the identification and validation of decisive modulators of cell death bittner has tested some drug combinations in cancer cell lines and mice datta said his basis for coming up with these drug combinations is his expert knowledge as a biologist what we want to do with this grant is to see whether we can use engineering methods to do the actual modeling and see whether those models suggest the same kind of combinations that he came up with as a biologist their project builds upon the recent robust induction of cancer cell death that bittner and his collaborators in the texas a&m school of veterinary medicine were able to experimentally demonstrate using canine cancer cell lines bittner worked with dr heather wilson-robles associate professor and dr fred a and vola n palmer chair in comparative oncology to successfully test his therapy on canine osteosarcoma a type of bone cancer in aging dogs the drugs in this case were chosen based on bittners expert knowledge the focus of their current project is to develop a systematic approach to identify highly potent modulators we want to see if we can make that knowledge systematic because it would have applications in other cancers and also agricultural genomics datta said im really excited about being involved in the research proposed in this grant because in this particular case bittner has already had experimental success so now the question is can we reverse engineer that and come up with bittners combination and perhaps more current cancer drugs targeted at checking cell proliferation have generally had limited success as cancer cells usually apply alternative mechanisms to bypass anti-proliferative drug activities however bittner and datta hope rapid and robust induction of cancer cell death may provide a more potent weapon against the disease most people are targeting how to prevent the cancer cell from multiplying and that has met with limited success datta said the wiring is so complicated inside the cancer cell that more often than not you test a drug that you think will work and the cell figures out a way to bypass the drug what bittner is trying to do is kill the cancer cells if you can rapidly kill all or nearly all of a patients cancer cells with a potent drug combination many possibilities arise a full cure via the initial cancer cell death a cure spurred by typical cancer cell killing via the immune system or the ability to apply the drugs again should the cancer recur thats whats exciting bittner agrees most cancer patients get three to four months longer survival with what is a considered a successful drug a very limiting and expensive situation for many cancer patients he said adding that because his goal is aimed at maximum elimination of cancer cells the chance of reoccurrence is reduced application of jointly developed methods could be used to identify other kinds of drugs which might well have powers that we havent figured out as biologists yet with their current grant the hope is that robles would continue to support their research with samples and information but the ultimate goal would be to secure another grant to fuel increased collaboration with the school of veterinary medicine and larger animals when you do these studies in mice getting them to scale up to humans is much more difficult datta said adding that dogs are closer to humans therefore positive results have more impact bittner a research professor with the tees-agrilife cbgse joined the center in january 2014 he is also associated with the translation genomics research institute (tgen) in phoenix where he served as co-director of computational biology from 2003-2013 prior to that he was with the national human genome research institute of the national institutes of health (nih) and previously worked for monsanto and amoco his research interests mainly center around cancer cell dynamics and with the relocation of his lab to college station tremendous opportunities have opened up for cancer drug identification and testing using canine samples datta the jw runyon jr 35 professor ii in electrical and computer engineering joined the department in 1991 he also currently serves as the director of the tees-agrilife cbgse and is responsible for developing research collaborations between the texas a&m college of engineering and texas a&m agrilife research dattas research focuses on robust adaptive control pid control engineering issues related to cancer genomics and most recently on plant genomics issues motivated by agricultural applications
to explain the potential energy impact for their air conditioning technology texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers dr david claridge and dr charles culp draw a parallel to the auto industry if we were still using vehicles that used as much gas as they did in the early 1970s compared to what were doing today the additional oil that we would need would just about double the oil imports in this country said claridge who is director of tees energy systems laboratory and the leland t jordan professor in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university the air conditioning business right now is about a $100 billion a year added culp who is a professor with the department of architecture and a joint faculty member with mechanical engineering by 2025 its projected to be about $200 billion that energy use is going to double what if we can come up with something that uses half the energy or less if you look at where the population is growing its all around the tropic belt in the hot and humid climates and our air conditioner loves hot and humid climates a new approach to an old technology evaporative cooling is a known technology with benefits over conventional air conditioning systems the biggest of which is it does not use refrigerants and is very efficient but its a technology with geographic limits because it requires dry air claridge and culp believe theyve found a way to remove that limitation simply put evaporative cooling adds water to the air and the evaporation of that water cools the air around it however adding more water to the air is a problem in high humidity climates in a climate like this the air is so humid that theres no way you want it to get more humid even if it does get a little bit cooler said claridge basically the technology weve developed is something that enables you to efficiently remove enough moisture from the air so that you can then go ahead and use this evaporative cooling technique to get the air colder though theyre now closing in on their goal of creating a prototype system its been a long journey since they first thought up the idea we are basically two physicists and we started thinking about how we could come up with a more efficient air conditioner culp said a 50 percent or even two times more efficient air conditioner because air conditioning takes a tremendous amount of energy their inspiration came from james clerk maxwells famous physics thought experiment called maxwells demon in it maxwell imagined a tiny demon that could open and close a small door between two chambers of gas separating out the fast moving particles from the slower ones causing the chamber of slower molecules to lower in temperature while the chamber of faster ones rises we thought maybe we can do something like that with water vapor claridge said their solution didnt come overnight and though it isnt a demon it does work on a very small scale we had years of failure said claridge we tried all kinds of crazy things about six years ago we had a breakthrough someone else came up with a molecular material that passes water vapor but only a tiny bit of air using this molecular membrane their system solves the humidity problem by removing water molecules from the air after the air is cooled producing cool dry air and pure water in wet climates the ability to control the humidity without changing the temperature of the air is also a benefit of the system think about those mornings this time of year that maybe its 70 degrees outside but theres condensation on the windows claridge said the house doesnt need to be colder but its sticky this technology allows you to dry the house sufficiently to make it comfortable at normal temperatures tees office of commercialization and entrepreneurship encouraged the two to form a company in 2015 which they named simply claridge-culp and has guided them from a business standpoint for example tees encouraged them to find a ceo with ties to the industry and they found the perfect person for the job in damon gowan aggie class of 1958 a self-made executive who built the largest mechanical contracting business in houston and is a former president of the american society for heating refrigerating and air-conditioning engineers (ashrae) a big thing for us is that a number of people who work for tees have been superior at giving advice on things that neither one of us had any experience working with culp said theyve also put us in contact with other small companies and we have a lot of shared experiences just sharing little bits of guidance makes a big difference there has already been early interest in the technology claridge-culp was selected as one of the best university startups by the national council of entrepreneurial tech transfer (ncet2) theirs was one of 35 university startups selected to present their company pitches in washington dc on sept 20 at the inaugural university startups demo day pushing technological limits last year they proved that the science behind the system works now they just have to engineer it theyre aiming to have a prototype system built and tested by 2018 were addressing all those myriad engineering problems said culp cost size weight -- you can just go down the list but we know it works the biggest hurdle to cross is the overall efficiency of the system they know that industry will be unlikely to adopt their system unless the cost is competitive with conventional air conditioning to do that theyre pushing the limits of technology in several areas take the compressor for example in conventional air conditioners the refrigerant is compressed to high pressures usually over 250 pounds per square inch in claridge-culps approach the compressors are faced with totally different requirements as they only need to compress about 15 pounds per square inch but with a higher flow basically the devices they use are in the general classification of vacuum pumps theyre generally not worried about the efficiency culp said the first compressors we used in the early prototype had an efficiency of less than 5 percent and we need something in the range of at least 60 percent to have a practical device were working with a company in colorado to use a different type of technology to build a compressor that looks like it should get us into the 65 percent range global implications according to the us department of energy 6 percent of the average american households annual energy use is space cooling in texas that number is even higher according to the electric reliability council of texas (ercot) the record peak demand was 71 093 megawatts on august 11 of this year thats 305 percent higher than the expected peak demand in autumn and 213 percent higher than expected peak demand in winter combine that with the fact that 764 percent of texas power is generated from fossil fuels (483 percent from natural gas and 281 percent from coal) and you can already see the potential impact of more efficient cooling i believe whatever the time frame were going to be running out of fossil fuels claridge said i personally believe burning fossil fuels unnecessarily is pretty harmful in terms of what its doing to climate change fundamentally it looks like this idea is one that will make air conditioning work better and more comfortably and it will do less harm to the environment than the way the current refrigerant systems do and it should do it at less cost thats something i think is pretty exciting while their team continues to solve the complicated engineering challenges to address the ‘how of their system claridge said the ‘why remains unchanged from when they started to change the world he said photo: claridge-culp at university startups demo day in washington dc from left to right: mark andrews manager contract negotiation (tees); culp; us rep bill flores; claridge; dr balakrishna haridas executive director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship (tees)
"the texas a&m energy research society an organization of doctoral students and postdoctoral associates along with the texas a&m energy institute and the texas a&m energy club an undergraduate student organization hosted the inaugural texas a&m conference on energy last week on the texas a&m university campus the energy institute is a joint center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and texas a&m university dr stratos pistikopoulos interim co-director of the energy institute said the conference was the brainchild of the late dr christodoulos a floudas the institutes former director who passed away in august floudas wife and daughter attended the conferences opening proceedings and many presentations over the entire three-day event he passionately believed that what has been lacking is an [organization] where the phd students and the post-doc students could interact together across the university and across the width and breadth of the energy research that shapes the energy landscape within this university pistikopoulos said floudas envisioned a conference on energy organized exclusively by students that would bring together texas a&m students and faculty members working on energy-related research and scholarship he would be extremely proud of the texas a&m energy research society if he were with us today with us pistikopoulos added there are over 450 members already and this is the first event the conference which was organized by students in the energy research society and energy club featured industry speakers 89 student posters and 94 student presentations in a wide range of breakout session focus areas dr karan l watson provost and executive vice president of texas a&m said in her opening remarks that sharing of information is crucial to the future this is a very important conference because were going to talk about whats going to make the world a better place or not and that is energy she said we like to talk about a whole lot of other things that are important to the world but when you get down to it energy is crucial how we find it how we process it how we utilize it how we regulate it how we share it and how we hoard it determines what kind of world we live in in sharing this information we show that we care for each other watson said texas a&m is leading the way in energy research on a number of fronts the texas a&m energy institute pursues and supports new approaches for multi-disciplinary energy research education and external partnerships these approaches cross departmental and college boundaries and address all facets of the energy landscape that naturally connect engineering sciences technologies economics law and policy decisions dr narasimha reddy tees associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers said the institute continues texas a&ms leadership in the energy field energy is a pillar by which texas a&m is recognized he said the energy institute is a focus point now and im hoping that this conference will not only increase our visibility even more but build on the strength that we already have photo: jose eduardo explains his research on the ""effect of contact hysteresis on droplet shedding on induced acoustic vibrations"""
for the past three years the southwest research institute (swri) has partnered with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) to invite select graduate students from across the texas a&m university system to participate in the graduate student research experience (gsre) gsre is a part of the national science foundations research coordination network climate energy environment and engagement in semi-arid regions (rcn ce3sar) multi-year grant awarded to texas a&m university-corpus christi a regional division of tees dr luis cifuentes vice president for research commercialization and outreach at texas a&m-corpus christi is the principal investigator for the grant that not only supports the gsre but also establishes deeper and more extensive research relationships to address the critical water and coastal issues in south texas while researching the nexus between water energy and food the gsre has promoted research collaboration among rcn ce3sar institutions and improved the work and resumes of our students said cifuentes dr [wesley] patricks leadership at swri and cindy walls involvement at tees made it possible to successfully implement the gsre although the rcn ce3sar project ends in june 2017 we are looking for other sources of funds to sustain it swri is a private non-profit organization with a particular interest in applied research and development dr wesley patrick vice president of swris geosciences and engineering division said they wanted to be the gsre location so graduate students would have a commercial research and development experience to complement the academic one they receive in the typical pursuit of their degrees in order to be eligible for a gsre assignment graduate students first participated in an externship at swri where they learned about the available research opportunities in several divisions of swri this year more than 40 students participated in the externship and 12 students applied to the gsre program the first two years of the gsre swri provided mentorship for two graduate students; but this year we selected five said patrick its worth the investment of time from our perspective the students were interested in the work being done at swri and made really strong connections with their swri mentors relationships that are maintained beyond the completion of gsre i see the students come in with bright ideas and i see firsthand how their new and creative thinking has a place in the world he said there are so many responsible companies and firms today that care not just about the bottom line but about the communities where they live and work the gsre students experience what it is like to put their academic endeavors into practice in order to have a real impact on industry and in communities we hope theyll complete the internships with a desire to work for companies that do well economically while servicing a fragile world in meaningful ways
the engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to four texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their research teams during the tees external advisory board meeting november 18 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more was given to dr nimir elbashir dr shehab ahmed dr raymundo arroyave and dr alvin yeh elbashir who holds a joint appointment as a professor in the chemical engineering program and the petroleum engineering program at texas a&m university at qatar and is the director of the gas and fuels research center was awarded a grant for $48 million from the qatar national research fund for his proposal design of novel catalysts and processes for co2 conversion from micro to macroscale his research team included co-pis dr konstantinos kakosimos dr dragomir bukur dr mahmoud el-halwagi and dr patrick linke all from chemical engineering their research seeks to develop new catalysts and novel technologies that scale the conversion of co2 into value-added chemicals and clean fuels which could significantly impact gas processing technology and co2 conversion worldwide ahmed an associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering program was awarded a grant from the rasgas company limited for his proposal an intelligent open hole wireline tool conveyance system his co-pi is dr hussein alnuweiri (electrical and computer engineering) their research is focused on developing an intelligent open hole wireline tool conveyance system to overcome challenges in deploying logging tools in deviated and horizontal wellbores the proposed intelligent wireline system can potentially save significant rig and crew time which contributes to a safer and more cost effective operation arroyave was awarded $15 million from the national science foundation for his proposal dmref: accelerating the development of high temperature shape memory alloys his co-pis are dr ibrahim karaman (department of material science and engineering) dr edward dougherty (department of electrical and computer engineering); dr dimitris lagoudas (department of aerospace engineering and deputy director of tees); dr amine benzerga (aerospace engineering) and dr theo baxevanis (department of mechanical engineering at the university of houston) this interdisciplinary research project combines ideas from materials science mechanics computer science machine learning and design to develop high-temperature solid-state actuators for the aerospace and automotive industries
yeh was awarded $11 million from the dhhs-nih-national institute of neurological disorders and stroke for his proposal imaging dynamics and interactions of developmental lineages in the early embryo his co-pi is dr lekven arne (department of biology) yehs research is focused on developing the tools and methodology needed to understand the earliest events in brain formation using zebra fish understanding how the midbrain-hindbrain boundary (mhb) forms with zebra fish will probably provide insight into the development of the human brain more specifically the tectum and the cerebellum top photo from left: m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees; el-halwagi; dr hassan bazzi assistant dean for research and tees division head at texas a&m at qatar; and lagoudas bottom right: banks dougherty and lagoudas
the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) collaborated with the universidade federal do rio de janeiro (ufrj) to coordinate two events in brazil between nov 3 and 11 both events were sponsored by the us department of states partnership for nuclear security (pns) and provided opportunities for nsspi to interact with brazilian professionals and students respectively and to provide outreach and training to these groups on the issue of nuclear security dr craig marianno nsspi deputy director and texas a&m university assistant professor of nuclear engineering and claudio gariazzo nsspi research engineer traveled to brazil to represent nsspi at these events the first event was a two-day workforce development workshop on nuclear security led by nsspi and ufrj for employees at the eletronuclear angra nuclear power plant (angra npp) in angra dos reis brazil twenty-eight eletronuclear employees participated in the workshop ranging from administrators to security and safety personnel the workshop consisted of lectures and exercises on the integration of safety and security as well as insider threat analysis the second event was the second annual nuclear security week event on the ufrj campus for undergraduate and graduate-level nuclear engineering students nsspi organized the first nuclear security week at ufrj in october 2015 and the events success motivated ufrj faculty to repeat the event in 2016 to include topics not covered in the original nuclear security week this years event focused specifically on security culture cyber-security transportation security and security system design and involved course instructors from nsspi the university of brandenburg kings college london the university of sao paulo eletronuclear and the brazilian nuclear energy commission the subject matter experts presented lectures on brazilian security regulations transportation security cyber security consequence analysis nuclear forensics security culture and insider threat analysis and students had the opportunity to enhance their conceptual knowledge through two practical exercises gariazzo also lectured on the world institute for nuclear security and the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) and ufrj students gave presentations on the universitys young generation of nuclear professionals group and the ufrj student inmm chapter and its activities at the end of nuclear security week all participants were given the opportunity to visit the angra npp
creating and maintaining a long-term environment friendly to innovation was the topic of conversation at the exploring innovation frontiers initiative (eifi) southern regional dialogue hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station texas a&m university college of engineering and the us council on competitiveness on nov 15 in houston the eifi southern regional dialogue focused on some of the regions already strong innovation-intensive industries like energy manufacturing transportation and healthcare dr greg powers vice president of technology at halliburton gave the keynote address he focused on the need for firms and organizations to be open to unexpected cross-disciplinary innovation opportunities outside of traditional silos as examples he pointed to a range of productivity-enhancing innovations underway at halliburton inspired by advances from other industries like healthcare and telecommunications a welcome address from m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station focused on the importance of texas a&ms continued role in helping create an innovation-friendly environment in the state of texas to compete in the global ecosystem the nation relies upon innovation banks said this event brings together our peers across higher education industry and government agencies to explore how we can work together to advance us competitiveness in the global economy and enhance american prosperity panels featuring experts from academia industry and government discussed several topics throughout starting with an exploration of the frontier of energy and manufacturing technologies critical sectors for the united states future in innovation a second panel focused on autonomous vehicles and their impact on moving people as well as products the third centered on the potential for new technology to create unique healthcare solutions such as personalized medicine and the importance of engineered medicine to the future of the united states competitiveness the aim for eifi – a multi-year progressive dialogue series taking place in creative hotspots across the nation– is to craft a transformative strategy to spark a larger us innovation movement and to increase dramatically the number of institutions businesses and people engaged actively in americas innovation economy this dialogue in houston added a range of best practices fresh ideas and inspirational technology paths to this conversation – and will help frame a national innovation strategy for the incoming administration and congress said deborah l wince-smith president and ceo of the us council on competitiveness the daylong event was the third in a progressive series across the united states
dr mladen kezunovic and lisa k akin were named recipients of the texas a&m university systems regents professor award and regents fellow service award respectively kezunovic is the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and serves as the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) smart grid center akin is the director of risk and compliance for tees the board established the regents professor awards program in 1996 and the regents fellow service awards program in 1998 to recognize employees who have made exemplary contributions to their university or agency and to the people of texas cliff thomas chairman of the texas a&m university system board of regents said the newest regents professors and regents fellows are vital members of the texas a&m system family who bring with them unique skills and perspectives these folks are integral to steering the system toward continued excellence chairman thomas said with them at the helm the universities and agencies under the texas a&m system can only keep improving texas a&m system chancellor john sharp said the new regents professors and regents fellows have proven their commitment to the systems success the recently recognized professors and professionals represent the best of our great system and higher education in texas sharp said their work consistently elevates texas a&m system campuses and agencies the regents professor award honors individuals at the rank of professor or equivalent whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service have been exemplary the award is the highest honor bestowed by the a&m system on faculty members the performance of those selected is considered meritorious and worthy of recognition of their achievements that had an impact on not only their institution or agency but also the community the state of texas and/or at the national and international levels the regents fellow service award honors and recognizes extension research and service professionals within the agricultural and engineering agencies health science center and veterinary medical diagnostic laboratory these professionals must have demonstrated a significant commitment and contributions to their respective agency by providing exceptional leadership in educational or program delivery/scholarship research or service that have resulted in significant impact and lasting benefits to the state of texas and beyond
the turbomachinery laboratory (turbo lab) will offer continuing education short courses in houston for both entry-level and experienced engineers in march the turbo lab a center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has offered short courses since 1995 building upon texas a&m universitys tradition of continuing education and professional development each short course offers continuing education unit (ceu) credits and is taught by one or more field experts with broad industrial knowledge attendees glean valuable industry insights to take back to their organizations and add to their professional network with the sharing of ideas questions and experiences the stand-alone short courses offer attendees the opportunity to delve deep into specific subject matter said dr dara w childs director of the turbo lab the courses are presented by instructors with extensive relevant backgrounds to the course materials including troubleshooting diagnosis and testing courses offered centrifugal compressor operations for 21st century users date: march 21-24 2017 ceu credits: 28 the centrifugal compressor operations short course will equip novice and experienced oil and gas industry professionals with state-of-the-art practical knowledge of centrifugal gas compressors centered on centrifugal gas compression the course begins with an introduction of basic centrifugal compressor technology (including an overview of the components and nomenclature) it progresses through the design and selection processes with an overview of the various analytical tools employed it concludes with project installation commissioning and maintenance who should attend this course is intended for novice and experienced oil and gas professionals with basic knowledge of centrifugal gas compressors instructors: jigger jumonville – owner of jumonville engineering j jeffery moore – principal engineer southwest research institute peter c rasmussen – owner of rasmussen machinery cons llc james m sorokes – principal development engineer dresser-rand a siemens business rotordynamics date: march 21-24 2017 ceu credits: 28 the rotordynamics short course focuses on turbomachines including turbines compressors expanders motors pumps and generators attendees will leave with an understanding of the rotordynamics of these machines and their subcomponents to help select analyze troubleshoot and repair them for maximum reliability and minimum vibration problems the course is not math-intensive and includes histories and workshops for hands-on evaluation of actual machines who should attend the course is intended for beginning and intermediate engineers in the petroleum chemical power and gas industries as well as individuals interested in the dynamics of rotating machinery instructor: malcom leader – turbomachinery consultant owner of applied machinery dynamics to register or to learn more about the courses and instructors visit turbolabtamuedu or contact debbie maggs at debbie@turbo-labtamuedu or 979-845-7114 in addition to stand-alone short courses the turbo lab offers one-day short courses in conjunction with the turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) held each september in houston tps presented entirely by the turbo lab hosts the premier professional continuing education program relied upon by rotating equipment engineers and technicians worldwide spanning oil and gas petrochemical power aerospace chemical and water industries
dr mian riaz director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations process engineering r&d center and head of the extrusion technology program at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2016 bernard lown 42 alumni humanitarian award from the university of maine alumni association riaz earned his phd in food science from the university in 1992 and was the universitys first doctoral student in the program the award named in honor of nobel laureate dr bernard lown is given in recognition of university of maine graduates who have distinguished themselves in their service to humanity as one of the worlds leading authorities on extrusion technology and a leader in food protein and research riaz has spent his career to improve the publics understanding of nutrition and food customs in both the united states and around the world he shares his expertise with underdeveloped countries by providing access to extrusion technology which is used to create low cost foods such as cereals and snack food riaz has worked for the texas a&m university system for 24 years and has published five books 22 chapters and more than 100 papers on extrusion and other related topics he is a frequent speaker at international and national conferences and meetings and to date has delivered more than 300 presentations in 55 countries riaz holds an ms in food technology (1987) and a bs in food technology and agriculture (1985) from the university of agriculture in faisalabad pakistan photo: riaz (third from left) accepts his award during a ceremony hosted by the university of maine alumni association
many of our nations returning war veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) a psychiatric disorder that can occur after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event the number of veterans who were diagnosed with ptsd varies by service era for every 100 veterans who took part in the war in afghanistan about 11 to 20 percent experience ptsd in a given year researchers from the department of industrial and systems engineering school of public health and college of medicine at texas a&m university are collaborating to develop an intelligent information system for veterans with ptsd that has the potential to save millions of lives were designing a system that utilizes sensor-enabled wearable technologies to monitor ptsd patients remotely and to monitor their condition outside of a clinical setting said dr farzan sasangohar an assistant professor in industrial and systems engineering people with ptsd can suffer from what are known as arousal symptoms which causes them to constantly be on the look-out for any signs of danger and can lead to outbursts of anger or irritability or flashbacks to a traumatic moment these symptoms can happen at any time and make ones daily routine extremely difficult or in some cases impossible to get through to help manage their condition some veterans engage in in-person therapy sessions with a specialized clinician however with the rising popularity of sensor-enabled wearable technologies and the emergence of mhealth applications patients now have the ability to continue their care outside of their regularly scheduled sessions by completing periodical assessments and being engaged in therapeutic activities although ptsd apps are used by many they are standalone devices that have significant usability issues and do not have the ability to report helpful feedback to the clinician
user engagement is a general limitation of current remote health technologies including current ptsd mhealth apps said sasangohar they do not provide a closed loop so no information is being sent to the clinician the new system the research group is developing will be able to passively collect continuous information on a patients well-being and send it to their clinician the information clinicians receive will help them make more holistic evaluations of their patients which then leads to more informed therapy sessions in addition to helping out clinicians using remote health technology is a more cost effective and efficient method for patients to get the help they need sasangohars new system will use wearable devices such as smartwatches and smartphones to identify episodes of non-normal activities (physical or biophysical) primarily using the patients heart rate during periods of hyper-arousal which is a state of increased psychological and physiological responses and will engage the patient in an interactive assessment to get an idea of their condition in that moment based on the patients answers the system will either route them to an emergency support system connect them to a clinician or engage them in an activity like relaxation or breathing techniques the system will have the ability to pick up a patients heart rate identify the patients physical state and use it to identify if a ptsd symptom is emerging the group has evidence that shows mental state change is correlated to heart rate variability the research group started work on this project in 2015 and is currently conducting validation testing on a prototype of the new system to ensure that when given to ptsd patients for field testing various noises from their surrounding environments will not adversely affect the physiological feedback once validation testing is completed and it has a final product the group would like to collaborate with the us department of veteran affairs in order to share the technology with veterans in july sasangohar received a seed grant from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the texas a&m university college of engineering and the texas a&m university division of research for his proposal effective management of ptsd: a systematic design and investigation of a novel ptsd information system for veterans this project is part of a portfolio of smart sensing projects in sasangohars cognitive ergonomics lab this new system will not only be able to help ptsd patients but also those with general depression or dementia the goal of all the projects is to provide affordable non-intrusive bio-sensing systems to improve patient safety in a wide range of healthcare environment solutions he said if i know the technology that i provide or contribute to will save even one life personally that satisfies me this kind of technology has the prospect of saving millions of lives it really paves the way for affordable solutions to improve the quality of care patient safety and help patients with mental disorders in general
"marlan o scully distinguished professor of physics and astronomy at texas a&m university and texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research chair has been elected as a foreign member of the russian academy of sciences (ras) scully is one of 63 new foreign members elected during the october 24-25 general meeting of the division of ras and subsequently approved as part of the october 28 general meeting of the broader academy according to the ras charter ""only the most prominent foreign scientists recognized by the international scientific community can be elected foreign members of the russian academy of sciences"" scully a laser physics pioneer joined the texas a&m faculty in 1992 and is director of the institute for quantum science and engineering (iqse) and the center for theoretical physics he holds the hershel e burgess 29 chair in physics in the department of physics and astronomy he also serves as associate dean for external relations in the college of science and holds a joint professorial appointment in the department of chemistry as well as at princeton university and at baylor university traditionally the ras chooses new academicians once every three years but due to the changes in the organizational structure of the academy no new members have been chosen since 2011 the ras made up for lost time in 2016 replenishing itself with 176 new academicians and 323 new corresponding members in addition to the 63 new foreign members which along with scully -- one of 14 named within the department of physical sciences -- include us national academy of sciences president macnutt marcia; nobel laureates serge arosh martinus veltman kenneth j arrow rogers kornberg jean-pierre sauvage and dan shechtman; and former us secretary of state henry kissinger scullys research in laser physics quantum optics and biophotonics has led to important advances in many fields his work on the quantum eraser for instance has had a major impact on the philosophy of quantum mechanics scullys groundbreaking multidisciplinary efforts encompasses many firsts including the first quantum theory of the laser (with nobel laureate willis lamb) the first demonstration of ultraslow light in hot gases the first demonstration of lasing without inversion and the first detection of anthrax endospores in real time furthermore his work on quantum coherence and correlation effect has shed new light on the foundations of quantum mechanics and yielded new insights into quantum thermodynamics ""marlan was a graduate student at yale shortly after i started teaching at cornell "" said dr david m lee texas a&m distinguished professor of physics and astronomy 1996 nobel prize winner in physics and foreign member of ras since 2007 ""he had a remarkable graduate career working with willis lamb over the years i have been impressed by the broad range of his research and skills as a researcher in my seven years at texas a&m he has been a wonderful colleague"" lee is but one of the many high-caliber modern scientists recruited to texas a&m in the past two and a half decades due in large part to scullys efforts energy and expertise that list in addition to lee includes fellow nobel laureates dudley r herschbach (chemistry 1986) and roy s glauber (physics 2005) along with a dozen national academy members many texas a&m distinguished professors and a plethora of bright young scientists from all over the world -- most of whom are either housed in or directly affiliated with scullys world-class iqse-based research group the russian academy of sciences was founded in 1724 when peter the great on the advice of gottfried leibniz invited prominent foreign scientists -- including leonhard euler nicholas and daniel bernoulli christian golbach jean delisle georg krafft and others -- in a quest to improve visibility of russian science many of the foreign academicians including daniel bernoulli and euler became world-famous while working for the russian empire the academy has always cherished ties with foreign scientists as evidenced by the fact that foreign honorary members have been selected on a regular basis since its establishment ""i understand that peter the great founded the russian academy of sciences and so it is only appropriate that marlan scully the great become a member "" said dr edward s fry texas a&m distinguished professor of physics and astronomy and former head of texas a&m physics and astronomy ""im honored i have had the opportunity to work and collaborate with him he has been a great asset not only to the department but also to texas a&m in general"" scully is a member of the national academy of sciences academia europaea and the max planck society as well as a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences the national academy of inventors the optical society and the american physical society a prolific researcher and author he has published more than 700 scientific articles and several books -- including laser physics by sargent scully and lamb and quantum optics by scully and zubairy -- earning an h-index of 95 and an impressive google scholar citation index exceeding 40 000 a highly decorated researcher and scholar scullys many awards and professional honors include the frederic ives medal/jarus quinn prize -- the highest award of the optical society (osa) recognizing overall distinction in optics -- the aps arthur l schawlow prize the institute of electrical and electronics engineers incs quantum electronics award the osas townes award the franklin institutes elliott cresson medal the commemorative silver medal of the czech republic the osas adolph e lomb medal the alexander von humboldt distinguished faculty prize the osas dpg hebert walther award harvard universitys morris loeb lectureship multiple distinguished fellowships including a guggenheim and many other accolades throughout his career scully who joined the texas a&m faculty in 1992 received both his masters of science and phd degrees in physics from yale university working with nobel laureate willis lamb he is a distinguished alumnus of the university of wyoming where he received his bachelors degree in engineering physics and also did undergraduate studies at rensselaer polytechnic institute to learn more about scully and his research visit http://physicstamuedu/people/scully/ visit here for additional information on the russian academy of sciences"
"the texas a&m university system is collaborating with the army research laboratory (arl) in establishing arl south the texas a&m system looks forward to this collaboration with one of the premier research labs in the nation in the service of our armed forces texas a&m university is proud to be the civilian institution that graduates the largest number of trained officers and texas a&m engineering is one of the largest engineering programs in the nation this collaboration will enable us to further our research contributions in a unique environment of co-creation said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp arl south will leverage regional expertise and facilities throughout the south central region to accelerate discovery innovation and transition of science and technology in support of the department of defenses third offset strategy and the army of 2050 ""arls plan is to locate research staff at key locations in the us such as the south central region this extension of arl to the nations innovation hubs will allow us to establish new relationships with other researchers in academia and industry "" said dr philip perconti acting arl director perconti said the global academic community industry small businesses and other government laboratories benefit from this kind of engagement through ""collaboration with arls specialized research staff and unique technical facilities as well as its understanding of army technology needs"" the initial focus areas of arl south will be primarily materials and manufacturing including additive manufacturing biosciences energy and power research in cyber sciences and intelligent systems will also be included the headquarters of arl south will be located on the university of texas campus in austin"
a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has partnered with higher education institutions from across the southern united states to form the transportation consortium of south-central states (tran- set) a research consortium funded by the department of transportation (dot) the researchers from tees will focus on projects associated with the use of multifunctional materials in new component construction remote sensing of signals potentially generated by these materials development of new environmentally friendly cement alternatives and the understanding and investigation of corrosion in aging infrastructure components dr ibrahim karaman chevron professor i and department head in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university will lead the tees team the consortium has the potential to highlight next generation materials needed for safer and smarter transportation infrastructure said karaman we need new and improved materials to develop our infrastructure and im excited that our faculty will be joining other research from across several southern states dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering will work with karaman to design optimization and development of embedded smart material sensors i am excited to work with this local texas a&m team in addressing materials and mechanics challenges in an area that is new and exciting to all of us hartl said i also look forward to our interactions with the other trans-set members dr aydin karsilayan associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering will develop new methods for broadcasting sensor signals at low powers dr miladin radovic associate professor and associate department head in the materials science and engineering department will develop new polymer-based concrete substitutes for reduced greenhouse gas emissions dr homero castenada associate professor in the materials science and engineering department will be involved in addressing new methods for corrosion control and mitigation in existing transportation structures dr marwa hassan of louisiana state university will lead tran-set which will address novel materials and innovative construction methodologies as applied throughout the transportation infrastructure it will also include economic limitations by considering research topics with strong potential for transition to implementation the dot will support the consortium with $25 million for the first year and determine future funding based on research success in addition to tees other members of the consortium include arkansas state university baton rouge community college navajo technical university new mexico state university oklahoma state university prairie view a&m university texas a&m university the university of new mexico the university of texas at arlington and the university of texas at san antonio
the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure summit had a successful inaugural event last week on the texas a&m university campus the summit brought together experts from government private industry and academia to debate and share ideas about protecting the united states from growing cybersecurity threats around the world overall the three-day event had a theme of optimism keynote speaker dr john launchbury director of the information innovation office at the us defense advanced research projects agency said he believes its a battle that can be won despite what people may read in the news other keynote speakers included: ray rothrock chairman and ceo of redseal and former general partner at venrock the venture capital arm of the rockefeller family dan ennis former director of the threat operations center at the national security agency (nsa) rhonda maclean ceo maclean risk partners and former chief information security officer (ciso) for the boeing corporation bank of america and barclays plc global retail and commercial bank in london for more about the issues discussed the bryan-college station eagle was on hand for the event and covered both the keynote from launchbury and the keynotes and panel discussions launchbury says issues serious but solvable cyber experts debate security priorities at texas a&m summit the event was sponsored by the lynde and harry bradley foundation and hosted by the texas a&m college of engineering and the bush school of government and public service the event organizers were the texas a&m institute for advanced study and the texas a&m cybersecurity center a join partnership between texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station the second cybersecurity of critical infrastructure summit is currently scheduled for april 2018
the texas a&m university college of engineering will lead a new south central regional robotics innovation collaborative part of the advanced robotics manufacturing (arm) innovation hub announced friday (jan 13) by the department of defense american robotics inc an independent institute founded by carnegie mellon university will lead the institute the arm institute joins the manufacturing usa network in its collective effort to help revitalize american manufacturing and incentivize companies to invest in new technology development in the united states the use of robotics is already present in manufacturing environments but todays robots are typically expensive singularly purposed challenging to reprogram and require isolation from humans for safety the arm institutes mission is to create and deploy robotic technology by integrating the diverse collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines to create a robust manufacturing innovation ecosystem we are excited to participate in this sustained contribution to arms public-private partnership in support of the expansion of advanced robotics for our nations manufacturing growth said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system this represents a significant investment in the robotics manufacturing space texas a&m already has some of the nations most outstanding faculty and researchers in the field of robotics and soon our new rellis campus will provide them and their research partners with premier test bed facilities and training space over the past year texas a&m engineering has been chosen to lead two other manufacturing usas nationwide initiatives texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) are leading the gulf coast regional manufacturing center one of five regional centers located across the country as part of the clean energy smart manufacturing innovation institute in addition the texas a&m energy institute a partnership between texas a&m and tees has been selected to lead the modeling and simulation efforts of the rapid advancement in process intensification deployment manufacturing institute of the american institute of chemical engineers having texas a&m leading this effort in robotics for advanced manufacturing is going to have significant and long lasting impact opening new avenues for education for our students and positively impacting the economies of our community state and nation said michael k young president of texas a&m university the robotics-manufacturing consortium headquartered in pittsburgh is comprised of more than 220 partners from state and local governments industry universities community colleges and non-profit organizations partner organizations contributed $173 million combined with $80 million in federal funding the substantial cost matching reflects the importance the us robotics community places on this institute and its value to us businesses academia and state and local governments as the lead of the south central regional robotics innovation collaborative we look forward to advancing the arm institute mission to improve us competitiveness in manufacturing through development of smart collaborative robotic solutions said m katherine banks vice chancellor of texas a&m engineering texas a&m engineering has strong existing partnerships with two-year colleges and key state agencies that support workforce development and education opportunities we will leverage these and other resources and develop new robotics curricula and training activities for manufacturing the arm institute joins the manufacturing usa institute network a program with industry academia and government participants who co-invest in the development of innovative manufacturing technologies and capabilities each manufacturing usa institute focuses on a technology area critical to future competitiveness – such as additive manufacturing integrated photonics or smart sensors the federal government has committed over $1 billion matched by over $2 billion in non-federal investment tees brings a network of regional expertise in engineering and design manufacturing and robotics for collaborative manufacturing to bridge the gap between innovative research and industry need by offering workforce training skills development and stackable certificates based on local robotics and manufacturing demands tees is uniquely able to create career pathways across all educational levels to increase the number of qualified employees in the industry dr prabhakar pagilla the james j cain professor ii in mechanical engineering at texas a&m served as principal investigator from texas a&m on the proposal and also represented texas a&m engineering at the announcement in washington dc dr ben zoghi professor in engineering technology and industrial distribution and stavros kalafatis professor of practice in electrical engineering actively participated in the proposals development and industry partnerships dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees and senior associate dean for research in the college of engineering continuously provided guidance and support throughout the long proposal effort and championed texas a&ms participation in this multi-university partnership for more information regarding manufacturing usa please visit https://wwwmanufacturingusacom/
dr robert skelton tees distinguished professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been selected to receive the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) mechanics and control of flight award for 2017 the award presented for an outstanding recent technical or scientific contribution in the mechanics guidance or control of flight in space or the atmosphere honors skeltons lasting contributions at the interfaces of mechanics and control of flight and leading the world in analysis design modeling and control of tensegrity structures he will receive a medal and certificate of citation during a recognition luncheon at the aiaa science and technology forum and exposition (scitech 2017) on jan 10 skelton pioneered the mathematical description of tensegrity structures derived by combining tension and integrity the term tensegrity describes materials composed of strings and rods his papers have explained the tensegrity nature of the cytoskeleton of red blood cells and of the molecular structure of natures strongest tensile material the spider fiber tensegrity materials can change shape by altering their string tension this ability to adapt allows tensegrity to produce materials systems that can modify their acoustic electromagnetic or mechanical properties in addition tensegrity structures may include built-in actuators sensors and power-storage devices this versatility makes tensegrity an attractive alternative to conventional design skelton joined the department in 2015 he became a member of the national academy of engineering in 2012 he is a fellow of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers a fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics and a life member of the alexander von humboldt foundation a non-profit foundation in germany established to promote cooperation in international research
"the texas a&m energy institute a joint partnership between texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) will be leading the modeling and simulation efforts of the rapid advancement in process intensification deployment (rapid) manufacturing institute of the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) this coalition announced dec 9 by the department of energy (doe) will be the newest and 10th member of the nations network of manufacturing usa institutes earlier this year the doe called for the establishment of a manufacturing innovation institute on modular chemical process intensification for clean energy manufacturing to date rapid has enlisted 75 companies 34 academic institutions seven national laboratories two other government laboratories and seven non-governmental organizations from all regions of the country these partners have committed to cost shares that leverage the does $70 million contribution over five years with total project spending exceeding $140 million rapids partners come from energy-intensive industries and range from small to large enterprises the new institute will transform the us industry by creating a manufacturing renaissance around innovative modular process-intensified manufacturing while concurrently developing the next generation of a highly skilled labor force leveraging the benefits of a public-private partnership between industry university national laboratories federal state local and not-for-profit entities the rapid institute will provide open access to shared research development and demonstration facilities and improve us manufacturing competitiveness through collaboration and partnership across industries national laboratories and universities rapid will enable transformational improvements in energy efficiency and us manufacturing productivity said dr glen a laine vice president for research at texas a&m the successful partnership we have forged between texas a&m and tees through the energy institute will continue to produce research programs and technologies that improve and impact peoples lives christodoulos floudas was the primary driving force behind this effort and he worked tirelessly to make texas a&m engineering a major partner in this initiative said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees floudas who served as director of the texas a&m energy institute passed away in august having the opportunity to lead such an institute supported by our outstanding faculty within texas a&m is a great tribute to chris legacy and the reputation for excellence texas a&m and tees have built in the field of advanced manufacturing"" the texas a&m energy institute will lead the rapid manufacturing institutes efforts in the enabling technology area of multi-scale modeling simulation optimization and control preliminarily involving 11 texas a&m faculty members as well as researchers at six other universities this work will center on the rapid demonstration of energy efficiency through process intensification technology in computational space thus providing expedient screening of competing technology concepts and step-by-step justification of proceeding with technology development the texas a&m energy institute has assembled a world-class team of faculty experts in all areas of process intensification modeling simulation optimization and control said dr stratos pistikopoulos interim co-director of the texas a&m energy institute and the primary investigator of texas a&ms efforts in the consortium the breadth of the ability of our collaborators and our team at texas a&m on this project to take a process intensification solution from concept to design to testing to optimization and control – toward the development and deployment of process intensification process solutions – is unmatched in the world the texas a&m energy institutes ongoing efforts in leading the gulf coast regional manufacturing center for the clean energy smart manufacturing innovation institute the ninth member of the nations network of manufacturing usa institutes will be closely aligned and integrated as both institutes are seeking improvements efficiencies and energy consumption reductions in the same industries additional information about the rapid manufacturing institute and its objectives can be found at wwwprocessintensificationorg"
m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr richard miles (left) dr thomas overbye (center) and dr zhijian zj pei (right) texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research professors peis appointment was effective aug 27 2016 overbyes was effective jan 1 and miless was effective feb 15 miles is a joint professor in the departments of aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering which he joined on feb 15 as part of the guri grant initiative he is a member of the national academy of engineering miles will establish and lead the center of excellence in interdisciplinary optical and laser detection systems for national security and safety at texas a&m one application of his innovative research is the development of state-of-the-art instrumentation for remote detection that will identify hazardous gases and dangerous contaminants such as anthrax or the ebola virus hidden explosives such as ieds and/or greenhouse gases and pollutants overbye is a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering which he joined jan 1 as part of the guri grant initiative he is a member of the national academy of engineering his research interests are in the domains of smart grid cybersecurity renewable electric energy systems power system visualization power system analysis by computer methods power system stability and power systems operation and control pei is a professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering which he joined in august 2016 he brings years of experience from working in industry academia and government environments and was named a society of manufacturing engineers fellow and american society of mechanical engineers fellow he received a national science foundation (nsf) directors award for excellence program director and an nsf career award his interests include cybermanufacturing systems additive manufacturing and subtractive manufacturing processes
"the polymer nanocomposites laboratory at texas a&m university directed by dr jaime grunlan is working with scientists at the sandia national laboratory to reduce or eliminate arc faults and corrosion in solar cells corrosion in photovoltaic cells which convert light into electricity can damage connections and reduce or destroy the ability to generate electricity sandia labs recently issued a press release detailing multiple approaches to corrosion research which has been picked up by several news outlets the specific goal of grunlans research with sandia is to prevent arc faults which are discharges of electricity that can occur when electrical connections are corroded initial testing suggests the thin clay-based nanocomposite coatings developed at texas a&m could also be used as anti-corrosive layers within the cells to improve durability/lifetime the coatings developed within grunlans research group are being evaluated as barriers to moisture and corrosive gases testing is being done at sandia as part of the larger durable module materials national lab consortium (duramat) which is seeking to benefit the photovoltaic industry its exciting to see how our long-term research in gas barrier and flame retardant coatings is being used to improve the efficiency and longevity of solar cells we are solving complicated problems using low-cost and environmentally benign materials which is an added bonus grunlan said in the release erik spoerke of sandias electronic optical and nano materials department compared the development of these nanocomposite films some of which can be 100 times thinner than a human hair to building a house ""its about assembling those structures in the right way so that you can use inexpensive materials and still get the benefits you want "" spoerke said ""if you build a house its not just piling together the drywall and two-by-fours and shingles youve got to use the two-by-fours to make the frame set the drywall on the two-by-fours and assemble the shingles on the roof"" the overall goal of the research is to bring down the long-term cost of solar panels and solar technology being able to slow down corrosion in solar panels using inexpensive materials like clay so that they last longer and stay efficient could help facilitate faster adoptions of solar technology grunlans project with sandia is an industry-sponsored project through the texas a&m engineering experiment station grunlan is the linda & ralph schmidt 68 professor in the texas a&m department of mechanical engineering"
the turbomachinery laboratory (turbo lab) is offering entry-level and experienced engineers a chance to break from the office network with colleagues and learn from the brightest minds in the industry the turbo lab will host three continuing education short courses in houston in late march courses run concurrently and are held at the doubletree by hilton houston intercontinental airport hotel attendees will receive a 10 percent discount when they register by feb 21 each short course offers continuing education unit (ceu) credits and is taught by one or more field experts with broad industrial knowledge attendees will glean valuable industry insights to take back to their organizations and add to their professional network with the sharing of ideas questions and experiences the turbo lab a center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has offered short courses since 1995 building upon texas a&m universitys tradition of continuing education and professional development stand-alone short courses offer attendees the opportunity to delve deep into specific subject matter said dr dara w childs director of the turbo lab the courses are presented by instructors with extensive relevant backgrounds to the course materials including troubleshooting diagnosis and testing courses offered centrifugal compressor operations for 21st century users date: march 21-24 2017 ceu credits: 28 centered on centrifugal gas compression the centrifugal compressor operations course begins with an introduction of basic centrifugal compressor technology including an overview of the components and nomenclature it progresses through the design and selection processes with an overview of the various analytical tools employed it concludes with project installation commissioning and maintenance who should attend this course is intended for novice and experienced oil and gas professionals with basic knowledge of centrifugal gas compressors instructors: jigger jumonville – owner of jumonville engineering j jeffery moore – principal engineer southwest research institute peter c rasmussen – owner of rasmussen machinery cons llc james m sorokes – principal development engineer dresser-rand a siemens business rotordynamicsdate: march 21-24 2017ceu credits: 28 the rotordynamics short course focuses on turbomachines including turbines compressors expanders motors pumps and generators attendees will leave with an understanding of the rotordynamics of these machines and their subcomponents to help select analyze troubleshoot and repair them for maximum reliability and minimum vibration problems the course is not math-intensive and includes histories and workshops for hands-on evaluation of actual machines who should attend the course is intended for beginning and intermediate engineers in the petroleum chemical power and gas industries as well as individuals interested in the dynamics of rotating machinery instructor: malcom leader – turbomachinery consultant owner of applied machinery dynamics dry gas sealing systems date: march 21-23 2017 ceu credits: 19 this two and a half day short course considers major aspects of dry gas seal systems applications and operation and provides a review of dry gas seal theory an in-depth analysis of system application and design and a guide to seal and system component selection attendees will also get an overview of system reliability safety and troubleshooting who should attend the course is intended for entry-level to intermediate engineers instructors: vladimir bakalchuk – global technology transfer lead at flowserve corporation jim mccraw – senior rotating equipment engineer at bp america inc rich hosanna – manager of t28 applications engineering at john crane to register or to learn more about the courses and instructors visit turbolabtamuedu or contact debbie maggs at debbie@turbo-labtamuedu or 979-845-7114 in addition to stand-alone short courses the turbo lab offers one-day short courses in conjunction with the turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) held each september in houston tps presented entirely by the turbo lab hosts the premier professional continuing education program relied upon by rotating equipment engineers and technicians worldwide spanning oil and gas petrochemical power aerospace chemical and water industries
dr john valasek professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and director of the center for autonomous vehicles and sensor systems (canvass) in the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has been selected by the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) as a 2017 aiaa fellow the aiaa confers the distinction of fellow upon 1 percent of its members in recognition of their notable and valuable contributions to the arts sciences or technology of aeronautics and astronautics the work and leadership of the aiaa fellows and honorary fellows consistently ensures that todays aerospace dreams become tomorrows realities said aiaa president jim maser they are individuals who have each shown a tireless dedication to shaping the future of aerospace aiaa congratulates the members of the 2017 class of fellows and honorary fellows on their selection the induction ceremony will take place at the aiaa aerospace spotlight awards gala on may 3 at the ronald reagan building and international trade center in washington dc valasek who is director of the vehicle systems & control laboratory in the aerospace department has been with the aerospace department for 20 years he has served as chair of committee to 47 completed graduate degrees and his students have won national and regional student competitions in topics ranging from aircraft design to smart materials to artificial intelligence he teaches courses in atmospheric flight mechanics vehicle management systems modern control of aerospace systems cockpit systems and displays and aircraft design valasek has been actively conducting flight mechanics and controls research of manned and unmanned air vehicles in both industry and academia for 32 years previously as a flight control engineer for the northrop corporation aircraft division his research is currently focused on bridging the gap between traditional computer science topics and aerospace engineering topics and he is a patent holder and leading developer of flight control systems for autonomous air refueling of unmanned air vehicles valasek has also made contributions to the flight control of hypersonic air vehicles planetary entry vehicles morphing aircraft and cockpit systems and displays for general aviation flight safety he is currently a member of the aiaa unmanned systems technical program committee the aiaa intelligent systems technical committee and an associate editor of the journal of guidance control and dynamics valasek has authored or co-authored three books: morphing aerospace vehicles and structures (2012); advances in intelligent and autonomous aerospace systems (2012); and nonlinear multiple time scale systems in standard and non-standard forms: analysis and control (2014) valasek has been recognized for his teaching with awards at three levels: the 2014 asee/aiaa john leeland atwood award as the national outstanding aerospace educator; the thaman university professorship for undergraduate teaching excellence (2016); the university level texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award for teaching (2008) and a scholar of the montague center for teaching excellence (2001); the college of engineering level bp amoco teaching excellence award (2001 2003) and the thomas u mcelmurry teaching excellence award in the aerospace engineering department (2001 2004 2014) valasek serves as the faculty adviser for texas a&ms sigma gamma tau (sgt) chapter the aerospace engineering honor society he served as the national president for sgt from 2006-2008 as well as the faculty adviser to the texas a&m student branch of the american institute for aeronautics and astronautics from 2000-2009 and received the national faculty advisor award from aiaa in 2005 valasek earned a bachelors in aerospace engineering from california state polytechnic university pomona in 1986 and a masters with honors and doctorate in aerospace engineering from the university of kansas in 1990 and 1995 respectively
"nuclear waste is a reality whether remnants of nuclear weapons or the byproducts of nuclear power plants while we arent at risk of an attack from a giant radioactive lizard nuclear waste can still pose threats to human health dr zachary grasley an associate professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university conducted experiments for the savannah river national lab (srnl) in hopes of preventing nuclear waste leakage the waste in question is relatively harmless especially compared to what we see in comic books and movies but it is a waste that must be safely disposed of the best way to safely store and contain this nuclear waste is by mixing it into a cement grout and storing it in large concrete vaults grasleys research concerns the permeability of these grout mixtures and in turn the ability for nuclear materials to eventually flow through the solidified grout and into the environment the srnl contracted grasley to run these experiments because of his state-of-the-art permeability testing method what once took weeks to test can now be accomplished in minutes with this test developed at texas a&m the original construction of the system was funded directly by the texas a&m engineering experiment station ""i developed a prototype of the permeability measurement system as a phd student at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign i then built a more advanced second generation with dual testing capabilities both hollow and solid cylinders once i arrived at texas a&m "" said grasley these tests involve taking hollow or solid cylinders of various grout samples developed by srnl saturating them with water and subjecting them to high levels of water pressure inside of a pressure vessel immediately after the pressure on the surface of the sample equalizes to the pressure the vessel was subjected to causing the material to contract the pressure level inside the sample remains much lower however because the solid structure of the grout is bearing most of the pressure because liquids flow from high pressure areas to lower pressure areas water will begin to flow into the pore network of the sample if the pressure is sustained as water permeates the material it begins filling the pores in the sample causing it to expand and regrow the rate at which the sample expands after the initial contraction allows for an accurate calculation of the permeability of the sample this process takes less than an hour compared to previous testing techniques that could take weeks to complete by developing this testing method grasley has significantly reduced the time and effort required to understand the permeability of these different grout mixtures produced by the srnl this means previously unknown information about these samples can now be determined in minutes as the srnl produces various grout mixtures containing nuclear waste materials it is vital to understand the rate at which the nuclear materials can escape from them this is actually pretty critical because it turns out that small changes in the mixture can cause an order of magnitude change in permeability said grasley that is important because if you have an order of magnitude change in permeability it leads to an order of magnitude change in the time scale that it takes for the material to leach out an integral part of grasleys research team is phd student jeffryd rose who was responsible for the actual testing and reporting of the project this project fit with roses doctoral research which focuses on measuring permeability of cement based materials as a part of my phd research i built a setup to measure the permeability of cement based materials so measuring materials with similar composition was a great application of my own research said rose this project offered me the opportunity to apply my research to a practical problem going beyond theory which is why this research project was so important and meaningful to me rose expects to graduate from his doctoral program after completing the fall semester of 2017 roses findings were sent to srnl to evaluate and apply to future waste containment methods this research is a matter of both environmental safety and human health the goal is to find the best way to contain these potentially harmful materials to ensure that they do not leak into the environment groundwater or surface water the test grasley developed and his collaboration with srnl are ensuring the safe disposal of nuclear waste and continuing to open doors for further exploration of nuclear energy contributing author: ryan terry"
"five engineering faculty members were part of the inaugural class of presidential impact fellows which were recently announced by texas a&m university president michael k young the 2017 honorees from the texas a&m college of engineering are dr melissa a grunlan dr arum han dr arul jayaraman dr raymundo arroyave and dr zachary grasley ""today we acknowledge a new investment in the excellence of select faculty who through their scholarship personal commitment and results demonstrate they are rising to meet the challenges of their field and demonstrating impact towards creating a better world "" said young ""i am proud to name these faculty as the inaugural presidential impact fellows"" the program was established to recognize rising stars in their respective fields and those who embody the universitys commitment to advancing knowledge through transformational learning discovery innovation and impact for texas and the world twenty-four faculty members from across texas a&ms 16 colleges and schools two branch campuses and comprehensive university libraries were honored with this award grunlan is an associate professor and director of undergraduate programs in the department of biomedical engineering her laboratory focuses on developing new polymeric biomaterials for medical devices and regenerative therapies she has produced coatings hydrogels elastomers and porous foams from hybrid systems based on combining inorganic and organic polymers her projects include the development of self-cleaning membranes for implanted biosensors clot-resistant coatings for blood-contacting devices and scaffolds for bone repair and for the regeneration of osteochondral interfaces han is a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering director of the nanobio systems lab and director of the aggiefab nanofabrication facility he is an expert in microfluidic lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip technologies and his research focuses on the interface of micro/nanotechnology and life sciences with an interest in solving grand challenge problems in the broad area of health renewable bioenergy and biomanufacturing jayaraman is associate department head director of the graduate program and holds the ray b nesbitt endowed chair in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering his research interests include molecular systems biotechnology specifically on using integrated experimental and modeling approaches for investigating problems in human health and medicine; systems biology of cytokine signaling in inflammatory diseases; inter-kingdom signaling interactions between bacteria and human cells in gi tract infections; and development of microfluidic model systems for combinatorial drug screening and vascular tissue engineering arroyave is an associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering and directs the computational materials science lab which uses computational materials science tools to investigate material properties at different scales of length and time his research team uses a variety of simulation methods to investigate the fundamental properties of complex materials more recently he has worked on developing tools and frameworks for the accelerated discovery and development of materials grasley is an associate professor and peter c forster faculty fellow i in the zachry department of civil engineering and is also a faculty member in the materials science and engineering department his research interests include behavior and modeling of porous materials durability and sustainability of cementitious materials and mechanics and thermodynamics of concrete the presidential impact fellows program includes the use of the honorific title for life and an annual stipend of $25 000 each for the next three fiscal years to accelerate each recipients pedagogy research and service impacts identified by his or her dean and confirmed by academic leadership these faculty members are considered candidates for continued or new national and international acclaim and will utilize this honor to participate in national dialogue advance their scholarship and create new partnerships ""this honor furthers our belief that these faculty are and should be considered among the nations very best and will enable greater recognition for their excellence "" said dr karan l watson provost and executive vice president the 2017 recipients were honored officially at a ceremony on march 7"
dr jim e morel director of the center for large-scale scientific simulations (class) and professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been recognized as a recipient of the gerald c pomraning memorial award the award recognizes key contributions within the field of computational methods and its applications to the field of nuclear engineering the award is presented by the mathematics and computation division of the american nuclear society (ans) morel was designated as a recipient for his contributions to the development of discretization and multi-level solution techniques for neutral and charged particle transport on unstructured and structured meshes with adaptive refinement monte carlo methods and hybrid deterministic methods as well as discretization and solution techniques for the radiation-hydrodynamics equations in april morel will provide a presentation on some of his research at a banquet hosted by the international conference on mathematics and computational methods applied to nuclear science and engineering in korea morels contributions to both the department of nuclear engineering and the field of nuclear engineering are well documented morel has served as the director of class for 10 years facilitating and promoting multidisciplinary multiphysics computational research collaborations among texas a&m faculty across a broad range of departments as well as collaborative work among other universities and national laboratories morel has been a professor at texas a&m since 2005 where he has taught both undergraduate and graduate engineering courses and continued to pursue research in the areas of computational transport methods computational radiation-hydrodynamics methods and computational multiphysics methods prior to his service at texas a&m morel served as a staff member group leader and in a variety of other positions within los alamos national laboratory (lanl) providing direction for research projects project leadership and other duties morels established career has also included service at sandia national laboratories among other positions morel has previously been recognized as a fellow of ans and received the department of energy weapons program award of excellence and the lanl distinguished performance award
the focus of the fifth annual smart grid workshop on the texas a&m university campus was using smart grids big data the workshop was organized by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) smart grid center after receiving a $1 million grant from the national science foundations (nsf) big data spokes program to extend collaboration and innovation using big data for the smart power grid area
the significance of smart grids big data is in the diversity of its sources growth rate correlations and spatiotemporal (belonging to space and time) characteristics big data is measured all over and monitored at a fine temporal scale in smart electric grids but largely unexploited for its transformational impact in discovering new knowledge and solutions resulting in major improvements in smart grid operation (eg power generation and distribution renewable energy interfacing transmission grid resiliency) and smart grid user necessities (microgrids smart cities transportation etc) the use of big data in implementing the automation of data analytics and data management and the implementation and benefits of utilizing big data in advanced power grids were discussed at the workshop as invited keynote speaker todd horsman senior director of strategy and product development at cps energy discussed data and the evolving utility business model
during lunch the featured speaker was kevin nowka director of ibm research in austin who discussed big data landscape: challenges and opportunities panel sessions included the topics big data availability and management international experiences: synchrophasors bd data analytics and tools and future efforts posters reflecting on graduate student research areas and outcomes were also presented and participants attended focus group sessions on topics related to big data this event was a great start toward forming a global partnership for big data research education and training relevant to the smart grids which the nsf grant was awarded for said dr mladen kezunovic principal investigator of the nsf grant and director of the smart grid center we are quite happy to serve as coordinators together with pis from temple university and the georgia institute of technology and expand the network of over 100 organizations and 200 individuals that have shown their interest so far overall 130 people attended the workshop including participants from texas a&m government and non-profit organizations and industry for more information about the workshop visit the smart grid centers website the next workshop on the topic will take place in april 2018
mauricio coen a phd student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded an aggies commit to graduate and professional student education experiences fellowship he will use the $1 500 award to help fund expenses for the a3dpt-mars: advantages of 3-d printing technology to operations in future human exploration of mars experiment which is part of the poland mars analog simulation (pmas) 2017 the aggies commit fellowship aims to support high-impact learning experiences of graduate and professional students that go beyond required degree program activities this fellowship furthers graduate and professional education by providing support and access to resources and programming not available at texas a&m and collaborative research with senior scholars at other campuses in the united states as well as internationally pmas 2017 organized by the space exploration project group of the space generation advisory council is a realistic mars simulation mission the simulation will concentrate on research areas that will be important for a real mars missions and will allow scientists and researchers to test out innovative ideas in a controlled environment the project consists of two teams astronauts and flight support a team of six analog astronauts will conduct scientific research and record their experiences for two weeks while confined in the modular analog research station in turza poland a new habitat built by space garden company in the polish mountains in addition they will have a three-day lunar simulation prior to pmas in partnership with the european space agency fully isolated from the rest of the world their only point of contact to earth will be the second team at the mission support center (msc) located 530 kilometers away in the offices of abm space in torun poland a group of 30 international students and young professionals will make up the flight support team supporting supervising and analyzing the astronauts activities coen will be at the msc providing support for the a3dpt-mars experiment the a3dpt-mars experiment will strive to understand if 3-d printing will bring operational advantages to human mars exploration and quantify the differences between the current approach to space exploration and the potential for future mars exploration coen said while previous research has focused on what 3-d printing can create this experiment will focus on testing a variety of operational scenarios mostly centered around geological sampling they will test scenarios by having simulated tool breakdowns during geological expeditions which have to be repaired by the astronauts using the 3-d printer the astronauts will also be able to print parts they think are necessary for improving their effectiveness during the mission overall they will be using an exact replica of the amf a 3-d printer currently aboard the international space station (iss) this will allow them to compare real iss operations with a mars analog simulation this replica is being provided by made in space which is providing in-kind support to the experiment made in space is also providing their vast expertise with 3-d printing and operations to the a3dpt-mars team coen will provide operational support to the astronauts for times when the printer stops working or they need clarification with procedures he will also have the capability to print parts without an astronaut needing to be present this will allow them to test the difference between earth and mars controlled 3-d printed operations we hypothesize that astronauts will be able to adapt more quickly to changing mission goals coen said crew time (astronauts available work time) is one of the most valuable assets in any space exploration mission and hopefully 3-d printing embedded in their daily operations will reduce time spent in cumbersome tasks especially with repairs coen hopes the experiment will pave the way to explore additive manufacturing technology to reduce space exploration costs while coen will be the one traveling to poland this summer the a3dpt-mars is being put together by an international interdisciplinary team of students that has been collaborating for about a year they are involved in designing 3-d printed parts testing prototypes and creating procedures members of the team include coen benjamin morrell (university of sydney australia) deliya kim (kaist south korea) and michael muller and sophie gruber (university of graz & innsbruck university austria) dr greg chamitoff professor of practice in the aerospace engineering department and his aerospace technology research and operations center are providing guidance financial support and resources to complete this experiment
the 2017 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) is bringing an impressive group of startups and an experienced lineup of judges to college station on may 18 at the competition judges will narrow the field of 16 semi-finalists down to six finalists and the final judging round will be open to the public and the media this years startups include companies from across a wide spectrum of fields including infrastructure analysis medical devices clean technology and artificial intelligence finalist judges announced so far include graham weston texas a&m university class of 86 and co-founder of rackspace hosting and dr billy cohn renowned heart surgeon and vice president at johnson & johnsons center for device innovation at the texas medical center in houston this years prize pool is the largest yet at $300 000 in cash and in-kind services details on specific awards will be announced closer to the competition in the first two years the tnvc has awarded more than $400 000 in 2016 a $50 000 top prize went to reecycle a houston-based company reclaiming rare earth elements from recycled electronics in 2015 $50 000 cash and $50 000 in investment from the texas emerging technologies fund went to noninvasix which is using patented optoacoustic technology to develop a solution for the safe accurate and noninvasive monitoring of fetal welfare during labor and delivery 2017 semi-finalists: alleviant medical medical devices - houston alleviant medical is a houston-based company developing next-generation devices to treat heart failure the company is committed to providing symptomatic relief and improved quality of life for over 6 million patients suffering from this disease clear river enviro inc environmental - sugar land clear river enviro inc is a healthcare support services business they focus on cleaner compliant solutions to ensure pharmaceutical waste stays out of the environment and does not contribute to the current opioid epidemic their disruptive technology delivers significant economies of scale over existing methods fortis biosciences inc biotechnology - college station fortis biosciences is an early-stage biotech startup translating the untapped universe of biochemicals produced by the endogenous microbiota into a new generation of drugs for human diseases fortis employs a proprietary and innovative discovery platform to identify novel compounds with powerful drug-like properties from the pharmacy inside us guidabot llc biomedical devices - houston guidabot llc was formed in 2014 as a joint venture between fannin innovation studio and the university of houston to develop an mri-compatible robotic manipulator for automated and precise control of minimally invasive neurosurgical procedures intuitap medical inc medical device - houston intuitap medical is developing a medical device to help physicians more accurately and efficiently place spinal needles for epidurals and spinal taps they provide physicians with real-time imaging of the vertebrae along with needle guidance to help them successfully place the needle on the first try macromoltek health it - austin medicine to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases is costly to both the researchers discovering them and the end user this cost is determined by the research that went into discovery and development clinical trials to prove the safety and efficacy and all failed drugs attempted in the process we reduce the cost of new drugs by decreasing the time nhc llc medical devices - houston nhcs otricath™ catheter introduces a new perspective on therapy delivery the platform technologys proprietary infuse/withdraw technique delivers cancer-fighting agents to solid tumors with unparalleled control and predictability for optimal therapeutic benefit and minimal systemic effect prepflash education- austin prepflash uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate multiple choice fill-in-the-blank true/false quizzes and flashcards just upload a pdf copy and paste a url type in your own notes or take a picture with the mobile app and prepflash will take care of the rest quantum industrial development corp energy/automotive - san antonio quantum industrial development corp is a texas-based company that has partnered with texas a&m university-san antonio in a project to develop a vehicle drivetrain that can achieve 100 miles per gallon this joint project holds the potential to dramatically improve vehicle fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions resthetics energy/water - houston resthetics is a houston-based company that is converting waste anesthetic gas into a renewable resource resthetics primarily recycles sevoflurane and desflurane the two most widely used anesthetic gases essential to anesthetizing patients for surgery rotex medical device - austin rotex develops the worlds thinnest and lightest electronic tattoo biometric sensors e-tattoo is a multifunctional high-fidelity noninvasive sensing platform that is hair thin skin soft and considered the ultimate form of wearables biometrics that are monitored include ekg eeg emg respiration temperature hydration blood pressure etc sensytec materials - houston there are currently no other technologies that detect the structural integrity of concrete in real-time over the operational lifetime of a structure the company monitors cracking contamination corrosion temperature mechanical pressures and more by delivering data on these properties sensytec can ultimately prevent failures in concrete structures shower stream misc/water - austin shower stream is an internet of things smart shower for hotels that helps them save water energy and money while improving their guests shower experience smarter sorting it mobile - austin smarter sorting has patent-pending technology that turns chemical waste into salable products in turn municipal waste depots lower their incineration rate and costs and smarter sorting generates multiple revenue streams stem cell security medical device- houston stem cell security is a biobanking company that will make it possible for adults to preserve their own stem cells--derived from a simple venous blood sample--for delivery to their doctor when requested thermascape technologies inc energy – college station thermascape technologies inc has developed a new class of fluids based on nanoparticle technology that increases heat transfer while reducing corrosion fouling and friction their self-generating self-stabilizing nanofluids can increase thermal effectiveness in heat exchangers by up to 50 percent while doubling the energy storage capacity in devices such as thermal batteries
what started as a whiteboard concept nearly 20 years ago by dr duncan maitland the stewart & stevenson professor i in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university could soon turn into a revolutionary product for the medical industry for treating vascular problems like aneurysms from his federally funded research on special plastics from the national institutes of health (national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering and national institute of neurological disorders and stroke) national science foundation department of energy and other sources maitland has created a peripheral vessel occlusion device called polyurethane-based shape memory polymer foams (smps) out of the 20 years of work the peripheral occlusion device was the first to be filed for a 510(k) clearance in the first quarter of 2017 a 510(k) is a premarket submission made to the food and drug administration (fda) to demonstrate that the device to be marketed is at least as safe and effective as a legally marketed device by the fda while a filing is no guarantee of approval to market and sell human devices the technical and commercial distance traveled in the last 20 years is significant maitland said the demonstrated benefit of using the shape memory polymer devices in humans and the wide adoption of technology in multiple clinical fields are two of the biggest hurdles remaining maitland said his device made of smps could provide doctors with a more effective and less risky method for treating aneurysms – blood-filled balloon-like bulges in the walls of a blood vessel that can rupture and cause neurological damage that is debilitating or even fatal especially when near the brain cerebral aneurysm ruptures occur in 30 000 people per year in the united states and nearly 75 percent of those patients can either die or become neurologically debilitated maitland hopes his research will mean a much better outcome for patients we develop vascular occlusion devices based on porous shape memory polymers the goal in occlusion is to create controlled blood clots that block off the target volume (eg aneurysm) and not the healthy vessels nearby he said existing occlusion devices regardless of the location in the body that they target (eg cerebrovascular aneurysm peripheral vessels feeding tumors and abdominal aortic aneurysms) rely on metal devices to fill volume and create foreign body surface area for clotting maitland said a dominant metal device category is embolic coils which are spring-like devices where metal is wound around a metal or polymer wire for all metal devices the body is asked to clot and occlude around a relatively low percentage of metal-filled volume with a relatively low surface area not surprisingly one of the main problems with metal embolic devices is that they only partially work because the target volume is not or only partially occluded to the point of requiring retreatment our shape memory polymer foams are delivered as compact devices that activate and expand once deployed into the body to fill a large percentage of the target volume with a porous high-surface area clotting scaffold thus for the shape memory polymer devices we achieve larger volume fills and much larger surface areas that result in superior filling and clotting maitland said also during testing the high surface area polymers result in a long-term healing response that is not observed with the metal devices so far in pre-clinical trials the shape memory polymer foams are superior to metal devices for both short and long-term clinical outcomes test results have also revealed smp foams promote long-term health of the areas of the blood vessel affected by the aneurysm reducing the chances of the aneurysm reforming which is shown by the formation of the types of cells and tissue that lead to a more stabilized healing in addition to demonstrating the promotion of an aggressive healing response in aneurysms the smp foams developed by maitland and his team are showing strong signs of biocompatibility – their ability to be accepted by the body in fact the foams are outperforming other fda-approved materials used in blood vessels this means less inflammation in the area which can inhibit the healing process typically foreign objects implanted in the body trigger an inflammatory response as the body attempts to reject them but the smp foams used by maitland show minimal inflammation once they are inserted into the aneurysm
this research is drawing the attention of others as well shape memory medical a company founded by maitland with industry veteran ted ruppel as ceo was selected as one of the top 40 best university startups of 2017 and was featured at the national council of entrepreneurial tech transfers university startups conference and demo day in april it was a great honor to be recognized as a top university startup maitland said i am a strong believer of making an impact with research in addition to the students that we train and papers that we publish i am such a fan of commercial technology translation that i was the founding director of the commercialization and entrepreneurship office in (the texas a&m engineering experiment station) tees he said i am thrilled with the opportunity to connect with other university startups the national council of entrepreneurial tech transfer and the whole community that believes in and supports academic entrepreneurism i also personally wish to thank dean and vice chancellor (m katherine) banks president (michael) young and chancellor (john) sharp for all of their support for the entrepreneurial ecosystem that the texas a&m system is building maitlands other funding resources include the lawrence livermore national laboratory tees texas a&m and the state of texas emerging technology fund
before the industrial revolution custom products were handmade by highly skilled individuals basic products that most people have in their homes today were very expensive and considered luxuries because of the time and skill that it took to make just one what the industrial revolution brought about was the ability to mass-produce identical items the result millions of units of a single product could be manufactured in short amount of time increasing availability and reducing the cost for consumers
researchers from the department of mechanical engineering and department of visualization at texas a&m university want to take things even further with custom cyber manufacturing using the technology behind origami and kirigami manufacturing the goal is to give non-manufacturers the ability to design and customize products such as chairs lamps and desks for their own use when one hears the word origami the first thing that usually comes to mind is an ornate figure made out of a single sheet of paper that has been folded many times origami manufacturing consists of the same basic idea manufacturers start by placing a flat sheet of material (metal or some kind of polymer) in a machine containing a robot that can fold it into the desired shape some machines can fold material using gravity twisting and turning it so it bends in a specific direction a kirigami machine has the ability to cut and fold the material this is currently done for a select number of large-scale parts but has not yet been used to make commercial items for the public it enables regular people to take their ideas and make something customized thats as good as what they would get if they bought it in a store said dr arun srinivasa co-director of the institute for manufacturing systems and associate department head and holdredge/paul professor in mechanical engineering at texas a&m this type of technology is most needed in the field of orthotics such as leg and wrist braces mass-produced braces are made the same way and not customized to fit each individual patient which can make them extremely uncomfortable to wear with custom cyber manufacturing uncomfortable braces would no longer be an issue because patients could have braces molded to fit the shape of their wrists or legs this type of technology has the potential to make commercial consumer items like jewelry lamp shades boxes or anything that is hollow or shell like in addition to its versatility custom cyber manufacturing can also help open up employment in the manufacturing field according to srinivasa a cyber manufacturing job will allow the person operating the machine to design what their product will look like the merging of technology and creativity will not only appeal to engineers but also non-engineers as well custom cyber manufacturing also frees up the machine operator from mundane tasks like cutting and folding since the machine has the ability to notify them when the object has been folded perfectly some may ask why go through all of this cant you accomplish the same thing with 3-d printing the answer is no 3-d printing and origami manufacturing are very similar yet each has its own capabilities and strengths for example 3-d printing would not be the best way to make custom products we use on a daily basis that are thin and shell-like objects made in a 3-d printer are deposited from power and the end product is solid they are very versatile and can potentially make many intricate shapes but are slow and have difficulty with slender or thing parts origami manufacturing is also efficient faster and costs a great deal less where a 3-d printer can take nearly three hours to make a single object an origami manufacturing printer can take three minutes to make the same object researchers are in the process of building a large origami manufacturing machine which will be housed on the texas a&m campus with a robotic arm inside to fold the material my dad was a machinist and could see that the other machinists would make amazing toys with scrap metal that was left over in their free time i never used to buy toys when i was young because my dads friends would make toys for me said srinivasa if we are able to provide that kind of thing to people it will unleash their creativity
efstratios (stratos) pistikopoulos tees distinguished research professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was recently appointed deputy director of the texas a&m energy institute in this role he will administer the institutes initiatives with manufacturing as well as its academic programs and will participate in the overall management of the institute pistikopoulos will continue to serve as interim co-director until a director is appointed pistikopoulos received his doctorate in chemical engineering from carnegie mellon university before joining texas a&m in 2015 he was a professor of chemical engineering at imperial college london and director of its centre for process systems engineering he is a fellow of the royal academy of engineering and the institution of chemical engineers and serves as editor-in-chief of the journal computers & chemical engineering pistikopoulos has authored or co-authored more than 350 major research publications in the areas of modeling control and optimization of process and energy and systems engineering applications along with 10 books he is responsible for two patents in 2012 he received the computing in chemical engineering award of the computing and systems technology division of the american institute of chemical engineers pistikopoulos received the title of doctor honoris causa from the university of politehnica of bucharest in 2014 and from the university of pannonia in 2015
"a team of texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers has been selected for a potential award by nasa to lead research into commercially viable civil supersonic transport aircraft that meet noise and efficiency requirements for overland flight put simply their research is on designing an aircraft that can modify its shape in real time in order to optimize for fuel efficiency or quiet flight as the flight phase and conditions change the team is one of five transformative system-level aviation innovations that nasa has selected as part of the nasa aeronautics university leadership initiative (uli) we are excited that texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station proposal was selected to be part of this highly competitive program with nasa said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees we have tremendous depth and strength in supersonics at texas a&m and look forward to advancing technology in this area of critical importance currently aircraft are limited to flying below mach 1 while over land because of the community noise impacts and even damage that can be caused by sonic booms research has shown small changes in supersonic transport outer mold lines can reduce sonic boom noise but these changes only work in specific flight conditions to be commercially viable aircraft must meet sonic boom signature limits for a range of flight conditions this multidisciplinary project which is led by texas a&ms departments of aerospace engineering materials science and engineering and boeing research & technology bridges advanced aerodynamics laser sensors and cutting-edge materials to enable a new generation of supersonic aircraft that can change shape during flight to reduce sonic boom said dr rodney bowersox aerospace engineering department head and co-principal investigator this has been a great team effort with texas a&m partnering with experts from several other universities and industry said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees and lead principal investigator together we will develop novel concepts for the design of the next generation of supersonic aircraft using adaptive structures principles"" these awards further enhance the strong relationship we have with our university partners said jaiwon shin nasas associate administrator for aeronautics in a press release we expect the awards will spur the nations leading universities to take a larger leadership role in advancing the revolutionary ideas needed to transform aviation and further advance us global leadership in the aviation community one of the additional goals of nasas uli program is for the selected universities to lead diverse multi-disciplinary teams the team led by tees includes researchers from several disciplines at texas a&m as well as several partner institutions including florida international university princeton university the university of houston the university of north texas and utah state university that have excellent technical capabilities in this area industry partners include ata engineering boeing and fort wayne metals team members include: texas a&m: dr rodney bowersox dr darren hartl dr paul cizmas and dr helen reed department of aerospace engineering; dr richard malak department of mechanical engineering; dr ibrahim karaman department of materials science and engineering dr george dulikravich department of mechanical and materials engineering florida international university; dr theocharis baxevanis department of mechanical engineering university of houston; dr richard miles departments of mechanical and aerospace engineering texas a&m university; dr marcus young department of materials science and engineering university of north texas; dr doug hunsaker department of mechanical and aerospace engineering utah state university; dr eric blades ata engineering james mabe boeing; edward white boeing; todd magee boeing; david lazzara boeing; hao shen boeing; dr jeremy schaffer fort wayne metals"
the texas a&m university system and the texas a&m engineering experiment station are part of a new public-private manufacturing usa initiative the advanced regenerative manufacturing institute (armi) headquartered in manchester new hampshire armi is the 12th manufacturing usa institute it brings together a consortium of nearly 100 partner organizations from industry government academia and the non-profit sector to develop next-generation manufacturing processes and technologies for cells tissues and organs approximately $80 million from the federal government will be combined with more than $200 million in cost share to support the development of tissue and organ manufacturing capabilities as part of continuing efforts to help revitalize american manufacturing and incentivize companies to invest in new technology development in the united states armi will lead the advanced tissue biofabrication (atb) manufacturing usa institute on behalf of the department of defense the texas a&m university system has made significant investment into biomanufacturing and is well positioned to make high-impact contributions in the field said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp i look forward to the partnership opportunities our researchers will have through the armi under the umbrella of manufacturing usa a public-private network that invests in the development of world-leading manufacturing technologies armi will work to integrate and organize the fragmented collection of industry practices and domestic capabilities in tissue biofabrication technology in order to better position the us relative to global competition armi will also focus on accelerating regenerative tissue research and creating state-of-the-art manufacturing innovations in biomaterial and cell processing for critical department of defense and civilian needs we need to develop 21st century tools for engineered tissue manufacturing that will allow these innovations to be widely available – similar to how a 15th century tool (the printing press) allowed knowledge to spread widely during the renaissance said inventor dean kamen armis chairman forty-seven industrial partners 26 academic and academically affiliated partners and 14 government and nonprofit partners support armis efforts the armi partnership continues to grow this aligns perfectly with our new engineering medicine (enmed) program focused on educating physician engineers who design and commercialize medical devices said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering along with a strong core of researchers working in engineered tissues and manufacturing technologies we look forward to further engagement with the armi partner universities and industry members and will also utilize this partnership to prepare a regional workforce with the skills needed to support reliable and high volume production of engineered tissues and organs in the future dr balakrishna haridas director of the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) and professor of practice in biomedical engineering at texas a&m serves as the pi/director for the armi operations at texas a&m and represented texas a&m engineering at the armi kickoff meeting in manchester new hampshire co-pis dr roland kaunas associate professor in biomedical engineering and dr carl gregory associate professor at the institute for regenerative medicine along with a large team of faculty from the departments of biomedical engineering electrical and computer engineering and industrial engineering along with the texas a&m health science center and texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences will bring a unique interdisciplinary approach to regenerative manufacturing systems development projects for the armi initiative dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees and senior associate dean for research in the college of engineering and dr jon mogford vice chancellor for research continuously provided guidance and support throughout the effort and championed texas a&ms participation in this multi-university industry and government partnership
"intuitap medical a houston-based medical device company was awarded $50 000 as the winner of the 2017 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) thursday on the texas a&m university campus intuitap is developing a medical device that helps physicians more accurately and efficiently place spinal needles for epidurals and spinal taps they provide physicians with real-time imaging of the vertebrae along with needle guidance to help them successfully place the needle on the first try the competition this year was extremely hard coming into it i was saying that it was probably the hardest competition that ive been in jessica traver ceo and co-founder of intuitap said but our product is very relatable every woman in the audience whos ever had a child knows how terrible epidurals are every husband whos ever watched their wife have a child knows how terrible they are so its a very relatable device"" according to the judges three teams stood out from the rest but separating the three from each other was a difficult task this was tough said judge mike wilkinson of paragon innovations we rotated them a lot and if we were here another hour we might have had a different winner but intuitap had a really cool medical device they have a clear path to market and their presentation today was really good as proof of how close the top group of teams were there was actually a tie for second place between houston-based otricath which is developing a novel catheter and austin-based shower stream an internet of things smart shower aimed at saving hotels money according to dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering and director of tees the event was another good example of the emphasis on entrepreneurship at texas a&m entrepreneurism is the cornerstone of the texas a&m engineering program said banks we support this competition to help our faculty students and researchers take great ideas and move them into the marketplace the competition was open to texas-based companies seeking to bring new or enhanced technology to the marketplace and required the companies in the pre-seed/seed start-up or early growth stages to pitch their ideas to judges that included angel investors and venture capitalists experienced entrepreneurs non-profit founders legal professionals patent experts and banking/investment professionals the companies were previously selected from a larger pool of applicants prior to the event as part of the competition participants received personal coaching and access to mentor strategists as they developed their competition business plans and presentation pitches this years group of finalists are our most diverse and complex group of technologies to date said dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees the fact that this competition continues to grow and have real impact is a testament to the innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem we are building at texas a&m for the benefit of the state of texas mays business school was also instrumental is putting together the competition mays business school takes very seriously its sustained commitment to support entrepreneurial excellence fueling innovation and collaboration across local state national and global economies said blake petty director of the center for new ventures and entrepreneurship at the mays business school in that respect we are proud to partner in and support the texas a&m new ventures competition the distinction this program bestows on its participants and its celebration of entrepreneurial success for societal benefit with more than $250 000 in total prizes the pool for the competition was the largest in the three-year history of the tnvc in the first two years the tnvc awarded more than $400 000 combined in 2016 a $50 000 top prize went to reecycle a houston-based company reclaiming rare earth elements from recycled electronics in 2015 $50 000 cash and $50 000 in investment from the texas emerging technologies fund went to noninvasix which is using patented optoacoustic technology to develop a solution for the safe accurate and noninvasive monitoring of fetal welfare during labor and delivery the division of research is extremely proud to be a sponsor of this years texas a&m new ventures competition said vice president for research glen a laine emerging technologies and innovations enhance the quality of life for the state of texas and its citizens as well as for people across the nation and around the world the 2017 tnvc was made possible by texas a&m tees the texas a&m division of research mays business school the texas a&m health science center texas a&m technology commercialization the tees clean energy incubator and the texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences sponsors for the event included the 80/20 foundation fluor pioneer natural resources winstead attorneys wells fargo innovation incubator and fujifilm diosynth technologies in-kind sponsors included tmc innovation innovate cxo services biotex aggie angel network pioneer natural resources and winstead attorneys am innovation center and ramey & schwaller full list of winners: 1st – $50 000 – intuitap medical 2nd – $35 000 – nhc inc (otricath) 2nd – $35 000 – shower stream 4th – $15 000 – clear river enviro inc 5th – $10 000 – thermascape technologies 6th – $5 000 – fortis biosciences elevator pitch competition: 1st - $5 000 – guidabot llc 2nd - $3 000 – sensytec 3rd - $2 000 - resthetics additional prizes: tmcx investment prize + accelerator admission - resthetics tmcx accelerator admission - guidabot innovatex/rvf prize – shower stream cleantech prize – wells fargo/tees clean energy incubator – claridge-culp ramey & schwaller ip legal services prize – fortis bioscience biotex investment prize – intuitap medical amerra visualization services prize – thermascape am innovation center prize – thermascape"
"as demonstrated over the weekend with the global wannacry ""ransomware"" cyberattack which infected 300 000 machines in 150 countries threats to cybersecurity have reached a crisis stage the global cost of cybercrime continues to increase and is estimated to reach $6 trillion by 2021 according to an analysis by cybersecurity ventures the texas a&m university system is stepping up to address this critical challenge by creating a system-wide initiative on cybersecurity education research and outreach led by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) associate vice chancellor and engineering professor of practice dr stephen a cambone has been appointed to lead the system-wide cybersecurity initiative cambone is the former us department of defense undersecretary of defense for intelligence and founder of adirondack advisors llc steve cambone is one of the most respected and knowledgeable leaders in cybersecurity and i cannot underscore enough the magnitude of expertise he brings to the system said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp we have breadth across multiple disciplines and enterprises throughout the system and under steves leadership we are well-positioned to elevate our cybersecurity initiatives to the next level cambone will engage thought leaders from government industry academia and not-for-profit organizations to develop transformational cybersecurity capabilities that support the united states mission of protecting against and combatting large-scale cyberattacks the broad vision of the texas a&m system cybersecurity initiative is intriguing seeking to bring together the fields of research technology development engineering policy and workforce development to improve cybersecurity said cambone there are few other organizations with such a wealth of resources to bring to bear im excited and eager to help in realizing the vision the assets of the texas a&m systems 11 universities and seven state agencies will be leveraged to maximize cybersecurity research and education and strengthen its impact in addressing cybersecurity threats the texas a&m system currently has world-renowned experts education programs facilities focused on cybersecurity research and 18 000 engineering students providing a unique opportunity to develop an elite cyber corps said texas a&m engineering vice chancellor m katherine banks with dr cambone leading this initiative we are well-positioned to move to the forefront of this critically important area in addition to associate vice chancellor for cybersecurity initiatives cambone will remain jointly appointed as a professor of practice in the texas a&m university college of engineering and will also be involved in the education programs at the george bush school of government and public service bush school faculty and students are particularly interested in the complexities of cybersecurity policy dr cambone combines great experience in national security policy at the highest levels with a detailed understanding of the cyber domain his leadership and the a&m systems strong relationships in the field put the a&m cyber team in a magnificent position to lead in this critically important arena said mark a welsh dean of the george bush school of government and public service in 2003 cambone was appointed as the pentagons first undersecretary of defense for intelligence and served from 2001-06 in the department of defense (dod) in that position cambone was responsible for the oversight of dods intelligence policy activities and budgets and its relationship with the director of national intelligence and the broader intelligence community cambone was awarded the dod distinguished public service medal by the secretary of defense and the national intelligence distinguished service medal by the director of national intelligence the significance of cybersecurity to our homeland defense is only increasing as our governments secrets our industry ideas and our citizens information are being held and transferred electronically a field that defies tradition by nature cybersecurity needs a combination of experience and innovation to guide policy into the digital era said congressman michael mccaul (r-tx) chairman of us house committee on homeland security steve cambone brings just that steve is an esteemed leader with both government and private sector experience who will guide texas a&ms cybersecurity initiative to the forefront of the emerging field and help engage conversations across industries and develop a new generation of cyber workforce experts as founder of adirondack advisors llc cambone has been an independent consultant advising start-up technology companies and public and private companies that service the national security market from 2007-12 he served in senior corporate positions for qinetiq north america (qna) including the senior and later executive vice president for strategic development as well as the president of qnas mission solutions group prior to joining the dod in 2001 cambone was a senior fellow at the center for strategic and international studies and director of research at the institute for national security studies at the national defense university he is a member of the advisory boards of the intelligence and national security alliance and volgenau school of it and engineering at george mason university cambone received his phd and masters degrees in political science from claremont graduate school and his bachelors degree in political science from the catholic university of america"
m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering at texas a&m university has appointed dr mark lawley head of the department of industrial and systems engineering the appointment of lawley who has been serving as interim head of the department is effective june 1 lawley is a texas a&m engineering experiment station research professor and joined the industrial and systems engineering department in 2014 after serving for 17 years on the faculty at purdue university and two years as a faculty member at the university of alabama he has also held engineering positions with emerson electric company and westinghouse corporation and has done extensive consulting lawley assumed the position of interim head of the industrial and systems engineering department in july 2016 and holds appointments in the departments of biomedical engineering and epidemiology and biostatistics and serves as deputy director of the center for remote health technologies and systems as a researcher in academics lawley has published more than 130 technical papers which have garnered four best paper awards and has supervised more than 30 graduate students in the completion of their dissertations and theses for his work in graduate education lawley received the 2006 james h greene graduate educator award from the school of industrial engineering at purdue university he earned his bachelors degree in industrial engineering from tennessee technological university in 1982 his masters degree manufacturing systems engineering from auburn university in 1988 and his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the university of illinois at urbana champaign in 1995 he is a registered professional engineer in the state of texas
"when casey mcneil and the rest of the reecycle team were competing at the 2016 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) they had received some positive feedback but still werent sure they were going to receive funding from the national science foundation now a year later the team has not only received funding but is closing in on opening a pilot production facility in houston weve recently made a few new developments to the process that were excited about and are filing additional patents around mcneil said while we continue to file patents in that family were also keeping a few things as trade secrets obviously to keep some areas close to the vest the technology continues to be on track and is scaling well mcneil is the ceo and one of three co-founders of the company along with cassandra hoang and susan tran all three of whom are graduates of the university of houstons ct bauer college of business reecycle with ree being an acronym for rare earth elements uses a patented process to recover such elements specifically neodymium and dysprosium from electronic devices according to the us department of energy china produces more than 95 percent of the worlds supply of these elements and less than 1 percent of them are recycled the reecycle team believes bringing a low-cost way to recycle these elements to the market is not only more sustainable compared to mining but that establishing a supply of these elements domestically is critical rare earth elements are critical to the manufacturing of magnets that are used in our hard drives cell phones electric cars and wind turbines mcneil said we produce the oxide which is a critical and key component to those materials but they arent actually the magnets so although we arent making the magnets ourselves we are partnering with two different groups to get closer to producing those magnets here in the states which would be a major step in the right direction for national defense and domestic manufacturing purposes with their winnings from the tnvc the group focused on designing systems for dismantling hard drives another potential source for rare elements that would otherwise be considered waste currently those hard drives are being shredded because there is no cost-effective method of extracting the elements mcneil said theyve now put together a process that will be deployed over the next year to more efficiently capture these materials before they are shredded we will be using these systems not only to remove the magnets that were after but also to be able to utilize the other materials that are in those drives he said theres high-grade aluminum and other materials that are in those drives that would be great to capture if we could do it cost effectively and thats exactly what our system is doing were really excited about the secondary business model thats come out of that opportunity mcneil said that like many startup competitions tnvc was a good opportunity for their team to sit down and reflect on their business plan something they often dont have time to do he also said that the interaction with the potential investors is always invaluable you really have a crash course board of advisors sitting in front of you across two different panels so its really interesting to see the feedback they have and why they think your baby is ugly or why they think your baby is beautiful he said hearing their advice and their criticisms and whatever it might be is extremely helpful more than other competitions they have attended mcneil was impressed by the competition at tnvc ""weve done a few competitions in the past and ill say i strongly believe the texas a&m new ventures competition did a tremendous job of pulling together some of the highest caliber competitors that weve ever seen he said he mentioned that it was good to talk to other startups and build those relationships but also used it as a measuring stick to see where their company compared from a progress standpoint--something that didnt happen as much at other competitions when youre around top competition like that and seeing what people are working on and how theyre presenting it and how theyre planning around their business model thats always a very inspirational thing i think that was our biggest takeaway mcneil said and relative to other competitions where you run into many student teams that maybe arent as far along or theyre still in the business plan stage and theres really not a lot of substance there its hard to judge what the validity of a company is we really liked how established the teams were at texas a&m new ventures"
the fourth eng-life workshop a faculty-led workshop designed to increase potential for multidisciplinary interaction and scientific communication between engineering physical sciences and the life sciences took place on april 14 in the memorial student center at texas a&m university the theme for the event was biomanufacturing and synthetic biology after opening remarks by dr glen a laine vice president for research at texas a&m the keynote was delivered by dr mansoor khan from the college of pharmacy on new collaboration opportunities to modernize pharmaceutical manufacturing and translation of texas a&m discoveries from bench to bedside other speakers followed with short presentations from the departments of molecular and cellular medicine; chemistry; biological and agricultural engineering; biological and agricultural engineering; entomology; veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; chemical engineering; electrical and computer engineering; and biomedical engineering dr arum han professor in the electrical and computer engineering department and chair of the organizing committee said the purpose of the event is to provide opportunities for faculty and students to meet and engage in multidisciplinary interactions between engineering physical/chemical sciences and life sciences he said many important and challenging problems can only be solved through interdisciplinary cooperative research and texas a&m has an extensive list of excellent faculty that sometimes just need to be aware of each other and linked i am very proud that we came where we are holding the fourth workshop han said im glad to see that the workshop has now settled as an annual workshop focusing on broad interdisciplinary interactions and that there is quite a bit of awareness in the campus community of the workshop i think we are at the stage where i feel that this will continue to be a successful established annual workshop the latest workshop had more than 140 attendees from colleges across the texas a&m campus with numerous researchers presenting during the poster session according to han there have already been some collaborations that have formed through the workshops and researchers from different colleges have become more familiar with each others work and students also benefit from the workshop i know several colleagues that have met new collaborators through this venue he said in addition many of the new funding opportunities now ask for a comprehensive team to be formed so its always good to know who is doing what so that we can reach out if such a funding opportunity comes up faculty benefits quite a bit from finding new collaborators and new ideas but graduate students and postdocs who present most of the posters also benefit a lot maybe even more so than faculty han said my interaction with them has been that they really enjoy the opportunity to present their work in front of a very diverse audience the division of research assisted in putting on this years workshop and the organizing committee chaired by han included dr paul hardin of the college of science dr arul jayaraman from the texas a&m college of engineering dr allison c rice-ficht from the college of medicine dr won-bo shim from the college of agriculture and life sciences and dr c jane welsh from the college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences
giving birth can be a stressful time for all involved it is of the utmost importance that the oxygen levels for the baby are accurately monitored which is currently done by using a fetal heart rate monitor introduced in the 1970s the monitor is an elastic band that has sensors on it and is used during the late stages of labor despite it being the only current method of fetal monitoring the heart rate monitor does not provide a direct measurement of fetal brain oxygenation and cannot accurately predict when a babys oxygen levels are low as a result the number of new cerebral palsy cases in the united states has not diminished since the introduction of the fetal heart rate monitor
obstetricians today monitor the well-being of the baby with the fetal heart rate monitor which uses the heart rate as a proxy for brain oxygenation but this doesnt work so well because a lot of factors influence heart rate said dr graham randall ceo of noninvasix fetal heart rate monitors have a false positive rate of 89 percent for predicting fetal distress which means that nine times out of ten when the physician orders a c-section the baby is perfectly fine these unnecessary c-sections can also put the life of the mother at risk as well as adding additional costs he said noninvasix randalls startup company was the winner of the 2015 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) in collaboration with obstetricians at the university of texas medical branch at galveston the company has developed a noninvasive device that utilizes optoacoustic technology to provide more accurate neonatal and fetal monitoring optoacoustic technology uses light to excite chromophores (molecules that absorbs light) which sends back an acoustic signal the inventors of the technology with funding from the department of defense had originally developed an application for soldiers with traumatic brain injury however when talking with the inventors about how to commercialize the optoacoustic technology randall researched brain hypoxia and malpractice and discovered the need for technology to monitor fetal and neonatal brain oxygenation levels in babies the monitoring system that noninvasix has developed uses a small fetal probe that uses pulse laser light to excite hemoglobin a protein in the blood that carries oxygen and sends back a pressure wave that will be detected by a sensitive microphone (ultra sound transducer) not only will the device be able to provide accurate real-time monitoring of the babys oxygenation levels but it could also reduce the risk of neurological impairments like cerebral palsy and unnecessary c-sections since winning first prize at the tnvc in 2015 noninvasix has been able to develop the technology further their latest prototype has been debugged and they are now able to collect data the team has made progress using the technology for hemoglobin concentration monitoring and has also improved the design of the patient interface for babies in the nicu randall said it will take about one or two years for them to build a final device that will be ready for the marketplace and then another six months for clinical studies before they can submit it to the federal drug administration as a result of participating in the tnvc randall said noninvasix has gained a great deal of attention from the media and it helped solidify several key relationships at texas a&m to go out and pitch your idea and win is a really big confidence boost when youre an entrepreneur you spend a lot of time having people tell you that [your idea] is not good and youre wasting your time so to actually get some validation like that is really important said randall we need more programs like the texas a&m new ventures competition to help support startups and to generate interest and excitement around startups in order to get people to want to get into these things i think thats where innovation comes from and it is extremely important to the texas economy because new technology is being developed here the new ventures competition can support startups financially and with feedback and strategic advice i think is extremely valuable
"dr jonathan burns an associate research scientist with the nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) was recently awarded a research and development award of nearly $400 000 from the us department of energy as part of their nuclear energy university program (neup) burns project which focuses on group actinide separation by crystallization was one of two proposals selected in the area of separations and the only one dealing with recovering the actinides from used nuclear fuel the neup was developed to support university-led research in advanced nuclear science and technology as well as funding equipment upgrades at us colleges and universities and providing student educational support according to burns the technique he proposes is a paradigm shift away from the traditional approach of solvent extraction and the neup award is evidence of the concept gaining visibility ""with the support of this neup award "" said burns ""i anticipate significant progress in not only the technical development of the separation but also in general interest and an adoption of the separation technique with the scientific community at large"" burns will be collaborating with researchers at oak ridge national laboratory on this project"
since 1981 the turbomachinery research consortium (trc) at texas a&m university has connected students with major industry leaders through cutting-edge research initiatives the trc is a group of more than 40 companies that contribute annual grants of $25 000 to fund projects that are investigated by 15 to 20 texas a&m graduate students and faculty in the turbomachinery laboratory (turbo lab) each year the turbo lab a center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) hosts a meeting for the trc where faculty members and students present research proposals for trc member representatives who provide feedback on the projects then select which proposals receive funding ­­ thats the great part about itthe feedback turbo lab graduate student clay norrbin said ive presented at trc for the last three years and each time after my presentation people from industry approach me and ask if i have tried a certain approach to my project or tell me they have experienced similar issues in the real world it really helps to give us guidance whether to narrow or expand the scope of the project
twenty-three proposals were presented this year during the meeting held may 31 to june 2 at pebble creek country club and the turbo lab research facility in college station texas the goal of the proposals is to find answers to questions relating to performance and reliability of turbomachineryrotating equipment that extracts or adds energy to fluids jeff moore an institute engineer at the southwest research institute (swri) has been on both sides of the podium at trc he said presenting at trc when he was a student in the turbo lab is how he landed his first job out of school conducting trc research is a great opportunity for students because its like youre getting your foot in the door without having even knocked because the industry leaders are coming here to texas a&m to learn about your research moore said the trc annual meeting allows students to make a positive impression on representatives from member companies if you have someone from trc who is helping to pull your resume through the process youre going to be a lot more successful over the last decade moore said his group inside swri has hired at least seven aggies and most of them have come through the turbo lab aggies are an attractive hire moore said because of the education and experience they gain with the resources at the turbo lab obviously were a very much a hands-on organization in terms of the kind of work we do--design work research laboratory moore said so those are the exact skills that the students who come through the turbo lab are gaining doing highly theoretical work but also going out and getting their hands dirty doing experimental work validating the models and proving the technology specifically in the area of turbomachinery so we do work with design rotordynamics combustion fluid dynamics controls--all of those skillsets the students are gaining at the lab trc representatives will review proposal material through the end of the month and awards will be announced the first week of july work on selected projects will begin in september
the national security agency (nsa) along with the department of homeland security (dhs) has designated texas a&m university as a national center of academic excellence (cae) in cyber operations making it one of only a handful of academic institutions in the united states to hold three nsa distinctions texas a&m is already designated as cae – four-year baccalaureate/graduate education (cae-cde) and cae – research (cae-r) the newest designation certificates will be presented during an awards ceremony at the 9th annual national cyber summit on june 7 dr daniel ragsdale director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations texas a&m cybersecurity center and professor of practice in the department of computer science and engineering was pleased with the new designation were thrilled and wholly gratified that the nsa after a very thorough and comprehensive review of our programs has determined that we should join the select group of institutions designated as national centers of academic excellence in cyber operations he said this designation is a true testimony to the extraordinary efforts of a&ms world-class faculty over many years to ensure that we are engaging in high-impact cybersecurity and cyber operations research and education also it underscores (the fact that) these faculty have helped our highly talented students to acquire important and increasingly valuable knowledge skills and abilities which will serve them well throughout their professional lives nsa experts visited in march as part of the second round of evaluations in the process to obtain the designation the nsa representatives were given presentations by faculty members in the computer science and engineering department outlining the courses that texas a&m offers that include cybersecurity-related material after the visit nsa representatives said texas a&m had demonstrated the capability to provide undergraduate level curricula that satisfied the necessary academic requirements the cybersecurity area presents students with technical challenges that require the understanding of many computing disciplines said dr dilma da silva department head professor and holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii in the computer science and engineering department this designation as a center of excellence recognizes the strengths of our curriculum in both breadth and depth ragsdale said beyond bolstering texas a&ms increasingly positive reputation in cybersecurity which includes the appointment of dr steve cambone as the associate vice chancellor for cybersecurity initiatives the impact of the new designation should be very significant both in education and research simply stated these designations reinforce our message that a&m with its amazing faculty and through our many cybersecurity initiatives is making outsized contributions to social good ragsdale said this new designation along with our previously awarded nsa/dhs accolades will provide a&m faculty the opportunity to pursue sponsored research that would otherwise not have been available to them ragsdale said in the past six months alone texas a&m faculty members have been awarded three grants they were eligible for only because of the cae designations as an institution this shows texas a&m is moving to the very forefront of cybersecurity research and education as a&m looks to attract prospective students prospective faculty and staff and potential collaborators from the public and private sectors we now have even greater justification for making this compelling assertion ‘if you wish to attend (or teach or conduct research at) a premier research institution with a nationally recognized cybersecurity program you must consider texas a&m ragsdale said
when he began working on an algorithm-based monitoring system to help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) dr farzan sasangohar didnt imagine hed wind up talking about the technology with the vice president of the united states sasangohar assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university was just looking for ways to get his research to people who could benefit from it which led to a partnership with project hero a nonprofit organization that helps veterans and first responders affected by injury post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury to achieve rehabilitation recovery and resilience in their daily lives
"their partnership called hero trak is a monitoring system that can help veterans with ptsd they debuted hero trak in april at the unitedhealthcare texas challenge and it is being tested again this week at the unitedhealthcare memorial challenge event which began in washington dc at the vice presidents residence sasangohar showed hero trak to vice president mike pence and his wife karen as well as veterans affairs secretary david j shulkin and dr poonam alaigh the acting undersecretary of health for the department of veterans affairs the vice president second lady and secretary shulkin interacted with the system and were enthusiastic about the potential for the technology to help veterans and expressed support to facilitate future research in this domain "" sasangohar said"
"at the unitedhealthcare texas challenge last month more than 100 wounded veterans and supporters biked more than 500 miles from san antonio to waco to houston thirty-one of them were wearing monitoring devices and after the event the data from those devices were collected by sasangohar the feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive ""the work done by texas a&m under the leadership of dr sasangohar has helped create a truly elegant and effective solution to the acute problem faced by our veterans and first responders of dealing with ptsd in their daily lives "" said john wordin founder and president of project hero ""our riders who have used the hero trak system see it as more than just an accurate and convenient way to track identify and deal with ptsd triggers -- which all of them do -- they also see it as an important step in the use of technology to address the needs of millions of patients like themselves for improved outcomes at lower costs which is the core mission of project hero"" theres only so much you can do in the lab space sasangohar said at some point you have to take these devices out and do naturalistic studies this was an opportunity because we had a group of veterans and first responders with ptsd who are actually motivated to participate and theyre performing some sort of physical activity"
currently interaction with patients suffering from ptsd is mostly limited to in-person sessions however sasangohars hope is that down the road technology will be able to identify ptsd issues the devices themselves are off-the-shelf motorola 360 smart watches but its in the analysis where sasangohars work takes place using advanced algorithms the technology identifies when someone might be having the arousal symptoms of ptsd the difficult part is deciphering symptoms of ptsd like an elevated heart rate from regular physical activity thats where the partnership with project hero is already showing tremendous value we have access to their biometric data to be able to validate our algorithms to see if they can pick up those activities sasangohar said and these are people that are motivated to help; we can ask them to self-report the ptsd triggers they experience they built the app so that it not only collected data but also worked as a self-reporting device for example the riders could tap the screen to indicate whether or not they were experiencing a ptsd trigger one goal of the research is to be able to intervene during a ptsd occurrence the wearer might be guided through some breathing exercises for example or if the system detects a ptsd episode is happening while the wearer is asleep the device could gently wake them up by vibrating the amount of ptsd triggers that happen during sleep is unbelievable sasangohar said the heart rate can rapidly increase and can stay there for 20 minutes so theyre having these long nightmares; we have objective data showing that and these are very intense nightmares if you wake up suddenly startled you can be in that zone for a few minutes where you dont fully know where you are what if we could intervene and gently wake someone up thats experiencing that sasangohar said he was also overwhelmed with the feedback he received from the participants they all came to me when i was collecting the data and it seems like they appreciate this technology he said they had so much positive feedback and offered to help more and participate in future interviews or studies some were very emotional saying thank you for helping us it was emotional seeing people pick up these devices and appreciate what were trying to do with this technology sasangohars research extends beyond ptsd applications currently his research group is testing smart monitoring and intervention applications in surgery nursing and other fields his research is in part funded by a seed grant from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) he has received a texas a&m isite grant to participate in the summer 2017 texas a&m cohort funded by the national science foundation the program explores the potential commercial potential for his tool remote monitoring and intervention for ptsd patients his isite team includes industrial and systems engineering doctoral students kunal khanade and carolina rodriguez-paras photos courtesy of project hero
joseph (joe) t martinez associate director senior research engineer and project manager for continuous commissioning® (cc®) in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) energy systems laboratory (esl) received the $20 million savings recognition award on behalf of esl/tees from the alamo colleges district for achieving cumulative energy savings of $20 million for the five-college district the alamo colleges district partnered with esl to implement continuous commissioning® energy management and sustainability strategies in 2002 the alamo colleges district started the implementation of the cc® processes at three of the largest campuses (san antonio college st philips college and palo alto college) in 2005 when they expanded the four existing colleges and constructed a new one as part of their capital improvement project the cc® efforts extended to all five campuses and other facilities owned by the alamo colleges district it was a major milestone to reach $20 million in cumulative energy savings through the partnership that alamo colleges district has with the energy systems laboratory martinez said the esl has been working with the alamo colleges district since 2002 and has helped them create and implement a comprehensive districtwide approach to energy management through the years more than 100 facilities went through the cc® process including existing and newly constructed buildings since then the alamo colleges district has created a comprehensive districtwide approach to energy management and energy conservation strategies alamo colleges districts facilities department under the direction of john w strybos associate vice chancellor of facilities operations and construction management led these energy management operations by successfully implementing cc® processes which included upgrading control systems participating in demand-response programs introducing thermal energy storage systems installing 600 kilowatts of generation capacity in solar panels and implementing the four-day work week initiative during the summer in february 2017 cumulative energy savings since implementing the energy management and cc ® partnership with esl reached $2006 million which martinez said is a major accomplishment for alamo colleges tees and texas a&m university it shows the importance of supporting these type of projects and how these partnerships are making a real impact in the community he said cost savings from the successful implementation of energy management and continuous commissioning® initiatives has positively impacted alamo colleges districts resources to enhance the educational experience of its students and the energy savings are contributing to the institutions and the communitys sustainability goals martinez is the principal investigator of the alamo colleges district serves as director of energy management and is supported by esls research associates and data analysis team to successfully implement cc® processes and energy management initiatives his field of expertise is in energy analysis and energy management and he has had more than 22 years of hvac experience in both the private and public sectors while at the energy systems lab he has managed many of the continuous commissioning® projects provided research engineering services and led many research projects that have saved millions of dollars he received a bachelors and a masters degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m and is a certified professional in continuous commissioning®
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) smart grid center is part of a united states team that will use a $75 million department of energy (doe) grant to help advance indias power grid to ensure access to affordable and reliable energy indias ministry of science and technology will match the commitment of the doe along with other indian partners bringing the total project commitment to $30 million this highly collaborative international project will give tees researchers a chance to use their expertise to solve the grid problems in one of the largest power systems in the world said dr mladen kezunovic director of the smart grid center tees has unique strengths and capabilities in designing the grids of the future and this is an opportunity to show that this initiative supported by does office of electricity delivery and energy reliability builds on the departments commitment to fostering the reliable resilient and secure delivery of electricity needed for strong us national security economic growth and global leadership it also furthers the does collaboration with india under the us-india partnership to advance clean energy this new consortium demonstrates the us and indian commitments to ensuring access to affordable and reliable energy in both countries energy secretary rick perry said we know that continued grid innovation will promote economic growth and energy security in the united states and india to help pave the way to a more advanced distribution grid that will allow greater use of distributed energy resources such as microgrids and energy storage the new consortia will bring together experts from academia does national laboratories and industry together with their counterparts in india the center will conduct research and deploy new smart grid and energy storage technologies that will modernize the grids of both nations to make them smarter while increasing resilience and reliability doe officials said the us consortium is led by washington state university along with tees mit the university of hawaii idaho national laboratory the lawrence berkeley national laboratory snohomish county (wa) public utility district avista burns and mcdonnell etap operation technology alstom grid/ge grid solutions clean energy storage abb the philadelphia industrial development corporation and the national rural electric cooperative association the indian team led by the indian institute of technology (iit) kanpur includes partners from iit delhi iit madras iit roorkee iit bhubaneshwar and the energy and resources institute in new delhi
today is a great time to be a beer lover as a nation the united states now has more beer styles (over 150) and brands (over 20 000) to choose from than any other market in the world and a large portion of them are produced in craft breweries a craft brewery or microbrewery is a brewery that produces small amounts of beer typically much smaller than large-scale corporate breweries and is independently owned such breweries are generally characterized by their emphasis on quality flavor and brewing technique more than 5 000 craft breweries are responsible for the beer brands available in the us with more than 200 in texas and the brewers association estimates over 2 000 craft breweries are in the planning stages a new course being offered by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations global petroleum research institute (gpri) can help breweries that are new to the craft get started or provide tips to improve their product the two-day course brewery operations: equipment ingredients and processing will be held in austin on sept 17-19 and hands-on training on brewery equipment operation and maintenance will be offered a partial list of topics includes sanitation/cip water quality boiler/chillers milling equipment pumps/piping/tanks and new technologies attendees will receive fundamental training on how to better manage equipment infrastructure and run their operation more efficiently reliably and safely all with a better understanding of how to support production of a specified beer of accurate style and quality there will also be presentations on best practices by industry experts equipment will be opened and displayed in demonstrations and there will be tours offered by local breweries carl vavra assistant research scientist with gpri will teach the course along with dr richard clough head of the process engineering research and development centers extraction and protein technologies program vavra said theyre offering the course because there is so much to learn about the craft brewing process the main reason for starting the course was because craft brewing is so popular and all the inquiries we received he said its a growing industry and it opened our eyes how many people who are interested in craft brewing vavra said they will give lectures in the morning and in the afternoon they will visit two austin craft breweries where they will learn about the equipment in the actual environment we will go to the breweries and show them what theyre doing and have a pump display with analytical things going on that we can show people how to use and maybe they can see some new technologies that they dont know about currently he said that gives us an edge and people are hungry for that its more of a hands-on learning environment that we bring to the table vavra said there are other craft brewing courses offered but their course is unique because of the hands-on aspect and the networking contacts they will get from the course to use at any time course attendees can learn a lot about craft brewing whether theyre just starting out or are currently working in a brewery but dont know a lot about the process the main audience is existing companies but there are some that are just beginning and other companies like karbach (brewing) in houston where they want some more advanced training like this vavra said they have people in their plant who push a button to do whatever theyre doing and they want them to go to a class or course to really understand whats happening with the yeast or hops or grain or why does this pump go with this flow rate and all that its a mix of people vavra said because there are so many people who can learn from the course their goal is host two craft brewery courses a year one in texas and one outside of texas craft brewing is exploding there are over 400 breweries in colorado for example 200-250 in texas and that number is growing rapidly in oregon theyre all over the place and they have a national conference each year where they had over 13 000 attendees vavra said were excited about it and it seems like a good fit for what we can do
high-speed winds during a thunderstorm may cause trees around an electric grid to crash into the distribution system feeders causing an outage in that area currently most utility companies diminish such accidents by scheduling regular tree-trimming operations this effort is costly and is based on a rotational approach to different service areas which may take months and sometimes years before all trees are trimmed texas a&m university researchers have developed an intelligent model that can predict a potential vulnerability to utility assets and present a map of where and when a possible outage may occur the predictive feature allows the trees in the most critical areas with the highest risk to be trimmed first dr mladen kezunovic regents professor and holder of the eugene e webb professorship in the department of electrical and computer engineering along with graduate students tatjana dokic and po-chen chen have developed the framework for a model that can predict weather hazards vulnerability of electric grids and the economic impact of the potential damage
by analyzing the impact of a potential vulnerability and weather impacts on power system outages the researchers can predict where and when outages can occur predicting an optimal tree trimming schedule that would minimize the risk of vegetation-related outages is only one of the applications the utility grids and related assets are mostly located outdoors and are exposed to all kinds of weather hazards dealing with aging infrastructure assets adds another layer of complexity that utility companies face said kezunovic any kind of environmental data that has some relevance to the power system can be fed into this prediction framework data such as a utility companys operational records weather forecasts altitude and vegetation around the power systems can be used to customize the applications of the model the model is flexible and can process a variety of data despite differing formats and data sources the researchers say processing such data is a demanding task they have been able to solve every source of data and its presentation is different and multifaceted based on the goals they select a large amount of input data from several sources and perform a risk analysis such comprehensive data analytics makes the power system and its operations more reliable the first and foremost goal of utility companies is to assure uninterrupted service said chen by improving reliability we can predict outages if we can prevent outages with historical and close-to-real-time data we can save millions of dollars since the outages may be mitigated the researchers describe their methodology for the framework as a three-part process first they investigate the probability of a potential hazard such as severe weather next they assess the vulnerability of the utility assets by taking the weather probability and predicting its impact on the assets the last and most significant step is evaluating the impact of certain events and the calculation of costs of reliability indices and maintenance replacement and repair the model analyzed historical and close-to-real-time weather data and successfully predicted future vulnerabilities enabling utility companies to have efficient mitigation measures such as inspection repair and maintenance processes overall the risk analysis helps predict the probability of events happening in the near future and then adds the financial impact allowing development of an optimal action plan for the utility operators to execute said chen when outages happen utility companies lose millions of dollars in just repairs said dokic the past has shown how certain outages have cost precious lives too the researchers used centerpoint energys utility data in their framework and have presented a proof of concept to the company their next step is implementation of the model on centerpoints database and environment kezunovic is also director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center the research was supported by centerpoint energy the national science foundation (nsf) center for ultra-wide area resilient electric energy transmission networks and in part by nsf power systems engineering research center and nsf smart grid big data spoke grants read more about the research in the ieee transactions on smart grid journal 5799 researchers develop model to predict and prevent power outages using big data 2017-08-03t08:37:00 0
‘talk text crash drink drive go to jail ‘click it or ticket weve all heard these and many other campaigns from the texas department of transportation (txdot) encouraging texas drivers to be more careful on the roads to reduce accidents and save lives what isnt well known is that john a barton the associate vice chancellor for strategic initiatives for the texas a&m university system was a driving force behind these and many other roadway safety initiatives
prior to joining the a&m system barton who is also a professor of practice for the zachry department of civil engineering and director of the texas a&m rellis campus was the deputy executive director of txdot where he provided executive control and oversight of all txdot operations and the states transportation system barton was selected as the 2017 public sector recipient of the john jake landen memorial safety award by the traffic safety industry division (tsid) of the american road & transportation builders association (artba) for his role spanning a 30-year career at txdot established in 1989 in memory of the tsid leader and past artba chairman (1976) jc landen this annual award recognizes individuals who have made significant lifetime contributions to the improvement of roadway infrastructure safety throughout his long and distinguished career with txdot john barton not only advocated for personal safety but also for safer roads and bridges throughout texas said txdot executive director james bass on behalf of everyone at txdot i congratulate john for receiving this prestigious honor and thank the selection committee for bestowing it on such a deserving candidate whose contributions to safety will continue to protect and benefit texas motorists for generations to come in his current role barton provides direction guidance and advice on strategic projects for the a&m system including the development of the new rellis campus and provides classroom instruction to educate students through lectures and seminars focused on leadership public administration and emerging transportation technologies whenever we face a transportation issue within the texas a&m university system i immediately look to john barton said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m system his knowledge expertise and passion for transportation-related matters make him a valuable asset to the a&m system and the state of texas the john jake landen memorial safety award was presented sept 18 at the artba foundation awards luncheon it is a great honor to be selected to receive this award i am humbled to be among those recognized previously for their contributions to making our transportation system safer barton said millions of people depend upon a safe and reliable transportation system each day i count it as one of my greatest career achievements to have been able to promote and contribute to making these systems safer now and for generations to come other honors for barton include the distinguished graduate award of the department of civil engineering at texas a&m the governor rick perry leadership in transportation award the american association of state highway and transportation officials (aashto) presidents special award of merit and the federal highway administrations public service award barton also served on the board of directors of the intelligent transportation society of america chairman of the american association of state highway and transportation officials subcommittee of traffic engineering and board of directors of the national operations center of excellence barton currently serves on the safety advisory board for uber and the advisory board for southwest research institute
in august the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) led a nuclear facilities experience (nfe) in japan for graduate students and staff from eight us universities and five national laboratories this event was coordinated with several institutions in japan including the hiroshima peace memorial museum the japan atomic energy agency the integrated support center for nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security tokyo electric power company and japan nuclear fuel limited support for the nfe was provided by the next-generation safeguards initiative (ngsi) of the office of nonproliferation and arms control in the defense nuclear nonproliferation program office of the national nuclear security administration
the graduate students were selected based on their specializations in nuclear nonproliferation-related topic areas four students from texas a&m university were joined by graduate students from clemson university oregon state university virginia commonwealth university the university of georgia and uc berkeley six national laboratory employees were selected by ngsi sponsors and included early-career research staff members from the y-12 national security complex sandia national laboratories lawrence livermore national laboratory pacific northwest national laboratory and oak ridge national laboratory the group was accompanied by faculty members dr craig marianno deputy director of nsspi and an assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m and dr marek flaska from pennsylvania state university the nfe began in hiroshima where participants toured the hiroshima peace park and the peace memorial museum participants were also given a first-hand perspective on the dropping of the atomic bomb on hiroshima from survivor ms keiko ogura who gave an account of her experiences and observations of august 6 1945 the nfe then took participants to the tokyo institute of technology where they interacted with students and staff from nsspis peer institute the academy of global nuclear safety and security which is run by professor masaki saito marianno flaska and saito all gave presentations on the nuclear security and safeguards educational programs at their respective universities and two students presented their research to the group
"for the remainder of the visit participants toured various institutions and facilities throughout japan such as the plutonium fuel development facility the tokai reprocessing center and the rokkasho reprocessing plant the group spoke with researchers technicians and managers with experience in nuclear material accountability and control and facility/process operations they were also able to view areas in facilities with active safeguards infrastructure in place through these interactions the students and professionals gained knowledge on safeguards practices and the interaction between operators and the international atomic energy agency (iaea) inspectors the participants were also given the opportunity to visit the fukushima daiichi nuclear power station site according to marianno ""this was a unique experience and all the participants thought it was one of the highlights of the trip"" at fukushima representatives from the tokyo electric power company briefed the group on the status of the cleanup efforts at the site and gave them an extensive tour of the protected area experiences like the nfe allow graduate students and early career professionals in nuclear safeguards and security to see first-hand how safeguards are implemented at various types of facilities and to network with their peers this is the second nfe conducted by nsspi this year the first being a visit to facilities in the uk in may and the third facilities tour led by nsspi to take place in japan"
international fears of nuclear war were once concerns of the cold war era but geopolitical and international developments within the last century have placed countries like north korea and iran at the forefront of nuclear tensions and capabilities as concerns of proliferation the spread of nuclear weapons development grows among hostile foreign powers researchers at texas a&m university are improving technologies that help monitor nuclear materials across the globe geopolitical tensions and issues will likely always continue to be in flux said dr sunil chirayath associate professor of nuclear engineering and the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) whats important is that we continue the work weve been doing at texas a&m to combat these threats texas a&m has a strong legacy of working in nuclear nonproliferation and forensics as the first university to create an education and research program combining the technical and policy aspects of nuclear security through the department of nuclear engineering in 2003 with the establishment of nsspi in 2006 texas a&m has served as a watershed for the development of multidisciplinary solutions to nuclear security challenges and policy issues two of which include the self-interrogation neutron resonance densitometry (sinrd) detector and the further development of nuclear forensics methodologies for tracking black market nuclear materials to its source these projects we have worked on and developed are part of the cutting edge of nuclear security and safeguards projects chirayath said they will give organizations like the international atomic energy agency (iaea) better tools for verification and accountability nsspi collaborated with los alamos national lab to develop a sinrd detector which improves existing nuclear material accountancy measures for light water reactors the sinrd detector provides numerous improvements over current iaea verification tools advances in nuclear forensics by nsspi with sponsorship from department of homeland security generated a specialized methodology to track nuclear materials to their source investigators would then be able to use this methodology by analyzing plutonium isotopes to keep weapons-grade plutonium out of the hands of terrorists or hostile powers this new methodology is envisaged to support the deterrence aspect of nuclear security such methods help agencies like the iaea police the proliferation of nuclear materials in 1970 the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons came into effect with 190 countries ensuring that countries that work with nuclear materials are able to account for safeguard and monitor uranium enrichment facilities and plutonium processing facilities to ensure weapons-grade nuclear material isnt diverted for military purposes nuclear weapons-grade material is a material that can sustain a rapidly growing chain reaction in which fast neutrons cause atoms to split releasing more fast neutrons over and over again until it leads to an uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction this uncontrolled chain reaction generates a nuclear explosion weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are not naturally present in the environment but can be produced in suitably designed facilities as more advances are made in nuclear safeguards and security efforts texas a&m looks forward to leading the way in practical solutions to the nuclear security challenges to address nuclear threats worldwide its a great feeling to be a part of these international efforts to help increase worldwide security against the threats said dr craig marianno assistant professor of nuclear engineering and the deputy director of nsspi the work we and our partners are doing is directly impacting the world community by preventing and protecting against these nuclear security scenarios
a texas a&m university system-led consortium of industry government partners and universities has been awarded a prestigious national science foundation (nsf) engineering research center (erc) on precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) with the goal of addressing the grand challenge of overcoming the human and economic burden of diabetes and heart disease in underserved communities institutional partners in paths-up include florida international university rice university and the university of california at los angeles along with several companies and other federal agencies the erc is the most significant nsf research grant an institution can receive in engineering and is a tremendous endorsement of the quality research being conducted within the texas a&m systems engineering program said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp this program is dedicated to helping underserved populations in rural and urban areas achieve greater access to health enhancing technologies and systems that aligns perfectly with our values as a land-grant institution
the prestigious nsf erc is an interdisciplinary initiative that connects academia industry and government partners to integrate engineering research and education with technological innovation to transform national prosperity health and security texas a&m university is an incubator of ingenuity and leadership dedicated to addressing the grand challenges facing our nation and world said texas a&m university president michael k young selection for the award by the national science foundation is a strong affirmation of our commitment to purpose-driven research to tackle the most pressing issues of our time and developing affordable access to life-saving technologies is among the most important the erc is initially funded by a five-year base award of $1975 million (which can be renewed for another $1556 million and a total potential term of 10 years for a potential total of over $35 million) ercs often become self-sustaining and typically leverage more than $50 million in federal and industry research funding during their first decade the grant will be administered through the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) for over 30 years nsf engineering research centers have promoted innovation helped to maintain our competitive edge and added billions of dollars to the us economy said nsf director france córdova they bring together talented innovators and entrepreneurs with resources from academia industry and government to produce engineers and engineering systems that solve real-world problems i am confident that these new ercs will strengthen us competitiveness for the next generation and continue our legacy of improving the quality of life for all americans nsf program director for paths-up deborah jackson emphasized the important role the center could play in bringing down costs the paths-up erc comprises a team of extraordinarily dedicated researchers who aim to develop cost-effective health care for underserved populations said jackson if paths-ups chronic disease interventions are successful they will have tackled a significant source of the skyrocketing national health care costs paths-up will be led by director dr gerard coté a texas a&m professor of biomedical engineering and will be housed in the health technologies building a newly renovated state-of-the-art 25 000-square foot building located in texas a&ms research park dr cote has a proven track record in developing innovation ecosystems driven by stakeholder input with a clear goal of commercialization of health-enhancing technologies said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering this aligns closely with our new enmed program in partnership with houston methodist which prepares physician engineer graduates with the clinical skills to diagnose symptoms and treat patients along with the engineering mindset to solve problems invent new technologies and rapidly move these innovative ideas to practice in patient care paths-up has two overarching goals the first is to engineer technologies that can overcome the barriers usually faced by point-of-care devices the technologies developed need to be deployable highly accurate easy-to-use and affordable the second goal is to recruit and educate a diverse group of scientists and engineers who will lead the future in developing enabling technologies to improve health in underserved communities on average every 30 seconds one person in the united states will be diagnosed with diabetes and another will suffer a coronary event like a heart attack these diseases are even more devastating in rural and urban underserved communities where they occur at much higher rates than the national average said coté i have been blessed with being able to lead an awesome team of technically excellent people who have a collective vision and a passion to change this paradigm for the health of the underserved populations by engaging them toward developing innovative user-friendly and cost-effective technologies and systems that can be used at the point-of-care in these communities this initiative will also include broad societal outreach including participatory design and community engagement that will prevent paths-up from perpetuating shortfalls in current biomedical practices in underserved communities and will instead establish relationships to develop technologies that seamlessly integrate into peoples lives the program will focus on two transformative engineered systems known as lab-in-your-palm and lab-on-a-wrist lab-in-your-palm allows for inexpensive remote diagnostic capabilities while lab-on-a-wrist allows for near continual monitoring paths-up will be the third active nsf erc in the state of texas the nanomanufacturing systems for mobile computing and mobile energy technologies (nascent) erc was established at the university of texas at austin in 2012 and the nanotechnology enabled water treatment (newt) systems erc was established at rice university in 2015 click here for more on paths-up
before hurricane harvey even made landfall texas a&m engineering has been helping texans to prepare respond and now rebuild here are just a few of the ways that texas a&m engineering students faculty and staff have sprung into action these stories and more from across the texas a&m university system are included in texas a&ms 100 stories (and counting) of selfless service dr sam mannan keeps the world informed on chemical safety mannan director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) mary k oconnor process safety center was interviewed by the associated press new york times washington post cnn nbc nightly news and more over the last week to keep the public informed about chemical safety specifically regarding the arkema plant in crosby texas dr robin autenrieth shares her knowledge of houstons water supply autenrieth head of the zachry department of civil engineering talked to the associated press and houston chronicle about why special attention should be paid during storms to drinking water dr robin murphy and roboticists without borders helped survey damage in fort bend county murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering and 13 pilots flew 119 flights over eight days using unmanned aerial and marine vehicles to help the fort bend county office of emergency management to survey damage and get a better look at the scope of flooding john bartons expertise at txdot helps inform people before the storm barton said that hurricane rita in 2005 was a learning experience and that lessons learned from the evacuations of galveston and houston were helping inform decision makers about how and when to implement contraflow lanes and evacuations turbo lab aims to raise $250 000 hurricane harvey caused the tees turbomachinery laboratory to postpone the turbomachinery & pump symposia until december but new way air bearings a longtime symposia exhibitor had the idea to challenge all of the exhibitors to donate $500 for every 10-by-10 section of exhibit space
build sends a clinic to southeast texas build a student organization that includes students in the college of engineering took a clinic to rockport the organization builds mobile medical clinics and sends them all over the world to date build has sent 13 medical units to nine countries on four continents process engineering r&d center collects 10 pallets of pet food to send to houston dr mian n riaz director of the process engineering r&d center reached out to former attendees of their training courses for anyone interested in donating pet food to send to houston riaz said he received and is still receiving numerous responses from people willing to help out initially mars petcare has sent nine pallets of dog food and one pallet of cat food cody caldwell with crossroads moving and storage offered to deliver the pet food to houston thursday morning at a significantly reduced cost tees eastmark employees donate 16 boxes of undergarments and socks brian blake director of communications for texas a&m engineering coordinated a tees eastmark initiative to collect 16 boxes of donated undergarments and socks to deliver to houston
turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) exhibitors across the globe are responding to needs in the tps host city in the wake of hurricane harvey the texas a&m engineering experiment stations turbomachinery laboratory host of tps has partnered with new way air bearings to launch #tpshelpshouston a fundraising campaign to provide relief to houston area residents affected by hurricane harvey donations will be processed by shelterbox usa a nonprofit that supplies aid to those displaced by disaster all funds raised through #tpshelpshouston will support emergency shelter efforts in houston and nearby regions the campaign was initiated by new way air bearings a longtime tps exhibitor after the turbo lab announced that tps would be rescheduled to dec 12-14 due to the impact of the hurricane the event would have been held sept 12-14 in the george r brown convention center where thousands of evacuees have sought shelter in the aftermath of the hurricane it breaks our hearts to see displaced houstonians in the same convention center where we would be exhibiting said drew devitt founder of new way air bearings we want to give back to the city that has supported us during tps for so many years especially in this time of dire need new way air bearings is challenging exhibitors to donate $500 for every 10-by-10-foot section of their exhibit space if each exhibitor rises to the challenge the campaign could raise upwards of a quarter million dollars i am thrilled that our exhibitors have been so quick to help said martha barton director of exhibitor services for tps its heartening to see their concern and willingness to give were excited to partner with each of them to offer our friends some relief in the midst of devastation #tpshelpshouston was launched tuesday sept 5 and will continue through tuesday dec 12 the results of the campaign will be announced wednesday dec 13 on the tps exhibit floor visit tpstamuedu/updates to donate funds will support shelterboxs hurricane harvey fund which provides emergency shelter for displaced individuals and families donors are asked to forward their donation confirmation email to bconrad@turbo-labtamuedu so they can be recognized on the tps website and social media channels donation amounts will not be publicized participating companies should include a high-resolution logo with the donation confirmation though #tpshelpshouston originated as a challenge for exhibitors anyone is invited to contribute
a recent study has added a new dimension to the controversial decision to inject large amounts of chemical dispersants immediately above the crippled oil well at the seafloor during the deepwater horizon disaster in 2010 the dispersants may have significantly reduced the amount of harmful gases in the air at the sea surfacereducing health risks for emergency responders and allowing them to keep working to stop the uncontrolled spill and clean up the spilled oil sooner the study was published aug 28 in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences in the midst of the deepwater horizon crisis officials made the unprecedented and controversial decision to inject more than 700 000 gallons of chemical dispersant over 67 days immediately above the oil rigs severed wellhead at the bottom of the ocean the goal was to break up petroleum that surged uncontrollably from the wellhead into smaller droplets in the deep sea with the goals of diminishing oil slicks and reducing the amount of harmful gases arriving at the ocean surface proponents claim the dispersants did help dissipate oil slicks on the sea surface causing less oil to taint shoreline beaches and marshes opponents said the dispersants themselves were toxic may have caused environmental damage and were not effective at reducing the already small droplets forming at the wellhead to this debate the new study demonstrates a beneficial effect of dispersants: the subsea dispersant injection may have allowed emergency responders literally to breathe easier by breaking up petroleum into smaller droplets that dissolved faster in the deep ocean the dispersants decreased the amounts of volatile toxic compounds that rose to the surface and outgassed into the air that dramatically improved the air quality for responders and presumably reduced the number of days when the air quality was too poor and responders had to don respirators and/or had to suspend cleanup efforts the study used a model developed by texas a&m university professor in the zachry department of civil engineering dr scott socolofsky and his research team called the texas a&m oil spill calculator (tamoc) the team members included: jonas gros socolofsky anusha dissanayake and inok jun (texas a&m); lin zhao and michel boufadel (new jersey institute of technology); christopher reddy (woods hole oceanographic institution); and j samuel arey (swiss federal institute of aquatic science and technology) the research was funded by the gulf of mexico research initiative and the national science foundation (nsf) grants to the texas a&m engineering experiment station dispersants have been applied to oil slicks on the ocean surface for half a century to break petroleum into smaller droplets that dissipate into waters of the open ocean so that less oil reaches ecologically sensitive coastlines but they had never been used at the unprecedented depth of 5 000 feet beneath the surface where an estimated 7 500 tons per day of oil and 2 400 tons per day of natural gas were jetting from the ruptured wellhead near the seafloor this flow rate is equivalent to 57 000 barrels per day of oil and 92 million cubic feet per day of gas being produced at standard conditions at the sea surface during the period studied by the authors 19 000 barrels per day of oil were also captured by an inverted funnel or top hat that was placed directly above the wellhead which decreased the amount of oil that escaped into the sea government and industry responders were faced with an oil spill of unprecedented size and sea depth pitting them in a high-stakes battle against big unknowns reddy and arey wrote in an article in oceanus magazine they made a crucial decision to proceed with the subsurface injection of corexit ec9500a a dispersant that roughly resembles a mix of food-grade mineral oil windshield-wiper fluid and household dish detergent aerial photographs and anecdotal accounts suggested that the deep-sea dispersant injection may have helped dissipate the oil slicks at the surface and improve air quality around responder boats working near the disaster site but in the heat of the crisis officials did not take the time to design and implement robust experiments to measure the detailed effects of the injection in the new study scientists built and tested the tamoc model to simulate the complex chemical and physical interactions among water oil gas and dispersant that occurred during deepwater horizon they focused on the period starting june 3 2010 when the riser pipe was cut at the wellhead by engineers until july 15 2010a timespan when a large number of scientific observations were collected nearby in the air and ocean to test the models ability to simulate the real-world disaster they compared the model predictions to the observations nearly all those comparisons aligned with the models output indicating that the model replicated many aspects of what happened to oil and gas under the ocean surface the research team then used the model to conduct a key test that was never done in real life: they ran the model to see what likely would have happened if dispersants had not been injected immediately above the wellhead during the same time period the model results indicated that deep-sea dispersant injection had a profound effect on air quality at the ocean surface the injection of the subsea dispersant caused the turbulent jet of petroleum fluids to form oil droplets that were about 30 times smaller (by volume) than they would have been without dispersants according to the model results this subtle change caused many volatile petroleum chemicals to dissolve more rapidly and become entrapped in the deep sea according to the study most of the highly toxic benzene and toluene in the oil were transported away in deep currents along with other entrapped petroleum compounds that affected organisms on and near the sea floor the benzene and toluene likely would have become biodegraded within weeks it turns out that several toxic and volatile compounds including benzene and toluene are in the sweet spot of compounds effected by the dispersant explained socolofsky to a national academy of sciences committee studying dispersant usage during marine oil spills more soluble compounds remain dissolved in the ocean and heavier substances rise to the sea surface whether dispersants are used or not he continues it is these carcinogenic btex compounds that were the most affected by dispersant usage during the deepwater horizon response since the total amount of oil reaching the sea surface is only weakly affected by subsea dispersant usage the modeling work done by this team was needed to fully understand their effect don rice a program director in the nsfs division of ocean sciences concurs as the findings of this study clearly demonstrate the discoveries of basic scientific research and the ensuing practical applications in their wake are often utterly unanticipated the model showed that the dispersant injection decreased the overall concentration of all volatile organic chemicals in the atmosphere by a modest amount (about 30 percent) but it also significantly reduced the amount of chemicals most harmful to humans such as benzene and toluene the atmospheric concentration of benzene for example decreased by about 6 000 times dramatically improving air quality without the dispersant injection the model showed that benzene concentrations in the air two meters above the sea surface would have been 13 times higher than the levels considered acceptable to breathe during a 10-hour working day or a 40-hour work week based on guidelines by the national institute of occupational safety and health (niosh) however with dispersant injection the model showed atmospheric benzene concentrations were 500 times lower than the levels considered acceptable to breathe by niosh these predictions depend on local weather conditions that can vary from day to day however we predict that cleanup delays would have been much more frequent if subsurface dispersant injection had not been applied reddy and arey say but this one study is not the final say on the usage of dispersants they added it is another row on a ledger sheet called the ‘spill impact mitigation analysis which assesses various strategies and tools to reduce environmental and economic damage caused by oil spills all potential positive and negative effects of dispersant injection need to be taken into account before final judgments on their future use can be robustly determined the debate about using dispersants is becoming increasingly politicized and acrimonious and the national academy of sciences has recently assembled a committee of scientists government officials and industry to evaluate the use of chemical dispersants in oil spill responses
a group of mechanical engineering students from mexico recently got an inside look at what the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university has to offer students from the universidad de guanajuato visited as a part of the mexico leadership exchange (mle) a program supported by the texas a&m university chapter of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) universidad de guanajuato students visit texas a&m each fall semester and texas a&m students visit the guanajuato campus every spring this year marks the 20th-annual mle visit texas a&m turbo lab students and faculty lead the guanajuato students on a tour of the 37 000-square-foot turbo lab and its test cells while explaining the research they conduct and the equipment they use to produce results its always very good for us to showcase what we are developing at the laboratory said dr luis san andres a professor in the turbo lab its a great way to attract potential students who find what we do interesting in addition to their tour of the turbo lab and the texas a&m campus the visiting students spent a day in austin touring facilities like sand hill energy center i think its a great way to spark their ambitions mle president and texas a&m mechanical engineering student william barr said there might be something going on in mexico that i dont know about and when i find out whats going on there i might want to completely gear my studies or my efforts toward that we try to give them insight into new interests and vice versa harsimram singh texas a&m mechanical engineering student and co-chair of international relations for mle has a personal connection to the value of mle singh came to the us from india about a year ago and his experience is what encouraged him to join the exchange program i know the feeling of trying to get to know a place how people live their culture what goes on there he said its really important and its really helpful to create a better understanding between nations between people and between cultures
a loss of offsite power event at a nuclear power plant also called a loop event is considered a serious safety risk that could put many lives in danger after the 2012 incident at the fukushima-daiichi power plant in japan which involved an extended loss of offsite power in the wake of a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami the nuclear industry has worked to make power plants even safer and better able to withstand even the most severe accident scenarios involving catastrophic weather or seismological events nuclear facilities must also evaluate their ability to withstand another sort of threat a threat to the security of the facility in the event of an attack from an outside adversary through testing their response force updating their security technology and analyzing the weaknesses of their overall security system facilities come to determine whether or not they are able to guard against these sorts of attacks as well
"now researchers at the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) are asking the question of how to combine these two separate forms of analysis-both safety and security-to get a more complicated picture of what would happen in the case of a combined safety-security threat does the security risk rise in the event of a catastrophic failure or loop event patrick oneal is a nsspi graduate student working on this problem with dr sunil chirayath director of nsspi and an associate professor in the nuclear engineering department at texas a&m university ""currently when a facility carries out safety and security analyses they are independent of each other; however safety events make it easier for an adversary to accomplish some nefarious goal and a security event makes ensuring operational safety more difficult essentially this research demonstrates a novel more holistic approach to evaluating the overall vulnerabilities of a facility; an approach that no facility is using currently "" oneal explains he conducted a probabilistic risk assessment for the safety system in question and then combined it with an evaluation of the plants physical protection system to find an overall plant vulnerability for different combined safety-security scenarios this type of work is necessary because safety and security are a topic of such importance for any nuclear facility yet the manner in which they are investigated creates situations where a facility might be left more vulnerable than it is aware according to oneal ""a typical nuclear power plant has countless volumes detailing procedures to follow for any sort of safety event and security professionals have gone to painstaking ends to form detailed plans on how to protect the plant from an outside threat but very few facilities if any have security plans that are formed by safety events and vice versa"" the analysis that oneal has done suggests that increased security during a safety-related event is warranted this realization could be a first step towards developing more informed and responsive safety and security procedures for nuclear facilities"
the engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to 14 texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their research teams during the tees external advisory board (pictured right) meeting nov 10 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more were given to the following: pi: karen kirkland nuclear engineering co-pis: abhay patil mechanical engineering and yassin hassan nuclear engineering $1 million grant from the institute of applied energy to study the expanded operation limitations of the terry turbopump systems pi: perla balbuena chemical engineering co-pis: jorge seminario chemical engineering; and partha mukherjee mechanical engineering $12 million grant from the department of energy (doe) vehicle technology office for their project understanding and strategies for controlled interfacial phenomena in lithium-ion batteries and beyond pi: jim morel director tees center for large-scale scientific simulations (class) co-pis: marv adams nuclear engineering; jean-luc guermond and bojan popov mathematics $14 million grant from the lawrence livermore national lab for his project computational r&d in support of stockpile stewardship pi: bahman yazdani associate director tees energy systems lab co-pis: joseph martinez carlos yagua and juan carlos baltazar energy systems lab $14 million grant from metco engineering continuous commissioning funded by the texas comptroller for designing and implementing a cost-effective energy efficiency program for 35 city of dallas facilities pi: jim morel director of class co-pis: nancy amato and lawrence rauchwerger computer science and engineering; raymundo arroyave materials science and engineering; amine benzerga aerospace engineering; marv adams and jean ragusa nuclear engineering; and jean-luc guermond mathematics $15 million grant from the lawrence livermore national lab for his project collaborative r&d in support of llnl missions pi: bryan rasmussen mechanical engineering co-pi: james eggebrecht associate research engineer tees energy systems lab $15 million grant from the doe to set up the texas a&m university industrial assessment center which will train engineering students on how to successfully apply energy conservation techniques in real-world situations pi: xia hu computer science and engineering co-pi: eric ragan visualization $16 million darpa grant transforming deep learning to harness the interpretability of shallow models: an interactive end-to-end system pi: luc vechot co-pi: tomasz olewski $16 million grant for the sabic process safety competency development program saudi basic industries corporation pi: radu stoleru computer science and engineering co-pi: walt magnussen director of the internet2 evaluation center and the academy of telecommunications and learning technologies $18 million grant from nist for his proposal distressnet-ng: next generation resilient mobile broadband communication pi: rodney bowersox aerospace engineering co-pis: ed white and kristi shryock aerospace engineering; jeff froyd engineering education; and issac sabat psychological and brain sciences $19 million grant from the national science foundation to dramatically improve the diversity inclusion and quality of undergraduate students graduate students and faculty members in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university pi: melissa grunlan biomedical engineering co-pis: michael moreno mechanical engineering; brian saunders and roy pool veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; and mariah hahn rensselaer polytechnic institute $19 million from the national institutes of health for bioactive self-fitting shape memory to develop material designed to precisely fill and promote healing of cranial bone defects and gaps in the skull pi: mladen kezunovic director tees smart grid center co-pis: steven liu computer science and engineering and alex sprintson electrical and computer engineering $44 million doe grant for timer timing intrusion management ensuring resiliency to develop next-generation cybersecurity solutions and enhance the reliability and resilience of the nations critical energy infrastructure pi: dimitris lagoudas tees deputy director co-pis: helen reed rodney bowersox paul cizmas christopher limbach aerospace engineering; richard malak mechanical engineering; and ibrahim karaman materials science and engineering $10 million as part of nasa university leadership initiative to design commercially viable civil supersonic transport (sst) aircraft that can modify shape during flight under a range of conditions to meet noise and efficiency requirements for overland flight pi: gerard cote biomedical engineering co-pis: bala haridas kristin maitland roozbeh jafari and javier jo biomedical engineering; ricardo gutierrez-osuna computer science and engineering; lee hudson center for remote health technologies and systems; mark lawley industrial and systems engineering; arnold vedlitz bush school of government and public service; and nicolaas deutz health and kinesiology $195 million for paths-up: precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) which was created to develop advanced technologies to prevent delay the onset and manage diabetes and cardiovascular disease partner institutions include florida international rice university and ucla along with several companies and federal agencies
"dr sam mannan can point to the exact moment when he first became aware of the importance of process safety while working at a desalination plant in 1978 shortly after graduating from college in bangladesh one day a boiler exploded sending a heavy piece of iron hurtling toward where he was standing missing him by only a few feet but it was close enough to rattle the young engineer another safety related incident the 1984 union carbide pesticide plants methyl isocyanate leak in bhopal india which killed thousands of people in the area and injured more than one million also made an impression on mannan at the time i still was young and didnt understand all the issues but over time i came to the realization that it was not just the fault of union carbide or even the industry but that the whole engineering profession had failed said mannan who is currently director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center i then looked into engineering history and found that engineering is about serving mankind and helping improve the standard of living of humanity this outlook eventually led him to college station and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations mary kay oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) the center was established by mike oconnor in 1995 in memory of his wife mary kay oconnor an operations superintendent killed in an explosion at the phillips petroleum complex in pasadena texas in 1989 the centers focus was what mannan had witnessed firsthandthe importance of safety in the chemical industry mannan was brought in to be director of the center in 1997 and has become an internationally recognized expert in process safety although it is now commonly talked about within the engineering profession at one point process safety was not a popular research topic among chemical engineers it was viewed as a rudimentary subject that only goes as far as basic lab safety rules (eg wearing goggles lab coats closed-toe shoes etc) process safety is now front and center in chemical engineering and that has a lot to do with the influence of the mkopsc over the years one of mannans greatest career accomplishments safety is now a required course for all chemical engineering students at texas a&m university students in other engineering majors have the opportunity to earn a safety certificate or minor in the subject and the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering also offers a master of safety engineering program as a result of their success at texas a&m mannan says other schools and universities around the world have taken notice and adopted similar programs theyve seen what a success the program has been and have seen the impact its had on graduates he said id like to see this process safety program that we have developed and had success in to be adopted worldwide so were putting a lot of effort into pushing these programs in other countries weve been very successful in doha qatar; china india and colombia so for a handful of countries weve been very successful we want to keep going and make it happen everywhere to date the center has graduated about 65 doctoral students and around 60 masters degree students graduates from the center are in high demand and working for industry during the chemical engineering departments most recent visit from the accreditation board for engineering and technology inc they had this to say about the center: the mary kay oconnor process safety center and required courses as part of this center provide an unparalleled opportunity for undergraduate students in the program to understand process hazards the chemical engineering program has a strong international reputation due to this industrial focus in their undergraduate program as a result students are highly sought for in industrial positions after graduation with a budget of nearly $4 million a year the mkopsc has expanded a great deal in the past two decades at the beginning mannan ran the center with only an assistant and a couple of student workers but the staff has now grown to more than 100 the center has also formed a consortium for industry this consortium has helped fund research projects from the department of defense the national science foundation the department of the interior with its growth mkopsc has also developed a strong continuing education program courses are taught by engineers with extensive experience in the fields of industrial chemical research and process safety knowledge the courses such as industrial hygiene engineering and risk analysis safety engineering are important to the changing landscape and promoting the centers goal of making safety second nature although process safety has been around for nearly 30 years many question why events like the west texas plant explosion are still happening according to mannan it is not a simple one-dimensional question on the industry side some of the main issues are the reluctance to adopt or seek new technologies and not studying incidents after they occur to learn how whatever happened can be prevented in academia not many schools have adopted process safety programs so the mkopsc has been working with other schools in the hope that they will adopt a program similar to what texas a&m currently has its been a slow process but its picked up over time said mannan in his efforts to help make safety second nature in engineering among all existing chemical plants mannan is also passionate about teaching the public the difference between hazard and risk when it comes to chemicals to explain the difference he uses a specific analogy: in a kitchen you have to have a knife because without one it would be impossible to cut vegetables meats etc but at the same time that knife could also be used to injure or kill someone intentionally or unintentionally which is the risk when it comes to using one said mannan the same is true of all chemicals we have in society most industrial chemicals are in these warehouses because they serve a purpose said mannan there is a benefit we make products out of it which serve mankind but at the same time if they are not used properly theyre going to cause problems it is known that some chemical plants operate under the radar with the public unaware of how close in proximity they are to these chemicals to inform the public about these sites and the hazard they carry mannan and a group of researchers created the potential to cause harm to the public (pchp) index the group gathered data through public resources and identified the flammability toxicity and reactivity rating for each chemical at each site they visited those things combined resulted in a hazard rating they then looked at how much of the chemical was present and the length and width of the building using a landview tool from the environmental protection agency they looked at how many people lived within a 2-mile radius the higher the amount of chemical and higher the number of people within a 2-mile radius the base hazard rating was revised upward proportionately many decades after his first harrowing experience with lab safety mannan continues to further the centers mission to make safety second nature another testament to his reputation mannan was recently appointed to the department of energys hydrogen and fuel cell advisory committee which advises the secretary of energy on hazard assessment risk analysis vulnerability assessment and process safety management ""weve done quite well from being not known at all to be a nationally and internationally known organization mannan said we are producing students who are taking on leadership positions in industry we are recognized by not only the us government but the media also as the place to go to get information on process safety"
dr mladen kezunovic regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed to serve on the department of energys (doe) electricity advisory committee (eac) the electricity advisory committee is critically important to ensuring our nations energy infrastructure and delivery system is secure resilient and reliable said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) dr kezunovics expertise in the modernization and resiliency of the smart grid will be a strong contribution to this high-level group of energy experts kezunovic director of the tees smart grid center also currently serves as the site director of the power engineering research center a consortium of 40 industry and 13 university members as an eac advisory board committee member he will help the doe define a strategy on long-range planning and priorities for the nations electricity system he joins 23 other members including state government officials industry executives consumer advocates and environmentalists charged with providing advice on implementing the energy policy act of 2005 executing the energy independence and security act of 2007 and modernizing the nations electricity delivery infrastructure i am quite honored and privileged to serve on this committee as it will give me a chance to learn about the nations energy priorities and provide advice based on over 40 years of my experience in conducting focused research and consulting on innovative applications in the electricity grids aimed at more reliable grid operation kezunovic said kezunovics expertise is in protective relaying automated power system disturbance analysis computational intelligence and data analytics and smart grids before joining texas a&m in 1986 kezunovic worked for westinghouse electric corp and energoinvest in europe among his many honors kezunovic has been named an institute of electrical and electronic engineers (ieee) life fellow and a council on large electric systems (cigre) fellow and honorary member he has published more than 550 papers in journals and conference proceedings and was invited to give more than 120 lectures worldwide he is also listed as a distinguished speaker of the ieee power engineering society while at texas a&m he has been the principal investigator on more than 100 research projects and supervised more than 50 graduate students the eac was established in 2008 to enhance leadership in the electricity delivery modernization and provide senior-level counsel to the doe on ways in which the nation can meet the many challenges to moving forward including the deployment of smart grid technologies research and development of energy storage technologies renewable energy resource system integration and new transmission infrastructure
recently a group of 12 texas a&m university nuclear engineering graduate students from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) nuclear security science and policy institute (nsspi) traveled to tennessee to participate in a short course in non-destructive assay (nda) techniques
the short course was offered at the oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) in their safeguards laboratory it consisted of lectures and hands-on experience with safeguards instrumentation and software providing the students with practical understanding of a number of nda techniques used for measurements and characterization of special nuclear material in international safeguards applications this experience is intended to supplement the material taught at texas a&m in the nuclear fuel cycle and material safeguards (nuen 651) and radiation detection and nuclear materials measurement (nuen 605) classes taken by all students pursuing a graduate degree with a specialization in nuclear nonproliferation while in oak ridge the group had the opportunity to tour various nuclear facilities at ornl including the high flux isotope reactor the radiochemistry hot cell labs the graphite reactor and the spallation neutron source as well as the nearby y-12 national security complex they also traveled to the university of tennessee in knoxville to meet with faculty and students in their nuclear nonproliferation education program the students were accompanied by dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor of nuclear engineering and dr craig marianno nsspi deputy director and assistant professor of nuclear engineering jessica white horton at ornl coordinated the training program which was sponsored by the us department of energys national nuclear security administration
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is leading a research team working to develop a new field laboratory in the hydrocarbon-producing geological formation known as the eagle ford shale the team along with wildhorse resource development corporation (wrd) which has been awarded an $8 million grant from the department of energy (doe) for research and development of unconventional oil and natural gas recovery will test next-generation monitoring solutions for hydraulic fracturing and enhanced oil recovery dr dan hill director of tees crisman institute for petroleum research noble chair holder and professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university is the principal investigator for the project he will be working with co-principal investigators dr jens birkholzer lawrence berkeley national laboratory; dr mark zoback stanford university; dr matthew averill wrd; and their research teams ""we are extremely excited to have the department of energys support for this research collaboration among two major us universities a doe national laboratory and multiple industry partners by applying the most advanced monitoring technology ever implemented in the field we will learn more than ever before about the hydraulic fracture systems created and the subsequent reservoir flow patterns in hydraulically fractured unconventional reservoirs the eagle ford shale laboratory will undoubtedly influence future drilling and well completion practices in shale reservoirs "" said hill the research team will be creating the eagle ford shale laboratory in central texas working with wrd which will contribute three wells for testing (one existing well for re-fracturing and two new stimulation wells) wrd will invest the funds to drill and complete these research wells over a period of several years hill and his team will develop methods to improve the effectiveness of shale oil production according to the doe the hydraulic fracturing methods in use a few years ago have left large portions of the reservoirs unstimulated and in many thick shale reservoirs there remain large untouched reserves lying above or below the stimulated region the teams research has the potential to enable operators of thousands of existing fractured horizontal wells to better select re-fracturing candidates and design re-fracture treatments that could increase oil production from previously accessed reservoirs the advanced monitoring technology to be applied to the two new wells will help to optimize geosteering and hydraulic fracture technologies a gas injection enhanced oil recovery pilot test in the re-fractured well will be the final phase of the project for the first time researchers investigating unconventional reservoirs will conduct active seismic monitoring using fiber optics in observation wells that will provide real-time monitoring of fracture propagation and stimulated volume for both new stimulation and re-fracturing of legacy wells the team will also be able to conduct time-lapse seismic monitoring of reservoir changes during initial production and enhanced oil recovery from a re-fractured well ""by focusing on increased recovery from previously fractured wells that were left behind because of low production this project will foster continued growth in us oil production but with a much lower environmental footprint "" said birkholzer hill added ""we would like to recognize jay graham chairman and ceo and anthony bahr president of wildhorse resource development for having the vision to contribute the wells for this study"""
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) clean energy incubator and its collaborators were among the eight projects and 19 organizations awarded more than $1 million to address gaps in clean-energy technology development and commercialization the wells fargo innovations incubator (in2) channel partner awards program is designed to foster the development of a robust cleantech ecosystem by funding innovative incubators accelerators and universities and promoting a collaborative network of knowledge sharing researchers from the clean energy incubator will collaborate with rice university the austin technology incubator at the university of texas at austin and texas state university on a series of programs and initiatives that will help catalyze the next generation of cleantech entrepreneurs and serve as a feeder to the in2 program referred to as the in2bound cleantech accelerator program they will receive $275 000 in funding to help educate entrepreneurs and accelerate startups and connect them to a network of experts to provide technical support and mentorship this grant will allow us to increase our outreach to tees member institutions in texas while adding a clean energy component to existing tees initiatives such as the texas a&m new ventures competition said john pappas director of the tees clean energy incubator the channel partner awards program supports in2s ultimate goal of building resilient smart and connected communities by encouraging the development of a strong multistakeholder cleantech ecosystem that will collectively support and drive innovation to enable greater urban sustainability said ashley grosh wells fargo vice president and in2 co-lead each of the recipients of the 2017 in2 channel partner awards program has displayed a talent for innovation disruption and commitment to clean technology in2 has engaged stakeholders from universities incubators and accelerators in an effort to give a voice to local community challenges and solutions and to create a strong collaborative ecosystem of startup support across the country said richard adams director of the innovation and entrepreneurship center at the national renewable energy laboratory our mission is to nurture an ecosystem where more startups and innovators receive the technical and financial backing as well as business mentoring and encouragement they need at their earliest stages in order to advance toward commercialization of their technologies the in2 channel partner awards program was established with $5 million of committed funding to be distributed over four years in 2016 the program supported more than 33 channel partners encouraging them to engage with their local communities attend in2 events and play an active role in helping develop the in2 ecosystem which currently includes 20 in2 portfolio companies more than 40 channel partners and a variety of external clean technology stakeholders across the us other clean tech award recipients include:• the california institute of technology partnered with clean energy trust: to establish the rocket fund mid-west (rfmw) an interstate partnership bringing together sustainability-focused accelerators utilities and universities in a community consortium to help guide vulnerable very early stage (ves) ventures through critical early stages pioneered in california the rocket fund will offer a solution for one of the most intractable problems preventing cleantech innovations from reaching the marketplace – the lack of funding and necessary commercial partners for building demonstrating and validating ‘pre-products in the real world • carnegie mellon university partnered with northwestern: to launch a new center for cleantech entrepreneurial excellence (c2e2) the goal of the center is to better understand how cleantech/energy innovation and entrepreneurship differ from other technology sectors at a regional level c2e2 will examine key success factors in early-stage company development and how societal outcomes can be enhanced as a result • cleantech group: to leverage its annual cleantech forum to capture key discussion points and identify themes to help further inform the direction of the in2 program as it considers expanding into the food-systems space • activation energy in support of the cyclotron road program: to disrupt the current partnering and investment model for bringing new technologies to market – which relies heavily on human networking – by developing a network leveraging artificial intelligence (ai) to identify a comprehensive list of strategic partners for emerging clean energy technologies working in partnership with moxley holdings and rho ai their model will identify future partners based on current investments partnering trends and natural language analysis of public statements • innosphere: colorados leading non-profit technology incubator will embark on a multi-year plan called scaleup colorado to systematically address three specific problems holding back colorados science and technology ecosystem from growing at a higher rate and creating greater economic impact these challenges include the need to grow colorados technology gdp by growing startup support capacity early stage companies achieving startup success and achieving more than $50 million in revenue per year and limited access to capital • los angeles cleantech incubator (laci) partnered with acre clean energy trust greentown learn and nextenergy: to establish a standard for measuring and reporting the economic environmental and social impact of the portfolio companies within their network the team will leverage lacis just impact 2016 report and framework and conduct individual research within organizations to evolve a common framework for training their staff and portfolio companies and measuring and reporting on their individual impact results • nextenergy partnered with prospect silicon valley: to ensure that the cleantech potential of case (connected autonomous shared electrified) mobility solutions are fully realized by entering into a sister city partnership between detroit mi and san jose california to address two main challenges – connecting a cleantech innovation pipeline to industry players and market opportunities and bringing private sector/industry partners together with government and ngo service providers to encourage a focus on serving low- to moderate-income market segments
the national science foundation (nsf) issued one of the first awards through its new improving undergraduate stem education: hispanic-serving institutions (hsi) program to the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) with the grant tees in partnership with seven institutions of higher learning will host consejos colectivos: improving stem success at hsisa regional conference for stakeholders in undergraduate hispanic stem educationat el centro college in dallas feb 27-28 this conference will identify challenges and opportunities for improving stem education at hsis specifically we will explore opportunities to improve stem education for latinx students to build capacity and increase latinx student participation in research and to create effective institutional change addressing barriers to latinx student success in stem said dr william kitch principal investigator for the grant and professor and chair of the david l hirschfeld department of engineering at angelo state university conversations at consejos colectivos: improving stem success at hsis will also help inform the nsfs new hsi program as it finds ways to bolster the quality of undergraduate stem education for over 100 years tees has served the citizens of texas through engineering and technology-oriented research and educational collaborations for the consejos colectivos conference tees is collaborating with seven educational institutions from across texas to discover solutions for big-picture concerns while opening doors to new opportunities said cindy lawley assistant agency director for workforce development at tees the conferences impact will extend well beyond the two-day event in dallas as those who attend urge their institutions to respond to the challenges identified we hope participants seek out new collaborations and work together to implement changes that will improve latinx stem student recruitment retention and advancement in the stem workforce pipeline registration for consejos colectivos: improving stem success at hsis is now open conference organizers are also accepting travel grant applications and poster presentation proposals conference organizers include tees and five tees regional division membersangelo state university del mar college texas a&m university-kingsville texas womans university and west texas a&m universityas well as texas tech university and el centro college this conference is supported by the national science foundation under grant no 1764268
dr jian tao a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) research scientist with affiliation to the texas a&m high performance research computing (hprc) group received a cash award and a free benchmark license for application code and datasets accepted under a benchmark search program sponsored by the standard performance evaluation corporation (spec) the new spec cpu2017 benchmark suite replaces spec cpu2006 launched 11 years ago spec is a nonprofit corporation formed to establish maintain and endorse standardized benchmarks and tools to evaluate performance and energy efficiency for the newest generation of computing systems its membership comprises of more than 120 leading computer hardware and software vendors educational institutions research organizations and government agencies worldwide in 2008 spec started looking for contributions for its new cpu benchmark suite via the spec cpu benchmark search program as a postdoctoral research associate at louisiana state university working on xirel a national science foundation-funded project to build the foundation of next generation numerical relativity code tao and his colleagues submitted an entry their code went through vigorous tests and six evaluation steps during the past nine years it was accepted in june 2017 to be officially part of the latest version of the spec cpu benchmark suite other authors of the benchmark suite are dr gabrielle allen (professor at the university of illinois urbana-champaign) dr erik schenetter (research technologies group lead at perimeter institute for theoretical physics canada) and dr peter diener (research assistant professor of physics at louisiana state university) since its launch in 2006 more than 43 000 spec cpu2006 performance results have been published on specs website the spec cpu benchmark suite is the worldwide standard for evaluating performance for purchasing decisions and new hardware development thousands of articles appear on news sites each year citing spec cpu testing results the benchmarks developed by tao and his colleagues are based on the cactus computational framework this benchmark uses an old version of the einstein toolkit to solve the einstein equations in a vacuum the numerical kernel of this benchmark mclachlan is automatically generated from a high level set of partial differential equations with the kranc code generation package in this benchmark a vacuum flat space-time is simulated with finite differencing in space and an explicit time integration method the einstein toolkit is now widely used by researchers to model gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers and colliding neutron stars tao joined dr narasimha reddy associate agency director for tees strategic initiatives and centers in nov 2016 to build the college of engineering high performance computing (coe-hpc) team to help faculty members research staff and students at texas a&m leverage high-performance computing facilities both on and off campus for their research the coe-hpc teams goal is to enhance the advanced computational research activities within texas a&m engineering and be a liaison to hprc to enable the broader research computing community at texas a&m in addition to helping faculty members research staff and graduate students on their research work they actively participate the education and outreach activities with staff members at hprc to help organize summer camps workshops tutorials supercomputing booths and more the coe-hpc works with hprc staff members to host short courses and workshops on various hpc related subjects on the texas a&m campus
the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university hosted another record-breaking turbomachinery & pump symposia despite a three-month delay due to hurricane harvey the 46th turbomachinery and 33rd international pump users symposia (tps 2017) was originally scheduled for sept 12-14 with short courses on sept 11 due to the impact of hurricane harvey on houston and surrounding areas the turbo lab announced on aug 29 that the event would be rescheduled for dec 12-14 with short courses on dec 11 undeterred by the reschedule tps 2017 attracted 89 new companies to the george r brown convention center topping last years record by 10 companies in total the exhibition hosted 359 companies just one shy of last years record-setting 360 companies the exhibition spanned 216 000 gross square feet featuring full-size equipment and emerging technology and industry trends from leading turbomachinery pump and related organizations eighty-eight percent of the exhibit floor for tps 2018 is already reserved four-thousand-six-hundred-twenty unique delegates representing 46 countries visited the exhibition or attended technical sessions engineers and technicians from novice to experienced chose from a combination of 15 short courses 23 lectures 16 tutorials 23 discussion groups and 21 case studies the technical program is selected by the turbomachinery and pump advisory committees and led by experts in their disciplines topics included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals technical content from tps 2017 will be available june 2018 proceedings from previous symposia are free for download at turbolabtamuedu/proceedings we are grateful to all of our authors leaders delegates exhibitors and advisers who make tps a staple event for the industry said greg gammon director of operations for the turbo lab symposium office we saw great success despite needing to reschedule the event with just two weeks notice we know this would not have been possible without support from our industry partners as well as our houston vendors dr dara w childs retired dec 13 from his post as director of the turbo lab and chair of the tps advisory committees he was honored with a banquet dinner during the symposia the search for a turbo lab director is underway tps 2018 is set for sept 18-20 with short courses held in conjunction with the symposia on sept 17 to learn more about tps visit tpstamuedu to reserve exhibit space email martha@turbo-labtamuedu
a passenger airliner full of people lines up on the runway preparing for takeoff as the engines rev up the sound is a dull roar to the passengers inside the craft however this sound is an indication of a process that could impact the safety and reliability of the plane a system that researchers at texas a&m university are seeking to improve
"dr luis san andrés mast-childs chair in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m works on multiple projects in the turbomachinery laboratory his work in rotordynamics includes novel squeeze film dampers which help reduce vibrations within a jet engine creating more reliable equipment that is safer and more comfortable to the ears of passengers the long-term project has been funded by pratt & whitney engines since 2008 ""you turn on an airplane engine and dont turn it off for three years; its not like your car which you turn on and off every day "" san andrés said ""you cant do that with aircraft because it takes a lot of warm up to come up to speed the moment you turn them off they cool off and parts contract and dont work as well"" inside the jet engine there is a space smaller than a human hair between the frame of the engine and the turbines the space is filled with lubricant that prevents the equipment from wearing down during the warmup period the lubricated squeeze film dampers are vital to help decrease vibration from the rotating gas turbine engine that makes the overall plane safer by reducing wear on the airplane the goal of san andrés research is to reduce the time it takes to warm up the engine as well as to continue to increase the safety and efficiency of aircraft jet engines san andrés said the concept is similar to the fluids inside the human body between the knee bones for example there is a packet of synovial fluid that cushions impact ""when you jump or run there is impact the fluid prevents the bones from hitting each other and wearing down these dampers only work under compression they cannot work under tension "" san andrés said ""inside the jet engine there is squeeze lubricant around the surface of the rotor that helps to keep it going and operating smoothly"" since aircrafts carry little lubricant to reduce weight and volume squeeze film dampers during operation are prone to draw air in the film this dynamic process causes the oil and air to mix and the air bubbles reduce the damping ability san andrés students are testing dampers with controlled bubbly oil mixtures to quantify damper degradation in realistic testing conditions"
"along with the physical research san andrés lab has developed computational programs that are used by the industry today but whether its the physical research or computational research one of the goals of san andrés is to teach engineering staff and students the importance of predictive maintenance a common theme across his varied projects in the turbomachinery lab ""in engineering the last thing that you want is to solve a problem you solve problems before they occur during the design stage "" san andrés said ""you have to figure out there will be a crazy professor whos going to test how to break it and it has to survive ""the best engineers arent the ones who solve problems theyre the ones who anticipate the problems and needs in a product "" san andrés said ""the best engineers create a need and change the world"" san andrés said his work falls in line with the mission statement of the turbomachinery lab which is to educate students perform research that is state-of-the-art as a tier one university should have and provide continuing education his work has a direct impact on industry as 95 percent of his projects are industry funded san andrés also works to promote engineering education giving students the skills necessary to survive in a modern fast-paced world his projects typically support a dozen graduate students and professional research staff each year"
"dr sam mannan executive director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) mary kay oconnor process safety center and regents professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed to serve on the department of energys (doe) hydrogen and fuel cell technical advisory committee (htac) ""the hydrogen and fuel cell technical advisory committee is important to ensuring our nations advances in hydrogen and fuel cell commercialization policy regulations standardization financial climate and research and development "" said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees ""dr mannans expertise in hazard assessment and risk analysis vulnerability assessment process safety management and risk management as related to hydrogen and fuel cell deployment will be a strong contribution to this high-level group of experts"" as an htac advisory board member mannan a tees distinguished research professor will provide technical and programmatic advice to the doe on its hydrogen research development and demonstration efforts he joins 18 other members including representatives from industry academia professional societies government agencies financial organizations and environmental groups ""it is a great honor to serve on such an important doe committee particularly at a time when our nation is faced with many choices and challenges in energy resources both in supply chain development and sustainability ""said mannan mannans research interests include abnormal situation management aerosol research inherently safer design quantitative risk assessment reactive chemicals modeling of silane releases liquid-to-natural-gas safety and design and flammability research a professional engineer and certified safety professional mannan is a fellow of the american institute of chemical engineers fellow of the uk institution of chemical engineers and a member of the american society of safety engineers international institute of ammonia refrigeration and national fire protection association in addition to his many honors and achievements mannan was named the first holder of the ma naser chair at bangladesh university of engineering and technology and has served as a consultant to numerous entities in both the academic and private sectors including the columbia accident investigation board"
"industrial distribution students recently took a trip to austin to visit a food pantry and the central texas food bank in order to explore solutions to fight hunger in texas the students are part of the hunger free project an intercollegiate effort to facilitate meaningful sustainable interactions between texas a&m university students and organizations representing core values of leadership and selfless service in the community this initiative was spearheaded by dr malini natarajarathinam an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology & industrial distribution in fall 2016 ""since i started this effort every person that i have solicited help from has gone above and beyond to propel this idea forward "" says natarajarathinam ""that just speaks volumes about our commitment as a society and institution to providing aggies with a meaningful learning experience grounded in selfless service it is very humbling to see the support from all possible avenues"" last spring a learning community of approximately 120 undergraduate students in the disciplines of industrial distribution sociology and computer technology management worked together in multidisciplinary teams to boost the ability of texas food banks to better understand their clients and their needs reduce costs and enhance efficiency the project is currently in its second year with a new class of students ready to get to work in april the students will present their solutions at the inaugural community engagement & impact summit held at texas a&m attendees will include stakeholders in the leadership and service center as well as the hunger free project service-learning classes provide opportunities for students to learn through practice by making a difference in their communities student teams were each assigned to a texas food agency or pantry that has a pre-identified problem in areas including distributing supply chain management and other organizational issues in austin students also visited the food pantry micah 6 where they got to experience firsthand the problems that these groups faced a dialogue was formed and students were able to ask questions to pantry workers in order to spark ideas to find solutions after the pantry visit students traveled to the central texas food bank which was responsible for providing over 45 million meals to its community last year alone students went on in-depth tours of the facility and were able to meet with food bank employees afterward and engage in meaningful discussion the central texas food bank is a strategic partner in the project and will provide the winning teams at the community engagement & impact summit with a total of $15 000 to implement their proposed solutions"
radiation detectors are deployed for many different uses in a variety of different field conditions and many of these detection systems are mobile the efficiency of radiation detection systems is known to decrease as the speed of the detection system increases understanding how these systems perform under increasing speeds and in changing environments will help improve the systems effectiveness and ultimately decrease the cost of performing a survey lt james falkner is a phd student working with dr craig marianno deputy director of the tees center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and an assistant professor of nuclear engineering to analyze the performance of mobile radiation detection systems with respect to how fast the systems are moving falkners research is a combination of simulation and experimentation he used computer models to simulate simple detection systems and derive the underlying relationship between efficiency and speed he then conducted experiments to verify this relationship using real world data data was first gathered in a laboratory using a 2 x 2 inch sodium iodide detector attached to a robot traveling between 20-120 centimeters per second data was then gathered outdoors using a 2x4x16 inch sodium iodide detector attached to a vehicle traveling between 10-40 miles per hour finally he tested the relationship using aerial data provided by two partner groups gathered using large multi-detector systems traveling between 70-140 knots
by comparing field data with the results of the computer simulations he was able to validate the relationship between efficiency and speed understanding how speed effects detector efficiency allows surveyors to tailor their survey plans for maximum effectiveness using this relationship surveyors can be confident in their survey results conduct surveys in the most efficient way possible or identify lower thresholds for their surveys given operational constraints on their detection system falkner is an active duty lieutenant in the medical service corps of the united states navy his previous assignments include the submarine tender uss emory s land and the naval dosimetry center he received a masters degree in applied physics from johns hopkins university in 2010 the views expressed in this article reflect the results of research conducted by the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the department of the navy department of defense nor the united states government this work was supported by navy medicine professional development center as part of falkners duty-under-instruction program falkner is a military service member of the united states government his work was prepared as part of his official duties title 17 usc 105 provides that copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the united states government title 17 usc 101 defines a us government work as work prepared by a military service member or employee of the us government as part of that persons official duties
"dr kristen maitland associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering and director of the microscopy and imaging center at texas a&m university has been promoted to fellow of spie maitland was recognized for ""achievements in confocal microendoscopy"" during a ceremony at the spie photonics west conference in san francisco california on jan 29 fellows of spie are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics photonics and imaging they are honored for their technical achievement for their service to the general optics community and to spie in particular maitlands research focuses on the development of optical imaging and sensing technologies for the detection diagnosis and treatment of disease she is recognized as a leader in multimodal optical imaging and an expert in endoscopic microscopy maitland is in her second term on the spie board of directors she serves on the editorial board of the spie journal of biomedical optics and on the editorial advisory board for spie professional she has served on program committees for conferences in spie photonics west and spie/osa european conference on biomedical optics maitland received her bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from cal poly san luis obispo and her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the university of texas at austin as an nsf igert research fellow maitland joined the faculty at texas a&m in 2008 spie is an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light more than 1 300 spie members have become fellows since the societys inception in 1955"
"according to an article in mashable nasas 2019 budget proposal includes funding for a new x-plane specifically a supersonic aircraft designed to travel faster than the speed of sound without generating a loud sonic boom dr dimitris lagoudas associate vice chancellor for engineering research at texas a&m university and principal investigator for the project leads a team of researchers that includes dr rodney bowersox and dr darren hartl from the department of aerospace engineering they are making recommendations to nasa on ways to reduce the massive shockwaves produced during supersonic flight the article ""nasa believes its supersonic x-plane will slice our cross-country flight times in half"" describes their research that subtly changes the shape of the aircraft in midflight depending on various weather conditions if nasa has its way the first x-plane prototype of this kind will take flight in 2021"
with 48 hours on the clock students from 14 universities set out to make an impact on the world this past weekend in the end more than 400 students in 10 different countries came up with solutions to problems facing the globe spearheaded by texas a&m universitys engineering entrepreneurship program invent for the planet followed the format of aggies invent an intensive design challenge that gives students hands-on experience with solving problems in 48 hours the event kicked off at 4 pm local time friday feb 16 in cambodia (3 am cdt) as the earth continued to rotate more universities joined the challenge from myanmar to idaho collaboration was key as students raced to develop solutions to 15 need statements sourced by some of the participating universities as well as usaid each student had access to microsoft teams software which allowed students to easily communicate with one another via messages video chat or audio calls the winners each university named a first second and third place winning team at texas a&m the first place team illuminate designed a lighting solution for children in developing countries without access to electricity to be able to study after dark the second place team erase the waste created an affordable bag that could be used to keep grains such as rice from going bad or being exposed to insects the third place team samara developed a device that could safely transport medication to rural areas the first-place winners from each team will compete against each other to be named the overall invent for the planet winner on monday feb 26 the grand prize includes an invitation for up to six members of the winning team to come to texas a&m in march to continue their work with experts the winning team will also present their project at the venturewell open minds showcase and reception march 24 at the bullock texas state history museum in austin texas and will have a chance to win up to $3 000 a global collaborative experience it was incredible watching all 14 universities around the world working on solutions to some of the planets biggest challenges said rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship at texas a&m from food security and waste management to the environment and education the ideas these students came up with were innovative and groundbreaking i cant wait to see some of these ideas come to fruition one such idea is already being implemented at state university of pernambuco in recife brazil the school of engineering is taking their winning teams design a system that keeps track of energy consumption in a household or business and will be using this system in all 10 engineering buildings on campus in an effort to reduce their expensive energy bill in the end boehm said thats what its all about turning ideas into reality and making a difference in the world for some of my students this opportunity was the first time they have been exposed to other universities abroad so i was more than happy dr fernando buarque in brazil said it was the first time his university has ever hosted an intensive design experience challenge it was a first for mahidol university in thailand too our team and mentors felt really happy to see our students eagerness and willingness to solve global problems so we see that this event can really help our students develop an entrepreneurial mindset and skills dr phattananrd phattanasri said texas a&m student reflections adriana hernandez a landscape architecture student at texas a&m was on team illuminate we already have very diverse backgrounds she said of her team but i talked to someone from mexico and someone from another school they tried to explain what they were doing and it was interesting to see what their approach was mechanical engineering masters student sarojeet deb said it was exciting to take his classroom education and apply it in a practical way teammate adam curtis agreed we were in the shop and technicians would say ‘this looks great on paper but we either cant machine this or its not going to make sense he said actually getting their input when we were trying to design was really useful senior aerospace engineering student makiah eustice said her favorite part of invent for the planet was being able to collaborate on her project with a multidisciplinary team of all ages and backgrounds i got to hang out with freshmen who are really innovative who bring a lot of different perspectives that you wouldnt expect she said a lot of people were better at things than me and then i can bring some things to the table too so its been a really neat experience
to see a list of all participating universities and need statements please visit the aggies invent page the overall winner will be announced next week to see photos from around the world check out #iftp2018 on social media
riser gas behavior was a major factor in the deepwater horizon disaster in april 2010 where an uncontrolled blowout on the macondo well caused explosions that killed 11 people sank the offshore rig and led to a hydrocarbon release in the gulf of mexico damaging the environment
to address the risks of riser gas in offshore drilling dr wesley williams a professional in residence at the craft & hawkins department of petroleum engineering at louisiana state university (lsu) and dr jerome schubert an associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university are heading a joint project focusing on gaps in the understanding of riser gas behavior their project is funded with a $49 million award from the gulf research program of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine with the use of a modified land well and several labs at both universities williams and schubert will gather data to understand and model some of the harsh conditions of offshore drilling their models and predictions mean better sensors advisory systems and equipment can be manufactured to warn about and prevent uncontrolled hydrocarbon releases or catastrophic blowout disasters in the future the project will begin by using the lsu petroleum engineering research and technology transfer laboratory and a modified 5 800-foot deep test well on the lsu campus called the gulf research well to perform simulations of kicks and gas-bubble migrations in offshore drilling muds
drilling muds are the heavy synthetic or oil-based muds circulated down the drill string behind the bit and back up the borehole to counter the pressures in a reservoir keeping liquids and gasses deep in the earth from forcing their way up the well while drilling is in progress a kick is the term for pressurized gas from a reservoir entering the borehole and mixing with the drilling mud if the kick is not stopped gas will migrate up and into the riser where it is called riser gas a riser is the conduit between a drilling rig and a well on the seafloor below weatherford deepwater well control will provide offshore muds needed for the gulf research well phase of the project with representative robert ziegler consulting on fluids and deep-water conditions the simulations will generate mud and gas datasets in controlled temperature and pressure environments the mud and gas datasets will be verified in lab-scale test environments at texas a&m using the tower lab under the direction of dr rashid hasan and the dual gradient drilling lab under the direction of schubert both labs will use scaled simulations to replicate and confirm the data and understand the physics behind riser gas behavior once this is done researchers will create computer models in the new high pressure and high temperature fluids laboratory at lsu to better predict the behavior of riser gas
"the properties of mud and gas mixtures will also be measured under extreme conditions at schuberts high temperature/high pressure laboratory at texas a&m schubert will use this new data to develop a high temperature/high pressure kick-and-well-control model for gas kicks in oil-based and synthetic drilling fluids which will be superior to the water-based mud assumptions or black-oil models currently used although newer risers are designed with gas handling equipment installed in the top of the riser operations can only improve if more is known about the behavior of gas entering the synthetic drilling muds and what happens when gas reaches the riser that is why williams and schuberts research is so critical ""standard operation is not to let any gas get in the riser but when youre in ultra deep water things are different "" said schubert who has specialized in deepwater well-control research for many years ""if we understand the process we can design a system to prevent it we can develop procedures where gas in the riser is not a problem i want incidents like the macondo (well disaster) to never happen again"""
texas a&m engineering is poised to become a national leader in advanced manufacturing helping cement that growing reputation the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has joined america makes the countrys leading collaborative partner in additive manufacturing and 3-d printing technology research commercialization and education the two will collaborate on ways to advance the additive manufacturing and 3-d printing industries across the country while also sharing their knowledge with texas a&m university students interested in manufacturing additive manufacturing and 3-d printing will transform the manufacturing industry said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering and director of tees we look forward to partnering with america makes to strengthen our position in this important area texas a&m has one of the largest concentrations of core manufacturing subject matter experts in the country the knowledge base is multidisciplinary with approximately 10 percent coming from the college of engineering and the other 90 percent comprised of representatives from various colleges within the university and the texas a&m university system as a public-private partnership the brand equity that texas a&m brings to america makes is world class said rob gorham america makes executive director what weve decided to do with texas a&m is really leverage world-class researchers and big initiatives that (texas) a&m can bring to the table to bring 3-d printing and additive manufacturing in to the state of texas in a very focused and deliberate way tees currently has significant involvement in several national manufacturing usa institutes including: leader of the gulf coast regional manufacturing center one of five regional centers located across the country as part of the clean energy smart manufacturing innovation institute (cesmii) in partnership with the department of energy cesmiis goal is to spur advances in smart sensors and digital process controls that can radically improve the efficiency of advanced manufacturing in the united states leader of the south central regional robotics innovation collaborative part of the department of defenses advanced robotics manufacturing (arm) innovation hub arms mission is to create and deploy robotic technology by integrating the diverse collection of industry practices and institutional knowledge across many disciplines to create a robust manufacturing innovation ecosystem co-leading the modeling and simulation focus area within the rapid advancement in process intensification deployment (rapid) manufacturing institute in partnership with the department of energy rapid is working to enable the development of breakthrough technologies in modular chemical process intensification that will boost energy productivity and energy efficiency cut operating costs and reduce waste in industries such oil and gas pulp and paper and various domestic chemical manufacturers thematic lead and regional hub of the advanced regenerative manufacturing institute (armi) a consortium of nearly 100 partner organizations to develop next-generation manufacturing processes and technologies for cells tissues and organs tier i partner in the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) supporting the standards for more efficient and rapid manufacturing capabilities in biopharmaceuticals
the scent of flowers that we breathe the water in the sea that we play with the colorful world around us that we explore have you ever wondered what they are made of the answer is atoms and molecules teeny-tiny particles that we cannot see with our eyes but scientists have developed many different ways to distinguish dr vladislav yakovlev professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has recently had a breakthrough with one of these ways raman scattering when it comes to viewing these building blocks of life this new technique attains low-background coherent raman scattering that is controlled by a tunable infrared laser raman scattering is the inelastic scattering of a photon by molecules the technique developed by yakovlev is called mid-infrared assisted coherent anti-stokes raman scattering/spectroscopy (mira cars) and is an entirely new technique this approach offers a new advantage including a potential for higher emission intensity a reduction of nonresonant four-wave mixing background preferential excitation of the anti-stokes field and simplified phasing matching conditions currently there are many different raman techniques that are widely used and range from microscopic imaging high-resolution spectroscopy and even the detection of fatality inducing spores such as anthrax yakovlev noted that the current challenge at hand is the availability of mid-ir sources researchers and companies alike are steadily pushing the boundaries of what mid-ir tools are capable of in addition infrared light is absorbed by water and carbon dioxide this in turn could limit the available wavelength if the beam is formed within open air or within biological samples however as demonstrated by andrew traverso and brett hokr two former students in yakovlevs group two-photon excitation lifts most of such restrictions and benefits a background free and highly efficient cars technique that will greatly enhance the sensitivity of current methods the theory for the new raman scattering method was developed by dr marlan scully zhenhuan yi and luqi yuan of the institute of quantum science and engineering and department of physics and astronomy at texas a&m their experimental research eventually became the groundwork for yakovlev the research conducted at texas a&m was funded by the air force office of scientific research office of naval research and the national science foundation
"the future needs more scientists and engineers - how do we inspire kids today to become them the idea in september 2016 four researchers at texas a&m university were awarded a $1 million national science foundation grant to promote interest in science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) careers in partnership with blinn college the funded project ""connected stem - promoting stem education through connected devices and building automation"" is a three-year innovative technology experiences for students and teachers (itest) grant focused on encouraging middle and high school students to learn about stem and the types of careers paths those fields offer the innovative technology experiences for students and teachers program is part of the nsfs directorate for education & human resources whose goal is to achieve excellence in us stem education at all levels in order to support the development of a diverse and well-prepared workforce itest grants specifically support research on the design development implementation and selective spread of innovative strategies for engaging students in technology-rich experiences for the promotion and increased awareness of stem and stem occupations grant recipients dr michael johnson dr joseph morgan dr jay porter and dr matthew kuttolamadom are all professors in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution dr jennifer whitfield and dr bugrahan yalvac are in the department of mathematics and department of teaching learning and culture respectively the project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the texas a&m college of engineering college of science and college of education to promote stem in classrooms researchers knew that they had to start with the biggest influence on students lives every day - teachers teaching the teachers last summer 12 teachers from across texas were invited to take part in an all-expenses-paid two-week stem training workshop where they would learn concepts that could be easily relayed to their students dr jennifer whitfield director of aggieteach from the college of science helped engineering technology and industrial distribution department researchers reach and recruit teachers through a highly competitive process ""we had 100 applicants but only 12 were selected for the workshop "" said whitfield ""these teachers wanted to be here and were really committed and engaged"" each teacher received free equipment for his or her classroom including stem software a new 3-d printer and even internet of things measurement devices how did the workshop go in short phenomenal teachers participated in a range of lectures and hands-on learning activities centered on building automation the internet of things the engineering design process and additive manufacturing ""dr johnsons team has taken these four areas and put them together in such a way that secondary educators have the ability to create curriculum from it "" said morgan dr cynthia maye a sixth-grade science teacher at burbank middle school from houston said the experience was truly eye-opening ""i could not fathom that i was going to learn this much in this amount of time "" maye said ""to know that we took stuff back with us that the kids can touch and learn from is really exciting"" once the workshop was over teachers returned to their schools and began developing their newly-learned stem curriculum which they are now teaching this spring this may sound like the end of the project but in fact is just the beginning one year down two to go johnson engineering technology and industrial distribution department associate professor and the grants principal investigator shared his thoughts on the progress of the three-year-long project ""i think we had a lot of success over the summer were at the point now where the teachers are implementing their curriculum into their classrooms and we are collecting preliminary data "" said johnson going forward all teachers will be getting visits from industry leaders who will speak to students facilitate building automation activities as well as come together for a family stem night where students can share what they have learned johnson wanted to express his gratitude to industries such as texas instruments who donated over 200 launchpads to the teachers from the workshop so that more students could get involved with internet of things activities other companies that supported the project include schneider electric and national instruments after teachers finish the program this spring johnson and his research team will welcome a brand-new set of teachers in the summer to repeat the entire process once that is completed there are plans for a stem camp in south texas for a large number of students and researchers who will be able to facilitate a variety of hands-on activities the future one of the most exciting aspects of this project is the potential for it to become a new standard of teaching stem in classrooms not only in texas but potentially the rest of the nation and even the world ""now that the teachers have this capability and understanding they can incorporate it into their classrooms for a long time "" said johnson ""this self-sustaining aspect is something that we want to build off of by expanding the scale to more teachers in the future"" engineers and stem professionals are in high demand now and this need will only increase johnson stressed just how important it is that we spark an interest in young people today so they can be the scientific leaders of the future ""everything is an engineered product so whether that is doing healthcare technology water resource management or even creating drugs to combat illnesses all of these things are in the purview of stem "" said johnson ""you can impact peoples lives and make the world a better place"""
"students from all walks of life enter texas a&m university in pursuit of degree for some they dont even step into a classroom douglas compton graduated last fall as the department of mechanical engineerings first graduate in the distance learning graduate program compton graduated with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from west texas a&m university and went into the workforce as an engineer for seven years working as a mechanical engineer for companies in the houston area and las vegas in 2015 while living in houston compton said he decided to go back to school for his masters degree to potentially expand future employment opportunities in project management ""i wanted to complete that degree online while working because i didnt want to be out of work-i have a wife and a 5-year-old "" compton said ""i wanted to pursue a degree and earn money at the same time"" he said he always wanted to get masters degree at texas a&m and began researching distance learning programs he started his masters degree in fall 2015 the first semester the university began offering the distance learning masters program he graduated in december 2017 with a masters of engineering degree having taken two classes every semester though technology helped him communicate with professors and fellow students while working compton said the distance still presented challenges ""you dont get the face-to-face time through email or phone and you have to coordinate with students schedules for group projects "" compton said ""working full-time time was extremely thin but i was able to still do it some people say its hard for professionals to have interaction with students but the way that this program was done it is very possible"" compton now works in dallas and offered some advice to students who may be considering or are already part of the distance learning program ""see it through keep working and keep in contact with professors "" compton said ""while i did not see (my professors) i made sure they knew who i was"""
dr helen reed regents professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded the 2018 american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) fluid dynamics award this award is presented for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the behavior of liquids and gases in motion as related to need in aeronautics and astronautics reed will receive an engraved medal and certificate of citation during the recognition luncheon at the 2018 aiaa aviation forum and exposition in june in atlanta georgia the citation for her award will read for lifetime achievements in the fundamental understanding modeling and control of boundary-layer laminar-to-turbulent transition for aerospace vehicles from subsonic to hypersonic reed has been with the department for 13 years serving as department head for four years before returning to teaching and research on a full-time basis widely regarded as an expert in hypersonics boundary-layer stability and transition energy efficient aircraft and small satellite design she has led research projects totaling millions of dollars among those projects she is presently a member of two of the five nasa university leadership initiatives (one led by texas a&m and one by university of tennessee knoxville) she is a principal investigator on a major air force office of scientific research program to model the transition process on a next-generation hypersonic flight-test article in addition reed has a phase ii small business innovation research program through arnold engineering development center and cfd research corporation to disseminate her analysis tools she directs the computational stability and transition lab as well as the aggiesat lab satellite program a design-build-fly student satellite program housed within the department reed is a consultant to the institute for defense analysis a member of the national academies air force studies board intelligence science and technology experts group chair of the aiaa transition discussion group and a member of the nato avt et 136 technical team: hypersonic boundary layer transition prediction she is also co-founder and chief technology officer for chandah space technologies a startup company specializing in small satellite systems she is a licensed professional engineer in the state of texas she has received numerous professional awards and honors including being named a fellow of the aiaa the american physical society and the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) she received the kate gleason award from asme the atwood award from the american society for engineering education and aiaa and the minnie stevens piper professor award from the state of texas she was inducted into the academy of engineering excellence and the committee of 100 in the college of engineering and the inaugural class of the academy of aerospace and ocean engineering excellence all at virginia tech in 2013 she was named a presidential professor for teaching excellence (in perpetuity) as well as a regents professor (in perpetuity) and in 2014 she was awarded the texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award in teaching at the university level and was named holder of the edward pete aldridge 60 professorship reed earned a bachelors degree in mathematics from goucher college and masters and doctoral degrees in engineering mechanics from virginia tech
dr james cross professor at auburn university and former doctoral student from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2017 distinguished member of the association for computing machinery cross is receiving this distinction for his educational contributions to the field of computing his recent research efforts include jgrasp a software development environment with integrated software visualization tools for computer science education he has authored or co‑authored over 100 technical papers in the areas of software methodology testing reverse engineering program visualization environments and software engineering education he received his bachelors degree in mathematics from the university of houston in 1971 his masters degree in mathematics from sam houston state university in 1976 and his phd in computer science from texas a&m in 1986
"news about cybersecurity is rarely good whether its individuals hacker groups or even foreign adversaries attempting to interfere with the democratic process it can feel like the united states is struggling to keep up on the cybersecurity front but the news isnt all bad instead of standing idly by texas a&m has been quickly responding to the call with the recently awarded $44 million grant from the national science foundation cybercorps scholarships for service (sfs) program the texas a&m cybersecurity center will administer the cyber leader-scholars program in partnership with houston community college the program will combine the academic expertise at both institutions to develop and mentor a group of students over a five-year period in return for their scholarships which include generous stipends the students agree to work for a government agency for a period equal to the length of the scholarship dr daniel ""rags"" ragsdale director of the texas a&m cybersecurity center said ""our cyber leader-scholars program which includes the sfs program leverages the strong and longstanding commitment of a&m leaders faculty and students to addressing threats to the safety and security of texans us citizens and other members of the global community it also takes advantage of the decades-long focus the university has directed at the ever-evolving challenges of cybersecurity ""we are fortunate to have highly motivated partners from houston community college (hcc) who will administer the program on their campus "" ragsdale added hcc is one of the six two-year institutions participating in the texas a&m-chevron engineering academies program the first-ever engineering transition program of its kind in the united states this program is the most recent development in texas a&ms ongoing effort to provide both groundbreaking research and a skilled workforce in cybersecurity last year following former us undersecretary of defense for intelligence dr stephen cambones appointment to lead the texas a&m university systems cybersecurity initiatives the chronicle for higher education profiled texas a&ms efforts to develop a robust cybersecurity curriculum recently militarytimescom ranked texas a&m as one of the top 10 schools in the country for cybersecurity the work being done by the texas a&m cybersecurity center and a&m faculty to meet the growing demand for cybersecurity expertise is extraordinary "" cambone said ""the increasing number of students enrolling in an increasing number of cybersecurity classes is a testament to their commitment addressing a set of issues that are both complex and in urgent need of resolution"" in terms of impact texas a&m faculty have been awarded more than $18 million in grants for cybersecurity research and education in the past three years and that figure continues to grow for example texas a&m scholars with support from the national science foundation the department of energy and the defense advanced projects agency are engaged in several high-impact research projects that address cyber vulnerabilities in a wide array of critical infrastructure sectors according to ragsdale the vision for the cybersecurity center is to ensure that texas a&m in partnership with other forward-looking institutions would move to the forefront of cybersecurity research and education ""with the progress we have seen in just the past two years and with the addition to our faculty and staff of dr cambone and a number of distinguished cybersecurity faculty it is safe to say that a&m is well on its ways to realizing this auspicious vision "" ragsdale said co-principal investigators for the national science foundation grant include texas a&m cybersecurity center assistant directors paula dewitte and dr robert jones and department of computer science professors dr dilma da silva and dr guofei gu"
if you had a chance to make a difference in the world would you create an environment for children in developing countries to continue learning once the sun has gone down design a tool to decrease the massive amount of food that is wasted or develop an identification system for migrant workers to help them access jobs and secure finances those questions and others may be answered as the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m university is hosting the first invent for the planet a 48-hour global design challenge that aims to solve some of the worlds most pressing problems from cambodia to new mexico 14 universities around the world are joining the challenge to invent for our planet the event kicks off in cambodia at 4 pm local time (3 am central time) feb 16 as the earth continues to rotate other universities will join the challenge invent for the planet will give engineering students around the world the ability to collaborate together to solve problems and experience what its like to be an engineer in our global society said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program adds m katherine banks texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean texas a&m is addressing the most challenging problems facing our world by encouraging the brightest young minds to develop innovative solutions from flood water management for rebuild texas to biomedical devices that help children in cambodia access health care the sun never sets on innovation and this is a wonderful example of engineers changing the world microsoft is providing a collaborative platform for teams to communicate with each other for example if a team in boise idaho is working on a challenge that might affect citizens of thailand team members can ask specific questions of mahidol university students in bangkok by video chatting or messaging venturewell and autodesk also have joined invent for the planet to provide support at each location teams are formed based on a shared interest in one of the available need statements over the following two days the teams research the topic come up with a plan and build a simple prototype at the end of the final day each team presents its prototype to a panel of judges presentations include a video about the teams innovation at each site three teams are selected for first second and third-place prizes the first-place teams from each university will have about a week to perfect their pitches before submitting new videos that will be judged remotely for a chance to be named the overall winner participating universities include the institute of technology of cambodia phnom penh cambodia; mahidol university bangkok thailand; the university of technology at yadanabon cyber city myanmar; texas a&m university at qatar doha qatar; technical university of cluj-napoca cluj-napoca romania; arab academy for science technology and maritime transport alexandria egypt; universidad politecnica de yucatan merida yucatan mexico; swansea university swansea wales; state university of pernambuco recife pernambuco brazil; wichita state wichita university kansas; arizona state university phoenix arizona; boise state university boise idaho; new mexico state university las cruces new mexico
for engineering project management teams time is money with this in mind civil engineering masters student morgan boudier and four other aggies developed a novel solution: save teams time and money with the use of specialized augmented reality software that can tell them if a project is on track boudier and four other students developed this software through the november 2017 aggies invent challenge sponsored by dell students were challenged to develop the next generation in augmented reality or virtual reality software wearable devices and other platforms before the event i already had an interest in the area of virtual reality boudier said i think it is a good way to cut cost in the industry so what we had done is develop a software on unix that will let a project manager track costs and losses due to project delays on construction management projects the software boudier and his colleagues developed in 48 hours was specifically designed to assess walls the software enabled a user through a virtual reality headset to survey a wall in front of them then looking at the wall the user can directly compare the architectural model developed for the structure on the headset to the wall in front of them to see if it is completed yet if there are complications and what cost there would be due to the lost time with the headset the engineer can directly see what is going on onsite and this visual can be sent [directly] to the project manager boudier said the idea was that you lose a lot of time with meetings and reporting so the headset can be used to speed up this reporting by allowing you to be on site also with the headset you can video stream with an expert and ask them questions in the field instead of having to gather people together for a meeting so youre saving both time and money the software that the team developed was designed to be applied to walls but has the potential for other future applications the team that developed the software consisted of boudier two mechanical engineering students a computer science engineering student and a student from the mays business school it was a pretty diverse group which was a good thing to see boudier said i think working with these people from different backgrounds gave me some self-confidence about working as a part of a team and helped me see that i could contribute good ideas for the betterment of the group a french native boudier said part of what drew him to pursue his masters education at texas a&m university was the hands-on engineering experiences like aggies invent that focus on real world challenges the upcoming aggies invent experience invent for the planet will take place this month as a part of a worldwide event that challenges students to tackle global issues such as human rights and resource conservation through product innovation reflecting on his time as a previous participant boudier said the experience was well worth it and encourages others to be a part of the competition i think the winners of the aggies invent are always the people with the best ideas boudier said i think it shows that those with the best ideas succeed and that you have to spend some time letting it develop in your mind it doesnt just happen if i could do this again i would its a great experience
"rachal thomassie a former advisor in the texas a&m university department of mechanical engineering is pursuing her masters degree in interdisciplinary engineering at texas a&m with the hope that she will be able to continue to help students in a whole new way ""ive always had a desire to help people and to devote my work efforts toward that value in some way "" thomassie said ""working with students these past years i have seen my direct and immediate impact on their lives it is a very gratuitous and humbling feeling"" thomassie received her undergraduate degree from texas a&m in mechanical engineering then moved to florida to work for the department of defense she worked for a year in mission and ministry work then changed her career path to education when she accepted a position as an academic advisor for the college of architecture at texas a&m she later moved to the college of engineering in the mechanical engineering department where she was an advisor for four years realizing the impact her work and compassion had on students lives thomassie decided to make a change and further her education so she could eventually help more students ""id like to make a broader impact by developing programs that support engineering students and aid in their development as people and as future engineers "" thomassie said ""i also want to guide students academically through teaching and connecting the classroom learning experience to the real world"" the master of science in interdisciplinary engineering (itde) has been the perfect fit for thomassie the flexible program accommodates accomplished engineering students whose research interests cross engineering disciplines and colleges interested in systems engineering and engineering student learning thomassie found itde to be ideal because the major allowed her to get an education in a custom degree plan tailored toward her needs ""the flexibility of itde has allowed me to create my own degree plan around my interest and research in engineering education and systems engineering "" thomassie said ""since a&m doesnt currently have a specific program in this area i choose itde""this in turn will help thomassie reach her career goals and stay true to her passion for helping students at texas a&m ""my goal is to create and direct programs that enhance engineering student development and engagement and to teach engineering students "" thomassie said thomassie was additionally assisted in reaching her goals when she received the bk krezner memorial reentry scholarship through the society of women engineers which is awarded to a nontraditional reentry student who wishes to enter the workforce as an engineer"
"dr xingyong song assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution with a joint appointment in the department of mechanical engineering was recently presented the prestigious doctoral new investigator award from the american chemical society (acs) for his research on autonomous shale oil drilling each year the acs holds a highly selective competition through peer review to award funding to top young researchers with a track record of producing innovative fundamental research established in 1954 the goal of the competition has been to support ""advanced scientific education and the careers of scientists to aid in significantly increasing the worlds energy options"" the award provides funding of $110 000 for two years and will support song on some fundamental studies in his proposed research ""dynamics modeling and process control of drilling system for unconventional oil and gas production"" shale oil is a ""tight oil"" trapped in hard rocks that in the past has been very difficult to extract since the united states has large reserves of shale oil it has become a priority to engineers to figure out how to ease the process of extraction in addition to the possible transition from the us being an oil and gas importer to a producer shale oil and gas can potentially be cleaner than its crude counterpart however extraction is highly difficult due to the depth of shale oil and the requirement of new types of drills that must operate in a 3-d space ""there are three major challenges to shale oil extraction "" says song ""cost environmental impact and safety"" songs research focuses on drilling automation - transitioning from a human drilling operator to a drill that can operate itself similar to a self-driving car or spacecraft ""machine learning can optimize the drilling path using analysis and data in ways that a human operator cannot "" says song ""you can potentially remove human error and effectively drill in a three-dimensional path"" song is focused on building the algorithm that autonomous drills would use to make intelligent decisions on their own resulting in cost-effective environmentally friendly and safe shale oil drilling autonomous drilling could also save companies crucial time in locating and extracting the oil allowing them to utilize their drillers in other areas that require human control"
texas a&m university researchers are studying seal leaks in subsea and aging oil well production facilities with the potential to greatly increase the efficiency of multiple-phase pumping and compressors turbomachinery dr luis san andrés mast-childs chair professor in the turbomachinery laboratory along with graduate assistant researcher xueliang lu a phd candidate in mechanical engineering conducted a series of measurements on the leakage and dynamic forced performance of wet seals such as pump liquid seals mixed with increasing contents of gas the test results show the gas or liquid content affects the system pumping efficiency and reliability with a dramatic impact on efficiency recorded with only a few droplets of liquid the experimental results validate mixture model predictions produced by san andrés in the early 2010s by better understanding the role seals have in the machinery researchers can help industry officials continue to enhance pumping efficiency increase reliability by reducing vibrations and ensure availability for extended operation times the researchers said an electric submersible pump (esp) manufacturer gave them positive comments on their work and said their data may help them design novel seal types toward improving the life of seals in their esps the current design can only survive 350 hours of operation about 1/100 of the desired reliability the team wrote a paper recording their results which was recently recognized with the best paper award at the american society of mechanical engineers turbo-expo 2017 selected from 133 papers accepted in the structure & dynamics division their papers title is leakage drag power and rotordynamic force coefficients of an air in oil (wet) annular seal the turbomachinery research consortium (trc) has sponsored the research for the past three years trc members original equipment manufacturers and end users envision more and more applications of multiple phase pumps for the subsea oil and gas industry san andrés and lu said wet seals must retain their leakage restriction ability without impairing the dynamic performance of the machinery follow up lectures are scheduled for presentation at the asia turbomachinery symposium and the turbomachinery symposium later this year more research developments will be published at the gas turbine conference with another journal paper already accepted the research opens a door for the future research career of lu as it verifies the likelihood of using air/gas injection to actively control leakage and force coefficient in pump seals and hydraulic turbomachinery in general san andrés said
"during the recent science technology engineering and math (stem) 4 innovation conference spark! texas a&m engineerings education outreach program launched their new mobile trailer designed to help texas children get excited about stem fields nearly 200 educators from across texas attended the conference and had the opportunity to see the 24-foot trailer in which students and teachers will be able to do anything from 3-d printing and welding to learning about robotics and cybersecurity ""we want to get students excited about engineering and we have to start with young ones "" said shelly tornquist director of spark! and pk-12 engineering education outreach ""we want them to know what a screwdriver is and how to solve problems by making things"" the stem 4 innovation conference for k-12 education is an interactive experiential event for k-12 stem educators administrators and counselors from across the state of texas the texas a&m college of engineering and the texas a&m engineering experiment station in partnership with the college of education and human development and the college of science hosts the conference which provides workshops tours speakers and hands-on activities"
texas a&m is headed to austin texas to the south by southwest (sxsw) conference to bring our outstanding thought leadership research and innovations during innovation week as a worldwide leader in research discovery and innovation this will showcase the superb work happening at our university to a global audience in particular dr gerard coté director of the center of remote health technologies and systems will represent the department of biomedical engineering at the sxsw conference in a panel titled disrupting traditional healthcare with innovation and technology the purpose of this panel is to bring into light some of the current issues that traditional healthcare is facing and how innovations and technology are a driving force to help revolutionize the industry due to the rising costs of healthcare and the large demand for professionals within the medical field traditional healthcare is in need of innovative research in affordable point-of-care health technologies and engineered systems that can enhance the health and quality of life for individuals while reducing the cost burden of the healthcare system coté was awarded the prestigious national science foundation (nsf) engineering research center (erc) on precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) the paths-up vision is to change the paradigm for the health of underserved populations by developing revolutionary and cost-effective technologies and systems at the point-of-care in the early 19th century most patients stayed at home and doctors went to the patient in order to provide health care eventually public hospitals emerged originally to care for the poor but expanded and improved to attract upper middle class said coté by developing innovative health technologies to collect data model that data and send it to the health care provider at the right time they may be able to again visit the patient in their home virtually in addition dr carrie l byington who serves as dean of the texas a&m college of medicine senior vice president of the texas a&m university health science center and vice chancellor for health services of the texas a&m university system will join coté on the panel also on the panel dr roderic i pettigrew a physician-scientist and internationally recognized leader in biomedical imaging and bioengineering has a senior leadership role at both texas a&m and methodist hospital and is the ceo of the new program known as enhealth that will integrate engineering into all of the texas a&m colleges within the universitys system that are part of the healthcare enterprise dr joseph frassica is head of philips research americas and chief medical officer royal philips north america and will moderate the panel frassica is focused on leading a broad-based medical science and technology team to bring clinically meaningful innovation to the bedside the 2018 sxsw conference is friday march 9 through tuesday march 13 and this panel will be on tuesday march 13th at 3:30 pm at the courtyard marriott 300 east 4th street austin tx
a penetrating injury from shrapnel is a serious obstacle in overcoming battlefield wounds that can ultimately lead to death given the high mortality rates due to hemorrhaging there is an unmet need to quickly self-administer materials that prevent fatality due to excessive blood loss
with a gelling agent commonly used in preparing pastries researchers from the inspired nanomaterials and tissue engineering laboratory have successfully fabricated an injectable bandage to stop bleeding and promote wound healing in a recent article nanoengineered injectable hydrogels for wound healing application published in acta biomaterialia dr akhilesh k gaharwar assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university uses kappa-carrageenan and nanosilicates to form injectable hydrogels to promote hemostasis (the process to stop bleeding) and facilitate wound healing via a controlled release of therapeutics injectable hydrogels are promising materials for achieving hemostasis in case of internal injuries and bleeding as these biomaterials can be introduced into a wound site using minimally invasive approaches said gaharwar an ideal injectable bandage should solidify after injection in the wound area and promote a natural clotting cascade in addition the injectable bandage should initiate wound healing response after achieving hemostasis the study uses a commonly used thickening agent known as kappa-carrageenan obtained from seaweed to design injectable hydrogels hydrogels are a 3-d water swollen polymer network similar to jell-o simulating the structure of human tissues
when kappa-carrageenan is mixed with clay-based nanoparticles injectable gelatin is obtained the charged characteristics of clay-based nanoparticles provide hemostatic ability to the hydrogels specifically plasma protein and platelets form blood adsorption on the gel surface and trigger a blood clotting cascade interestingly we also found that these injectable bandages can show a prolonged release of therapeutics that can be used to heal the wound said giriraj lokhande a graduate student in gaharwars lab and first author of the paper the negative surface charge of nanoparticles enabled electrostatic interactions with therapeutics thus resulting in the slow release of therapeutics this research is funded by the national science foundations chemical bioengineering environmental and transport systems division and the national institutes of healths national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering see more details about the inspired nanomaterials and tissue engineering laboratory here
dr james e hubbard jr has joined the faculty of the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university as a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) research distinguished professor before joining texas a&m hubbard served as the samuel p langley distinguished professor at the university of maryland college park and director of the morpheus laboratory and the center for adaptive aerospace vehicle technology through the national institute of aerospace hubbard received his bachelors masters and doctoral degrees all in mechanical engineering from the massachusetts institute of technology he is known internationally for his work in aeroacoustics for noise control adaptive structures spatially distributed transducers and the extension of modem time domain control methodologies into the spatial domain for the real-time control of distributed systems hubbard is a member of the national academy of engineering a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers a fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics and a senior member of the international society for optical engineering his research interests include: smart structure design and control; morphing aircraft technology; control of distributed parameter systems; smart skin sensing technology; ultra-low power energy management and storage; self-powered wireless sensor networks; energy harvesting; and internet of things
all nuclear facilities contain assets that must be protected against security threats threats may be in the form of outsider adversaries seeking to steal materials to produce nuclear weapons or dirty bombs or to attack the facility to cause a dangerous release of radioactive materials adversaries may also collude with insiders people with authorized access to the facilities protection elementslike barriers detectors alarms doors and so forthare installed at a facility as part of the physical protection system (pps) to detect the intrusion of adversaries and then delay their progress in order to give the response force such as the police time to interrupt the intrusion and neutralize the adversary analysts evaluate the effectiveness of a pps by calculating the probability that an adversary would be stopped by a response force for each possible path an adversary could take to get from outside the facility to the target there is currently a method used to measure the physical protection system effectiveness called the estimate of adversary sequence interruption (easi) in which single adversary intrusion paths are analyzed one at a time however imagine if the facility is massive with many different possible intrusion paths analyzing these paths one at a time is not only tedious but it can also be limited in its ability to evaluate the system as a whole
yanuar (ady) setiawan a masters student with the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) worked on this issue with dr sunil chirayath director of nsspi and an associate professor in the nuclear engineering department and developed a software code that can measure the effectiveness of the physical protection system using a multi-path analysis that includes all of the possible intrusion path options in the facility the developed code utilizes a stochastic approachcompared to the deterministic approach used in the easi modeland is able to analyze the whole facility the code also incorporates considerations of the uncertainty in the performance of the protection elements of the pps and is capable of analyzing the various adversary intrusion strategies as well as the possibility of an insider helping the adversary in the intrusion process according to setiawan beside the automation of adversary analysis by the software code the combination of the ppss performance adversarys strategy and insiders involvement in the multi-path analysis simulations may give results which are not provided by the single path easi analysis that are useful for the pps analysts conservative approach of design and analysis setiawan completed his undergraduate degree in nuclear engineering at universitas gadjah mada in indonesia in 2015 he will be receiving his masters degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m university in may 2018 and then continue as a doctoral student with nsspi setiawans research is fully sponsored by the government of the republic of indonesia through the indonesian endowment fund for education institution under the authority of the ministry of finance
the manner in which students learn and retain content from higher education courses is constantly evolving because of this progression faculty members need to find innovative ways to teach courses that have been taught the same way for years this opens new doors for creativity and change four faculty members in the texas a&m university college of engineering were awarded a grant from the instructional technology services (its) innovative pedagogy grant program this program offers texas a&m faculty and staff the opportunity to learn how to skillfully interlace technology into an online or hybrid course out of 16 awards three faculty members from the department of computer science and engineering and one professor from the department of aerospace engineering were presented an award to transform engineering education in their respective courses
dr aakash tyagi professor of practice is focused on rebuilding the computer organization course content in a pseudo-flipped format where classroom activities include elements of traditional homework and classwork weaved together with real-time feedback on conceptual learning through this grant its will help with audio video and graphic content creation to realize the concept his ongoing vision for this course is to modernize content to include real-world computing devices and applications and their engineering tradeoffs and to increase student motivation and retention of the foundational principles of computer organization
shawn lupoli instructional assistant professor is focusing on creating advancements in the data structures and algorithms course offered to students in computer science and engineering and other engineering majors lupoli plans to convert the traditional class to a hybrid course with mentoring and faster feedback that would utilize several technologies to enhance the overall learning process one technology lupoli would like to implement is a course management system that would contain the content order of the course and provide simulated exercises to enforce student learning with this process in place class time can be better utilized this can eliminate lecture time in material that does not need to be covered enabling deeper discussion and understanding of the already difficult topics in data structures
dr paula dewitte associate professor of practice is focused on developing an online course on cybersecurity risk the risk assessment and management course provides students with the knowledge and skills to assess analyze and manage risk to make good business and technical decisions as stated in her proposal the initial goal is to have this course available for a minor in cybersecurity as well as for graduate and certificate programs throughout the colleges to meet the demand for myriad types of cybersecurity workers projected to be two million by 2020 the ultimate goal is to build a library of case studies for students from various disciplines and interests to make the course more worthwhile in building the knowledge and skills required by industry
dr john whitcomb aerospace engineering professor hopes to create a much more active learning environment in the aero structural analysis course that introduces students to the theory and use of finite element analysis whitcomb believes that there is a difference between providing students with numerous learning resources and having the students take advantage of those resources utilizing digital technology to motivate students to take ownership of the concepts learned in class is an essential component of whitcombs teaching philosophy the redesigned course will be rooted in student-curated digital notes that will allow for the integration of static content such as that provided by a standard textbook with resources ranging from videos that introduce key concepts to engaging computational tools that encourage exploration students will also have the opportunity to revisit a lecture via a recorded video with whitcomb a teaching assistant or a classmate and discuss questions that they did not realize they needed to ask at the time of the lecture or were too shy to ask as stated in his proposal the onenote class notebook app will be used as the framework for gluing together an accessible interactive electronic textbook that is tailored for each student
assistant professor dr justin wilkerson and his team are working to advance the state-of-the-art capabilities of new protection materials for defense wilkerson the james j cain 51 faculty fellow ii in the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university recently received a two-year award to continue his work with the materials in extreme dynamic environments (mede) collaborative research alliance (cra) for his proposal titled novel void nucleation models enabling higher fidelity magnesium spall strength predictions this research is sponsored by the united states army research laboratory traditionally new protection materials have been developed through an edisonian trial-and-error process which typically requires decades of laborious experimentation paid for by millions of taxpayer dollars wilkerson said our goal here is to demonstrate the utility of computational modeling in accelerating and reducing the costs of the development of the next-generation of lightweight protection materials for the soldier this most recent award comes in a series of related mede cra projects wilkerson has successfully led for the past few years the objective of the mede cra is to bring academia government and industry together to establish the capability to design materials for use in specific dynamic environments especially high strain-rate applications in this particular project we aim to improve the damage nucleation criterion in our crystal plasticity framework for dynamic failure of light-weight magnesium alloys wilkerson said this new capability will enhance our likelihood of computationally discovering a new magnesium alloy with the desired ballistic performance wilkersons research interests include deformation and failure dynamic behavior of materials impact mechanics shock physics materials in extreme environments and planetary science click here for more information about the mede collaborative research alliance and its research
an interdisciplinary team of researchers at texas a&m university has been awarded a division of computing and communication foundations grant by the national science foundation to develop a gut-microbial investigation model that can identify critical dietary risk factors that cause colorectal cancer the three-year $350 000 project is a direct outcome of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations interdisciplinary seed grants for strategic initiatives which provided initial funding to establish the collaborative research effort the project titled minimum mean square error estimation and control of partially observed boolean dynamical systems with applications in metagenomics aims to develop and apply innovative signal processing techniques to uncover the complex interactions among microbes human cells and their metabolic products in the gut the project will produce innovative methods for estimation and control of processes that consist of the complex interactions of many switching elements such as presence and absence of a particular microbial species in the gut which are only indirectly observed through noisy biomedical assays our goal is to develop a signal processing framework that formalizes the interactions of the complex ecosystem observed in the human gut such as the microbial communities and their interactions with the gut epithelial cells said dr ulisses m braga-neto associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and the principal investigator of the project this framework will allow us to study the effects of nutritional supplementation on this complex ecosystem in terms of changes in the microbial diversity and human gut gene expression in cell-signaling pathways the project will provide life scientists with computational tools for biochemical pathway discovery as well as rational intervention design as in optimal drug scheduling and diet modifications to treat human disease the project will also provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students preparing them for highly interdisciplinary biomedical research braga-neto is assisted by an interdisciplinary collaborative team that includes dr robert s chapkin distinguished professor in the department of nutrition and food science at texas a&m agrilife; dr arul jayaraman ray b nesbitt endowed chair professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering; dr xiaoning qian assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department; and dr ivan ivanov clinical associate professor of bioinformatics in the department of veterinary physiology and pharmacology dr johanna w lampe associate division director of the cancer prevention program in the division of public health sciences at the fred hutchinson cancer research center is an external collaborator
the energy was high saturday night when a team of students learned they had taken the top prize at the open minds showcase during the venturewell open 2018 conference in austin texas for their creation of a device that could bring light and electricity to millions of children around the world currently unable to study at night for the 10 students the aftermath of the 48-hour design challenge hosted by texas a&m universitys engineering entrepreneurship program last month culminated in their winning first place and being awarded $3 000 for the continuation of their product
it was very hard she said we used candles to study since this is a problem i faced in my village i wanted to solve this edu-lite is a collaborative team comprised of five texas a&m students and five students from the university of technology in yatanarpon cyber city myanmar the teams were named first and second place winners respectively during invent for the planet a 48-hour design challenge hosted by texas a&m universitys engineering entrepreneurship program last month after invent for the planet winners were announced rodney boehm director of engineering entrepreneurship at texas a&m invited the team from myanmar to college station so the two teams could collaborate it was the first time any of the students from myanmar had ever left their country or flown in an airplane the team spent the past week collaborating on their designs when combined the two devices create an overall solution to the problem of extending education into the evening in areas without electricity the texas a&m students focused on creating an inexpensive and lightweight lighting platform while the university of technology in myanmar students focused on creating a source of electricity modeled after a sewing machine treadle for both teams being able to work together all week and then win first place was unforgettable
i could not be more proud of these students they bridged cultures to work extremely hard together to come up with an overall solution to this problem that affects millions of children around the world boehm said to see their hard work and dedication pay off at the open minds showcase was amazing it was especially remarkable because edu-lite had some steep competition at the showcase there were 13 teams in the competition boehm said each had tables that showed their products and prototypes most teams had been working on their solutions for nine to 12 months some teams already had products on the market or were very close to launching their product the reason i believe they won is because this combined team demonstrated a very unique solution to a real need and the story behind the team and the development was just so darn compelling boehm said almost every team member from texas a&m and the university of technology in myanmar has personally experienced not having reliable access to electricity in fact about 55 percent of the entire population in myanmar is without electricity this drove each team even harder to find a solution to this problem van lar ruat a computer engineering student from kale myanmar said she grew up without electricity freshman texas a&m engineering student an nguyen said this problem hit close to home for her as her father grew up in vietnam and had limited access to electricity to study she said he would place fireflies in an eggshell to create a small glow lamp other teammates shared similar stories of hardship which ultimately inspired them to solve this problem boehm said he hopes to see the teams continue to work together to bring this product to market
now that both teams have met in person and have formed a bond of friendship they are even more dedicated to taking their idea and setting it into motion with a business plan and strategy boehm said for the millions of children without electricity in the world this could have a huge impact for their education
the reach of the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university has long been global that impact was demonstrated earlier this month when the turbo lab hosted its second biennial asia turbomachinery & pump symposium (atps) in singapore
"the 2018 atps was held march 13-15 with short courses on march 12 engineers and technicians from novice to experienced chose from a combination of seven short courses 23 lectures 16 tutorials 12 discussion groups 38 case studies and 11 technical briefs the technical program is selected by the asia turbomachinery and pump advisory committee and led by experts in their disciplines topics included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals the conference is modeled after the turbomachinery & pump symposia (tps) founded in 1971 and hosted annually in houston atps debuted in singapore in 2016 in response to a need for industry education and networking in southeast asia atps is a very important platform to share our experience learn from others and to network said minhui he machinery specialist with brg machinery consulting and advisor and technical session leader for atps having this event in southeast asia is important because this area has a need for knowledge in turbomachinery we come here to make new connections hear what they are doing and what they need it is an expansion of our network its important that we connect with one another and share our knowledge"" new to atps this year were two panel sessions one on career and industry intended for students and young professionals and one on successful applications of digitalization in oil & gas everyone is interested in digitalization but not so many people understand so we came together to discuss what it is look at where we are and determine where we should go with it said ishigaki hiroyasu digitalization panelist and general manager of information and communications technology operations of mitsubishi heavy industries compressor corporation top-tier sponsor of atps its very important to combine machinery knowledge and experience with computer science including artificial intelligence and data analysis for a more beneficial result i think atps can play an important role in the digitalization movement the technical program was paired with an international exhibition featuring leading companies and organizations from across the globe that showcased full-size equipment and the latest technological trends longtime tps exhibitor flowserve corporation that also exhibited at the inaugural atps was pleased with their event experience and praised the quality of delegate interaction at their booth flowserve is accustomed to participating in tps each year that is not the reason for being at atps but it did make the decision easier said torsten bernicke a product manager in the compressor seals and systems/mixer seals division of flowserve with singapore being a gateway to southeast asia india and china its a nice location to present our products my advice to companies considering atps is to give it a try it helps to grow the visibility of your products and you have the chance to explain your products better and secure follow-up leads atps hosted 670 delegates from 31 countries and 30 exhibiting companies i am very pleased with the quality of the program and the traffic in the exhibit hall said dag calafell chair of atps we have seen some setbacks due to economics in the region as well as challenges in the oil & gas industry still we achieved success thanks to the support of texas a&m the advisory committee delegates and exhibitors our ultimate goal is to provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and practices that impact our industry and we have certainly achieved that plans are underway for future events in the region including a stand-alone technical program in 2019 the regular atps with technical program and exhibition is slated for spring 2020"
ask many aerospace engineering students what their lifelong dreams are and one common answer is to fly for nine undergraduate students in the department of aerospace engineering that dream will come true in the united states air force these students are members of air force rotc detachment 805 at texas a&m university and were selected for rated (flying related) positions for the air force brandon wingfield was selected for a position for remotely piloted aircraft and richard hobson nathan agner matthew bierwagen chris marcario shelton stephens jake wilcox brian simpson and michael brockey were selected for manned aircraft and undergraduate pilot training joining the air force was a dream of bierwagens since eighth grade guided by his mother to pick a major that complimented what he loved he was immediately drawn to aerospace engineering for me getting the pilot slot acts as a culmination of all my work since middle school bierwagen said all of the studying throughout high school so that i could obtain a contract with the air force and get in to texas a&m then to push my way through engineering to be competitive on a national scale this selection marks the end of eight years of work since committing myself to this dream but it also marks the start of another decade serving in the armed forces i could not be more excited to have this opportunity to be paid to do something id happily do for free we are all truly honored and blessed to have this opportunity to serve our country in the capacity stephens said getting to strap into the seat of such an awesome piece of aerospace technology really puts all of those late nights spent studying for the various aerospace classes into perspective the aerospace students were nine of 35 detachment 805 cadets selected by the us air force rated board based on rankings by both peers and afrotc instructors standardized test scores gpa physical fitness scores and performance at afrotc field training i have wanted to become a pilot for the air force since i was 5 years old agner said i have always enjoyed the thought of flight and building things for the betterment of the aviation industry which is why i chose to become an aerospace engineer receiving this pilot slot has been the culmination of 165 years of work for me and its only just the beginning later in my pilot career i hope to apply for usaf test pilot school i would say it feels really good putting in three years of hard work and coming out with an amazing career wingfield said when the students graduate in 2019 they will commission as second lieutenants in the air force and go to initial training for their career fields at various pilot training bases they will go through a year of training before being assigned to a specific airframe this is a great opportunity to serve my country and do what i love at the same time marcario said currently i am half way through (getting) my private pilot license and its just awesome to think that i can fly multiple times a week while being a part of something special ive always wanted to be an astronaut originally i wanted to be a developmental engineer in the air force but after coming to texas a&m opportunities presented themselves which made flying both inspiring and realistic having a tech degree opens a lot more scholarship opportunities in the air force and during my sophomore year in college i had the privilege of being awarded scholarships from air force rotc and the society of american military engineers (san antonio post) this degree also allows me to have different career options once i am a pilot; a test pilot is an example which requires a tech background the air force rotc is a four-year training program that prepares college students to become officers in the air force detachment 805 is one of the nations oldest afrotc programs established in the early 1920s and with over 700 air force cadets it is the largest unit in the nation in the past 50 years texas a&m has produced more officers for the air force than any other university
the national science foundation recently awarded a grant through the engineering education and centers (eec) unit for a new reu site on cybermanufacturing the site will engage participants in the research experience for undergraduates (reu) program in high-quality research enrichment and development experiences through a 10-week long summer research program
dr bimal nepal associate professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university will serve as the principal investigator of the group to increase enthusiasm and research skills in advanced manufacturing among early stage undergraduates dr satish bukkapatnam rockwell international professor in the industrial engineering department and dr prabhakar pagilla james j cain professor in mechanical engineering will serve as co-principal investigators the reu projects will leverage the diverse cybermanufacturing efforts and testbeds of the institute of material science faculty members to provide the students with a broad perspective of cybermanufacturing with a specific on three critical areas said dr nepal holleran-bowman faculty fellow these are design and planning in situ prognostics and process control and enterprise-wide optimization and coordination ten students from across the nation will be accepted each summer to participate in the program which will equip them with professional skills to enter the science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) workforce or to pursue a graduate degree the grant will begin may 2018 and end in april 2021 totaling $358 850
yong-yu jhan a student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a fellowship to the taiwan ministry of education jhan is currently in the second year of her doctoral program students are selected for the fellowship based on academic achievement research experience research proposals and letters of recommendation the fellowship supports a variety of majors including: business history politics arts education and science technology engineering and mathematics (stem) fields and are awarded to 125 graduate students every year jhan plans to use the funding to provide financial support for her studies and further her doctoral research project i felt like i met the requirement for the fellowship and i felt it is a good opportunity for me to practice my research proposal writing said jhan i am blessed that i have been given the opportunity to be awarded a fellowship that encourages me to work harder on my current research jhan has been working in dr corey bishops pharmacoengineering laboratory since last september focusing her research on developing a stable and convenient drug delivery platform for pulmonary delivery the labs goal is to explore combinational therapeutic formulations for cancer and infection diseases including small molecules and gene therapy this year 17 engineering students received the fellowship and each recipient was awarded $16 000 per year for two years
texas a&m university graduate student sarojeet deb put his mechanical engineering knowledge to the test to seek new ways to illuminate education for children in poverty deb joined a team of four other students under the name team illumi-nite to compete in the invent for the planet challenge in february which included more than 400 students from 14 universities across the globe during the 48-hour global design challenge teams selected a project from a list of needs that aimed at making the planet better debs team chose a challenge focused around light and education the need statement tasked students with designing a creative inexpensive environment for multiple children to study in the evenings after the sun has gone down deb said he had a personal connection to the assignment from his time living in a suburb of mumbai india in the early 2000s once a week we would lose electricity and it used to annoy me a lot because if there was a test the next day i couldnt study for it deb said illumi-nite members developed a platform that can hold light-emitting diode (led) lights for children in developing countries without access to electricity the design allows children to create their platform using items that are easily found around the world such as plastic bottles along with the platform deb said the team worked on a cost analysis and a pamphlet of assembly instructions that came in six languages which was an intentional decision everyone in the group is of a different ethnicity so we have a lot of diversity in the group deb said theres also diversity in majors the team consists of students in mechanical general industrial and electrical engineering as well as a landscape architecture student reflecting on the event deb said he took away several lessons from the challenge each team member had expertise in a different area so we learned how to distribute tasks between people deb said i also learned that what looks good on paper does not mean it will be easy to manufacture or physically possible debs team won the grand prize which was an opportunity to present at the venturewell open minds conference in austin at the end of march the prize also included a trip to texas a&m and the engineering entrepreneurship program who organized the event decided to extend the invitation to the second-place team team edu-lighter from the university of technology in yadanabon cyber city myanmar who was working on the same need statement the goal is to have the two teams collaborate we have a light delivery system they have an electricity producing system deb said so we have both ends covered and when we put them together we have a complete solution to the problem deb said he thinks there is a high potential that the finished product will be manufactured one day if we can convince investors that this invention is feasible and can actually be implemented i dont see any reason why they will not want to invest deb said in general deb said his interest in mechanical engineering has developed over time it started as a child watching his dad work as a mechanic i had a lot of exposure to that from my childhood deb said as i reached high school i liked physics so taking mechanical engineering seemed like a natural choice deb received his bachelors degree in india and then traveled to the united states for his graduate program after graduating he is interested in pursuing work in the thermal engineering industry i want to learn for a couple of years and then take that expertise back to india and maybe have a company of my own in a few years deb said
the average distribution firm carries between 10 and 30 percent more inventory than needed the result millions of dollars are wasted that could be reinvested in competitive processes like new services or new product offerings distributors are facing forces of change that range from nontraditional competitors like amazon who have superior technology human capital and customer experience changing the way one goes to market requires new ways of thinking innovative business models and creative leadership
the challenges are clear dr senthil gunasekaran said the solutions are waiting to be explored it is critical for distributors to master inventory management in order to take advantage of the advanced analytics opportunities in todays digital transformation landscape gunasekaran and dr pradip krishnadevarajan researchers in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university are offering a solution for business owners to efficiently organize their inventory which is led by three major forces
first is the impact of information management krishnadevarajan said higher efficiency is opening the door to disruptors like online distributors second is a large generation millennials who will use these technologies to restructure supply chains third is an explosion of services in response to product and supply chain services commoditization the heart of distribution is driven by optimizing working capital while maximizing profitability this is known as the service versus cost trade-off managing working capital effectively decides the financial viability of your firm gunasekaran said its very important to understand the role of working capital not only for your existing business model but also for the evolving new models of e-commerce and other digital platforms until now distributors lacked a proven and tested strategy to perform the advanced must-do inventory analytics on this trade-off typically companies rank products based on a single metric or dimension such as sales or profit gunasekaran and krishnadevarajans approach presents a multicriteria approach that incorporates three metrics – stratification forecasting and replenishment the three-step inventory management model has been in existence for a long time krishnadevarajan said our approach presents a more practical applied and holistic approach backed by 33 real-world applications that companies can implement within a few months with minimal investment of both time and money companies also benefit from learning 24 best practices on growth from actual wholesaler distributors and 43 action steps to implement immediately brent burns retired ceo of isc building materials experienced firsthand the benefits of gunasekaran and krishnadevarajans solution through knowledge learned from the inventory management program attended by all our management and key salespersons we have reduced our total inventory levels by over 20 percent burns said their research was funded by several distributors for more than 15 years through their research engagements business initiatives and executive education sessions with the thomas and joan read center for distribution research and education as a result of gunasekaran and krishnadevarajans program companies will have the ability to better determine what product to stock when identify pricing opportunities at the product level reduce stock-outs and increase product availability and improve customer service
the rules of the road are changing algorithms that are used to help predict driver behavior in years past are facing a changing landscape as more and more automated vehicles are on roadways the emergence of these automated vehicles is just one aspect of roadway safety that is covered by dr dominique lords new book safe mobility: challenges methodology and solutions lord a professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university along with co-author dr simon washington a professor of civil engineering at the university of queensland wrote the book which represents a compilation of research from specialists across the world it serves as a guidebook for roadway safety practitioners and researchers in topics ranging from driver behavior transportation networks urban and suburban transportation and safe road design for vulnerable road users such as bike users and pedestrians in addition to being an educational resource the book has other practical implications for researchers and roadway safety practitioners someone in the us or abroad could look at the theories and concepts laid out in this book to help design something within their own country lord said it is not a design manual but it is based on the latest research from a variety of top authors in this field lords personal contribution to the book includes his years of research on highway safety and design specializing in large data sets lord analyzes these large crash data sets with many zero responses or observations where no crash occurred in my portion i provide information on when we should use traditional models as opposed to when we should use new multiparameter models which is something that has not been done before in my area of work this will be very useful when automated vehicles become prevalent on our roadways lord said were working on a proposal that is beyond this book that deals with how to match drivers with the correct models along with automated vehicles the book as a whole hopes to address a variety of safety concerns in road planning guiding practitioners to design roadways for the future that implement the best practices in transportation safety we want to bring people up to date with what the near future will look like in [in transportation safety] and i feel like this work does a good job of giving a strong look at designing safe and sustainable roadways lord said
it is estimated that this year alone nearly 10 000 people will die from oral cancer in the united states and around 50 000 new oral cancer patients will be diagnosed in the fight against this disease early detection is one of the most crucial components if oral cancer is diagnosed before it spreads the five-year survival rate is higher than 80 percent unfortunately only 30 percent of patients are diagnosed during the early stages that is because diagnosing oral cancer is not always easy in spite of the fact that oral lesions are fairly accessible for clinical evaluations dentists and physicians typically rely on the naked eye to look for problematic areas in a patients mouth that warrant a biopsy but identifying these areas can be difficult because a patients mouth can manifest lesions that may be benign precancerous or cancerous as a result many early stage cancerous oral lesions are missed while many unnecessary and painful biopsies of benign lesions are prescribed diagnosing oral cancer is somewhat of an educated guessing game that dr javier jo associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university is hoping to improve upon through the use of advanced endoscopes that he and his team are developing these potentially lifesaving endoscopes make use of a technology known as fluorescence lifetime imaging (flim) to detect subtle metabolic changes that occur in the epithelial tissue covering the oral cavity as it turns cancerous preliminary results from more than 80 patients already suggest the potential of flim imaging for distinguishing noninvasively and in real time a variety of benign lesions from precancerous and cancerous lesions in the human oral cavity recognizing the potential of this technology for significantly facilitating the early detection of oral cancer the national cancer institute (nci) part of the national institutes of health (nih) awarded jo and his team a $25 million grant that will help support research focused on further developing their flim endoscopy technologies for noninvasive and accurate detection of oral dysplasia and early stage cancer this grant will also help support clinical studies at different medical centers in houston and dallas before moving to in-depth clinical trials and licensing of the technology we are extremely excited that nci recognized the potential of our technology for enabling early detection of oral cancer and decided to award our research proposal especially considering that only around 10 percent of these major grant proposals are recommended for funding jo said we strongly believe that our technology could potentially be used to assist at every stage of the clinical management of oral cancer patients not only for screening and early diagnosis but also for guiding treatment and monitoring for cancer recurrence which happens in 30 percent of patients who survive a first incidence this five-year nci/nih grant was awarded in february to jo and his colleagues dr brian applegate associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m; dr yi-shing lisa cheng and dr john wright professors in the college of dentistry at texas a&m; dr maryellen giger faculty fellow from the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m; dr carlos busso associate professor in the department of electrical engineering at the university of texas at dallas; dr nadarajah vigneswarab professor in the school of dentistry at the university of texas health science center in houston; and dr thomas schlieve assistant professor in the department of surgery at the university of texas southwestern medical center
young and driven both are words that could describe dr cortlan wickliff at 26 years old wickliff is an engineer licensed attorney business owner motivational speaker and author perhaps more important however is his desire to help others and inspire the next generation of thinkers and doers
when wickliff was in third grade he wrote a paper about dr martin luther king jr that motivated him and propelled the trajectory of his life i found out that he got his phd when he was 26 years old and from that moment on i was inspired he said competitive in nature wickliff set out to earn his phd by 25 a feat he accomplished last summer when he received his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary engineering at texas a&m university four days before his 26th birthday to get there wickliff skipped a grade in elementary school and at 15 was admitted into a program at the university of north texas that allowed bright high school students to gain early entrance into the university he eventually transferred to rice university where he earned a degree in bioengineering graduating at 19 as the youngest engineer in the nation from there wickliff went to harvard law school becoming one of the youngest african-american graduates in the history of the school at age 22 the following year he made history again by becoming the youngest barred attorney in the state of texas these days he travels the country speaking to young people about his tools for success all while starting his own business doing legal work and consulting for other business owners he also wrote a book young and driven
while wickliffs mother dr tanya dugat-wickliff is an engineering professor of practice at texas a&m wickliff said his earliest scientific inspiration began in his fathers auto body shop he was a mechanic and would let me play with power tools and take things apart he said later during wickliffs elementary years he would go with his mother to her master of business administration courses wickliff was bright even as a young child and his mothers classmates would allow him to participate in class projects when she began working on her phd at texas a&m wickliff again came to many of her classes and conferences he said he was able to communicate effectively at a very young age partly because the people who surrounded him did not water things down its something we often overlook and dont think is important but when dealing with kids even as early as elementary all the way through high school if you talk to them with a certain level of maturity and expect a lot out of them they tend to rise to your expectations he said wickliff certainly rose to his parents expectations last summer when he graduated from texas a&m with a phd it was his mother who waited at the end of the stage to hood him it had all come full circle making a difference when wickliff was a child his father died of a heart condition at the age of 40 this tragedy inspired wickliff to study bioengineering in the hopes that he could help prevent others from dying of preventable causes at rice wickliff was able to help develop cardiorespiratory monitors for doctors in developing countries there are a lot of people who die every day from easily treatable easily preventable problems he said its just that doctors are overwhelmed trying to manage patient loads in the end his goal is to make health care more accessible and more affordable for people around the world as an attorney he hopes to make it easier for new technology to be available on the market
wickliff said its important to be a trailblazer especially as an african-american engineer people have looked at my skin color and made snap judgments about my intelligence or capabilities he said thats always a challenge to overcome but wickliff said its important to never be afraid of being the first person of color to work at a company dont be afraid to be that trailblazing person he said and make sure that when you do you reach back and you dont be the only person you bring more people with you wickliff said more and more companies recognize the importance of having different cultures represented in their companies and that its importantfor african-american latinx and other minority groups to be interested in science technology engineering and mathematics its a field where you have a lot of job security and a lot of opportunities to provide for yourself and your family and in the end thats what its all about he said i define success as being able to positively impact those around you the most lasting memories are always of those people who made your life better
texas a&m engineerings graduate program was ranked 12th overall nationally and remained seventh among public institutions in the latest us news & world report survey americas best graduate schools 2019 eight departments in the college of engineering were also ranked in the top 10 public universities: aerospace engineering (4) biological and agricultural engineering (3) civil engineering (8) computer engineering (10) industrial and systems engineering (9) mechanical engineering (8) nuclear engineering (2) and petroleum engineering (2) the complete list of individual programs ranked were: aerospace engineering 7 (4 public); biological and agricultural engineering 3 (3); biomedical engineering 38 (19); chemical engineering 21 (12); civil engineering 15 (8); computer engineering 17 (10); computer science 43 (23); electrical engineering 21 (12); industrial and systems engineering 13 (9); materials science and engineering 37 (23); mechanical engineering 16 (8); nuclear engineering 3 (2); and petroleum engineering 2 (2)
in addition to 38 active learning studios for class instruction the zachry engineering education complex (zach) will offer students 30 000 square feet of multidisciplinary hands-on learning laboratory space these learning laboratories will be common lab spaces which are flexible shared spaces that ensure the facility can be utilized efficiently; equipment duplication is minimized; and practice lab space is available more often and to more students these multidisciplinary labs will accommodate more than 50 courses each semester
the labs span three floors in zachry and are grouped into nine focus areas encompassing the shared vision of all 14 departments within the college of engineering the focus areas include: materials fluids high bay large-scale processes controls cyber-physical and transport phenomena on the first floor located at the base of the staircase in the atrium are the materials laboratory the fluids laboratory and the high bay and large-scale processes laboratory
directly above on the second floor are the controls laboratory the cyber-physical laboratory and the transport phenomena laboratory the electrical measurements laboratory the electrical sciences laboratory and the instrumentation laboratory are above the other labs and overlook the central atrium from the third floor
all labs will offer a modern laboratory infrastructure including overhead service carriers (120-volt and 240-volt power data compressed air water and specialty gases) distributed throughout the space movable workbenches and seating allowing easy reconfiguration of the space augmenting such flexible infrastructure are specialty laboratory systems including ro-water sinks chemical vent hoods an rf shielded room a 45-foot tall high bay and a crane each of the nine focus area laboratories will have a set of equipment shared and selected by various engineering departments to accommodate multiple courses in the lab the shared environment is enabled by equipment-specific software scheduling and hardware interlocks engineering students from various disciplines will work side by side within these labs fostering collaboration architecturally the space is designed to be an open environment with glass walls and windows emphasizing the communal nature of the labs the multidisciplinary and shared nature of these labs represent a paradigm shift from the previous laboratory structure at texas a&m and used by other universities in addition to efficient use of space and equipment common labs also provide greater instructor and student access to a larger variety of laboratory equipment increasing experiential learning opportunities the consolidation of undergraduate labs into the zachary building also allows for the repurposing of departmental lab space for department growth and research
most people might think of computer storage like an external hard drive or flash drive as something static that you can leave sitting somewhere indefinitely without issue in reality thats not the case for instance data is stored in flash drives by capturing electrons in cells and over time those electrons can escape for a variety of reasons creating errors in the data or corrupting the data altogether dr anxiao (andrew) jiang associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university said even the ambient room temperature can affect data storage
"for example for flash memory every read or write of data will disturb many memory cells changing the amount of electrons in them jiang said even if we do nothing and just leave the flash memory alone as time goes on the electrons in memory cells will still leak away which is a big problem for long-term storage of data if the temperature becomes high such as under sunshine in the summer the electrons will leak even faster so errors are very common in stored data; and the longer data are stored the more errors there will be this problem makes reliable and secure long-term storage of data a problem especially in an era where individuals and institutions are creating massive amounts of data all the time to solve this problem jiang is combining coding theory with advances in deep learning a fast-developing area in artificial intelligence to unveil a new way of securely storing data this is possible because text images video and audio files found in data are related to each other in complex ways such complex relations also mean the data has a lot of structures which is mathematically equivalent to redundancy and can be used to correct errors jiang said in coding theory redundant or identical bits are added to the original data these bits are not fully independent of one another for example if someone repeats the same message three times those three copies are identical if any one of those three copies has errors the remaining two copies will show what the correct message should be in real data the redundancy can take on more complex forms such as a text that talks about ""raining"" may also talk about ""umbrella"" or other related things or the bits in data may satisfy some mathematical equation but the principle is the same – once we know the bits in data are dependent on each other in some way we can use that knowledge to correct errors jiang said jiang believes integrating coding theory with artificial intelligence can lead to the development of new error correction algorithms which can be implemented in storage systems previously researchers believed the key to safely storing data was to add redundancy to the data using a mathematical tool called error correcting codes that can correct a certain number of errors that appear unfortunately this solution had limitations a problem arises when errors accumulate in the long term and the number of errors in a file exceeds what the error correcting code can correct at that point the loss of the file becomes inevitable although adding more redundancy and attempting to remove errors from files periodically is still an option it is challenging and costly jiang and his collaborators dr krishna narayanan eric d rubin 06 professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and dr jehoshua bruck gordon and betty moore professor at the california institute of technology have found a new source of redundancy in the stored files themselves that can be used to correct errors and store data soundly why its important ensuring that all data is stored reliably in computer systems impacts everyone this study aims at creating a new tool for that grand goal with new advances in artificial intelligence especially deep learning jiang believes they may have the right tools to take on this challenge the primary goal of this project is to reveal how much redundancy exists in every type of data and how much of it is usable for error correction the second goal is to use the natural redundancy found in the data itself to realize highly reliable long-term data storage storage systems can be made more reliable by building them with the ability to understand the data they store the results of their work titled error correction with natural redundancy can be used by various storage systems such as cloud storage built with nonvolatile memories these memories work very fast but suffer from various types of errors the research team was recently awarded a grant from the national science foundation for this project on natural redundancy"
the united states has produced more than 70 000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel over the past 60 years from nuclear power generation there is currently no available repository capable of containing this large amount of used nuclear fuel which is expected to double within the next 30 years the us has also not implemented any reprocessing methods for this used nuclear fuel on a large-scale according to andrew wilcox a student in the center for nuclear security science & policy initiatives (nsspi) only about 4 percent of the uranium in nuclear fuel is used for power generation meaning that about 96 percent of the original uranium is disposed with other nuclear waste along with a portion of plutonium which can also be recycled in addition to this isotopes of am and np are produced in this power generation and remain significantly radioactive for tens of thousands of years however it is known that the actinides–uranium neptunium plutonium and americium–can be reprocessed and burned up in a nuclear reactor as fuel or otherwise wilcox is working with his advisor dr jonathan burns an associate research scientist at nsspi to explore a simple reprocessing technique called co-crystallization to separate these elements which could be reused as fuel from the remaining used nuclear fuel this co-crystallization technique could contribute significantly to reducing both the amount of waste currently stored mostly at reactor sites as well as waste that would be produced in the future wilcox and burns are studying the dissolution behavior of sodium bismuthate in a system that is comparable to the feed stream of a used nuclear fuel process the development of a group separation of the recyclable actinides u pu np and am could significantly simplify the closure of the nuclear fuel cycle while reducing the amount of nuclear waste produced one major benefit to this group co-crystallization is that it sidesteps the difficult separation of am3+ from cm3+ and the trivalent lanthanides which are present in used nuclear fuel by oxidizing am3+ to amo22+ prior to oxidation this separation is challenging because these elements share the same chemical charge and have very similar size characteristics; however upon oxidation differences in chemical and physical properties are present to isolate the desired species and remove them from the system wilcox has been observing the various properties of sodium bismuthate that could be used in achieving this feat wilcox graduated from the new mexico institute of mining and technology in 2016 with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering he is looking forward to defending his masters thesis on this research this month his research is part of a larger effort to fully develop the co-crystallization reprocessing technique by burns and his colleagues in the chemical separations group at oak ridge national laboratory and the aqueous separations & radiochemistry group at idaho national laboratory the project is sponsored by the fuel cycle research and development program office of nuclear energy us department of energy and the nuclear energy university program office of nuclear energy and the us department of energy under award no de-ne0008653
whether your full-time job is pursuing an education or career it is rewarding to push yourself and seek opportunities for growth outside of your daily routine himank yadav a senior in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has gone above and beyond to gain a well-rounded education in computing which included engaging in extracurricular activities outside of the classroom in addition to being the director of tamuhack for the past two years yadav has held several internships at companies such as ck-12 apple nextdoor and facebook each of these not only brought invaluable growth for yadav but also presented unique experiences for instance holding internships at two smaller startup companies allowed yadav to work on multiple teams and projects within the organizations
"at nextdoor yadav was able to interact directly with users across the world hearing their unique use cases and understanding their varying needs he learned user empathy and used this to inform his engineering decisions that followed yadav explained that it was very eye opening to see whether people liked or did not like something that he helped build while at apple yadav worked as part of the apple maps team where he learned how to navigate a complex product firsthand ""mapping is a hard technical problem because it holds an enormous amount of data "" yadav said ""you are trying to basically fit the whole earth into a phone it was a phenomenal initiative to be a part of"" during his internship at facebook yadav knew he wanted to be a part of a very technical aspect of the organization so he chose to work on the infrastructure team while completing his internship he decided to participate in an internal company hackathon as well for the hackathon he worked alongside his team of fellow interns on a project to integrate political media into facebooks existing structure this side project resulted in yadav and his peers presenting it to mark zuckerberg and the rest of facebooks leadership team who were impressed with their idea to increase civic engagement on the platform ""watching people around you use something that you built from scratch is a great feeling "" yadav said yadav who will be graduating this may said that faculty interaction outside of classes was definitely a highlight of his time as a student he has worked alongside several faculty members in the department including dr james caverlee associate professor; dr aakash tyagi professor of practice; and mostly with dr jennifer welch chevron professor ii and regents professor ""getting to understand their research and their angle on how they are contributing to this whole body of computing knowledge has been fantastic "" he said ""the reason i am working with dr welch now is because i had a fair idea of what she is working on and i could see myself contributing in the same field"" yadav believes it is important to get to know people with expertise in a multitude of areas because computing is not just one sphere but rather multiple parts that come together from artificial intelligence to robotics data mining and systems they are all interconnected he also credits attending computing conferences sponsored by the department as opportunities to meet even more computing professionals and peers in the field that he would not have had the opportunity to meet otherwise"
"the wind and water have subsided after hurricane harvey swept through texas in august but the road to recovery is long to help the process move along engineering students from texas a&m university spent their winter break assisting the federal emergency management agency (fema) where they could ""i wanted to contribute to assisting my hometown (houston) while also working with fellow engineers and engineering students "" said irfan beg a senior mechanical engineering student ""my fathers car was damaged severely one of my best friends from high school had water damage in the carpets and tiles on the floors of his house"""
"thirty students from different engineering majors volunteered for a 10-day internship with fema all interns first went through five days of training with site inspectors and then spent 10 days in the field ""we were very happy that these students chose to invest time on this and take part in this program and provide some service for the state "" said magda lagoudas executive director for industry and nonprofit partnerships traci brasher recovery division director for region 6 of fema said the federal agency viewed this first of its kind internship as a chance for students to gain knowledge about emergency management as well as open up future opportunities ""i dont know that weve done anything like this any faster with any university ever "" brasher said ""i cant say enough about the partnership that we have gained between fema and texas and the university in order to do this"" freshman engineering major lorenzo martinez said the program sounded like a prime opportunity to help his hometown of houston and gain internship experience early in his college career ""i felt that i could give back and do my part to help out in any way i could "" martinez said ""also my parents both of whom are first responders had to help and be out during the storm so i figured i would pay their hard work forward myself"""
"james stone site inspector for the fema disaster team said he had the opportunity to work with some of the students during the december training and the students jumped right in and were not afraid to tackle anything ""i think they have experienced a little reality check in their life and they will go forward with a different attitude on what it takes to go out there and do the work "" stone said the student-inspector teams were sent into the field to assess public infrastructure as part of femas public assistance program assignments included meeting with applicants to identify measure and quantify structure damage in public areas ""when we did go out to a site in houston affected by hurricane harvey i got to shadow a site investigator on a community park that had been under five feet of water or more during the flooding "" said civil engineering junior anh duong ""it was a very unique experience"" during site visits students were expected to talk with the public to record damage then report and file all the information ""the biggest thing i learned was how meticulous everything at fema is "" said ocean engineering junior david nelle ""every detail of every damage is documented and everything has to be denoted a certain way there are specific ways to denote everything"" douglas edge biomedical engineering senior said he gained knowledge from the different individuals from fema he worked with"
"""i learned about construction and civil engineering principles "" edge said ""i learned about the various locales that those folks came from-many of femas employees are not originally from texas i also learned about leadership and management in an office setting"" although many students completed their work over the winter break they have until april to complete their internships some students such as general engineering freshman isabel londrigan are planning to complete their work over spring break in march ""these site inspections will lead to fema granting the state the funding they need to get houstons facilities back on its feet and in full recovery "" londrigan said for many students the internship opened their eyes to the enormous role site inspectors play in the aftermath of disasters ""the site inspectors are the eyes and ears for everyone else "" said mechanical engineering sophomore volunteer rebekah legband ""they are the ones who actually see the damage in person which makes the information they bring back with them vital"" ""site inspections mark the beginning of (the residents) road to recovery "" said jason nguyen industrial engineering senior audree co manufacturing and mechanical engineering tech senior said the experience gave her a new vantage point on the recovery process a sentiment shared by many of her fellow students ""with fema im able to help as a financial liaison instead of a disaster relief volunteer "" co said ""this allows me to get a better understanding of the recovery process"""
on march 5 the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university hosted kristina swallow president of the american society of civil engineers (asce)
during her visit swallow had the opportunity to tour the center for infrastructure renewal (cir) and rellis campus with dr zachary grasley cir director professor and presidential impact fellow; dr stuart anderson assistant vice chancellor for facilities planning and management and zachry chair in construction integration; dr peter keating director of operations; and dr robin autenrieth department head and ap and florence wiley professor ii the cir is a state-of-the-art research center that will house researchers who are developing advanced and sustainable materials and structural systems that will reduce cost and extend infrastructure life safety resiliency and durability the rellis campus fosters collaboration of advanced research technology development testing and evaluation higher education and hands-on career training
"later in the day autenrieth and stephen franklin executive director for facilities and planning and management gave swallow a tour of the newly redesigned zachry engineering education complex set to open fall 2018 ""it was a pleasure to host ms swallow and show her our new research and education facilities at texas a&m "" autenrieth said ""for our students it was also a wonderful opportunity for them to engage with an engineer who is an inspiring role model in the field and promotes the exciting future of civil engineering"" that evening swallow gave a presentation at a well-attended meeting with the asce student chapter at texas a&m her presentation addressed how relevant civil engineering is to society and our world she also offered students practical advice on how to achieve great things in their career and make a difference in the field ""i think the presentation showed the abundant amount of resources and networking opportunities that asce has to offer "" said alyssa ornelas civil engineering senior and president of the texas a&m chapter of asce ""this was a great opportunity for our students to get to see what kind of role they can have in the future"" swallow is a professional engineer envision sustainability professional and an asce fellow in addition to her role as asce president swallow serves as program manager for the city of las vegas where she oversees a team of engineers responsible for public works projects prior to her current appointment she worked alongside senator tom udall as the lead on transportation policy since 1995 she has been an active member of asce and has served on several committees within the organization honors include receiving the alumna of the year award from the university of nevada las vegas in 2013; the asce citizen engineer award and edmund friedman young engineer award for professional achievement in 2008; the outstanding young alumni award from the university of arizona department of civil engineering and engineering mechanics in 2005; and the asce young engineer of the year in 2000 and 1998 for the western region and southern nevada"
"what initially appeared to be the underdog student team has proven they have what it takes to compete with the help of industry leaders aggie ocean discovery a team of students from the college of engineering at texas a&m university entered the shell ocean discovery xprize competition a mere three years ago they have now been named a finalist in the global competition challenging teams to push the boundaries of ocean technologies the xprize® has a reputation of presenting impossible challenges that inspire new industries and new ideas the finalists will take 3-d scans of a 500-kilometer patch of ocean floor at a depth of 4 000 meters (almost 25 miles) ""as a society we are entering a technological revolution to be successful and keep ahead of the constantly changing climate it requires a collaborative effort from the most innovative partners in their respective industries "" said dylan blakeslee a senior in the department of ocean engineering ""the shell xprize pushes the students and their partners to look ahead and develop next generation technology having partners as passionate and innovative as deep down inc has allowed us to create technology incomparable with anything on the market today without the industry support that we have been afforded this wouldnt be possible"""
"the final part of the competition will take place at an undisclosed location to protect the integrity of the judging area the aggie team will be competing against nine other teams as finalists toward the end of 2018 ""when i first looked into the competition i was specifically interested in the fact that it was a challenge to map the ocean floor "" blakeslee said ""only five percent of the ocean has been mapped yet it feeds a billion people and provides 50 percent of our oxygen we have mapped land mass via satellite but have yet to come up with a viable solution to map the ocean floor and find what lays at the deepest depths of our oceans"" after deciding to accept the competitions challenge blakeslee turned to dr sharath girimaji department head in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m ""the first meeting ended with dr girimaji expressing concerns over the entry fee and an endless list of questions "" blakeslee said ""the following day i returned with a pamphlet and 100 pages of documents i made to address his questions and dr girimaji said okay you have me convinced"" the next step of the process was to motivate peers in all disciplines to join the effort and take time out of their already busy schedules to dedicate themselves completely to this project"
"the texas a&m team has a torpedo-like autonomous underwater vehicle (auv) called marlin that will endure crushing pressure utter darkness and will navigate autonomously without human intervention marlin will send data to its counterpart a remote surface vessel (rsv) called wahoo that in turn will send the data back to the control center on land where the data will be received and analyzed marlin carries an on-board intelligence system a long-range optical and acoustic communication and reference system an ultra-high resolution 3-d scanner inertial navigation system doppler velocity tracking chemical sensors to monitor the environment a pump jet propulsion for high speed operation forward dive plane for quick descents and a wave energy conversion system to operate all of this technology marlin is also equipped with a 48 kilowatt-per-hour battery system which is more than the average household uses per day ""many students have a full workload with their current degree requirements and also family commitments "" blakeslee said ""we have been extremely fortunate to have many students involved in this project some who have only been able to commit for a semester and some that have been in for the long haul; all have been important on this amazing journey"" the team has an application process for new members to complete and specifically looks for a certain grade point average and the amount of time one can commit to the project ""we are focused on a goal which is to benefit mankind and everyone has contributed in whatever way possible whether it be short term or long term "" blakeslee said ""many students joined our team and focused on our goals straight out of high school we have had the help from middle school students in this process so creativity doesnt have an age limit to participate"" manpower is only one end of the spectrum in terms of the help the team would need in order to build an adequate machine to answer the competitions quest ""joining such an exclusive competition we knew that we would be going up against the most talented and best-funded groups around the world "" blakeslee said ""we also knew that billion-dollar companies have tried and failed to solve exactly what the xprize requires"" one of the greatest obstacles the team faced was sharing their vision with companies to take a risk with them and help finance their endeavor financially and through equipment donations ""our team has always had a unique advantage as students we have been able to develop our innovative ideas with the years of experience and funding of our partners to support "" blakeslee said ""we have been extremely fortunate and honored to have our platinum sponsor deep down inc look beyond the age of the students they have invested in and see that we are a competent group that has come up with ideas that seem so impossible and believe in the fact that we can make it possible this collaboration and the passion of all those involved has allowed us to remain ahead of the curve"" the texas a&m team has secured other valuable gold partners including oceaneering subctech ses networks and ix blue all of whom the team are grateful to for their participation"
"""this is a multidisciplinary project "" blakeslee said ""we have excellent students from ocean engineering electrical engineering mechanical engineering chemical engineering computer science and engineering biomedical engineering and even geology we have a team that works well together and have consistently solved problems that we did not anticipate"" members have partnered with deep down inc which has financed the project to utilize their facilities to build marlin while learning from their engineers through internships the students have become very close to all of the industry partners that have made marlin become a reality and contender in the competition ""without the valuable mentoring of ronald smith ceo of deep down inc and his staff we would not be where we are today "" blakeslee said ""ron believed in us he put his money behind us every step of the way along this journey we have had successes we have had failures and we have also learned that nothing worth having is going to come easy but with sheer hard work determination and will power the impossible becomes the possible"" for blakeslee the goal has shifted away from winning the competition and transitioned to a lifetime passion developing a suitable and cost-effective fleet of auvs to deploy around the world for research and accessible education ""i believe that our technology will have lasting effects on our planet uncovering artifacts unknown species and even new cures for disease "" blakeslee said ""theres a lot of incentive to monetize what we have built but most importantly for me its about securing our planet for future generations"" marlin is currently on display on the college station campus in the department of ocean engineering"
the two organizations will collaborate to capitalize on major research education and training efforts the leadership of the texas a&m energy institute (tamei) a joint institute between texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) along with the tees gas and fuels research center (gfrc) have announced a new partnership that will align the research education and training interests of both organizations for their mutual benefit with common interests in the pursuit of the advancement of knowledge and science-related to energy-related and energy-intensive processes systems and opportunities tamei and gfrcs objectives are well aligned complementary and stand to benefit texas a&m tees the texas a&m university system the state of texas and the broader community further the leaders of these organizations anticipate added value and enhancement for both organizations through increased collaborations between the two parties we very much welcome this partnership said dr stratos pistikopoulos interim co-director and deputy director of the tamei this will allow us to create synergies and opportunities between our two organizations in the strategically important energy space of natural and shale gas and fuels further this will strengthen the existing relationships between our qatar campus and main campus for energy research education and training texas a&m university has played a critical role in the energy future by leading the oil era in the united states with many impacts globally said dr nimir o elbashir director of the gfrc the partnership of the tees gas and fuels research center with the energy institute provides an excellent opportunity for the university to now lead in the shale oil and gas era it is anticipated that new approaches will be discovered through this partnership previously unavailable research opportunities will be presented and diverse sets of individuals will gain mastery of concepts through innovative educational programs
dr jay porter was recently appointed associate dean for engineering at texas a&m university at galveston and will assume his new role on june 1 2018 porter has been a faculty member in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university for 20 years he is currently a professor in the electronic systems engineering technology program as well as the associated department head for undergraduate studies porters research interests include analog and rf electronics instrumentation and measurement virtual instrumentation development mixed signal integrated circuit test and characterization and magnetic resonance imaging he is passionate about stem education and promotion and has been involved in numerous projects including a $1 million itest grant to educate teachers about stem principles and careers
"second place team from myanmar to travel to texas a&m and collaborate on solution more than 400 students participated in invent for the planet the 48-hour global design challenge hosted by texas a&m university in february but in the end it was a team right here in college station who took home the grand prize - an opportunity to present at the venturewell open minds conference since the grand prize also included a trip to texas a&m the engineering entrepreneurship program decided to open that opportunity up to the second-place team - a team from the university of technology in yadanabon cyber city myanmar so they could collaborate with the texas a&m team the texas a&m team -illumi-nite - developed a platform that can be used to hold led (light-emitting diode) lights for children in developing countries without access to electricity team edu-lighter from myanmar developed a power source for the same need statement by combining both innovative ideas the teams will be able to collaboratively produce a complete solution ""were very proud of team illumi-nite for coming up with such an innovative idea in just 48 hours and im thrilled that we were able to invite team edu-lighter from myanmar to come to texas a&m "" said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program at texas a&m ""this was a global competition and i cant wait to see these two teams collaborating together in person on a solution to a real problem"" the need statement sourced by associate professor dr fernando buarque at the university of pernambuco in brazil indicates that education is a key component to ending poverty it tasked students with designing a creative inexpensive environment for multiple children to study in the evenings when the sun has gone down adam curtis illumi-nite team member and junior electrical engineering major said he is excited to see this project become a real product that can be used by children ""limited access to electricity will continue to be a problem in these developing countries and access to an education will remain the best option most children have to escape poverty "" he said for team member an nguyen a freshman engineering student this need statement hit close to home ""i chose this need statement because of my fathers story back when he was a little kid "" she said ""he told me about his life living in poverty not having enough electricity to power through the night"" nguyen said her father would catch fireflies around his village in vietnam and put them in eggshells as a glow lamp to study other times he would use a kerosene lamp but this became a fire hazard when he would fall asleep while studying ""these stories stirred something inside me to help children who have gone through the difficulties like my father "" she said ""i know that people like my father if provided with the opportunity to learn and grow their determination will excel beyond their peers"" the teams design allows children to create their platform using items that are easily found around the world such as plastic bottles teammate adrianna hernandez aguirre a sophomore landscape architecture student said illumi-nite could easily be used by children in her home country of mexico and all over ""when i was in high school i did social work in rural communities as a tutor and i can say that many children in the world could benefit from illumi-nite "" she said ""i would be very proud of my teammates and myself if we could impact a childs future by allowing him or her to study at night"" sarojeet deb a graduate student in mechanical engineering also drew from his own personal experiences when he selected this need statement from a list of 15 needs as a child growing up near mumbai india he frequently experienced power outages at night he said hes also excited to collaborate with the team from myanmar to help make sure they finish their project ""with their help well be able to eliminate the biggest shortcoming of our design - absence of a power source "" he said ""we plan on integrating our designs and coming up with a comprehensive solution to tackle the problem"" boehm said hes excited that illumi-nite wants to see this product through to market ""in the end thats what its all about "" boehm said ""we want these students to be inspired to make a difference in the world through entrepreneurship"" in addition to the texas a&m and myanmar teams boehm has been hearing positive feedback from the 13 other universities who joined the challenge ""by giving these students a platform for collaboration and communication we were able to bridge cultural gaps and open each student up to a world of possibilities "" he said ""it was amazing to see"" team illumi-nite and edu-lighter will work together later this month on their solution and will present at venturewells open minds conference in austin on march 24"
"dr reza sadr is seeking to bring his research success from his time at the texas a&m university at qatar across the ocean to the texas a&m university campus in college station by collaborating with researchers within the department of mechanical engineering and beyond sadr began his tenured faculty track with texas a&m at qatar in 2008 he now holds a joint associate professor position at texas a&m ""the reason i went [to qatar] was because i felt there were more research opportunities in terms of funding at the time "" sadr said in less than 10 years sadr has managed more than $11 million in research even with challenges in qatar including a lack of personnel and equipment resources sadr managed to build the state-of-the-art micro scale-thermo fluids (mstf) laboratory with about $1 million in assets and equipment ""the idea is for those assets to help us have research collaborations and productivity i work with a couple of faculty in the university and i enjoy multidisciplinary research "" sadr said ""ive been collaborating with faculty at texas a&m in civil engineering mechanical electrical along with faculty from other universities both domestic and overseas"" sadr is an experimentalist interested in thermo-fluid sciences with a focus in fluid mechanics his research projects have ranged from nano- and micro-fluidics all the way to atmospheric turbulence with a focus on energy efficient systems his nano- micro-fluidic research is rooted in his past research work at the georgia institute of technology in development of novel nano particle image velocimetry (npiv) his last major project looked into alternative fuels such as gas to liquid (gtl) technology specifically spray research as part of the qatar aviation fuel consortium working with other researchers in qatar united kingdom and germany the team was tasked with looking beyond the current capacity of gtl fuels for jet planes to fully quantify its impact on local air quality and fuel burn sadr worked on the combustion team ""our work will be used for the development of numerical models which will be extremely helpful for engineer designers "" sadr said ""we wanted to understand how the fuel behaved so that it could be used by an aviation combustion system designer in the future"" sadrs latest project is looking into alternative refrigerants he said these alternative refrigerants would be more environmentally friendly than freons which are used to cool most refrigerators and heating ventilation and air conditioning systems shell inc is funding sadrs work to investigate the possibility of developing an alternative refrigerant that not only eliminates or reduces the role of freons but also utilizes carbon dioxide to help reduce greenhouse gases along with potentially offering an alternative to freons sadr said he will explore other ways to use his product ""when you buy or build something you like to have it be multiuse you dont buy something for one specific action you want to have it for many different purposes if possible "" sadr said ""when i design my experimental set up i usually try to envision a little bit beyond that particular application"" sadr has been in college station since august and said the distance between universities will be a challenge he and other faculty collaborators will have to manage his goal is to travel to qatar at least once a semester to work on his research there ""i think it would be a great help if people could visit across the campuses more frequently "" sadr said sadr is looking to establish relationships with even more researchers at texas a&m in college station and would like to work with others inside and outside of the mechanical engineering department ""i think theres a lot to be done-i think theres a lot that could be done im trying to use my previous experience to come up with new proposals that matches [college station] researchers expertise "" sadr said for more information on sadrs research visit his research website"
on april 20th 2018 dr phanourios tamamis assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2018 kaneka junior faculty award for outstanding performance and dedication in his research recognized by the polymer technology center of the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the kaneka foundation tamamis research focuses on computational biophysics and biomolecular engineering with the aim to address key challenges in amyloid diseases amyloid biomaterials and the structural elucidation of key biological axes in his award talk at the polymer technology industrial consortium meeting tamamis presented part of his research which starts from understanding and inhibiting protein aggregation and the formation of amyloid fibrils that occur in many age-related diseases (eg alzheimers disease) and aims to exploit amyloid formation for the discovery of novel biopolymer-based materials with applications in biomedicine energy and the environment in this direction tamamis lab is developing the first computational framework for the design of functional amyloid materials such a framework is expected to revolutionize how functional amyloid biopolymer-based materials are designed and thus lead to novel amyloid materials of the future earlier in 2018 tamamis was awarded a grant from the national institute on aging part of the national institutes of health for his research on potential therapeutics for alzheimers disease parkinsons disease and type 2 diabetes
in the last five years more than 150 000 people have been injured and more than 3 600 killed due to drowsy drivers in the united states a large percentage of those involve shift workers like nurses to tackle this problem texas a&m university college of engineering researchers dr tony mcdonald and dr farzan sasangohar in the department of industrial and systems engineering are conducting a first-of-its-kind study on intervention techniques agencies are starting to step in and say that this is a solvable problem; all of these crashes are preventable and we need to take action mcdonald said one group dedicated to doing something is the national safety council which began its road to zero initiative in 2016 with the goal of eliminating roadway deaths within 30 years the us department of transportation committed $1 million a year for three years to help kick-start the program mcdonald and sasangohar received one of these grants in collaboration with dr nena bonuel this year to begin a study on nurses at houston methodist hospital their approach focuses on two methods of intervention the first is education and training to try and prevent the situation from happening at all and the second is using available technology to detect when a nurse may be driving drowsy the cars are going to be one of our primary ways of collecting data from the nurses mcdonald said we are going to install data recorders similar to what you see from insurance companies that plug into the on-board diagnostic port and collect continuous speed acceleration and in some cases gps data according to mcdonald there have been several broad driving studies that have shown changes in speed braking patterns and steering correlate with drowsy driving but they need more robust data of these events their collaboration with houston methodist hospital enables a large-scale study involving a representative sample of 300 nurses a 2016 study found that one in five sleep-related fatalities in the us happened in texas and its an issue that isnt going away any time soon houston specifically is a good test bed for this research because it not only has the worlds largest medical center but also a large number of nightshift workers in other domains such as oil and gas the issues with nightshift-related incidents are not new about one-fourth of all jobs in the united states are considered shift work type of jobs sasangohar said you cant shut down hospitals and police stations while the problem has been recognized there are very few interventional studies on this scale investigating applied solutions it is our expectation that this study will build a strong foundation for a large nationwide study the reason they believe this study can be impactful where others have fallen short is the caliber of partners they have both texas a&m and houston methodist are world-class research institutions sasangohar said we expect to collect strong preliminary findings to build a solid foundation for future university-hospital collaborations to reduce fatigue-related fatalities among nurses bonuel a nurse scientist at houston methodist is helping sasangohar and mcdonald carry out the study she has more than 25 years of experience working in nursing and her expertise not only lends credibility to the project but also has been critical in designing the education part of the program she said the study was especially personal for her since she worked 12-hour overnight shifts for many years working in the intensive care unit often times i had to pull myself off the road and rest at a nearby mall parking lot just to take a nap before i could continue driving home she said there was one time a police officer knocked on my windshield to check if i was ok i think this study where we will offer road safety education as well as a technology intervention will keep not only the nurses safe but at the same time help lessen accidents in the road that could involve other people if the program goes as planned they hope to expand it to other hospitals as well as other industries that have a significant number of shift workers once we complete development of this program we are hoping to distribute it to a much broader audience mcdonald said certainly to other hospitals in the area and across the country but also in the long term to other industries with a predominant population of shift workers like oil and gas
a group of juniors from the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university had the opportunity to give back to their host community while studying abroad in egypt this winter dr alaa elwany assistant professor in the department taught the 14 students during the faculty-led three-week program elwany who is originally from alexandria egypt reached out to the local rotary club to see how the students could give back to the community they would be visiting
the students volunteered their time and money to help set up a special-purpose lab for elementary school students in a local underprivileged school the students who will use the lab have special needs and are part of the governments fusion program as part of the program students with special needs study one-third of the curriculum in the lab which is equipped with customized educational tools designed to address their needs one-third of their curriculum is taught to them in that lab which is set up for that particular purpose and then the rest of the curriculum is taught to them with the rest of the kids so that they fuse without being left out elwany said once onsite the aggie students worked with the local students to learn how to use the educational tools provided on computers and other custom-designed educational tools they worked with the local student chapter of the institute of industrial and systems engineers to communicate between arabic and english it is a very welcoming country elwany said in appreciation of what they did the kids made a little performance for them where they sang local welcoming songs and held heart-shaped flags of the us and egypt to demonstrate unity we got local egyptian school students who never got out of their cities to interact with our students along with volunteering the students completed a three-hour course and explored the city visiting about 19 tourist sites elwany said the overall experience can have a positive impact on students as they move forward in their careers theyre enhancing their skills and some of them may aspire to spend some time working outside the country so this experience was perfect for them to learn how to interact with a radically different culture elwany said this december will be the third year for the study abroad program to egypt
imagine if all the roads and streets of a city were empty with no other cars and no variables like pedestrians it would be relatively easy to direct an autonomous car from one place to another but what about 20 000 autonomous cars all trying to get to and from different places each car has a different goal one car might be delivering a package another might be driving someone to work and still another could be an emergency vehicle taking a patient to a hospital how does each individual autonomous car account for their own particular goal and for these many variables according to dr pr kumar texas a&m university distinguished professor in electrical and computer engineering they cant yet autonomous cars presently are mostly like lone wolves kumar said they have all these sensors and capabilities to create a highly precise map of the environment and they can thread their way through the traffic but they dont collaborate with other vehicles theyre not a system that inability to collaborate is part of why even though we already have the technology for autonomous cars experts like kumar believe were still years away from truly autonomous transportation systems on the roads the sky is a different story i thought ‘why dont we try to develop a completely autonomous system of drones kumar said autonomy will be sooner realized in the sky than on the ground you cant automate pedestrians and cyclists and other interferences but in the air there are fewer of those using drones for agriculture and infrastructure surveillance is expected to have a significant economic impact the idea of short-range drone deliveries seems like more a question of when than if over the last year there have been news stories about companies ranging from amazon to dominoes testing the idea in a basic sense drone delivery is something were already technologically capable of but right now theres a huge catch: it only works because theres relatively no traffic in the air if the amazon and dominoes drones flight paths crossed there is no agreed upon framework for how they should interact with each other to prevent them from crashing into one another it gets even more complex if there are many drones in the sky what we need is a set of traffic rules for drones in the sky or what we researchers call a traffic protocol kumar said kumar and his team of student researchers have been working to solve this problem which doesnt even exist yet by designing the framework in which all these autonomous systems could safely operate think of all the things the highway system has roads signs signals driving laws and all of that were designing those things the rules of the road for the sky he said we wanted to build a system that was provably safe from the bottom up instead of trial and error we just wanted to design it so it would have the right architecture and the right algorithms from the get-go there is obviously some inherent risk in the very idea of drones flying overhead but its minimizing the risk to create a great benefit thats key if there are accidents as the technology becomes more widespread it could slow or even stop something that has the potential to be a tremendously beneficial to society so safety is exactly where kumar decided to begin rather than worry about efficiency first and then safety kumar and his team went the other direction but to create rules for a safe system requires overcoming a myriad of challenges what we decided was for a drone to never move forward unless it is guaranteed that that piece of airspace is ceded actively by everybody else he said so unless it proactively gets permission from everyone within a certain region it will not move into the region furthermore if there is nowhere to go then it has to land safely unlike cars a drone in the air cant just pull over and stop if things go wrong and the actual implementation of a safety-first system increases the risk of complications a lot of issues have to be solved you need to proactively communicate with everybody and get acknowledgements so theres a whole network broadcast with active replies said kumar and somehow we have to know that we heard from everybody so there has to be a database saying who are the vehicles in this neighborhood we have to know whenever anybody enters and leaves the system thats a lot of management to be done right there operation of that database could be done by a federal aviation administration or another ground server that monitors drones entering and leaving the system is designed so that at any time any drone can decide to change its path and its destination its completely up to the drone kumar said it can suddenly get a message to go somewhere else and our architecture is provably safe under those circumstances that permits drones from different enterprises to talk to each other and adjust lets say a drone delivering medical devices suddenly has a high priority because of an emergency or something the rest of the drones in the system will adjust to that priority drone the question that kumars group must ultimately answer is what exactly will happen when the system is turned on the answer might not be as straightforward as you think its one thing to create a set of rules its quite another to see how theyre actually followed we designed this from a safety first perspective but how much inefficiency does that result in kumar said will this system result in several drones aborting their missions or will it actually be pretty efficient if it is then by creating a provably safe system you open the doors for creative applications we cannot anticipate the uses he said we can develop technology but some kid somewhere could come up with an amazing use that weve never thought of in sweden theyre using drones to deliver emergency medical equipment we arent trying to develop the uses were just developing the systems protocols by designing its operational protocols kumar is bringing to the air something we already have on the roads competing companies can then share the airspace with others in the system by conforming to by the same rules kumar also anticipates that this system will create other less obvious business opportunities for example as part of a safe infrastructure there will need to be places for drones to safely exit the system in case of problems that creates a market for rooftops of high rises to be available as potential landing pads drones are complicated because they cant just stop they have to land kumar said for a completely safe architecture for example companies flying drones will have to contract rooftops in manhattan there will be an economy for this kind of rooftop or landing patch real estate kumars groups next step is a simulation of the system which will recreate the real world and its variables like wind faulty communications channels and malfunctioning drones to test the framework after that kumar hopes to test the system with drones at the texas a&m rellis campus possibly in collaboration with other researchers working with drones at a&m
hannah stroud and samuel murley undergraduate students in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university won the undergraduate student research poster portion of the university technical competition (utc) hosted by the south texas division of american society of mechanical engineers (asme) the pair undergraduate researchers in the multifunctional materials and aerospace structures optimization lab led by dr darren hartl presented their poster multiphysical characterization of avian inspired morphing wing section covering the design of the wing itself and an overview on the characterization techniques including 3-d digital image correlation (dic) which gives shape data for the wing the poster also covered infrared thermography (ir) which allows the researchers to map temperature data onto the shape as well as experimental setup and the dic/ir results and aerodynamic results from their test for their research the students have a wing that morphs using thermally activated shape memory alloy actuators on the lower surface and they wanted to know if they were achieving the shape they expected (to give them higher lift) when they morphed it under aero loads what they discovered was they were able to morph to the same shape consistently and affect the lift and pitching moment in repeatable methods utc is a research competition for graduate and undergraduate students at asme-partnered universities where students have the opportunity to present their mechanically-focused research or design projects to industry and university professionals the students were among 25 teams comprised of 70 students participating in three categories: undergraduate design/capstone poster undergraduate research poster and graduate research presentation teams competed from texas a&m the university of houston rice university texas a&m university–corpus christi and prairie view a&m university
eight teams from universities across north america will gather april 30 to may 5 at yuma arizona for the society of automotive engineers (sae) autodrive challenge a three-year competition that allows university teams to develop and demonstrate their own autonomous vehicle the competition is broken down into segments of yearly benchmarks with the goal of having a vehicle that can navigate an urban driving course autonomously while adhering to specific conditions and requirements identified by the sae when general motors (gm) and sae international announced last year that texas a&m university was one of the eight north american universities selected to compete in the three-year challenge the team was supplied with a chevy bolt and has been working for the past year to prepare the vehicle and themselves for the upcoming benchmark showcase
civil engineering doctoral students yang woo kim and gihyeob an computer science senior steven leal and mechanical engineering senior brianne murray have worked alongside more than 40 students from six departments within the texas a&m college of engineering to get the car ready for the spring 2018 competition ive always had an interest in autonomous vehicles kim said i have a background in image processing and computer coding and have worked in the electronics industry previously so i was excited to get the opportunity to work on this project the aggie team was split into 10 sub teams each assigned with a different task for the overall project kim and leal work with the lane detection team coding the car with the ability to detect lanes and other objects from its birds eye view camera ans work involves getting the car from one point to another creating a waypoint for the vehicle to follow as it moves from destination to destination while following a trajectory as theyve completed their tasks the team members have branched out to other groups within the overall team helping with heat exchange and design murray started as part of the longitudinal control team developing code and mechanics to help the car move forward and brake before assisting the lane detection team leal was assigned to the simulation team creating a simulated vehicle that the team could use to virtually test their ideas for the actual car we had a lot of people with the technical know-how to create control algorithms because they have taken these classes and they could whip them up in matlab and show a really nice graph but we needed to implement it into an environment that could work specifically on our server hardware that was running inside of the vehicle leal said that transition required someone with the technical know-how between different programming languages i think for any senior design project youre never really prepared and you learn most while youre in the project trying to collect data and scope murray said throughout the last two semesters murray said she has gained new skills in communication and project management and overall it has been a valuable experience were trying to figure out where we fit in on the scope of things how big is our project on the scale of things and how can we be leaders and encourage each other while also being present with the bigger group she said leal said that the project brought many challenges to the team its surprising at the end of this that each individual part of the project such as object detection seems simple enough however communicating each set of data to a waypoint planner and then having the waypoint planner correctly send data over to the control teams it starts to become a really complex problem leal said in arizona the car will be hooked up to gms testing hardware so they can record data as they perform goals within the test once the team gets on site there will be three tests performed first the car will have to pass a straight line test where it will go down a single lane and stop each time it approaches a stop sign the second test will be the lateral challenge where the car has to navigate through a curvy one lane road and stop at the end the final test is the object detection or lane change challenge the students look forward to the competition as not only a way to showcase their skills but as a way to identify areas for the vehicles improvement and development i think this competition is a good opportunity for students to run actual skills an said challenges like this are what help students apply their knowledge and gain practical understanding and i am glad to be a part of it all students have been led and supported by faculty members across the texas a&m college of engineering including: zachry department of civil engineering:dr alireza talebpour – associate professor and project leader department of computer science and engineering:dr dezhen song – professor department of electrical and computer engineering:dr peng li - professor department of mechanical engineering:dr debiyoti banerjee - professor dr swaroop darbha - professordr swaminathan gopalswamy - professor of practice dr sivakumar rathinam - associate professor
three students from the college of engineering have been named distinguished graduate students for 2018 they were among a group of 16 graduate students from texas a&m university who are pursuing their masters or doctoral degrees the students were recognized for their exemplary accomplishment during a ceremony on april 23 at the association of former students clayton w williams jr alumni center on the texas a&m campus the 2018 recipients from the college of engineering are: research- doctoral william hamilton department of computer science faculty advisor: dr andruid kerne charles brandon sweeney department of materials science and engineering faculty advisor: dr micah green research- masters joshua harris department of aerospace engineering faculty advisor: dr john valasek
on april 16 dr james holste senior professor and professor emeritus in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was presented the prestigious donald l katz award by the gpa midstream association (formerly the gas processors association)
the donald l katz award recognizes outstanding work in industry science and educational excellence in the classroom holste was presented the award during the gpa midstream associations 97th annual convention in austin texas holste who retired from full-time teaching in 2017 has more than 42 years of service at texas a&m he was the first associate department head in the chemical engineering department and the first associate director of the office of graduate studies at texas a&m he also served as assistant dean and assistant agency director for research in the engineering program and later as associate dean for graduate studies and international programs in the texas a&m college of science he spent seven years in doha qatar during the start-up of texas a&m university at qatar serving initially as the first associate dean for academic affairs and later as the first associate dean for research and graduate studies holste previously received the association of former students distinguished achievement award for research and he was a member of the inaugural group of tees senior fellows he also received an outstanding alumnus award from concordia university–nebraska he served for three decades on the american society of mechanical engineers/ american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) joint committee on thermophysical properties for nine years on the board of directors of the concordia university system and nine years as a member of the working group on thermophysical properties of refrigerants of the international energy agency
while many texans were bracing for hurricane harveys landfall in late august 2017 a team of researchers set out to deploy instrument pods along the texas coast the information gathered from these rapid response units (rrus) could help develop more resilient coastal communities by improving predictive models and tools
the texas coastal storm rapid response (coastrr) team is comprised of researchers from texas a&m university – college station and galveston and rice university dr jens figlus assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m is the principal investigator on this project the team is specifically looking for information to help them understand if storm impacts will erode the beach; scarp overtop or completely wipe out sand dunes; or if sediment deposits could require expensive clean-up efforts when hurricane paths are forecast to hit a certain coastal area it is important to know ahead of time what the impact to the coastal morphology is figlus said our field measurements of hydrodynamics and sedimentation during and after hurricane impact allow us to improve those predictive models and tools so they can then be used by federal state and local agencies to issue notifications to the public allocate resources and plan for the appropriate response based on expected local conditions currently rapid response field measurements of impacts to coastal systems from extreme storms such as hurricane harvey are difficult to collect this is because of short notice preventing deployment of the instruments potential of instrument failure or loss and uncertainty of actual storm impact for specific locations
"""the work provides further advances to our capabilities to measure detailed hydrodynamic processes such as currents and waves across the surface of barrier island systems impacted by extreme events figlus said this project is important to me because it combines fundamental work on better understanding our coastal systems with practical applications of rapid response to coastal hurricane impacts to address the dilemma coastrr is trying to link measurements of storm hydrodynamics across stretches of barrier island systems during storm impact with observations of coastal morphology change in the days and months following the storm the researchers are specifically interested in infragravity waves produced by hurricanes and how these low-frequency water surface motions affect coastal erosion and accretion patterns as well as associated damages of these massive storms infragravity waves are water waves within a specific frequency range between 004 and 0003 hertz (hz) figlus said this means they have wave periods the time between two consecutive wave crests passing the same location between 25 and 333 seconds similar to how the different frequencies of light waves from the sun can create different colors in a rainbow water waves in specific frequency ranges hitting a coastline can have very specific effects on the coastline infragravity waves have much lower frequencies or longer wave periods than regular wind waves you can see on the beach with the naked eye every day figlus said this property makes them a primary suspect driving sediment erosion and deposition on beaches especially since they become more pronounced due to storm activity hurricane harvey presented a wide range of effects on the texas coast including complete devastation and major erosion near landfall as well as the deposition of sediment called accretion at other locations the observed effects of infragravity wave interactions with the coastal system has been exciting to explore figlus said being able to predict precisely which impact happens where and to what extent is the challenge that this research is helping to tackle"
as a result of the work the coastrr team conducts future coastal management decisions will be improved through a more detailed understanding of how storms reshape our coastal barrier island systems the information will also be incorporated into classroom teaching ongoing outreach activities and publications to the research community research on extreme event impacts to the nearshore environment is paramount to the creation of more resilient coastal communities figlus said the conducted field measurements provide a unique dataset of great societal importance as our coastlines will continue to face increased pressure from natural disasters and human development while the coastrr teams work is still ongoing it has the potential to help communities rebuild stronger than ever not only along the texas coast but coastal communities around the world by better predicting the potential damage of a storm before it makes landfall
gordan england former us deputy secretary of defense and secretary of the navy recently visited texas a&m university to give a lecture on ethics and the principles of leadership to engineering students in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution england served in the george w bush administration from 2003-09 he received a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the university of maryland college park in 1961 and a master of business administration from texas christian university in 1975 in addition to his government service england had a very successful career as an electrical engineer he started out working on the project gemini space program with honeywell in 1966 and later served as executive vice president of general dynamics as well as president of lockheed fort worth co
england provided insightful anecdotes spanning his career in business and government on defining leadership best leadership practices and leading technical teams effectively the most important lesson england stressed is understanding that leadership is based on strong moral character and a consistent set of ethics such as the aggie core values you cannot be a leader unless you are ethical said england you have to be ethical all the time not just at work you have to make that the touchstone of your life; otherwise you are not going to be successful england went on to share his personal code of honors: never embarrass your mother and be forthright honest and direct with everyone in every circumstance he also shared his 15 principles of leadership highlights from his list include providing an environment for every person to excel; improving effectiveness to gain efficiency; encouraging constructive criticism; and being forthright honest and direct with every person in every circumstance at the conclusion of englands lecture dr ben zoghi electronic systems engineering technology (eset) faculty and professor of the engineering leadership class facilitated an in-depth q&a with the students and england
students in the zachry leadership program in the texas a&m university college of engineering engage with a wide variety of extraordinary leaders from industry academia and government who have made positive impacts on the world through these engagements the students learn more their own possibilities and opportunities to influence others for the better regardless of the career they pursue seniors in the program recently had the opportunity to have an extended conversation with texas railroad commissioner ryan sitton sitton class of 97 with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering at texas a&m started pinnacleart with his wife jennifer in 2006 the engineering and technology company focuses on reliability and integrity programs for the oil gas petrochemical mining pharmaceutical and wastewater industries as a project that sitton started from the ground up the company now employs more than 700 people across four continents he told the students his goal is to find ways to impact the world around him which can be difficult because making an impact involves taking risks and being creative outside of owning his own business sitton also serves as the texas railroad commissioner a position he has held since 2014 the railroad commission is the energy regulator for the state and sitton is the first engineer to serve as railroad commissioner in 50 years one element students asked him to discuss was communication as a society we are getting worse at communication sitton said people think it is about being a good speaker it is about articulating your ideas well that is not what communication is thats why we have the term public speaker communication is about connection connection is not about my ability to talk its about my ability to hear he encouraged students from the zachry leadership program to take the knowledge they acquire while at texas a&m and in the zachry leadership program with them and turn it into skills that will help them become leaders in whatever path they choose moving forward the zachry leadership program is currently accepting applications for its next cohort to qualify students must be enrolled in the college of engineering and not be planning to graduate before may 2021 accepted students will attend leadership retreats enroll in exclusive classes designed to expand their leadership capabilities earn a certificate in holistic leadership and receive a scholarship each semester
two graduate students from the texas a&m university college of engineering received the us senator phil gramm doctoral fellowship award for scholarly excellence the awards each for $5 000 will support the research efforts of the students as they pursue their doctoral degrees madeleine s durkee from the department of biomedical engineering and nazanin afsar kazerooni from the department of mechanical engineering were among a group of eight students to receive the award during a ceremony in april that featured a three-minute presentation by the recipients highlighting their academic work durkee whose advisor is dr kristen c maitland associate professor in the biomedical engineering department presented her research on improving detection of pathogenic bacteria specifically mycobacterium tuberculosis in a living host she works with an optical method to detect viable bacteria in a small animal model of disease the bulk of her research has been developing a model of light transport within a host to determine what limits the number of bacteria that can be detected then attempting to improve the optical system to overcome these limitations this will eventually lead to more sensitive detection of bacteria and a better diagnostic she is also deeply involved in teaching undergraduate courses and research which has led her to pursue a career path in academia
i am very honored to receive the phil gramm award durkee said i have dedicated the past five years to teaching and academic research and to be formally recognized for those efforts is very exciting kazerooni whose advisor is dr arun srinivasa the holdredge/paul professor in the mechanical engineering department presented her research on the inelastic behavior of soft tissues especially skin and damages that happen for a better understating of wearable electronics skin diseases aging and wrinkling etc she has designed and built an intricate biaxial tension setup and has been instrumental in repairing a precise laser cutter system she has also worked in a co-op program with st jude medical (aka abbott) for five months on developing antimicrobial meshes and material testing for the next generation of cardiac implantable electronic devices in addition to her contributions to research she has been the instructor of record twice teaching two courses in the department of mechanical engineering as the winner of the graduate teaching fellowship i am deeply grateful and honored to receive this award from senator phil gramm kazerooni said i feel thrilled and overjoyed that my work has been recognized as well as its potential to help people the fellowships are named for phil gramm who served as an economics professor at texas a&m for 12 years before embarking on a highly successful political career
nuclear forensics involves using analytical techniques to determine the origin and history of nuclear materials in particular those that have been intercepted from smuggling operations or recovered following a nuclear explosion according to jeremy osborn a nuclear engineering phd student working with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) the growing concern regarding nuclear terrorism has heightened the need to develop nuclear forensics analysis techniques that allow nuclear material source attribution and thereby strengthen nuclear deterrence
osborn is part of a team of researchers at nsspi who have been working on a project to develop new methods to determine the reactor origins of weapons-grade plutonium dr sunil chirayath director of nsspi has led this seven-year project which was funded by the us department of homeland securitys domestic nuclear detection office under an academic research initiative (dndo-ari) grant in conjunction with dr charles m folden iii of the cyclotron institute this project has brought a much-needed nuclear forensics capability to nsspi and has led to the training of many graduate students in this crucial field this year osborn and fellow phd student paul mendoza will be the latest students to earn their doctorates through this project which has already generated three masters degrees another phd and research experience for three undergraduates up to now pre-detonation nuclear forensics for chemically separated weapons-grade plutonium has been limited to estimating the time since last chemical separation mendoza said this project provides a means and methodology developed and tested for determining much more much more includes determining characteristics of the material in question like the reactor type irradiation history burnup and scalar neutron flux magnitude the material saw in the reactor this information could help pinpoint the origins of the material which mendoza notes would be important in a national security context if such a material were to be interdicted from a us adversary
the researchers used a radiochemistry technique utilizing plutonium uranium oxidation-reduction (redox) extraction to separate the plutonium from the trace elements in spent nuclear fuel nsspi has developed the first capability for bench-scale plutonium uranium redox extraction (purex) reprocessing of plutonium at a us university they used a gaussian maximum-likelihood reactor-type discrimination process for the forensics methodology development osborn and mendoza built on the work of past nsspi graduates to investigate two different methods for discriminating the separated plutonium from various reactor-types using the forensics methodology developed as part of this dndo project mendozas project focused on forensics methodology that uses destructive analysis to investigate the trace contaminants in plutonium recovered using the purex process which could give clues to the conditions under which the plutonium was produced osborn developed a non-destructive forensics technique based on using intra-element isotope ratios to determine the reactor type both methodologies were verified through both experimental and computational means mendoza graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering from biola university he successfully defended his dissertation in october of 2017 and will be receiving his phd in may 2018 he currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at los alamos national laboratory osborn has both a bachelor of science degree and a master of science degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m and is planning to defend his dissertation and graduate in august 2018 for more information on this project visit nsspis website
networks have been widely used to represent real-world information systems such as social media networks or a healthcare provider network traditional network data often operates without human input until now in a traditional data-driven network-embedding framework only network analytics algorithms are considered they are purely data driven meaning that the algorithms do not take into consideration any human prior knowledge that may be helpful in many situations
human prior knowledge means that there are some pieces of information that we as humans might know and understand that a computer may not automatically determine dr xia (ben) hu assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the national science foundation (nsf) faculty early career development award (career) to build a human-centric network-embedding framework in which human prior knowledge would be properly modeled and integrated in the framework process in contrast to the traditional data-driven network-embedding framework prior to conducting network analysis hu operated on the assumption that some people are more influential than others on social networks individuals such as national leaders and movie stars are much more influential than many others on twitter because of their leadership popularity and activity without including that human prior knowledge into the network the computer might not pick up on that many types of human prior knowledge are dynamic and can change from day to day for example a current presidents influence on social media will be more important after he is elected versus before hu said that all of these factors should be considered and be tackled while modeling the network embedding problem and understanding the network hu proposes to systematically investigate three types of human knowledge from the node- edge- and community-level in a network and to integrate them into a combined framework an example of the edge-level human knowledge is the connections between contacts on a social network – where some connections between contacts are stronger than others on social networks while the traditional data driven framework may not accurately indicate ones connections with others hus project will integrate human prior knowledge that will accurately show those connections on social networks for example i may be closer with my students than another professional colleague from another university hu said however on social networks it appears that i may or may not have those connections with others in healthcare there are many types of human prior knowledge that can be beneficial to include in the framework so that diagnoses and medical history can be more accurate in patients seeking medical care in healthcare systems there are many other types of human knowledge hu said for example we know some people are (related) thats why we should take family disease history into consideration in disease prediction for ai driving healthcare analytics not only will this project impact social networks and healthcare but it will also impact the critical infrastructure by implementing human prior knowledge of the connections between power stations into the network embedding problem before hurricanes and natural disasters it is critical to understand which power stations are more important than others by conducting these network analytics hu said some power stations are more important because if they are ever damaged the whole area power systems will be down if researchers are able to analyze which power stations are the most critical to keep stable it can help prevent unnecessary outages during natural disasters this research enables data analysts and domain experts such as doctors to handle network data from real-world information systems with abundant human knowledge for scientific discovery which was extremely difficult if not impossible before while existing studies focused on data-driven approaches this project is to investigate a novel direction to explore how human knowledge could enhance network embedding and how the results could be better understood by human beings hu said the successful outcome of this research will lead to advances in providing an effective embedding which is essential in analyzing real-world networks with human knowledge hu also plans to make sure that data science education can be received by a larger audience in order to make a broader impact his plan is to not only make an impact through classroom teaching but to make data science education publicly available and try to make sure more people receive an education in terms of data science and network analytics by posting them online in different formats
how do you compete in supercomputing the students on the texas a&m university supercomputing team know thats going to be the first question before its even asked build run optimize said dr jian tao advisor for the team and texas a&m engineering experiment station researcher you build the computer you run programs on it and then you optimize the performance theyre simple words but the competition is anything but over 300 student teams from around the world entered the asia supercomputer communitys student supercomputer challenge (asc18) but only 20 made the cut to the finals to be held in may in china texas a&ms group is not only the lone team from the united states to make the finals its the only team from the entire western hemisphere and it almost didnt happen instead of just trying to form an extra-curricular team tao was encouraged by the engineering academic and student affairs office to create an aggie-challenge course for the competition aggie-challenge courses give students the opportunity to work on projects related to engineering challenges facing our society in this case the challenge is building efficient high-performance computers working against the clock tao was able to get the course approved during the middle of the last week where students can add and drop classes i wasnt sure we would even be able to get anyone but they were able to announce the class and some students were interested he said we didnt even have a room yet we had to figure out where the best time and place to meet would be after everyone had already signed up four students will travel to china but there are nine on the team theyre a mix of underclassmen and upperclassmen coming from multiple departments within the texas a&m college of engineering like any team figuring out each others strengths and weaknesses was one of the major challenges early on we have members with different engineering backgrounds and skill levels said freshman michael lau two of us are freshmen so were learning some things we wouldnt have learned for a couple of years otherwise so thats been cool also to see how everyone fits together on the team
at the competition teams have to perform tasks and to do them they have to build a supercomputer (the team is quick to point out that when you say supercomputer it conjures up images in popular culture of a room of servers or ibms watson but these computers for the competition are just two nodes compared to large supercomputers that can have hundreds) to build that supercomputer the team will pick from a list of available hardware before the competition that hardware will be in boxes at the competition and they have to assemble the computer the key is that the power consumption cannot exceed 3 000 watts so teams have to select what combination of parts will best accomplish the tasks while staying below that threshold the tasks involve running several different programs that use significant computing resources some of the programs take more central processing unit (cpu) power and others more graphic processing unit (gpu) power then teams have to find ways to optimize the way those programs run on the systems should you put more cpus in there or gpus said tao thats what you have to decide they just give you boxes and you have to assemble it yourselves and install the software and optimize it yourself its a very cool challenge the wildcard round at the finals is a mystery challenge that teams have no way to prepare for they know that the other tasks will be using the same programs they used in the preliminary round but the mystery task will be what separates the teams at the finals everyone is going in blind said senior computer science major mohammad sagor it could be hit or miss we all have our various things that were working on and how to optimize that but thats going to be a game changer and on top of that its with hardware weve never used before so thats another layer adding yet another layer is the fact that the internet itself is more heavily censored in china than it is in the united states there are some restrictions on the internet in china so its not as simple as just looking something up here said sheldon wei another freshman on the team thats something were going to have to figure out on the fly because theres no way to prepare for that really being able to look things up is a crucial part of the challenge according to junior computer engineering major sean dormiani because the installing the software portion of the competition isnt like installing a new program on your regular desktop computer installing software sounds simple because youre used to clicking next but when youre compiling it from the source its not the same he said its a very minimal front end its all text there are no buttons its like building a tower and youre supposed to build the top but you need everything underneath it and sometimes its not documented what you need underneath it so youre like ‘im missing a floor here whats going on and sometimes you end up finding one guy on one forum somewhere that has the same problem and theyve found a solution theyre also just excited to be the first texas a&m team to ever compete at the event were going to introduce texas a&m to the competition and im excited about that said sophomore computer engineering major shaina le its really inspiring to have a bunch of teams come together and even though were competing against each other and against the clock were all working toward the same end goal of sustainability efficiency and optimization its all about the bigger picture and i think thats wonderful the team has been supported by texas a&m high performance research computing and members also include senior computer science major isaac decastro senior electrical engineering majors michael hagaman samra tariq and alexander ngo and freshman engineering student zengyu wei
students in the aggie women in computer science (awics) organization at texas a&m university hosted the ninth annual awics leadership workshop on friday april 6 at the event sponsored by chevron female leaders from academia and industry participated in two panels as well as a lunch with activities and discussion the panels centered on leadership and how to make an impact in the workplace
one of the most important components of a successful career is about interacting with colleagues said diane uwacu awics graduate president as women training for a career in tech it is important to hear from women in leadership we learned about how we can prepare for leadership roles while in college as well as the kind of impact that we can have my favorite part of the event was hearing guests answer questions with examples from their personal stories apart from the incredibly inspiring success stories they shared about the hard times in their journey which showed us that failures make for better success stories in the long run panelists included tammy mcneley ‘84 lockheed martin aeronautics fellow; dr theodora chaspari computer science and engineering assistant professor; and dr dilma da silva department head professor holder of the ford motor company design professorship ii and interim deputy director of the texas a&m institute of data science dr nancy m amato regents and unocal professor served as the moderator mcneley serves as chief engineer of the lockheed martin aeronautics warfare integration laboratories including f-35 and advanced development program facilities and as the corporate modeling and simulation lead for next generation platform initiatives she has 35 years of experience in military operations analysis human-in- the-loop experimentation and modeling and simulation she is also certified as an expert systems engineering professional by the international council on systems engineering mcneley is one of three female fellows at lockheed martin aeronautics and is very involved in stem activities in schools and through girls inc she earned her bachelor of science degree in computer science from texas a&m in 1984 through mentoring workshops students have the opportunity to identify areas in which they can be leaders here and now da silva said as they continue to grow in technical knowledge through their courses they can also strive to make their workplace better by learning from those who can offer invaluable leadership experience
dr juan garay professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was named a fellow of the international association for cryptologic research (iacr) for his fundamental contributions to the interface of cryptography and distributed computing and for service to the cryptographic research community garays research focus is cryptographic protocols and schemes which play a fundamental role in enabling new functionalities and privacy-preserving ways of interaction in todays digital world recently garay has greatly contributed to the continuous research on the subject of blockchain protocols and cryptocurrencies for this distinction technical contributions and distinguished service to the cryptologic community are considered iacr has established the fellows program to recognize outstanding iacr members for their technical and professional contributions that advance the science technology and practice of cryptology and related fields; promote the free exchange of ideas and information about cryptology and related fields; develop and maintain the professional skill and integrity of individuals in the cryptologic community; and advance the standing of the cryptologic community in the wider scientific and technical world and promote fruitful relationships between the iacr and other scientific and technical organizations the iacr fellows program was established in 2004 and as of today around 70 cryptographers world-wide have been elevated to fellows this is an awesome – and at the same time humbling – honor which i would like to share with my large number of amazingly talented collaborators garay said
the texas a&m university college of engineering honored six alumni during the 2018 outstanding alumni awards banquet receiving the outstanding alumni honor award were quentin baker 78 peter c forster 63 jay graham 92 stephanie g hertzog 96 and carl f jaedicke 73 receiving the outstanding early professional achievement alumni award was lieutenant colonel aaron tucker 12 outstanding alumni honor awardsquentin baker 78mechanical engineeringpresident and chairman of the boardbaker engineering and risk consultants inc quentin baker is president and chairman of the board of baker engineering and risk consultants inc a company he founded in 2001 the company was recognized among the 2009 aggie 100 as one of the 100 fastest growing aggie-owned or aggie-led businesses in the world during his career baker has made significant contributions in the areas of explosion consequence assessments and the investigation of accidental explosions he has also designed and conducted tests for recreational purposes in accident investigations and to evaluate functionality or performance of equipment recovered from accident sites baker has authored more than 60 papers and is co-author of two books with a third currently being written his work on predicting the risk of fatalities to building occupants is still an industry standard he is the co-inventor of five patents and has participated in four standards writing committees he is a member of the american society of mechanical engineers american institute of chemical engineers national association of fire investigators national fire protection association and national society of professional engineers baker received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from texas a&m university in 1978 and a master of business administration from the university of texas at san antonio in 1986 he and his wife jana have two children sean and evan 15 peter c forster 63civil engineeringdirectorclark construction group llc as chairman and ceo of clark construction until 2013 peter forster was responsible for the overall operation of the company through his strategic vision and leadership clark has grown to perform more than $42 billion per year in general building projects this work includes major convention centers stadiums and arenas high-rise buildings government facilities airport terminals and other projects throughout the united states prior to joining the organization forster was president and chief operating officer of the montgomery alabama-based blount international ltd which he joined in 1968 he was promoted to president and chief operating officer of blount brothers corporation the companys largest subsidiary in 1978 forster is a member of the knights of malta and serves on the board of the national capital area boy scouts and archbishop carroll high school forster earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering and a bachelor of business administration degree in 1964 from texas a&m and then pursued graduate study in civil engineering at northeastern university he began his career in 1964 as a civil engineering officer with the us air force where he worked on construction projects in the united states and thailand he and his wife betsy have been married 54 years and have two children catherine and john and six grandchildren jay graham 92petroleum engineeringchairman ceo and co-founderwildhorse resource development corporation jay graham is the chairman ceo and co-founder of wildhorse resource development corporation (wrd) which operates premier assets in the eagle ford shale and the over-pressured cotton valley in north louisiana over the past year wrd has consolidated several natural gas partners-backed companies and acquired approximately $1 billion of assets located in the eagle ford shale previously graham was the ceo and co-founder of wildhorse resources llc and wildhorse resources ii llc wildhorse resources was founded in 2007 and ultimately provided assets for three public companies: memorial production partners memorial resource development corp and penntex midstream partners he served as ceo and a member of the board of directors of memorial resource development corp from january 2016 until the merger with range resources in september 2016 graham has been in the oil and gas business since 1993 and serves on the petroleum industry advisory board college of engineering advisory council and 12th man foundation board of trustees at texas a&m he is also co-founder and advisor of the petroleum ventures program at texas a&m which is a collaboration between the harold vance department of petroleum engineering and the mays business school graham received his bachelor of science degree in petroleum engineering from texas a&m in 1992 and is a member of the petroleum engineering academy of distinguished graduates at texas a&m he is a recipient of the society of petroleum engineers (spe) young member outstanding service award and is an inaugural member of the spe emerging leader program graham and his wife are the founders of the april and jay graham fellowship for military service initiatives at the george w bush institute the couple has three children: april jacob and jackson stephanie g hertzog 96chemical engineeringsenior vice presidenttally energy services stephanie goettle hertzog is senior vice president at tally energy services where she is responsible for strategy sales and marketing she started her career as a process engineer at celanese in clear lake texas she also spent several years as an engagement manager with mckinsey & co a global consulting firm and at psc an environmental services firm where she was senior vice president of strategy she later joined exterran a publicly held oilfield services company and held several roles there such as vice president of sales and marketing and vice president of strategy she has chaired the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering advisory council and served on the college of engineering advisory council and engineering honors steering committee at texas a&m she has been president and board member of the harvard business school (hbs) club of houston and vice president of the hbs alumni board she also chaired the education foundation of harris county board she received her bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering in 1996 from texas a&m and her master of business administration degree from harvard business school in 2001 hertzog and her husband ben have two children holden and hudson carl f jaedicke 73nuclear engineeringphilanthropic consultant carl jaedicke is a philanthropic consultant providing consulting services to nonprofits grant makers and individuals prior to this he worked for 32 years for the texas a&m foundation where he served several roles including chief development officer for the college of engineering vice president for college programs and vice president for principal gifts he was the first person to hold the position of vice president for principal gifts at the foundation and was also the first development officer in the college of engineering he served 19 years in this role for four deans and pioneered the college-based fundraising model now used by the texas a&m foundation jaedicke assisted in the establishment of the engineering advisory council which first met in fall 1988 and has become a primary source of major gifts for the college prior to entering the development field jaedicke was employed by stone & webster engineering corporation in boston massachusetts and consumers power in jackson michigan he is also a registered professional engineer as a student at texas a&m he gave tours of the original zachry engineering center on the day it was dedicated march 16 1972 he is a recipient of the distinguished former student award given by the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m he received his bachelor of science degree in nuclear engineering from texas a&m in 1973 and his master of business administration from indiana university in 1979 jaedicke and his wife shelby have two children elizabeth and joshua outstanding early professional achievement alumni awardlieutenant colonel aaron tucker 12 united states air forceaerospace engineeringprogram managerlive-virtual-constructive training networkair force life cycle management center lieutenant colonel aaron tucker united states air force is the program manager for the live-virtual-constructive (lvc) training network in the simulator program office of the air force life cycle management center wright-patterson air force base in ohio he is responsible for transitioning advanced technology and establishing the live-virtual-constructive training network program of record for the us air force lvc provides advanced training for the combat air forces in dense threat environments he is a member of the society of experimental test pilots associate fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) and a member of the aiaa flight test technical committee he has co-authored papers for many publications including the international journal of engineering modeling & simulation and the journal of systems engineering tucker is a member of tau beta pi and his awards include the bronze star the meritorious service medal air force commendation medal aerial achievement medal and the 2010 society of experimental test pilots herman r salmon technical publications award he received his bachelor of science and master of science degrees in aerospace engineering from the university of southern california in 1997 he earned his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from texas a&m in 2012 tucker and his wife michelle have three children ashton alex and andrew photo (left to right): jaedicke hertzog forster tucker baker and graham
dr nancy m amato unocal and regents professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been elected as a 2018 association for the advancement of artificial intelligence (aaai) fellow the aaai fellows program began in 1990 to recognize individuals who have achieved unusual distinction in the field of artificial intelligence the aaai fellows selection committee typically selects five to 10 new fellows each year with eight fellows being inducted in 2018 amato was selected for significant contributions to the algorithmic foundations of motion planning in robotics and computational biology and leadership in broadening participation in computing she was inducted during the thirty-second aaai conference on artificial intelligence which was held feb 2–7 in new orleans louisiana in addition to this she is also a fellow of the american association for the advancement of science the association for computing machinery the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) and the world technology network (wtn) amatos research focuses on motion planning and its applications in robotics computational biology animation computer-aided design and virtual reality motion planning deals with finding paths to move an object (the robot) from an initial to a goal position she has developed novel algorithms that work by using probabilistic methods to strategically generate configurations of the robot she and her students have developed several important strategies that can be used for robots operating in very crowded environments or help them plan how to manipulate or grasp an object her group was also the first to apply these sampling-based planning methods to proteins and other biomolecules amato has been instrumental in setting up key national programs for women and minorities in computing she received the 2014 computing research association (cra) haberman award the inaugural national center for women and information technology (ncwit) harrold/notkin research and graduate mentoring award in 2014 the 2013 ieee hp/harriet rigas award and texas a&m association of former students university-level awards for teaching (2011) and research (2018) she has also received a national science foundation career award she has graduated 23 doctoral students with most going on to careers in academia government or industry research labs and the rest going to industry or postdoctoral studies she was program chair for the 2015 ieee international conference on robotics and automation and for robotics: science and systems in 2016 she is an elected member of the cra board of directors (2014-2020) currently serves as vice president for member activities for the ieee robotics and automation society (ras) was twice elected as a member of the ras adcom was co-chair of the committee on the status of women in computing research (cra-w) from 2014-2017 and was co-chair of the ncwit academic alliance from 2009-2011 the association for the advancement of artificial intelligence formerly the american association for artificial intelligence is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines aaai aims to promote artificial intelligence research the organization also aims increase the public understanding of artificial intelligence improve the teaching and training of artificial intelligence practitioners and provide guidance for research planners and funders in respect to the current developments and future directions of the area of study
the center for robot-assisted search and rescue (crasar) received the emergency management association of texas (emat) emergency management technology and innovation award at the 11th annual emat leadership symposium last week crasar received the award for the 100-plus flights they conducted with their small unmanned aircraft system during hurricane harvey the award is presented to local or regional-level emergency management programs in texas that developed and implemented a technology product project or innovation in texas during the previous calendar year (2017) that was developed at the local or regional level; was successfully implemented and tested during an exercise special event or emergency circumstance; and can be replicated at little or no cost by other local or regional programs
"dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university director of the humanitarian robotics and ai laboratory and vice president of crasar said she was pleased with the award to be recognized by emergency professionals is so rewarding we believe that helping them use and adopt the technology they need will transform disaster response murphy said in a year with major flooding and then hurricane harvey with so many agencies are responding it is amazing to be singled out for an award"" the purpose of the emat annual awards program is to recognize the achievements and hard work of the individuals organizations and jurisdictions that have made exceptional efforts to further the field of emergency management and to ensure a whole community approach to preventing preparing for mitigating against responding to and recovering from disasters crasar serves as crisis response and research organization that strives to direct and exploit new technology development in robotics and unmanned systems for humanitarian purposes worldwide crasars mission is to serve existing rescue organizations by providing deployable robot-assisted search and rescue teams while fostering research into sar-specific robot systems and educating the public murphy is an ieee fellow a ted speaker and a founder of roboticists without borders she has worked in disaster robotics research and deployment since 1995 and has deployed ground air and marine robots in disasters worldwide"
human stem cells have shown potential in medicine as they can transform into various specialized cell types such as bone and cartilage cells the current approach to obtain such specialized cells is to subject stem cells to specialized instructive protein molecules known as growth factors however use of growth factors in the human body can generate harmful effects including unwanted tissue growth such as a tumor researchers at texas a&m university have explored a new class of clay nanoparticles that can direct stem cells to become bone or cartilage cells dr akhilesh gaharwar an assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering and his students have demonstrated that a specific type of two-dimensional (2-d) nanoparticles also known as nanosilicates can grow bone and cartilage tissue from stem cells in the absence of growth factors these nanoparticles are similar to flaxseed in shape but 10 million times smaller in size their work widespread changes in transcriptome profile of human mesenchymal stem cells induced by two-dimensional nanosilicates has been published in proceedings of the national academy of sciences this week two-dimensional nanomaterials have gained increasing popularity over a variety of fields such as energy optics and regenerative engineering due to their extremely small size and unique shape these nanoparticles consist of highly organized atomic layers made from minerals the minerals are abundantly present within the human body and help in some vital functions
to understand how these nanoparticles interact with stem cells we utilized a next-generation sequencing technique called rna-seq said irtisha singh a computational biologist from weill cornell medicine at cornell university and the corresponding author rna-seq takes a snapshot of gene activity of the cell at any given moment this is similar to taking a high-resolution photo during the super bowl and identifying the reaction of every fan during the touchdown rna-seq uses next-generation sequencing (ngs) to reveal the presence and quantity of rna in a biological sample at a given moment for example cell-nanoparticle interactions can result in significant change in cellular behavior that can be observed by using this technique
this technique is very sensitive to investigate the interaction of a wide variety of nanomaterials with cells said jake carrow a doctoral candidate in gaharwars lab and co-first author of the study with this combination of nanotechnology and computational biology we can better understand how a materials chemistry shape and size can contribute to cell functions from this study nanosilicates demonstrated some very interesting capabilities when applied to adult human stem cells these cells presented signaling typically observed during regeneration of bone and cartilage this indicates a great deal of potential for these nanoparticles as a possible therapy against osteoarthritis among other orthopedic injuries this cellular response is believed to originate from the unique physical and chemical composition of the nanoparticles this premise of mineral-based particles affecting cell behavior has opened the doors to the development of new class of therapies
the ability to customize a therapy to a specific tissue simply by changing the mineral content within the nanoparticle presents a great potential within the field of regenerative engineering said lauren cross also co-first author on the publication we believe this new field of ‘mineralomics can provide a viable alternative compared to the current treatments existing today another collaborator on this research was dr carl gregory an associate professor in the institute for regenerative medicine at the texas a&m college of medicine a component of the texas a&m university health science center who studies stem cells this work represents an excellent example of the long-standing interdisciplinary collaborations between the health science center and engineering he said one way to foster innovation is to bring together investigators with shared interests but substantially different research approaches life science-engineering collaborations are powerful in this respect because they encourage investigators to reassess dogmatic approaches that frequently slow progress this research is funded by the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering the gaharwar lab targets cell-biomaterial interactions across multiple biological scales his group is specifically interested in the repair and regeneration of biological tissues through the use of nanoengineered biomaterials see more details at inspired nanomaterials and tissue engineering laboratory
technology advancement is changing the disability landscape as demonstrated by the 10 student teams at aggies invent for assistive technology this past weekend the 58 participating students were challenged to improve the lives of the more than 57 million americans who have some form of disability by developing a technological solution to one of the 16 need statements of the competition this aggies invent had students from 18 different majors and ranged from freshmen to graduate students across campus with advancing technology comes new opportunities to address the needs of the larger population said rodney boehm director of the engineering entrepreneurship program advances like artificial intelligence and text to speech are evolving so rapidly we take these cutting-edge technologies and apply them to those who live every day with disabilities aggies invent an intensive design experience offered at the texas a&m engineering innovation center at texas a&m university provides an environment made to inspire and support entrepreneurship and innovative thinking students have 48 hours to generate a solution to need statements presented at each aggies invent competition each event has a completely different theme keeping the students ready for a challenge the solutions presented ranged from translating sign language to text increasing real-time captioning efficiency and lowering cost affordable hands-free technology to unlock and open residential doors and supportive technology for those on the autism spectrum
team open sesame won first place in the overall competition they chose to create a solution to opening doors hands-free their functioning prototype used voice commands from a phone to unlatch open and close the door william smith a junior manufacturing and mechanical engineering technology major had heard that doors are the biggest problem for those with disabilities he had considered each need statement but made his decision when he discovered one about hands-free freshman robert myers who had recently injured his knee in a skiing accident was drawn to participate in the event because the theme of assistive technology was applicable to his current situation and gave him unique insight into what its like to live with a disability team capcha won second place for their fully functional real-time captioning system as an app their inspiration came from personal experience we often saw that when we attended different conferences and events that it is hard to listen to what is going on especially if you are sitting in the back said shubham sarwate a computer engineering graduate student we thought ‘what would happen if a person with a hearing impairment goes to this conference the team was very passionate about their work and saw a growing interest in mentors as they assisted throughout the weekend if we can bring this to the market this will not only benefit people with a hearing disability but every one of us said sarwate taking third place was team carlisle with yourday a task management system for users with cognitive disorders which integrated a wearable monitoring device with aws cloud software unusual for aggies invent an honorable mention award was given to team third eye for their wearable device that vibrates as a person gets closer to a pathway obstruction using camera recognition software mentors assisting throughout the weekend ranged from those with vision impairments to those who work to make accessibility a priority on a daily basis debra dandridge accessibility coordinator with texas a&m engineering information technology guided students using her work background as a resource technology lends to a more inclusive society said dandridge if i went by a group of people using sign language i cant understand or engage that group with some of the technology these groups are proposing we have overcome that barrier the participants from team open sesame all found value in the competition and said the prize of the weekend wasnt a winning idea but a winning team to call on during the rest of their education here at texas a&m they recommended every engineering student participate saying that this is what engineering is all about theory is a large part of instruction and coursework but aggies invent allows students to work with a team and see a project come together aggies invent is particularly special said michael bayern a senior electrical engineering student when i was a freshman i did not know what i wanted to do--i didnt really know who i was--and when i did [aggies invent] it just helped me go into the right direction i feel like experiences like these help you make up your mind and figure out what youre really passionate about the top three teams received $1 000 $750 and $500 respectively the engineering entrepreneurship program also offers support for students to continue working on their projects along with a wide range of programs and events that help promote students understanding of business principles from an engineering perspective sponsors of the event were amazon web services (aws) trane residential heating and air - an ingersoll rand company texas a&m disability services and it divisions and texas a&m engineering it and accessibility it was incredible to watch students incorporate aws products and services to build real-world solutions that help individuals with disabilities and address accessibility challenges said andrew ko director of global education of amazon web services congratulations to aggies invent participants for an extraordinary showcase of entrepreneurship and maker-skills
credited with acquiring the legislative funding needed for the texas a&m university systems center for infrastructure renewal (cir) texas lieutenant governor dan patrick was the special guest for the centers ribbon-cutting ceremony held on the rellis campus april 11 the 138 000-square-foot multidisciplinary research center boasts state-of-the-art research facilities and laboratories aimed at making infrastructure smarter more resilient and longer lasting ground was broken for the $80 million project 17 months ago at this particular time in history infrastructure is a part of the national conversation greg winfree agency director of the texas a&m transportation institute (tti) told the crowd gathered for the ceremony its never been more important to our state and to our country
the center is a joint facility operated by tti and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) that will leverage the strengths of numerous engineering professionals to develop research-based solutions to engineering and transportation challenges imagine roads being paved with new materials that instantly harden so roads reopen immediately afterward a&m system chancellor john sharp said highlighting some of the expected products of the center new ways to use asphalt that will pay for this place 50 times over bridges that have sensors that self-report when they weaken and need replacing and homes and businesses that are flood- and wind-proof just imagine what this facility is going to be prior to the ceremony sharp patrick vice chancellor and dean of engineering and tees director m katherine banks and several other elected officials who had critical roles in the conceptualization funding support and construction of the center toured its newly opened laboratories the cir is designed to renew every public-critical infrastructure systemfrom transportation to nuclear reactors to water systems this is a one-of-a-kind coordinated cross-disciplinary effort to focus on improving the nations infrastructure for the long term sharp introduced patrick telling the crowd that the cir absolutely would not have happened without him after walking through here i know this is an investment thats going to pay great dividends to the university other universities to the country to the state of texas patrick said from the podium its going to make infrastructure more efficient more affordable and safer for us
texas governor greg abbott signed a proclamation that was presented to sharp by tommy williams senior advisor for fiscal affairs for the governor recognizing the cir ribbon cutting ceremony charles schwartz chairman of the a&m system board of regents gave attendees an overview of the new campus a few years ago rellis existed only as an idea in the mind of john sharp schwartz stated in a few short years weve seen an amazing development on these 2 000 acres cir will be a place where well deliver the kind of professional workforce development training that we need in this state well see big things from these laboratories and the people of the state of texas will benefit from them other members of the stage party included: texas senator paul bettencourt of houston; texas representative john raney of bryan/college station; texas representative paul workman of austin; texas a&m university president michael young; banks; and zachary grasley cir director
for every 100 000 people there are 536 speech-impaired individuals who can benefit from the use of augmentative and alternative communication (aac) devices six students from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university were selected to participate in the eighth annual rice 360° global health technologies design competition held at rice university in march at the competition they presented their project commbo a web-based speech-generating picture communication board that alleviates the major pain points of aac users the students formed team commbo as a senior design capstone group advised by dr tracy hammond professor and director of the sketch recognition lab at texas a&m the team is comprised of computer science and engineering senior undergraduate students christopher wilcoxen christopher tsao cory avra kaveet laxmidas leon wallace and reed spivey in addition to hammond the team is mentored by graduate student and teaching assistant puneet kohli and seth polsley a doctoral student in the sketch recognition lab commbo offers customizability far beyond that of a physical picture board and leverages machine learning to provide intelligent suggestions enabling heightened communication that can be brought to any internet-connected device this application provides much greater flexibility than the picture board systems that you usually see and the fact that it can work on any device with a web browser allows for greater accessibility than similar systems tsao said commbo is designed for patients suffering from stroke-induced aphasia autistic spectrum disorder or any trauma that impacts a persons ability to communicate effectively currently available aac devices are either difficult to adjust or excessively expensive to own commbo is an accessible modern and affordable application that improves common use cases of aac picture boards its versatility makes it easy to use in medical settings the home and almost anywhere throughout the world with its implementation potential users of traditional aac devices can experience a heightened quality of life and unprecedented access to effective communication we believe our application has the potential to change the medical community avra said our motivation comes from our drive to improve the lives of our friends family members and humanity in general the rice 360° competition featured 21 student teams from national and international universities who presented their low-cost global health technologies presenting at such a prestigious competition is something i didnt think i would be able to take part in during my undergraduate career wallace said i am so happy that texas a&m university provided me with this opportunity entries were judged on the quality of the problem definition the effectiveness and potential impact of the design solution and the likelihood that the solution can be successful in improving healthcare delivery in low-resource settings by faculty clinicians and private and public-sector partners from around the country i am incredibly proud of what the students have accomplished hammond said even more so i am excited about the educational enrichment opportunities the students had from participation in the design competition
education has the potential to impact lives an impact that is usually made by a good teacher few teachers however have impacted their students like dr jean-louis briaud distinguished professor spencer j buchanan chair professor and regents fellow in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university and the director of the national geotechnical experimentation site
in honor of briauds 40 years of teaching and research he was recognized at the geo-institute of the american society of civil engineers (asce) annual congress in early march 2018 at a special symposium held in his honor briaud has also been named a geo-legend by geo-strata magazine a series honoring professionals who have left a significant impact on the field of geotechnical engineering more than 20 speakers presented at the asce symposium on work they have done in the field of geotechnical engineering based on briauds work it didnt really dawn on me until i had two students that got up there and said that i had changed their [lives] because of my teaching briaud said it raises this concept that professors have the potential to change young peoples lives but it is a big responsibility that i did not see the full weight of until now the symposium included researchers from korea brazil egypt and russia who each gave presentations on their work based on foundations laid by briauds work and influence more than 180 colleagues attended the symposium to have a special limited copy of a book reflecting briauds lifes work all of which began at texas a&m in 1978 born and educated in france briaud received his masters and doctoral degrees in canada and eventually came to the united states to pursue a teaching career briaud fondly remembers getting off the plane at easterwood airport in a suit and tie to interview for a teaching position only to be greeted by a professor in a ten-gallon cowboy hat driving a pickup truck the environment at texas a&m was not at all what he had expected i remember thinking to myself: ‘what kind of place is this briaud said then i met the people kind interested and ready to help with a can-do attitude i had six job offers but i chose texas a&m because of the environment and the people here reflecting on the highlights of his career one contribution served to preserve a piece of aggie history: the cliffs at pointe du hoc made famous by the assault of james earl rudder and his men during the normandy invasion we worked on a fantastic project to save the cliffs from collapse because there was erosion at the bottom of the cliffs and we were about to lose the bunker that was overtaken by rudder and his men briaud said it was one of the most interesting and significant projects i ever worked on briaud remembers a long list of similar projects and research contributions over his lifetime but maintains that his greatest contribution has been the relationships he has built over the years with his students as briaud plans to continue teaching and serving as a mentor and guide to students he finds that educating others has given him a career of immense purpose and satisfaction i have always looked at my graduate students as my professional children briaud said you have discussions that are technical sure but you talk about family philosophy and all sorts of things it really hit me during these presentations that as a professor you really have an impact on young peoples lives and it is beyond what you can measure
when browsing the web it is vital to have peace of mind that your data has not been stolen or corrupted by a virus or a malicious site researchers understand the severity of situations where data is compromised and have worked for many years to come up with a way to block impending attacks dr jeff huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has proposed a new technique that can detect use-after-free (uaf) bugs in web browsers with a higher detection ability than the state-of-the-art techniques currently being used uaf is a class of memory errors in computer programs written in unsafe languages such as c/c++ uaf errors occur when a program continues to use a pointer after it has been freed depending on the timing of the vulnerability or flaw the use of previously freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code which is when the attacker can execute any command of choice on a target machine uafs have been one of most exploited memory errors in web browsers such as chrome many zero-day cyberattacks which occur when a flaw is exploited and attackers release malware before a developer has an opportunity to create a patch to fix the vulnerability have also been launched through uafs huang was awarded the prestigious google faculty research award for this work the google faculty research awards program supports academic research in computer science engineering and related fields through the program google funds world-class research at top universities facilitates interaction between google and academia and supports projects whose output will be made openly available to the research community this project is one of the 152 considered by google during its 2017 call for research project proposals chosen from a total of 1033 covering 46 countries and over 360 universities what excites me most about this project is its practical impact huang said web browsers such as chrome are used by billions of people this project will make browsers more secure by killing more uafs huang is working on this project with his students in the automated software engineering research (aser) group in the parasol laboratory at texas a&m this is the second google faculty research award he has received among huangs many honors are a 2016 national science foundation career award a 2015 google faculty research award the 2013 association for computing machinery sigsoft outstanding dissertation award and a 2013 acm sigplan pldi distinguished paper award which was also recognized as acm sigplan research highlights
lisa bratton has always loved being outdoors and jumping in the water marrying these two passions in college has proven to be the ultimate success story i was an extremely active child so my favorite childhood memory would have to be any time spent playing outdoors bratton said whether that was with friends playing catch with my dad playing with sandy our dog or simply entertaining myself
bratton a senior in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university is also the captain and a member of the womens swim team all the males in my family are civil engineers--my dad his dad my moms dad--so ive always been drawn to engineering but i wanted to do something a little different bratton said when i learned about ocean engineering it sounded like the perfect way to apply civil engineering in a different environment and to top it off i truly do love the water pursuing a degree in engineering while juggling the demands of being a student athlete may be daunting enough but tack on training for the olympic trials and holding the school records for the 200 backstroke 400 medley relay and being the 2016 sec champion and the questions arise of how she handles the demands of each however the most recent honor came in 2018 when she was named the sec female scholar athlete of the year this award keeps me focused and reminds me of the balance needed to succeed bratton said sometimes you have to be a student-athlete and sometimes you have to be an athlete-student in the end it all works out if you just keep your head down do the work and trust the process the journey hasnt always been easy bratton is most proud of the way she has learned to balance school and swimming i set high standards for myself and my first semester was rough bratton said ive come a long way im proud of all the hard work i have put in to be where i am today
bratton acknowledges that she could not have achieved these accomplishments without support from her family and team but most importantly her dad he has helped me work out many homework problems showed me the value of hard work and what it means to do what you love and love what you do bratton said my dad after taking many years off continues to swim simply because he enjoys it he worked hard at his job because he knew thats what it takes and he always found time for family time i learned the value of balance hard work and finding the fun in what you do by watching my dad the greatest honor she has received to date was being named captain of the swim team
this team works extremely hard day in and day out in the pool and in the classroom it is an honor that they see me in a position to lead them and im proud to compete side-by-side with them bratton said while she is still searching for her dream job bratton knows she was meant to be around the water im still trying to figure out what i want to do but ideally i would like to work with renewable energy resources or coastal environments bratton said in a perfect world if i could make a living swimming that may take the cake bratton encourages those looking to journey upon similar paths to go for whatever it is no matter how difficult it may seem going into college everyone asked ‘how are you going to do it engineering and swimming bratton said i knew it wasnt going to be easy but i knew i wanted to do it if it was easy it wouldnt be any fun! so enjoy the process dont get too bogged down with school and take some time for yourself – i promise there is time
dr jean-briac le graverend assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering has been awarded the von humboldt research fellowship one of the most prestigious awards in germany from the alexander von humboldt foundation le graverend joined the department in 2014 after receiving a doctoral degree in materials science and engineering/aerospace from the national school of mechanics and aeronautics (poitiers france)/national office for studies and aerospace research (chatillon france) in 2013 and working as a postdoctoral scholar at caltech in the aerospace department le graverend whose research goals are to predict the mechanical behavior and lifetime of materials at high temperature by means of a multi-scale approach combining experimental theoretical and computational tools will spend the next three summers in bochum germany working with dr gunther eggeler and studying microstructure degradation and damage in high-temperature materials the ultimate goal of this project combining experimental theoretical and computational mechanics is to initiate a new approach in the field of viscoplastic damage in metals in particular superalloys and precipitation-hardening metals he will do this by gaining knowledge in how microstructural degradation affects the kinetics of damage and therefore the mechanical response and lifetime to do so the proposed research will examine the thermo-mechanical response of a ni-based alloy at multiple length scales the humboldt foundation was established in 1953 to foster an international network of scientific cooperation and trust the fellowship enables highly-qualified postdoctoral scientists and scholars from around the world to carry out research projects of their own choice in germany
dr helen reed regents professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and aiaa fellow is the recipient of the third yvonne c brill lectureship in aerospace engineering from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa) reed will present her lecture student design-build-fly micro- and nano satellites on october 2 in conjunction with the national academy of engineerings annual meeting in washington dc reed has contributed to the discipline through her satellite design programs: first at arizona state university (asusat lab) and then when her lab moved with her to texas a&m and became aggiesat lab she found effective ways to create interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate and graduate students with industry and government affiliates to engage in design-build-fly of operational small satellites while advancing new technologies that feed into national initiatives and learning industry practices within the university environment involving more than 1 000 students over the years her team has launched four small satellites with the us air force and nasa and partnered on other projects her students have joined space-oriented businesses and the national laboratories aiaa with the participation and support of nae created the yvonne c brill lectureship in aerospace engineering to honor the memory of the late pioneering rocket scientist aiaa honorary fellow and nae member yvonne c brill brill was best known for developing a revolutionary propulsion system that remains the industry standard for geostationary satellite station-keeping the lecture emphasizes research or engineering issues for space travel and exploration aerospace education of students and the public and other aerospace issues such as ensuring a diverse and robust engineering community reed has been with the department for 13 years serving as department head for four years before returning to teaching and research on a full-time basis in addition to small satellite design she is also widely regarded as an expert in hypersonics boundary-layer stability and transition and energy efficient aircraft and she has led research projects totaling millions of dollars among those projects she is presently a member of two of the five nasa university leadership initiatives (one led by texas a&m and one by university of tennessee knoxville) she is a principal investigator on a major air force office of scientific research program to model the transition process on a next-generation hypersonic flight-test article in addition reed has a phase ii small business innovation research program through the arnold engineering development center and cfd research corporation to disseminate her analysis tools she directs the computational stability and transition lab as well as the aggiesat lab satellite program reed is a consultant to the institute for defense analysis a member of the national academies air force studies board intelligence science and technology experts group a member of the national research councils air force development planning roundtable chair of the aiaa transition discussion group and a member of the nato avt et 136 technical team: hypersonic boundary layer transition prediction she is also co-founder and chief technology officer for chandah space technologies a start-up company specializing in small satellite systems she is a licensed professional engineer in the state of texas she has received numerous professional awards and honors including being named a fellow of the aiaa the american physical society and the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) she is the recipient of the 2018 aiaa fluid dynamics award the 2016 kate gleason award from asme the 2007 atwood award from the american society for engineering education and aiaa and the 2014 minnie stevens piper professor award from the state of texas she was inducted into the academy of engineering excellence and the committee of 100 in the college of engineering and the inaugural class of the academy of aerospace and ocean engineering excellence all at virginia tech in 2013 she was named a presidential professor for teaching excellence (in perpetuity) as well as a regents professor (in perpetuity) and in 2014 she was awarded the texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award in teaching at the university level and was named holder of the edward pete aldridge 60 professorship reed earned an ab degree in mathematics from goucher college and a master of science and phd in engineering mechanics from virginia tech
dr jaime grunlan the linda & ralph schmidt 68 professor in the department of mechanical engineering has been named a fellow of the american society of mechanical engineers (asme) an asme fellow grade is conferred upon worthy candidates to recognize their outstanding engineering achievements fewer than 3 percent of all asme members are fellows im very honored to be named an asme fellow grunlan said achieving the fellow grade in any major professional society is a significant accomplishment it serves to legitimize my professional efforts as a professor and scientist grunlans polymer nanocomposites laboratory is focused on the development and understanding of multifunctional thin films grunlan recently completed pilot coating trials of food packaging film with one of the worlds largest film converters additionally he has filed a patent in relation to his work with an aircraft materials manufacturer who is interested in using a novel coating developed this past year in grunlans research group grunlan said the lab is working on developing environmentally benign flame-retardant treatments for plastic items such as foam seat cushions furniture upholstery clothing fabric etc while becoming a fellow does not alter grunlans research he said it could open doors in the future we are also interested in gas barrier layers for food and electronics packaging and thermoelectric energy generation such as converting body heat into electricity using thermoelectric fabric we are developing grunlan said someday i hope a jogger can power their phone from their own body heat grunlan received his bachelors degree in chemistry from north dakota state university and his phd in materials science and engineering from the university of minnesota he joined the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m in 2004 the department of mechanical engineering has been very good to me over the years so im basically an adopted mechanical engineer grunlan said
highways serve as a critical asset for our economy: underpinning our national infrastructure while providing avenues of travel for people and essential goods across a complicated yet convenient network of roads as our highways continue to be physically taxed the demand for maintenance projects and construction continues to grow and is estimated to cost taxpayers $21 billion each year to maintain our current highways additional projects will only add to taxpayer costs but researchers at texas a&m university are finding new ways to make highways more sustainable and cost-effective supporting both our economy and the everyday consumer
"dr amy epps martin a professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m and her fellow researchers are developing laboratory tools for the departments of transportation (dots) in each state to increase the amount of reclaimed asphalt pavement (rap) and reclaimed asphalt shingles (ras) that can be reused in new asphalt pavements to reduce the demand for new highway materials according to the national asphalt paving association (napa) asphalt pavement is used on 94 percent of the more than 27 million miles of paved highways in the us and is the most recycled material in the us at more than 99 percent in 2016 more than 769 million tons of rap and nearly 19 million tons of ras were reused to save taxpayers $21 billion compared to the use of new materials currently only about 20 to 25 percent of new asphalt pavement contains recycled asphalt materials to ensure resistance to cracking epps martins research is hoping to double that amount to increase sustainability and taxpayer savings were striving to increase the amount of rap and ras we can put in new asphalt pavements by using a small amount of specialized chemical recycling agents to partially restore some of the aged binder in the recycled materials epps martin said these chemicals work in the same way an anti-aging lotion might work on human skin rejuvenating skin cells and extending their lifespan with asphalt pavements its the aged binder or black sticky material that holds the rock pieces together that gets rejuvenated this binder and the rock pieces also known as aggregate are mixed and compacted together to make the asphalt pavements we drive on however while the chemicals have the potential to rejuvenate old material and allow the use of more recycled materials epps martins team is also concerned about longer-term performance in 15 to 20 years which ultimately impacts cost-effectiveness at the end of the day we care about how the asphalt pavement performs in the field epps martin said we have to build pavements for many climates and traffic conditions so we start in the laboratory with tests and tools to figure out recipes for the binder-aggregate mixture we want to use for a given location then the ultimate test is field performance which we are monitoring for multiple mixtures in field projects in delaware indiana nevada texas and wisconsin [the goal is] to create comprehensive tools and guidelines that agencies can use in creating sustainable cost-effective asphalt pavements with recycled materials for their state epps martin and her team aspire for the tools they are developing to be adopted by the american association of state highway transportation officials (aashto) which provides national standards for the use of highways materials the research teams results will be combined in a draft aashto standard practice to be completed by the end of 2018 will provide guidance for dots in each state on material selection for virgin asphalt binder rap ras and recycling agents the document will also include guidance on recycling agent dosage selection binder and mixture evaluation tests and performance thresholds the team endeavors to work with aashto to help implement the standard practice nationwide and allow for individual state dots to have the flexibility to best construct recycled asphalt pavements for their unique conditions we are providing these tools so that the states can have [these] guidelines for what they need to do to build sustainable cost-effective asphalt pavements "" epps martin said this project is part of a collaborative effort between researchers at the texas a&m transportation institute the texas a&m college of engineering the university of nevada – reno and the university of new hampshire this is a five-year project that was funded by the national cooperative highway research program of the national academies of science engineering and medicine"
in march the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives joined with the tees institute of nuclear-security and cyber-security education and research the bush school of government and public service and the texas a&m university student chapter of the institute of nuclear materials management to present a panel discussion on 21st century deterrence and the 2018 nuclear posture review the event which was open to the public was moderated by dr marvin adams htri professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m and associate director of inscer the panelists included rebecca hersman director of the project on nuclear issues (poni) and senior advisor of the international security program at the center for strategic international studies dr robert webster principal associate director for the weapons program at los alamos national laboratory dr jasen castillo associate professor at the bush school and dr matthew fuhrmann professor of political science at texas a&m
the discussion centered on the latest nuclear posture review (npr) which reviews us nuclear weapons policy and describes strategies for the coming years given the evolving global threats present in the current geopolitical environment the the question of how the us can maintain effective deterrence has become especially critical panelists addressed how this newest npr differs from previous versions and what those changesand similaritiesmean for us weapons strategies and its role in extending nuclear security guarantees to allies in europe and asia the group also answered many questions from the audience
engineering medicine (enmed) texas a&m universitys innovative engineering medicine track at houston methodist hospital in houston is now included in the liaison committee on medical education (lcme) accreditation of the texas a&m college of medicines doctor of medicine (md) program this approval allows the program to begin recruiting the inaugural class of students set to matriculate in july 2019
a partnership between the texas a&m college of engineering college of medicine and houston methodist hospital enmed is the nations first four-year fully integrated engineering and medical education curriculum leading to both a md and masters degree in engineering accredited by lcme this news represents a major accomplishment reflective of the extensive efforts between the texas a&m college of engineering college of medicine and houston methodist hospital said dr amy waer vice dean of education and academic programs at the college of medicine the successful development of this program is directly attributed to our facultys collaborative nature and adherence to the aggie core values of leadership and excellence enmed will train a new type of physician engineer the ‘physicianeer who will be a practicing physician and a trained engineer it is expected to be the largest engineering-based medical degree program in the nation it is also the only program that allows graduates to receive both a doctorate of medicine and masters in engineering in four years enmed will be a signature program for the texas a&m college of medicine and will serve the state by offering unique training that will advance health care technologies and ultimately the health of texans said dr carrie l byington dean of the texas a&m college of medicine senior vice president of the texas a&m health science center and vice chancellor for health services at the texas a&m university system the proposed curriculum is a case-based format with integration of both medicine and engineering content to develop and improve students clinical reasoning and problem-solving skills through real-world examples students admitted into enmed will have a bachelors degree in engineering computer science or in selected instances a closely related field to effectively develop the technologies required to advance health care engineering and medicine education should be integrated from the startcreating a mindset that sees medical needs analyzes them and then creates the desired solutions said dr roderic i pettigrew ceo of enhealth and executive dean for enmed through enmed we will generate a new class of clinicians who can actively participate in and lead research invention and entrepreneurial endeavors to improve health care one of the tenets of enmed is for students to design something transformational and take their invention to the marketplace prior to graduation utilizing the unparalleled world-class facilities at the states top-ranked houston methodist hospital and houston methodist research institute students will have access to those on the leading edge of engineering medicine
this program will educate future physicians on how to effectively use their engineering skills to translate medical research into promising solutions for patients in a timely fashion said dr tim boone co-director of the institute for academic medicine at houston methodist and associate dean of the houston campus for texas a&m health science center several students with engineering backgrounds are piloting the new curriculum in preparation for the inaugural class set to begin in 2019 technology integration is the future of medicine and we anticipate that our graduates will be on the forefront of new developments in the field of medicine and engineering said dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering our students will be immersed in one of the greatest medical centers in the world and encouraged to revolutionize health care technology as it is known today enmed will initially hire 25 faculty members and utilize instructional and research space in the texas medical center including space in houston methodist hospital the texas a&m health science centers institute of biosciences and technology and the adjacent 1020 holcombe building in the texas medical center that will be renovated to serve as the education and training campus for enmed and enhealth students the program will be reviewed for ongoing accreditation during the next lcme meeting in february 2020 applications for the specialized program are expected to open this spring
in the latest us news & world report survey americas best graduate schools 2019 the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineerings ranking rose by six places the survey ranked the department as the 21st best graduate chemical engineering program in the country overall and the 12th best among public institutions according to dr m nazmul karim head of the department and holder of the t michael oconnor chair ii the rise in rankings reflects a long-term vision and a commitment to excellence we have dedicated ourselves to recruiting and retaining the highest quality faculty members providing all of our students with a world-class education and maintaining state-of-the-art facilities said karim this jump in rankings is a testament to our success in each of these areas since 2015 the department has risen 10 places in the us news & world report best graduate chemical engineering programs
eighteen outstanding faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering received one of the highest honors in academia at the investiture ceremony held tuesday march 27 the faculty members who were awarded the designation of a chair or professorship were invested during the ceremony and presented with bronze medallions the medallions are engraved with the name of their chair or professorship and symbolize the honorees commitment to teaching research and service the 2018 recipients include: mark a barteau halliburton chair in engineeringchemical engineering gerard l cotéjames j cain professor i in biomedical engineeringbiomedical engineering yossef elabdjoe m nesbitt professor in chemical engineeringchemical engineering melissa a grunlancharles h and bettye barclay professor in engineeringbiomedical engineering m cynthia hipwelltees distinguished research professormechanical engineering james e hubbardtees distinguished research professormechanical engineering moo-hyun kimtees research professorocean engineering mark a lawleysugar and mike barnes department head chair in industrial and systems engineering w john leekelly l ‘87 and william d ‘87 von gonten jr dvg chair in petroleum engineeringpetroleum engineering hong helen liangoscar s wyatt jr professormechanical engineering m sam mannantees distinguished research professorchemical engineering daniel a mcadamsrobert h fletcher professor in mechanical engineeringmechanical engineering michael mcshanejames j cain professor ii in biomedical engineeringbiomedical engineering george j moridisgeorge and joan voneiff professor in unconventional resourcespetroleum engineering nobuo moritamichael and heidi gatens professor in unconventional resourcespetroleum engineering anastasia h mulianag paul pepper 54 professor in mechanical engineeringmechanical engineering marc perlinwh bauer professor in dredging engineeringocean engineering j alex thomassonendowed chair in cotton engineering ginning and mechanizationbiological and agricultural engineering
"the american institute for medical and biological engineering (aimbe) has announced the induction of dr duncan maitland holder of the stewart and stevenson professorship i and associate department head and dr melissa a grunlan holder of the charles h and bettye barclay professor in engineering both in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university to its college of fellows they were nominated reviewed and elected by peers and members of the college of fellows for outstanding contributions their fields election to the aimbe college of fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer the college of fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers college membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to ""engineering and medicine research practice or education and to ""the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education"" a formal induction ceremony was held during the aimbe annual meeting at the national academy of sciences in washington dc on april 9 maitland and grunlan were inducted along with 156 colleagues who make up the aimbe college of fellows class of 2018"
whitney souery a student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has been accepted into harvards neonatology summer student research program at boston childrens hospital and beth israel deaconess medical center students are selected by the directors of the program based on an assessment of each applicants application the objective of the summer student research program is to provide motivated students with an intensive laboratory and clinical research experience under the guidance of faculty and fellow mentors from their academic program souery is also actively involved in the engineering department and several campus-wide organizations including texas runners against cancer the university disciplinary appeals panel the society of women engineers and serves as a leader in the engineering honors executive committee souery has been working in dr corey bishops pharmacoengineering laboratory since the fall of 2016 and is currently endeavoring to automate an injection system for microbubbles used for drug delivery applications
dr mark a barteau the recently appointed vice president for research at texas a&m university and the halliburton chair in engineering will serve as professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and the department of chemistry barteaus research focuses on chemical reactions at solid surfaces and their applications in heterogeneous catalysis and energy processes he has received numerous grants throughout his career from such prestigious institutions as the national science foundation (nsf) the us department of energy the us air force office of scientific research and nasa prior to joining texas a&m barteau served as the dte energy professor of advanced energy research professor of chemical engineering professor of chemistry and a dow distinguished fellow in sustainability at the university of michigan under his leadership the university of michigan energy institute launched several major initiatives including the formation of a comprehensive battery fabrication and characterization user facility the university of michigan energy survey and beyond carbon neutral a university-wide program integrating technological biological and policy solutions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas concentrations he is a frequent contributor of perspectives on energy and the environment to the conversation fortune and npr among other media outlets prior to joining the university of michigan in 2012 barteau served as the senior vice provost for research and strategic initiatives at the university of delaware where he held the robert l pigford endowed chair of chemical engineering and was a professor of chemistry and biochemistry in his leadership role he was actively engaged in the development of funding and new facilities for several university-wide institutes including biotechnology rehabilitation and environmental institutes and served as founding director of the university of delaware energy institute he chaired the governors energy advisory councils environmental footprint task force which prepared a five-year energy plan for the state of delaware in 2009 barteau received a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from washington university in st louis and a masters and doctorate from stanford university he was an nsf post-doctoral fellow in physics at the technische universität münchen in germany and has held visiting appointments at the university of pennsylvania (chemical engineering) and the university of auckland new zealand (chemistry) barteau has been widely recognized for his scientific and professional leadership in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering he was elected to the national academy of engineering in 2006 and was named in 2008 as one of the 100 engineers of the modern era by the american institute of chemical engineers (aiche) he is the recipient of numerous awards including the alpha chi sigma and allan p colburn awards from aiche the international catalysis award from the international association of catalysis societies the ipatieff prize and the victor k lamer award from the american chemical society the paul h emmett award in fundamental catalysis from the north american catalysis society and the canadian catalysis lecture tour award of the catalysis division of the chemical institute of canada he is a fellow of both the american institute of chemical engineers and the american association for the advancement of science barteaus national and international leadership roles have included chairmanship of the national research council (nrc) committee that produced the 2013 report effects of diluted bitumen on crude oil transmission pipelines he was one of 17 members of the nrc committee that authored the report beyond the molecular frontier: challenges for chemistry and chemical engineering he currently serves on two national academies studies developing research agendas for carbon dioxide removal and the utilization of carbon waste streams he was co-chair of the chemical sciences roundtable and chair of the council of chemical sciences for the department of energys office of science he currently serves on the national academy of sciences board on chemical sciences and technology and on the science advisory board for the national institute of clean and low-carbon energy in china
joshua harris a december 2017 graduate from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been recognized with two prestigious research awards harris is the 2018 us department of transportation/federal aviation administration research student of the year master of science level this award was created to recognize outstanding students from the university transportation centers for their achievements and accomplishments in the transportation field during the year awardees are selected based upon technical merit and research capability academic performance and leadership harris was recognized for significant contributions and leadership on two projects funded by the federal aviation administration: weather technology in the cockpit (wtic): general aviation weather alerting and characterization of derived angle-of-attack and flight path angle algorithms for general aviation platforms both projects seek to improve general aviation flight safety by utilizing advanced technologies that assist pilots in critical decision making and improve their piloting skills harris received the award at the annual transportation review board meeting and council of university transportation centers banquet in washington dc on january 6 harris is also recipient of the 2018 association of former students distinguished graduate student award for excellence in research – masters he defended his masters thesis titled nonlinear adaptive inversion control for variable stability small unmanned aircraft systems in october 2017 and he is being recognized for his outstanding academic record and contributions in aerospace engineering by a distinguished committee of reviewers recipients will be honored at a ceremony at the clayton williams jr alumni center on april 23 harris was a graduate research assistant in the vehicle systems & control laboratory working with his advisor dr john valasek for six years he earned his bachelors degree in aerospace engineering summa cum laude in 2014 and his masters degree in aerospace engineering in 2017 both from texas a&m he is a recipient of the national defense science engineering graduate fellowship the nasa aeronautics scholarship the federal aviation administrations pegasas center of excellence outstanding student researcher award the texas a&m college of engineering outstanding engineering master of science graduate student award and the sigma gamma tau outstanding texas a&m university aerospace engineering senior for 2014 harris is currently a member of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics intelligent systems technical committee and is a software engineer with lockheed martin aeronautics in fort worth texas
"water is in danger according to a 2014 report by the us government accountability office 40 out of 50 state water managers expect water shortages in some portion of their states over the next decade such concerns do not even address the water situation in developing countries where if trends continue figures from the united nations population fund suggest that by 2050 as many as 42 billion people will be living in countries that cannot meet the daily minimum living requirement of 50 liters of water per person this escalating demand amidst a growing need for limited water resources is exactly what drove civil engineering graduate student bansi rajesh khajuria and her fellow invent for the planet teammates to come up with a simple solution: an app that helps families reduce water consumption and waste by keeping the faucet running for 30 seconds more [than necessary] you can waste 20 gallons of water keeping in mind that the average person in africa uses just 22 gallons of water for the whole day khajuria said so we thought to develop an app that can be accessible all around the world which actually tracks your water wastage and makes people aware of how they can save more gallons a day the app the team developed is able to track water wastage through the sound of water that is going through the faucet or the showers it begins automatically working when the faucet comes on and it will alert the user of excessive use keeping users aware of how they can conserve water and how many gallons they can save a day the app was developed in 48 hours as part of invent for the planet a global design challenge hosted by texas a&m university where students from 13 different universities across 10 countries participated to solve the worlds engineering challenges with each team addressing a specific need statement ""the best ideas come when we are under intense pressure "" khajuria said the thing i learned the most was how to hone your soft skills and how to get along with people in such a short amount of time that can be very challenging and ive learned how to work together with people of different backgrounds and cultures which is so vital in the workforce the team consisted of a physics student two mechanical engineering students a business student a general engineering student and khajuria each of which provided a unique perspective in completing the project khajuria who worked in industry before pursuing graduate school used her understanding of internal residential piping to play a crucial role in the development of the app each student was responsible for a specific aspect of the project and they were able to come together despite having different backgrounds to complete the challenge the spirit of collaboration especially in the light of addressing global challenges across continental lines is what khajuria enjoyed most about the event this [project] provided us with a very global perspective in regards to these challenges because we have to come up with solutions that are feasible for the whole world khajuria said looking forward khajuria and her teammates would like to continue to pursue developing the app further or other solutions like it given the right resources and opportunities for growth its unfathomable frankly that these things we work on can impact all these people khajuria said this problem doesnt seem grave to people here because water is so abundant but there are actually a lot of water shortage problems cropping up in the rest of the world i want to do my best to help prevent this in the future"
after finals the first thing many students think about is a relaxing break at the end of a long semester however 30 aggie engineering students took that time as an opportunity to give back through a 15-day volunteer internship with the federal emergency management agency (fema) among those students was civil engineering junior anh duong who participated in the internship by assessing damages to public infrastructure sites impacted by hurricane harvey
when we went to a site in houston affected by hurricane harvey i was able to shadow a site investigator at a community park that had been under about five feet of water during the flooding duong said it was a very unique experience before going out on a 10-day field exercise as a part of the internship duong and the other engineering students attended a 40-hour certification course put on by fema at texas a&m universitys main campus they learned site inspection practices and culminated in a two-day exercise at the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city® training facility in college station during the last two days they would run us through scenarios where we would look at damaged sites take pictures and record everything duong said we had a week of training before we went to houston and i felt like the actual practice was much more beneficial to our learning experience rather than just sitting in a classroom duong was paired with another student and they were assigned to a site inspector who guided them in assessing damages within the park he was also able to interact with other fema engineers and drew some connections to his civil engineering education getting to see different people come in during the process was cool duong said we were able to see mitigation practices applied at the site and learn how they might reduce the damage with future structures they build there i learned a lot; it was a really good experience according to duong the experience ultimately framed his career in a new perspective and made him think about various career paths now that i have this experience i know that it is always something i can pursue he said i know that if i ever wanted to do something technical with fema i could do the mitigation work and working this internship has allowed me to see opportunities in areas i wouldnt have been aware of duong was also able to make connections during the internship both with fellow aggies and industry professionals such as the site inspector he was teamed with providing the students with this fema public assistance program is the result of a unique partnership created as a part of the governors commission to rebuild texas (gcrt) which texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp is the gcrt commissioner by appointment from governor abbott for students like duong the experience has proved valuable and a true example of the texas a&m selfless service core value im glad i had the opportunity to do this because i got so much out of it during the short time i spent duong said i had never planned on making these connections but it taught me that you never know what an opportunity will bring
dr m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of engineering has appointed dr michael j mcshane head of the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university the appointment will be effective june 1 mcshane joined the biomedical engineering department as an associate professor in 2006 and is currently the james j cain professor ii he served as the director of graduate programs for the department from 2015-17 and has served as interim department head since september 2017 biomedical engineering is a dynamic field that is rapidly growing in importance texas a&m is already making a strong impact with our translationally focused faculty and students now the opportunities created by the paths-up national science foundation engineering research center will allow us to expand our influence into underserved populations mcshane said it is an honor to be selected by my colleagues and the administration to serve in this role my intention is to work with faculty student staff alumni and our clinical and industry partners to prioritize research and educational initiatives wherein texas a&m can truly lead and set the standard for medical device innovation in an academic setting in addition to biomedical engineering mcshane has an appointment in the department of materials science and engineering and is affiliated with the center for remote health technologies and systems prior to joining texas a&m he served as the doctoral program chair in biomedical engineering and interim director for the center for biomedical engineering and rehabilitation science at louisiana tech university mcshanes research program spans the nano­ to-macro in merging responsive materials and optical instrumentation to create biochemical monitoring tools for use in the body inside cells and in cell culture environments he has secured more than $20 million in federal funding from the national institutes of health national science foundation army research office state sources private companies and foundations and has received honors for excellence in research teaching and service he is a fellow of the american institute for medical and biological engineering senior member of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers and member of the biomedical engineering society american chemical society and spie the international society for optics and photonics mcshane received his doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from texas a&m in 1999
sophia esteban encourages her peers and prospective college students to find something to be passionate about and stick to it esteban a sophomore in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university has pursued her own advice and followed a passion to eventually work for the ocean view maps department at google inc
i want people all around the world to be able to explore our ocean with a simple click of their mouse esteban said in order to do that i want to develop technologies that will map our oceans identify species and collect data to help us get a sense of the vastly unknown
contrary to most prospective ocean engineers esteban always feared the ocean when she was growing up dr sharath girimaji ocean engineering department head caught her attention when he spoke of the student organizations in the department and the things students were working on the aggie ocean discovery xprize teams mission spoke directly to her passion i was drawn to ocean engineering when i heard dr girimaji talk about the xprize team and the amazing things they were doing esteban said i knew that ocean was the major for me these people were living out my dream to map the bottom of the ocean and i just had to be a part of it the aggie ocean discovery team is vying for the $7 million prize in the shell ocean discovery xprize competition challenging competitors to develop a means to map the ocean floor by overcoming the initial challenges of the extreme environment cost and technology thirty-two original teams of industry professionals and higher education research teams answered the call to attempt the challenge nine final teams currently remain for the last round of the competition that will be held in december 2018 before xprize i was on the texas a&m women in engineering vex robotics team and that was a great experience with an amazing cause to advance women in the field of engineering esteban said i am also a member of the texas a&m womens ultimate frisbee team and it has taught me so much about teamwork leadership and hard work by joining the xprize team esteban only expected to gain experience through the three-year journey of the competition she quickly learned she would gain so much more i went into this project knowing absolutely no one and nothing but now i have people that are like moms and dads to me at deep down inc and my teammates are my annoying brothers who are always there for me esteban said her greatest accomplishment thus far into her collegiate career is joining the team and advancing to the final round of the xprize competition it has been so rewarding learning from industry professionals meeting ceos of major companies and learning what it is really like in the world beyond college esteban said while she may have decided to join the team all on her own esteban credits an entire support system for where and who she is today i have to thank my parents for raising me to be a strong intelligent young woman and for supporting me in all my endeavors esteban said i also have to credit dylan blakeslee for giving me a chance to grow myself as an engineer and show the world what i am made of lastly i have to thank ron smith and mary budrunas for really making the impossible task of undergraduates competing against industry professionals possible esteban encourages students to utilize all resources at their fingertips to explore various career fields and get involved as soon as possible had i known i would be in this position sometimes working until two oclock in the morning designing things or modeling structures i would have taken those classes in high school esteban said really take advantage of the time you have now to put into learning and exploring and i promise it will pay off ten-fold in the long run
"in a time of critical demand from industry students from the texas a&m university department of engineering technology & industrial distribution hosted a seminar focusing on ethics leadership and entrepreneurship better preparing the capstone cohort for the post-graduation experience thanks to the industry relationships nurtured in the capstone program team techtris hosted guest speaker gene frantz professor in the practice at rice university and chief technology officer and co-founder of octavo systems this roundtable seminar provided all capstone teams the exposure to and experience with ethics leadership and entrepreneurship (ele) practices first hand augmenting lessons in the traditional classroom setting team techtris is developing a small form factor at the mobile integrated solutions laboratory (misl) with an intelligence layer capable of the command and control multiple sensors and measurement devices that utilizes the linux operating system to be used on either the international space station or a satellite the variety of the relationships in the project with customer texas space technology applications & research company (t star) project sponsor misl as well as extended partnerships with nasa and octavo systems gives the team a way to incorporate these important ele practices into their capstone sequence during the guided discussion frantz shared real-world ele experiences from his current roles as well as past experience as a former principal fellow at texas instruments (ti) ive been lucky enough to spend my career at extremely ethical companies with ethics as a foundation you are able to quickly build strong relationships with your customers suppliers and within your organization"" students learned about frantzs ethical and leadership challenges at ti as he became the industry spokesperson for digital signal processing (dsp) technology students focused on entrepreneurship as frantz reviewed his involvement in the development of octavo systems a leader in system-in-package (sip) technology founded in 2013 techtris will include a tiny linux pc based on the octavo systems osd335x sip in their design garrett dupree techtris software engineer reflected on the impact of the seminar [the seminar] was very useful because you want to get in contact with those people who have been successful in industry and hear about the challenges they have faced… and as a student at texas a&m you strive to learn as much as you can to do better if not just as well techtris is a new tech startup based in college station texas founded in the engineering technology and industrial distribution department the company is focused on the design development documentation and delivery of embedded intelligence-based product and systems the team is dedicated to taking new technological ideas and creating fully functional prototypes the undergraduate experience in the electronic systems engineering technology (eset) program in the department is based on hands-on experiential learning that includes a significant amount of laboratory assignments and projects senior eset students are required to complete a two-semester capstone project to complete their degree forming a four- to six-member team students conduct product design and development activities as a startup company which includes the application and practice of project management concepts teams serve real industry customers and sponsors with oversight from the course director and a faculty technical advisor"
how researchers in medicine and engineering are moving a bone-healing technology forward when biomedical researchers have a technology they believe can help patients they want to get it into the clinic as soon as possible however some therapies that look promising in the lab are challenging to scale up and produce in sufficient quantities to test in a larger group or eventually make broadly available to patients dr carl gregory an associate professor in the institute for regenerative medicine at the texas a&m college of medicine found this out firsthand with his research using adult stem cells to repair bone gregorys earlier work found that injecting mesenchymal stem cells from donated human bone marrowand an accompanying biomatrix of proteins that are usually found in young bone tissueat the site of the injury could help healing to make the bone therapy available to humans millions of cells per patient are required however generating clinically relevant cells from donated human bone marrow is very difficult when you go up an order of magnitude in scale then everything gets bigger and heavier more expensive and every source of error is going to compound gregory said we did one calculation and found that for some specific resources it would take more than exists in the entire world to make enough cells using currently accepted strategies gregory added another problem is that mesenchymal stem cells are usually made from donated human tissues but these sources are finite and variable an alternative approach is to use what are called induced pluripotent (ips) cells a type of stem cell that can be made from adult cells they can theoretically divide an infinite number of times gregory said but weve still run into difficulty manufacturing mesenchymal stem cells from ips cells in large clinically relevant batches thats where engineering comes in among the engineers gregory collaborates with is dr roland kaunas associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university with the engineering philosophies of these members of our team we had a head start gregory said and now were just working on the fine-tuning this fine-tuning involves in part a matrix that can help create the number of cells they need while simultaneously providing a scaffolding for the cells to grow say youre in the swimming pooleven if you can tread water when you start to get tired your tendency is to go to the side of the pool and hang on gregory said our cells tend to do that too so if we can improve and expand the surfaces where cells tend to hold on that will improve their functionality by producing the matrix as small spherical cell microcarriers we provide the cells with ‘floats to grab onto to maximize the growth area in bioreactors kaunas and gregory are also 3d printing scaffolds that mimic the structure of bone the scaffolds can be developed to mimic the surface of the bones the stem cells grow on naturally in the body they need to have a spongy porosity of natural bone with complicated structuresall about the size of a single cell we can generate these with 3d printing and the technology can create the same thing every time gregory said we can also mix the materials with proteins like growth factors or anything else we need in the creation process kaunas added by coating these porous scaffolds with our biomatrix we are providing an environment that coaxes stem cells to more rapidly heal bone next gregory is the lead investigator on a finalist in the x-grants competition that if funded will further this technology the goal of that research is to establish a scalable way to produce cells for treating disease or healing injuries that scalable part of the equation is necessary for treatments to be helpful for an entire population in europe the use of adult mesenchymal stem cells is becoming standard treatment for certain autoimmune disorders but there are only a few facilities that make these cells gregory said patients who need it cant get it so training people to start an industry is key he and kaunas are working on that training portion as well speaking with industry leaders to identify jobs that need qualified people and setting up training programs to get people ready for these positions i personally believe that everything scientists do has to be translatable and everything has to be worth something to the general public gregory said if you are developing a technology from day one you have to think about whether its scalable if its not then no matter how wonderful a therapy it is its not going to be useful photo courtesy of texas a&m university health science center
rice is a primary dietary component for half of the worlds population and is grown on every continent on earth in light of the important part rice plays in the human diet this international crop also has a history of causing health issues from heightened levels of arsenic consumption researchers at the texas a&m university college of engineering are conducting research on how to reduce arsenic uptake in rice plants during their cultivation with the goal of decreasing the number of health issues caused across the globe from this important staple crop leading this effort is dr xingmao samuel ma an associate professor in the zachry department of civil engineering ma explains that the process of cultivating rice makes it much more open to absorbing arsenic however the amount of arsenic absorbed can depend on where the rice is grown in the chemicals present in the soil and a variety of other factors that occur on a nanomolecular scale our goal is to understand the uptake process ma said when you water plants the water contains some of the arsenic and other chemical compounds so we want to know how these compounds the soil and (other) factors affect the level of the arsenic uptake in the plant one chemical compound used in mas research zinc oxide nanoparticles has been shown to inhibit the uptake of arsenic in certain varieties of rice while also acting as a fertilizer treating rice paddies with this chemical could potentially limit arsenic uptake while still producing a high yield crop rice has very special chemical transporters that allow the easy transport of arsenic into the rice crop ma said but how easily that rice takes up the arsenic depends on the speciation of the arsenic which is another factor that we are considering arsenic speciation refers to the different species of the arsenic and what forms they can take which can affect how the chemicals are absorbed into rice roots and then transported to the shoots and grains going forward ma and his research team are reaching out to the us department of agriculture with the intent of expanding their work beyond the smaller hydroponic studies which involves growing rice without soil into studies within soil systems to better understand how zinc and other elements can affect arsenic uptake were planning to grow them in soil in the future ma said within the soil system there are microorganisms which will also impact the speciation of the arsenic we will see how it is changed when you expose the arsenic to these nanoparticles while mas research will require further exploration the concept that this work could impact the health of millions of people for the better has remained a positive motivation over the course of the project which is in its second year we as a species eat a lot of rice which means we have a lot of people that suffer from arsenic contamination ma said i think that highlights the importance of this study and we think that if we can limit the arsenic uptake by 50 percent the levels of exposure to people would be so much less harmful
on may 8 texas a&m universitys department of residence life and utility & energy services announced the winners of the 2nd annual u-challenge the team that took first place at the graduate level included five doctoral students from dr mm faruque hasans research group in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering – ishan bajaj (team leader) shachit shankaran iyer salih emre demirel akhil arora and spyridon tsolas – and one masters student from the subsea engineering program – mohammad alvi the team was assigned davis-gary hall the u-challenge tasked each of the eight teams – four undergraduate and four graduate – to come up with ways to increase the efficiency of an assigned residence hall the teams were given access to utility and energy consumption data for their assigned hall and then presented infrastructure and student engagement recommendations improvements to decrease consumption when examining the data the team was able to determine that chilled water heating hot water and electricity have the largest impact on the buildings utility costs through their research the team was able to come up with novel approaches to cut the costs associated with each of these areas for the chilled water and heating hot water the team recommended utilizing desiccant-based dehumidification as well as replacing the pneumatic water valves with direct digital control valves to solve the high electricity costs the team made the largest and most novel solution: the implementation of a biogas digester to provide energy across campus essentially food waste goes into the biogas digester where it is then fermented the process results in biogas – which can be used in the same was as other natural gas sources – and compost – which is a high-quality fertilizer in addition to the infrastructure recommendations the team also made student engagement recommendations such as a sustainability orientation monthly utilities flyers and student competitions to promote active engagement for their efforts the student teams who made it to the final round will have the have the chance to see their recommendations implemented at texas a&m in the future residence life representatives are excited to work on implementing student suggestions in their efforts to make sustainability an aggie tradition
according to the national petroleum council 95 percent of oil and gas wells drilled in the us today are hydraulically fractured this is because the reservoirs containing much-needed hydrocarbons that attract the attention of current us production efforts are unconventional meaning they are formed of tightly-compacted layers of shale rock fracturing the shale does provide better channels for flow but hydrocarbons in these reservoirs are often confined in spaces of 100 nanometers or less by comparison a strand of human hair is between 80 000 and 100 000 nanometers in diameter in these small pores hydrocarbon reaction to changes in pressure and temperature is unexpected often changing phase from liquid to gas in conditions not seen in conventional reservoirs made of porous rock where hydrocarbons move freely this has a direct impact on both reservoir flow and the amount of gas and oil produced at the surface dr hadi nasrabadi assistant professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering is working in collaboration with professors in the chemical and mechanical engineering departments at texas a&m university to better explain and predict hydrocarbon phase behavior in the nanometric spaces of unconventional reservoirs we are focused on pores 100 nanometers and below said nasrabadi these pores form a significant portion of the pore volume of unconventional reservoirs in these pores the phase behavior is different from what we know in conventional reservoirs
nasrabadi a douglas von gonten faculty fellow has studied phase behavior of hydrocarbons in conventional reservoirs for years and feels the answer to the phase behavior issues is actual experimental data he is currently gathering this data from controlled laboratory experiments that use physical testing techniques not usually associated with normal oil and gas research one of the gaps i saw in phase behavior research in unconventional reservoirs was experimental work said nasrabadi there have been several (computer) modeling efforts but there are not as many experimental efforts especially on the phase behavior in shale nasrabadi is working with dr jodie lutkenhaus an associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering on a technique called differential scanning calorimetry in this technique the sample temperature is programmed to steadily increase and the temperature at vaporization and the heat change during the vaporization event is measured (lutkenhaus) is an expert in this technique and she was using it for understanding the behavior of polymers in nanoscale confinement said nasrabadi i had a meeting with her and we thought this technique could be used on hydrocarbons
their experiments the first recorded use of differential scanning calorimetry on hydrocarbons in nanoscale confinement are a means of accurately predicting the bubble point of hydrocarbon samples based on heat signatures the research is funded by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations crisman institute for petroleum research and several papers have been published documenting their work nasrabadi is also collaborating with dr debjyoti banerjee from the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m in the use of nanofluidic devices these devices are microscopic chips with intricate nanoscopic grooves etched in a glass base normally slated for biomedical and pharmaceutical research nasrabadi uses these chips as a housing for different hydrocarbons which he and his students subject to temperature variations to see under a microscope exactly what temperature is required to change the liquid particles to a gas state these experiments again funded by the crisman institute are also part of cutting-edge research in phase behavior studies nasrabadi believes the data from both types of experiments will lead to a better understanding of the phase behavior changes and eventually to the development of models to better predict oil and gas production from unconventional reservoirs conventional models cannot answer the questions that we have for unconventional production said nasrabadi there are several pieces in this puzzle but one of them is phase behavior and nanopores may not answer all the questions but our experiments and models show they cannot be ignored
it may one day be possible to power electronics using your body heat based on research conducted by a team that included texas a&m university professor dr jaime grunlan waste heat generated by engines air conditioners human beings etc is abundant and can be converted to voltage that could power portable/wearable electronic devices and critical equipment in remote off-grid locations our hope is to one day have a shirt that will recharge someones cell phone while they are out jogging because of the excess heat they are generating grunlan said researchers are seeking new ways to harvest waste heat and put it back to work as consumable voltage while the research is currently focused on waste heat from critical energy sectors such as the transportation and electricity-generation sectors and manufacturing processes the team reported that improved energy generation efficiency in materials will naturally lead to widespread use in clothing capable of powering various devices from body heat
researchers are seeking new ways to harvest waste heat and put it back to work as consumable voltage while the research is currently focused on waste heat from critical energy sectors such as the transportation and electricity-generation sectors and manufacturing processes the team reported that improved energy generation efficiency in materials will naturally lead to widespread use in clothing capable of powering various devices from body heat
a team consisting of grunlan the linda & ralph schmidt 68 professor in the department of mechanical engineering along with dr jeffrey blackburn and dr andrew ferguson scientists from the national renewable energy laboratory and grunlans postdoctoral student dr chungyeon cho recently published a review of carbon nanotube-based thermoelectric materials that are capable of converting wasted heat into useful voltage this publication was featured on the cover of the march 15 issue of advanced materials (carbon-nanotube-based thermoelectric materials and devices vol 30 art no 1704386) one of the highest impact journals in the field of materials science carbon nanotubes (cnts) represent a unique form of carbon with structural electrical and thermal properties that enable efficient thermoelectric-energy conversion the researchers reviewed the progress that has been made to understand the properties of single-walled cnts and the role they could play in thermoelectric devices the thermoelectric work in grunlans lab has been sponsored by the air force a private foundation and a battery company his group has recently spoken to some major sporting goods companies along with a professional rugby team in australia about investing in the development of this important technology in the sports world there is a desire for players to wear jerseys that contain soft sensors that will transmit health information to the sidelines if the jersey fabric were thermoelectric the players own body heat would serve as the power source for those sensors grunlan said the researchers also ran models to demonstrate the harvesting potential of cnts with encouraging results finding that the carbon-based material could act as a thermoelectric material with the same level performance as semiconductor systems while remaining lightweight and flexible grunlans research focuses on thermal and transport properties of nanocomposite materials especially in the areas of thermoelectric energy generation gas barrier and fire prevention he also holds joint appointments in the department of chemistry and the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m
"during the second annual ""aggies celebrate teaching! – recognizing transformational learning"" reception three faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering were honored by the center for teaching excellence at texas a&m this years award reception was part of the inaugural texas a&m university transformational teaching and learning conference dr yucel akkutlu associate professor in the department of petroleum engineering was nominated by mohamed eid a senior in the department dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering was nominated by vijay rajanna a graduate student in the department; and dr timothy jacobs professor in the department of mechanical engineering and director of interdisciplinary engineering for undergraduate and graduate programs was nominated by clayton mulvihill a graduate student in engineering students across all disciplines wrote essays giving evidence of and reflecting upon the instructors impact on their learning and lives this annual teaching award celebration provides a unique view of teaching excellence students share their personal experiences of the relationship between teacher and learner growth and change difficulties and triumph – experiences that shifted their thinking and perspectives in a personal way the college of engineering instructors were among six honored by students as inspirational and transformational mentors each faculty-student pair shared unique stories related to their personal experiences making it clear that there are many ways to teach as well as many individuals at texas a&m that promote transformational learning and foster student growth and development"
a texas a&m university-led consortium has received support from a local innovative telemonitoring device and service company to support diabetes and heart disease research the texas a&m precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) has been working since september 2017 to study remote wearable technology to help people monitor and manage diabetes and heart disease in underserved communities the paths-up project received funds from a national science foundation (nsf) engineering research center (erc) grant
"recently members of the consortium including dr mark lawley head of the department of industrial and systems engineering and deputy director of the center for remote health technologies and systems visited with coordination centric a telemonitoring device and service company with offices in bryan and mcallen the parties involved sought to collaborate to better enable advanced technologies to improve the health of those in underserved communities the telemonitoring services provided by coordination centric assist health care providers in preventing delaying the onset and managing diabetes and cardiovascular disease by using advanced technologies and medical devices ""texas a&m and coordination centric have similar goals "" said ives soto director of provider relations at coordination centric ""we believe that we can help improve healthcare in our communities through the use of advanced technologies and ultimately reduce healthcare costs"" lawley said there are four phases to the research starting with developing biometric sensors to measure readings such as blood glucose and those seen as symptoms of cardiovascular disease and then developing an optical reader that can activate the sensor well be designing a sensor thats going to be about the size of grain of rice that will be inserted underneath the patients skin lawley said it has no power in it no battery or anything like that researchers aim to make the wearable readers light and sleek so they can better integrate into a persons lifestyle the last research thrust is to develop a way to look at the data from the sensor through different techniques such as artificial intelligence machine learning and statistical learning one thing were quite interested in is studying the way physicians use the information coming from this technology how it affects their workflow and helping them integrate that better into their daily activities so that they improve not only the quality of their patients lives but also the quality of their own lives lawley said this is where telemonitoring with coordination centric can play a role as it involves a physician remotely monitoring patients who suffer from these diseases patients can be taught to take daily vital signs that are then automatically and securely sent to their physician which helps the physician take proactive measures when necessary ""we believe this relationship will be meaningful in developing transformational healthcare technologies and most definitely propel our efforts in solving high risk healthcare problems lawley said the outcome is the relationship and a remote health study using patients and clinicians from the rgv as a test group to determine remote patient monitoring efficacy the nsf erc is an interdisciplinary initiative with florida international university rice university and the university of california at los angeles as well as several companies and other federal agencies"
anita brown a doctoral student in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has received a scholarship as part of the science mathematics and research for transformation (smart) scholarship program smart is a scholarship for service program that funds the remainder of a recipients education in exchange for service in research roles to department of defense (dod) entities following graduation the goal of the scholarship program is to help produce the next generation of dod science and technology leaders ill be working with the us army corps of engineers in the harbors entrances and structures branch of the coastal and hydraulics laboratory said brown on the nature of her work after the completion of her doctoral program they do a lot of work with hydraulic structures and navigation channels and other kinds of things that my civil engineering background can help me to investigate brown has already been acquainted with the armys engineer corps having worked with them last summer on some finite element modeling research it was there that brown was told about the smart program and encouraged to apply as a civil engineering student brown is conducting research with dr john niedzwecki a cain 13 chair and regents professor in the department were looking at modeling debris flow during disasters such as floods and hurricanes brown said when a storm comes and there is debris floating in a waterway were looking at tracking the motion of that debris to see how it accumulates around a structure or waterway brown is currently in the process of evaluating current literature and models in relation to debris flow looking to see how existing models might be improved or future models developed this kind of research is important because there is a lot of attention around understanding how debris accumulate in certain sections of the oceans and how it interacts with structures that may be near waterways browns goal with her research is to take the models that have been developed for specific scenarios and create a methodology that can extend to applications beyond what current models are used for im excited to get the opportunity to fund the rest of my degree and also work in this capacity afterwards brown said
more than 40 engineering students from the texas a&m university college of engineering shifted into high gear the week of april 30 to may 5 placing second overall in the first competition milestone of the general motors and society for automotive engineers autodrive challenge in yuma arizona comprised of eight universities across north america the competition is a three-year event that challenges university teams to develop and demonstrate the capabilities of an autonomous vehicle the texas a&m engineering team known as the 12th unmanned participated in four events including a stop sign challenge a lateral driving challenge an obstacle avoidance course and a graded technical report presentation each event tested the cars autonomous driving ability and the teams technical competence in a different way
the stop sign challenge required the car to maneuver on a straight three-lane road and successfully detect and stop for a series of stop signs a challenge in which the team reached a top speed of 20 mph before stopping the fastest in the competition during the lateral driving challenge the vehicle was tested on its ability to drive down a curved road and make sharp turns while staying within the same lane the team also achieved the fastest performance time on the obstacle avoidance course where the car had to drive down a three-lane road covered with obstacles while successfully detecting and avoiding them the team credits their high overall placement at this years competition to their performance in the technical driving challenges im incredibly proud of my students said dr alireza talebpour assistant professor of civil engineering at texas a&m and the faculty project lead for the competition we had students that were spending day and night working on this car and the teams success is a testament to their amazing work ethic in the coming year the team will focus on expanding the strong technical foundation they built this year each year the end of spring driving challenges will grow more complex culminating in a fully autonomous vehicle field test at the end of the three-year competition the team wont know the upcoming challenges for spring 2019 until later this summer but they already have ideas on how they plan to move forward for this coming year the team will definitely have to add in radars to account for the complexity of the more complicated driving events said alex greene former electrical engineering student and the former autodrive challenge team captain the team will eventually be put in a more urban scenario with moving obstacles to simulate things like pedestrians
the team also had many of its senior students such as greene graduate in may they will need to fill in the ranks of the team with new talent and a diverse multidisciplinary group of young engineers students that participated in the may 2018 challenge came from a variety of disciplines including civil computer science electrical industrial systems and mechanical engineering to make the car a reality computer engineering student juan vasquez the teams new captain was one of the team members who worked on the cars systems integration engineering the cars different components to work in concert i worked on the can (controller area network) bus team which is all about how the cars different systems talk to one another to do what we want vasquez said well be going in and tackling new problems based on what we learned from this last year and making it better in the same way the engineers will work to better integrate the vehicles systems theyll work to strengthen and build their relationships with one another through team social events according to talebpour managing such a large team of multidisciplinary engineers is challenging as students with different engineering backgrounds can struggle to communicate with one another or understand the larger picture however he said the teams management leaders plan to make the challenge of interdisciplinary communication a priority and coming together to meet such challenges head on is a hallmark of the aggie spirit this success shows the dedication aggies have when they take on a serious challenge like this talebpour said there is no way we could be here if we didnt have dedicated students and that dedication is what surprised me the most and is what i am proudest of
quentin baker class of 78 graduate from the department of mechanical engineering was recently recognized as a 2018 college of engineering outstanding alumni honor award recipient an honor he said he was stunned and honored to receive we have so many qualified and capable aggie engineers this is an incredible honor to be named an outstanding alumni he said baker (pictured right) president of baker engineering and risk consultants inc has 40 years of experience in risk and hazards analysis research and development he serves as a member of the department of mechanical engineerings industry advisory council (iac) which he said has a critical part for the department one role council members play is to provide feedback on what industry is looking for in graduating engineers what do (the graduates) really need in terms of their training their coursework their capabilities baker said industry gets to say ‘hey for our current situation we would like engineers to be better in these areas and the emphasis shifts over time which is good the department needs to stay current baker said the proof of success is in the high demand for aggie engineers after graduation employers know when (the aggie students) come in theyre qualified and they know how to work he said baker said iac members can also make suggestions to the department to make it a better organization as many members come from management company ownership roles and entrepreneurial roles baker said one highlight of the job is visiting campus throughout the year when he graduated in 1978 he was one of 80 mechanical engineers in his class although the growth causes some feelings of crowding he said he has found the department to still be as tightknit as it was when he was in school the department is near and dear to all of our hearts baker said its a special place for us and its important to us to have contact with students and see what theyre doing thats one of the highlights of the iac meetings is getting the students in and seeing what theyre doing
the qatar general electricity and water corporation (kahramaa) recently signed a collaborative research agreement with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) smart grid center and the centers extension in qatar on the study optimizing kahramaas smart grid capabilities and setting its future roadmap kahramaa attendees included his excellency engineer essa bin hilal al-kuwari president of qatar general electricity & water corporation and chair of the sgc-q steering committee and mohamed ali s a almuhannadi manager of the public relations and communications department the purpose of the agreement is for kahramaa and the smart grid center both in qatar and in college station to investigate smart grid technologies and challenges to implementation on the qatar grid it is harmonious with qatar national vision 2030 and qatar national strategy the study aims to give recommendations to advance efficient use of electric energy and transform electricity grid in qatar into a smart grid; promote collaboration to investigate smart grid challenges and deliver innovative and effective smart grid solutionsthe smart grid center and the extension in qatar will assess the current kahramaa grid in terms of smart grid applications and solutions; conduct a gap analysis study to define challenges and limitations of smart grid solutions implementation; develop a subtle and practical plan for successful smart grid application in kahramaa and ultimately the state of qatarthe final outcome of the project will be recommendations for benchmarking and assessment criteria for the smart grid roadmap in the state of qatar and to present a final report that outlines the above recommendations
"houston-based arovia creators of the spontaneous pop-up display was awarded $50 000 as the winner of the 2018 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) arovia co-founder president and ceo alexander wesley said he was excited that judges liked their pitch im definitely not a natural pitcher but i love our product i love our team and the state of texas has been really great for us as well wesley said i definitely dont view myself as being a stellar pitch man so i had no expectation at all but im glad the enthusiasm i have for our product and our team and what were doing for our customers comes through wesley added that the experience of competing with other companies that are in similar stages to his was a great experience its really cool to see all the different things that people are doing you can really get stuck in your own world so its fun when you get to hang out with other startups jessica travers one of the finals judges and winner of the 2017 tnvc with intuitap medical said that multiple aspects of arovia impressed the judges we really liked their ability to demonstrate the traction theyve had its very fast "" she said ""obviously theres a demand their intellectual property strategy is very strong which is great and will definitely come in handy in the future theyre meeting a need that nobody else has been able to meet yet so were excited to see where they go and how theyre going to scale and the revenue theyre going to be able to pull in with a total of $380 000 in total prizes the pool for the competition was the largest in the four-year history of the tnvc in the first three years the tnvc awarded more than $670 000 combined the 2018 tnvc was made possible by the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship texas a&m university college of science texas a&m health science center tees clean energy incubator texas a&m engineering extension service texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences texas a&m school of innovation texas a&m division of research 80/20 foundation tmc innovation goose society aggie angel network research valley partnership amerra biotex paragon pioneer natural resources thomas horstemeyer ramey & schwaller law firm chevron technology ventures winstead pc and ota compression/kimark systems full list of winners: (for more information on these companies click here) 1st – $50 000 – arovia 2nd – $35 000 – admetsys 3rd – $25 000 – m&s biotics 4th – $15 000 – vastbiome 5th – $10 000 – advanced scanners 6th – $5 000 – atmospark elevator pitch competition: 1st - $5 000 – responderx 2nd - $3 000 – yotta solar 3rd - $2 000 – polar panel additional prizes: ramey/schwaller ip legal services prize – advanced scanners research valley launch prize – responderx thomas | horstemeyer ip legal services prizes – venostent and alleviant medical paragon innovation prize – vitls biotex investment prize – m&s biotics amerra visualization services prize – arovia tees cleantech prize – yotta solar aggie angel network investment prize – arovia goose society of texas investment prizes – arovia and m&s biotics tmc innovation investment and accelerator admission prize – vitls tmc innovation accelerator admission prize – venostent"
dr mladen kezunovic eugene e webb and regents professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was named a 2018 distinguished member of the international council on large electric systems (cigré) for his longstanding service to the organization the distinguished member award is bestowed upon those who have dedicated years of active participation in the work and development of the association kezunovic who is the director of the smart grid center and site director of power engineering research center pserc consortium was named a 2014 cigré fellow and a honorary member for his contributions to the organization in the fields of protection and automation of power systems and of distribution systems and dispersed generation as a member or a convener of several working groups other cigré recognitions include the atwood associate award in 2008 and cigré technical committee award for remarkable technical contribution to the study committee b5 protection and automation in 2012 he was also recently appointed by the us secretary of energy to serve on the department of energy electricity advisory committee his research expertise is in protective relaying automated power system disturbance analysis computational intelligence data analytics and smart grids he has contributed seminal work in the areas of automated fault analysis predictive outage management and life-cycle test approaches for synchrophasor system he has also served as a consultant to over 50 companies worldwide kezunovic has been a principal investigator on over 150 research and development projects published more than 550 papers and has given over 120 invited lectures short courses and seminars around the world kezunovic will be honored with this recognition during the cigré us national committee annual meeting and luncheon ceremony held aug 7 in portland oregon
chemical purification and separation are among the most energy intensive processes on earth in 2010 chemical purification and separation accounted for around 15 percent of global energy consumption as many of the separation and purification dependent commodities such as water fuel and chemicals are projected to grow three times by 2050 the same processes will require around 45 – 50 percent of global energy usage the traditional separation processes are not sustainable and a drastically different process is needed dr hae-kwon jeong associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university has developed a novel method to separate light olefins – such as ethylene and propylene that are used in packaging plastic processing and textile manufacturing – from paraffins – such as ethane and propane this is one of the most significant separations in chemical and petrochemical industries with propylene production amounting to around $90 billion annually worldwide yet one of the most challenging due to the similarity of their physical and chemical properties traditionally this separation requires the use of massive energy-intensive distillation columns jeongs research has focused on the use of membrane-based separations essentially membrane-based separations act much the same as colanders or strainers; a mixture flows through the membrane that allows the smaller molecules through while excluding the larger molecules membrane-based separations are quite common throughout the chemical industry with the majority of these processes utilizing different polymer membranes light olefins and paraffins present a challenge as the size differences between the molecules are around 3 ångströms (around 0000000003 centimeters) polymers are not selective enough to be a useful membrane for this process jeongs research utilizes metal-organic frameworks (mofs) as the membrane material especially zeolitic-imidazolate frameworks (zif) which are composed of metal ions (usually zn2+ or co2+) and imidazole-derived organic linkers jeong has already shown that zif-8 membranes (composed of zinc and 2-methylimidazole) are incredibly effective at separating propylene and propane however zif-8 membranes are relatively expensive to produce and a significant improvement to their productivity – essentially the speed with which the molecules are filtered – is required for them have any practical applications there are two ways increase the productivity of the membrane; reduce the membrane thickness and/or increase the area per volume of the membrane jeong has developed a novel method to drastically reduce the effective size of the zif-8 membrane detailed in a paper published in angewandte chemie rather than using a membrane composed wholly of zif-8 he replaced the top layer of the membrane with zif-90 the aperture of zif-90 is slightly larger than that of zif-8 but they both share the same structure (see image below) therefore by adding the top layer of zif-90 jeong was able to reduce the effective thickness of the zif-8 membrane which increased the propylene permeance by about four times with little to no loss in its separation effectiveness this drastically improves the productivity of zif-8 membranes and opens the door for practical applications
"the paper ""comparing visual textual and multimodal features for detecting sign language in video sharing sites"" by caio monteiro dr frank shipman and dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna from the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university won the best paper award at the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) international conference on multimedia information processing and retrieval locating videos containing sign language is a problem for members of the hearing impaired community to address this problem the authors have developed a method to detect sign-language content in videos using machine-learning techniques the approach consists of extracting features from the video itself (eg hand movements) and from metadata (eg title description) attached to videos on youtube and other video sharing sites the paper compares various approaches for extracting metadata information and combining it with visual features the results indicate that a modular approach that learns a separate classifier for each feature type and them combines the classifier outputs outperforms monolithic approaches that feed all feature types into a single classification function"
what do art and engineering have in common more than you might think this past semester a group of engineering students at texas a&m university has been working closely with an artist from new york to help her design a new smoke painting tool rosemarie fiore isnt a traditional painter instead of using paint brushes and paint she uses fireworks and colorful smoke to create beautiful large-scale paintings last month about 100 people from the community witnessed fiore create a new piece destined for the zachry engineering education complex the team of students assisted during the performance bringing fiore new fireworks and helping her load them onto the tool they designed that tool bring your a frame was based off an earlier design fiore created but was modified to be more efficient
fiore said that art and engineering often work in tandem they rely on each other and can create great things when applied together she said i think engineering is at its best when it extends beyond the mechanical into creativity and design fiore began smoke painting several years ago after accidentally burning herself with fireworks on the 4th of july she instinctively dropped the fireworks and as it rolled across the pavement it left behind a beautiful mark since then fiore has focused almost solely on smoke painting the entire smoke painting process fascinates me but what intrigues me the most is the way smoke reacts to changes in the environment she said the weather temperature air pressure and inversion all affect how smoke behaves electrical engineering student michael bayern said it was very interesting to work on such a project it was a fun change to jump from an engineering project with known constraints and some sort of testing and data to this project which was more like an engineering art project he said it was much more creative and free form than other projects ive worked on
for sophomore manufacturing and mechanical engineering technology student mikaela casuga this project combined two of her passions art and engineering casuga was in the engineering innovation center when fiore first visited campus and a friend encouraged her to sign up for the team i love art and i enjoy drawing painting writing and singing she said for me hearing there would be an engineering project involving my passions i knew i had to join casuga said the experience taught her that she can combine both her passions and delve deeper into her own field of engineering applying metallics and nonmetallic materials in the construction of tools that can be applied by artists bring your a frame was an improved version of a tool fiore designed in 2016 made of aluminum and mounted on wheels a pole is used to maneuver the tool across paper fireworks are lit in unison and inserted into mounts each fuse is the same length causing the fireworks to go off at the same time creating pressure which pushes the pigmented smoke out of the holes on the bottom of the tool the students worked from my original design creating changes to improve my experience using the tool she said for example higher quality wheels were installed also the bottom pattern can be switched out and firework mounts were installed to allow for easy loading unlike tools fiore has made in the past bring your a frame was made of aluminum making it easier to clean and more durable fiore said she was very happy with the end result and plans to continue using the tool for future art works the piece fiore began last month is now back in new york where she will finalize it before it is displayed in the zachry engineering education complex permanently
the crisman institute for petroleum research a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station is under new leadership dr jeff spath the new department head of the harold vance department of petroleum engineering at texas a&m university has taken on the role of director for the institute were committed to keeping the department at the forefront of petroleum engineering education and research and development said spath crisman is a valuable tool that improves both while increasing our industry relations industry-defined problems brought to the institute are used to generate specific research proposals developed by faculty graduate students conduct the research under industry mentoring and faculty supervision to provide answers for industry the resulting knowledge is implemented into new industry practices and into the department curriculum and classrooms the institute was initially established in 1984 by a private donor endowment from wayne and ruby crisman to further research efforts within the petroleum engineering department in 2004 dr stephen a holditch became the director and invigorated the program backed by endowed funding from schlumberger halliburton and chevron the institute was opened to other companies through membership in 2016 holditch came back from retirement to spearhead efforts for the institute to merge research endeavors with the berg-hughes center (bhc) for petroleum and sedimentary systems a part of the department of geology and geophysics within the college of geosciences at texas a&m by combining crisman and the bhc faculty and graduate students we have the integrated team we need for solving the complex problems associated with developing shale reservoirs said holditch at the time of the merger we need to improve the fundamental science in our geologic hydraulic fracturing and reservoir models so they can be used to both match the production history and predict the future production performance more accurately than we can now there is no shortage of problems to be solved by the institute particularly in shale reservoirs their challenging geology and production issues require a combination of petroleum engineering fundamentals innovative techniques and creative thinking something spath knows the institute can provide this industry-driven approach is vital in maintaining the departments relevance and provides the department opportunities to increase visibility and reputation through cooperative research said spath the institute also provides real current problems to the graduate students thereby strengthening their overall education as a final but very important advantage many of our graduates end up going to work with the sponsoring companies
after becoming captivated with the texas a&m university at galveston campus william mick prouse decided to pursue a degree in ocean engineering with a concentration in coastal studies prouse strives to raise the bar in both his academics and the field of ocean engineering i came to texas a&m galveston wishing to transfer to college station but involvement in student life and various organizations changed that i immediately felt at home prouse said the small campus and family atmosphere has definitely encouraged me to grow into my own prouse always knew he wanted to study engineering but it was not until he dove into oceanic topics that he found his passion i fell in love with the galveston campus and decided to give ocean engineering a shot prouse said after becoming involved in research i truly gained a passion for my studies prouse works under the guidance of katherine anarde a phd student at rice university and fellow collaborator in the coastal engineering laboratory research group the research group is spearheaded by dr jens figlus an assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university prouses project addresses removing errors associated with digital elevations models (dem) in environments with dense vegetation shielding the substrate
the project came to fruition as a sub-study of my mentor katherine anardes thesis prouse said we have a symbiotic relationship where im granted the opportunity to research my personal interests under her guidance while also aiding her thesis dems created using unmanned aerial systems (uas) allow researchers to quickly and easily survey large plots of land and with consecutive dems researchers are able to track the morphological changes over a period of time researchers are still fine tuning their processes to maximize the accuracy of this uas dem data which allows them to rapidly map larger and more environmentally diverse ecosystems with smaller ranges of uncertainty in the data i initially began studying the subject of vegetation-induced dem inaccuracies the summer after my freshman year prouse said that summer katherine tasked me with learning how to operate a drone and create aerial survey maps dem measurement errors occur because photographic sensors lack the ability to see through the vegetation thus creating a false reading from the desired bare earth elevation the overarching goal of his work is to allow for the quick yet accurate mapping of topographic transects to study the impacts of storm events on our barrier islands barrier islands comprising of 85 percent of the united states coastline are the first line of defense against surge and wave attacks from extreme storm events by understanding the effects of storms on barrier islands and recording the hydrodynamics during these events we can offer unique engineering solutions to better guard against the effects of hurricanes with a minimal footprint on our national scenery i enjoy the problem-solving aspect of this project prouse remarked completing research goals reminds me of solving a puzzle and finishing is extremely rewarding when the work is successful prouse particularly enjoys studying structural design hydrodynamics and wave mechanics as they closely relate to his research and are highly challenging fields of study my dream job is to be a coastal engineering consultant specializing in flood prevention programs all over the world said prouse i would first like to continue my research and further my expertise as a graduate student prouse was recently inducted as an undergraduate research scholar and an aggies commit to excellence scholar additionally he has been named a fellow of the texas institute of oceanography and awarded a texas sea grant
dr manoranjan majji assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university has been elevated to the grade of senior member by the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) ieee the worlds largest technical professional society is dedicated to advancing innovation and technological excellence for the benefit of humanity composed of engineers scientists and allied professionals ieee senior membership is an honor bestowed only to those who have made significant contributions to the profession majji joined the department in 2016 his research interests include structural systems computational vision and sensor systems astronautics and dynamical systems and aerospace robotics and autonomous systems
civil engineering sophomore nicholas rossi was recently named sergeant major in the fightin texas aggie band making him the highest ranking junior cadet in the band im able to be a second set of eyes and ears for the commander to help inform him about whats going on in the band rossi said its my job to take his mission and vision and own it – not just push it across the band without any reasoning behind it since joining the band his freshman year rossi has moved from drums to one of two of the bands cymbal players to one of three bass drum players he started playing drums in the sixth grade and continued playing in high school when two of his cousins joined the aggie band rossi came to campus to watch march-ins where he said he remembers thinking wow i want to be a part of that its something bigger than yourself and thats something ive really come to learn he said rossi said he did not know what a sergeant major was when he first joined the band but has learned more about the position and its role in behind the scenes operations to ensure the band is functioning properly
you dont want recognition for yourself rossi said just to have the thrill of waking up in the morning and saying ‘wow im in the fightin texas aggie band and i get to have a hand in it and be a part of taking care of everyone and making sure theyre where theyre supposed to be and doing what theyre supposed to be doing its very humbling rossi who is from sealy texas worried he would become homesick however becoming a part of the corps of cadets and training alongside other cadets quickly gave him a group of friends who have helped him grow over the years the corps the band and my upperclassmen have really helped me focus on developing my goals and what i want to get done he said theyve helped my work ethic grow and increase how effectively i can complete all of my tasks pursuing a degree in civil engineeringrossi said he chose civil engineering after months of research his freshman year he spoke with engineering upperclassmen professors and visited with student organizations to help him decide the best course of action for himself since joining civil engineering rossi said he has developed another set of friends outside of the corps its good because i can get a perspective of the corps from someone who is not within see how they view things and learn why they came to texas a&m rossi said rossi said he does not have a set career for after graduation but instead plans to go with whatever opportunities become available and doing his best to be as prepared as he can be i strongly believe in not trying to force things because from what ive seen with anything in life is that if you try to force it it will break and just wont work out the way that you want it to rossi said every day i find some way to improve myself and improve something around me as a sophomore rossi has taken his role as a model for freshman cadets seriously aiming to teach them the routine of being a cadet and leading by example he said he has learned that what people say can have a real impact on other people which has influenced where he puts his values whatever value you dedicate to your things whether its a goal or an object others will see that and emulate it he said
with a total pool of $380 000 $165 000 in cash and $215 000 in in-kind and investment prizes this is the largest prize pool yet for the texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) this years startups include companies from across a wide spectrum of fields including healthcare it/software digital health transportation and clean energy technology at the may 17 competition judges will narrow the field of 16 semi-finalists from across texas down to six finalists judges for the finals are dr ashok gowda founder and ceo of biotex; dave fox angel investor and founder of blue baker restaurants; pat matthews founder and general partner of active capital; william p ramey iii founding partner of ramey & schwaller llp; jessica traver 2017 tnvc winner and ceo of intuitap medical; and louis a raspino super-angel investor member of the goose society the finalist and elevator pitch cash prizes are as follows: finalists first place - $50 000; second - $35 000; third - $25 000; fourth - $15 000; fifth - $10 000; sixth - $5 000 elevator pitch: first - $5 000; second - $3 000; third - $2 000 special prize awardees will be chosen by their sponsor for which all 16 semi-finalists and two alternates are eligible the final judging round begins at 1 pm and is open to the public and the media the finals will take place in the all american club at kyle field
in the fall of 2015 two texas a&m university students worked alongside faculty and a local space commercialization company to develop equipment that would be used on the international space station (iss) for research by nasa over the course of four months department of engineering technology and industrial distribution students dakotah karrer and vincent rodriguez worked with faculty member dr joseph morgan and matt leonard president and ceo of texas space technology applications and research (t star) on a special tube-like experiment station known as strata-1
the integrated hardware and software system within strata-1 helps identify properties of regolith the material found on the surface of airless planetary bodies interacting with regolith becomes a challenge in a low-gravity environment as robotic and crewed missions visit small bodies such as asteroids it will be important to understand how to anchor to these surfaces in the spring of 2016 strata-1 was launched to study the evolution of asteroid regolith through long duration exposure of simulant materials to the microgravity environment on the international space station despite its short development and launch window the strata-1 experiment was a success the nasa scientists who originally conducted the experiment were granted funding for a new class 1e research facility named hermes which will reside on the iss for five-plus years to host monitor and control groups of up to four experiments when again contracted by nasa to develop hermes t star turned to a capstone team within the engineering technology and industrial distribution department to design and deliver the electronics package for the system the capstone team microgravity automated research systems (mars) consisting of five students from the electronic systems engineering technology (eset) program in the department have been working on the hermes facility electronic equipment over the past academic year
recently karrer and rodriguez (now engineers with texas instruments) came back to campus to meet with dr morgan leonard original strata-1 experiment scientists dr kristen john and lee graham and the mars capstone team to discuss the history and future of the project mars and t star are continuing the work of karrer and rodriguez via the hermes facility which will be capable of hosting up to four experiments at a time that can be changed out multiple times during the facilitys lifetime hermes is an experimental microgravity facility that enables science experiments microgravity exposure testing testing of engineering components concept trials and any payloads that fit within the hermes design and operations constraints it is open to any investigation that benefits from microgravity exposure said dr john principal investigator for hermes given the durability of hermes a multitude of experiments can be conducted over its five-year mission on the iss the four chambers inside the facility can be interchanged as needed giving nasa scientists the freedom and flexibility to conduct their research accordingly with minimum deployment costs and varying project timelines the facility includes lighting image recording capabilities and a robust electrical interface being developed by mars which will give scientists complete access to power computation and control mars is also developing software that will allow scientists to achieve desired lighting camera use and electrical components that are uplinked from the ground to hermes nasa has stated that possible experiments could include asteroid regolith investigations life cycle tests of engineering components and penetrometer and anchoring demonstrations any investigation that can benefit from exposure to microgravity can be incorporated into hermes as long as it meets the specified structural electrical and safety standards
at this years engineering project showcase mars received the first place award for all projects in the department and was presented the emerson award for their efforts the partnership between eset students t star and nasa continues to grow with exciting opportunities such as strata-1 and the hermes facility other projects being developed by the partnership include tsat and the dstr robot during the presentation of the strata-1 flight unit to department head dr reza langari leonard summed up the strata-1/hermes meeting by stating the innovation and rapid prototyping capabilities available within the departments product innovation cellar and mobile integrated solutions laboratory have allowed t star to successfully design and develop solutions for nasa scientists in a timely and cost-effective manner while engaging students in a real-world project
dr dimitris lagoudas associate vice chancellor for engineering and deputy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) recognized faculty and staff award winners during the 2018 faculty and staff awards banquet lagoudas presented faculty awards staff excellence awards a new employee award a key contributor award and the engineering team award a new category was added this year the college of engineering research impact awards to highlight research that has had an impact beyond conventional boundaries such as opening a new line of research producing a tool widely adopted by industry or establishing a startup venture staff awards key contributor award damon slaydon (human resources) new employee award michael elverud (materials science and engineering) staff excellence award chris huff (information technology); murat kaynak (materials science and engineering); cheryl kocman (industrial and systems engineering); keisha lamb (engineering payroll); rebecca marianno (aerospace engineering);debbie oakes(offshore technology research center); and zahir odovicic (aerospace engineering) engineering team award engineering facilities (john clark andy deuel stephen franklin and david glockzin) faculty awards college of engineering excellence in teaching award mahmoud el-halwagi (chemical engineering); michael johnson (engineering technology and industrial distribution); and patrick shamberger (materials science and engineering) instructional faculty teaching award james donnell (mechanical engineering); kristi shryock (aerospace engineering); and doug white (chemical engineering) college of engineering outstanding contribution awards charles crawford distinguished award for contributions bryan rasmussen (mechanical engineering) george armistead jr ‘23 faculty excellence award for contributions mark holtzapple (chemical engineering) william o and montine p head memorial award for contributions raymundo arroyave (materials science and engineering) and melissa grunlan (biomedical engineering) williams brothers construction engineering award for contributions stefan hurlebaus (civil engineering) college of engineering service awards george armistead jr ‘23 faculty excellence award for service benjamin wilhite (chemical engineering) william keeler memorial award for service natarajan gautam (industrial and systems engineering); aydin karsilayan (electrical and computer engineering); and john keyser (computer science and engineering) william o and montine p head memorial award for service bryan maggard (petroleum engineering) and edward white (aerospace engineering) college of engineering faculty fellows george armistead jr ‘23 faculty fellow jodie lutkenhaus (chemical engineering) charles h barclay jr ‘45 faculty fellow john valasek (aerospace engineering) barbara and ralph cox 53 faculty fellow jim morel (nuclear engineering) holleran-bowman faculty fellow bimal nepal (engineering technology and industrial distribution) tees fellow awards tees young faculty fellows moble benedict (aerospace engineering); jens figlus (ocean engineering); huilin gao (civil engineering); xia (ben) hu (computer science and engineering); and bruce tai (mechanical engineering) tees faculty fellows tim davis (computer science and engineering); ricardo gutierrez-osuna (computer science and engineering); daniele mortari (aerospace engineering); xiaoning qian (electrical and computer engineering) and miladin radovic (materials science and engineering) dean of engineering excellence award assistant professor akhilesh gaharwar (biomedical engineering); darren hartl (aerospace engineering); yang shen (electrical and computer engineering) associate professor michael demkowicz (materials science and engineering); eduardo gildin (petroleum engineering); guofei gu (computer science and engineering) and gregory huff (electrical and computer engineering) professor debjyoti banerjee (mechanical engineering); zhengdong cheng (chemical engineering); frank shipman (computer science and engineering); alex sprintson (electrical and computer engineering); and vladislav yakovlev (biomedical engineering) college of engineering research impact awards new this year these awards recognize research that has had an impact broadly defined as leading to outcomes that extend beyond conventional boundaries including opening new lines of research solving a long existing problem or producing tools or products that have become widely adopted in practice by industry and/or government yu ding (industrial and systems engineering) for innovations in data and quality science impacting the wind energy industry dings efforts have significantly improved performance and reliability of wind turbines catalyzing multi-million dollar investments from industry guofei gu (computer science and engineering) for development of innovative software defined network security technology gus innovations have been widely adopted by major internet and telecommunications companies and are laying a foundation for secure communication in next-generation networks duncan maitland (biomedical engineering) for development of innovative shape memory polymers (smps) for biomedical applications maitlands efforts have led to commercialization of a peripheral vascular occlusion devicethe first biodegradable smp device approved for human use in the world scott socolofsky (civil engineering) for development of improved forecasting tools to model the dispersal of pollutants in offshore oil spills socolofskys tools have been widely adopted by industry and government bodies (including noaa) to develop strategies for optimal deployment of dispersants to contain the spread of oil spills
texas a&m university at qatar graduated its 900th engineer on may 10 in a ceremony attended by her excellency sheikha hind bint hamad al thani vice chairperson and ceo of qatar foundation more than 100 students walked across the stage of the qatar national convention centre during texas a&m at qatars annual commencement ceremony including 89 students who earned their bachelors degrees in chemical engineering electrical engineering mechanical engineering and petroleum engineering of those 49 degrees were awarded to qatari graduates in addition 14 graduate students earned their master of science and master of engineering degrees in chemical engineering
a senior design capstone team in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university evaluated ibm watson for use as the brain-system in an on-campus autonomous paratransit shuttle this was the first time ibm partnered with a major university to explore the use of watsons services in alternative transportation mobility solutions undergraduate students alejandra hernandez and alejandro cuellar were given the task to analyze what ibm watson an advance artificial intelligence (ai) technology is capable of they researched the transportation needs of the mobility challenged students at texas a&m and how ibm watson could fulfill these needs as the interface between the transportation vehicle an autonomous shuttle and the mobility-challenged passenger imagine you broke your leg and you had to go from west campus to the engineering technologies building said hernandez our research studied the feasibility of having an on-demand driverless vehicle that could pick you up and you could have a conversation with as if it were a human dr tom ferris associate professor in the department was the teams faculty advisor i am very excited to see our students applying their industrial engineering knowledge to the research and design of new technologies such as this said ferris alejandra and alejandro especially made me proud in the way they conducted analyses of potential user groups a skill that we teach in our courses related to human-systems interaction to determine key human factors that should be considered in the development of this vehicle hernandez enjoyed working with ibm watson and through the partnership was reminded that technology and humankind are meant to work together we can choose to focus on the negative sides of it or we can focus on the beautiful and useful way to extend the human capabilities to those who are in need said hernandez cuellar enjoyed working with ibm watson because use of artificial intelligence software was something new and he believes there will be an increase in the use of it in the coming years i feel honored to have the opportunity to represent texas a&m in a project that positively impacts the lives of others said cuellar their paper on the topic was accepted for presentation at the transportation research boards 2018 annual meeting in washington dc in january the meeting focused on transportation modes with more than 5 000 presentations in nearly 800 sessions and workshops addressing topics of interest to policymakers administrators practitioners researchers and representatives of government industry and academic institutions bob brydia senior research scientist for the texas a&m transportation institute leads the campus transportation technology initiative which worked with ibm and the college of engineering to find ways to improve campus transportation
the texas a&m energy institute is joining the massachusetts institute of technology energy initiative (mitei) and the stanford precourt institute for energy to support implementation of the department of energy-led us clean energy education & empowerment (c3e) program to advance womens participation and leadership in clean energy as a proud aggie i am thrilled to see my alma mater joining this important effort to encourage women to lead the way to our energy future said secretary rick perry with this type of collaborative effort by such distinguished institutions our energy workforce will continue to expand beyond measure the new collaboration with the texas a&m energy institute will broaden the geographic reach and diversity representation of the united states c3e program and help further promote womens leadership in the energy sector at the texas a&m energy institute we are dedicated to discovering energy solutions that improve the quality of life for all peoples said dr stratos pistikopoulos interim co-director and deputy director of the texas a&m energy institute through a partnership within the clean energy education & empowerment (c3e) initiative we believe that we can effect positive change that will bring awareness and recognition to the significant role that women play in conceiving designing and implementing a clean energy future for texas the united states and the world key elements of the us c3e program include the c3e ambassadors senior leaders who serve as role models and advocates for women in clean energy and the annual c3e women in clean energy symposium designed to help women in the clean energy sector build the skills and professional networks needed to succeed many participants say that the symposium inspired them to take the next step in their careers whether by taking on a new leadership role or starting a clean energy business each symposium honors winners of the c3e awards which recognize the outstanding leadership and achievements of mid-career women working to advance clean energy c3e awards are given in eight categories: advocacy business education entrepreneurship government international law and finance and research over the past six years doe and mitei have collaborated on the planning and implementation of the annual awards program and symposium with the stanford precourt institute for energy joining the collaboration in 2016 that responsibility will now be shared with the texas a&m energy institute which will host the event on a rotating basis and host this years ambassadors retreat the seventh annual symposium will be held at stanford university in december 2018 and the eighth symposium will be at texas a&m in 2019 mitei is thrilled for texas a&m energy institutes collaboration in the us clean energy education & empowerment program said mitei executive director martha broad their support will help even more women advance and achieve recognition for their clean energy careers while expanding the vibrant c3e network c3e recognizes that the ideas and talents of all members of society are essential to meeting our future energy challenges and that more womens participation and leadership is key to realizing that future said dr sally benson co-director of stanfords precourt institute for energy texas a&m energy institute joining in this work is a major advance and im delighted to have the aggies as partners
a new technology combining a laser beam and a particle beam for interstellar propulsion could pave the way for space exploration into the vast corners of our universe this is the focus of procsima a new research proposal by dr chris limbach and dr ken hara assistant professors in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university nasa has chosen the proposal procsima: diffractionless beam propulsion for breakthrough interstellar missions for the 2018 nasa innovative advanced concepts (niac) phase 1 study procsima stands for photon-particle optically coupled soliton interstellar mission accelerator and is meant to evoke the idea that interstellar travel is not so far away in this study limbach and hara propose a new and innovative beamed propulsion architecture that could enable an interstellar mission to proxima centauri with a 42-year cruise duration at 10 percent the speed of light proxima centauri is the nearest known star to the sun with proxima b a planet orbiting the star at a distance of 75 million km the mission of the research is to create an extraordinarily long-range beam of light and matter that can propel a one kilogram probe to complete a flyby around proxima b there is great interest in studying this planet as it is a prime candidate for visual observation because of its proximity to earth and because proxima b orbits in the habitable zone where liquid water may exist for half a century researchers around the globe have been studying laser-beamed propulsion technologies for interstellar travel in this concept thrust is generated by the reflection of light off the spacecraft unlike conventional rockets spacecraft accelerated by beams of light or matter do not require their own propellant or propulsion energy source enabling incredibly high final velocity the disadvantage of such concepts is that as the spacecraft gets farther away the beams spread out or diffracts into the vacuum of space this results in less thrust over time as the beam pushes less and less effectively limbach and hara are looking at a revolutionary way to overcome this fundamental problem by combining the light beam with a particle beam that simultaneously reduces the spreading effects are simultaneously reduced for both beams the primary value of the procsima system is the game-changing high-mass capability in the acceleration phase provided by the greatly extended distance over which a laser can provide photon thrust the procsima concept also maintains a tight 8-meter beam size over the entire acceleration phase reducing the required size of the laser transmitter an advantage of this research is that it brings together technologies developed by the fusion community as well as aspects of photonics and telecommunications one of the exciting parts of this project is that it brings together the forefront of so many different research areas which are under intense investigation said limbach my hope is to have an influence on all of the various topics even if the application which is interstellar travel is probably decades in the future this project is not only interesting because of the innovative propulsion concept but also from the perspective of fundamental physics related to particle-photon interaction hara adds collaboration between experiments theory and computer simulations is necessary to tackle this challenging problem the goal of niac phase 1 will be to determine the potential benefits and stumbling blocks of this new concept and to assess where relevant technologies are now while limbach will undertake experiments and modeling of the light beam propagation hara will contribute detailed calculations on the particle beam and combined beam concept initial modeling will be based on the state-of-the-art high energy laser technology at different wavelengths and the current capabilities of neutral particle beam sources the phase 1 study lasts for nine months with a grant of $125 000 after phase 1 they will apply for phase 2 which would fund a more detailed investigation of the mission architecture with a grant of up to $500 000 over a span of two years one aspect of this project is simply the excitement and potential to inspire others to take a serious look at this innovative concept limbach said interstellar travel is an exciting and difficult problem and if we can get this solution to work it opens up not just sending microscopic payloads to the stars but actually sending larger perhaps human-scale types of missions the nasa innovative advanced concepts program nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future nasa missions with the creation of breakthroughs radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts while engaging americas innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey the program seeks innovations from diverse and nontraditional sources and niac projects study innovative technically credible advanced concepts that could one day change the possible in aerospace
to help better predict the spread of mosquito-borne diseases two researchers from the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have joined a grant project to develop better monitoring tools in coastal areas dr madhav erraguntla and dr mark lawley are part of the gulf coast vector-borne disease regional center of excellence at the the university of texas medical branch which was recently funded by an award from the centers for disease control and prevention to develop low-cost integrated wireless solutions for real-time monitoring of changing environmental conditions in areas where mosquitoes are known to breed and rest mosquitoes are known for carrying a variety of diseases including west nile virus and the zika virus [we are seeking to] better [understand] how localized environmental conditions affect the breeding and resting sites of mosquitoes; the effect of local environmental conditions on the growth and infectivity of mosquito erraguntla said eventually this work will facilitate disease modeling and management to create the models researchers will record fluctuations in temperature ranges on prototypes and then replicate them in the lab mosquitoes raised under various environmental conditions will be assessed for immune status and susceptibility to zika virus the data generated from these experiments will be used to develop an analytical model by developing real-time analytical models of the microclimate weather in shaded areas where mosquitoes spend time research can help provide predictive capabilities for the spread of mosquito-borne diseases in temperate climates modeling and predicting changes in the transmission dynamics and epidemiology of mosquito-borne viral diseases is challenging due to the complex influence of environmental factors on etiological agents and vectors erraguntla said current models fail to incorporate the daily fluctuations in diurnal temperatures which are occurring in the shaded microenvironments where container-breeding mosquitoes are found the research includes two industrial systems and engineering students josef zapletal and himanshu gupta for more information about texas a&m universitys efforts to battle viruses such as zika read this 2017 article
texas a&m university department of mechanical engineering graduate student cole fincher has been selected for the prestigious national science foundation (nsf) graduate research fellowship program an honor bestowed upon only the most outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based masters and doctoral degrees fincher said he will remain at texas a&m as he pursues his graduate education in mechanical engineering he plans to continue researching small-scale mechanics and nanoindentation which he described as poking small objects with a small stick to investigate how materials behave at the nano and micro scale its nice to be able to have some certainty of whats going to happen over the next few years fincher said every day is exciting here we have many interesting projects in the lab that im working on its fun its like a little puzzle you have to figure out each day he said the news of his selection brought with it a mixture of excitement and relief for the possibilities the programs funding would provide him over the next few years fincher and his peers will receive a three-year annual stipend and a cost of education allowance to help cover tuition and fees fellows also have additional opportunities for professional development and international research through the program fincher who graduated with an bachelors degree in december is co-advised by dr matt pharr assistant professor in the mechanical engineering department and dr george m pharr iv texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) distinguished research professor and professor in the department of materials science and engineeringmatt pharr said fincher is a great student who has made positive contributions not only in the lab but through entrepreneurial and outreach activities such as demonstrations for elementary school students as well he said finchers research interests have the potential for broad impacts in several areas including sustainable energy storage electric vehicles and more through the aid of the fellowship program matt pharr said fincher will be able to have the flexibility to pursue the research that most interests him rather than being tied only to the projects for which he can gain funding hes going to get to explore on his own matt pharr said hes enthusiastic and energetic and he loves doing academic and scientific work cole deserves this award and it is a great opportunity for him fincher said he believes his selection for the fellowship program is also a reflection of matt pharrs mentorship which he said has played an integral role in his development as a researcher and as a student established in 1952 the fellowship program was designed to recognize and provide support to students in nsf-supported engineering technology science and mathematics disciplines with the goal of helping to produce subject matter experts who can make significant contributions to teaching research and innovations it has funded more than 50 000 fellowships since its inception more than 450 of the programs fellows are members of the national academy of sciences and 42 have become nobel laureates previous fellows of the program include google founder sergey brin freakonomics co-author steven levitt and former us secretary of energy steven chu who is a distinguished lecturer with the hagler institute for advanced study at texas a&m as he moves forward as a fellow in the program pursuing his graduate education fincher said he hopes to publish as much as he can and take advantage of having the extra time to spend on research i think thats why the fellowship is so impactful -- it frees up a lot of time that you otherwise would have to spend acting as a teaching assistant or fulfilling other duties to fill that funding gap fincher said so now im freed up to focus more time on my research which i enjoy a lot
two students have recently received awards for their research and co-curricular activities scott wilson a former student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university received the graduate student award for excellence in research-masters and dr charles w peak a doctoral student in biomedical engineering received the buck weirus spirit award both from the association of former students (afs) both work in a laboratory in the department under assistant professor dr akhilesh garharwar
wilson graduated with a master of science in 2017 with a thesis title of designing advanced bioinks for 3d printing complex tissue structures each year the afs graduate student award for excellence in research-masters is given to researchers who are nominated by faculty advisors or departments an external panel of reviewers that includes faculty and administrators chooses the distinction of excellence winners the panel selects the recipients based on criteria including scholastic achievements publications academic awards and scholarships this award adds to the pride that i have in my individual academic work and research wilson said but more importantly it is a testament to the great team dynamic we have in the gaharwar lab i would not have been able to produce the level of research that i did without the encouragement and refinement given by my graduate student colleagues lauren cross cw peak jake carrow david chimene and advisor dr gaharwar the 2018 buck weirus spirit award honors up to 55 students each academic year and recognizes students with high involvement that create positive experiences that impact the texas a&m community
peak was the founder and inaugural president of the biomedical engineering graduate student association he worked diligently to enhance the program through service to the department enhanced professional development opportunities and improved recruiting this award is a validation of the formation of the biomedical engineering graduate student association peak said it shows that we as students can identify our own areas for improvement and that we can work collectively to better our program i am honored to have my work in establishing this organization recognized by receiving the buck weirus spirit award wilson and peak join several of gaharwars students who have received university level awards in the past for additional information visit the afs distinguished graduate student award website or the buck weirus spirit award website
concrete canoes bowling balls and frisbees while this mix of objects sounds odd these items are the namesakes of engineering competitions for civil engineering students who attended the american society of civil engineers (asce) 2018 asce texas-mexico student symposium held from april 11-14 the symposium hosted by the asce student chapter at texas a&m university invited students from 21 universities in both mexico and texas to participate in competitions professional networking opportunities and learning activities
the asce holds 19 student symposiums a year that act as qualifying rounds for the national concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions but an additional component of this years symposium was having speakers and professionals give presentations on engineering soft skills the theme for the conference was serve: engineers serving the public and included seminars on sustainability skills to support students in their transition as learners to professionals in industry james gayle the student chapters committee head for the symposium is proud to be able to further the reach and impact of the symposium by allowing schools to come together and learn now that weve transitioned this into more of a symposium it allows all these students from different places to get to network with professionals gayle said we also hosted a career center and brought ten companies to talk about potential internships and full – time jobs to more than 400 students students got to test their mettle in a steel bridge competition where students from each school are required to design fabricate and construct a steel bridge and test it under various loads each university also fielded a concrete canoe team who had their constructed canoes on display but were not able to race them on saturday due to inclement weather the chapter also hosted a student paper competition which allowed students to discuss and share research and a social event so the students could relax during the symposium
the symposium is a lot of fun but its also a lot of work for everyone involved gayle said the social and the fun competitions we hold like the concrete bowling and concrete frisbee stuff are the only times that everyone gets to relax the responsibility of hosting the symposium was decided two years ago when the members placed a bid to host the symposium and won while planning the event the current officers of the chapter knew they wanted it to be more than just a series of competitions which is something they felt they were able to achieve the student team that put this together worked really hard to make this an engaging and full event gayle said we wanted it to be something where people were able to compete but also have fun and learn and truly make it an event for the students
four students from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university have been awarded the 2018-2019 vertical flight foundation (vff) scholarships from the american helicopter society (ahs) this is a merit-based scholarship given by the ahs to students who conduct cutting-edge research related to vertical flight david coleman who is a recipient in the doctoral degree category conducts foundational research to understand the flight dynamics of a novel hummingbird-inspired robot atanu halder also a recipient in the doctoral degree category focuses his research on developing an aeroelastic model-based design framework for cyclocopters bochan lee who won the scholarship in the masters degree category is working on the development of a novel control system for vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aerial vehicles to autonomously land on small surface vessels james mcelreath the top candidate in the bachelors degree category conducts experiments to understand the three-dimensional unsteady aerodynamics on a cycloidal rotor blade the students work in the advanced vertical flight laboratory under the guidance of dr moble benedict assistant professor in aerospace engineering a total of 25 vff scholarships were awarded internationally this year and texas a&m is second in number of scholarships per university the scholarship winners will be honored at the 74th american helicopter society annual forum in may in phoenix arizona in addition to receiving their scholarships coleman halder and mcelreath will be presenting technical papers during the conference
dr andreas polycarpou head of the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university co-chaired a successful 2018 international mechanical engineering education leadership summit as part of the american society of mechanical engineers in march the summit held in in san diego california focused on the themes of safety and security in mechanical engineering specifically how they both apply to protection advances in technology–the internet smart cars smart cities–that have improved the lives of the average person must now ensure both safety and security as operating principles bringing in the age of the digital mechanical engineer a summary of the summits theme stated
dr nk anand the james m and ada sutton forsyth professor regents professor executive associate dean of engineering and associate director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station texas a&m university was a panelist for a discussion on various mechanical engineering partnerships ranging from government and industry to academia and nonprofits
dr arun srinivasa holdredge/paul professor in the department also attended the summit as a panelist on a safety and security of autonomous systems discussion that was moderated by polycarpou who is also the james j cain chair in mechanical engineering and the meinhard h kotzebue 14 professor srinivasas presentation was pedagogy technology/flipped and educating future mechanical engineers since 1989 the asme international mechanical engineering education leadership summit has brought together university industry and government leaders to discuss issues in engineering education and research and to sharing latest business management and curricular practices dr andreas polycarpou head of the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university co-chaired a successful 2018 international mechanical engineering education leadership summit as part of the american society of mechanical engineers in march dr nk anand was a panelist for a discussion on various mechanical engineering partnerships ranging from government and industry to academia and nonprofits dr arun srinivasa also attended the summit as a panelist on a safety and security of autonomous systems
harvey irma katrina the list of hurricanes and other natural disasters that have impacted the lives of millions of people continues to grow natural disasters disrupt communications restrict access to basic needs like electricity and water and can isolate entire communities forcing them to fend for themselves munich re a reinsurance company based in germany reported that natural disasters caused more damage in 2017 than in any of the five previous years events that some suggest are linked to our continually warming climate as a part of the aggie- challenge event students are working to change the way communities survive and thrive during natural disasters with a multifaceted program called disaster iq disaster iq has three primary components: tweetit seeit and mapit each component helps in providing disaster information through analytical data gathering resident self-reporting and disaster scenario education the approach we are using is based on data from a variety of sources to identify the effects different issues have on these communities said dr ali mostafavi the project faculty advisor and an assistant professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m the goal with this is three-fold: educating people on how to be smarter citizens during disasters using online data sources like social media for problem detection and cataloging and promoting resident self-reporting of issues like flooding or downed power lines in and around their communities the primary goal behind disaster iq is the dissemination of critical information organizations such as the us army national guard and other relief entities can use data gathered by disaster iq to triage and address challenges during and after national disasters this kind of community is what civil engineering student ehab abo deeb calls a smart city a city that can address challenges through data integration and community support the idea going forward is that well consolidate all of these practices into a single app said abo deeb ‘tweetit takes data from tweets and puts the incident maybe a power outage on a digital map to provide information to emergency responders we also have ‘mapit so that a user can manually put an incident on a map and report it and we have ‘seeit which [has] educational videos that teach people to be smarter citizens how to see warning signs and how to use the software to help themselves the key idea in this project according to abo deeb is community each resident has to pitch in to provide the information either self-reported or via social media to give emergency services the information they need to succeed abo deeb and his team were in the process of developing tweetit when hurricane harvey struck which put a whole new perspective on their work we all sifted through tweets manually during harvey and irma abo deeb said my brother lives in houston and the community where he works was heavily flooded i was touched seeing this area in disarray and seeing people clean up their houses its a vibrant community out there and to me it just reinforced the idea that we all have to pitch in as a community the team presented their prototype at the texas a&m engineering project showcase on april 27 with the goal that interested parties will help continue the projects development in the future they hope to integrate other social media platforms and web assets to help report the best information possible to emergency services the next phase is scaling the technology mostafavi said this system is a prototype in terms of the amount of data were currently able to process which is a body of about 100 000 tweets during harvey we had 23 million tweets alone that conveyed some type of disaster information so we want to build a capacity in the system that hits millions and billions and is able to analyze that data senior computer science engineering student michael peterson is one of the students involved with tweetit focusing on data analytics and using the data in tweets to create a comprehensive map one of the challenges is how we collect information from these tweets peterson said im working on clustering tweets which involves taking tweets that are all happening in the same area to create reliable information on what is happening as peterson abo deeb and eight other team members involved keep working to expand disaster iq their hope is that one day city municipalities will be able to use disaster iq as a reliable tool to promote infrastructure resilience disaster response and better the lives of those in the affected communities our goal is to deliver a tool to improve the lives of people during these extreme events and to transform this into a product for users mostafavi said i think the students are making great strides in doing that and we are excited to see it go further
dr zachary grasley presidential impact fellow director of the center for infrastructure renewal and professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m has been named a fellow of the american ceramic society (acers) grasley will be honored during the acers honors and awards banquet at their 120th annual meeting on oct 15 2018 in columbus ohio grasley was selected based on his scholarly contributions and leadership impact on the materials engineering industry grasley has spent his career making research contributions to the integration of analytical computational and experimental techniques across several length scales to fundamentally advance civil infrastructure materials grasley has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles has given more than 30 invited or keynote seminars and has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants totaling over $62 million
texas a&m university students were recently recognized for their efforts to end hunger in texas as part of the hunger free project a texas a&m tier one-funded grant this intercollegiate effort facilitates meaningful sustainable interactions between texas a&m students and organizations representing core values of leadership and selfless service in the community
after working all semester tackling problems facing local food banks and pantries 20 teams presented their solutions at the inaugural community engagement impact summit on the texas a&m campus industrial distribution students worked closely with peers from many other disciplines who were part of a class offered by the department of sociology to help local food agencies in need evaluators included directors of non-profit agencies from the local bryan-college station area champions of engaged scholarship on the texas a&m campus central texas food bank representatives as well as specially invited guests they did exceptionally well said dr malini natarajarathinam an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology & industrial distribution (who spearheaded the initiative
all the feedback the presentation evaluators provided us about the student presentations was impressive the evaluators were clearly impressed with the students presentation skills and how they had structured their presentations to focus on solutions and impact evaluators were so impressed by the teams that deliberations took almost an hour and were unable to narrow down their top three choices instead a total of five teams were selected as winners central texas food bank a strategic partner in the hunger free project awarded nearly $20 000 to the teams so they could implement their proposed solutions the winners include: academic and community engagement award winner group 12 (caritas of waco agency mentor: buddy edwards) trevor bartz celine jacques emily kenny christine sanford community impact award winner ($10 000) group 16 (hutto community food pantry agency mentor: connie gooding) cody cooper patricia dossett mathew romanchuk rosario vega-tirado community impact award runner-up ($5 000) group 6 (helping hands ministry of belton agency mentor: tasha roberts) daniels mengual avero lauren powers shelby schlesselman carter shults community impact award runner-up ($3 500) group 20 (micah 6 agency mentor: barry smith) blake broussard mateo camacho ricardo duenez kyle gardner kelsie warren community impact award runner-up ($1 000) group 19 (covenant umc pantry agency mentor: dan schultz) allison reese peter muller lukas vogt patrick wylie this program gives our students the opportunity to work on a truly collaborative effort said department head dr reza langari they are learning skills and knowledge that they need to assume moral leadership and solve societal problems both locally and worldwide two other programs were recognized at the summit including the service-learning faculty fellows program as well as presentation of the 2018 margaret rudder community service awards this summit was a collaborative venture across the texas a&m campus community the department of student activities leadership and service center in the division of student affairs planned the event with assistance from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution and the department of sociology public partnership and outreach in the office of the provost provided support for the luncheon
a research group in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university led by dr shiren wang is working to find efficient solutions to reusing and repurposing wasted heat energy industrial processes consume fuel to implement the desired operations unfortunately more than half of the energy produced is lost through waste heat thermoelectric technologies recycle waste heat by using it to create electricity for example thermoelectric products can be integrated into cellphones for increasing battery life or vehicle engines for improving fuel efficiency (see figure 1)
thermoelectric products are made from special materials that absorb heat and create electricity these products often need to have complex geometries that fit in tightly constrained spaces which makes 3d printing the ideal manufacturing technique unfortunately printable materials that demonstrate flexibility and high thermoelectric performance are in short supply wangs research group has invented a new hybrid nanostructure that can serve as ink for scalable printing with good mechanical flexibility and outstanding thermoelectric properties the efficiency of recycling water heat is around 12 percent for a thermal gradient of 60 oc and 6 percent for a thermal gradient of 260 oc for example in an iphone x printing of wangs thermoelectric materials onto the battery could extend the battery lifetime 5-10 minutes if integrated within vehicle engines the fuel efficiency can be improved by 6 percent in freeway driving that means every gallon of fuel can run one-two more miles dr mark lawley head of the industrial and systems engineering department said wangs remarkable achievement is the culmination of years of difficult research his work has the potential to save our economy billions of dollars in energy consumption while reducing societys impact on the global environment lawley said congratulations to dr wang for this outstanding work wangs research has been selected for publication in the prestigious journal energy & environmental science of the royal society of chemistry energy & environmental science is an international journal that publishes important high-quality and agenda-setting research relating to energy conversion and storage alternative fuel technologies and environmental science with an impact factor of 295
james mcelreath an undergraduate student in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university was named the international runner-up of the american helicopter societys (ahs) prestigious 2018 robert l lichten award competition mcelreath works with assistant professor dr moble benedict in the advanced vertical flight laboratory and his project involves force and flowfield measurements to understand the 3d unsteady aerodynamics on a cycloidal rotor blade operating at ultralow reynolds numbers mcelreath won the award for his paper tip vortex measurements on a cycloidal rotor blade at ultralow reynolds numbers he will be honored at the annual grand awards banquet at the 74th ahs forum in phoenix ariz in may previously he was the first prize winner from the southwest region and at the international level he competed with six other regional winners including graduate students and employees from sikorsky and the army aviation directorate to win the second place the robert l lichten award was established in 1975 to honor the memory of robert l lichten an outstanding rotary-wing engineer and the societys 22nd president it recognizes new and innovative research in the area of vertical flight and encourages ahs members who have not previously presented to begin making public the results of their work through presentations at the local level each of the ahs regions around the world is eligible to select a regional winner from which an overall international winner and runner-up are selected
following a dream to build and install underwater habitats ron smith found the key to his dream in by earning a degree in ocean engineering from texas a&m university i told my mom that i wanted to be an oceanographer that knew how to build structures underwater said smith founder of deep down inc and advisory board member in the department of ocean engineering this was in 1975 when i was a junior in high school she presented texas a&ms ocean engineering program to me and i knew instantly this is what i wanted to do but i didnt want my parents to have to pay for my education when i had that covered from the naval academy
upon graduation smith began working as a drilling engineer trainee at odeco in new orleans he was one of the first to have the unlimited master modular offshore drilling units (modu) marine license so he managed the semi-submersible modus while there he learned from a mentor lee trahan that work success is based on 20 percent ability and 80 percent working well with others i worked seven or 14 days offshore and in my off-time i either worked in the office five days a week or went to training schools that a few of us in the same program set up smith said it was a self-training program i learned to balance my ocean engineering education with real field experience and found that spot right in the middle which shaped my career trahan was just one of many mentors smith learned from in his life that deeply influenced who he has become and what he is committed to in his work and personal life my dad was a retired marine corps major and highly-decorated f4u corsair fighter pilot smith said he was also my baseball coach scout master hunting and fishing teacher anything i wanted to do he was grown up doing everything with me and teaching me lessons without me knowing i was being taught when i got to high school and he asked about my day i told him what all we did not have he got himself on the school board and organized a bond election as he was a stock broker as a school board member smiths dad cleaned up the school and obtained all the chemistry physics athletic and art equipment students could possibly need he followed me every step of the way and made sure i had all the support i needed no matter what the topic smith said then smith went to texas a&m and met another key mentor
dr robert randall made me feel important no matter what my grades were and found the spot for each person teaching us to be all we could be from a fun educational and career-building way smith said in 1997 he decided to embark on a journey of his own to provide save-the-day products and services to oil companies deep down inc was founded and has since supported companies on some of the most important field developments in the world and some of the most critical catastrophes it was mine and patrice chemins president of stolt comex seaway effort to talk our respective bosses into forming an alliance between kvaerner and stolt comex seaway to provide turnkey supply and installation of our steel tube umbilicals smith said shell decided to form a frame agreement on who would supply all their complete subsea systems and fmc technologies was awarded the contract shortly afterwards shell consolidated the controls into fmc and agreed to start using kongsberg controls an fmc owned company with fmc and shift to an all-inclusive frame agreement of fmc supply shell could no longer support smiths company from kvaerner fssl as they were competitors to fmc while discussing my predicament with patrice he told me ‘ron deep down youll never be truly happy until you have your own company hey you should call it deep down smith said so i took his advice and formed deep down inc in the following days what was once one person and then one specialized team on the deck of the vessel is now a team of about 100 people with a concentrated effort to keep it lean and mean in order to maintain all the expectations set out our client at bp once said ‘ddi is a small company that does big things which is something close to my heart smith said we now have all the systems in place to either maintain this 100-person level with all the safety and quality that goes with it or increase to two or three times the size providing exponentially more to our clients and still maintain our core values and skill sets today his job description goes beyond ocean engineering and includes words such as influencer professional mentor and role model smith is a platinum level sponsor of the aggie ocean discovery xprize student team that has now reached the finalist level of the international shell ocean discovery xprize competition it meant a lot to be there for the faculty and the students to share how their education and my experience has been a good blend to help both the professors in their teaching and the students in their learning smith said my niche is promoting that balance i keep talking about also by opening my shop and team to the students in an internship makes me proud to see our influence start to take roots and see the students grow in front of our very eyes i want to continue to do this
smith was named the inaugural department of ocean engineering outstanding alumni last fall in recognition of his work and support of the department smith credits his teaching and mentoring style to another mentor of his own captain peter bamber a marine superintendent from his days at odeco he was a british sea captain in the british and cajun navys in which education was focused on academic growth and internships as they did in the united kingdom smith said he pushed me to develop the skillsets to solve the offshore problems and find the best balance of education and experience i think this is where i get much of my training aptitude and desire to have interns like the xprize team in my company i want to give back smith encourages new graduates to take the time to learn from those who have been in the industry for a while as he did respect those old guys in the field and learn from them by listening and working with them smith said get as much offshore experience as possible and blend it with the education and find your own balance whether it is most education with a little experience or most experience with a little education or smack down the middle
three college station startups are among the 16 semifinalists announced for the 2018 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) at the may 17 competition judges will narrow the field of 16 semi-finalists from across texas down to six finalists the final judging round begins at 1 pm and is open to the public and the media the finals will take place in the all american club at kyle field this years startups include companies from across a wide spectrum of fields including healthcare it/software digital health transportation and clean energy technology at more than $350 000 in cash and in-kind services the prize pool for this years competition is the largest yet details on specific awards will be announced closer to the competition since 2014 the tnvc has awarded more than $700 000 in prizes to texas-based startups last years winner was intuitap medical a houston-based medical device company that is developing a technology that helps physicians more accurately and efficiently place spinal needles for epidurals and spinal taps 2018 semi-finalists: admetsys -- houston admetsys was formed to explore the next generation of diabetes treatment technology: patient-adaptive learning algorithms coupled with counterbalancing medication delivery the union of these with automated blood glucose measurement and state-of-the-art visualization has created a transformative product advanced scanners inc -- temple advanced scanners is a seed stage medical device company making a 3d optical scanner and computer vision system to augment a surgeons capabilities in the operating room this will improve precision reducing the amount of brain tissue removed reducing potentially catastrophic but avoidable side effects alleviant medical -- houston alleviant medical is developing a minimally invasive device to treat congestive heart failure that is intended to relieve symptoms improve quality of life and reduce hospital readmissions for more than 6 million patients suffering from this condition nationwide arovia inc -- houston arovia makes spud the spontaneous pop-up display the first and only desktop-sized display that collapses like an umbrella for portability atmospark -- beaumont atmospark technologies llc develops atmospheric water generation systems that provide constant freshwater to those with limited access or in remote locations around the world its first product blu element enables cruising sailboat owners with unreliable water makers to reduce downtime risk up to 80 percent saving up to $16 000 per year m&s biotics -- houston m&s biotics is developing an autonomous internet of things solution to detect track count and locate surgical items within the operating room in real-time this effectively automates the surgical counting process while providing downstream analytics regarding instrument utilization by leveraging machine learning polarpanel -- houston polarpanel is a solar energy startup focused on bringing clean reliable and low-maintenance refrigeration technology to the commercial cold chain polarpanel is specifically targeting rail by retrofitting refrigerated railcars with nasa-developed solar technology that removes the need for both battery and a large diesel generator responderx -- college station after the deaths of two bryan texas firefighters in 2013 responderx was founded by a firefighter with a technical background to use emerging technology improve the safety of first responders their patented system allows for real-time tracking and locating of firefighters inside of buildings something that is not currently possible saber corporation -- college station saber is developing an antimicrobial bandage to provide a cost-saving solution by helping hospital staff reduce healthcare associated infections the company is utilizing blue light technology to protect patients prevent life-threatening infections and provide cost savings to hospitals and the healthcare system stream biomedical inc -- college station stream biomedical is an early-stage company founded to address unmet therapeutic needs for individuals suffering as a result of neurological trauma and/or degeneration stream is initially developing an acute stroke therapy a biologic drug that has shown preclinically to be neuroprotective and neuroreparative resulting in dramatic functional improvement sunrise health -- houston sunrise health is an app for text-based group therapy and peer support where patients with substance abuse or mental health conditions can receive 24/7 stigma-free support the app uses artificial intelligence to catch clinically relevant information within messages so existing providers can focus their time on patients most in need vastbiome -- houston vastbiome applies machine-learning methods to model how the gut microbiome influences disease the company enables pharmaceutical companies to select the best patients for clinical trial enrollment by predicting patient response to immunotherapy venostent -- dallas a jlabs startup company from vanderbilt university ip venostent inc is developing a shape memory polymer external stent to improve the quality and length of life for the more than 2 million (and growing) dialysis patients worldwide verdegen -- kingwood verdegens go! mosquito repellent gel is modeled on the success of hand sanitizer and hand soap wall-mount dispensers verdegens dispenser-based products are designed to put repellents where people need them and lets communities/businesses protect their residents/customers xyber -- austin data centers consume 3 percent of the worlds power and consume more than 160 billion gallons of fresh water each year for cooling alone xyber technologies has developed a cooling system for new and existing data centers that reduces power consumption by 40 percent thereby saving the average data center more than $500 000 per year yotta solar -- austin solar energy has become the cheapest form of new electricity generation in many parts of the world energy storage is required to fully utilize solar as a reliable power source yotta is simplifying energy storage with solarleaf an industry first advanced battery that mounts directly behind solar modules drastically reducing installed cost
kyle fields hall of champions was packed for the sixth annual engineering project showcase the annual celebration of the technical accomplishments of texas a&m universitys engineering undergraduate students more than 200 teams with freshmen to seniors across all engineering departments participated and presented their team projects through posters and prototypes to industry judges in competition for top awards while not mandatory a great deal of the projects at showcase this year relied on functioning prototypes to demonstrate their progress and mastery of the need statement they chose to answer the student team behind the low-cost field-use nystagmus (fun) recorder demonstrated their goggles much to the delight of showcase attendees while the ultimate purpose of the goggles is to assist law enforcement in the conviction of duis by recording rapid eye movement the demonstrator entertained the crowd with over-enlarged eyes from magnifying glasses people will be charged but not convicted because a lot of evidence is thrown out said christopher vega biomedical engineering senior these will record the eyes illuminate them and make it a lot more constant so that in a court of law the evidence is fully admissible and it can actually assist in getting a drunk driver off the streets and keeping the streets a lot safer the students worked with the local sheriffs department as well as a local ear nose and throat physician when the biomedical engineering department was presented with the conviction challenge as well as the overall hopes for an end result the student team came up with the fun goggles
the mechanical engineering student team that took second place in their category with a document preservation tool had a very positive experience with their sponsor the texas a&m university libraries the team worked to help the library staff preserve historical document integrity from oils environmental influences and moisture they created a welding encapsulator that uses ultrasonic energy to create a seam or spot weld around a document or item showcase has been awesome in that ive never seen so many engineering students work so hard on a project said sheila khodadad mechanical engineering senior a lot of us didnt have any experience coming into this then you get this new idea and youre trying to figure out how to solve this problem its just really worthwhile learning how to problem solve in real life seeing a design all the way to development is just a really good feeling you work so hard with your teammates and its been amazing industry judges were impressed with this years projects many found themselves interacting with the teams beyond those they were asked to judge simply because the projects were so impactful many of the industry judges had participated in the past citing the interesting and unique projects as a main cause for returning originally from mexico jose quintana 86 president of advent gx came to study computer science at texas a&m and ended up staying in the area for work this was his second year to judge for the showcase these are technologies that contribute to the betterment of our community said jose quintana ‘86 president of advent gx even judging the freshman students with their marble-sorting technology is great to see [showcase] gives us the opportunity to see the kids at work have them go through a process where they have to manage their teams and the design process itself judges and visitors arent the only ones to benefit from the team project experience as roger kittrell 86 sector leader in transportation with the wood group pointed out the students gain skills outside of the classroom that polish them as a potential hire my son is a sophomore electrical engineer said kittrell i told him that once he graduates all you are going to have is one sheet of white paper that represents all youve done they arent going to know anything about you except whats on that one sheet of paper and by talking to you youve got to get as much experience as possible the projects allow students to interact as a group just like a work environment where they would have a problem that needed to be solved and collaborate on solving it together the interaction and communication skills gained through team interaction is a large part of why showcase participants enjoyed it because few engineering industries have individual work scenarios students learning to collaborate and communicate in a real-world environment helps round them out ensuring the showcase happens annually is very important to me said magda lagoudas executive director of industry and nonprofit partnerships for the college of engineering i know these students benefit immensely from the experience of interacting with industry and the journey to getting their projects and themselves ready for the judges we are extremely grateful for industry involvement each year especially as our showcase grows larger to accommodate more majors and more diversity in projects this event was made possible by the 2018 engineering project showcase sponsors and supporters: kubota texas a&m engineering experiment station baker hughes boeing elbit systems of america emerson houston airports peak nano student project sponsors industry judges and support staff and faculty winners of of the 2018 engineering project showcase: biological and agricultural engineering capstone design winners:kubota tractor corporation award: sasle nicaragua water conveyance and distribution systemsecond place: controlled atmosphere storage biomedical engineering capstone design winner:development of a non-blood contacting pediatric heart augmentation device various department capstone design winner:commbo: modernizing augmentative and alternative communication electrical & computer engineering capstone design winner:elbit systems of america award: east texas climate tracking engineering technology & industrial distribution capstone design winners:emerson award: nasa class-1e facility monitoring and control systemsecond place: mobility worldwide industrial & systems engineering capstone design winners:houston airport system award: autonomy as a service: the optimal experiencesecond place: revitalizing american manufacturing with lean practices mechanical engineering capstone design winners:kubota tractor corporation award: shredder for recycling plasticssecond place: texas a&m university libraries document encapsulator project aggie_challenge winners:the boeing company award: ecomoldsecond place: advanced vapor compressor desalination (desalination & power team) design competition winners:baker hughes a ge company award: marlin auv tees commercialization award:smart harness system: the future of fall protection | mechanical engineering capstone design team non-capstone other course project winner:lazarus specialty ammunition engr 112 winners:team 9team 5
a senior design course capstone team in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university won first place in the texas space grant consortium (tsgc) design challenge for their presentation on 3d printed antennas the tsgc design challenge is a unique academic experience offering undergraduate students an opportunity to propose design and fabricate a solution to a toward solving research objectives of importance to nasa and its mission the team isen team 10 nasa won first place in top design second in best poster and best model and third in best oral presentation at the event team members included undergraduate students gregory bair cindy zuniga stephanie urrutia and cameron wagner dr nancy currie-gregg professor of practice in the department of industrial and systems engineering and former astronaut was the teams faculty advisor as space exploration deepens resupply missions are become more and more complex making 3d printing a preferred solution said urrutia if a part breaks or is missing a 3d printer could print a part in a matter of hours rather than having to wait weeks or months for a resupply mission the challenge tasked competitors with evaluating the performance of commercially available 3d conductive filaments in antenna applications with recent advances in 3d printing methods a wide variety of new filaments have been developed including conductive filaments said urrutia we selected two pla filaments; graphite pla by proto-pasta and f-electric by functionalize we then made a model of a horn antenna using solidworks and printed it at the engineering innovation center with the help of the department of electrical and computer engineering the team conducted an impedance and radiation pattern test while the antennas were not conductive enough to perform as antennas the team learned valuable information from the experience as an industrial engineer i only had a basic understanding of electrical engineering concepts and 3d printing said urrutia i spoke to subject matter experts and brought their knowledge together to complete the project this was the first time i had the opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary team and i thoroughly enjoyed it currie-gregg enjoyed mentoring the students and was proud of the manner in which they represented the department college and university the students were extremely enthusiastic and learned a tremendous amount throughout the semester including technical skills such as cad design and additive manufacturing project management skills and the importance of collaboration with other engineering disciplines said currie-gregg
team gleans new insights on key material engineers from texas a&m university and virginia tech report important new insights into nanoporous gold--a material with growing applications in several areas including energy storage and biomedical devices--all without stepping into a lab instead of conducting any additional experiments the team used image-analysis software developed in-house to mine the existing literature on nanoporous gold (npg) specifically the software analyzed photographs of npg from some 150 peer-reviewed papers quickly measuring key features of the material that the researchers then correlated with written descriptions of how the samples were prepared one of the results a recipe of sorts for how to make npg with specific characteristics
we were able to back out a quantitative law that explains how you can change npg features by changing the processing times and temperatures said ian mccue a postdoctoral researcher in the texas a&m department of materials science and engineering mccue is lead author of a paper on the work published online in the april 30 issue of scientific reports the team also identified a new parameter related to npg that could be used to better tune the material for specific applications before our work engineers knew of one tunable ‘knob for npg now we have a second one that could give us even more control over the materials properties said josh stuckner a graduate student at virginia tech and co-author of the paper stuckner developed the software that allowed the new insights other authors are dr michael j demkowicz associate professor in the materials science and engineering department at texas a&m and dr mitsu murayama associate professor at virginia tech nanoporous gold has been studied for some 15 years but little is actually known about its physical characteristics and the limits of its tunability for specific applications the team writes in scientific reports the material is a three-dimensional porous network of interweaving strands or ligaments multiple ligaments in turn connect at points called nodes all of these features are almost unimaginably small stuckner notes for example that some of the smaller pores would fit about three strands of dna side by side as a result mccue said the overall structure is very complex and its been extremely difficult and time-consuming to measure features like the lengths between nodes and the diameters of ligaments but stuckners software has changed that manually it might take 20 minutes to over an hour to measure the features associated with one image stuckner said we can do it in a minute or even just tell the computer to measure a whole slew of images while we walk away earlier attempts to measure npg features led to very small data sets of five or six data points the texas a&m/virginia tech team has looked at around 80 data points that in turn allowed the team to create the new quantitative description of npg features associated with different processing techniques all that without doing any actual experiments just clever data-mining and analysis said mccue the work has also led to new publication guidelines for future researchers of the 2 000 papers the team originally analyzed only 150 had useful information we had to throw out a lot of data due to poor image quality or a lack of written information on how a given npg was processed mccue said the new guidelines could prevent that ultimately allowing better data mining not only for npg but for other materials their work was supported by the national science foundation (nsf) through a program called designing materials to revolutionize and engineer our future (dmref) the dmref is the nsfs response to the materials genome initiative a multi-agency federal program that aims to discover manufacture and deploy advanced materials twice as fast at a fraction of the cost top picture: by the naked eye nanoporous gold might look like normal gold but very small-scale features emerge under high magnification using high-resolution microscopes electron micrograph courtesy of johns hopkins university
water is a resource that is not only in constant demand but also has the power to cause catastrophic damage to urban communities these communities need a resilient infrastructure as a resource in order to be adaptable and effective stewards of the resources
texas a&m university zachry department of civil engineering doctoral student kambiz rasoulkhani has dedicated himself to studying the long-term resilience of water infrastructure systems in urban communities he evaluated these communities using simulations based on current day data creating projections on how resilient a communitys infrastructure might be over a period of 50 to 100 years in the future the goal of his work is to see the effects of natural disasters on a citys long-term infrastructure sustainability work for which he was recognized at the 2018 american society of civil engineers construction research congress im interested in applying technical and infrastructure solutions that can enhance the urban water infrastructure resilience on both the demand and supply side of water utilities said rasoulkhani on the demand side i attempted to identify pathways leading toward [increased] adoption of conservation technologies for water users like you and i and on the supply side i examined the effectiveness of physical infrastructure solutions for the water utilities professionals who are making decisions on how the water infrastructure system is managed in his research rasoulkhani used a simulation research approach applying multi-agent based modeling to look at the long-term effects of the mechanisms underlying a water distribution infrastructures behavior he has developed simulation models to capture long-term performance metrics based on data collected in cities across the country such as fort collins colorado
"im not looking at just a single pipeline rasoulkhani said im looking at the whole system in this which is what is called a complex system approach in looking at the data from fort collins we can capture the dynamics of singular and dual water distribution systems and compare them over an extended 50-year horizon through simulation to understand all the dynamics and life cycle costs rasoulkhani believes these models can be used by the city decision makers to implement strategies that can improve or enhance the resilience of urban infrastructure systems and help short- and long-term recovery from disasters like droughts and floods moving forward the next step in his research is to validate the findings of his study he looks to expand his study to include costal water infrastructure resilience by evaluating areas like miami florida that are more exposed to extreme weather events my ultimate goal in all of this is to help in the creation of sustainable cities rasoulkhani said for our future we have to make sure that we will have access to more water we have to make sure we have infrastructure that is resilient in order to be sustainable and thrive and this is part of that answer"""
seven faculty members from the college of engineering were selected to receive a 2018 distinguished achievement award from texas a&m university and the association of former students they were among a group of 24 outstanding members of texas a&m faculty and staff who were honored first presented in 1955 the university-level distinguished achievement awards have been awarded to more than 1 000 professionals who have exhibited the highest standards of excellence at texas a&m the 2018 distinguished achievement awards were formally presented to the recipients on april 27 during ceremonies in rudder theatre on the texas a&m campus the 2018 recipients from the college of engineering were:
mark t holtzapple artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering
krishna r narayanan department of electrical and computer engineering
nancy amato department of computer science and engineering
perla b balbuena artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering
mladen kezunovic department of electrical and computer engineering
daniel a mcadams department of mechanical engineering
nk anand executive associate dean
nine sophomore and junior mechatronics engineering technology (mxet) students from texas a&m university took their first industry field trip to fort worth texas to visit and tour bell helicopter glenn isbell 96 vice president of rapid prototyping and manufacturing innovation and glenn rodriguez quality operations manager hosted the students visiting from the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution
isbell provided an introduction to bell helicopter including an update on their newest aircraft the v-22 (vertical take off and landing) osprey and the bell air taxi a joint project with uber through this overview and discussions it became very clear that the mxet curriculum which integrates mechanics electronics embedded computers control and communications is a perfect fit for entry level positions and rewarding careers at bell students then toured the bell manufacturing facilities of particular interest was the production and testing of composite helicopter blades and other major components used to manufacture advanced military and commercial aircraft
the group then visited the bell training center here students had the opportunity to learn about the different levels of simulators that bell has to train and certify helicopter pilots afterwards students visited the aircraft maintenance training facility where bell provides hands-on training for maintenance personnel from around the world the trip allowed the first cadre of mxet students to see the types of entry-level positions that will be available in the aerospace industry segment when they graduate having the opportunity to interact with these bright and inquisitive young men and women also generated interest in bell engineers and managers to engage in the new undergraduate program in mechatronics established by dr reza langari department head of the engineering technology and industrial distribution department mxet faculty and students are hopeful that bell will be ready to sponsor the first mxet capstone project in fall 2018 and take a leadership role in the development of the mxet industry advisory committee the mxet program will continue to visit and interact with the private and public sectors so students get a better idea about opportunities in other industry segments such as oil and gas and automotive to learn more about the mechatronics program contact dr joseph morgan
the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was well-represented at the annual physics and engineering festival hosted by the department of physics and astronomy at texas a&m on saturday april 7 the event boasted over 200 interactive demonstrations and lectures and over 5 000 visitors attended dr krishna narayanan the eric d rubin 06 professor and david gent a former student represented the electrical and computer engineering department during the festival and their presentations resonated with the community and drew interest in the field of electrical engineering and all the department is doing narayanans presentation centered on the voyager spacecraft which launched in 1977 there were two space probes in the original launch – one devoted to studying jupiter and saturn and the other to study uranus neptune and pluto voyager sent back pictures of jupiter saturn and the moons of jupiter then it continued on its way now billions of kilometers away we are still receiving signals from the spacecraft the question is ‘how are we still getting signals from there narayanan said you have to keep in mind that voyager was launched in 1977 in 1977 there wasnt a lot of technology the cell phone today is a more powerful computer than the computer that is on the voyager and we are still getting signals from there we talked about how electrical engineering and communications technologies make this possible
gent showcased several demonstrations including telegraphs a replica titanic transmitter an orange powered digital clock a morse code keyboard and more the hit of the show was my morse code keyboard gent said i let visitors type in their name so i would decode their name by ear as they typed many people thought i was a mind reader or at least had a hidden camera watching them type both narayanan and gent said that there was no shortage of interest in their demonstrations and that parents and children alike were excited and engaged the physics and engineering festival provides a venue for the department to highlight and share the exciting work that is being done with the public
innovation and advancements in biomedical and engineering research was the theme of this years lasker lecture and spring biomedical imaging symposium hosted by texas a&m university and the houston methodist hospitals enmed program event attendees came together april 25-26 to share best practices and attend sessions led by some of the nations most renowned experts in the fields of medicine and engineering dr roderic i pettigrew ceo of enhealth and executive dean of enmed gave the 2018 lasker lecture the prestigious lasker lecture is an honor bestowed upon a distinguished individual serves to advance public understanding and discourse about the ways in which we collectively pursue answers to questions posed by science and are intended to boost public understanding of the importance of biomedical research to society in conjunction with the lecture was the daylong spring biomedical imaging symposium which brought together interested parties for discussions concerning education ways to spur innovation and the future of the biomedical and engineering fields speakers included researchers and faculty members from md anderson ucla the mayo clinic harvard medical school houston methodist research institute rice university texas a&m the center for airborne pathogen research and tuberculosis imaging and the texas a&m institute for preclinical studies we are bringing together experts who share our vision to elevate discussion and inspire new ideas at the intersection of engineering and medicine said dr m katherine banks dean of texas a&m engineering in an opening address to attendees in the not-so-distant future we could engage robo-diagnosticians who prescribe custom 3-d printed pills conveniently delivered by drones to the patients location i am confident texas a&m and houston methodist will be well-regarded as pioneers in this new age dr carrie byington dean of the college of medicine at the texas a&m health science center echoed banks sentiment we will all benefit as the domains of scientific discovery technological innovation and health care converge the enmed program and the symposium embrace this future enmed is recognized as a first of its type innovative inter-institutional and intercollegiate academic and scholarly program launched as a venture among the college of engineering led by banks; the college of medicine led by byington; and the houston methodist research institute led by president and ceo dr mauro ferrari enmed has emerged as a national model for convergence at the level of the practice – the unified practice of engineering and medicine enmeds curriculum was recently approved by liaison committee on medical education (lcme) accreditation and the program is currently recruiting the inaugural class which will enter in 2019 each student enrolled in enmed will have an undergraduate degree in engineering or computing science then in four years they will earn their medical degree and a master of science in engineering enmed graduates will be both practicing physicians and trained engineers poised to tackle some of health cares greatest challenges through the invention of novel technologies
dr dennis assanis continues to find ways to take engineering impacts to new heights through collaboration with experts in fields ranging from healthcare to art you really need to consider all aspects especially if you want a bigger impact assanis said a lot of our education in the future needs to be more creative and more interdisciplinary if the intent is to make a greater contribution to society assanis president of the university of delaware met with graduate students on march 21 as part of the department of mechanical engineerings fowler distinguished lecture series at texas a&m university before becoming university president in 2016 assanis served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at stony brook university and as vice president for brookhaven national laboratory affairs he previously taught and conducted research at the university of michigan and the university of illinois at urbana-champaign growing up in athens greece assanis said he remembers how education in his formative years took a holistic approach and included topics ranging from the sciences to liberal arts he said taking a similar mindset with an engineering education is beneficial to engineers who tend to be more analytical and systems-oriented what is nice in general about engineers is that their training prepares them well to think analytically to think about every problem as a big system that has some input some output and some constraints assanis said with that kind of analytical thinking you can approach problems at least to a degree but thats not enough because of all these other factors; the people factors the emotional factors the constraints that you have around the world assanis said it is important to place engineering within the context of the broader environment that encompasses society economic and political aspects if it is engineering for engineers it wont quite have the same impact assanis said it needs to be engineering for the world assanis received his bachelors degree in marine engineering from newcastle university in england at the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) he earned masters degrees in naval architecture and marine engineering mechanical engineering and management he also earned a doctoral degree in power and propulsion while at mit i went into engineering because it felt to me more analytical and more systems-oriented than some of the other fields assanis said but i didnt lose sight of the fact that you need to continue to have your grounding in the social and environmental aspects that are happening around you communication collaboration and social skills are important he emphasized the role and contributions of his wife eleni and their two sons in expanding his interdisciplinary perspective on a wide range of topics throughout his life assanis said there are some challenges to developing a more interdisciplinary approach to an engineering career one example is that the awards system in academia especially in the early years of a career are based on individual contributions and research he feels that researchers can benefit from having a mixture of independent work to build credentials and collaborative work with others with an engineering degree assanis said the sky is the limit even if graduates use their knowledge and skills in unconventional ways he has known engineering majors who have become doctors lawyers and even priests its such excellent preparation he said some of the best doctors i have encountered were the ones who actually had an undergraduate degree in engineering preferably mechanical engineering because they knew how to analyze what is going on with your condition with logic assanis visit for his seminar was his first time at texas a&m he said he enjoyed meeting aggies and touring different parts of campus ive always heard great things about texas a&m and especially about the engineering program he said it is really one of the power houses in engineering so anybody in the field of engineering aspires at some point in their life to pay a visit and see what the campus has to offer assanis is a distinguished educator with a wide range of academic leadership experience and a worldwide reputation as a scholar and expert in both fundamental and applied studies of internal combustion engines and energy systems he was elected as a member of the national academy of engineering in 2008 his advice to future engineers was to embrace the other disciplines ranging from public policy and social studies to the business world and health sciences youre going to have an even stronger impact assanis said even though youre very good in engineering i think its important that you collaborate with all the other sciences to make a bigger impact the fowler distinguished lecture series invites nationally recognized engineers and scientists to lecture as part of the graduate department seminar class
dr daniel a jiménez professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been appointed the interim chair of the institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) computer society technical committee on computer architecture (tcca) tcca is a community of researchers and practitioners involved with the architecture (integrated hardware and software design) of general- and special-purpose computers this committee oversees ieee computer society activities related to computer architecture research including sponsorship of the ieee international symposium on high-performance computer architecture (hpca) and the association for computing machinery (acm)/ieee international symposium on computer architecture (isca) (shared with acm sigarch) as well as a number of other conferences as chair jiménez leads an executive committee of 18 highly qualified computer architects including many former program chairs and general chairs of isca hpca and other prestigious conferences this includes former chairs of tcca who also provide advice among other responsibilities tcca selects the program chairs and general chairs for the hpca conference and oversees the selection of the program committee for hpca they also cooperate with acm sigarch to select the program chairs and general chairs for the isca conference tcca also sponsors a number of awards many in cooperation with acm sigarch recent initiatives from tcca include improving diversity in their conferences as well as finding new ways to highlight the contributions of computer architecture research and researchers one of the main activities this year will be the 2018 isca conference during which david patterson and john l hennessy will give their acm turing award lecture jiménez and his acm sigarch counterpart will lead the isca business meeting where he will present outcomes of recent tcca activities and discuss new proposed activities including future venues for tcca sponsored conferences jiménezs term as interim chair will extend through september 2018 when a new election will determine the next tcca chair preceding his appointment as interim tcca chair jiménez served as a member of the tcca executive committee for several years as program chair of hpca 2017 and general chair of hpca 2011 as tcca chair he also become a member of the steering committee for the isca conference jiménezs research focuses are computer architecture and compilers he was inducted into the acm/ieee international symposium on microarchitecture (micro) hall of fame in 2017 and the ieee international symposium on high performance computer architecture (hpca) hall of fame in 2015 and is notable for inventing the perceptron branch predictor published with co-author dr calvin lin professor at the university of texas at austin as well as other impactful research
secretary of the us air force heather wilson and more than 400 invited guests from academia and industry gathered at texas a&m university for the air force science and technology 2030 forum texas a&m is honored to host secretary wilson and other distinguished guests on our campus today said michael k young president of texas a&m as a tier-one research university discovery and innovation are paramount to our mission in education and also in supporting the us air force in foreseeing tomorrows technology wilson launched an initiative in september 2017 to update the air forces science and technology strategy by hosting discussions about research innovations with the scientific community prestigious research universities and business professionals with this initiative we are going out to listen to americans from higher education to small and large businesses to understand what basic and applied technologies will help us create the next game-changing inventions for 2030 and beyond said maj gen william cooley air force research laboratory commander ­ texas a&m has a long history of producing talented graduates who go on to distinguished careers in the air force and our other military branches said wilson we look forward to engaging with the university on the basic and applied research that will shape the future of our air force as one of only 17 institutions in the nation to be designated a land- sea- and space-grant university texas a&m was the perfect setting for this unique opportunity to help shape discussions on research innovations for the next generation of technology used by the us air force some of the most important and high-stakes research in the country is going on right here at texas a&m university said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp aggies can always be counted on to help with matters of national security panel discussions at the workshop focused on four important research areas: space situational awareness; nuclear delivery systems; hypersonics lasers and electromagnetics; and engineering and military medicine texas a&m has one of the largest and most diverse defense research programs in the nation and a long history with the air force in advancing key technologies said m katherine banks vice chancellor and dean of texas a&m engineering we are honored to host this forward-thinking and vision-inspiring event as the air force prepares for a technology future that for many is difficult to fathom ideas generated from the forums will be gathered and those with the greatest promise will be considered by a panel chaired by the chief scientist of the air force selected research opportunities will then be documented in a formal report to the secretary of the air force in september to help shape air force research investments over the coming decade texas a&m is one of six university locations across the country to host the air force science and technology 2030 forum the forums were held earlier in the year at the university of nebraska university of south florida indiana university and university of washington the final forum will be held at the university of utah
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and the texas a&m university division of research hosted a national science foundation (nsf) faculty early career development (career) proposal writing workshop featuring dr george hazelrigg a former nsf program officer who has been speaking at similar workshops for more than 15 years the prestigious nsf career program is a foundation-wide activity that offers the nsfs most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization which offers funding for five years activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research this workshop was organized at the initiative of dr zj pei who has participated in similar workshops in earlier years while he was at nsf said dr narasimha reddy associate agency director for strategic initiatives and centers at tees associate dean for research in the college of engineering and a career award recipient the strong participation from young faculty is a welcome sign that this workshop is addressing a clear need we hope the experience from this workshop will lead to better proposals and outcomes
nearly 100 junior faculty from tees texas a&m and texas a&m university system schools attended the workshop which included a lecture a question and answer session group exercises a mock review panel and a reception with hazelrigg tees leadership former nsf program directors senior faculty recent career awardees and other participants ive been working with junior faculty on their career proposals for over 15 years and this is one of the best overall workshop formats ive seen highlighted by strong interactions with multiple nsf program officers said dr laurie garton tees senior research development officer and organizer of the co-workshop
the department of biomedical engineering hosted biomaterials day at texas a&m university on june 1 it marked the ninth annual biomaterials day conference in texas and the fourth time it has been held at texas a&m the goal of biomaterials day which is sponsored by the society for biomaterials is to enhance networking between academic and industrial sectors and increase student exposure to exciting biomaterials research dr daniel alge assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department and lead organizer of the conference said the turnout was impressive there were 191 registrants for the conference representing texas a&m the university of texas at austin the university of texas at san antonio the university of texas at dallas rice university texas state university trinity university the university of oklahoma the us army institute for surgical research abbott and integra life sciences in addition 100 abstracts were submitted for the poster session it was a testament to the vibrant biomaterials research community in the area alge said
the keynote address was delivered by dr steven little the william kepler whiteford endowed professor of chemical and petroleum engineering bioengineering pharmaceutical sciences immunology ophthalmology and the mcgowan institute for regenerative medicine at the university of pittsburgh littles research has resulted in 80 peer reviewed publications four us patents and the founding of two spin-out companies located in pittsburgh pa he serves as the 12th chairman of the department of chemical and petroleum engineering the event also included invited talks by leading texas biomaterial scientists dr duncan maitland from the biomedical engineering department at texas a&m spoke of his work developing and translating occlusion devices using shape memory polymer foams other invited speakers were dr liping tang (department of bioengineering the university of texas at arlington) dr junghae suh (department of bioengineering rice university) dr eric brey (department of biomedical engineering the university of texas at san antonio) dr julie hakim (pediatric and adolescent gynecology baylor college of medicine) and dr jerome klawitter (integra life sciences) students presented during a poster session and nine were selected to deliver five-minute rapid-fire presentations awards were given to the top undergraduate and graduate student presenters in each category the winners for best rapid-fire presentation were marissa wechsler (graduate student in dr nicholas a peppas lab at the university of texas at austin) and michael talanker (undergraduate student in dr elizabeth cosgriff-hernandezs lab at the university of texas at austin) the winners for best poster were courtney shrode (undergraduate student in dr melissa grunlans lab at texas a&m) and kabir dhada (graduate student in dr laura suggs lab at the university of texas at austin) in addition to alge other biomedical engineering faculty who helped organize biomaterials day were dr melissa grunlan dr akhilesh gaharwar and dr corey bishop the student chapter of the society for biomaterials at texas a&m which is advised by alge also played a key role in planning the conference and ensuring its success the conference was sponsored by the society for biomaterials the texas a&m college of engineering the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m the office for commercialization and entrepreneurship at texas a&m the national center for therapeutics manufacturing at texas a&m the stephenson school of biomedical engineering at the university of oklahoma the paths-up engineering research center at texas a&m integra life sciences malvern panalytical anton paar netzsch and apl bioengineering
for decades biomedical engineers have used their acumen to revolutionize healthcare through the development of devices tools equipment techniques and pharmaceuticals that have advanced the medical field in ways previously unimaginable while patients around the world have benefited from this ingenuity those patients almost exclusively have had one thing in common-theyve all been human researchers in the texas a&m college of veterinary medicine & biomedical sciences (cvm) and the texas a&m college of engineering have teamed up to begin filling that gap in the biomedical engineering field--that of veterinary medicine-­by exploring the possibilities of what can be accomplished when innovative minds come together
"getting to the heart of the problem dr ashley saunders a professor of cardiology and clinician in the veterinary medical teaching hospitals (vmth) small animal cardiology service began using 3d imaging and printing to create models of the heart to aid in the teaching of anatomy and preparing for complex surgeries for animals but while 3d models are useful in this regard the technology has not been a definitive training tool especially in the case of treating minimally invasive cardiology defects cardiology residents are taught heart and blood vessel catheterization through observation and practice relying on an understanding of the anatomy and the feel of inserting a catheter to perform a procedure teaching catheterization using 3d printed models is difficult because doctors cant see inside the blood vessels theyre trying to navigate and its also difficult to replicate the feel of an animals blood vessels; therefore doctors have to learn catheterization on a beating heart ""thats how you learn"" saunders said ""thats how i learned"" because heart defects like patent ductus arteriosus (pda)--a congenital defect characterized by an opening between two blood vessels leading from the heart--are the most commonly addressed congenital defect by cardiologists at texas a&ms small animal hospital (sah) saunders began looking to create a safer environment in which residents could learn and practice one in which the stakes werent quite so high enter dr duncan maitland the stewart & stevenson professor i in the college of engineerings department of biomedical engineering and dr mark wierzbicki a postdoctoral researcher in maitlands biomedical device laboratory"
"synthesizing a solution maitland whose research focuses on novel treatments for cardiovascular disease had previously worked with a vmth cardiovascular doctor to create devices for use in the operating room; the doctor encouraged maitland and the biomedical engineers in his lab to move toward creating devices for animal patients ""i learned long ago that we could reduce the number of animal iterations on device development if we brought clinicians in or even imported our models into the clinical environment for more advanced testing "" maitland said ""just getting iterations on models of real anatomies reduces the number of animals that need to be used in studies and the quality of devices goes up exponentially"" maitlands lab had developed blocks made of silicone to test devices created to treat cardiovascular diseases one day saunders toured maitlands lab and immediately began thinking about how the technology could be applied to help her train residents to treat pda ""the silicone block was made to resemble a pda and i knew we could use the 3d prints from our patients to make one that is more anatomically correct "" saunders said and thats exactly what she and wierzbicki a doctoral student at the time did the two put their heads together and devised a plan that would combine the 3d imaging technology saunders was already using with the silicone-­based technology wierzbicki was exploring for his dissertation the final product looks like a clear rubber block inside which upon closer inspection has the outline of several ""tubes"" these tubes are arteries cast from the actual heart from one of saunders canine patients to make the cast saunders used ct scans to create a 3d representation of the dogs heart printed on the 3d printer in maitlands laboratory ""we were able to 3d print the ct scanned heart using a dissolvable material and vapor polish the printed model to smooth out the ridges from the 3d printing process "" wierzbicki said ""we took the smooth 3d printed heart cast silicone around the model and then dissolved out the 3d-printed part after completing those steps we were left with a model dr saunders could use for training"" the result was a solution to multiple problems--not only did the project become part of wierzbickis dissertation but it produced anatomically correct customized models that might change the way budding cardiologists are trained to learn catheterization techniques and repair heart defects to create an even more realistic setting saunders incorporated a camera that projects what the doctors are seeing onto a computer screen so that they train on a simulated heart that mimics a true procedure ""when we do these procedures in a dog we cant see inside the body; we use fluoroscopy with images displayed on a screen that we have to look up at so it is important to learn how to do these procedures by watching a screen "" she said ""we can mimic the procedure by having the silicone blocks because they have the anatomy inside and the block is clear so they can see through it; the document camera displays the image up on my computer screen ""they watch as they pass a catheter in and they learn how to do the procedure by getting the feel of inserting a device "" she said ""it doesnt require fluoroscopy or radiation and it doesnt require them being inside an actual dog to practice for the first time"" the best part--the silicone blocks are virtually indestructible ""this means you can take the block into a training lab setting knowing that its going to stand up to being used over and over again "" saunders said the future of biomedical engineering: just a heartbeat away because of what the model means for how doctors treat cardiac defects saunders wierzbicki and maitland have published multiple papers related to the model and other devices used in cardiology saunders also has begun using the model in training exercises and labs for both residents and specialists who have an interest in catheterization techniques and interventional cardiology during a recent training that included specialists from around the world saunders found that the doctors responded enthusiastically to the model ""they really loved it "" she said ""they said they feel like theyre more comfortable practicing with the model it makes more sense to them"" while most companies that manufacture devices for human cardiology currently arent interested in making devices for animals as more and more veterinary surgeons begin recognizing the value of this kind of model maitland said he hopes that attention will open the doors for more opportunities for collaboration between biomedical engineers and the field of veterinary medicine ""if you look at all of engineering and biomedical engineering specifically you dont think about animal health care as a primary focus were not trained to do that and so there are not enough partnerships going on between the two colleges and specifically biomedical and the cvm "" said maitland who is chairing a committee in his department to do just that ""i think we could make a lot of impact and in this case not just with what ashley is developing for training but we can also impact the technologies that are used in animal health care significantly if we just pay attention to it"" this article originally appeared in the spring 2018 edition of cvm today"
dr h gene hawkins a professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has been named this years public-sector recipient for the john jake landen memorial highway safety award the annual award is supported by the american road and transportation builders association and traffic safety industry division and recognizes individuals from public and private sectors who have made significant contributions to roadway infrastructure safety previously hawkins was the former division head of the transportation and materials division within the department and before joining the department he was a research engineer with the texas a&m transportation institute for 18 years hawkins has done extensive research studies and presentations on traffic control devices and the manual on uniform traffic control devices that involve evaluating signs markings and other traffic control devices although signs and markings can be taken by granted by some users they play a pivotal role in our ability to travel safely from one place to another hawkins said as simple as signs and markings are i have spent most of my professional career researching ways of making them better hawkins has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than 20 research projects with a cumulative budget of $6 million his research interests include traffic control infrastructure retroreflectivity and visibility of traffic signs and pavement markings driver response to traffic control devices traffic engineering policy and guidelines signal design work zone traffic control freeway operations and historical aspects of transportation engineering according to hawkins the award was unexpected he said that he first became interested in traffic safety as a child when his father who was also a traffic engineer was explaining signs markings and signals to a young boyive worked with many great people during my career in consulting research and education said hawkins i learned a lot from them and they deserve a part of this award as much as i do
dr andreas a polycarpou dr john a rogers and mechanical engineering graduate teaching fellow mohammad humood from the department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university are conducting research to help further the broader engineering goal to develop flexible wearable electronic devices which can be integrated into clothes glasses skin and even inside the human body these devices are required to be mechanically robust and able to retain their performance and efficiency under different ranges of mechanical deformations such as bending and twisting without any failure in the rigid components of these devices such as silicon and copper said humood who came onto the project after he was awarded the hagler institute for advanced study fellowship and was assigned to work with faculty fellow rogers according to dr matt pharr who also works on the project the goal of the research was to produce multilayer 3d kirigami microstructures that contain silicon and investigate their basic mechanical response under mechanical pressure kirigami is a variation of origami that includes cutting the paper rather than solely folding it these materials have potential applications in 3d micro-electro-mechanical systems (mems) devices which could then be used to develop the wearable electronics and the texas a&m team was the first to experimentally study the nanomechanics of silicon-based kirigami structures the modeling aspect was done in collaboration with dr yonggang huang in northwestern university this work aims to provide insight into their basic mechanical response with an eye toward potential applications pharr said humood said there is a growing need for 3d mems as a route to improve the efficiency and reliability of current devices such as sensors he said future applications of this technology are broad once developed the sensors could be integrated with the skin and organs of patients which will help medical professionals better understand how diseases develop and predict them early biology such as human skin and organs is inherently a 3d design humood said therefore 3d nano/micro structured flexible devices will yield a complete integration between life and technology the team faced several challenges throughout their research such as the small and somewhat fragile makeup of mems which are made of silicon and its oxides which is inherently stiff and brittle finding and implementing a reliable means of producing such structures was challenging but was ultimately resolved such that robust structures could be produced repeatedly pharr said another challenge humood said was running complex experiments within the scanning electron microscope where the material was compressed this gave us the opportunity to record images and videos while compressing them which helped us to observe their deformation modes humood said the teams paper was published on the cover of small an internationally known magazine having our work accepted for publication in the journal of small and being selected to be on the cover of the journal by the editor highlights the importance of this work as it shows proof of concept for the reliability of these new 3d structures and how they can enable the development of a new class of electronic devices humood said results of the research show that not only were the silicon-based mems promising candidates for building wearable electronics their mechanical characteristics such as load bearing capabilities energy dissipation bending stiffness and elastic recoverability could be tailored by changing the geometry of the microstructure because the materials can change their qualities and mechanical response when their structure is only slightly changed they have a number of potential applications in 3d mems devices moving forward for the broad community we hope the findings of this work show our promise and commitment as engineers and scientists toward continuous improvement of human life polycarpou said
in a collaborative study involving equal channel angular extrusion (ecae) a unique severe plastic deformation (spd) process researchers dr ibrahim karaman from texas a&m university and drs don susan and andrew kustas of sandia national laboratories were able to improve the mechanical properties of magnetic alloys without changing their magnetic properties through microstructural refinement this process has proven to be troublesome in the past production of high-performance magnetic alloys and other intermetallics could prove particularly useful in aerospace and space exploration where materials must endure harsh environments including temperature extremes shock and vibration ecae forces a bar of metallic or polymeric material at a 90-degree angle through a die channel this process induces spd without any changes in the cross-sectional area of the sample originally the researchers at sandia national laboratories and texas a&m worked together on a different topic involving shape memory alloys they quickly realized the potential in combining the strengths of their respective facilities on an entirely new study and subsequently applied the experiences to magnetic alloys sandia saw the need to manufacture magnetic alloys in bulk demonstrating superior mechanical properties because ecae allows the microstructure of materials to be drastically altered without affecting its cross-sectional area larger samples with dimensions greater than one inch could be produced while improving mechanical properties simultaneously i was initially skeptical about increasing the strength of the particular materials while keeping the magnetic properties unaffected said dr ibrahim karaman department head of the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m however through collaboration with sandia scientists we were able to achieve what we dreamed of and that lead to a patent application for ecae-processed soft magnetic alloys researchers at texas a&m carried out the ecae processing and some microstructural characterization and mechanical testing sandia took these findings and administered further microstructural and mechanical characterization and magnetic properties testing ecae process has been a key element of texas a&m material processing research in the last two decades and we applied this technique to many unconventional materials with success said karaman ecae has traditionally been applied to common materials such as aluminum copper or steel said dr don susan principal member of technical staff at sandia who added that these materials were malleable and readily manipulated taking the shape of the die with ease this work was groundbreaking because it attempted ecae on a brittle intermetallic alloy conventionally a cold temperature process the team had to experiment with high temperature ecae that had not been extensively explored in magnetic alloys sandia scientists wanted to apply ecae to magnetic alloys with low strength and extreme brittleness such as fe-co-v said karaman as a result their work was able to show ecae can be done in extreme processing conditions producing high-performance alloys that can withstand demanding mechanical environments we think there may be opportunities to apply ecae to other intermetallic alloys such as fe-si or ni-ti to refine their microstructures and improve properties as well said susan these experiments have opened the door for further studies in the field now sandia is pursuing a scale-up of the process with a spin-off company from texas a&m to check the industrial scale magnetic and mechanical properties of these magnetic alloys said karaman its exciting for us to see the fruit of our joint collaboration the findings are electronically published on cambridge core in journal of materials research by the cambridge university press
texas a&ms formula sae team is less than a month from international competition and the 22 members are revving their engines since august 2017 the team has been discussing designing building and testing a race car they created from scratch along with racing the car the students are judged on design cost of manufacturing their presentation of a business model and other vehicle components on top of building a car from scratch all the students graduated in may some will pursue masters degrees while others already have jobs lined up in the automotive and other industries
for many of the members their interest in the program was piqued when they first started at texas a&m although their interest in cars may have started long before growing up i bonded with my family by working on cars so then coming into college i wanted to study mechanical engineering so i could work on cars and this was the perfect opportunity to make a childhood dream come true said project manager spencer weaver over the past two semesters adam isaacks said he has been impressed by the work ethic of the group its pretty common that whenever youre put into a group where theres a project theres always going to be that one person who doesnt carry their weight he said but somehow on a team of 22 members theres not a single person who doesnt carry their weight and i think thats going to help us be successful
unlike other university teams texas a&ms team also doesnt pass along designs year to year instead they bring in a fresh approach to the design and data we do a full redesign every year while others will take the old design and tweak it said team member zach beck we make a new car from scratch every year there are a number of rules the students follow within the dimensions of a formula car so that the car remains safe for drivers this years team added another challenge by redesigning the cars chassis or frame which has been similar in the past several years were taking a whole new approach to it and the biggest challenge is figuring out does it fit into the rules can we actually build this and how will we package everything around this new design weaver said
the car is test drove on a concrete runway at the rellis campus but even with the practice weaver said the track will be different at competition making it hard to predict how the car will handle sarah rohmer team lead of the electrical subgroup crew chief and a purchasing manager for the team said she has appreciated the hands-on experience with automotive she has gained through the project ive seen firsthand how designs get implemented and problems that can happen she said when you look at a drawing on a computer its really hard to see and visualize all the problems that might arise but when youre working on the car you see ‘ooh a wrench cant fit in there that isnt the best design you see a lot more complications the team will head to lincoln nebraska in mid-june for the sae international competition june 19-23 where they will face 80 teams from schools across the country and world
renewable energy sources such as wind and wave can power our world currently mechanical gears are used inside of these energy conversion systems to connect a high-speed electric machine to a low-speed physical energy source improving the design of the systems that convert these sources into electrical energy has far-reaching benefits matthew gardner a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is studying the use of magnetic gears and their advantages over the traditional mechanically geared machines
"just like mechanical gears magnetic gears transform rotational power between different speeds and torques but instead of physically interlocking teeth they use magnetic fields by using magnets to transmit torque between the input and output shafts of the gear they avoid mechanical contact this provides a number of advantages such as reduced maintenance reduced acoustic noise and vibrations and improved overall reliability if too much torque is applied to mechanical gears they may break; if the same happens to magnetic gears the magnets will simply slip past each other without causing any damage in regard to wind and wave energy some gearing is necessary in machines to avoid the use of an extremely large and expensive generator for example special turbines convert the kinetic energy in the wind and water into power gearboxes within these mechanically geared systems are subject to severe loads and are often in locations where it is extremely expensive to replace or repair a failed gearbox with the use of magnetic gears the cost of maintenance would be significantly reduced magnetic gears drew my interest because they represent a potentially disruptive innovation in the field of electric machines gardner said much of the research in electric machines represents incremental improvements on the technology that has been developed over the last few hundred years however magnetic gears are a relatively new area of research and are currently not an industry accepted alternative to mechanical gears gardner looks to change that he has worked on a project sponsored by the us department of energy that reduced the cost of wave energy using magnetic gears together with the power and automation company abb gardner and his team built a magnetically geared machine prototype that is one of the largest in the world for its particular set of properties this machine is rated for about 4 000 newton meters of torque to put that into perspective most magnetic gears and magnetically geared machine prototypes in literature are rated for less than 150 newton meters our analysis found that using a magnetically geared generator would be about 50 percent smaller 50 percent lighter and 25 percent less expensive than using a generator without any gearing for this wave energy application gardner said on the other hand reliability concerns ruled out systems involving hydraulics or mechanical gearing gardner works in the advanced electrical machines and power electronics lab under dr hamid toliyat raytheon professor his work has been conducted largely in part with former doctoral student dr matthew johnson ""matthew has done a lot of work that has the possibility to significantly transform the field of electric machines toliyat said i am excited about the opportunity to make a disruptive change in the field of electric machines gardner said magnetic gears and magnetically geared machines offer the possibility to provide a significant not just incremental improvement in systems involving electric machines"
dr maria koliou an assistant professor in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a rapid grant (cmmi 1829433) from the national science foundation (nsf) to investigate the seismic resilience of wood frame building systems and explore the efficiency of various seismic retrofit/repair solutions in enhancing urban community resilience koliou is serving as the lead principal investigator in conjunction with dr shideh dashti an associate professor at university of colorado boulder dr keri ryan an associate professor at the university of nevada-reno and dr chris pantelides a professor at the university of utah who are serving as co-principal investigators this grant will allow researchers from the united states and japan to collaborate as a team to conduct experimental seismic studies on wood frame building systems the systems will be tested on the worlds largest earthquake shake table (e-defense) in miki japan in early 2019 past studies have made progress on understanding structural systems and nonstructural component response but this study will focus on building interactions with lifeline components and soil-structure interaction during seismic events kolious research interests consist of multi-hazard performance-based design of buildings and non-building structures engineering risk analysis post-disaster system functionality and community resilience collapse assessment of structural systems experimental methods in earthquake engineering and timber structures she has previously been awarded research grants on different aspects of her research portfolio including a seed grant through texas a&ms program to enhance scholarly and creative activities a rapid grant from the texas sea grant program through the national oceanic and atmospheric administration and a project on seismic testing of cross laminated timber structures from the us department of agriculture koliou has also recently received the structural engineering institutes young professional scholarship from the american society of civil engineers and an nsf-supported travel grant to attend the 2018 engineering mechanics institute conference
tokunbo tj falohun a graduate student in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has found research to be at the intersection of his strengths and interests i think there are few things that are more compelling than trying to improve human health ive always looked at that as something that draws me something i feel that if i can help out that would be a really impactful experience falohun said biomedical engineering boils down to using technology to improve human health falohun recently was granted a national science foundation graduate research fellowship a prestigious award given to graduate students the fellowship provides three years of financial support within a five-year fellowship perioda $34 000 annual stipend and $12 000 cost-of-education allowance to the graduate institution the support is for graduate study that leads to a research-based masters or doctoral degree in a science technology engineering and math (stem) field along with providing research funding the program also provides access to a community to help scholars network he said receiving the fellowship was an honor i think its a motivator because it shows my growth as a scholar in the field falohun said you get your undergrad degree and thats a step above high school; and then grad school is a step above undergrad but to join this program it shows that theres growth overall being able to pull together a competitive application is a challenge but its something that is also really rewarding the program encourages researchers to develop ways to share scientific knowledge with the public by sharing technology and education that will have an impact on peoples lives there is also an emphasis on improving knowledge in underserved communities and using science to help those less fortunate which falohun said he is passionate about and actively pursues through his research falohun works in the biosensing systems and materials lab under department head dr mike mcshane helping to develop small-molecule biosensorsminiature analytical devices used to measure biochemicals in the body and cell/tissue samples for medical research and clinical application mcshane is the james j cain professor ii in biomedical engineering and has been funded by the national institutes of health and national science foundation to develop this type of technology over the past 16 years one example of the research performed at the lab is the measurement of blood sugar levels for individuals with diabetes the biosensor which is implanted under the skin can respond to blood sugar levels for extended periods without the need for finger pricks the implant can then be read using an external device to inform a patient on their current condition giving them more control of their health the field of biosensors i think is one of our most compelling subdisciplines within biomedical engineering because it enables people to better maintain their conditions falohun said it saves tons of money as opposed to going to the doctor to get tests if we can monitor our own health you can prevent a lot of these chronic diseases that develop over the years so far the team has developed a biosensing platform to measure oxygen glucose and lactate for his masters thesis falohun is working to expand the list to include uric acid an analyte associated with gout the lab also aims to prepare students to be contributors in an interdisciplinary research and development environment through a combination of relevant and challenging biomedical engineering projects professional development activities and an atmosphere that encourages individual creativity as well as collaborative work falohun said mcshane assisted with generating ideas for the fellowship proposal and provided a letter recommendation falohun plans to pursue his doctoral degree and then his goal is to contribute to the development of life-saving medical technologies thats broad but that is the overall direction i want to go into he said
"three researchers from the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university have received funding to develop a wearable noninvasive reliable inexpensive and proactive device to detect and prevent hypoglycemic events in diabetic patients the international diabetes federation says an estimated 415 million people have diabetes worldwide according to dr ranjana mehta assistant professor diabetes is associated with other serious health complications such as heart disease stroke blindness kidney failure and hypoglycemia-low blood sugar diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the united states and costs the us economy more than $240 billion per year ""frequent hypoglycemic episodes not only affect patient quality of life but also could result in coma stupor behavior change dizziness seizures and even death "" mehta said existing solutions for glucose monitoring such as continuous glucose monitors are invasive costly and reactive self-monitored glucose approaches are intermittent and miss hypoglycemic events especially at night the qatar national research funds by the qatar foundation is funding research to develop better technology to monitor and gather data from diabetic patients mehta along with dr mark lawley and dr farzan sasangohar are three researchers from the industrial and systems engineering department working on the project the proposed project will develop a noninvasive reliable inexpensive proactive and wearable device that can detect monitor and predict hypoglycemic episodes in diabetic patients through the early onsets of hypoglycemic tremors the device will use compact high-precision accelerometers and will have two novel configurations to support arm/wrist and finger-based use ""the innovation of our approach is to develop machine learning-based pattern detection algorithms to explicitly detect and characterize the frequency and amplitude of tremor "" sasangohar said over time the device will develop a predictive algorithm for personalized hypoglycemia event risk which can then provide feedback to patients and healthcare providers along with the researchers in college station the team consists of engineering researchers from texas a&m university at qatar and is affiliated with the center for remote health technologies and systems and texas a&m ergonomics center as well as healthcare partners from hamad hospital and sidra hospital in qatar students involved in the project include industrial and systems engineering department doctoral student karim zahed and school of public health doctoral student yibo zhu mehta said the impact of the project will help uncover more about the relationship between the tremors and blood glucose levels associated with hypoglycemic events as well as a broader impact to healthcare in modern society other areas of science that may benefit from the research include cyberphysical systems telemedicine and preventive medicine ""the system proposed will be the first of its kind to provide a real-time hypoglycemic monitoring that can be easily deployed in daily life "" sasangohar said ""it will save hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare costs and lost productivity and will significantly improve the quality of life for millions suffering from diabetes"" beyond diabetes sasangohar said the technology has a wide range of applications including early detection of seizures essential tremors and parkinsons to fatigue detection during high-accuracy tasks such as surgery one major benefit is that the novel solution would be a noninvasive approach to continuously monitor for drops in blood sugar levels as well as provide feedback about imminent hypoglycemic events the research is in its first year of a three-year integrative multidisciplinary international project user-centered studies are planned followed by a clinical study in a qatar hospital click here for more information on the qatar national research fund"
during the annual pregraduation celebration held in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering graduating students are recognized for outstanding performance service and other worthy attributes as voted on by faculty and their peers but senior students also have an opportunity to vote on and bestow one of the most coveted faculty awards in the department: the petroleum engineering department award for excellence in teaching established by dennis johnson 74 and amy and tim leach 82 this award recognizes full-time faculty members who maintain high expectations of their students and ensure academic rigor in their undergraduate classes this years excellence in teaching winner is professor of engineering practice dr ibere nascentes alves and this is the second year in a row he has received it
for the past three years alves has embraced teaching at texas a&m university he is the instructor for pete 325 petroleum production systems in this course students follow the path of fluids from reservoir to well to surface flowlines and onward through separation facilities to the sales line (hydrocarbons) or other outlets (produced water re-injection disposal etc) along the way students learn the different components of the flow systems their functions and a bit about how to design systems based on fluid throughput expectations said alves (students) look at improving flow into the well by artificial lift or lowering bottom hole pressure and stimulation (to improve) near-well flow in the reservoir this prepares (students) to have a more positive experience in their internship during the summer due to their greater appreciation for how oil and gas production works when he is not in class alves is in his office passionately explaining theories and practical applications to students who want to know more he actively volunteers for the annual department student paper contest and helped out with the department undergraduate video he recently arranged a demonstration of aggie well no 1 for his students so they could observe the most utilized artificial lift method for bringing fluid up from a reservoir the so-called sucker rod lift system that uses a pump jack mechanism he also gave his students a demonstration in the lohman lab on the three-phase separator where students witnessed the processes that take place inside a separator and learned more about the physical principles that controls the fluids separation process
as a professor of practice alves offers students at texas a&m a unique focus of instruction based on his vast industry experience and he is excited to share his knowledge with them originally from brazil alves worked for petrobras for 35 years as an engineer academic and researcher before retiring to become a full-time educator a few years ago he gave a graduate student seminar presentation at texas a&m and spoke with some of the professors in the department once he toured campus he was enchanted by our school spirit and gladly accepted an invitation to join the faculty alves was a mechanical engineer fresh from school when he joined petrobras at the time there were refineries in brazil but only a small amount of oil production petrobras had just started offshore exploration he took a short company course and then received a hands-on introduction to petroleum engineering out in the field he enjoyed the challenges and strove for efficiency while supplying his country with energy for economic and social changethrough the years he attained his masters and doctoral degrees and taught courses in addition to doing his professional work he soon learned he loved teaching as much as he loved petroleum engineering there is discovery in a university an exchange with the youth said alves i give the students these ideas and as a return i love to see their faces when they understand what they learn they can start better than i started i want the students here to give a chance to everything to look for new things and grow
a lifesaving device more than 20 years in the making has received 510(k) clearance from the us food and drug administration (fda) the clearance allows a company co-founded by associate department head dr duncan maitland from the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university to begin to market the medical device maitland developed the impede embolization plug a device that could provide doctors with a more effective and less risky method for treating aneurysms – blood-filled balloon-like bulges in the walls of a blood vessel that can rupture and cause vascular damage that is debilitating or even fatal the device quickly clots blood to block it from reaching aneurysms tumors or other issues it creates a different kind of clot than current devices if you put in other devices theyre asking for big clots to form maitland said instead of creating a blood clot that is three or four millimeters in diameter were creating thousands of smaller clots that are connected together
how it works the device is made from polyurethane-based shape memory polymer (smp) foams while small during insertion the porous polymeric materials are capable of growing to a memorized larger conformable shape when delivered into a blood vessel allowing it to obstruct or reduce the rate of blood flow in the vein or artery targeted by the doctor after blocking flow in a vascular target there is also concern that one could reform over time with the impede embolization plug test results have shown that smp foams promote long-term health of the areas of the blood vessel reducing the chances that another treatment is required the benefit to patients is that they dont get reoccurrence maitland said this is a less traumatic deliverable device as its being delivered its not potentially rupturing the blood vessels like some of the current devices would and it heals the site so they dont have to have it retreated while the impede device is built to address issues outside of the brain such as abdominal aortic aneurysms as well as acting as adjunct treatment for tumors or cancer to promote long-term healing where current devices dont maitland said he plans to submit the fda application for a neurological device soon weve created this stepping stone that has value will establish the long-term clinical superiority and it will be a predicate device for future more complicated devices to receive regulatory clearance maitland said maitland and his team sent the impede embolization plug to the fda for review in 2017 while the plug is not available in the united states yet it has been used to treat patients in new zealand and in several countries in the european union
milestones there were several milestones that maitland could look back on in the last two decades of research he started working on stroke related diseases in 1995 the breakthrough idea for the porous structures for embolization was formulated in 1999 maitland worked with dr todd landsman who initially developed the impede device as part of his phd dissertation at texas a&m the teams record in the patent literature documents from 2001 which maitland said proceeds any publications by about two years the first shape memory foams research material that was on the right development path was created in august 2011 the work has also led to the establishment of shape memory medical inc co-founded by maitland to commercialize stable predictable embolization solutions for a variety of clinical applications the company has 26 issued us patents and multiple patents under review on a worldwide basis several of maitlands graduate students have worked in the company over the years maitland moved from the lawrence livermore national laboratory in california to texas a&m with the goal of commercializing the smp foams for vascular occlusion he liked the policies within texas a&m specifically the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) he said dean m katherine banks has created an environment where researchers are able to work on impacts that extend beyond traditional academic metrics at the same time faculty must respect traditional metrics: maitland has graduated 14 phd students and seven ms students since joining texas a&m in 2008 he has also cumulatively published more than 75 journal publications related to the smp technology and devices working on this kind of impact was made possible by the support of tees by conflict of interest management policies of the university and the implementation of those policies out of the division of researchs office maitland said whats next now that the device technology is in the hands of shape memory medical inc which will work on product commercialization maitland said new research directions are opening up in the short term his team has sponsored research with the company and has received some grants that are allowing them to research how the devices interact with the body and a deeper understanding of device safety over the long term his team plans to continue working with the company to modify the material so that it increases the effectiveness or opens up new medical applications maitland is also partnering with researchers in veterinary medicine the health science center and other tees centers to open new application directions for the smp technology along with about 200 people who have touched the project in one way to another over the last 20 years institutions that have provided support include shape memory medical inc the texas a&m engineering experiment station lawrence livermore national laboratory the national institute of biomedical institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering and the us department of energy maitland was recently recognized with a college of engineering research impact award for his development of innovative shape memory polymers for biomedical applications
from june 23-30 a group of graduate students faculty and national laboratory staff members participated in the nuclear facilities experience (nfe) which took place in various locations across japan the nfe was jointly coordinated by the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and argonne national laboratory (anl) with assistance from the japanese integrated support center for nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security (iscn) the facilities tour was led by dr claudio gariazzo a nuclear engineer in the strategic security sciences group at anl and nsspi assistant research engineer dr evans kitcher the graduate students were selected based on their specializations in nuclear nonproliferation-related topic areas the nine students represented texas a&m university the university of tennessee-knoxville the university of california at berkeley the university of illinois at urbana-champaign the middlebury institute for international studies and virginia commonwealth university they were joined by one faculty member from the university of tennessee-knoxville the five early-career research staff members came from sandia national laboratories los alamos national laboratory brookhaven national laboratory pacific northwest national laboratory and argonne national laboratory
the nfe is a unique opportunity for graduate-level engineering and policy students from us universities and early-career professionals from us national laboratories to visit nuclear fuel cycle facilities in foreign countries it provides experiential understanding of facility operations nuclear materials management and applied material safeguards practitioners and facility operators make presentations and lead discussions on the practical application of safeguards and security measures participants have the opportunity to witness first-hand how nuclear safeguards are implemented at various types of facilities some of which are not found within the us additionally the nfe provides excellent networking opportunities for participants to strengthen relationships among students staff faculty and professionals while travelling and experiencing a foreign country this years nfe began with a trip to the japan atomic energy agency headquarters in tokai-mura where participants visited the tokai reprocessing technology development center the plutonium fuel development center the virtual reality system and the physical protection training field from there they traveled to rokkasho nuclear fuel cycle plant and visited their enrichment facility sub-surface disposal test cavern low-level waste disposal center j-mox construction site and the reprocessing facility including the spent fuel receiving/storage and vitrified waste storage they then spent a day at the tokyo institute of technology where they met with students and faculty and attended a presentation by the international atomic energy agency about the safeguards activities at the fukushima dai-ichi nuclear power plant and the rokkasho nuclear fuel cycle plant they traveled from tokyo to the monju fast reactor the final stop of the nfe was hiroshima where participants visited with a survivor of the hiroshima bombing and toured the hiroshima peace memorial museum and peace park the visit to hiroshima highlights the importance of nuclear safeguards and security to keep the world safe from nuclear weapons the nfe is made possible under a grant provided by the national nuclear security administrations office of international nuclear safeguards the nfe program is set to continue for another five years
the texas a&m university system will join a consortium of higher education institutions and state agencies that will offer expertise research and innovations in support of the us army futures command in austin the us army announced friday (july 13) from the pentagon during a press conference at the pentagon army officials said the effort leverages higher education offerings in texas with private sector innovation cutting-edge science and technology prototyping and demonstrations and warfighter testing and feedback the texas a&m system is ready to support army futures command texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp said this is a great day for the state of texas government and academic leaders came together to offer an unbeatable combination of talent and resources sharp added that the texas a&m system campuses in the region – including college station rellis san antonio and central texas – as well as the texas a&m transportation institute texas a&m engineering experiment station and texas a&m engineering extension service will bolster the core mission of the army futures command the texas a&m contribution will give american soldiers a technological advantage to bolster national security we are honored to support the us army in this exciting next chapter said michael k young president of texas a&m university with more than 15 000 graduates per year – nearly half of whom are in stem fields – and nearly $1 billion per year in research as well as more than 1 000 current veteran students texas a&m university is well equipped to deliver on expertise and innovation for future success the us army futures command which was announced in october 2017 and informally referred to as modernization command has eight cross-functional teams working toward reducing prototype development demonstration and testing and the evaluation process from 60 months down to approximately 12 the state has a wealth of capabilities to bear between its military resources and broad academic and research base said steve cambone director of the texas a&m system institute for national-security and cyber-security education and research we have the breadth of resources and testing and evaluation facilities within the texas a&m system to help the army ‘fail early and succeed quickly in support of the armys mission to modernize among the areas the army is aiming to modernize include development of improved long-range precision fires a next-generation combat vehicle future vertical lift platforms a mobile and expeditionary army network air and missile defense capabilities and soldier lethality the texas a&m systems offerings include producing graduates with bachelor masters and doctoral degrees in high-need fields including biomedical sciences biomedical engineering chemical engineering computer science electrical engineering mechanical engineering and materials and materials engineering the establishment of the command marks the most significant reorganization of the institutional army since 1973 according to army officials it is being headquartered in austin to best partner with academia industry and innovators in the private sector while providing a good and affordable quality of life for command personnel
smartphones tablets ipads – mobile devices have become invaluable to the everyday consumer but few consider the security issues that occur when using these devices
modern mobile applications or apps use cloud-hosted http-based application programming interface (api) services and heavily rely on the internet infrastructure for data communication and storage to improve performance and leverage the power of the mobile device input validation and other business logic required for interfacing with web api services are typically implemented on the mobile client however when a web service implementation fails to thoroughly replicate input validation it gives rise to inconsistencies that could lead to attacks that can compromise user security and privacy developing automatic methods of auditing web apis for security remains challenging dr guofei gu associate professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university and director of the success lab together with his doctoral students abner mendoza and guangliang yang are working to combat these security issues gu and his team analyzed 10 000 mobile apps and found that many of them are open to web api hijacking – something that potentially affects the privacy and security of tens of millions of business users and consumers globally the root of the threat lies in the inconsistencies that are often found between app and server logic in web api implementations for mobile apps gus team created the wardroid framework to crawl applications automatically carrying out reconnaissance and uncovering these kinds of inconsistencies using static analysis along with what kinds of http requests are accepted by the server once an attacker has the information on what these requests look like he or she can carry out their own actions by tweaking a few parameters as a simple example gu explains in a vulnerable shopping app/server a malicious user could shop for free by making some of the item prices in the shopping cart as negative (with tweaking some http parameters) which should not be allowed by the app but unfortunately can be accepted by the server after identifying many vulnerable real-world mobile apps/servers that affect millions of users gus team has communicated with the developers to help them fix the vulnerabilities this research has already generated real-world impacts their research paper was published in proceedings of the 2018 institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) symposium on security & privacy (s&p18) one of the most prestigious top conferences in cybersecurity with an acceptance rate lower than 12 percent this work has also been reported in several media outlets including bleepingcomputer threatpost and securityboulevard and also generated extensive discussion on the popular technology social news website slashdot this is just one example of gus research on mobile app security at the same conference gus team had another research paper on mobile app security that identifies a new type of vulnerability named origin stripping vulnerabilities (osv) in modern hybrid mobile apps and introduces a new mitigation solution osv-free for more details on gus research on mobile security please visit his labs website gus innovations in network security technology were recently recognized with a college of engineering research impact award
triad national security llc which includes the texas a&m university system has received official notice to proceed toward managing the los alamos national laboratory in los alamos new mexico the national nuclear security administration notified triad on july 9 to begin the four-month transition this is a significant milestone in the history of texas a&ms commitment to public service john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system said in announcing the start of the transition of the los alamos national laboratory from the current management team to triad which includes the texas a&m system the university of california and the battelle memorial institute los alamos is one of the most important nuclear security assets in the world we are committed to working with our partners to enhance safety and security at the lab while advancing its world-class science and executing its vital missions sharp added obviously this is a huge affirmation of the nationally recognized quality of research teaching and national service at texas a&m the texas a&m system brings to the triad team expertise in nuclear engineering criticality safety and workforce development all of which are important to the future of the los alamos national laboratory triad will assume management and operational responsibility for the laboratory when the transition period ends nov 1 dr thomas mason will serve as president of triad and director of the los alamos national laboratory mason brings extensive national lab management experience to the position having served for more than a decade as the director of the us department of energys oak ridge national laboratory in tennessee most recently mason was senior vice president for global laboratory operations at battelle it is a tremendous honor to be selected as director-designate of one of the worlds leading scientific institutions which is working at the forefront of science to solve complex nuclear security and energy challenges mason said
three texas a&m university researchers proposals were among 89 projects selected by the us department of energys (doe) office of nuclear energy for funding for nuclear energy research facility access and crosscutting technology and infrastructure development the projects are part of the nearly $64 million in awards for advanced nuclear energy technology to doe national laboratories industry and 39 us universities in 29 states because nuclear energy is such a vital part of our nations energy portfolio these investments are necessary to ensuring that future generations of americans will continue to benefit from safe clean reliable and resilient nuclear energy said ed mcginnis does principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy our commitment to providing researchers with access to the fundamental infrastructure and capabilities needed to develop advanced nuclear technologies is critical
principal investigators from texas a&m were: dr karen vierow kirkland associate professor and associate department head in the department of nuclear engineering received $748 000 for innovative use of accident tolerant fuels (atf) with the rcic system to enhance passive safety of commercial bwrs dr sean mcdeavitt associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and director of the nuclear science center was awarded $500 000 for demonstration of a methodology for direct validation of marmot irradiation-induced microstructural evolution and physical property models using u-10zr dr karim ahmed assistant professor in the nuclear engineering department is a collaborator on the project dr marcelo sanchez professor in the zachry department of civil engineering was awarded $608 375 for his proposal impact of coupled gas migration and thermo-hydro-mechanical processes on the performance of repositories for high level nuclear waste three faculty members from the department of nuclear engineering were collaborators with researchers from other universities including: dr pavel tsvetkov associate professor working with the ohio state university on development of optical fiber based gamma thermometer and its demonstration in a university research reactor using statistical data analytic methods to infer power distributions from gamma thermometer response dr yassin hassan department head and the sallie & don davis 61 professor in nuclear engineering working with the university of illinois at urbana-champaign on accurate and efficient parametric model-order reduction for turbulent thermal transport dr lin shao professor working with the university of nebraska-lincoln on bridging microscale to macroscale mechanical property measurements and predication of performance limitation for fecral alloys under extreme reactor applications the awards were dispersed under three doe nuclear energy programs: the nuclear energy university program the nuclear energy enabling technologies program and the nuclear science user facilities program
jeremy osborn won the jd williams student paper award at the 59th annual meeting of the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) which took place from july 22-26 in baltimore maryland osborn is a phd student in the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university working with the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) director dr sunil chirayath the award for the best student paper at the meeting is based on the students written paper and oral presentation and includes a $1 000 prize i am honored by the support and recognition from the inmm community said osborn it represents the success of the texas a&m nuclear forensics group osborns paper titled experimental validation of a nuclear forensics methodology for source reactor-type discrimination of chemically separated plutonium presents the results of his dissertation work to develop new methods to determine the reactor origins of weapons-grade plutonium this research is part of a seven-year project funded by the us department of homeland securitys domestic nuclear detection office under an academic research initiative (dndo-ari) grant which is led by chirayath in conjunction with dr charles m folden iii of the cyclotron institute
i believe the greatest strength of the project is the fusion of computational simulations research reactor irradiations radiochemistry laboratory work and experimental measurements osborn explained osborn successfully defended his dissertation this summer and will be graduating in december he recently joined nsspi as a postdoctoral research associate chirayath was also awarded an inmm senior membership appointment at the meeting osborn was one of three nsspi students to present at the meeting; yanuar setiawan and athena sagadevan also had papers there texas a&m nuclear engineering undergraduate student mario mendoza attended the meeting on behalf of the texas a&m inmm student chapter as the incoming president nsspi assistant research engineer dr evans kitcher presented a fifth paper and chirayath also co-chaired a session on education & training: empowering the workforce
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) awarded $20 000 to a team of researchers from texas a&m university-corpus christi texas a&m university-kingsville prairie view a&m university (pvamu) and the texas a&m engineering extension service (teex) at the 2018 tees annual research conference this summer the winning team will research and develop a community infrastructure resilience index (ciri) tool designed to help decision-makers determine funding priorities for improving community infrastructure this planning and assessment tool determines the resilience of critical infrastructure systems to stressors related to various natural and human-caused hazards the problem we are trying to address is that small or medium communities do not have the capability to identify or prioritize projects that will significantly improve community resilience said dr hua zhang an assistant professor in the department of engineering at a&m-corpus christi this leads to an inability to compete for and win capital investment the research team wants these communities to ultimately use ciri to guide their capital investments and to become more competitive for funding because they will be able to demonstrate the benefits of potential infrastructure projects the ciri research team includes zhang; dr lee clapp professor and associate dean of the frank h dotterweich college of engineering at texas a&m-kingsville; dr william kitch professor and chair of the david l hirschfeld department of engineering at angelo state university; dr emmanuel nzewi professor and head of the department of civil and environmental engineering at pvamu; and ed brickley strategic business development manager at teex the team competed against 18 other research collaborations created at the conference to take the top award tees launched the annual research conference in 2016 giving representatives from tees regional divisions an opportunity to come together and expand the research capacity in texas by tapping into the talent of the tees network this is the second year collaborations developed at the conference competed for seed funding at the end of the conference the ciri team is already putting their $20 000 award to work theyve completed a review of existing infrastructure rating systems and are developing a formal presentation of their findings and research framework the team anticipates submitting a grant proposal in september and will soon initiate 3-5 pilot evaluations engaging a variety of community stakeholders and industrial end users its exciting to see researchers come from all over the state and discover new ways of working together to meet some of texas greatest needs said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees at the tees annual research conference we encourage the researchers to form innovative risk-taking highly needed collaborations knowing there is a chance for the top teams to earn seed funding to continue their work and to serve as a catalyst for additional funding opportunities i look forward to what our new teams accomplish in the next year in addition to the $20 000 award given to ciri tees also gave $2 500 in seed funding to 10 additional collaborations created at the 2018 conference to see a list of all the 2018 collaborations visit /research/regionals/collaborations/
the southwest national pediatric device consortium (swpdc) anchored by texas childrens hospital and baylor college of medicine and including texas a&m university recently received a prestigious p50 grant from the us food & drug administration (fda) the five-year $675 million grant will begin on sept 1 swpdc supports pediatric device innovators with the goal of addressing the shortage of needed novel medical devices for children a public health problem that has been acknowledged by the fda the consortium includes clinical scientific/engineering investment regulatory and academic partners in the texas medical center the greater houston area and the southwestern us the primary partners are texas a&m rice university university of houston and fannin innovation studio and includes others such as biotex inc childrens hospital of san antonio childrens health in dallas and phoenix childrens hospital with additional future sites swpdc was selected as one of five national consortia that are addressing the shortage of pediatric devices a great need currently exists for medical devices designed specifically for children said dr chester koh founder of swpdc and lead principal investigator as well as a pediatric urologist at texas childrens hospital and professor of urology pediatrics and ob/gyn at baylor pediatric device development is challenging but with this support from the fda our consortium will continue to assist pediatric device innovators along all stages of development with the goal of improving our care of pediatric patients with the p50 grant support swpdc will leverage its ongoing activities to expand its footprint to accelerate the development of much-needed medical devices the five principal investigators include koh and dr henri justino of texas childrens hospital and baylor dr balakrishna haridas of texas a&m dr maria oden of rice university and dr michael heffernan of fannin innovation studio significant technical (design and manufacturing) preclinical testing clinical and regulatory testing challenges exist in the field of pediatric devices said haridas co-founder and co-pi of swpdc lead pi at texas a&m and professor of practice in biomedical engineering at texas a&m this fda-funded swpdc is uniquely positioned to address these challenges across the pediatric device development and clinical translational cycle to deliver significant advances in treatments tailored for pediatric patients swpdc will provide services in several areas: unmet needs assessment prototype development product and technology acceleration services and business acceleration services the swpdc members will evaluate and support projects as well as advise innovators throughout the total product life cycle based on individual project needs the consortium will direct investigators to specific resources collaborators and industry experts and will coordinate the services offered by its member programs to identify evaluate and assist pediatric device projects additional work within the consortium involves a real world evidence (rwe) demonstration project with texas childrens and texas a&m that builds upon the work of the paths-up engineering research center led by texas a&m paths-up is supported by a 10-year $40 million national science foundation grant advanced patient care algorithms and novel devices will be developed for improved continuous glucose monitoring in children with diabetes to avoid the complications associated with inadequate glucose control to learn more about the southwest pediatric device consortium visit swpdcorg
around mach 5 interesting things start to happen to vehicles flying in our atmosphere its a harsh flight environment and anything that can go that fast and survive is very expensive a key challenge is that changes in the viscous flow around a vehicle can lead to catastrophic events which are extremely complex and difficult to simulate thats the challenge of the field of hypersonics where researchers dont have the luxury to build flight test and retest which is why the cutting edges in aerospace research are wind-tunnel testing and computer modeling armed with some of the worlds leading faculty staff and students as well as unique laboratory facilities texas a&m universitys department of aerospace engineering is on the front lines of this research hypersonics is basically when vehicles are flying through the atmosphere at speeds sufficient such that the heating causes changes in the internal structure of the air molecules said dr rodney bowersox department head and director of the national aerothermochemistry and hypersonics laboratory (nal) these phenomena begin at roughly mach 5 which is about a mile a second as these vehicles are traveling through the atmosphere theyre creating shock waves and as the molecules go through these shockwaves they get excited dissociate and chemically react its a fair question to ask why even travel at hypersonic speeds and bowersox admits that civilian aircraft traveling at these speeds may be a dream (though companies such as boeing seem to share this dream) however its already a current reality for space exploration space planes and national security earths gravity pulls back any vehicles reentering the atmosphere from space at hypersonic speeds and recent tests of hypersonic vehicles by potential adversaries underscore the national security motivation
the most well known issue of travelling at hypersonic speeds is surface heating for example a turbulent flow can produce six times the heating of a laminar flow and if unexpected could mean the loss of the vehicle said dr helen reed director of the computational stability and transition laboratory computational research coupled with data from tests with models studied in our quiet tunnel will lead to a better understanding of when and why the air flowing over a surface changes (transitions) from smooth to turbulent and we observe a strong increase in heating and drag predicting and controlling the transition process are recognized as critical enablers for future hypersonic systems and engineers need highly accurate predictive tools for confidence in their designs for example designs with extended regions of laminar flow would heat up less thus requiring less heat shielding and likely lighter-mass vehicles being able to build a computer model for this process is extremely complicated but reed is an internationally acclaimed computationalist and has developed state-of-the-art tools and theories to predict airflows to do a flight test is extremely expensive and with the harsh environment it is very challenging to take the right measurements to confirm that you got things right said reed but with our suite of ground test and computational facilities and by working as a team on these problems our goal is to predict the flow field and heating measure it figure out and model the right physics and then those models can be applied to design the flight articles well give our models to those that are building these vehicles and theyll be more reliable in helping them achieve successful missions building the right kind of lab facilities is crucial for any research but hypersonics offers many critical challenges for example most conventional wind tunnels inherently have disturbances and noise levels that are many times greater than the relatively undisturbed (or ‘quiet) atmosphere encountered by a flight vehicle even seemingly small effects can be highly amplified and can give results different than what is observed in flight for some technologies texas a&m has two signature facilities whose flowfields have been especially conditioned to mimic the ‘quiet flight environment: one is low-speed (klebanoff-saric wind tunnel) and one is hypersonic (mach 6 quiet tunnel) reed said the mach 6 quiet tunnel from nasa is one of only two in the united states and is now housed within the texas a&m nal creating and maintaining these types of tunnels is difficult so much so that the tunnels themselves are research projects bowersox along with dr simon north (professor and head of the department of chemistry at texas a&m) and their team have created additional complementary signature facilities and capabilities including a high-temperature shock driven facility capable of producing mach 15 flight conditions within the nal all of which are critical to advancing hypersonics bowersox is an internationally recognized experimentalist having established programs in next generation propulsion systems turbulent flow modeling high-temperature chemistry effects and diagnostics the extensive faculty expertise also includes dr richard miles who recently joined the texas a&m aerospace department as part of both the chancellors research initiative and governors university research initiative programs miles is a world-renowned leader in developing new advanced laser diagnostics and he is creating a new laboratory to be located next to the nal to pursue the study of aerospace applications of lasers and electromagnetics according to bowersox miles innovative measurement techniques are enabling new measurements in hypersonics at research facilities across the us in addition dr william saric an internationally renowned expert in boundary layer stability led a five-year air force and nasa-sponsored center in hypersonic transition the mach 6 quiet tunnel was an experimental centerpiece of this program miles said the challenge of hypersonics has been a recurring theme ever since his first experiments with hypersonic helium at princeton university in the 1970s and that it was clear even then that lasers could provide critical measurements that otherwise were not possible with conventional methods in hypersonic flows miles and bowersox met previously while working on the national aerospace plane project and then again when they were part of the defense advanced research project agency quiet supersonic platform which also included reed who was at arizona state university at the time since then it seems that all hypersonic roads now converge on texas a&m at least in the academic domain miles said rodney and helen have built a unique capability and assembled an outstanding team of researchers the commitment that texas a&m has made to hypersonics is remarkable the nal not only has unique wind tunnels it also leads in the development and application of advanced diagnostics once i became emeritus at princeton the opportunity to join the texas a&m team became a reality and it is proving to be a wonderful transition according to bowersox a key strength of the texas a&m program is the excellent cross-discipline faculty from aerospace engineering chemistry physics materials science and engineering and mechanical engineering
student impact the outstanding faculty and laboratories within the department have made texas a&m an exciting destination for students interested in aerospace fields the quality of the students in the program became apparent last year when the texas a&m sounding rocketry team which was a spin-off of bowersoxs laboratory competed for the first time and placed second in a national competition in new mexico despite not being able to launch the rocket due to a sensor malfunction
evan marcotte a former student who now works with blue origin an aerospace manufacturer based out of washington helped start the team a few years ago because he had a hard time getting internships with companies because he didnt have any hands-on rocket experience i think that continued legacy from one student to another is what allows a culture to thrive and grow he said i truly believe that the nal is one of the most unique places in the academic world due to the students who go through there and dr bowersoxs leadership i have no doubt that it will continue to produce top-notch students and do some amazing things marcotte also said that the way bowersox leads the lab is the key to its success he guides and defines big picture plans but allows students to truly take ownership of their projects from design and fabrication to data acquisition and analysis he said he maintains the perfect balance between being there and not to the point where you can make mistakes and learn but always know that if you hit a wall that he is there to help you overcome it similarly reed has created the aggiesat lab student satellite program which has launched four student-developed satellites into orbit the mission of aggiesat lab is to provide students with real systems engineering and leadership experiences develop and demonstrate modern technologies using a small-satellite platform complement students in-class education and teach industry practices all as extracurricular activities bowersox said that another interesting aspect of hypersonics research is that since being able to test and observe some aspects of it is still such a new field there are unique moments you may make a measurement and youll see it and sometimes youll be the first person to ever to see it he said maybe its a fluctuation somewhere even if its a small thing it doesnt matter students love the science aspect of what were doing the students in our department believe in the future of high-speed flight rockets and space exploration and being a part of enabling humans to achieve these goals said reed they closely follow international progress and with their passion and capabilities they will be the leaders the enablers with the quality of research going on with the faculty and students its a good bet that texas a&ms hypersonics program will be involved in helping humans travel faster and farther for years to come
the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university will host its 47th turbomachinery and 34th pump symposia (tps) sept 18-20 in houston at the george r brown convention center full-day short courses will be held in conjunction with the symposia on sept 17
tps is recognized as the premiere conference for rotating equipment engineers and technicians worldwide spanning oil and gas petrochemical chemical power and water industries now surpassing 46 years the symposia have remained steadfast in their founding principles: to enable interested individuals to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field and to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas on a practical engineering level tps accomplishes this mission through two pathways: program delegates may choose from an array of technical sessions including full-day short courses and lectures tutorials case studies and discussion groups technical program content is solicited from engineers and technicians who have relevant field experience to share and is hand-selected by advisory committees of industry leaders who began work on the 2018 program in october 2017 view the technical program schedule at https://tpstamuedu/program/ exhibition the symposia exhibition will feature booths from more than 350 leading companies from the oil and gas petrochemical power pump and turbomachinery industries companies will display full-size equipment cutting-edge technology and emerging industry trends during a portion of the symposia the exhibit hall will be free to the public upon completion of a free pass registration form free entry will be available tuesday 2:30 – 7 pm wednesday 2:30 – 6:30 pm and thursday 9:30 am – noon view the list of exhibiting companies at https://tpstamuedu/exhibition/
tps 2017 originally scheduled for sept 12-14 was postponed three months due to the impact of hurricane harvey on houston and surrounding areas undeterred by the reschedule tps attracted 89 new exhibiting companies and hosted a total of 359 exhibiting companies just one shy of tps 2016s record-setting 360 a total of 4 620 unique delegates representing 46 countries visited the exhibition or attended technical sessions we are pleased to host another symposiathe meeting of choice for users and manufacturers of commercial turbomachinery and pumps said dr eric l petersen turbo lab director this is where the best in the industry come to share their expertise registration remains open online and will be available onsite for paid symposia delegates for more information on tps 2018 including the full technical program event schedule exhibiting company list registration procedures and more please visit tpstamuedu
dr stratos pistikopoulos tees eminent professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was recently named the director of the texas a&m energy institute
additionally he serves as the course director of the master of science in energy program in the institute co-director of the southern regional manufacturing center in the clean energy smart manufacturing innovation institute (cesmii) and co-lead of the modeling and simulation focus area within the rapid advancement in process intensification deployment (rapid) manufacturing usa institute on process intensification energy including its sustainable production and environmentally responsible use represents one of the grand challenges to human progress and well-being in the 21st century pistikopoulos not only brings outstanding credentials and collaborative leadership to this position but his expertise in the analysis of complex systems will be essential to the integration of the diverse contributions from science technology and policy that must be part of future solutions with pistikopoulos vision and creativity texas a&ms energy institute is well positioned to lead the state and the nation into our energy future says vice president for research dr mark a barteau before joining texas a&m in 2015 pistikopoulos was a professor and director of research in the department of chemical engineering and director of the centre for process systems engineering at the imperial college london he earned a doctorate from carnegie mellon university and worked with shell chemicals in amsterdam before joining imperial pistikopoulos has written or co-written over 400 major research publications and 10 books in the areas of modeling control and optimization of process energy and systems engineering applications he holds two patents and is co-founder of process systems enterprise ltd his numerous awards include co-recipient of the prestigious macrobert award from the royal academy of engineering the computing in chemical engineering award of cast/aiche doctor honoris causa from the university politechnica of bucharest and the university of pannonia and a fellow of the royal academy of engineering in the united kingdom the texas a&m energy institute is a joint institute between texas a&m university and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) the institute pursues and supports new approaches of multi-disciplinary energy research education and external partnerships these approaches cross departmental and college boundaries to address all facets of the energy landscape that naturally connect engineering science technology economics behavior law and policy decisions
the national center for therapeutics manufacturings (nctm) bioforce summer academy has just completed its seventh year having served a grand total of 566 rising texas high school sophomores juniors and seniors several dozen of whom have gone on to become texas a&m university aggies but the 2018 camps were made much more special by having two bioforce graduates engage with this years participants in special ways bioforce is a stem summer program that provides a three-year series of opportunities for high school students to gain exposure to the biotechnology industry by learning from and working with industry leaders in state-of-the-art laboratories and pharmaceutical companies bioforce students learn how cutting-edge research and medical discoveries become new drugs and pharmaceutical treatments and discover their potential to become a scientist who creates a blockbuster life-saving medicine or an engineer who manufacturers disease-eradicating vaccines when away from these exciting eye-opening experiences students enjoyed simply making memories with their new like-minded friends as they got to tour and explore the texas a&m campus eating breakfast and dinner at sbisa dining hall playing sports at the student recreation center and hanging out in the game room at hullabaloo hall logan ardrey graduated from the bioforce summer academies in 2016 and is now a texas a&m sophomore biology major and pre-med student ardrey served as a 2018 bioforce counselor i cannot stress how glad i am that i went to bioforce when i was in high school ardrey said campers get a chance to tour cutting-edge research laboratories and manufacturing facilities get hands-on experience with experiments and current good manufacturing practices (cgmp) guidelines and meet other like-minded students from across the state i have always been interested in science but this summer academy really helped me to realize what i want to do later in life this years camp began as they all have – buzzing with an air of anticipation and nervous excitement but with curiosity in their eyes and with each session having no greater than 25 students campers made connections in record time diving into lab work and interacting throughout each day campers quickly took hold of the opportunities to bond with different individuals such that hometown friends and camp friends became difficult to distinguish
students selected for bioforce academies are chosen as the most competitive among a large pool of applicants specifically 1 005 to-date within only hours of camp sessions commencing it was obvious that students were just as impressive in person as on paper during the first day of bioforce i (upcoming sophomores) discussions of ap courses choosing the right university drafting perfect college applications and the atmosphere of college courses emerged this ambitious and inquisitive nature of the rising sophomores bode well for them as they encountered experiences on the topic of the camp todays medicine leading them to ask thoughtful intelligent questions in laboratory experiments ranging from pipetting & bacterial plating to microscopy and gram staining to green fluorescent protein transformation and bacterial painting as well as during tours of the sacchettini lab the texas a&m institute for genomics medicine and the texas a&m institute for preclinical studies bioforce ii shifted the focus to tomorrows medicine exposing students to lab experiments and concepts that are pertinent to advanced processes in biotechnology such as sds page western blot and enzyme and elisa labs as well as tours of the microscopy and imaging center and the world-renowned biotechnology company lonza biologics in pearland texas camper rebecca ramirez said i like going to the lab because ive never done any of that never seen that equipment ive learned about it in school but ive never actually done it so having that opportunity was really cool the summer academies concluded with a look into my future in medicine through bioforce iii in which seniors were able to role play a day in the life of a biotechnician during experiments such as surface monitoring plating and incubation restriction digestion pouring and running gels cell staining and counting and gram staining and elisa they also had the opportunity to picture themselves in a biotechnology career during tours with asuragen and bioo scientific in austin texas during the tour of asuragen current intern and former bioforce academy graduate mason ouren said bioforce was very helpful in giving early exposure to the lab setting in high school its a challenge to get good experience and experiments in a classit introduced that ‘cool factor and that awe that spring boards into ‘maybe i want to pursue this moreand that led me to want to do research in college im a bio major now and work in a lab that studies plant genetics and that lab connected me to this internship which is 100 percent molecular genetics which is awesome and exactly what i was anticipating doing [bioforce] was the gateway into learning and discovering ‘i really enjoy this and want to do this as a career
like mason campers of 2018 bioforce iii shared similar thoughts rising senior ankita rao stated i think the best part was going to actual companies because once you learn these skills once you have that education sometimes its easy to forget what you can actually do with all that and to see where you can possibly go with that kind of knowledge i think that was really important to see bioforce summer academies are formative yet fun opportunities for high schoolers of all ages experience levels and backgrounds with a relaxed encouraging and unifying environment bioforce camps allowed high-caliber busy high school students to have a break from the stresses of being the perfect college candidate so that they could make friends and memories with individuals they would not have met otherwise in a short time students were able to revolutionize their perspectives on science biotechnology and medicine and gain insight that will prove incredibly valuable as they choose their college majors and the career paths that best fits their personalities and passions bioforce summer academies are primarily financed by grant funding from the governors summer merit program (smp) awarded by the texas workforce commission the smp sponsors summer youth camps that focus on science technology engineering and math (stem) and inspires texas youth to learn high demand stem skills in fields that will position them for success in the industries of the future
the turbomachinery laboratory at texas a&m university hosted another record-breaking turbomachinery & pump symposia last week the 47th turbomachinery and 34th international pump users symposia (tps 2018) attracted 53 new companies to the george r brown convention center for a total of 365 exhibiting companies topping tps 2016s record by five companies the exhibition featured full-size equipment and emerging technology and industry trends from leading turbomachinery pump and related organizations already 85 percent of the exhibit floor for tps 2019 has been reserved
4 750 unique delegates representing 45 countries visited the exhibition or attended technical sessions engineers and technicians from novice to experienced chose from a combination of 18 short courses 18 lectures 23 tutorials 24 discussion groups and 32 case studies the technical program is selected by the turbomachinery and pump advisory committees and led by engineers and technicians with experience in particular disciplines topics included compressors steam and gas turbines expanders pumps and drivers and auxiliary equipment such as couplings bearings gearboxes dry gas seals and annular seals technical content from tps 2018 will be available to the public in march 2019 proceedings from previous symposia are free for perusal and download at turbolabtamuedu/proceedings the call for papers for the tps 2019 program is now open one- to-three page abstracts are due monday oct 22 for submission details visit tpstamuedu/program i am grateful to all of our authors leaders delegates exhibitors and advisers who make tps a staple event for the industry said dr eric l petersen turbo lab director i am fortunate to be a part of this unique forum where the best in the industry come to share their expertise i look forward to building on this experience for many more successful symposia to come tps 2019 is set for sept 10-12 in houston short courses will be held in conjunction with the symposia on sept 9 to learn more about tps and see photos from this years event visit tpstamuedu to reserve exhibit space email martha@turbo-labtamuedu
dr yu ding isnt the type of engineer that people normally think of when they think of wind energy but perhaps thats why over a decade ago he became the perfect engineer to solve a problem in the renewable energy industry the problem: how do you know if something is really working due to both their massive size and the number of variables involved proving that small changes in a wind turbine are having a measurable effect is a challenging task even the most basic element of a wind turbine isnt constant you obviously cant control the wind itself; its changing all the time ding said but theres also all kinds of other environmental variables -- temperature turbulence humidity etc how do you possibly accurately control those types of things so that you can testify to the effect of an operational change one way would be to control for the variables using some kind of wind tunnel but wind turbines stand at over 300 feet tall if you want to do a controlled experiment youre going to have to use an enormous wind tunnel in front of a utility scale turbine but nobody has been doing that ding said that would be a huge undertaking so you have to rely on their normal operation a proposed change in the wind energy field was installing vortex generators on turbines to improve the power production efficiency vortex generators simply put are small devices that change the way air moves around the turbines to increase energy productivity the industry simply wanted to know do they work finding an answer is extremely complicated in part because a field test is costly adding the generators material wise is not very expensive but you need to put a bunch of them on turbine blades so the labor is pretty expensive ding said someone has to climb up there with special equipment they also have to stop the production and not just for one turbine you have to shut down other turbines in its neighborhood so youre looking at about $7 000 to $10 000 per turbine if youre on a big scale of say 200 turbines youre looking at up to $2 million upfront for a whole farm another problem is even if they do work the expected improvement is small twenty-five years ago when someone studied vortex generators in a lab they said it could get significant improvement say 15 percent or 20 percent ding said obviously that would be really easy to detect in the field the general consensus is that its probably between 1 and 5 percent and with all of the noise you have in this data that 1 percent or 5 percent could be overwhelmed by the noise one percent does not sound like much but if true it is enough to get the investment back in just a couple of years and the benefit over the life of a wind farm really adds up so with all of the given variables how can you possibly hope to reliably measure a change as small as 1 percent the solution searching for a weak signal in that much noise requires data--a lot of it--and that is dings specialty ding the mike and sugar barnes professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university considers himself a data scientist and his phd dissertation was about advanced manufacturing his early work out of college primarily was about using data for quality assurance he applied the same principles to these new problems starting in 2004 over the next several years he worked on some wind energy problems but it wasnt until connecting with edp renewables in 2011 that his research in this area really took off we created data science models to try and see other than the wind speed how you possibly can incorporate other kind of measurables ding said the environmental conditions wind direction air density turbulence wind shear humidity can we put enough data into a model to tell you how conditions are going to affect wind power production so when you feed in new data its like you create a mathematical surrogate and you can compare your datas theoretical power output to the actual power output his work on data science for wind turbine performance and upgrade quantification drew the attention of the german company smartblade ding published a study about quantifying wind turbine upgrades and smartblade asked him to conduct a joint study to see if his method could verify their internal assessments on their own data the two published an academia-industry case study in renewable energy in 2017 quantifying the effect of vortex generator installation on wind power production which presented a strong case of cross validation testifying to the respective methods capability and credibility the impact the result of that study was enough to convince edp renewables the fourth-largest wind owner-operator in the world to rethink how a turbine upgrade and retrofit effect should be quantified they decided to fine tune dings original approach and jointly developed with dings team a standard procedure that evaluates decisions of installing retrofits on a large scale based on dings innovative approach that re-affirmed gains with more certainty edp renewables installed blade retrofits on up to 1 000 turbines across our fleet brian hayes executive vice president of edp renewables north america said this was an investment of greater than $7 million and increased the amount of clean energy produced by more than 100 000 mwh -- a positive impact to say the least! hayes went on to say the change in thinking he (ding) is driving with our team is significant given the history and general risk aversion to changing methodologies ding compared the relationship with hayes to the relationship between (oakland athletics general manager) billy beane and bill james in the book moneyball ding said that hayes encouraged him to read the book when they first met in the book james is a data analyst who had some innovative ways of looking at the game of baseball but it wasnt until beane and the money-strapped oakland athletics began to buy into them that they were ever applied and accepted it only took one insider in that case billy beane to believe in the data science and now data analytics is routine in major league baseball ding said thats a complete change in mentality the impact of dings research is why he was a recipient of a college of engineering research impact award earlier this year ding said that data sciences impact on engineering applications is everywhere he is now working on developing innovative data science methods for advanced manufacturing the subject he worked on in his phd dissertation and always something he wants to make an impact on
"the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) represented by the texas a&m cybersecurity center has signed a new collaborative agreement with the qatar general electricity and water corporation (kahramaa) which aims to strengthen cooperation between both parties in relation to cybersecurity the agreement was signed at texas a&m university at qatar by his excellency engineer essa bin hilal al-kuwari kahramaa president and chair of the smart grid center at qatar steering committee and dr ioannis g economou associate dean for academic affairs at texas a&m at qatar who was representing dr dimitris lagoudas tees deputy director under this collaboration agreement tees experts will study the current situation in kahramaas grid and give recommendations for current and future development opportunities for the corporation to become a pioneer as a cybersecure grid the agreement will also establish an industry consortium to study current and future development opportunities for the state of qatar where needed and a mechanism to develop and manage projects related to cybersecurity for more than 100 years tees has engineered solutions to real-world problems with significant input and collaboration from industry and government said economou texas a&m at qatar and its tees extensions are proud to continue that tradition in qatar and this partnership with kahramaa is just the latest example of these strong ties to industry we are proud to collaborate with kahramaa as it works to transform its utilities and power grid into a smart cybersecure grid for the benefit of qatar and its people this agreement will also enable sharing expertise and research studies in several areas including cybersecurity assessment and vulnerability malware infrastructure analysis and related research areas such as critical infrastructure protection moreover through this collaborative agreement tees will offer certificate programs and training opportunities for kahramaa nominees to acquire cybersecurity knowledge and skills for their careers al-kuwari said this further cooperation between kahramaa and tees represented in one of its important centers namely the texas a&m cybersecurity center is an excellent embodiment of an extended successful partnership between our two entities smart grid helps utilities conserve energy reduce costs increase reliability and transparency and make processes more efficient ""however it increases use of it-based electric power systems which can increase cybersecurity vulnerabilities which increases cybersecuritys importance thats why we pay great attention to our grid security by identifying vulnerable areas if any and other related strategic issues through a layered security approach proper data management and privacy concerns through kahramaas staff efforts and the support of our expert partners such as tees which is our second collaboration together this new agreement expands a previous partnership between kahramaa and tees to investigate smart grid technologies and challenges to implementation on the qatar grid through tees smart grid center and its qatar extension the initial study aims to give recommendations to advance efficient use of electric energy and the full transform of the electricity grid in qatar into a smart grid promote collaboration to investigate smart grid challenges and deliver innovative and effective smart grid solutions"
in september two new stanton nuclear security fellows joined the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university and will be working with the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) for the 2018-19 academic year the stanton nuclear security fellows program supports young scholars to pursue policy-relevant technical research in nuclear security for a 12-month period at texas a&m under the guidance of a faculty mentor fellowships are available for postdoctoral researchers and early-career faculty with the express mission of stimulating the development of the next generation of thought leaders in nuclear security by supporting research that will advance policy-relevant understanding of the issues this years stanton fellows are early-career faculty member dr sherzod kurbanbekov and postdoctoral researcher dr kavita rathore both of them will spend a year working with texas a&m faculty mentors dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor of nuclear engineering and dr matthew fuhrmann professor of political science kurbanbekov will conduct an investigation of the high-enriched uranium (heu) stockpile of north korea he will use information available in the public domain as well as theoretical projections to estimate the expected quantity of heu in the north korean stockpile produced through both known and possibly clandestine enrichment capacity in the country kurbanbekov notes the results of this study could help us policymakers achieve better outcomes in future negotiations with north korea kurbanbekov received his doctoral degree in materials science from the d serikbayev east kazakhstan state technical university ust-kamenogorsk kazakhstan he began working at the institute of atomic energy branch of the republican state enterprise national nuclear center of the republic of kazakhstan in kurchatov as a researcher in october 2013 and is currently working there as a senior researcher rathores project focuses on the effects of the withdrawal of the us and possibly the european union (eu) from the joint comprehensive plan of action (jcpoa) the jcpoa widely known as the iran nuclear deal was implemented in 2016 with the aim of ensuring that the iranian nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful with the announcement in 2018 that the us would withdraw from the jcpoa the question of how this withdrawal will affect iranian nuclear proliferation becomes pertinent the scenarios of the us withdrawal as well as us and eu withdrawal from the jcpoa should have effects on the country profile for iran and thus nuclear weapons latency values rathore said nuclear weapons latency is the time needed for a non-nuclear weapons state to develop a nuclear weapon once the decision to proliferate has been made rathore will analyze the broad political effects of us and possibly eu withdrawal from the jcpoa and will use the nuclear weapons latency tool developed at texas a&m to estimate the nuclear weapons latency values in face of this new political reality compared to that under continued implementation of the jcpoa rathore completed her doctoral degree in nuclear engineering and technology from the indian institute of technology kanpur india she completed her masters degree in nuclear science and technology from delhi university in delhi india and bachelors degree in physics from kota university in kota india the stanton nuclear security fellows program is supported by the stanton foundation which was created by frank stanton to support work in his areas of interest including nuclear security texas a&m is one of seven leading institutions in nuclear security in the us that currently hosts stanton nuclear security fellows
dr m sam mannan executive director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) passed away on tuesday sept 11 2018 mannans work at the mkopsc has influenced the entire chemical engineering industry in the us and worldwide process safety which was once seen as little more than wearing safety goggles or a lab coat has become one of the most important areas of chemical engineering throughout mannans more than 20 years with the center the mkopsc has been a driving force in industrys adoption of more rigorous safety standards mannan regents professor and holder of the t michael oconnor chair i in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university was a fellow of the american institute of chemical engineers fellow of the uk institution of chemical engineers and a member of the american society of safety engineers international institute of ammonia refrigeration and national fire protection association earlier this year mannan was also appointed to serve on the department of energys hydrogen and fuel cell technical advisory committee mannan has received countless awards for his work including the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) engineering genesis award in 2014 the charles w crawford service award at texas a&m in 2014 the bush excellence award for faculty in public service at texas a&m in 2012 american institute of chemical engineers norton h walton/ russell l miller award in 2009 the medal of honor from the technical university of lodz poland in 2008 and the texas a&m university association of former students distinguished achievement award for teaching in 2003 in addition to these awards mannan was named the first holder of the ma naser chair by bangladesh university of engineering and technology; distinguished visiting professor sinopec research institute of safety engineering qing dao china; and distinguished honorary professor rajiv gandhi university of petroleum technology in 2011 the technical university of lodz poland conferred a doctoris honoris causa on mannan he was a prolific author and researcher he co-authored guidelines for safe process operations and maintenance published by the center for chemical process safety american institute of chemical engineers he is the editor of the 3rd and 4th edition of the three-volume authoritative reference for process safety and loss prevention lees loss prevention in the process industries and co-authored a book multiscale modeling for process safety applications he has also published over 300 peer-reviewed journal publications more than 220 proceedings papers and more than 270 technical meeting presentations mannan is survived by his wife afroza mannan and their two daughters joya and rumki
mannan is survived by his wife afroza mannan and their two daughters joya and rumki
on july 22 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) led a workshop on the policy and technical fundamentals of international nuclear safeguards that took place in conjunction with the 59th annual meeting of the institute for nuclear materials management (inmm) in baltimore maryland the workshop consisted of a face-to-face session at the inmm meeting and an online certificate course which participants could complete either before or after the meeting the in-person portion of the workshop featured presentations by a panel of international safeguards experts and professionals with current or recent experience in policy technical implementation and/or inspections according to nsspi director dr sunil chirayath who moderated the panel this is the first such professional development workshop to take place during the inmm annual meeting in 20 years and it speaks directly to the mission of the organization to offer such opportunities to its members chirayath is also the president of the us southwest professional chapter of the inmm and the faculty sponsor of the texas a&m university student chapter of the inmm the four-hour panel session began with a presentation by therese renis the director of the division of concepts and planning in the department of safeguards at the international atomic energy agency (iaea) her talk gave participants an overview of the iaeas safeguards implementation policy michael whitaker manager of the international safeguards group in the nuclear security and isotope technology division at oak ridge national laboratory then gave a presentation on iaea inspections at us nuclear weapons production facilities and how the facility prepares for and hosts iaea safeguards inspections this was followed by an overview of the technical aspects of international safeguards by shirley johnson a private consultant and former iaea safeguards inspector jill cooley who is a senior technical advisor for the global security and strategic partnerships program at the y-12 national security complex with 20 years of experience at the iaea spoke about the states system of accounting for and control of nuclear material laura rockwood the executive director of the vienna center for disarmament and nonproliferation addressed the role of the additional protocol from a states perspective finally dunbar lockwood who is a senior advisor for safeguards and safeguards policy in the office of international nuclear safeguards at the national nuclear security administration gave a presentation on the challenges of implementing the state-level concept with emphasis of the issues related to state-specific factors acquisition path analysis and customized state-level approaches after the presentations participants were given the opportunity to interact with the experts in an informal question-and-answer session
there were 67 registered participants at the workshop at the time of the meeting 18 individuals including inmm president corey hinderstein had completed the online coursework and were awarded their certificates during the workshop an additional 12 participants have completed the online portion since this coursework represented approximately 25 hours of training in nuclear safeguards and covered: an introduction to nuclear safeguards and security an overview of the nuclear fuel cycle an introduction to statistics and applied statistics for safeguards nuclear material accountancy containment and surveillance spent nuclear fuel safeguards and uranium enrichment safeguards participants have the option of completing the online course through the end of september to earn a certificate and continuing education credits participants reported to me that the course work was fairly rigorous inmm vice president cary e crawford remarked at the opening plenary session of the inmm annual meeting the institute very much appreciates the effort from texas a&m because it not only brought an educational element and academic credit but it also was able to continue promoting our next generation education the workshop was jointly conducted by the us southwest professional chapter the international safeguards technical division of the inmm and the texas a&m and university of new mexico student chapters of the inmm
when your power goes out you probably assume that your utility provider has a monitoring system quickly telling them exactly where the problem is after all this is the era of smart technology and big data but the electric grid wasnt designed or built in this era utility companies may know if there is an outage but they likely dont know exactly where or what the problem is until crews inspect it and find the problem utility providers are essentially blind to developing problems in the grid other than whether the power is on or off not only is their ability to assess a current outage limited they also have no way of identifying a problem that may not actually be causing an outage or anticipating where a problem may occur in the future for example a failing device could be sparking creating a dangerous situation that nobody is aware of for days or weeks before it completely fails and causes an outage but not anymore applying concepts of pattern recognition and advanced signal processing to more than a decade of data a team of texas a&m university researchers has developed a new technology called distribution fault anticipation (dfa) it has the capability to not only help utility providers find the cause of outages but to also anticipate and predict some failures before outages occur (their published research application of dfa technology for improved reliability and operations was presented at the 2017 institute of electrical and electronics engineers rural electric power conference in columbus ohio) power distribution system electrical signals include specific failure signatures which tell a story for instance whether potential faults and outages are about to occur said dr b don russell a power engineer and the engineering research chair professor and distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m simply put theyve been ‘listening to the electric grid for more than a decade to analyze signals and identify which ones indicate a potential problem conceptually it is not much different from an auto mechanic who can hear a problem in an old engine and know exactly what is causing it practically however this is an entirely new technology the texas a&m research team led by russell includes carl benner jeff wischkaemper and karthick manivannan their research sponsored by the electric power research institute developed the dfa technology it is an autonomous distributed computing system that provides electric utility operators a continuous situational awareness of the condition of each circuit the result is increased reliability of their network and reduced outages it enables the utility operator to predict adverse power line conditions and events generally not detected by conventional technologies dfa recognizes the impending failure mechanisms of most distribution hardware often allowing operators to find and fix failing devices before catastrophic failure said russell the devices report line events to a master station server which provides access to reports from a fleet of dfa devices on circuits across the power system
an obvious example of the benefits from this technology is wildfire prevention high winds can cause electric lines to contact causing arcing on the line and damaging it but not causing a complete outage the sparks from these faults have been known to start wildfires especially during dry conditions and often without the knowledge of utility personnel repeated contact can burn the line down dfa has also helped utilities detect and locate tree branches making contact with power lines and causing faults which can start fires directly or break a line and cause it to fall to the ground an example of this situation was the devastating fire of 2011 in bastrop texas where a true worst-case scenario unfolded when high winds and severe drought conditions caused the most damaging wildfire in texas history many wildfires in the western united states last year were also linked to electric faults russell explained that awareness of adverse events and conditions even before they cause a failure enables utility companies to take preventive action by performing repairs or condition-based maintenance the dfa technology is a result of more than 15 years of continuous research collaboration resulting in the only system of its kind a practical benefit of using dfa is the ability to detect and repair arcing and misoperating devices that often cause wildfires said russell in a four-year study just completed at texas a&m it has been proven that many fires can be prevented with this technology whether preventing wildfires or dangerous power lines on the ground dfa is the new tool that improves reliability and safety industry tested this technology is not just lab tested it is field proven as well robert peterson director of control center and emergency preparedness at pedernales electric cooperative the nations largest distribution electric cooperative said dfa has been invaluable in providing information that is not available any other way dfa has enabled us to identify potential issues like trees on lines failing clamps failing arrestors etc and resolve those issues before they create power interruptions he said in one case we were able to pinpoint the location of a branch on an overhead line that could have become an ignition source for wildfire in a rural subdivision we have also used the monitors to provide information allowing us to proactively address issues with capacitor switches in order to keep our power factor within regulatory prescribed limits overall the technology has proven itself to the extent that our plans now include expanding their use to the rest of our distribution system dr comfort manyame senior manager of research and technical strategy and robert taylor engineering specialist at mid-south synergy were also complimentary of the technology taylor said it makes me wonder what we did before dfa while manyame said they are hoping to expand their use of dfa in the coming years thomas ellis manager of engineering at bluebonnet electric cooperative said that their control center operators have used dfa information to accurately determine the cause and location of multiple faults including a fault that affected just one single customer on a stretch of circuit with more than 160 miles of overhead line we would have been unaware of this issue until a member reported an outage which did not happen for a full hour ellis said a crew was already en route with the information that the likely cause was a failed arrester before we even got the call from the affected location according to ellis information provided by dfa allows us to better identify intermittent faults incipient failures and capacitor malfunctions increased prefailure awareness facilitates proactive equipment repair to mitigate catastrophic failures and avoid sustained outages he added that dfa technology not only improves customer satisfaction but also improves worker safety thanks to diagnostic capability of the system leading to more efficient troubleshooting that kind of industry feedback makes all of the efforts by dfa creators worth it according to benner an engineer co-inventor and associate research professor in the electrical and computer engineering department we have spent 20 years developing dfa benner said i get great personal satisfaction when i see utility companies using it on a day-to-day basis to improve their operations and the quality of service they provide to their customers this research is funded by the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas wildfire mitigation project which was initially established by the texas state legislature in 2013 with the support of the texas a&m forest service
an obvious example of the benefits from this technology is wildfire prevention high winds can cause electric lines to contact causing arcing on the line and damaging it but not causing a complete outage the sparks from these faults have been known to start wildfires especially during dry conditions and often without the knowledge of utility personnel repeated contact can burn the line down dfa has also helped utilities detect and locate tree branches making contact with power lines and causing faults which can start fires directly or break a line and cause it to fall to the ground an example of this situation was the devastating fire of 2011 in bastrop texas where a true worst-case scenario unfolded when high winds and severe drought conditions caused the most damaging wildfire in texas history many wildfires in the western united states last year were also linked to electric faults russell explained that awareness of adverse events and conditions even before they cause a failure enables utility companies to take preventive action by performing repairs or condition-based maintenance the dfa technology is a result of more than 15 years of continuous research collaboration resulting in the only system of its kind a practical benefit of using dfa is the ability to detect and repair arcing and misoperating devices that often cause wildfires said russell in a four-year study just completed at texas a&m it has been proven that many fires can be prevented with this technology whether preventing wildfires or dangerous power lines on the ground dfa is the new tool that improves reliability and safety industry tested this technology is not just lab tested it is field proven as well robert peterson director of control center and emergency preparedness at pedernales electric cooperative the nations largest distribution electric cooperative said dfa has been invaluable in providing information that is not available any other way dfa has enabled us to identify potential issues like trees on lines failing clamps failing arrestors etc and resolve those issues before they create power interruptions he said in one case we were able to pinpoint the location of a branch on an overhead line that could have become an ignition source for wildfire in a rural subdivision we have also used the monitors to provide information allowing us to proactively address issues with capacitor switches in order to keep our power factor within regulatory prescribed limits overall the technology has proven itself to the extent that our plans now include expanding their use to the rest of our distribution system dr comfort manyame senior manager of research and technical strategy and robert taylor engineering specialist at mid-south synergy were also complimentary of the technology taylor said it makes me wonder what we did before dfa while manyame said they are hoping to expand their use of dfa in the coming years thomas ellis manager of engineering at bluebonnet electric cooperative said that their control center operators have used dfa information to accurately determine the cause and location of multiple faults including a fault that affected just one single customer on a stretch of circuit with more than 160 miles of overhead line we would have been unaware of this issue until a member reported an outage which did not happen for a full hour ellis said a crew was already en route with the information that the likely cause was a failed arrester before we even got the call from the affected location according to ellis information provided by dfa allows us to better identify intermittent faults incipient failures and capacitor malfunctions increased prefailure awareness facilitates proactive equipment repair to mitigate catastrophic failures and avoid sustained outages he added that dfa technology not only improves customer satisfaction but also improves worker safety thanks to diagnostic capability of the system leading to more efficient troubleshooting that kind of industry feedback makes all of the efforts by dfa creators worth it according to benner an engineer co-inventor and associate research professor in the electrical and computer engineering department we have spent 20 years developing dfa benner said i get great personal satisfaction when i see utility companies using it on a day-to-day basis to improve their operations and the quality of service they provide to their customers this research is funded by the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas wildfire mitigation project which was initially established by the texas state legislature in 2013 with the support of the texas a&m forest service
this technology is not just lab tested it is field proven as well robert peterson director of control center and emergency preparedness at pedernales electric cooperative the nations largest distribution electric cooperative said dfa has been invaluable in providing information that is not available any other way dfa has enabled us to identify potential issues like trees on lines failing clamps failing arrestors etc and resolve those issues before they create power interruptions he said in one case we were able to pinpoint the location of a branch on an overhead line that could have become an ignition source for wildfire in a rural subdivision we have also used the monitors to provide information allowing us to proactively address issues with capacitor switches in order to keep our power factor within regulatory prescribed limits overall the technology has proven itself to the extent that our plans now include expanding their use to the rest of our distribution system dr comfort manyame senior manager of research and technical strategy and robert taylor engineering specialist at mid-south synergy were also complimentary of the technology taylor said it makes me wonder what we did before dfa while manyame said they are hoping to expand their use of dfa in the coming years
dr ali mostafavi a researcher at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and assistant professor with the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a $2 million research grant by the national science foundation (nsf) critical resilient interdependent infrastructure systems and processes (crisp) program crisp enables response to national critical infrastructure resilience needs while increasingly focusing on interdisciplinary research mostafavi is also a faculty fellow at the texas a&m institute for sustainable communities and will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers that includes: dr phillip berke professor in the department of landscape architecture and urban planning at texas a&m and director of the institute; dr sierra woodruff assistant professor in the department of landscape architecture and urban planning; dr arnold vedlitz professor and holder of the bob bullock chair in government and public policy at the texas a&m bush school of government and public service; and dr bjorn birgisson professor in the texas a&m civil engineering department the project builds upon an infrastructure resilience research program that mostafavi established within the texas a&m department of civil engineering to identify interdependencies between critical infrastructure systems using complex networks and system-of-systems models the team will be investigating how human and physical networks interact and how those interactions impact critical infrastructure performance in relation to flooding networks in this case is a broad term for groups of organizations or infrastructure and their interactions an example is the network of organizations involved with hazard mitigation and resilience planning or the interconnected flood control channels and bayous in this project what we aim to do is understand through dynamic network modeling the complex interactions among stakeholder networks network of plans and physical infrastructure networks that affect flood vulnerability and resilience mostafavi said we will see how the properties of stakeholder networks influence the level of integration among the network of local and regional plans and ultimately influence vulnerability of physical infrastructure networks our network approach will help us answer questions such as who coordinates with whom for hazard mitigation and flood resilience planning who manages what infrastructure who develops what plans what plans affect what infrastructure what roads get flooded if a specific bayou fails the problem of flooding is very complex with various interconnected physical systems and organizations we cannot identify and implement effective engineering and public policy solutions unless we understand and improve these complex network interactions the project will use harris county as the test bed and currently available data from hurricane harvey for testing the research methods the project will provide a better actionable science which in turn will help inform public policy decisions to create a stronger level of national infrastructure resilience another exciting and impactful aspect of this project is the deep engagement with stakeholders in harris county we have a noteworthy study advisory committee with individuals from the harris county flood control district city of houston us army corps of engineers and the texas department of transportation mostafavi said continuing upon those strong relationships well now be able to look at how all these networks are interacting together simultaneously and use that information to translate these findings into actionable science-based policy recommendations for these communities to improve infrastructure resilience from flooding according to mostafavi once methodologies and policies have been developed because of the teams findings they will be shared with stakeholders across the nation the goal is to disseminate the findings to inform policy decisions not only for municipal governments but also at the national level for example in collaboration with berke they will employ a resilience scorecard for communities to evaluate their resilience and hazard mitigation plans which would account for infrastructure interdependencies to reduce physical vulnerability from flooding events mostafavi who has already done federally-funded infrastructure resiliency studies in the aftermath of hurricane harvey through nsf rapid response research (rapid) grants said he is excited about the larger impact this research will have on these communities my previous work has led to a significant impact in terms of discoveries and methods and will continue to do so with this project he said but i am most looking forward to see immediate and long-term impacts on these harris county communities we have been partnering with in the aftermath of harvey
without electricity that the power grid supplies we wouldnt be able to work in the office or enjoy the comfort of our homes and in many ways this power is distributed and ultimately depleted with nothing in return qin yan a doctoral student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university is studying the impact of electric vehicles on the power grid in hopes of bringing support back to the grid in a new way electric vehicles need power to charge their batteries which may put a burden on the power grid system yan is working to alleviate this impact and develop a solution that would be mutually beneficial to both the vehicle and the grid yan is also taking renewable energy resources such as solar generation into consideration for this study and examining how to coordinate each element to better support the power grid as part of her research yan proposed an integrated bidirectional electric vehicle charging station that includes the charging station for the electric vehicles solar generation and battery storage in a commercial building she also developed an optimization algorithm to minimize the operational cost we are integrating these elements – electric vehicles solar generation and also battery storage yan said this symbiotic relationship would bring even more reliability to the grid enhancing the support it could give in other areas
"yan is also taking renewable energy resources such as solar generation into consideration for this study and examining how to coordinate each element to better support the power grid as part of her research yan proposed an integrated bidirectional electric vehicle charging station that includes the charging station for the electric vehicles solar generation and battery storage in a commercial building she also developed an optimization algorithm to minimize the operational cost we are integrating these elements – electric vehicles solar generation and also battery storage yan said this symbiotic relationship would bring even more reliability to the grid enhancing the support it could give in other areas i feel this research area of electric vehicles and solar generation is very promising and may be realized in the near future yan said with the growing development of distributed generation the traditional power system is facing new challenges and this study can help mitigate such impact on the current power system yan works alongside dr mladen kezunovic director of the smart grid center at texas a&m electrical vehicles are coming said kezunovic eugene e webb and regents professor ""they are not deployed as widely as we expected them to be but in the future the expectation is to have more electrical vehicles around so the question is open on how the electrical vehicles can not only benefit the owners but also the electrical grid"
while it isnt a hurricane labor trafficking is the perfect storm subtle and hard to track this type of involuntary servitude is often present in the recovery period following a natural disaster with rebuilding underway a team of researchers from texas a&m university and the university of texas at austin is taking a deeper look into post-harvey houston to find new ways to combat construction-related labor exploitation and trafficking
the project is funded by the national science foundations early-concept grant for exploratory research program (nsf eager) dr eleftherios iakovou director of manufacturing and logistics innovation initiatives at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m will be co-leading the study the team also includes dr yanling chang corrie and jim furber 64 faculty fellow and assistant professor in the department the ut austin team will be led by dr matt kammer-kerwick a research scientist at the universitys ic² institute labor trafficking is a form of human trafficking that occurs when a person is forced or coerced into a job with little or no compensation hidden in plain sight the most common victims are refugees impoverished people and immigrant workers in the construction manufacturing and mining industries a lack of visa portability withholding of passports and high recruitment fees are some of the risks contributing to the increased vulnerability of construction workers and the emergence of illicit supply chains in the sector iakovou said the industry is further characterized by informal part-time and temporary working relationships because these laborers are lacking financial security they can be easily intimidated and are more prone to exploitation and accepting dangerous working conditions the lingering chaos and need to rebuild after a natural disaster opens the door to the complicated illicit supply chains that lead to the trafficking of temporary workers with their two-year nsf eager grant iakovous team is finding new ways to break those chains using the post-harvey houston construction industry as a foundation of the study the researchers can better understand how trafficking networks function in and are affected by a post-catastrophe environment using information gathered while interviewing post-harvey cleanup laborers the researchers will model human trafficking and exploitation and identify interventions that can be used to cut down on the behaviors that lead to construction-related trafficking this exploration of the current systems used for disrupting exploitation will provide policymakers regulators and companies essential guidance about how to identify and fight trafficking in the future in addition to broadening research opportunities and involvement in ending harmful supply networks this project hopes to ensure that the suffering from a natural disaster ends with the storm this could assist in making the state of texas a fairer and more transparent place to live and work while addressing a pressing societal problem iakovou said
on october 5 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) hosted a delegation from the nuclear security division of the international atomic energy agency (iaea) division director raja adul aziz bin raja adnan along with jason e tierney the divisions section head for program development and international cooperation and nassima i barrows the nuclear security attaché for the us mission to international organizations in vienna visited the center to discuss ways that nsspiand other entities across the texas a&m university system–could possibly support the iaeas nuclear security mission they were particularly interested in possible collaborations in the area of nuclear security human capacity development and training the delegation met with nsspi faculty and staff to discuss the centers capabilities and past training experiences they also toured the texas a&m engineering extension services disaster city and emergency operations training center to determine how these facilities could support the iaeas nuclear security training endeavors
the only good thing about oil spills is that they are extremely rare in fact there has only been one recorded deep-water ocean spill but their rarity presents its own problems when it comes to choosing how to react to them thats why research done at texas a&m university to create stronger prediction models will play a critical role in assessing the pros and cons of tactics used in future spills the texas a&m oilspill calculator (tamoc) model developed by dr scott socolofsky professor in the zachry department of civil engineering and his team is being used by the us national oceanographic and atmospheric administration (noaa) in its oil spill model gnome (general noaa operational modeling environment) the severity of an oil spills impact depends on the amount and source of oil what courses of action responders choose and the physical properties of the oil the presence of oil in the ocean affects surface and subsurface organisms and resources linked in a complex way including humans damages include that which we see directly impacting wildlife such as coating birds or mammals with a layer of oil and the toxicity of the oil itself which may be poisonous at high enough concentrations oil spill research at texas a&m seeks to mitigate the effects of future spills predict the hazard conditions under future spill scenarios and help with decision support in future spills for the response effort it takes into consideration the solubility of oil something previously ignored in past models which allows for different predictions of impact on the ecosystem with the texas a&m oilspill calculator we are able to demonstrate the best choices for a blowout model and help to improve model prediction said socolofsky better predictions will save resources during the next major subsea blowout by helping to direct the response a blowout occurs any time an operator loses control of the flow rate in an oil well pipeline blowouts are most likely to occur during drilling of a new oil well since less is known at that time about the characteristics of the oil reservoir only in extreme cases do blowouts result in oil spills as occurred during the deepwater horizon accident an example of how this model can be used is to determine the impact of subsea dispersants during deepwater horizon dispersants were used resulting in a debate that still continues about how much measurable impact they had and whether that impact was worth the potential adverse effects on the environment when considering trade-offs socolofsky said to remember that an oil spill is already a bad event for the environment so any decision really comes down to mitigating these effects the choice to use dispersants is made whenever they will reduce exposure of toxic oil compounds to people people usually encounter oil through fumes in the air oil on the coast or oil on the sea surface subsea dispersant injection aims to reduce oil residue in the air coast and surface by allowing more of it to be dissolved into the ocean the epas first line of decision making is to protect human health said socolofsky dispersant injection did do that during the deepwater horizon accident and would still be selected today if human health would be protected an unfortunate trade-off is that the oil still enters the environment and in the case of subsea dispersant injecting impacts more of the ocean water column and seafloor than if dispersants were not used the national academies of sciences and engineering are still looking into the topic and socolofsky has been called in as an expert however how best to use or not use dispersants was never his goal socolofsky just set out to make the best model for these types of spills the model helps us make informed decisions for policy about dispersants so that if we are to have a future spill were prepared to respond in the best way he said whether thats to use dispersants or not thats up to someone else to decide but at least our model can provide objective background on what that decision should be made about the adoption of the tamoc model by government and industry earned socolofsky a college of engineering research impact award this year the team is also now working with noaa to predict what might happen for an accidental blowout in the arctic illustration by natalie renier woods hole oceanographic institution
officials with the texas a&m university system announced thursday that the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) will help address critical needs in the nations nuclear weapons stockpile by providing technical expertise workforce development and training at the pantex plant the nations primary facility for the final assembly dismantlement and maintenance of nuclear weapons the pantex plant northeast of amarillo is one of the panhandle regions largest employers with nearly 4 000 employees including nuclear electrical mechanical and computer engineers as well as pipefitters and maintenance workers consolidated nuclear security llc (cns) which manages and operates the plant signed a memorandum of understanding with tees a state agency within the texas a&m university system in february then in april the texas a&m system board of regents authorized the engineering state agency to sublease up to 16 000 square feet of space at the newly opened john c drummond center located adjacent to the pantex plant cns approached tees about the many opportunities for collaboration in research and training education professional development and joint program development at pantex said john sharp texas a&m system chancellor the partnership accelerates access for tees to partner with us department of energy employees and researchers housed inside the secured-areas of pantex plant chancellor sharp and texas a&m system officials see the partnership with cns at the pantex plant as a natural extension of the systems commitment to the nuclear weapons industry in november triad national security llc of which the texas a&m system is a partner began the management and operation of the nations premiere nuclear weapons laboratory los alamos national laboratory in new mexico cns manages the pantex facility under a contract from the us department of energy/national nuclear security administration as an additional way to elevate and grow this collaboration cns has expressed interest in tees leading a consortium of universities in specific research areas this would include texas a&m university in college station and west texas a&m university in canyon as well as other universities from texas and other states cns is pleased to partner with texas a&m system researchers in this joint venture and is confident of a mutually beneficial relationship going forward in research and development for national defense said mike beck cns vice president of mission engineering the goal is to increase the level of interaction between the two organizations to address areas of mutual interest and mission-critical challenges and to serve as an incubator for new ideas in developing technical approaches to national defense challenges the texas a&m systems statewide network of universities will provide a substantial amount of qualified future pantex workers from around the state and is a natural partner due to a longstanding commitment to national security as demonstrated by a 2017 dod defense security service award for excellence in counterintelligence nuclear safety and security are paramount to our national defense and the texas a&m university system recognizes that our strengths and purpose align well with the mission and overall efforts at pantex said m katherine banks texas a&m system vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories texas a&m engineering dean and tees agency director we are excited to establish research and development activities with pantex and look forward to future collaborations as we work together in service to the national nuclear security administration as an academic research institution serving the geographical region where this exciting partnership is unfolding west texas a&m university proudly partners with cns and the texas a&m university system at the pantex plant to focus attention research and resolution on the challenges and opportunities that are unique in the advancement of nuclear security said dr walter wendler west texas a&m university president our faculty and students will work in collaboration with the texas a&m engineering experiment station to drive new knowledge generation benefiting the region the state and the nation partnership opportunities include designing sensors and instrumentation for blast measurements investigating the use of augmented and virtual reality training for plant operations additive manufacturing certification training for first responders and facility safety and security further potential workforce development programs could include certificate and continuing education courses on cybersecurity nuclear safety fire safety criticality engineering and data analytics as well as local programmatic opportunities by tees-nuclear power institute programs available to school districts and community colleges in the panhandle region
preventing terrorists from smuggling nuclear and radiological material across our borders has been a priority for the department of homeland security (dhs) and us customs and border protection (cbp) since the beginning of this century radiation detection portal monitors are currently the primary means by which the cbp scans cargo and vehicles at ports of entry to detect radiation with approximately 1 300 deployed at the us borders ryan coogan a masters student at the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) is working on studying the strategic analysis of radiation detection portal monitors and mobile detection systems in border monitoring essentially this work attempts to answer a very particular question: if we want to catch nuclear materials being smuggled into the country and we already have a border with static (but obvious) radiation detectors do we continue to invest in more of the same do we plug holes in the border or do we diversify into mobile detection that can discretely operate state-side accepting that an intelligent adversary may bypass our border detection
we looked at what kind of an adversary might pursue nuclear terrorism we also examined the uncertainties that plague network modeling and how we might avoid them we then created a network in shield a program created by jun lao at nsspi some years ago and ran a series of simulations said coogan coogans work builds on tools developed as part of a large multi-year multi-disciplinary project led by nsspi and funded by the dhss domestic nuclear detection office called the smuggled heu interdiction through enhanced analysis and detection (shield) as part of this project researchers from nsspi and the texas a&m university department of industrial and systems engineering developed an integrated systems analysis model and created a code to analyze the strategic problem of nuclear material smuggling coogan used this software to perform a comparative analysis of two networks: one that deploys more radiation detection portal monitors and another using mobile detection systems according to coogan the results point to using more mobile detection systems what we found is that were better served investing in mobile detection while a static system may be effective against opportunists its not very effective against the type of adversary which is going to engage in nuclear terrorism while his study did not examine the cost associated with the different systems coogans research suggests that mobile detection systems have a significantly higher payoff in terms of their ability to successfully detect a simulated adversary coogan earned a bachelor of science degree in physics from michigan state university and a bachelors degree in liberal arts from drew university he worked with his advisor dr craig marianno deputy director of nsspi and assistant professor of nuclear engineering on this project and he successfully defended his thesis on oct 3 he will be earning his masters degree in nuclear engineering in spring 2019 after graduation he aspires to work in government to better inform the public and decision makers about nuclear technology
the engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research was presented to 20 texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) researchers and their teams during the tees external advisory board meeting oct 26 the award which is presented to tees researchers who have secured significant research grants of $1 million or more were given to the following: pi: michael demkowicz materials science and engineering co-pis: karl hartwig alan needleman and george m pharr materials science and engineering $125 million grant from the department of energy-national nuclear security administration for the center for research excellence on dynamically deformed solids (credds): discovering the role of heterogeneities in high strain rate mechanical response pi: dan hill petroleum engineering co-pis: george moridis david schechter and ding zhu petroleum engineering $6 million grant from the department of energy for the eagle ford shale laboratory: a field study of the stimulated reservoir volume detailed fracture characteristics and eor potential pi: daniel ragsdale computer science and engineering and director texas a&m cybersecurity center co-pis: paula dewitte robert jones dilma da silva and guofei gu computer science and engineering $44 million grant from the national science foundation for the texas a&m cyber leader scholarship program: developing cyber leader-scholars for the nation pi: jean ragusa nuclear engineering co-pis: mark kimber richard kurwitz sean mcdeavitt luis ortega lin shao and pavel tsvetkov nuclear engineering $3 million grant from the department of energy for nustem: nuclear science technology and education for molten salt reactors pi: javier jo biomedical engineering co-pis: brian applegate biomedical engineering; yi-shing cheng and john wright texas a&m health science center $25 million from the department of health and human services-national institutes of health-national cancer institute for endogenous fluorescence lifetime endoscopy for early detection of oral cancer and dysplasia pi: akhilesh gaharwar biomedical engineering $22 million from the national institutes of health for mineralomics: designing mineral based therapeutics to control and direct cell function pi: jeyavijayan rajendran electrical and computer engineering $2 million from the department of defense-office of naval research for towards verification-guided hardware synthesis for security pi: ali mostafavidarani civil engineering co-pis: philip berke and sierra woodruff land use and environmental planning; arnold vedlitz public service and administration bush school of government and public service; and bjorn birgisson civil engineering $2 million from the national science foundation for crisp 20 type 2: anatomy of coupled human-infrastructure systems resilience to urban flooding: integrated assessment of social institutional and physical networks pi: helen reed aerospace engineering co-pis: rodney bowersox and william saric aerospace engineering $18 million from the department of defense-air force office of scientific research for boundary layer transition (bolt)-experiment and simulation (concave curvature and leading-edge sweep effects) pi: yang shen electrical and computer engineering $17 from the department of health and human services-national institutes of health-national institute of general medical science for unraveling molecular and system-level mechanisms of human disease-associated protein mutations pi: mark burris civil engineering $14 million from the department of transportation-federal highway administration for topic 2 behavioral science and experimental economics approaches for transportation pi: michael mcshane biomedical engineering co-pi: lee hudson biomedical engineering $13 million from national institutes of health for minimally-invasive metabolite monitoring systems for in vitro and in vivo disease models pi: rodney bowersox aerospace engineering $12 million from the department of defense-office of naval research for turbulence transport in extreme non-equilibrium environments pi: mladen kezunovic electrical and computer engineering co-pis: miroslav begovic and chanan singh electrical and computer engineering $12 million from the department of energy for ui-assist: us-india collaborative for smart distribution system with storage pi: akhil dattagupta petroleum engineering $12 million from the department of energy for robust carbon dioxide imaging using joint tomographic inversion of seismic onset time and distributed pressure and temperature measurements pi: bahman yazdani energy systems laboratory co-pis: joseph martinez ahmet ugursal and carlos yagua energy systems laboratory; and juan carlos baltazar architecture $11 million from the city of houston for energy management sustainability and m&v services for houston airport system q&m rfp pi: pushkar lele chemical engineering $1 million from the national institutes of health for mechanical regulation of ultra-sensitivity in e coli flagellar motors pi: karen butler-purry provosts office co-pis: samuel merriweather edac and shannon walton grst $11 million from the national science foundation for lsamp btd: texas a&m university system louis stokes alliance for minority participation (tamus lsamp) bridge to the doctorate cohort xiii (2018-2020) program pi: jean ragusa nuclear engineering co-pis: marvin adams and jim morel nuclear engineering $1 million from the department of defensedefense threat reduction agency for models with multiple levels of fidelity tractability and computational cost for nuclear weapon radiation effects pi: dan hill petroleum engineering $1 million from marathon oil company for marathon oil unconventional fluid flow/eor
the practice of separating carbon dioxide (co2) from power plant emissions goes back more than 30 years when concerns were raised about its effects on the atmosphere sequestering co2 usually means capturing it during power plant processes and concentrating it in a compressed state so it can be injected in a geologic storage reservoir deep underground a discovery in 1972 determined that compressed co2 gas could enhance oil recovery when it was injected in a hydrocarbon reservoir using co2 to produce more oil and gas would seem to be a win-win situation today – good for the environment and good for energy production – but underground reservoirs have fractures and faults meaning co2 can potentially escape to date co2 monitoring is mostly limited to surface measuring near injection sites and rarely tracks its movement underground dr akhil datta-gupta a university distinguished professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering is working to broaden those monitoring capabilities he is the principal investigator on a texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) research project to develop a better method to track co2 storage and use in oil production his method has the potential to be far more rapid practical and cost-effective than current efforts meaning it would be a true win for energy and the environment the oil is trapped because of something called interfacial tension forces that hold the oil in small pores said datta-gupta the co2 is miscible with the oil so we can actually drive the oil out of the smallest pores of course one of the big challenges is how to track that co2 because if you are injecting the co2 and it leaks back to the surface then you are not getting any environmental benefit you want to make sure that co2 stays in the ground datta-guptas process involves the accurate modeling of the hydrocarbon reservoir where the co2 is going and the effects the co2 has on pressure temperature and subsurface formations in that area he will be using the advanced imaging technology he developed for hydrocarbon reservoir investigation and management this fast marching method-based program is an efficient way of tracking the co2 movement underground because it rapidly transforms the 3d governing equation of subsurface modeling into a one-dimensional equation leading to orders of magnitude savings in computation over a full 3d simulation this speed is needed for quick responses should the co2 enter a fracture where it could potentially escape the reservoir the focus here is real-time imaging of co2 using temperature pressure and time-lapse seismic data or close to real-time imaging said datta-gupta so as the data is being generated and processed well use it to reconstruct the gas movement in the subsurface pressure and temperature data for the project will come from the injection site and monitoring wells at the petra nova carbon capture and storage site near houston texas the location is part of a joint venture between nrg energy jx nippon oil and gas exploration corporation and hilcorp energy company for seismic monitoring we basically send out sound waves and then we look at the properties of the reflected waves and reconstruct the image similar to medical ultrasound imaging said datta-gupta imaging the human body with its known properties is relatively routine but understanding unseen and unknown subsurface compositions will be difficult we are not only trying to image the gas plume we are at the same time trying to estimate what the properties of the medium are going to be said datta-gupta thats what makes it doubly challenging for us datta-guptas research project is titled robust carbon dioxide imaging using joint tomographic inversion of seismic onset time and distributed pressure and temperature measurements and it is funded by the department of energys safe and permanent storage program with a $12 million budget aimed at mitigating greenhouse gases the project team includes battelle memorial institute as a subcontractor further support is provided by shell global anadarko petroleum corporation chevron corporation and jx nippon oil and gas exploration corporation to an estimated amount of $300 000 while the generous funding makes the project one of the top grant awards for tees this fiscal year and garnered an engineering genesis award for multidisciplinary research for datta-gupta his focus is on the challenges and developments the research presents this is very exciting to be getting data from the largest co2 sequestration project in the world said datta-gupta it opens up a lot of research opportunities for us as a department to dive into new areas which is carbon capture utilization and sequestration; this is going to become increasingly important in the future
access to affordable reliable and sustainable energy across the globe is one of the 2030 targets of the united nations wind plays a prominent role in the solution of increasing renewable energy in part through the use of wind turbines drs raktim bhattacharya and robert skelton in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university are contributing to a solution by providing the means to build larger lighter blades for the turbines using tensegrity principles with a $375 000 grant from the national science foundation the goal of their research is to develop a suite of theoretical and computational tools for the design of high strength-to-weight wind turbine blades with custom aeroelastic properties that are critical for deploying large wind turbine blades
access to affordable reliable and sustainable energy across the globe is one of the 2030 targets of the united nations wind plays a prominent role in the solution of increasing renewable energy in part through the use of wind turbines drs raktim bhattacharya and robert skelton in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university are contributing to a solution by providing the means to build larger lighter blades for the turbines using tensegrity principles with a $375 000 grant from the national science foundation
wind power is one of the fastest-growing sources of new electricity supply and the largest source of new renewable power generation the wind power industry is moving to offshore sites where larger wind turbines can be deployed as the rotors become larger the blades must become longer but remain lightweight strong and stiff currently fiber-reinforced polymer composites have been identified as the best material for rotor blades use of these composites poses some challenges including design analysis manufacturing vibration control structural health assessment and transportation the theoretical and computational tools the team is designing will significantly alleviate some of these challenges and provide a feasible path to address the proposed expansion to increase energy generation from 40 gigawatts in 2012 to 400 gigawatts in 2050 in the united states
the tensegrity-based design of wind turbine blades has several advantages including accurate modeling aeroelastic tailoring optimal sensing for structural health monitoring and the ability to contract to a smaller form for easy deployability the scientific problems that will be addressed in this research also present a new systems engineering perspective that is missing in current engineering typically these systems are first built and modeled then sensing and actuation architecture is decided in an ad hoc manner followed by the design of the estimation/control law that is constrained by this ad hoc sensing and control architecture the texas a&m team will use the grant to pursue an integrated approach for design of the structure the sensing/actuator architecture (for control and optimal health monitoring) and the control law to alleviate stress and maximize energy absorbed from the wind this will provide a new perspective with strong theoretical foundations bhattacharya (top right) is an associate professor in the aerospace engineering department skelton (bottom left) is a tees eminent professor and a member of the national academy of engineering
the national academy of inventors (nai) has named dr cynthia hipwell among its newly appointed class of fellows for 2018
"hipwell a tees eminent professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university worked 21 years as a technology and business process innovator developing industry-leading technologies as well as new tools and methods to accelerate the pace of technology development and increase business impact election to nai fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life economic development and the welfare of society she will officially be inducted into the academy in april at the eighth nai annual meeting at the space center houston hipwell who joined the mechanical engineering department in 2017 holds a wealth of experience in nanotechnology tribology sensors and actuators that she is putting to use through her innovation tools and entrepreneurial new technology (invent) laboratory even as new research propels technologies into new and exciting directions there is a crucial need for the development of tools and methods capable of delivering faster higher impact innovations and feasibility studies that indicate commercial viability it is a pursuit on which hipwell has her eyes firmly set ""i am most excited about some of the new ideas that are emerging as we bring researchers from several disciplines together and see how we can really impact critical product areas with new technologies "" she said hipwell is working on numerous projects through her invent lab alongside researchers well-versed in disciplines that include tribology materials cognitive ergonomics and human-machine interactions upcoming projects will include the pursuit of high-resolution flexible tactile sensors and actuators to be used for haptic feedback applications – such as a vibration motion or application of force to recreate the sense of touch – in a range of situations including communications hazardous work environments virtual reality and design as well as an improved understanding of the finger-device interface for the optimal performance of haptic devices hipwell has a particular interest in the process of developing a piece of technology from its early conceptual stages to a fully realized and functional product though she plans for her lab to mature several new technologies over the coming years - as well as a system for achieving better faster results - hipwell also wants to instill a passion for this pursuit in her students as well ""often that process has to happen across multiple disciplines to address performance reliability and manufacturability "" hipwell said ""my hope is that by leading this type of multidisciplinary feasibility work that we can not only get more university developed technologies out the door but that we also train more students to be system thinkers and innovators as they leave the university and head out into the real world"""
dr m katherine banks has been named winner of the 2019 pinnacle award presented by schlumberger for her dedication to future engineers banks is vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m university system and oversees coordination and collaboration among the engineering academic and research programs at seven universities and three state agencies in the a&m system she leads systemwide national laboratory engagement and serves as a board member and principal executive engaged with triad national security llc for the management and operation of los alamos national laboratory she is also the director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station where she oversees administration for $300 million in sponsored research she has made national security research a priority with $16 million in awards from the department of defense in 2018 and strategically focused on hypersonics cyberphysical security and materials in extreme environments as dean of engineering banks leads one of the largest engineering schools in the country at texas a&m university with more than 20 000 students and 675 faculty under her leadership the college of engineering initiated its 25 by 25 initiative to transform engineering education and increase access for qualified students to an enrollment to 25 000 students by 2025 she also oversaw construction of the largest and most technologically ambitious building on the texas a&m campus the zachry engineering education complex the building is dedicated to undergraduate engineering education and its student-focused design will revolutionize the way engineering education is delivered to students this dedication to expanding and transforming engineering education has positioned texas a&m engineering students at the forefront of todays industry banks is a university distinguished professor and holder of the harold j haynes deans chair in engineering and is a member of the national academy of engineering and a fellow of the american society of civil engineers banks along with the honorees of oil and gas investors 25 influential women in energy will be recognized at the second annual women in energy luncheon feb 12 2019 at the hilton americas houston the full list of honorees can be found here
in november dr craig marianno and dr jeremy osborn from the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives along with fred marcussen from oak ridge national laboratory traveled to cape town south africa to conduct a nuclear security workshop at eskom the south african electricity utility that operates the koeberg nuclear power station workshop participants included 26 members of the eskom workforce spanning all sectors from security personnel to corporate management eskom attendees were enthusiastic about the training and were really involved said marianno i could tell that the eskom upper management is promoting a strong inclusive security culture lectures and activities for the workshop were centered on nuclear security culture insider threat mitigation and nuclear security systems the workshop concluded with a pathway analysis and insider threat tabletop exercise at first i was apprehensive about who signed me up for this i was thinking of all the paperwork that would pile up on my desk remarked one of the participants he noted however it was worth it i learned a lot during this workshop the workshop was sponsored by the us department of states partnership for nuclear treat reduction
in september dr chaitanyamoy ganguly professor of nuclear engineering and abhinav kapadia chief financial officer from pandit deendayal petroleum university (pdpu) in gandhinagar india visited texas a&m university to sign a memorandum of agreement (moa) between pdpu the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and the nuclear power institute at a ceremony on sept 28 ganguly and kapadia signed the agreement on behalf of pdpu and dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor of nuclear engineering signed on behalf of texas a&m maria alvez director of the halliburton engineering global programs represented the texas a&m college of engineering at the ceremony the agreement was finalized in november and follows a letter of intent that nsspi signed with pdpu in 2011 the moa formalizes collaborations between nsspi and pdpu in the areas of nuclear security research and development education policy and technical analysis and service as a resource for knowledge and skills to reduce nuclear threats the renewed moa for the next five years will allow us to continue the ongoing collaborations between texas a&m and pdpu and to explore new possibilities of student and faculty exchanges as well as hosting study abroad programs said chirayath nsspi currently works with pdpu to deliver training workshops on nuclear security topics for indian students and faculty
akron biotechnology has partnered with the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) to pursue an exciting workforce development initiative tees leads the grant which combines online and in-person modules to train technicians on processes required in biotherapeutics manufacturing developed and delivered by tees national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) the curriculum includes upstream bioreactor operation downstream processing and analytical testing as part of its commitment to professional development akron has enrolled two manufacturing team members in the training we are honored by niimbls sponsorship and proud to collaborate with akron through this rigorous educational program that will immerse participants in more than 100 hours of cgmp bioprocess training said dr zivko nikolov director of nctm upon completion of the program more than 40 technically skilled graduates will be ready for immediate employment with niimbl partner companies akron biotechnology is dedicated to continuing education and workforce development said claudia zylberberg ceo of akron biotechnology the biopharmaceutical industry is rapidly evolving and it is critical that training be aligned with industry needs we are excited to partner with niimbl as well as the academic and industry team members on these initiatives niimbl invests in projects that will strengthen the pipeline of skilled workers for the biopharmaceutical industry this project promises a robust curriculum that will serve industrial needs said john balchunas niimbl workforce director
imagine you have a 1985 jaguar xj6 but it hasnt run since 1992 its 2018 and your job is to ensure that it will not only work but start on the first try you maintain the car but some parts arent made anymore and you have to make them yourself this is the world of the us nuclear-weapons stockpile and dr marvin adams and his texas a&m university collaborators are helping national-security professionals navigate this tricky world the first nuclear weapon explosion was in 1945 and from 1945 to 1992 the testing of us nuclear bombs took place largely in the south pacific before moving underground in nevada to alleviate environmental concerns you didnt have to understand things perfectly then he said it was an era of physical testing in 1992 the explosive testing of nuclear weapons in the united states ended and in 1996 the united states signed (but has not yet ratified) the comprehensive test ban treaty which bans nuclear-explosive testing across the globe the united states has not developed new nuclear weapon designs since the end of testing but instead has been refurbishing some retiring others and making repairs and replacing parts in others materials degrade over time but our experts still have to ensure they will work said adams adding that guaranteeing the weapons are still functional is imperative to the goals of nuclear deterrence thats where predictive computational modeling comes in one place where texas a&m is unquestionably strong is predictive science and engineering in the area of particle transport (neutrons photons and charged particles) said adams we have unique strengths in this area adams is a professor of nuclear engineering associate director of the institute of national security and cybersecurity education and research deputy director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station center for exascale radiation transport (cert) and holder of the heat transfer research inc endowed professorship he credits the success of the predictive computational modeling group to the collaboration among dr jim morel and dr jean ragusa (nuclear engineering) dr lawrence rauchwerger and dr nancy amato (computer science) dr bani mallick (statistics) and dr jean-luc guermond dr raytcho lazarov and dr bojan popov (math) we feel fortunate to have such an excellent multidisciplinary group said adams the team has a long history of developing methodologies that us national laboratories have adopted and use in their daily work the team develops predictive science and engineering methods that help national laboratory experts calculate the effects of time on the weapons and their probabilities of success the more time passes from when the devices were originally tested prior to 1992 the more difficult the calculations become as the materials degrade over time and devices change from tested configurations through refurbishments or repairs eventually each type of nuclear weapon will have to be refurbished or replaced how do you verify the calculations and run through every variable very carefully said adams anybody can calculate an answer but calculating how accurate your answer is and predicting uncertainties is extremely difficult adams and his team are currently working on several projects in this realm each is sponsored by the department of energys national nuclear security administration (nnsa) or one of its laboratories the team is currently working on an $11 million project for the cert an important phenomenon in nuclear weapons is thermal radiation transfer he said we figure out how to develop and test predictive methods for thermal radiation transfer by using neutron transport as a surrogate we design complicated neutron transport experiments predict the results predict how close our answers should be to reality execute the experiments then compare the experimental results to our predictions lawrence livermore national lab (llnl) has sponsored two of the teams current projects: ‘computational r&d in support of stockpile stewardship ($14 million) and ‘collaborative r&d in support of llnl missions ($15 million) these two projects are developing advanced computational methods and new computational results that support the nations nuclear deterrent and other national security missions for which llnl is responsible the projects which are the third set of three-year projects from llnl that morel has led with adams as co-pi grew out of texas a&ms role as an affiliate of lawrence livermore national security llcthe organization that manages llnl for the nnsa the expertise weve developed here at texas a&m is part of what made us an attractive partner in the competition for the contract to manage and operate the los alamos national laboratory (lanl) said adams the texas a&m university system the university of california and the battelle memorial institute united by their shared commitment to national service formed triad national security llc which competed against several other groups and was awarded the lanl contract in june of 2018 the triad team assumed management of lanl on november 1
two researchers from texas a&m engineering were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the texas a&m university system and their respective fields of expertise by the board of regents dr gerard l coté was named a regents professor and dr marvin adams received the regents fellow service award these outstanding individuals are doing incredible work on behalf of the a&m system and the entire state of texas said a&m system chancellor john sharp they exemplify the values and commitment to excellence that defines the a&m system and i am grateful for their dedication coté is director of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center for remote health technologies and systems and holds the james j cain professorship i in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university he also leads the national science foundation engineering research center on precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) which is focused on addressing the grand challenge of overcoming the human and economic burden of diabetes and heart disease in underserved communities coté is recognized as a worldwide expert in optical sensing for diagnostic and biomedical monitoring applications specifically his research focuses on the development of macroscale to nanoscale systems using lasers optics and electronics for in vivo and in vitro sensing such as development of a glucose-monitoring system for determining blood sugar levels in patients with diabetes; optically monitoring perfusion and oxygenation for tissue transplants and wearable technologies; and development of point-of-care and cell phone-based devices to remotely detect cardiac biomarkers blood toxins skin cancer and malaria he is a fellow of four societies including the institute of electrical and electronics engineers the american institute for medical and biological engineering the biomedical engineering society and the international society for optics and photonics he also does translational research has several patents is an entrepreneur and with student involvement has started four medical device companies (one recently acquired by medtronic inc) adams is the associate director of the tees institute for national security and cybersecurity education and research a professor of nuclear engineering deputy director of the center for exascale radiation transport and holder of the heat transfer research inc endowed professorship an overarching theme of his career is a commitment to national service particularly on matters pertaining to national and international security adamss technical expertise in national-security areas has been developed over decades of research and service since 2000 he has been a consultant for multiple national laboratories and has served on numerous national laboratory advisory panels and review committees decision-makers in washington dc and elsewhere often ask adams for assessments and explanations concerning technical matters related to national security adams was also instrumental in the recent effort to secure the contract to manage the los alamos national laboratory (lanl) the texas a&m university system university of california and the battelle memorial institute united by their shared commitment to national service formed triad national security llc which was awarded the lanl contract in june 2018 the triad team assumed management of lanl on nov 1 the laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutes in the world and it conducts multidisciplinary research in fields such as national security space exploration renewable energy medicine nanotechnology and supercomputing the board of regents established the regents professor awards program in 1996 and the regents fellow service awards program in 1998 to recognize employees who have made commendable contributions to their university or agency and to the people of texas the regents professor award honors individuals at the rank of professor or equivalent whose distinguished performance in teaching research and service have been exemplary the award is the highest honor bestowed by the a&m system on faculty members the regents fellow service award honors and recognizes extension research and service professionals within the agricultural and engineering agencies health science center and veterinary medical diagnostic laboratory these professionals must have demonstrated a commitment and contributions to their respective agency by providing exceptional leadership in educational or program delivery/scholarship research or service that have resulted in significant impact and lasting benefits to the state of texas and beyond
when it comes to walking with a transfemoral prosthetic its a lot harder than it looks traditional transfemoral (above the knee) prosthetics are passive or semi-active meaning they are made up of a single metal rod that is able to bend a little bit but does not give the wearer a full range of motion or the ability to change their walking pattern without either of those features walking can become a tedious job when it comes to dealing with various terrains going downhill or walking up and down a set of stairs to help make daily life easier for amputee patients dr pilwon hur assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university has developed a robotic transfemoral prosthesis hur became interested in the topic of rehabilitation robotics when he was studying biomechanics and neuromechanics for his phd with a degree in mechanical engineering and a personal interest in mechatronics (a hybrid of mechanical electrical and computer engineering) and robotics he already had an extensive knowledge in the technical side of the issue however it was not until he was in the midst of completing his dissertation that he was inspired to take his research a step further
i was trying to understand how humans move and why we move this way and how i could use this information to help people who are disabled said hur since i was interested in walking and balance i figured i should work in that area for rehabilitation so when i was doing my post doctorate i mostly worked with stroke patients and learned a lot about rehabilitation robotics at that time his design is focused on addressing the weight of the prosthesis because one of the main reasons many amputee patients dislike robotic prosthetics is because they are too heavy to maintain any sort of natural movement his design uses series elastic actuators which is a spring that can be added to the motor of a robotic device used to control force and increase shock tolerance and compliance with the surrounding environment it is an existing technology but hur took a different perspective to use a rotary spring that will help reduce the devices weight as well as control the system more effectively making it easier for the wearer to handle and walk were optimizing the design of the structure so that we can minimize the weight and so that we can cut off some parts which based on our analysis are not necessary so that we can make it lighter said hur we can lower the specs of the motor allowing us to use a much lighter motor to achieve the same goal the spring saves energy and that energy can be used to control the system so the use of battery power is minimized in addition to the device as a whole hur is working to develop a new design for the foot one that will replicate the rolling behavior of the foot joints and allow the foot to bend like a regular one it will help give patients a more natural feel he is in the process of conducting tests in the lab to see if this tool will enhance the bioperformance of the prosthesis hur is currently searching for a commercial partner to license this technology manufacture it conduct the necessary testing and get it to the market for consumers the texas a&m engineering experiment stations commercialization and entrepreneurship office is ready to offer licensing terms for the intellectual property corresponding to the technology while the market for the device may not be huge hur believes that it will help amputees navigate their world without being weighed down by a prosthetic what i hope to achieve with this technology is for amputee patients to walk without any worry or hesitation and just live their lives without any difficulties said hur
between media and international pressure to reduce controversial cost overruns and production delays lockheed martin partnered with a team from texas a&m university to analyze and streamline the companys final assembly process for f-35 fighter jets global security and aerospace company lockheed martin is a leader in engineering innovation from cutting-edge military aircrafts such as the f-35 lightning ii fighter jet to advanced spacecraft systems their influence can be seen throughout the world and beyond unfortunately when their inventions cause expenses to soar their troubles are also broadcast around the globe in order to help resolve some of these troubles researchers from the department of industrial and systems engineering investigated how lockheed martin could increase their production rate from assembling one plane every six days to one plane every day and a half the team consisted of dr lewis ntaimo professor and marilyn and l david black faculty fellow and a trio of students dr amarnath andy banerjee professor and corrie and jim furber 64 faculty fellow led the project innovations in the air with production partners and customers in more than 10 countries around the world the f-35 joint strike fighter program relies on a global network of manufacturers to create each aircraft lockheed martin is responsible for the final assembly of three variations of f-35 military aircrafts these versions designated as types a b and c are nearly indistinguishable from one another on looks alone along with internal components the main differentiating feature of each is their landing and takeoff capabilities type a the most common and basic version of the f-35 is designed to operate on conventional runways in contrast type b requires a shorter takeoff and landing distance finally type c is crafted explicitly for aircraft carriers and is able to take off and land vertically due to a rotatable engine
as banerjee described the assembly is not only dependent upon the delivery of necessary materials and manufactured pieces from company partners but also must adhere to each countrys specifications and codes and specified production steps this in addition to each category of f-35 needing to be configured differently to achieve their distinctive landing and takeoff functions means that parts cannot simply be switched out if a shipment is delayed such factors added to late delivery dates and drove up costs increasing criticism and controversy simulating solutions with pressures rising to reduce production setbacks and widespread negative media coverage on cost overruns the texas a&m team searched for solutions using a statistical distribution-based simulation model of the assembly process it was an interesting experience to take the things we do as industrial engineers like developing simulation models analyzing data and doing future projections and then getting to see how our result directly compares with whats actually happening in the production facility said banerjee using their model which has been given to lockheed martin as an ongoing resource the researchers ran what-if analyses that detailed how potential changes such as adding workers combining tasks or modifying task precedencies might affect production time the what-if scenarios were further bolstered by elaborate scripts written in r a statistical analysis freeware banerjee explained that the model and r together estimated the likelihood of a task to be behind or on schedule and produced an interactive visual that allows the company to infer the cause of task-related setbacks this new insight was used to predict how prospective changes will positively and negatively impact the assembly process and create a list of suggested steps to gradually and smoothly increase production rate in doing so the team not only helped solve the problems that lockheed martin faces in the present but also set them up for a more efficient and cost-effective future
like reading and sorting through lecture notes to better understand the topics covered in a class computers use machine learning to decipher categorize and respond to information machine learning a branch of artificial intelligence explores the ability of computer systems to learn from data identify patterns and make decisions without much need for human interaction and guidance
to optimize this learning process dr shahin shahrampour assistant professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university partnered with dr vahid tarokh professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at duke university to revamp the fundamental pattern analysis algorithms called kernel methods kernel methods are used for pattern recognition in machine learning to make them more adept and applicable to the constantly changing world of technology while kernel methods are sufficient when dealing with small to moderate datasets shahrampour explained that they are not scalable to a large enough degree to be effectively applied to more advanced systems the boost in core efficiency that shahrampours and tarokhs updated algorithms propose will enhance the cornerstone kernel methods that program and train computer systems to recognize patterns and apply them to future variables this will help machine learning keep up with the rapid innovations in computer technology even though there has been a lot of advancements in hardware technology that allow computers to process data faster and faster its always good to have methods that are computationally efficient said shahrampour shahrampour further explained that having a better understanding of kernel methods may also help overcome the limitations that hinder the expansion and integration of machine learning into deep learning research heavily reliant upon efficient and accurate machine learning the ultimate goal of deep learning is to emulate the human mind through a neural network of computational models and codes in order to anticipate activity behavior and trends deep learning has been tremendously successful in many applications such as natural language processing and image pattern recognition many researchers in academia and companies like google and microsoft have been working on understanding the reason behind this success said shahrampour and i think there is a way to understand deep learning by going back and rethinking some of the classic results from kernel methods their research was published at the 2018 conference on neural information processing systems in montréal québec in a paper titled learning bounds for greedy approximation with explicit feature maps from multiple kernels
the nations energy infrastructure has become a major target of cyberattacks over the past decade with more frequent and sophisticated attacks on the rise today a cyber incident has the potential to disrupt energy services damage highly specialized equipment and threaten human health and safety this makes energy cybersecurity a top national priority that will require the federal government and the energy sector to work together to reduce cyber risks that could trigger a large-scale or prolonged energy disruption
to address this priority the us department of energy (doe) announced awards of up to $28 million to support the research development and demonstration of next-generation tools and technologies to improve the cybersecurity and resilience of the nations critical energy infrastructure including the electric grid and oil and natural gas infrastructure among the 11 teams to receive an award is a team from the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) led by dr kate davis davis assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university leads the team with project members from pacific northwest national laboratory sandia national laboratory sekurity the university of illinois urbana-champaign and vistra energy the tees project is titled deep cyber-physical situational awareness for energy systems: a secure foundation for next-generation energy management the project team will develop a next-generation secure energy management system that can detect malicious and abnormal events through fusion of cyber and physical data and algorithms effective integrated analytics and visualization the grant is about re-envisioning the next generation energy management system that considers the power system together with cyber communications davis said the idea is to have a truly cyberphysical energy management system that provides visibility into the cyber side and analysis of the cyber side that is tightly coupled with the physical side according to davis current energy management systems often are older technology that has been in place a long time which makes them very hard to upgrade and make changes to because the focus is on the physical processes that can increase security risks because theyre so hard to change and because theyre so complicated they tend to keep doing things the same way theyve always done it which is sort of the conventional applications for managing power systems davis said theres a lot of old outdated protocols just like old technology still being used and it only considers the physical system so what were doing would consider the cyber system and the physical system together which in our case is the power system its also going beyond that and thinking how do we design and build the system in such a way that were incorporating security by design davis said how do we get away from problems that existing energy management systems have and how do we get away from using old outdated protocols and make sure the information we get out of our systems is trustworthy and has high integrity the does office of electricity delivery and energy reliability has prepared the doe multiyear plan for energy sector cybersecurity to improve cybersecurity and the resilience of the nations energy system the plan aligns does distinct roles and programs with the efforts of government energy owners and operators and key energy stakeholders at all levels with funding provided by the office of cybersecurity energy security and emergency responses cybersecurity for energy delivery systems division research partnerships such as this will create and make available innovative technologies that help prevent detect and mitigate cyberattacks davis said the overall impact of a more secure energy management system would benefit everyone from communications personnel to operators who can learn what types of risks they need to worry about to education and outreach for everyone to make the different groups more aware of issues shes excited to be able to do her part this is a project thats the close to my heart davis said these problems are the things that keep me up all night so im thrilled to have the opportunity to have this kind of impact
dr ali mostafavi an assistant professor in the zachry department of civil engineering recently received the faculty early career development (career) award from the national science foundation (nsf) one of the most prestigious awards for up-and-coming researchers the award provides funding to support promising integrated research and education mostafavi will use the career award to study the impact of infrastructure failures during natural disasters on people his research recognizes that disasters do not impact people equally due to the variance in vulnerability among a regions population he hypothesizes that there is a disparity in the impact of risk and his research aims to increase the theoretical and empirical foundations in the interdisciplinary area of urban resilience research his nsf career project will use machine learning social sensing and complex networks simulation to analyze peoples responses to infrastructure disruptions following disasters such as hurricane harvey newly developed computational simulations models will allow researchers to assess the predicted societal impacts alongside existing system failure models which will advance fundamental knowledge of urban resilience to inform policy decisions the computer models will even be applicable to engineers and infrastructure managers prioritizing resilience investments in preparation for different types of disasters such as flooding wildfires and earthquakes mostafavis research will have a positive impact on future engineers as well he currently teaches his students the human-centered approach which emphasizes the need to consider human dimensions when designing and updating civil engineering systems student participants in his newly developed service learning project will engage with households from harris county and learn how to prioritize the reduction of human suffering in vulnerable populations through community engagement learning modules will be shared with faculty across the nation to magnify the impact of these new frameworks the knowledge will also be shared with organizations tasked with both disaster resilience and optimizing the prevention of future failures both at the state and the national level we are trying to advance convergence research in the interdisciplinary field of disaster resilience in my lab and this project reflects the novel convergence of different interdisciplinary methods data and theoretical elements to uncover social inequalities in risks due to the interplay between physical infrastructure and household social networks in disasters he said read his nsf abstract
corrosion is the natural deterioration that occurs with all materials and it affects nearly every industrial sector and government agency along with having a direct impact on the economy health safety infrastructure environment and national security so its not surprising that industry professionals from toyota motor north america inc and pinnacleart traveled to college station to learn more about the degradation process and how to deal with its destructiveness in their own fields the national corrosion and materials science reliability lab at texas a&m universityin partnership with tees edge the professional and continuing education division of the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees)now offers a course that introduces industry professionals to the fundamentals of corrosion and the multiscale-level materials performance for corrosion engineering applications tees edge collaborates with tees researchers to meet current industry needs by developing opportunities for professionals to explore in a hands-on environment applications resulting from our cutting-edge engineering research said melissa walden tees edge director dr homero castaneda-lopez and the center for infrastructure renewal worked closely with leaders at toyota and tees edge to launch this high-quality short course with immediate benefits across the automotive and energy industriesbenefits we hope extend beyond those enrolled in the course on dec 11-13 the center presented the short course basic corrosion: an introduction to thermodynamics and kinetic fundamentals at the center for infrastructure renewal the course was led by castaneda-lopez interim director of the lab and associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m the course is about corrosion basics why corrosion because theyre industry empirically they know that the phenomenon exists but they dont know some fundamentals some basics of why its happening so the intention of the course is to first explain what is happening then the fundamentals and then how to apply it to their fields during the course participants attended lectures and hands-on demonstrations on modern engineering tools necessary to understand the basic principles of materials electrochemistry and corrosion its definitely been a great experience weve been able to get into a lot of the details and background on some of the theory said kory koran a toyota engineer weve been able to discuss some of the real-world applications of those theories and got hands on experience working with some of the tools used to calculate corrosion mechanisms
from jan 29 through feb 1 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) of the texas a&m engineering experiment station at texas a&m university collaborated with amity university in india oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) and the us defense threat reduction agency to conduct a nuclear security workshop on the topic of nuclear security design vulnerability assessments and battle board table top exercise for indian academics the workshop was hosted by amity university at their campus in noida which is in the uttar pradesh region near new delhi fifty-five students technical staff and faculty members from nine different universities and academic institutions one non-governmental organization and two governmental institutes across india participated in the workshop nsspi and ornl developed the instructional materials and provided the instructors which included dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and dr evans kitcher nsspi assistant research engineer the objective of the workshop was to provide training to indian university faculty students and nuclear professionals in the area of comprehensive nuclear security system design as well as how to perform vulnerability assessments and do hands-on tabletop exercises after familiarizing the participants with the basic concepts involved in physical protection systems nuclear security design vulnerability assessment and the calculation of nuclear security risk the instructors led two different interactive tabletop exercises the first exercise focused on vulnerability assessment including the creation of an adversary sequence diagram to compute the probability of interruption and probability of neutralization for a typical nuclear research reactor the second a battle board exercise demonstrated physical protection system operations through a turn-based simulation similar to a combat-oriented board game both exercises gave the participants practical experience with applying nuclear security vulnerability assessment in a realistic situation
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) has signed a new research agreement with kathaleen wall 90 co-owner of texas thorium llc on the new thorium research initiative (tri) wall along with co-owner holly frost donated $5 million to support research geared toward advancing thorium-based nuclear technology the research initiative will be led by principal investigator dr yassin hassan from the department of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university along with dr sean mcdeavitt and dr lin shao the research in this initial project will focus on molten salt thorium systems the tri will perform studies to enable the design of a small modular reactor and a 10 to 30 mw test reactor fueled with thorium we are excited to have the backing of someone like kathaleen wall and her belief in our expertise in the field of nuclear engineering said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp with ms walls generous donation our researchers have the support they need to further their work in this emerging technology thorium power has the promise of simpler safer cleaner and cheaper power than any other power source said wall thats the reason were doing this
three faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering are among 66 academic inventors named to the inaugural class of senior members by the national academy of inventors (nai) members include drs jaime grunlan linda & ralph schmidt 68 professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering; duncan j maitland associate department head and stewart & stevenson professor i in the department of biomedical engineering; and richard miles tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering nai senior members are active faculty scientists and administrators from nai with success in patents licensing and commercialization they have produced technologies that have brought or aspire to bring real impact on the welfare of society congratulations to our faculty members who have been elected to this first class of nai senior members mark a barteau vice president for research and nai fellow said this recognition pays tribute to their knowledge skill and talent as well as to the role that texas a&m plays in encouraging and nurturing research and innovations from start to finish together these faculty members and texas a&m are making the world a better place for all of us senior members also foster a spirit of innovation within their communities through enhancing an inventive atmosphere at their institutions while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors this inaugural class of nai senior members represents 37 research universities and government and non-profit research institutes they are named inventors on over 1 100 issued us patents we are truly excited about each of our nai awardees this year whose research and inventions range across novel multifunctional surfaces and coatings (grunlan) advanced shape memory polymers for implantable medical devices (maitland) and microwave lasers and magnetohydrodynamic technologies (miles) said dr bala haridas executive director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship for the texas a&m engineering experiment station this technological diversity world-class research and translation to practical application truly represents the exciting work by researchers in texas a&m engineering a full list of nai senior members is available on the nai website
as nasa and private companies race to send humans to mars and beyond the need for a program providing sustainable life for long periods in space becomes apparent dr robert skelton has proposed a growable habitat with 1 g of gravitational force to solve this need skelton a tees eminent professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university is wrapping up phase ii of his space habitat project funded through nasas innovative advanced concepts program skelton aims to answer four yet-unsolved needs for maintaining long-term life in space: gravity radiation protection agricultural space for food production and a growable technology for expanding the habitat as economic conditions allow while humans have been traveling to space for over 50 years each of the stays has been relatively short in part because outer space is not a friendly long-term environment for humans the human body is used to a 1 g gravity environment as found on earth when astronauts spend a significant amount of time in zero gravity different bodily systems are affected including bone density loss impaired vision muscle atrophy cardiovascular deconditioning and immune system changes for example on earth the fluid pressure in your eye is less than the pressure in your feet because gravity is pulling everything down when someone is in space the pressure is the same throughout the body which is too much for the eye the pressure change causes changes to the eye that are noticeable upon return to earth
skelton argues that the only way to sustain life in space long term is to provide a habitat for humans that provides a gravity environment similar to what they experience on earth the habitat he envisions is a settlement in space with research capabilities to determine what level of gravity is required for human health before launching long-term space travel to mars and farther he proposes to start the habitat at the size of 20 meters radius enough to sustain about 20 people with the final structure being built over time out to 225 meters housing 8 000 people with 300 square meters of agricultural space per person the initial habitat would be small and built from materials launched from earth because material resources are costly in space skelton suggests using tensegrity systems for the design of the growth adaptable space structure these minimal mass structures make the habitat easy to change in shape and its very strong and lightweight subsequent growth stages of the habitat would rely on tensegrity robots mining materials from the moon and asteroids with the overall shape of the habitat designed in concentric cylinders the outer shell would be a thick-wall of regolith for radiation protection that would rotate slowly to enhance stability regolith is a layer of loose heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock found on earth the moon and asteroids the habitat inside would spin at a faster rate to provide artificial gravity (due to the centrifugal forces) for the inhabitants inside the habitat would provide all levels of gravity from 0 g to 1 g where the lower g-level space is reserved for agriculture and the people occupy higher g-levels up to 1 g the outer shell would consist of 5 meter thick panels which would allow light in but are thick enough for radiation protection included in the outer shell are shutters that can open and close to simulate night and day large mirrors on either side of the structure will be used to bounce light into the structure
inside the habitat along the outer walls in the lower gravity range are shelves that are used for growing varied crops positioned where light can easily get to them in the center of the habitat skelton envisions green space including parks with plants and rivers running through it bringing some of the loved features from earth including 10 000 trees and lakes the finished habitat at 225 meters would include five residence floors housing people offices shops and work spaces the initial orbit skelton has chosen for the habitat is called a lunar resonance orbit its a stable orbit that goes from the earth to the moon and back again in a somewhat figure eight pattern in the orbit the habitat would visit the earth and the moon once every 10 days while near the moon the inhabitants could be doing operations such as mining the moon and other commercial chores when orbiting near the earth the proximity makes it easier to get resupplies to the habitat as the project wraps up skelton believes that the space habitat is the next step in building our space program answering the question of how we safely and perhaps permanently occupy space for extended periods of time team members that contributed to the project include drs manoranjan majji raktim bhattacharya and bonnie j dunbar from the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m as well as anthony longman from skyframe research and joel sercel from transastra inc
dr mladen kezunovic regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was recently invited to participate in a prestigious panel organized by the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine under the leadership of the naval studies board the panel was part of a two-day workshop titled maintaining operational effectiveness for us naval forces in highly degraded environments: ensuring trusted resilient data in the face of data warfare representatives from different areas of the us naval forces community attended the workshop kezunovic was part of panel session two aggregating pre-processing and storing data kezunovic is director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations smart grid center site director of the power systems engineering research center and director of the power system control and protection lab his expertise is in protective relaying automated power system disturbance analysis computational intelligence and data analytics and smart grids before joining texas a&m in 1986 he worked for westinghouse electric corp and energoinvest in europe among his many honors kezunovic was appointed by the us secretary of energy to serve on the electricity advisory committee for the department of energy he has been named an institute of electrical and electronic engineers (ieee) life fellow and a council on large electric systems (cigre) fellow honorary member and distinguished member he has published more than 550 papers in journals and conference proceedings and has been invited to give more than 120 lectures worldwide he is also listed as a distinguished speaker of the ieee power engineering society while at texas a&m he has been the principal investigator on more than 120 research projects and supervised more than 60 graduate students
the first-ever institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) international conference on smart grid synchronized measurements and analytics (sgsma) will be held at texas a&m university may 20-23 2019 the conference will bring together leading researchers and developers from academia research and industry from all over the world to facilitate innovation knowledge transfer and technical progress in addressing synchronized measurements and analytics to advance smart grids registration for the conference is open and early-bird rates are available through march 15 some of the greatest smart grid minds will be joining us including terry boston dr jay giri dr žarko sumić and mahesh sudhakaran said dr mladen kezunovic sgsma conference chair kezunovic is also a regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and the director of the smart grid center at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) boston is a 2017 presidential appointee to the national infrastructure advisory council giri before becoming a consultant and a faculty member at university of washington was the director of power systems technology and strategic initiatives at ge grid software solutions sumić is the vice president and distinguished analyst at gartner where he provides innovative strategic and operational advice to gartner utility clients using his extensive technology leadership and business experience and sudhakaran is the chief digital officer at ibm energy environment and utilities he will be sharing the biggest challenges with artificial intelligence internet of things and blockchain technology facing the three ibm global teamsenergy operations customer experience and asset management in addition to the invited speakers and guests our conference will feature more than 40 paper presentations selected among the best research teams working on smart grids said dr mario paolone technical program chair for sgsma and professor at the swiss federal institute of technology in lausanne switzerland we understand the importance of creating space for researchers to network and share their recent projects and findings sgsma is co-sponsored by the national science foundation and ieee-pes the power and energy society of ieee ieee is the worlds largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity other sponsors include tees the texas a&m university division of research the tees smart grid center and the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m along with the departments power and energy group additional conference support is provided by tees edge the professional and continuing education program for tees
a prize will be named in memory of dr m sam mannan executive director of the mary kay oconnor process safety center (mkopsc) and pioneer in process safety at hazards 29 the institution of chemical engineers (icheme) premier process safety conference in association with the mkopsc as a tribute to mannans career icheme has renamed the poster prize the sam mannan poster prize which will be given for the first time at the annual conference this year throughout my career sam mannan has always been a great friend and supporter of our work at the icheme safety center said trish kerin director of the center he was passionate about teaching process safety to undergraduates and postgraduates so it is fitting for the hazards poster prize to be renamed in his honor for several years the icheme safety center has worked with the mkopsc to explore key challenges in process safety and share lessons learned through workshops events and publications in 2017 both organizations launched process safety for the 21st century a report which set out a roadmap for the future of process safety mannan spent 20 years at the mkopsc and developed it into a leading international process safety research and education center he also helped to establish undergraduate certificates and post-graduate qualifications in process safety in addition mannan was a fellow of the icheme regents professor tees eminent professor and holder of the t michael oconnor chair i in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university sam mannan was a friend and colleague long before he joined texas a&m when he came to the university there was no safety center and in the intervening 20 years he was the major player in developing it into what it is today i am proud to have known and worked with him said dr james holste interim director of mkposc and professor emeritus of chemical engineering the conference will take place on may 22-24 in birmingham england and will feature more than 100 technical presentations from industry practitioners researchers and regulators sharing the good practice latest developments and lessons learned in process safety
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) is partnering with america makes the national additive manufacturing innovation institute to establish an america makes satellite center on the campus of texas a&m university in college station a memorandum of understanding (mou) between america makes which is managed by the national center for defense manufacturing and machining (ncdmm) and tees was announced friday during a signing event held at the zachry engineering education complex this latest partnership with america makes positions tees to become a national leader in advanced manufacturing texas a&m has one of the largest concentrations of core manufacturing subject matter experts in the country which makes it the perfect location for american makes newest satellite center said dr m katherine banks texas a&m engineering vice chancellor and dean as a platinum-level member of america makes we have built a strong partnership with the institute and will be able to leverage our relationships with industry and academe to accelerate new developments in additive manufacturing technologies the center will initially be located in texas a&ms emerging technologies building but will later be expanded to the texas a&m university system rellis campus with the america makes satellite center tees and america makes plan to: leverage networks to co-develop new business and opportunities in mutual areas of interest; serve as implementation partners for existing and future programs at both entities; expand each brand into both networks; focus on the transition of additive technology from the research lab to commercialization; and develop students at all levels including nontraditional students k-12 and veterans through additive-related curricula on behalf of all of us at america makes we are pleased to announce the selection of the texas a&m engineering experiment station as the site of our second america makes satellite center said america makes executive director rob gorham for more than 100 years tees has performed groundbreaking engineering research and developed technology to address state and national problems with our second america makes satellite center to also be located in texas housed on the texas a&m campus we have strategically expanded our reach of accelerating the adoption of additive manufacturing technologies to encompass all of the southwest and southeast united states we look forward to getting the america makes satellite center at tees up and running soon managed by ncdmm america makes is the national accelerator for additive manufacturing and the first institute within the manufacturing usa network as a public-private partnership america makes currently has a membership community comprised of more than 220 member organizations bringing together the nations brilliant technical minds from all corners of government industry and academia to create a hub of advanced manufacturing innovation in additive manufacturing america makes founded its first satellite center in 2015 at the wm keck center for 3d innovation on the campus of the university of texas at el paso in addition to its partnership with america makes tees currently is participating in five national manufacturing innovation institutes the agency also operates a statewide network of research centers and institutes focused on six research areas: energy systems and services healthcare information systems and sensors infrastructure materials and manufacturing and national security and safety
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and national technical university of athens (ntua) have signed a formal affiliation agreement that will foster and strengthen collaborations between the two institutions we are excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with a highly regarded university and research institution such as ntua said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director of tees we look forward to the innovative research and development activities that will result from this partnership as well as the opportunities for student and faculty exchanges between ntua and texas a&m universitys college of engineering the two institutions plan to: integrate and complement their capabilities for the creation of strategic plans to promote entrepreneurship innovation and development and technology transfer; define projects and pursue collaboration in areas of interest; encourage collaboration and cooperation of projects involving exchange of researchers undergraduate research assistants or graduate research assistants; and work with the college of engineering to establish a process for student exchanges mobility and exchange of faculty members and development of dual masters degrees we are really very happy to initiate today our collaboration with tees one of the oldest biggest and well-known organizations for research in engineering we are sure that this collaboration will lead to joint research activities of mutual interest and of high level that would benefit substantially both parties said professor yannis golias rector of ntua tees operates a statewide network of research centers and institutes focused on six research areas: energy systems and services healthcare information systems and sensors infrastructure materials and manufacturing and national security and safety
the autonomous material discovery and manufacturing using artificial intelligence project funded by several sources including the national science foundation and the new texas a&m university x-grants program is helping researchers at texas a&m university forge a novel path to create materials that are yet to be discovered creating new materials involves conducting tedious experiments that take decades of work soon artificial intelligence (ai) may be used to find the exact materials needed for any situation resulting in less material waste and increased progress in developing future products the vast majority of which will use materials that are yet to be discovered the grant allocates $500 000 toward project planning for 18 months ending in december 2019 we greatly appreciate the universitys generosity and support said dr satish bukkapatnam principal investigator industrial and systems engineering professor and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations institute for manufacturing systems the x-grants are all about leveraging our collective strengths to address grand societal challenges bukkapatnam said texas a&m has thriving research areas in materials science artificial intelligence data science and manufacturing research thanks to investments in facilities and professors this project will bring all of these strengths together the bottleneck in 21st century inventing materials scientists and engineers design new materials particularly metals and alloys to enhance their performance for use in aerospace defense biomedical and other applications material discovery is the bottleneck to creating highly functional and 3d printed parts with an industry average for material discovery of 15 years in the last 20 years materials scientists have worked to accelerate the design of materials in 2011 the materials genome initiative proposed the synergistic use of data advanced computations and sophisticated experiments as a way of making this a reality as engineers search for a specific material to fit a project they consider many different properties including the distribution of the materials temperature strength and structural integrity my colleagues and i have been discussing this challenge for at least a year bukkapatnam said the x-grant provided the funding needed to solve this problem 3d printing represents a new frontier but it alone could not solve the problems of materials we knew there had to be a better way what material will you use to print what intelligence can we use to 3d print and choose materials we have to create new knowledge
the closed loop solution material discovery will transform from the work of human scientists to an autonomous experimental platform said dr yu ding industrial and systems engineering professor at texas a&m university and co-lead of the project tackling this enormous challenge requires three different kinds of expertise: materials science and engineering: the knowledge of how elements come together their properties the processing structure and property relationship advanced manufacturing: how the material can be processed and how to create different shapes from a material data science and ai: how to quickly assess the data and improve efficiently instead of through trial and error the smart hybrid platform will consist of a software brain that will run the experiments autonomously through simulated workflows using a form of machine learning that automatically predicts the next best step the computers hardware can then create the product assess it and repeat the process until an optimal match is found the brain will be able to test and assess dozens of options at once testing for pressure shaping temperature and more the platform will be materials agnostic meaning it will work for any material experiments will be completely autonomous and able to use little to no input data creating a closed loop system a truly autonomous materials discovery platform will transform the way materials scientists think about the entire materials discovery cycle said dr raymundo arróyave materials science and engineering professor at texas a&m and co-lead of the project arróyave will provide computational domain expertise materials discovery is the future of this country said dr ibrahim karaman department head of materials science and engineering at texas a&m university and co-lead of the project karamans role is to help fabricate bulk new materials in a high throughput fashion the department of defense is invested in discovering developing and designing materials much faster karaman said the materials portion of the project will use instruments funded by the air force office of scientific research and texas a&ms research development funds models can be created and even models of models (metamodels) will be created but in the end physical testing must take place ding said he plans to use engineering data science to reduce a large amount of raw data points from dynamic imaging data to a handful of key process indicators the filtered data will then lead to better decision making the machine learning system will use both experimental data and prior knowledge to actively formulate the next experiment to meet the target specifications active learning will allow researchers to design the next experiment from which to learn said dr pr kumar electrical and computer engineering professor and a co-lead of the project it marks the beginning of a new era in learning for materials discovery in the end the discovery platform may give us even a better answer than we hoped for said bukkapatnam it may discover a material that even exceeds the expectations for the experiment
collaboration: the key to progress it is an interdisciplinary problem kumar said without a multidisciplinary initiative of this sort i would not normally have been involved in a research project with materials scientists researchers from diverse backgrounds are coming together and sitting at a table from a texas a&m point of view we have a fantastic team and were ready to try to create a breakthrough several professors have selected their graduate students or post-doctoral fellows they will have the opportunity and financial support to work on a project that could change the course of manufacturing as well as contribute to the field of machine learning
the deepwater horizon oil spill of 2010 was the largest oil spill in history estimated to have pumped more than 200 million gallons of oil into the gulf of mexico during a period of more than 85 days nearly a decade ago methods for tracking the flow of an oil spill and determining the extent of its negative impacts neglected processes that proved important during deepwater horizon lessons learned by researchers as a result of deepwater horizon have empowered them to create tools to better facilitate response and mitigation efforts in the event of future spills through a collaborative research effort dr scott socolofsky ap & florence wiley professor ii and the division head for environmental water resources and coastal engineering in the zachry department of civil engineering at texas a&m university has developed a model that can accurately predict where contaminants from an oil spill will travel helping response teams such as the us coast guard better prepare plan for and mitigate damage to human and ecological populations we are interested in this model for response socolofsky said if there were a new type of deepwater horizon event our modeling system is fast and efficient so that it can help responders answer questions they need to know in 2000 10 years before deepwater horizon offshore experiments in norway tested models predicting the spread of oil well blowouts as part of that effort socolofsky performed laboratory experiments with air bubbles in an attempt to better understand the risks of deep-water drilling after this time oil companies started developing in deeper water and interest in studying oil well blowouts faded that was until deepwater horizon
"laying the foundation for the modelafter completing his phd in 2001 socolofsky turned his focus to gas bubble injection in lakes and reservoirs this research set the backbone for what would one day become his improved oil blowout model oil well blowouts are a mixture of gas and liquid droplets of oil which travel from the ocean floor through seawater and create a multi-phase plume or a column of liquid and gas particles moving through one another in the water socolofsky was able to use the model structure that he developed for aeration plumes in lake reservoirs to gain a deeper understanding of oil blowouts however making the jump from lake reservoirs to oil blowouts had several challenges socolofsky and his colleagues knew that the chemistry of the oil would be important to correctly model the flow of a spill so the research team would have to determine how the chemistry density size of droplets and other factors for both the liquid and gas states of oil would interact with seawater predicting the behavior of oilin water density is stratified meaning that denser water is closer to the bottom of the ocean floor and less dense water rises to the top during deepwater horizon as gas and liquid oil droplets burst from the ocean floor the flow of oil became a deep-water plume of gas oil and seawater most of the gas and some of the released liquid petroleum dissolved into the seawater and this plume of dissolved oil was held down by denser water brought up from the ocean floor unable to break the waters surface the crude oil that comes out of the seafloor during a spill contains some damaging hydrocarbons that can negatively impact marine life as the plume festers in the seawater underneath the oceans surface this formation of a deep-water dissolved petroleum plume is important because it can have an impact in industries like fisheries socolofsky said these hydrocarbons below the surface may be affecting fish in certain areas which are exposed to toxic chemicals that impact both human health and the ocean ecology impacting future spillsthe research team joined socolofksys original reservoir model with other collaborator models to determine the chemistry and droplet sizes for the liquid and gas states for oil and gas creating a model that could predict spill behavior during events such as deepwater horizon after taking extensive measures to validate the accuracy of the model entities such as the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) are now utilizing the model in their capacity to forecast spills during an oil spill event the us coast guard is responsible for directing an oil spill recovery response when directing this response they need to have forecasts of the oil trajectory in the environment and be able to relay that information to response teams for effective cleanup noaa forecasts where this oil might be to help the coast guard assess what can be done about it socolofsky said their modeling system needed the capability to model what is happening underwater and they teamed with us to use our model"" socolofsky is now using the model for projects in alaska and canada to study the specific conditions and considerations around possible oil spills in the arctic which are now more likely to occur due to the increased crude oil shipping in the region i am happy that noaa can use the model and finds it valuable socolofsky said im glad weve created a tool that noaa can actually use to forecast oil trajectory if there was another spill and im glad there is the opportunity right now to use this tool as preparation to avoid future spills or have better mitigation and response in the event of a disaster ________________________________________________________________________this project is a collaborative effort with researchers at eth zurich the woods hole oceanographic institution and the new jersey institute of technology you can read more about the model in this publication about its implementation by the gulf of mexico research initiative"
the quest for clean energy sources has been ongoing for many years with minimal results this could all change with the development of a single device that will lie on the waters surface and utilize the ocean waves to generate electrical power dr heonyong kang a research assistant professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university first began working on this idea in 2015 as the result of the us department of energys (doe) wave energy prize competition
kangs project is the development of a surface riding wave energy converter (sr-wec) while the initial applications will be a stepping stone to eventually utilizing the renewable and clean ocean energy in the commercial sector the sr-wec will be further developed to be a competitive power supply for the large-scale grid connected system the first goal is to supply maritime markets then supply the large-scale connected system in this project we develop and test the sr-wec in a form of scaled prototype which can eventually supply electricity to various maritime markets at a competitive cost said kang lead principal investigator on the project the maritime markets to benefit from this technology include ocean observation and navigation underwater vehicle charging desalination marine aquaculture marine algal biofuels seawater mining offshore data center disaster resiliency and recovery and isolated power systems kang and his team of interdisciplinary researchers will be faced with some limitations regarding the development of the scaled prototype of the sr-wec due to being in the early stages of developing the technology required for wave energy conversion into electrical power there are multiple aspects we need to make efforts along the technical development kang said it spans from fabricating the scaled prototype out of limited suppliers and building connections in the industry to educating the public of the sr-wec and its potential impact on society the most challenging aspect of the project has been to develop the preliminary system with minimal support the doe identified $23 million for projects in next-generation marine energy devices and selected 12 research projects including kangs project the grant will help to further develop and test the prototype and prepare it for open-sea testing by the end of the project in 2022 i am most excited to unlock the renewable ocean wave energy and eventually resolve energy challenges in the various maritime markets kang said
on april 4 eight faculty members from texas a&m university gave presentations about their research during the inaugural presidents excellence fund symposium at the walter and leonore annenberg presidential conference center each speaker is a leader or a member of an interdisciplinary research team that earned project funding from the first round of texas a&ms x-grants program an initiative of the 10-year $100 million presidents excellence fund three researchers represented the texas a&m college of engineering for his project point-of-care diagnosis and monitoring of respiratory disease through exhaled breath analysis dr ricardo gutierrez-osuna a professor in the department of computer science and engineering and his research team are developing a new technology to help individuals who suffer from respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma to monitor their conditions through exhaled breath analyses called breath-on-a-chip spectrometers (bocs) unlike current devices that cost up to $3 000 the bocs will be a fraction of the cost of existing sensor-based monitors easy to operate and able to monitor multiple biomarkers with the planning grant they received for their project autonomous material discovery and manufacturing via artificial intelligence dr satish bukkapatnam professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering and director of the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) institute for manufacturing systems and his team are investigating the creation of new materials using artificial intelligence to build an autonomous materials discovery framework autonomous materials scientist (ams) that will be able to explore complex materials spaces as part of the grant the ams will drive the discovery of a new class of functional alloy materials the overall goal of the project is to have the ams serve as a platform facility to speed up the process materials and manufacturing process discovery for various applications dr john tracy professor in the zachry department of civil engineering and director of the texas water resources institute is part of a team led by dr wendy jepson professor in the department of geography that is working on a three-year project to examine desalination and water reuse in urban areas jepson was not able to attend symposium due to another engagement but tracy presented a video that she put together that explained how the team will examine the various pathways cities are taking to transform their urban water systems all the researchers and their respective teams shared $7 million in funding during the first round of texas a&ms x-grants program they represent 81 faculty members and other researchers from eight colleges four schools and two state agencies agriculture and life sciences architecture education and human development engineering geosciences liberal arts medicine and science mays business school the school of law the school of public health and the bush school of government and public service as well as tees and texas a&m agrilife research
the houston airport systems two international airports will undergo major infrastructure and equipment upgrades and much-needed renovations through a design and construction management agreement with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a member of the texas a&m university system the projects at william p hobby airport and george bush intercontinental airport will reduce the airports utility costs and improve air quality for houston residents collaboration among the city our universities and our centers of commerce leveraging technology for sound business practices and a better world is a great boost for our growing city mayor sylvester turner said i applaud this partnership and look forward to realizing its benefits in texas a&m weve found a partner with the right expertise that paired with our airport industry know-how will advance the science of operating this large-scale enterprise more efficiently and cost effectively from an energy standpoint said mario diaz city of houston aviation director this project which could be in excess of $30 million and is led by the texas a&m engineering experiment station will allow our phd students to perform a great service for the city of houston with results in saving both energy and public dollars said texas a&m system chancellor john sharp the main objective for these projects is to replace outdated equipment controls baggage handling system and lighting at the airports the projects include installing four new chillers as part of a new utility plant improving building operations and installation of a solar array on new shading canopies the implemented projects will reduce the annual energy consumption by more than 24 million kilowatt-hours while reducing the utility costs by more than $13 million annually this will also help the houston airport system to reach its net-zero energy goal for george bush intercontinental airport as part of this agreement the tees energy systems laboratory (esl) will manage the project design and construction the esl will implement this project with the majority of funding from the loanstar program administered by the state energy conservation office (seco) of the texas comptrollers office the benefits of this project for all users of each airport as well as the community at large will be capital improvements and upgrades and increased efficiency of operating systems and processes all of which will be paid back mostly by the stream of utility cost savings made possible as soon as the individual projects are implemented another major benefit will be the improved air quality in houston and providing emissions reduction credits as part of houstons commitment in reducing nitrogen oxides as required by the texas emissions reduction plan (terp) the projects will also provide phd students within the texas a&m system with the opportunity to learn and demonstrate best practices in energy efficiency and gain valuable hands-on experience in construction management collaborating with industry representatives and drawing on individual researchers varying backgrounds also promotes a productive learning climate for students while supplying them with professional workforce development and transferrable skills ideal for careers in both academia and industry in 2001 the state legislature enacted laws directing tees to fill an important role in the implementation of state energy standards for new construction and calculating emissions reduction benefits from energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives which are part of terp the esl has worked with the houston airport system on various energy-efficiency projects for more than five years this new project is the culmination of previous studies and will be one of the most comprehensive undertaking for both the esl and the houston airport system the project is expected to begin in april 2019 and conclude within a year
on may 16 16 startup companies from across texas will compete to be one step closer to making their innovative ideas become a reality at the 2019 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) aimed at promoting the commercialization of emerging technology to the marketplace tnvc recognizes technology and science-focused independent companies with high-growth potential and provides seed funding to help them effectively execute their idea for a new or advanced technology and move it to product development this years startups include a company using artificial intelligence to predict early onset alzheimers disease and another that is tackling the global plastic pollution problem the semi-finalists come from a wide spectrum of fields including healthcare it/software digital health transportation and clean energy technology at the may 16 competition judges will narrow the field of 16 semi-finalists from across texas down to six finalists the final judging round begins at 1 pm and is open to the public and the media the finals will take place in the all-american club at kyle field at more than $350 000 in cash and in-kind services the prize pool for this years competition is the largest yet since 2014 the tnvc has awarded more than $700 000 in prizes to texas-based startups 2019 semi-finalists: bezoar laboratories llc bezoar laboratories llc is a research and development company currently developing a novel patent-pending probiotic that when fed with nitrate reduces methane by 50% in ruminants while reducing food-borne pathogens and increasing feed-efficiency gaitiq llc fewer than 50% of people with alzheimers disease ever get a diagnosis gaitiq is using deep learning and artificial intelligence to predict risk of alzheimers years or decades before symptoms of dementia appear by detecting subtle changes in how you walk from video taken in a doctors office harmony aeronautics llc harmony aeronautics has patented a revolutionary approach to compact electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft their technology offers game-changing improvements in efficiency and noise reduction relative to existing designs expanding the capabilities and markets for both unmanned aircraft system and manned personal commuting applications ictero medical ictero medical is building a minimally invasive ablation system to provide definitive therapy to high-risk patients with gallstone disease their device the cholesafe system leverages existing workflows widely utilized by interventional radiologists which allows physicians to offer their patients the benefits of surgery without the risk immosis llc survivr is a virtual reality platform for immersive accessible and data-driven police training the company is supplementing the limitations of existing training and emphasizing de-escalation through hands-on scenarios which includes active shooter traffic stop and domestic battery currently they have demos with seven police departments in north texas intelligent implants pioneering the use of wireless implantable bioelectronics to stimulate sculpt and monitor bone growth in real-time novothelium novothelium provides a tissue engineered matrix for nipple areolar regeneration after mastectomy polyvascular polyvascular is creating polymeric transcatheter valves for children with congenital heart disease saber corporation saber corporation is developing an antimicrobial bandage to provide a cost-saving solution to the healthcare system by enabling hospital staff to reduce healthcare-associated infections by addressing surgical site infections spark biomedical spark biomedical is a texas-based medical device company focused on non-invasive bioelectric medicine for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders surfellent surfellent has developed a new generation of anti-icing surfaces with extremely low ice adhesion and exceptional durability under severe environmental conditions teysha technologies teysha has developed new and unique solutions to the global plastic pollution problem to meet the growing demand for sustainable plastics teysha technologies natural product polycarbonate platform creates a wide range of polymers with tunable properties and practical applications which will then degrade after the end of their useful lifetime toggle health toggle health is a healthcare technology company that delivers a breakthrough surgical user experience in the operating room they connect surgeons to their digital case data in the sterile field using a sterile wireless controller venostent venostent is developing a novel bioresorbable smart polymer to address the chronic issue of vein collapse for dialysis patients their external wrap represents a new prophylactic way of preventing this condition that takes thousands of lives and costs medicare billions of dollars each year vitls vitls has developed an innovative way to enable earlier detection of patient deterioration they have developed a wearable device that monitors body temperature pulse heart rate variability respiratory rate pulse oxygen (spo2) sleep and movement the device is thin flexible waterproof unobtrusive has a six-day battery life and is disposable yotta solar inc yotta solar has developed a modular energy storage device solarleaf; battery storage integrated with photovoltaic installation designed to reduce cost and expand development of energy storage and grid resiliency on commercial buildings solarleaf will expand solar energy use by reducing the soft costs of design and installation about the texas a&m new ventures competition: the texas a&m engineering experiment station and the texas a&m university system along with a growing number of sponsors are working to ensure todays innovative ideas become a reality through the texas a&m new ventures competition aimed at promoting the commercialization of emerging technology the competition recognizes companies with high-growth potential and provides seed funding to help them effectively execute their ideas and advance product development
the national nuclear security administration (nnsa) partnered with texas a&m university to host nuclear security enterprise (nse) day on april 8 the event offered attendees the chance to learn about career opportunities and internships for all stem majors with the nnsa labs plants and sites dr donna mischell navarro chief human capital officer for the nnsa welcomed students in her keynote speech and encouraged them to consider a career with the nnsa she explained that the nse is made up of the nnsa and its labs plants and sites the nnsa maintains and enhances the safety security and effectiveness of the nations nuclear weapons stockpile; reduces global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the us navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the united states and abroad nse day also featured several undergraduate and graduate panel discussions aimed at answering any questions students might have about working within the nse a career with the nnsa is especially great for undergraduates to consider since the positions are structured in a way to help them build on skill sets they gained during their education said ben stallwitz 09 functional manager from the pantex plant in amarillo texas many companies will even support employees pursuing masters and phd degrees as well students also had the option to attend a career fair as a part of nse day to learn more about the critical work these entities perform to protect the nation the industry is literally looking to hire thousands of new employees from all kinds of backgrounds said benjamin grover division leader from lawrence livermore national laboratory the development of nuclear weapons isnt going away and theres no way we can control or predict what other countries will do with that technology its kind of like a pandoras box and we need to be aware of it all but that also means we will always need people in this line of work the nuclear industry recognizes the important role academia plays in workforce development which is why y12 and the los alamos national laboratory (lanl) have partnered with professors such as dr pavel tsvetkov associate professor in the department of nuclear engineering and dr sunil chirayath associate professor and director of tees center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives to support and fund specialized focused courses for students the focus of our nuclear criticality safety program is to prepare future generations of nuclear criticality safety experts for the national labs and industry tsvetkov said he is teaching a course about criticality safety fundamentals together with experts from lanl and y12 while chirayath is teaching a course on the use of monte carlo n-particle transport code a computational tool that is widely used in the nuclear community the program is currently in its second year and aims to establish a pipeline of nuclear criticality safety engineers to us national laboratories and industry texas a&m is one of only a handful of prestigious universities selected to host an nse day event to engage stem students interested in a career with the nse
dr mohammad alam head of the fats and oils program at the process engineering research and development center (perdc) has received a grant from the malaysian palm oil board to fund several semesters of teaching and short courses about the significance of dietary oils and fats as essential sources of energy similar programs exist at other universities but perdcs labs and pilot plants provide a truly hands-on experience that short course attendees and students will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere short courses like alams are often largely teaching focused so his incorporation of lab practicals introduces a new element that is enticing to industry representatives who recognize academic programs as a vital part of workforce development certainly teaching is important alam assured but a lot of industrial training can only be communicated effectively through practicals and equipment demonstrations and our labs serve that purpose extremely well funding from the palm oil industry is especially noteworthy because the food and drug administration instructed the food industry to eliminate trans fats from food production by july 2018 palm oil has since been a preferred replacement oil for food manufacturers as a result alam believes industry support for the fats and oils program positions texas a&m at the forefront of new technology and innovation we are also doing a lot of work with biodiesel alam said any kind of oil can be used to produce biodiesel that includes palm oil soybean oil non-edible oils or even used cooking oils the latter especially is where alams focus lies by collecting used cooking oil from local restaurants he hopes the fats and oils program will one day be able to produce biodiesel efficiently enough to fuel the texas a&m buses in addition to the opportunity to assist with cutting-edge research students in the fats and oils program can also be involved with industry projects large companies commission the perdc to help with smaller projects at times and short course attendees often have the chance to participate in the production process the focus on practical experiences and interactions is why perdc short courses can boast successfully training thousands of people around the world the short courses often feature guest lectures and interactions with top industry and technical staff as a result seating is limited in order to maximize the learning experience alams short course trends in margarine and shortening manufacture non-trans products runs from may 12-16 registration is open through may 14
texas a&m university researchers are looking to nature for inspiration in developing a new method of underwater plasma generation using shrimp as a model – a discovery which could provide significant improvements for actions ranging from water sterilization to drilling
"dr david staack associate professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering and xin tang a phd candidate and graduate research assistant in the department used 3d printing technology to replicate not only the physical shape of a snapping shrimps claw but also the complex mechanism through which it generates plasma the teams research was published march 15 in the online journal science advances ""generally when you look to nature evolutionary pressure makes it so that nature is very efficient at doing things "" staack said ""i find it interesting that the shrimp has been doing intense shock waves plasma chemistry and nanoparticle synthesis for millions of years"" when the snapping shrimp – also known as the pistol shrimp – snaps its claw it shoots out a jet of water fast enough to generate a bubble which when it collapses creates a loud noise and emits light the high pressures and temperatures produced in this process lead to plasma formation the project led by staack began more than four years ago as an offshoot of a national science foundation (nsf)-funded project on electrical discharge plasma in liquids in comparing the plasma-generation process of the snapping shrimp to their electrical plasma process the researchers became curious if they could find a way to measure and replicate its properties the researchers set out to mimic the mechanics of the snapping shrimps claw with initial support from the nsf carefully studying how the sea creature creates a cavitation bubble that generates plasma at upwards of 3 000 degrees fahrenheit ""in our paper we report the first direct imaging of the light emission induced by the same method the shrimp uses: the mechanically generated energy focusing on a collapsing cavitation and the following shockwave propagation "" staack said ""the bio-inspired mechanical design allowed us to carry out repetitive and consistent experiments on the plasma generation and indicate a significant increase in conversion efficiency compared to sonic laser and electric induced cavitation"""
"staack said the use of 3d printing was instrumental in the progression of this project allowing the researchers to create an accurate scaled-up model of the snapping shrimps claw in a way that was impossible just a few years ago previous attempts at replicating the shrimps behavior focused on the two-dimensional geometry of the shrimp ultimately missing some of the complex 3d processes that newer technology allowed the researchers to recreate the mechanism successfully staack and tang created a 3d model of a snapping shrimps molted claw husk five-times larger than it appears in nature to power the mechanism without the aid of the shrimps muscles the researchers implemented a mousetrap-like spring system in nature shrimp use the cavitation bubble as a weapon to generate shocks and stun their prey a scaled-up version of the shrimps mechanism could be used for a broad range of disciplines including analytical chemistry physics and material processing ""shrimp use the systems as a weapon and that is certainly one application "" staack said ""the pressure and shocks can stun small fish or break-up a kidney stone the cavitation and dynamics can be used to modify boundary layer flow and reduce drag for a boat other applications take advantage of the chemistry of the plasma state nanoparticles can be synthesized with exotic phases due to the extreme conditions during synthesis water can be sterilized oil can be upgraded"" drawing inspiration from the snapping shrimps plasma and shockwave capabilities staack is working with a team of colleagues from the mechanical engineering department on a spin-off project to advance the drilling technology used to create geothermal wells that tap into the earths natural heat by enabling electrodes on the tip of a drill bit to emit a microscopic plasma discharge the technology will help break through hard rock and streamline the drilling process moving forward staack said some of the goals for future research include determining the temperature of the plasma generated finding out how large they can scale up the mechanism and testing some potential applications they are also working on refining the most efficient version of the mechanism removing parts from the claw model that do not serve a purpose in the creation of plasma ""what weve learned from this is that we dont need all of this shrimp biology "" staack said ""we need the little back plunger and we need the channel but we dont need the part that the shrimp uses to hit with there are some things which evolved for different reasons some of the things were doing now are figuring out what the distilled version of this mechanism is"" build your own the bio-inspired snapping shrimp device is relatively easy to build making it both useful for reproducibility of the science as well as being fun for those interested to explore staack believes with appropriate supervision and less than $100 people ages 12 and up could reproduce the device the materials necessary to reproduce the device have been made available electronically through an open-access platform hosted by the texas a&m university libraries"
on feb 26-28 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and the indian institute of technology-bombay (iit-bombay) organized a discussion meeting on nuclear security best practices sponsored by the us department of the defenses defense threat reduction agency with technical support from oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) the event was hosted by dr suneet singh at iit-bombay with organizational support from dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university the workshop brought together subject matter experts from both the us and india to discuss the challenges and best practices for nuclear security in their respective countries these experts were pulled from nsspi ornl the international atomic energy agency and the south texas project nuclear power plant various indian universities and technical institutes the indian nuclear industry the atomic energy regulatory board (aerb) the indian navy and the department of atomic energy (dae) the meeting was attended by students and academics from various indian universities as well as representatives from the indian nuclear industry aerb dae and the observer research foundation 7456 nsspi organizes nuclear security best practices meeting with iit-bombayon feb 26-28 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives and the indian institute of technology-bombay organized a discussion meeting on nuclear security best practices
donation will fund tees hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) a member of the texas a&m university system announced the creation of the new hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research made possible with a donation from hewlett packard enterprise (hpe) r stanley williams former hpe senior fellow and nanotechnology pioneer will lead the tees hpe center as well as serve as the hewlett packard enterprise chair professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university the ongoing rise of big data and the development of powerful analytical techniques that can efficiently evaluate the data will dramatically transform the way we live and work unlocking the value of this data will require computer architectures that are flexible and not bound by traditional designs the centers mission is to lead the way into this new world of data-driven computing architectures through academic-industry collaboration hpe donated research equipment valued at $105 million hpe also funded a $1 million endowed chair position that texas a&m will match with a $500 000 contribution these gifts will establish a leading-edge research capability and partnership with tees dedicated to the study of advanced materials and photonics for innovative computer architectures this is an extremely significant gift of equipment and the hiring of stan williams places us at the forefront of next generation discovery in computation nonlinear dynamical electronics and materials said texas a&m university system chancellor john sharp there is no other cleanroom in the state of texas that has all five of the high-end instruments hpe is donating and we plan to become a regional hub for next-generation nano- and micro-engineering we owe tremendous appreciation to hpe cto (chief technology officer) mark potter whose vision for leveraging our joint assets will build a world class laboratory and attract preeminent talent in the broad area of materials initially the center will focus on advanced materials fabrication and characterization future electronic devices advanced photonics and novel computer architectures research will aim to achieve results that both expand knowledge and motivate the next generation of computer scientists and architects for the benefit of society looking ahead the ability to make sense of the massive amounts of data generated in academic public and private sector settings will change not only how we do business but also how we live said potter also director of hewlett packard labs our success at evaluating the world around us and making breakthroughs we never thought possible hinges on our ability to apply technology texas a&m university has great traditions coupled with visionary leadership said williams tees hewlett packard enterprise center for computer architecture research director there are already world-class faculty in place who are contributing to the advancement of neuromorphic materials and new computing paradigms the students who come here are inspired by generations of successful aggie alumni and expect to work hard this is the ideal environment to do something completely new in computing untethered from legacy notions and i am excited by the opportunities that i see the center occupies 25 000 square feet of space in the giesecke engineering research building (gerb) tees also has contributed approximately $2 million for renovations to gerb to support the new equipment and will hire three faculty in this area among the equipment donated is a clustex used to deposit material layers on a wafer a titan cubed themis tem microscope helios sem/fib dual beam system an asm atomic layer deposition tool and a nanolab 460f1 electron microscope researchers can now develop next-generation computer chips for more powerful but energy-efficient computing integrated photonic devices and microsensors for biosensing/medical applications or better autonomous vehicles or flexible electronic devices and micro/nanofluidic systems for continuous health monitoring or point of care diagnosis in remote settings said dr arum han director of the aggiefab nanofabrication facility at texas a&m and professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering it typically takes three to four years of intensive effort and institutional support to acquire even one instrument that hpe just donated han said having five such high-end instruments coming to our cleanroom facility simultaneously is just absolutely amazing and is unheard of for any university cleanroom
a texas a&m university former students startup spark biomedical was awarded $50 000 as the winner of the 2019 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) daniel powell is ceo of the medical device company which is developing noninvasive neurostimulation solutions for opioid withdrawal and addiction im very humbled and grateful said powell ceo of spark and a 1996 graduate of texas a&ms mays business school this award means a lot because texas a&m is my alma mater being back here is fantastic and this win is a testament to the work were doing and our dedication to making a difference with this product also in the finals was teysha technologies which was commercialized out of texas a&m college of science laboratories teysha has developed new solutions for the worldwide plastics pollution problem by developing a natural polycarbonate platform that will degrade after the end of their useful lifetime teyshas ceo and inventor of the technology dr karen l wooley has joint appointments in the departments of chemistry chemical engineering and materials science and engineering dr ashlee jahnke is head of research and development for the company as well as an assistant research scientist at texas a&m the competition featured a new award this year the engineering vice chancellors innovation prize two $15 000 (in-kind support) prizes were awarded to sun co tracking and ictero medical sun co tracking is developing shape memory alloy actuators for solar panels and ictero medical is developing a catheter-based therapy for treating and preventing gallstone disease this unique prize is intended to help the awardees access the world-class engineering capabilities at texas a&m to obtain technical assistance toward solving their most challenging technical problems in product design manufacturing or testing said dr balakrishna haridas tees director for technology commercialization and entrepreneurship these collaborations between the prize winners and texas a&m engineering will generate technical data to support on small business innovation research/grant proposal funding or private capital investments to the company at more than $500 000 in cash and in-kind services the prize pool for this years competition was the largest yet since 2015 the tnvc has awarded more than $15 million in prizes to texas-based startups the 2019 tnvc was made possible by tees; mcferrin center for entrepreneurship; texas a&m university school of innovation; 80/20 foundation; southwest national pediatric device consortium; exxonmobil; texas engineering extension service-product development center; ark pharmacies inc; amerra; brazos valley economic development corporation; biotex; paragon innovations inc; schwegman lundberg and woessner; thomas horstemeyer; hollinden | marketers + strategists; tees clean energy incubator; ramey & schwaller law firm; texas a&m college of science; tmc innovation; aggie angel network; goose society of texas; texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences; chevron technology ventures; fannin innovation studio; winstead pc; texas a&m health science center; texas a&m transportation institute; fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies; texas a&m division of research; and tumey llp full list of winners: (visit here for more information on these companies) 1st – $50 000 – spark biomedical 2nd – $35 000 – surfellent 3rd – $25 000 – intelligent implants 4th – $15 000 – teysha technologies 5th – $10 000 – venostent 6th – $5 000 – gaitiq elevator pitch competition:1st - $5 000 – polyvascular2nd - $4 000 – saber3rd - $3 000 – novothelium4th - $2 000 – immosis5th - $1 000 – em device lab additional prizes: brazos valley economic development corporation launch prize – saber southwest national pediatric devices consortium prizes – spark biomedical and em device lab ark pharmacies inc regional prize – gaitiq paragon engineering services prize – toggle health biotex investment prize – polyvascular amerra visualization services prize – polyvascular thomas | horstemeyer ip legal services prize – ictero medical and teysha technologies tmc investment prize – gaitiq tmc accelerator admission prize – ictero medicalramey & schwaller ip legal services prize – venostentaggie angel network investment prize – spark biomedicalhollinden marketing and strategists services prize – gaitiq schwegman lundberg and woessner ip legal services prize – gaitiqtees clean energy incubator prize – carbonwire technologygoose society investment prize – polyvascularengineering vice chancellor innovation prize – sun co tracking and ictero medicalteex product development center prize – surfellent
on april 24-26 the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and the national institute of advanced studies (nias) in bengaluru india co-organized a discussion meeting on human reliability programs (hrp) with technical support from oak ridge national laboratory (ornl) the meeting titled human reliability program in industries of national importance brought participants from the indian atomic energy regulatory board multiple units of the indian department of atomic energy various public and private universities and research centers together with subject matter experts from texas a&m university and ornl to discuss elements of hrp dr sunil chirayath nsspi director and associate professor of nuclear engineering co-coordinated the meeting along with dr m sai baba of the nias chirayath also gave a presentation titled roadmap to a sustainable human reliability program and implementation plan dr craig marianno nsspi deputy director and assistant professor of nuclear engineering spoke about insider threat mitigation strategies an element of hrp the presentations were balanced between us and indian experts in an attempt to identify good practices in safety and security with respect to hrp as well as identify hrp implementation challenges the meeting was multi-disciplinary in nature and provided an excellent learning forum for the participants us and indian subject matter experts from academia the nuclear industry nuclear research centers and think tank organizations that advise industries of national importance such as aviation and defense all spoke about hrp from their own perspectives as a result of the meeting nsspi and the nias resolved to work together to form a core working group to study and discuss hrp in the context of indian industry
in 2017 it was estimated that there were nearly 42 million veterans with service-connected disabilities many of whom required housing assistance in one form another to be able to live independently among these are about 42 000 veterans with severe spinal cord injuries and disorders researchers at texas a&m university are working on new technology that could help these veterans achieve even more independence the department of veterans affairs (va) oversees a program offered to veterans and service members with certain service-connected disabilities called specially adapted housing (sah) which provides funds to modify or construct an adapted home to meet their needs typical adaptations include ramps wider halls and doors or wheelchair-accessible bathrooms but there are many other emerging technologies that could improve home adaptions or enhance a veteran or service members ability to live independently such as voice-recognition and voice-command operations living environment controls and adaptive feeding equipment the va has defined this as new assistive technology (at) an advancement that could aid or enhance the ability of a veteran or service member to live in an adapted home
to help improve this new assistive technology the va is awarding specially adapted housing assistive technology (sahat) grants dr hangue park assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering along with dr jeonghee kim assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution have received a $200 000 sahat grant to work on their own assistive technology device park said he and kim had been working on types of assistive technology since their doctoral studies 10 years ago but it wasnt enough we were not satisfied with what we did and we think there is still a long way to go for ats for severely disabled individuals he said park said most people with quadriplegia still depend on old assistive technologies such as the sipnpuff head-switch and mouth-stick in spite of their limited functionality and accessibility it is mainly because they are intuitive robust easy-to-use and price competitive he said however those basic ats do not support multiple commands and cannot handle multiple devices such as computers powered wheelchairs and smartphones indeed a considerable effort has been put out to develop advanced ats for people with quadriplegia however one of the main reasons that advanced ats fail in the market is because theyre difficult to operate or learn as advanced ats have versatile functionalities with a more complex operating principle command intuitiveness becomes more and more important to reduce the cognitive burden to address this issue and make the advanced and intuitive at available the researchers proposed a new multifunctional intraoral assistive technology (mora) mora employs intuitive intraoral (occurring within the mouth) commands and motion-dependent sensory feedback to make the advanced ats more convenient and easier to use park said the intraoral function is intact for most people even after a high-level spinal cord injury because intraoral organs are designed to perform sophisticated and repetitive motor tasks and motion-dependent sensory feedback is crucial for the new motor learning mora will be easily accepted by people with quadriplegia and promote their sustained functional independence as a one-stop shop to control multiple devices and intuitive interface to the environment with minimal cognitive burden he said park is excited about working on mora and credits much of their ability to pursue this research to the environment at texas a&m texas a&m university provides a great research environment for me and (kim) our department heads dr miroslav begovic and dr reza langari are extremely supportive to assistant professors which truly helps us to pursue our research park said also texas a&m provides a great research environment to pursue spinal cord injury research under the leadership of dr james grau faculty in the texas a&m spinal cord initiative help each other with the same objective of improving the quality of life for people with a spinal cord injury i feel privileged to work as a part of texas a&m spinal cord initiative it is really a family-like environment and makes a great synergy among faculty in multiple disciplines park was pleased to receive the grant and do his part to help veterans and adds that their new device will not be limited to veterans with spinal cord injuries because the same technology can be generally applied to veterans with other severe disabilities veterans should be taken care of with special attention as a way to appreciate their sacrifice for the nation and other people park said (kim) and i very much appreciate this opportunity from the united states department of veterans affairs and are looking forward to contributing to improve the quality of life for veterans
han co-leads $15m darpa grant to create rapid ways to test dangerous bacteria bacteria are microscopic organisms that thrive in diverse environments they can live within soil in the ocean or other water environments and even inside the human body bacteria can be helpful like recycling nutrients in the environment or helping with our digestion but many other times they are harmful causing diseases like pneumonia and staph infections that are difficult to treat because of lack of proper therapeutics or resistance to some antibiotics the functions and properties of the vast number of bacteria in the environment are unknown to us the risk posed by these unknown bacteria is increasing as the global environment changes populations expand and tools for genetic engineering increase which puts the general population and especially members of the military in danger to combat this potential threat the defense advanced research projects agency (darpa) created the friend or foe program which tasks researchers to find new ways to detect these potential unknown bacterial pathogens both natural and human-introduced in the environment before people become ill possible target environments are soil and water because they typically have millions of bacterial cells already in them and again no one can determine easily which ones are safe or not dr arum han and a texas a&m university-led research team received a grant from the darpa program totaling more than $15 million to develop a way to quickly detect and determine which bacterial pathogens are present in a soil or water sample
han professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and co-principal investigator (pi) on the project is working with a team to create a microdevice to rapidly and efficiently characterize the harmfulness of bacteria in the environment they will do this by screening each microorganism in the sample one cell at a time but very rapidly to see if it has the properties of a pathogen since no one can screen millions of cells by hand the team is working on building a microfluidic device or microchip to do so automatically while han is developing the microchip dr james samuel (pi) and dr paul de figueiredo (co-pi) from the department of microbial pathogenesis and immunology in the texas a&m college of medicine will look at the microbial pathogens to determine what aspects of their harmfulness to humans or animals can be tested rapidly using about five to 10 different criteria han and de figueiredo have been working together for the past several years on developing microfluidic devices that can measure a variety of different properties of microorganisms so this request from darpa was right up their alley according to han the problem with the current method is it takes too long to determine if bacteria are pathogenic or not because there are a variety of different mechanisms in which bacteria can harm a human and it can typically only detect pathogenic bacteria that are already known but not the unknowns it is their expectation that their new method will for the first time be able to detect unknown pathogens and also be much more time and cost-efficient we came up with a microchip that allows two things: one is to first grow the unculturable cells (cells that cant be grown using traditional means which occupies most microbes in the environment) as much as possible and second we are trying to measure whether a cell is pathogenic or not without any molecular analysis han said in other words you directly measure whether a toxin is produced by bacteria you directly measure whether bacteria under antibiotic treatment can survive you test whether bacteria go inside a host cell and still survive (when they normally should die) and so on youre measuring directly the property of these bacteria cells in five to 10 different criteria and then combining this information to quickly determine whether a particular bacterial cell has the potential to be pathogenic or not han is also collaborating with dr arul jayaraman the ray b nesbitt professor of chemical engineering on analyzing the metabolites produced by environmental microbial consortia to come up with strategies to improve the chance of culturing the so-called unculturable environmental microbes so that those unculturable environmental microbes can also be tested for their pathogenic potential han said the ultimate goal would be to have a chip that is compact small enough to bring into a field take an environmental sample and within a relatively short period of time determine whether there are pathogenic microbes in that sample this would work for natural and engineered pathogens a task that currently cant be done without the microchip theres no current technology that can measure so many different traits of a bacterium and do that for millions of bacterial cells han said we are the first ones trying to develop this new technology that will enable such analysis and detection this is not improving on something that exists but rather developing something that does not exist the hardest kind of discovery and development to help with different aspects of this project the team also includes investigators from the university of oklahoma university of california san francisco the university of virginia and the argonne national lab while its still in its early stages han believes the final product will not only benefit military personnel who are often deployed in a variety of domestic and foreign environments where their safety is a concern but will also benefit the general population against various existing and emerging infectious diseases such threats also include engineered pathogens that may be introduced by adverse entities if someone has engineered a strain its not on our list of harmful substances because its unknown han said the technology we are developing ultimately has the potential to provide an answer to an unknown microbe to determine whether they can cause harm to a human or not the full team includes han samuel de figueiredo provin jayaraman erin van schaik and jon mogford from texas a&m; adam abate from the university of california san francisco; rebecca wattam allan dickerman and andrew warren from the university of virginia; james davis from argonne national lab; and jizhong zhou from the university of oklahoma
texas a&m agrilife research and the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) were recently awarded a grant from the us department of agricultures national institute of food and agriculture to study and develop super-repellent and anti-fouling surfaces for foods the grant will be used in their collaboration to help ensure the safety of fresh food products benefiting both consumers and the produce industry there is a need to reduce those outbreaks associated with microbial contamination that may take place in different operations along the fresh produce chain said dr luis cisneros-zevallos agrilife research food scientist and co-principal investigator for the project the surfaces we are designing avoid cross-contamination and reduce the risk of biofilm formation in recent years we have developed various types of nanotechnology-based coating with an intriguing combination of surface texture and chemistry to inhibit and prevent the attachment of microorganisms on plastics metals ceramic and glass at the laboratory scale said dr mustafa akbulut associate professor in the department of chemical engineering and principal investigator for the project with this project we will design novel coatings which are specifically tailored for the food industry and also suitable for large-scale production and application to achieve a broad impact on relevant stakeholders akbulut said food safety outbreaks in recent years have caused illnesses and deaths among consumers negatively affecting the fresh produce industry on a large scale after observing the natural morphology and chemistry of rice leaves which have hydrophobic super-repellent characteristics the team was inspired to create novel surfaces that mimicked leaves ability to reduce the attachment of microorganisms bioinspiration is key when it comes to using nanotechnology strategies specifically when you want to provide surfaces with unique characteristics of polarity and morphology akbulut said the interdisciplinary research team also includes texas a&m university food microbiologists drs matt taylor and alejandro castillo our team is a pioneer in this area in the us and worldwide cisneros-zevallos said we certainly believe that it will transform the way the fresh produce industry operates and we hope the industry will adopt many of the products our project will develop in the next few years of the grant for more information on the project read articles from the american chemical societys website or the journal food control
dr sunil chirayath director of the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) and associate professor of nuclear engineering at texas a&m university has been named a specially appointed associate professor to the tokyo institute of technologys (tokyo tech) world research hub initiative (wrhi) the wrhi is part of the institute of innovative research at tokyo tech which comprises of leading laboratories and research centers that aspire to accelerate international collaborative research and researcher mobility through recruiting top-level international researchers as specially appointed professors or visiting scholars facilitating interdisciplinary research and broadening the research scope of tokyo tech enhancing its global profile through chirayaths appointment the wrhi hopes to combine the capabilities of nsspi and the tokyo tech laboratory for advanced nuclear energy to advance work on generation iv reactors with particular attention to molten salt reactors chirayath will be in residence for three-month periods over three years during which he will work directly with other wrhi researchers on safeguards approaches waste handling criticality safety and uncertainty quantification for molten salt reactors dr hiroshi sagara an associate professor at tokyo tech will be his collaborative researcher for the project this appointment is the next step in a long history of collaboration between nsspi and tokyo tech on nuclear safety security safeguards research and education nsspi has hosted groups from tokyo tech for academic exchanges and exercises on radiation detection in emergency response situations and has provided internships for tokyo tech students working on their dissertations texas a&m students are frequently invited to participate in conferences workshops and other exchange activities at tokyo tech read the official announcement on the wrhi website
some of the greatest minds in smart grid research came to texas a&m university during the first ever institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee) international conference on smart grid synchronized measurements and analytics (sgsma) may 21-23 during the conference leaders from academia research organizations and industry from all over the world facilitated innovation knowledge transfer and technical progress in addressing synchronized measurements and analytics to advance smart grids the theme of the conference was focused particularly on synchronized sampling and synchrophasors (time-synchronized measurements that represent both the magnitude and phase angle of the sine waves found in electricity grids) prior to the conference tutorials on synchrophasor data analytics and standards and workshops on the use of synchrophasors and synchronized sampling in protection as well as on implementation of synchrophasor data analytics were held overall more than 170 participants attended these events
the conference featured more than 40 paper presentations selected from the best research teams working on smart grids along with panel discussions invited talks and keynote presentations given by gil bindewald and terry boston bindewald is the director for advanced grid research and development within the us department of energys (doe) office of electricity he is also co-chair of the grid modernization initiative his discussion was on driving grid resilience with synchrophasors before joining the doe he worked as an engineer at the general electric company and westinghouse electric corporation was on the technical staff of the massachusetts institute of technologys lincoln laboratory and spent time in the czech republic and bangladesh
boston discussed repowering earth smart secure and sustainablethe future aint what it used to be after serving as president and ceo of pjm since 2008 boston retired in 2016 and received a 2017 presidential appointment to the national infrastructure advisory council he is past president of the association of edison illuminating companies and past president of go15 reliable and sustainable power grids a voluntary initiative of the worlds 18 largest power grid operators that serves 34 billion people the conference was a major success because it had met and exceeded all the expectations in attendance (over 20 countries were represented) expertise of individuals (vendors government utilities academia) and extensive discussions (paper sessions panels tutorials workshops) said dr mladen kezunovic sgsma conference chair regents professor and the eugene e webb professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m and director of the smart grid center at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) we are particularly proud of the contribution the conference has made to the profession since it was the inaugural ieee conference on the subject long overdue since the deployment of synchrophasors was going on for over 10 years the next sgsma conference will be in split croatia in may 2021
the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) awarded $40 000 in seed grant funding to new research collaborations at its fourth tees annual research conference first place and $20 000 was awarded to the cyber warriors team for their project powering up: cybersecurity education for a dispersed workforce dr abhijit nag assistant professor in the computer information systems department at texas a&m university-central texas will serve as principal investigator each year at the conference representatives from the 19 tees regional divisions and affiliates come together to expand the research capacity in the state of texas by tapping into the talent of the tees network and forming collaborations that compete for seed funding at the end of each conference dr brent donham dean of the college of science and engineering at texas a&m university-commerce was chair of this years conference we appreciate brent donhams leadership for hosting the event at texas a&m-commerce said dr m katherine banks texas a&m university engineering vice chancellor and dean texas a&m-commerce president mark j rudin provided exceptional hospitality and created an atmosphere that fostered productive conversations for collaboration on future research projects this years winning project intersects the cybersecurity expertise that is honed in our partner universities across the state with the educational needs of our public service and military workforce for whom a university degree is not necessarily a requirement said dr dimitris lagoudas deputy director for tees and associate vice chancellor for engineering at texas a&m collaborations like these bring to life our strategic plan to help our partners respond to changes in a dynamic world through professional and continuing education tees researchers will remain committed to addressing big-picture problems and we will empower our partners to become leaders in engineering innovation we will not only work to deliver solutions but open doors to new opportunities the powering up project addresses the need for effective cybersecurity education for a dispersed workforce that includes entry-level military personnel and aspiring law enforcement officers nag and a team of five others from tees regional division partners will create online instructional curriculum for a certificate program that will cover cybersecurity topics like artificial intelligence and provide lab simulations team members include dr camille gibson professor and interim dean in justice studies at prairie view a&m university; dr daniel creider associate professor in the computer science and information systems department at texas a&m-commerce; dr vikram bhadauria assistant professor of management information systems and dr ram neupane assistant professor of math at texas a&m university-texarkana; and dr mirley balasubramanya professor and dean of the college of arts and sciences at texas a&m university-san antonio the $20 000 award will be used to conduct market and gap analysis identify key competencies and develop pilot modules all while the team explores even more grant opportunities to fully fund the powering up project in addition to the $20 000 award tees also presented two $5 000 awards and four $2 500 awards at the conference visit the tees annual research conference website for a list of all the award winners
a successful life by definition includes service to others george hw bush nuclear policy and a shared commitment to serve tie together the department of nuclear engineering and the bush school of government and public service at texas a&m university creating cross-disciplinary interactions that connect the opposite sides of campus the classes seminars and organization relationships are advantageous to both students and washington good nuclear policy is essential for maintaining peace and making sure countries have a diverse energy portfolio said dr sunil chirayath associate professor and director of the center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives (nsspi) nsspi is a multidisciplinary organization at texas a&m the first us academic institution focused on technical graduate education research and service related to the safeguarding of nuclear materials and the reduction of nuclear threats in 2006 nsspi was formed as a joint center between texas a&m and the texas a&m engineering experiment station nsspi combines the talent of internationally recognized researchers from the uss largest nuclear engineering department with renowned policy expertise from the bush school the team brings unique capabilities to face complex nuclear threats and proliferation challenges involving both policy and technology nsspi students participate in foreign field experiences present their research results in national and international forums and have premier internship opportunities at national laboratories said chirayath our students recently participated in the domestic nuclear facilities experience where they visited los alamos national laboratory sandia national laboratory urenco and the waste isolation pilot plant next month our students will be touring facilities in europe focused on nonproliferation effective policies achieve goals dr evans kitcher an assistant research engineer for nsspi teaches nuclear technology for policy makers a class that informs bush school students studying international affairs with an interest in nuclear security or energy on the technical aspects of nuclear engineering effective policies achieve goals said kitcher in turn professors from the bush school also teach classes for both nuclear engineering and government graduate students having a strong technical background in nuclear engineering and supplementing it with lectures and seminars from policy experts in the bush school enhances your worldview said athena sagadevan a nuclear engineering doctoral student i enjoyed the international security class i took with dr william mayborn at the bush school we analyzed previous wars that have happened around the world and how they influence policies today nuclear policy in the us is governed by its history so knowing the past is essential policies tend to allow countries to have guidelines on how they act with one another said sagadevan from an energy perspective policy allows you to make sure that a certain quota of your energy comes from nuclear meaning that its clean for example pollution is a significant challenge in china currently mainland china has about 45 nuclear power reactors in operation roughly 15 under construction and more about to start their policies are helping make them a more green country i was really encouraged to see the interaction between the nuclear engineering students and the bush school students as the former would often help us understand the complexity of nuclear weapons production and the enormous costs involved in a weapons program said dr william mayborn a visiting assistant professor to the bush school sagadevan completed an internship at oak ridge national laboratory where she used a code developed at texas a&m to provide a score for reactors indicating how much they would need to be monitored this score can communicate the probability of misuse of a reactor to a policy maker she said securing the globe the institute of nuclear materials management (inmm) is a nonprofit technical organization dedicated to the safe secure and effective stewardship of nuclear materials and related technologies inmm unites engineers technicians managers policymakers analysts commercial vendors educators and students across the globe texas a&m was the first university to start a student chapter as a student organization inmm connects texas a&m students to professionals from all over the world if youre interested in international relations making a concrete impact in the world and reducing nuclear weapons through nonproliferation join inmm this fall said mario mendoza a senior nuclear engineering student and the 2018-19 texas a&m chapter president of inmm mendoza had the opportunity to visit the national inmm conference which included ambassadors and representatives from the united nations benefits for a student include meetings every other week with food and events that put you in contact with people from industry academia and national labs said sagadevan the 2018-19 texas a&m chapter vice president at texas a&m inmm is a great platform to connect with undergraduate students graduate students students from the bush school and our organization advisors every year there is an inmm liaison to connect the department of nuclear engineering and the bush school in 2018 audrey hopkins an international affairs graduate student served as the liaison in april inmm hosted an advanced reactor safeguards workshop the workshop gathered experts in safeguards and advanced reactor design from around the world and texas a&m students to discuss current and future safeguards implementations for these new reactors new challenges arise with the development of new reactor types so current safeguards in place must be modified or new methods must be created to keep the world secure
since 1906 the global average surface temperature has increased by more than 16 degrees fahrenheit even more in certain polar regions while this doesnt seem a lot the effects of this global warming are becoming more and more apparent the heat is melting glaciers shifting precipitation patterns and forcing animals to move from their natural habitats to help combat global warming a team led by dr mert atilhan from texas a&m university and dr cafer yavuz at the korea advanced institute of science and technology (kaist) is working on a new porous polymer that can store natural gas more effectively than anything currently being used their research focuses on adsorbed natural gas (ang) a process to store natural gas that is a safer and cheaper alternative to compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas currently we are facing serious issues that are related to global warming due to the excessive use of coal and petroleum said atilhan who is affiliated with the texas a&m experiment stations gas and fuels research center natural gas is a much cleaner source and there is an abundant amount of gas being explored in the united states the mediterranean sea and elsewhere all around the world if natural gas can be stored effectively it can be utilized easily even in remote areas natural gas burns more cleanly as a fuel making it a useful alternative in vehicles and applications such as cooking heating or running generators it contains mostly methane and ethane these light gases have very high vapor pressure at ambient temperatures and their storage requires either high-pressure compression adsorbent systems or an extreme reduction of temperature in the ang process natural gas adsorbs to a porous adsorbent at relatively low pressure (100 to 900 psi) and ambient temperature solving both the high-pressure and low-temperature problems we looked into designing an ang adsorbent from a different perspective most research is focused on raising the upper limit the total capacity by introducing more pore volume said yavuz adding that the more pore volume also meant more leftover gas since it remains comfortably stored even if the pressure went below the minimum tank pressure needed by a vehicle we said ‘lets make sure the porous material squeezes all out when desorbed to the minimum pressure
atilhan and yavuz have been collaborating since 2008 on the development of new materials for gas capture and separation in the last few years they have been specifically looking more into storing natural gas in novel porous based materials the team focused on swelling mechanisms of network polymers the idea would be to pressurize natural gas on the sorbent so that it would expand and take a lot during consumption (desorption) the swollen polymer would release the gas until it completely deflates this expansion/contraction mechanism also solves certain ang issues as it turns out all the adsorbents warm up when in contact with gas and that causes all kinds of problems not to mention new safety risks atilhan said by having the adsorbent release energy by expanding itself they are solving many issues at once by keeping the adsorbent unheated they get the maximum performance and since thermal management is an absolutely critical design feature in engineering fuel systems they eliminate any unsafe pressure spikes that might come up because the temperature swings and contamination is minimized since the adsorbent remains contracted when no gas is stored with this work we are introducing a new plastic-based material that can store natural gas very effectively said atilhan we broke the world record for natural gas storage and passed well above the target for materials in order to be considered feasible which is determined by us department of energy (doe) yet it has a very cheap production cost which makes it even more attractive to use it in widespread applications to fast forward the feasibility checks on their technology the team began working on real gas cylinders lab results were great but you always have this what-if question when it comes to pushing your technology out in real life said vepa rozyyev the first author of an article they published in nature energy on the research who has since moved from kaist to the university of chicago for a phd he said to test it they went to a gas station and stuck the pressurized nozzle onto a cylinder full of their adsorbent their material beat the top industrial and literature examples by at least 20% it also marked the first time any study ever did this type of field testing the team is excited about the prospects and possibilities that this work will introduce this is just the beginning said yavuz we envision a whole host of new designs and mechanisms based on our concept since natural gas is much cleaner fuel than coal new developments in this realm will help in switching to less polluting fuels atilhan agrees the most important impact of their research is on the environment he said lowering toxic gaseous emissions by using natural gas more than coal or oil will significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted from various sources we have high aspirations to utilize these materials in vehicular applications which is one of the main causes of global warming it will also help to reduce the operating cost that is spent on acid/sour gas capture operations since we propose to store much cleaner fuel source and replace current state-of-the-art with these materials for fuel storage he said we believe one day we might see vehicles equipped with our materials that are run by a cleaner fuel source natural gas the results of their work were recently published in nature energy in an article titled high-capacity methane storage in flexible alkane-linked porous aromatic network polymers
high-repetition-rate brilliant and coherent light sources are significantly increasing the pace at which scientific experiments can be performed for the field of materials science to fully leverage this capability technological transformations are needed in materials sample preparation and target fabrication achieving this transformation could open new frontiers in high-energy-density science and dynamic materials in extremes research both of which are central to the department of energys (doe) stockpile stewardship mission with a goal of advancing this revolution members of los alamos national laboratory (lanl) and the texas a&m university system recently led a workshop aimed at assessing current efforts in high-volume flexible and agile materials sample preparation and target fabrication fostering collaborative interactions that take advantage of present advances and considering initiatives that could attract sponsor support the adaptive sample preparation and target fabrication for high-throughput materials science workshop held in may in college station texas brought together a diverse set of innovative participants from national laboratories academia and industry cris barnes champion for matter-radiation interactions in extremes at lanl remarked many of the attendees had never been in the same room before or met and most found it very exciting to hear about new and different research texas a&m university did a great job facilitating these interactions the two-day workshop featured sessions dedicated to identifying challenges and needs and to describing solutions and new technologies participants at the workshop realized the rare opportunity to combine three major initiatives: the materials genomics initiatives the fields of artificial intelligence and big data science as well as advanced manufacturing driven by science this can come together in autonomous materials discovery systems also known as materials acceleration platforms participants agreed that if the issues and challenges of adaptive sample preparation could be solved major advances could be made in multiple fields to move forward workshop participants would like to seek qualified sponsors willing to fund innovative projects that could be used at multiple facilities with a possible big payoff or return to succeed in attracting sponsors they will need to identify: a key application such as nuclear photonics/neutron radiography that requires high-volume and high-repetition rate; an important science campaign such as an effort to generate a nearly complete set of opacity data or x-ray transition data that would drive enabling technology investment over the required several years; or a user facility open to innovative beamline proposals where autonomous systems could be developed with wide applicability dr michael demkowicz associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering at texas a&m added the challenges are pretty substantial but if we can pull off an experiment campaign as envisioned by this workshop the impact could be huge materials research might shift from individuals making their best bet on what to investigate to an ai (artificial intelligence) steering an automated ‘discovery machine running thousands of tests a day the meeting was the first 2019 workshop funded by lanls momentum initiative which aims to maintain a state-of-technical awareness on key directions in mesoscale materials or accelerator science doe has identified an unmet national scientific need for a dynamic mesoscale materials science capability such a capability supporting the strategic and vital goal of science for manufacturing would require the advanced sample preparation and target fabrication discussed at the workshop; similarly advances in understanding issues of inertial fusion and high-energy-density science would benefit by higher-throughput experiments this workshop was one of a multi-year series of such workshops that lanl has sponsored
from june 15-22 the texas a&m engineering experiment stations center for nuclear security science and policy initiatives coordinated with argonne national laboratory to provide an international nuclear facilities experience (infe) that allowed graduate-level engineering and policy students and early career professionals from laboratories in the us to visit nuclear facilities in foreign countries this year the infe visited several nuclear fuel cycle facilities and laboratories in the netherlands germany and austria the infe provides participants with a better understanding of facility operations nuclear materials management and applied material safeguards than they would have through their academic coursework as part of the experience they get to the opportunity to visit a series of facilities where practitioners and facility operators give presentations and discuss the practical application of safeguards and security measures participants also have the opportunity to witness first-hand how nuclear safeguards work at various types of facilities some of which are not found within the united states the program gave the rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of the real-world applications of nuclear safeguards said miles chen a graduate student at texas a&m university who participated in the infe the facility personnel were very kind in having provided insightful presentations and tours chen also noted that a highlight of the experience was meeting fellow travelers and learning about their experience and expertise the infe provides excellent networking opportunities for participants to strengthen relationships among fellow students staff faculty and professionals while traveling and experiencing a foreign country the participants for this years infe included ten graduate students from texas a&m middlebury institute of international studies at monterey oregon state university university of maryland university of tennessee-knoxville the university of texas at austin and virginia commonwealth university and five early career professionals from idaho lawrence livermore pacific northwest and savannah river national laboratories dr claudio gariazzo of argonne national laboratory led the infe with help from nsspi faculty members dr shaheen dewji and dr craig marianno jay joshi a graduate student at the university of texas at austin described how experiences like the infe can also give participants perspective on the work they are doing in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and safeguards as well as renewed purpose what i saw and experienced during the trip was all about the enhancement of well-being across the world said joshi whether it was use of peaceful nuclear energy nuclear safeguards cancer treatment or poverty elimination via irradiation they were all about a better future for mankind the trip strengthened the purpose of my research it made me realize that the work that i am doing is not just for me but it has a much wider scope now im more inspired to learn more and do more in this field in the netherlands the infe group toured urenco nederland in almelo where they saw safeguards applied to a uranium enrichment facility they then visited the framatome advanced nuclear fuels facility in lingen germany which manufactures fuel assemblies provides powder and pellets to other fuel fabrication plants and disassembles and recycles unused fuel assemblies from decommissioned facilities in the country from there they traveled to the european commissions joint research center in karlsruhe germany to see their laboratories and the european nuclear security training center there finally they went to vienna austria to visit the international atomic energy agency (iaea) headquarters and the iaea laboratories in seibersdorf the knowledge and insights gained by first-hand observations of nuclear science and applications at laboratories and facilities gave context to the concepts ive been learning in graduate school said laura micewski a graduate student participant from oregon state university individuals in the cohort also benefited from the diversity of experience and expertise internal to the group which included both technical and policy experts at various stages in their education or career the infe has the potential to be a life-changing experience for many participants because it made us aware of possibilities for future research and employment in the very important field of international safeguards the national nuclear security administrations office of international nuclear safeguards provides financial support for both the infe and the domestic nuclear facilities experience