VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Headlines College of Engineering Headlines is produced annually to present highlights of the past year as well as late-breaking December 2011 news, as they appeared in the general media. Due to limited space, many of the articles appear in excerpted form and are designat-ed by ellipses. These 28 pages represent only a small sampling of news concerning the College of Engineering alumni, faculty, student, and events during 2012.

Published by the News Office, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech 540-231-6641 Vol. 29 No. 1

CHICAGO TRIBUNE • October 5, 2012

What’s the economic value of a college degree?

THE SUNDAY TIMES (United Kingdom) • October 15, 2012

New robot will fight fires, throw grenades

BOSTON GLOBE • August 30, 2012

USA TODAYFebruary 22, 2012

East Coast quake a

‘teachable moment’

See ROBOT, page 9

As America grays, businesses help seniors age in placeTHE WASHINGTON POST • April 2, 2012

A new robot inspired by C-3PO being developed for the US Navy will fight fires and throw grenades.

The battery powered ro-bot is being developed by scientists at Virginia Tech University.

May the force be with the US Navy as they de-velop robotic help for their warships, able to read hu-See HELMETS, page 2

By Lisa KocianNo equipment is

guaranteed to prevent a concussion. But manu-facturers say innovative football helmets, soccer headgear, and mouth guards can reduce their severity.

DOES SOCCERHEADGEAR HELP?Molly Caron wish-

es she had been wear-ing headgear when she got a concussion play-ing soccer in October. Now the Bridgewa-ter-Raynham Regional High School senior is

Improved equipment may boost protection

By Chuck RaaschSix months after an

earthquake shook the East Coast, its lessons still reverberate through the emergency manage-ment, engineering and geological communities.

The magnitude-5.8 quake, centered in the tiny town of Mineral, Va., demonstrated that earthquakes aren’t just a West Coast threat. Big quakes had hit the East Coast before but not recently nor with the frequency or ferocity of those in California.

By Olga KhazanEileen Morrissey has

always been independent. But at 91, she can no longer drive, which has made it hard for her to get to the grocery store.

At least once a week, she calls SilverRide, a San Fran-cisco transportation service that takes elderly clients on errands of their choosing.

“When I went to do my Christmas shopping, they carried my packages to the car,” Morrissey said. “They’re easy to talk to and they keep you in conversation.”

Morrissey is among those seniors who are eschewing nursing homes in favor of independent living. …

At-home devices for

By Bill SizemoreVirginia students and parents now have

a new source of information about the po-tential economic value of a college degree.

It’s long been clear that higher educa-tion translates into higher income. But how much difference does it make which

seniors have come a long way since Life Alert, the classic emergency-response system with its token tag line, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” Although fall prevention is still a big part of the senior market — tumbles are a lead-ing cause of injury among older Americans — the new-est devices are more discreet.

Researchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are developing a fall-prevention device that can be worn as a piece of jewelry. It measures changes in gait or stability over time.

“If a person decreases their walking velocity or is more prone to instability, we can use that information to identify health conditions

and how that can influ-ence the likelihood of falls,” says Thurmon Lockhart, Virginia Tech engineering professor….

promoting the use of such protection by her peers….

But specialists say even the best-designed helmet won’t necessar-ily protect against dan-gerous play.

“Don’t let people tar-get each other’s head,” said Stefan Duma, head of the biomedi-cal engineering depart-ment at Virginia Tech, whose research led to practice limitations ini-tiated by the national Pop Warner youth foot-ball program….

Can hi-tech helmets re-duce football head injuries?

BOSTON - As Ameri-cans grow more aware of the risk of brain injury tied to football — the coun-try’s most popular sport — players and coaches are experimenting with the latest technology in a bid to make the game safer.

Advances in training have led to bigger, faster players who have made the high-im-pact sport more dangerous, particularly at the college and professional level….

REASON FOR CONCERN

Research has shown that more than 4 million youth players are at risk. A 2011

NBCsports.comApril 2, 2012

See QUAKE, page 8

school you choose? And which major?Potential answers to those questions

are now available with a few clicks of a mouse.

A huge database that went online Thursday reveals the wages earned by

See DEGREE, page 10

man gestures, climb lad-ders, throw grenades and fight fires….

The US Navy has de-veloped a robot very simi-lar to the popular robotic character from George Lu-cas’ Star Wars to work on their ships.

ASH or Autonomous Shipboard Humanoid will have the capacity to oper-

ate in smoke-filled areas, climb ladders and react to human gestures with the help of infrared cameras and sensors on its ‘face’.

ASH would also be able to throw PEAT (propelled extinguishing agent tech-nology) grenades, and be able to use hoses and fire extinguishers.

The battery-powered

robot is being developed by scientists at RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) at Virginia Tech University and is a follow on from a previous version called CHARLI or Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence.

The team is working

2 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

IEEE SPECTRUM • May 4, 2012

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HeadlinesDean, College of Engineering:

Richard BensonEditor and Director of News:

Lynn NystromAssistant Editor: Lindsey HaughDesigner: David SimpkinsPublic Relations: Steven MackayVirginia Tech does not discriminate against employees, students, or applicants for admission or employment on the basis of race, gender, disability, age, veteran status, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or political affiliation. Anyone having questions concerning discrimination should contact the Office for Equity and Access.

Ratings for Football Helmets Help Improve Players Safety — But Not Before Another Tragedy

By Willie JonesEarlier this week, Junior Seau, once one of the

most respected and feared defensive players in the National Football League, committed suicide. As if the news were not tragic enough, whispers began almost immediately about whether the 43-year-

HELMETS - NBCsports.com - (Continued from page 1)

ESPN • August 30, 2012

Game-changers off the playing fieldBy Kevin Van Valkenburg

The people who just might be able to save the sport of football from its own self-destructive ways don’t wear whistles or hold clipboards. They don’t file lawsuits, and they don’t dole out suspensions for helmet-to-helmet hits.

Instead, they tend to wear lab coats. They might spend their days poking and prodding mice, interviewing patients involved in a study, or gathering data and obsessing over it. Some of them are men, and others are women. Some of them follow football closely, while others couldn’t tell you the difference between Peyton Manning and Peyton Hillis.

The Hit SystemTypically, though, they have a few things in

common: They try to focus on facts, not emo-tion, when it comes to a debate about head in-juries in football. And they tend to work at a research university. …

In recent years, athletic departments have been increasingly willing to open their doors to the research departments on campus, hoping to find the right balance between prevention and properly diagnosing head injuries. Take Virginia Tech, for example. In 25 seasons un-der coach Frank Beamer, the Hokies have built one of the best football programs in the country. But the school’s highly regarded Department of Biomedical Engineering might go down in history as having made a more important con-tribution to the game.

Since 2003, thanks to engineering professor and department head Stefan Duma, all Vir-ginia Tech football players have been outfitted with sensors in their helmets that can measure the number of the collisions they are involved in during the course of a football game, as well as the severity of them. It’s technology that was originally designed for soldiers in the military, but Duma immediately recognized the poten-tial benefits for football players as well, and made his pitch to the athletic department.

“Coach Beamer was very receptive,” Duma said. “He was not a hard sell at all. I think it helps that we had such a successful and long-term coach behind us, because there is obvious-ly a lot of stress over this issue.”

The data is collected by the sensors, and then uploaded in real time to a computer on the sideline where it can trigger an alert, warn-ing the team’s medical staff any time a player is involved in a major collision. The Hokies don’t pull players from the game based sole-ly on the sensor’s readings, Duma says, but it does help them immediately look for signs of a concussion. Schools like North Carolina, Okla-homa, Dartmouth and Brown have already implemented the system, which costs between $50,000 and $75,000, and Duma said several

study by Nationwide Children’s Hospital found football players aged 6 to 17 are treated in hospital emergency rooms for about 8,631 concussions each year. Many more concussions may go unreported….

The NFL has tweaked the rules intended to limit concussions. They range from changes in game play, including moving the kick-off line for-ward by five yards, to telling teams to keep players off the field if they show memory problems.

“Over the past year to two years, there has been a dramatic change in how the game is played, what’s allowed, what’s called, what we do at practices,” said Stefan Duma, head of the Virginia Tech/Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences….

Editor’s Note: Stories on youth helmet research also appeared in the following: PR Newswire, Associated Press, individual.com, WSAU.com, KLTV-TV, WSMV-TV, WTNZ-TV, WJAC-TV, TriCities.com, WHNS-TV, webindia123.com, Himalayan Times, Khaleej Times, Federal News Service, ScienceDaily, REdOrbit, WTLH-TV, GoDanRiver.com, WCAX-TV, Morningstar.com, KAIT-TV, KWES-TV, Product Design & Development, KCAU-TV, WOIO-TV, WTRF-TV,WSHM-TV, KUSA-TV, FirstScience.com,

News & Messenger, The News & Advance, WDBJ-TV, KPHO-TV, Supercomputing Online, Burbank Leader, KDAF-TV, Digital Journal, iStockAnalyst, Buffalo News, WSLS, Atlanta Journal Constitution.)

NFL teams have shown interest. “We know every single head impact that has

happened to all of our football players in the last 10 years,” Duma said. “We know the exact exposure. We know how many times they’ve been hit, how hard, and what direction the hit came from. That’s much more powerful than talking about hits without knowing how many actual exposures there were, because exposure is the key. It’s like cigarettes. It doesn’t matter how packs of cigarettes are in your pocket, it matters how many you smoke.”

The research data, as well as 2,000 crash tests done in the department’s 25,000-square-foot lab in Blacksburg, Va., also helped the school come up with a five-star rating system for all football helmets sold in the United States. The ratings,

the first of their kind, were so influential, ac-cording to Duma, the lowest-rated helmets -- the Riddell VSR-4 and the Adams A2000 -- were taken off the market by their manufacturers.

“When we switched from the VSR-4s to the Riddell Revolution, it was like a light switch,” Duma said. “Concussions were reduced by [more than] 31 percent.”

Virginia Tech isn’t the only major program welcoming scientists into their locker room to study brain trauma. For the second straight year, Stanford football players will be wearing mouth guards that have tiny sensors implanted in them to measure the severity and frequency of hits they endure. The data is collected, stored and then studied in a hundred different ways by budding young scientists. …

old Seau might have been suffering from depres-sion and other symptoms of early onset demen-tia caused by the repeated blows to the head that football players endure over the course of their ca-reers….

See RATINGS, page 4

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 3

THE NEW YORK TIMES • July 20, 2012

Pop Warner Weighing Research and Risks in Concussion Prevention EffortsBy Tim Rohan

The unremarkable football career of Dr. Julian Bailes, who is now the chairman of the Pop War-ner medical advisory board, ended quietly during his college days in the 1970s. He never sustained a concussion that he knew of, but he can recall a friend in high school who did. Confused and concussed, his friend started describing a car he had just bought; there was no new car, and Bailes found it hilarious. “We didn’t know any better,” he said.

Now, his son is a 13-year-old football player who understands the risks, Bailes said, and still wants to play, so Bailes allows him to.

For now, assuming the risk is Bailes’s choice, and his son’s. But the future of youth football may be determined by research that continues to rede-fine what the sport considers safe. On Wednesday, in an attempt to limit head injuries to young play-ers, Pop Warner issued new rules that put restric-tions on the amount of contact players can have

RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH • September 25, 2012

Va. Tech at the forefront of football helmet safetyBy Mike Barber

BLACKSBURG — Being pro-tected by state-of-the-art equip-ment — from shoulder pads to helmets — can be empowering for college football players.

With the right gear, “you just go out there and play ball,” Vir-ginia Tech sophomore safety Kyshoen Jarrett said. “I guess the safety of the helmets and stuff like that helps us not wor-ry as much.”

Jarrett may not be thinking about concussions while he’s playing and practicing, but Vir-

ginia Tech’s training staff cer-tainly is. During each Hokie game or practice session, about 25 players wear helmets outfit-ted with sensors to measure the impact of hits to their heads.

It’s all part of the research of Dr. Stefan Duma, the de-partment head of the Virgin-ia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, who last year released the first independent ratings for football helmets.

Duma’s study put each hel-met through 120 impacts at

varying forces and spots. The amount of head acceleration was measured and recorded, and the helmets that did the best job of reducing acceleration received the highest ratings.

The idea for the ratings system came from a question posed to Duma by the Tech football program.

“Several years ago, they asked us, ‘Hey, what helmets should we buy?’ “ he recalled. “There was no data out there to grade helmets.”

Duma said there are two

main factors that affect how well a helmet protects. The first is the design of the outer shell, and the second is the use of padding inside the helmet.

His study gave three helmets the highest possible rating of five stars: the Riddell Revo-lution Speed, the Rawlings Quantum Plus and the Riddell 360….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in: GoDanRiver.com, Stafford County Sun, In-side NoVA, and the Lynchburg News and Advance.)

in practice. …Stefan Duma, the head of the biomedical

engineering department at Virginia Tech, oversaw the research published in February that prompted Pop Warner to issue its rules changes. The study, the first of its kind for participants that young, placed sensors in the helmets of seven youth football players ages 6 to 8 during their 2011 season. Calling it a pilot, Duma expected the im-pacts to be too inconsequential to record.

Results showed that about 95 percent of the im-pacts were between 15 and 20 g’s — what Duma likened to an “aggressive pillow fight.” The other 5 percent spiked to 50 to 100 g’s — what Duma characterized as a “car accident.”

Duma noted that collegiate and professional football players had a low risk for concussions at 100 g’s. But research has shown that the damage from concussions can be cumulative, and that the brains of younger athletes may be particularly sus-ceptible. So Pop Warner tried to lessen the num-

ber of impacts by reducing incidents in practice, when a majority of the “car accidents” took place, according to Duma.

This fall, Duma will participate in a joint re-search project with Virginia Tech and Wake For-est that will more thoroughly evaluate six teams, about 300 players ages 6 to 13, as a follow-up to better understand the pilot project. Research has been difficult to quantify, Duma said, because “no one knows how many times or how hard players have been hit.” Until recently, it was common to hide or minimize concussions.

“There has to be scientific data that makes that decision,” he said about making changes in foot-ball. “It can’t be a group of people telling stories of how they used to play football. You’ve got to actu-ally quantify what drills are causing what level head impact, and target those, and minimize those.” …

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared on WSKG Radio, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and WXXY-FM.

By Richard Foster Rifle fire cracks intermittently like kernels of

popcorn as you make your way hesitantly down a generic digital back street of a war-torn Mid-dle East town. A wounded U.S. soldier lies on the street ahead. Townspeople run across the road, into the sights of your M-16 rifle.

Then a message flashes on the screen below you: “Treat Person.” You drag the solider off the street, avoiding gunfire as you pull out your med-ic’s kit and choose from a menu of medical ac-tions like “clear airway.”

VIRGINIA BUSINESS • December 29, 2011

Modeling and simulation industry wants to expand in the private sector

Call of Duty:Modern Warfare this isn’t

Welcome to CIRTS (Complex Incident Re-sponse Training System), a first-person-shoot-er-style video game developed by Portsmouth-based defense contractor MYMIC to train Army combat medics….

Some researchers already are finding main-stream applications for their military modeling and simulation work. Leigh McCue, an associ-ate professor in aerospace and ocean engi-neering at Virginia Tech, created a free app

for Apple’s iTunes store called SCraMP (Small Craft Motion Program) that monitors a small boat’s motion and warns the operator if his or her craft is in danger of capsizing.

“We were taking research we’ve been doing for the defense sector and with just a very simpli-fied approach, you could boil it down and put in the hands of anybody,” she says.

In about two decades, the modeling and simu-lation industry has gotten to the point that it can create portable technologies for smart phones.…

4 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

RATINGS - IEEE SPECTRUM - (Continued from page 2)

Just one day before Seau’s death, researchers at Virginia Tech released their second annual re-port rating the effectiveness of football helmets in reducing the likelihood that a player will exhibit signs of a concussion at some point during a sea-son. The Riddell Revolution Speed, the only hel-met to earn the highest rating of five stars last year, was joined atop the rankings by two new models: Riddell’s 360 helmet, and the Rawlings Quantum Plus. Two other new Rawlings models — the Im-pulse and the Quantum — received four stars.

Overall, says the Virginia Tech team, seven hel-met models earned four stars; five others — like the Xenith X2, which was introduced after the Vir-ginia Tech helmet ratings were released last year — earned three stars or less. The makers of the models rated two stars and below have immediate cause for concern. “The three lowest rated helmets from last year are now all off the market,” says Steven Row-son, assistant professor of biomedical engineer-

ing at Virginia Tech. “It is encouraging to see this positive shift towards better head protection.”…

Virginia Tech’s STAR (or Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk) Evaluation System was de-veloped using a mountain of data in a national da-tabase comprising over 1.8 million head impacts collected over eight years with the cooperation of college players whose helmets were retrofitted with the HIT system. Now the researchers can simply drop helmets from a given height and strike them with foreign objects to assess the likelihood that players wearing them will suffer a concussion over the course of a season.

But what they know relates specifically to adult helmets. The next order of business for the group is extending their research to the helmets worn by youth football players. It’s an important step, be-cause of the possibility that mild brain injuries have begun to accumulate even before a player reaches the high school ranks. …

TMCnet.com • February 2, 2012

Ross garnersCAREER award to

advance understanding of fluid flows

In engineering, a dynamical system has a multi-tude of meanings. Fluid flow in the human body is considered to be such a system, as well as pollution and pathogens that travel through the air. In fact, atmospheric and aquatic environments provide a dy-namical system for a plethora of biological activities. Even the motions of a basketball team or the shuffle of dollars through the economy constitute a dynami-cal system.

For the past eight years, since receiving his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, Shane Ross, now an assistant professor of engineering sci-ence and mechanics at Virginia Tech, has focused his career on determining these various types of be-havior and how to more successfully predict what many once believed to simply be chaotic motion.

Based on his activities and ideas, the National Sci-ence Foundation has awarded Ross one of its coveted 2012 CAREER Awards, valued at $420,000 over the next five years, to determine how to develop better engineering tools to understand and predict fluid motions….

By Guy Norris To achieve sustainable growth in air travel, fu-

ture airliner designers face challenges never seen by their predecessors. New concepts will not only have to meet unprecedented performance goals, but they must do so while striving for carbon neu-trality.

NASA’s goal to solve this conundrum takes on new significance in coming weeks as researchers across the U.S. begin a series of landmark tests un-der the next stage of the agency’s subsonic fixed-wing program.

Wide-ranging work will include refining a glid-er-like truss-braced wing and integrating it with a hybrid-electric propulsion system, wind tunnel

AVIATION WEEK • February 7, 2012

NASA’s push toward carbon-neutral airlinerstests of a multirole wing leading edge and evalu-ation of a protective outer skin that could enable lighter structures….

As part of plans to cut operating empty weight by up to 25%, Cessna will begin the first test of a scaled multifunctional fuselage skin and structure panel in March. …

Other weight-cutting efforts include work with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Uni-versity (Virginia Tech) to develop design opti-mization tools which can tailor structural designs and combine them with engineered materials. The result would be stiffeners made from new al-loys that – unlike present-day straight, uniform units – would be bent and curved to reflect the

best shape for handling localized transverse, shear and in-plane loads.

Similarly alloys would be tougher at the base of the stiffeners for better damage tolerance, and transition to metal matrix composites for in-creased stiffness and acoustic damping. …

WVTF (RADIO) • November 11, 2012

New Earthquake DataU.S. Geological Survey scientists

are reporting that last year’s Virginia earthquake was felt over an area 20 times larger than previous research suggested. Robbie Harris has more.

Reporter Script:It is estimated that approximately

one-third of the U.S. population could have felt the August 2011 earthquake centered in Mineral, Virginia, making it one of the larg-est earthquakes in the last one hun-dred years. Shaking reports came all the way from southeastern Canada to Florida and as far west as Texas. Virginia Tech Engineer Russell Green presented a paper on the

quake at last week’s U.S. Geological Society of America conference.

Green: “And the reason the mo-tion traveled farther is that the rocks here are much older and denser and less fractured and if you go out in the western U.S. they’re younger and more fractured.

Green and other scientists are us-ing this new information to update their previous assumptions about the impact of east coast seismic events and improve models for safety in building codes and practices.

Green: “ And the VA earthquake certainly is going to add tremendous-ly to that effort…

GREEN CAR CONGRESS • December 5, 2012

VTTI team proposes optimization algorithmfor driverless vehicles at unsignaled intersections

Researchers at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) have developed a heuristic optimiza-tion algorithm for driverless vehicles at unsignalized intersections using a multi-agent system (MAS). Their research, presented at the Intelligent Transportation Society World Con-gress in Vienna in October, won the Best Scientific Paper Award for North America.

The system proposed by Ismail Zohdy, a Ph.D. student in civil engi-neering at Virginia Tech, and Hes-ham Rakha, director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility at the transpor-tation institute and professor of civil

engineering at the university, models the driverless vehicles as autonomous agents controlled by the intersection controller (manager agent).

...Imagine that all running vehicles are unmanned and controlled by highly sophisticated equipment, there will be a need for innovative optimization algo-rithms for controlling these driverless vehicles.

This research effort attempts to focus on optimizing the movements of the future intelligent (driverless/autonomous/unmanned) vehicles at unsignalized intersections by control-ling these vehicles as agents that have certain goals and limitations….

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 5

WTOP-FM • September 27, 2012

Quitting driving: Families key but docs have role

PUBLIC BROADCASTING SERVICE (PBS) • April 2, 2012

A Hard Hitting Story:Young Football Players Take Big-League Hits To Head

By StaffDuring a week in which NASCAR icon Dale

Earnhardt Jr. said he had driven in at least five rac-es with a concussion and NFL super-rookie Robert Griffin III was downplaying his concussion despite suffering memory loss after being knocked from a game with a vicious hit to the head, sports fans were again wondering if their favorite athletes not to mention their sons and daughters were so intent on being “tough guys” that they were risking brain damage.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took an op-portunity Wednesday to take the issue directly to where many believe it is needed most: kids.

After watching a group of youth football players in northern Virginia go through safe tackling drills, Goodell preached the message that good health takes precedence over being a tough guy….

USA TODAY • October 11, 2012

Head games still persist in sports

(Transcript)JUDY WOODRUFF:

Now, little kids and the danger of hard hits in youth football.

There’s been growing awareness of the risks of head injury for those who play football at the high school and higher -- par-ticularly at the professional level.

But new research shows that young children may be knocking each other down with more force than many realize.

Special correspondent Stone Phillips has the story.

STONE PHILLIPS:

Growing concern about head injury in America’s favorite sport have focused a lot of attention on profes-sional, college and high school football.

But what about the estimated 3.5 million kids playing below the high school level? How much are they exposed to? How hard are they hitting?

It’s easy to assume colli-sions involving the games’ youngest players aren’t that powerful. But last fall, a top researcher at Virginia Tech teamed up with a volunteer coach for the first study ever conducted

of head impacts in youth football.

The results, reported here for the first time -- information parents need to know.

These 7- and 8-year-old boys played football for the Auburn Eagles, a rec-league team in Montgom-ery County, Va. They’re watching highlights from a memorable season.

Memorable, because last fall their team took part in a groundbreaking study -- the first of its kind on head impact in youth football, which accounts for 70 per-cent of those playing tackle

football in this country. STEFAN DUMA,

professor, Virginia Tech: If you look at the NFL you’re talking about 2,000 players, college 100,000, 1.3 million in high school, but 3.5 million youth 6- to 13-year olds. We know a lot about the adult.

We don’t know much at all about this youth population.

STONE PHILLIPS: Ste-fan Duma conducted the study. He’s a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech and a leading researcher in the field of injury biomechanics. The

testing he does is aimed at engineering better, safer designs for the auto industry, the military, even toy companies learning about the limits of human tolerance for impact, and injury.

For years, Duma has also been focused on football helmets and player safety. His youth study with the Auburn Eagles began by providing the team with new helmets, seven of them outfitted with sensors to measure hits to the head. The technology isn’t new but applying it to kids as young as 7 and 8, is….

Monitoring kidsStefan Duma, department head of biomedi-

cal engineering at Virginia Tech, found in a study last fall that some of the hits absorbed by youth football players equate to those seen in major col-lege football.

Duma, who has been using a sensor system placed in the helmets of Virginia Tech football players for the past decade, used the same system on 7- and 8-year-old tackle football players in Vir-ginia. The sensors record G-force - the gravitation-al force associated with the acceleration of an ob-ject relative to a free-fall.

According to Duma, the typical hit for Virginia Tech players is about 20 Gs, and any hit above 98 Gs is cause to check the player for a concussion. Among the youth players he monitored last fall, the strongest hit was measured at 100 Gs, with six

measuring 80 Gs or higher.A month after Duma’s study results were made

public, Pop Warner football instituted national changes in its practice guidelines, decreasing con-tact drills.

At all levels, however, athletes continue to be willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in: Asheville Citizen-Times, AZCentral.com, Battle Creek Enquirer, Baxter Bulletin, Bucyrus Tele-graph-Forum, Burlington Free Press, CentralO-hio.com, Chillicothe Gazette, Cincinnati Enquirer, Clarion-Ledger, Coshocton Tribune, Courier-Post, Daily Advertiser, Daily Journal, Daily News Jour-nal, Daily Record, Daily World, Democrat and Chronicle, Des Moines Register, Desert Sun, Flor-ida Today, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Fremont News Messenger, Great Falls Tribune, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Guam Pacific Daily News, Her-ald Times Reporter, Indianapolis Star, Iowa City Press-Citizen, Ithaca Journal, Jackson Sun, Jour-nal & Courier, Kentucky Enquirer, KSDK-TV, KTHV-TV, KUSA-TV, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Lansing State Journal, Leaf-Chronicle, Louisville Courier-Journal, Mansfield News-Journal, Mar-ion Star, Marshfield News-Herald, Montgomery Advertiser, Newark Advocate, Oshkosh Northwest-ern, Port Huron Times Herald, Press & Sun-Bul-letin, TucsonCitizen.com, Times Recorder, States-man Journal, Star Press, WMAZ-TV, WZZM-TV, WLTX-TV, WKYC-TV, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, and the Wausau Daily Herald.)

Doctors aren’t trained to evaluate driving ability, and the study couldn’t tell if some drivers were targeted needlessly, noted Dr. Matthew Rizzo of the University of Iowa. Yet he called the research valuable.

“The message from this

paper is that doctors have some wisdom in knowing when to restrict drivers,” said Rizzo….

Identifying who needs to quit should be a last resort, said Jon Antin of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. He helps oversee data collection for a study that’s

enrolling 3,000 participants, including hundreds of seniors, in Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington.

The drivers undergo a battery of medical checks before their driving patterns are recorded for 12 to 24 months….

6 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

NEW YORK TIMES • May 8, 2012

Keep an Ailing Relative at Home, AlmostWhen her father became ill

just before Christmas last year, Dr. Socorrito Baez-Page faced an increasingly common conun-drum.

Her aging parents wanted to stay in their town house, but her mother couldn’t handle the care-giving alone….

By Lindsey GetzRecent data suggest that fall accidents are on

the rise among the older adult population. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each year one in three adults aged 65 and older experiences a fall. Falls are now the leading cause of injury-related deaths among this population and the most common cause of nonfatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma.

However, researchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia are looking to change these disturbing fall statistics. With a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Smart Health and Wellbeing program, they are creating a portable fall prediction monitoring system for the early detection of fall risk that can provide di-agnosis and treatment before a fall occurs.

With the aid of the grant, a device is in the de-velopment stages that could be worn by older adults to measure potentially small declining changes in gait, posture, and mobility — all ma-jor indicators that can help point to a future fall.

Though many families are often forced to consider nursing homes under these circumstances, the Page family found another option.

They ordered a MEDCottage — a prefabricated 12-by-24-foot bed-room-bathroom-kitchenette unit that can be set up as a free-stand-ing structure in their backyard.

It’s more than a miniature house — it’s decked out with high-tech monitoring and safety features that rival those of many nursing homes.

The floors, for instance: “It’s got special rubber floors, so even if you fall, you’ll be safe,” noted Dr Baez-Page’s husband, Dr David Page.

Indeed, according to Kenneth Dupin, a minister and the found-er of N2Care, the Virginia com-pany that worked with Virgin-ia Tech College of Engineering to design the MEDCottage, you can drop an egg from 18 inches onto the special flooring without breaking it. ….

AGING WELL • September 25, 2012

Innovative Sensor to Stop FallsThe sensor will function for several days between battery recharging, collecting long-term data dur-ing everyday wear, explains Thurmon Lockhart, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Virginia Tech Grado department of industrial and systems engineering and a researcher involved with the grant. An early prototype of the sensor has al-ready been built and tested under a previous Na-tional Science Foundation-funded project.…

In-clinic studies have used a wristwatch-sized node worn on both the wrists and the ankles as well as the sacrum to collect data.…

While the research is still new, the long-term hope is that this portable monitoring system will become widely available. With the technology, primary care physicians or gerontologists could make fall risk assessment a routine part of their patients’ care.

“Down the road, this technology could be used in a variety of settings,” says Karen Roberto, PhD, a professor of human development at Virginia Tech and director of the Center for Gerontology and the Institute for Society, Culture, and Envi-

ronment, who is also involved in the research grant.…

A Serious Silent DangerWhile modern medicine puts a lot of focus on

disease prevention and has made many advances in that area, falls remain a huge problem, and the issue requires more attention. Lockhart has been involved in several lines of research regarding falls and has become passionate on the subject.

In the US, as well as other countries, we are approaching such a significant portion of the el-derly population experiencing falls that it’s on the verge of becoming a pandemic,” says Lock-hart, who is also the director of the Virginia Tech Locomotion Research Laboratory and has worked with dozens of companies invested in preventing falls…

Making Changes While the new remote monitoring technology

is still in its early phases, there are other impor-tant intervention solutions that can be consid-ered in the meantime. “There are prevention opportunities out there, such as strengthening programs and balance programs, that can help the patient with their musculoskeletal integrity,” Lockhart says. “Task has to be taught as well. For instance, carrying a pillow, even though it’s very light, still changes your gait. The patient can be taught safer ways to perform tasks, such as a bet-ter way to hold the pillow.”

But Lockhart says it’s not just about exercise and balance training, as there’s more to falls than the musculoskeletal system. “Nutrition, the ves-tibular system, vision, and personal habits all also influence fall accidents,” he says. “So there has to be some risk assessment. We can test vision, and we can ask the patient some important ques-tions.”…

Lockhart says once a patient falls, the risk of falling again is very high. He believes this new technology will help reduce that risk and may even help reduce the risk of that initial fall. Lock-hart says that result could be significant. “I be-lieve we could really help some people, and that is the reason for this program: helping save lives.”

Aging drivers:Docs can help elderly to give up the keys

By Lauran NeergaardWashington • Families may

have to watch for dings in the car and plead with an older driver to give up the keys — but there’s new evidence that doctors could have more of an influence on one of the most wrenching decisions facing a rapidly aging population.

A large study from Canada found that when doctors warn patients, and tell driving authorities, that the older folks

THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE • October 5, 2012

may be medically unfit to be on the road, there’s a drop in serious crash injuries among those drivers.

The study, in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, couldn’t tell if the improvement was because those patients drove less, or drove more carefully once the doctors pointed out the risk….

Identifying who needs to quit should be a last

resort, said Jon Antin of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. He helps oversee data collection for a study that’s enrolling 3,000 participants, including hundreds of seniors, in Florida, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington.

The drivers undergo a battery of medical checks before their driving patterns are recorded for 12 to 24 months….

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 7R&D MAGAZINE • May 29, 2012

Robotic jellyfish could patrol oceans,clean oil spills, and detect pollutantsVirginia Tech College of Engineering researchers

are working on a multi-university, nationwide project for the U.S. Navy that one day will put life-like au-tonomous robot jellyfish in waters around the world.

The main focus of the program is to understand the fundamentals of propulsion mechanisms used by nature, said Shashank Priya, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at Virginia Tech, and lead researcher on the project.

Future uses of the robot jellyfish could include conducting military surveillance, cleaning oil spills, and monitoring the environment.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s happening now in a lab inside Virginia Tech’s Durham Hall, where a

WAVY-TVMarch 28, 2012

COMPUTING UNPLUGGED MAGAZINE • March 27, 2012

Robot jellyfish may be underwater spy of future

NEW SCIENTIST • March 31, 2012

Robot jellyfish sucks up power from the waterBy Jacob Aron, technology reporter

Robojelly — a robot jellyfish that feeds on water — could aid in underwa-ter search and rescue operations, say its creators.

Researchers at Virginia Tech and the

Robotic jellyfishwill aid Navy

Researchers at Virginia Tech have creat-ed robotic jellyfish to assist the Navy in their missions.

The $6 million jellyfish are made of sili-cone and shape memory metal. The Navy footed the bill.

According to researchers, the government will use the jellyfish to spy on enemies. But, Alex Villanueva, the creator of the jellyfish, hopes to see them used in civilian life tool.

“Some of the reason, spying on enemies or surveillance, or also, blending in with schools of fish to monitor their behavior in the ocean. Those are all reasons why you would want to be bioneumatic, look like a natural fish,” Vil-lanueva said.

The jelly part of the robot is already com-plete. Researchers are now working to make it swim on its own.

600-gallon tank is regularly filled with water as small robotic jellyfish are tested for movement and energy self-creation and usage. A synthetic rubbery skin, squishy in one’s hand, mimics the sleek jellyfish skin and is placed over a bowl-shaped device covered in electronics. When moving, they look weirdly alive….

The idea for a robotic jellyfish did not originate at Virginia Tech, but rather the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research. Vir-ginia Tech, is teaming with four U.S. universities on the multi-year, $5 million project… Virginia Tech is building the jellyfish body models, integrating fluid mechanics and developing control systems….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared on the Homeland Security News Wire.)

ASTROBIOLOGY MAGAZINEJune 4, 2012

Robot Jellyfish Could Patrol the Oceans

Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers are working on a multi-university, nationwide project for the U.S. Navy that one day will put life-like autonomous robot jellyfish in waters around the world.

The main focus of the program is to under-stand the fundamentals of propulsion mecha-nisms utilized by nature, said Shashank Priya, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering at Vir-ginia Tech, and lead researcher on the project. Future uses of the robot jellyfish could include conducting military surveillance, cleaning oil spills, and monitoring the environment….

By Thomas ClaburnScientists at the University of

Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech have built a jellyfish-in-spired robot that can refuel itself, offering the possibility of perpet-ual ocean surveillance.

Like Slugbot, a robot designed

to be able to hunt garden slugs and devour them for fuel, Robojelly, as the machine is called, is self-sustaining. It ex-tracts hydrogen and oxygen gases from the sea to keep it-self running. …

“The only waste released as

it travels is more water.” The robot offers one way

around a problem that continues to vex researchers developing au-tonomous machines: operational limitations imposed by the need for frequent refueling. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and Northrop Grumman last year concluded that nuclear power would extend the capabilities of aerial drones but couldn’t be implemented due to political con-siderations.

The U.S. government presum-ably would rather avoid the politi-cal outrage that would follow from a downed nuclear drone. …

TOPNEWS UNITED STATES • March 27, 2012

Researchers experiment with robotic jellyfish

By Justin SorkinIf the experiments passes, soon

our nation can have underwater robots which can help serve the legal departments in certain rescue situations or reconnaissance ones.

The experiment is ongoing by the team of researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech who, with the help of bio-mimicry concept, are try-ing to introduce an unusual robot of future with an aim to serve the

purpose of undersea surveil-lance and rescue vehicles.

Researchers have started their experiment on a robotic jellyfish, which has been smartly designed to serve underwater till long hours by using hydrogen and oxygen gasses in water as its source of energy. Explanations of the experiment have been clearly mentioned in Smart Materials and Structures….

University of Texas at Dallas built Ro-bojelly from materials known as shape-memory alloys, which return to their original shape when bent.

Eight moving segments wrapped in carbon nanotubes and coated with a platinum powder replicate the jellyfish’s natural opening-and-closing method of propulsion….

(Editor’s Note: Articles on the robot-ic jellyfish also appeared in the Sunday Observer, Sub Sea World News, and the Times of India.)

...of other new surveillance devices, it’s beginning to seem like the only place you can go for real is deep-sea div-ing. Well, guess again. Researchers (Shashank Priya of mechanical engineering) at Virginia Tech are working with the U.S. Navy to design Robojelly, a seagoing reconnaissance robot that…

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN • March 24, 2012

Energy efficient, hydrogen-fueled robot can swim like a jellyfish

8 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK • October 7, 2012

Virginia Tech partners with government at research center

INDIA WEST • April 30, 2012

Virginia Tech Prof. GetsFive-Year Turner Fellowship

By Staff ReporterShashank Priya, associate

professor of mechanical engi-neering and materials science and engineering at Virginia Tech, and director of the Center for Energy Harvesting Materi-als and Systems, a partnership between Virginia Tech and the University of Texas at Dallas, re-cently received a five-year Turn-er Fellowship.

Priya joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 2007 and immediate-ly received an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young In-vestigator Award. He became a

Virginia Tech and a U.S. defense contractor on Friday christened a joint research center in Northern Virginia designed to foster tighter national security.

Virginia Tech’s Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Se-curity and Technology teamed up with L-3 Communications to create the National Security Solutions Center. It is located at the 14-month-old Virginia Tech Research Center in Arlington, which hosted about 100 visitors for an open house Friday.

TODAY’S MEDICAL DEVELOPMENTS • March 8, 2012

U.S. to help India with energy needsBLACKSBURG, Va., Sept. 27

(UPI) – A research center set to open in India will work to refine and adapt windmills and solar panels for use in households in rural India, U.S. engi-neers said.

The center, a collaboration between Virginia Tech and private-sector part-ner MARG Swarnabhoomi, will help release millions of people from poverty by helping India produce enough elec-tricity for everyone, they said….

“India, with its big energy needs, can immediately begin to use these technologies and tell us how they work, what improvements need to be made, and guide us so that the wind-mills and solar panels are suitable to go to the marketplace,” said Shashank Priya of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering.

member of the university’s Cen-ter for Intelligent Materials Sys-tems and Structures, and cur-rently serves as its associate director.

In 2008, Priya received the Office of Naval Research Multi University Research Initiative Award titled “Jellyfish Autono-mous Node and Colonies.”

This five-year program com-prises of team members from Virginia Tech, Stanford Univer-sity, University of Texas at Dal-las, University of California at Los Angeles, and Providence Col-lege. …

(Editor’s Note: This article also ap-peared in Intrepid Report, iStockAna-lyst, Online Journal.com, Newstrack India, Sify.com, Smashits.com, Bom-bayNews.net, Sri LankanNews.net, webindia123.com, FirstPost, Economy, Asian News International (ANI), SYS-CON Media, WNEM-TV Online, WSHM-TV Online, KCOY-TV On-line, WRIC-TV Online, WBOY-TV Online, DNA India Online, KXXV-TV Online, KWWL-TV Online, KPHO-TV Online, WTNZ-TV On-line, KGWN-TV Online, WDSI-TV Online, WWTV-TV Online, WFSB-TV Online, WTOC-TV Online, WIS-TV Online, WPFO-TV On-line, WHNS-TV Online, WKRN-TV Online, Northern Colorado 5, The Her-ald, Green Technology TMCnet.com, EarthTechling.com, Virginian-Pilot.)

QUAKE - USA TODAY - (Continued from page 1)

But the Aug. 23 quake was felt by more people than any other in American history, said Mar-cia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). … Geologists have discovered that the northeasterly direction of the shock waves and the ground in the Washington, D.C., region — sediment atop swamps and riv-erbeds — contributed to damage far from the epicenter.

But some analysts say the Aug. 23 shake will cause designers and building code officials to pay more attention to eastern quake threats….

Russell Green, a Virginia Tech civil engineering profes-sor, predicted that the quake will cause engineers to design build-ings in the East to absorb more ground motion than previously anticipated. Green and others

at Virginia Tech are finishing a national study of the East Coast quake.

James Martin, an environ-mental engineering professor who is directing the Virginia Tech study, said the quake was a “teachable moment” for scien-tists and the public.

Among his study’s prelimi-nary findings: “Areas such as Washington, D.C., are unpre-pared to deal with even a mod-erate earthquake, particularly with respect to communica-tions, evacuation and transporta-tion.”…

(Editor’s Note: Other media outlets sharing same story above were Indianapolis Star, Clarion-Ledger, Guam Pacific Daily News, The Salinas Californian, Alex-andria Daily Town Talk and the Great Falls Tribune.)

Finley Charney, a structural engineering associate professor in the civil and environmental en-gineering department, and Ma-hendra Singh, the Preston Wade Professor of Engineering in the engineering science and me-chanics department, are develop-ing new structural systems that are geared to perform optimally during earthquakes.

Singh’s background is also in civ-il and structural engineering, and one area of his expertise is in earth-quake engineering.

It’s no secret that earthquakes

WEBNEWSWIRE.COM • January 15, 2012

As earthquakes take their toll, Virginia Tech engineers look

at enhancing building designscome in all sizes with varying de-grees of damage depending on the geographic locations where they oc-cur.

And even a small one on the Richter scale that strikes in an im-poverished nation can be more damaging than a larger one that occurs in a city where all buildings have been designed to a stricter building code.

According to Charney, attaining acceptable structural performance is a problem even when the current building codes are used as intended for the structural design….

VIRGINIA BUSINESS • September 11, 2012

Virginia Tech to develop propulsion laboratory

Virginia Tech plans to develop a $3.5 million propulsion laboratory in the expanding Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg.

The proposed 8,100-square-foot facility, operated by the College of Engineering, will support propulsion research.

That research will include next-generation fighter and commercial

aircraft engine technology plus power generation gas-turbine technology for the energy industry.

Tech officials believe the specialized facility and equipment will distin-guish Virginia Tech as a leader for this type of research….

(Editor’s Note: An article on this topic also appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch.)

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 9

FORBES • March 26, 2012

RoMeLa’s Robots

CNN • March 13, 2012

Grenade-throwing robot to fight fires on shipsBy Matthew Knight

It might look like science fiction but the US Na-val Research Laboratory (NRL) hopes to turn this humanoid robot into a seafaring fact in an effort to improve firefighting capabilities on board mili-tary vessels.

Currently at the development stage, the Ship-board Autonomous Firefighting Robot (or SAF-FiR for short) is intended to combat fires in the cramped conditions of a ship, saving lives and costly equipment.

Armed with cameras and a gas sensor, the bat-tery-powered SAFFiR will be “capable of activat-ing fire suppressors” and throwing “propelled ex-

with the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC …

The Navy hopes the robot will also be able to put our lethal fires which put the lives of the crews onboard.

Professor Dennis Hong, from the uni-versity, told the Sunday Express: ‘‘It is walk-ing now and will start testing on a Navy ship early next year but that does not mean that it is complete.

‘’It still needs a lot of things done, such as protection against heat and flames, sen-sors, navigation, fire-fighting behaviors.’’

tinguishing agent technology (PEAT) grenades,” says the NRL….

It is being developed in conjunction with re-searchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, as a next step from Virginia Tech’s CHARLI-L1 (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) robot. CHAR-LI-L1 is a five-foot tall humanoid robot built by students from the Virginia Tech College of Engi-neering’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory.

The NRL says SAFFiR will be tested on board the ex-USS Shadwell — a decommissioned land-ing ship dock used for fire fighting experiments -- towards the end of 2013.

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in nu-merous other outlets including: Pegasus News, WMAR-TV, WJW-TV, WPAX-TV, WTVQ-TV, WFMZ-TV, Fire Engineering, Press Trust of India - US Bureau, and Architecture Week. Occupational Health & Safety also ran a story.)

CHARLI-L1(Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with

Learning Intelligence-Lightweight)Meet CHARLI, perhaps the most photogenic

of the 20 or so robots that have been developed at Virginia Tech’s Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa). Mechanical Engineering professor Dr. Dennis Hong founded the research lab in 2004 and continues to oversee it. Eventually, CHARLI could be used for domestic chores or elder care.

CHARLI has attracted notice for being the first full-size humanoid robot that could walk (without a tether) that was developed in the U.S. If it looks familiar, it may be because it was modeled on the NS-5 robots from the film I, Robot and the industrial-looking bots that appear in Bjork’s 1999

“All Is Full Of Love” video. There are also hints of Iron Man, particularly in the shape of CHARLI’s chest cover. The robot measures about 4 feet 3 inches tall.

CHARLI-H (Heavyweight CHARLI)The next generation of RoMeLa’s CHARLI

robot is heavier and sturdier than the original and called Charli-H. It is yet to be finished; pictured is a leg prototype….

CHARLI-L2 (2nd Generation of CHARLI-L)The next generation of the “lightweight” version

of CHARLI is known as CHARLI-L2. Like the original CHARLI, CHARLI-L2 will be able to play soccer. The benefits of creating a lighter CHARLI are lower cost of materials and safety (in case the robot falls)….

WASHINGTON POST POLITICS • October 9, 2012

Star Wars robot joins the Navy?By Al Kamen

After Tuesday night’s 12-4 pummeling in St. Louis, the Washington Nationals pitching staff looks like it may need some help if the team’s going to win the World Series.

And it turns out that the Na-val Research Laboratory, along with engineers and scientists at Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania, is already work-ing on something that might do the trick — though maybe not for this season.

The Navy is developing a ver-sion of C-3PO, the lovable “Star Wars” robot who appeared on the big screen 35 years ago, to fight shipboard fires.

The Navy robot’s name is

Autonomous Shipboard Hu-manoid (ASH). It’s hoped ASH will be able to walk in any direction, keep its balance at sea and go through narrow passage-ways and up ladders….

What’s more, ASH would be able to throw PEAT (propelled ex-tinguishing agent technology) gre-nades, and be able to use hoses and fire extinguishers.

The planned Navy robot is a fol-low-on version of Virginia Tech’s CHARLi-1 robot, which was de-veloped by Virginia Tech’s Ro-botics and Mechanisms Labo-ratory (RoMeLa) founded and directed by Virginia Tech profes-sor Dennis Hong.

And robots can play sports. Hong’s team won the RoboCup,

or robot world soccer cup, in Is-tanbul last year. (This is a huge deal amongst folks in that field.)

When will it be ready? “It is walking now and will

start testing on a Navy ship ear-ly next year,” Hong said in an e-mail. “But that does not mean that it is complete — it still needs a lot of things done,” such as “protection against heat and flames ... sensors, navigation, fire fighting behaviors” and so forth.

“It still has a long way to go until it can actually be deployed for fighting fires,” he said, “but it will one day.”…

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in Asian News In-ternational (ANI).)

ROANOKE TIMESJune 29, 2012

Tech team dominates

RoboCup againVirginia Tech’s Robotics and

Mechanisms Laboratory domi-nated RoboCup’s international hu-manoid robot soccer competition for the second year in a row, once again wining the adult- and kid-sized humanoid soccer robot com-petitions.

The robotics laboratory, part of the Virginia Tech College of Engi-neering, took first place finishes in the adult class with the 5-foot hu-manoid robot CHARLI-2 (short for Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence). It won the kid class with the minia-ture-humanoid robots DARwIn-OP (short for Dynamic Anthropomor-phic Robot with Intelligent). ...

ROBOTSUNDAY TIMES (UK)(Continued from page 1)

10 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Virginia Tech’sCHARLI-2 robot

dances Gangnam Style

NEW SCIENTIST • October 26, 2012

DARPA throws down gauntletto human-style robots

By Jason FalconerJust in case you haven’t had your fill of

PSY’s viral K-POP sensation, the research-ers at Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mecha-nisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) have put out a new video of their robot dancing Gangnam Style.

While the robot named CHARLI-2 doesn’t display any fancy footwork in the vid-eo, some of its walking and balancing tech-nology is being implemented in the Navy’s Autonomous Shipboard Humanoid (ASH).

Already the team at RoMeLa, led by Dr. Dennis Hong, have developed a pair of legs based on CHARLI-2’s lower half called SAFFiR (Shipboard Autonomous Firefight-ing Robot), which will have to navigate in tight corridors and smoky environments lat-er this year….

(Editor’s Note: Mention of the YouTube video also appeared on CBS, ABC, Interna-tional Business Times, and received over one million hits within a week of its release.)

GIZMAG • October 21, 2012

By Hal HodsenThe DARPA Robotics Challenge, one of the

most rigorous tests of robotic ability ever conceived, kicked off on Wednesday. The contest sets teams of engineers from around the US and the world a set of Herculean robot trials that promise to take automa-tons’ abilities far beyond anything that’s come before. 

The emphasis is on testing robots’ abilities to work in difficult situations in environments designed for humans.

“It’s the grandest, the most exciting, and possibly the most important robotics project ever,” says Den-nis Hong of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Hong leads a team that plans to field the human-oid THOR (Tactical Hazardous Operations Robot). THOR will be in training over the next year, learning tough skills like scrambling over debris, driving cars and climbing ladders.

Previously, Hong’s team has worked on everything from firefighting to soccer-playing humanoid robots. “People might think it’s a waste of time building ro-bots that play soccer,” he says.

“But if a robot can’t play soccer, how would you use it to save people’s lives?”…

KDAF-TV ONLINE • September 19, 2012

York company, Virginia Tech partner to build flying robotYORK – A soccer-ball sized

flying robot could become the go-to technology for performing inspections of Navy ship tanks.

York County-based aeronau-tics company AVID (Air Vehi-cle Integrated Design) LLC has partnered with Virginia Tech to make that technology a reality.

The company has already built a flying prototype that is ready for testing.

Virginia Tech received funding for the project from the Naval Engineering Education Center through the Naval Sea Systems Command to develop a robot-ic device that can perform bal-last and fuel tank inspections on

DEGREE - CHICAGO TRIBUNE - (Continued from page 1)

Entrants are split into four tracks. Hong and Vir-ginia Tech are in Track A, along with six other teams, and will build robotic hardware and software for the challenge, with funding from DARPA.

Track B competitors will also be funded, but will only make software, the best of which will be chosen to run a special version of the Atlas humanoid robot built by Boston Dynamics. (Virginia Tech is also part of a team participating in Track B.)

Track C and D get no funding from DARPA, but can still win the grand prize of $2 million….

Hong describes the first step of the first task – opening a car door and getting into the car – as “practically impossible right now,” highlighting how much work his team must do if it is to get out of the starting blocks in the first round of the challenge in December 2013.

The Virginia Tech team is in good company. Two teams from NASA will be building a robot for the competition, as well as a collaboration headed by Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a team from Carnegie Mellon University in Pitts-burgh, one from robotics company Schaft and anoth-er from defense contractor Raytheon.

Navy ships.Jon Greene, director for Na-

tional Security and Program De-velopment at Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Tech-nology and Applied Science, said the education center is pro-viding $180,000 a year to fund the project which began last year.

Greene said the Navy has a “large problem” with corrosion of tanks and spends billions of dollars a year in performing the inspections which involves open-ing the tanks and making them safe for people to enter, assess and repair. The goal of the proj-ect is to find a more efficient and cost effective way to perform the

inspections.A team of undergraduate and

graduate students at Tech led by professor Dan Stilwell are de-veloping sensors to help with the robot’s navigation system which will be paired with AVID’s vehi-cle prototype.

“These tanks are often like

mazes and the device has to be able to fly through serpentine paths and through openings in these tanks,” Greene said….

(Editor’s Note: A version of this article also appeared in: New-port News Daily Press, WXIN-TV, Stars and Stripes – Washington D.C. Bureau – Online.)

recent Virginia college graduates, broken down by school and major.

A few samples of what you can learn…

– Psychology graduates from Virginia Commonwealth Univer-sity make up the biggest single

cohort of four-year bachelor’s de-gree recipients. There were 1,757 graduates from that program over the five-year period of 2006-10, and the median full-time wage 18 months after graduation was $27,527.

– Another large degree pro-gram, mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, is almost twice that lucrative. For graduates from 2006 to 2010, the median full-time wage 18 months later was $52,663….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in the Virginian Pilot and the Baltimore Sun.)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has award-ed a three-year $999,531 grant to Virginia Tech to op-timize the laboratory processes used to make custom DNA molecules with the tools and methods of industrial engineering.

NANOWERK NEWS online • July 25, 2012

NSF awards $1 million to improve the efficiency of DNA fabricationThe interdisciplinary team led by Jean Peccoud, Asso-

ciate Professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute also includes Kimberly Ellis and Jaime Camelio, Asso-ciate Professors in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, at Virginia Tech. ...

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 11

BLOOMBERG NEWS • June 10, 2012

BITS • October 24, 2012

Companies shape curriculain new university partnerships

By Craig Torresand Steve Matthews

Kevin Peterson, who helped Gen-eral Electric Co. (GE) redesign a tool to speed up the disassembly of gas turbines last year, is listed on the patent application as one of the in-ventors. Now, at the age of 20, he is working on a rocket-launch system in Alabama for Boeing Co. (BA)

Peterson, a rising senior at Virgin-ia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, is one of the hottest new products in corpo-rate America’s supply chain: a kind of futures contract on high-skill labor. …

Faced with a wave of retiring en-gineers and scientists and the need

By John MarkoffThe Pentagon’s advanced research agency said on

Wednesday that it will offer a prize of $2 million to the winners of a contest testing the performance of robots that could be used in emergencies like the Fukushima nu-clear crisis in Japan.

The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, which is responsible for helping the nation avoid unpleas-ant technological surprises, had previously announced its Robotics Challenge, but on Wednesday it added details and announced the selection of teams that will compete in separate “tracks” of the contest….

In one of the new Robotics Challenge tracks, the agency has chosen Carnegie Mellon University’s Na-tional Robotics Engineering Center, Drexel University,

In Contest for Rescue Robots,DARPA Offers $2 Million Prize

ROANOKE TIMES • August 12, 2012

Virginia Tech residential program helps retain female studentsBy Sarah Bruyn Jones

As a freshman, Ashley Taylor joined a small mentoring group of women who, like her, were focused on becoming engineers.

In a world where few women pursue engineering, the group of-fered her a venue to embrace what is often characterized as a hard-ship.

“Sometimes you kind of feel a fish out of water, like a giraffe in

CHICAGO TRIBUNEMarch 27, 2012

Some profs letstudents skip classfor job interviews

By Menachem Wecker,U.S. News & World Report

The attendance policy at Geor-gia Southern University is so strict that students can’t even miss the first session of a class for their own wedding without being forced to drop the course. The only excused absences the school extends for the first day of class are for serious ill-ness, military order or loss of an immediate family member.

Another commitment that the school also won’t usually excuse is a job interview. …

Allison Hoyt, a fifth-year senior majoring in mining engineering at Virginia Tech, estimates that she has had about 40 job interviews as a student there. She typically tries to schedule interviews on holiday breaks or in between classes, so only about a quarter of the phone and in-person interviews have oc-curred during class.

Hoyt advises students to notify professors at the beginning of the semester that their job hunt may require that they miss class. “Pro-fessors appreciate knowing this, especially since some classes have students ranging from freshmen to seniors — where freshmen don’t typically interview, but seniors are looking for permanent employ-ment,” she says.

Students should also remind the professor about their previous cor-respondence a few days before the interview, Hoyt advises. …

(Editor’s note: This article also ran in the Orlando Sentinel.)

See PROGRAM, page 12

Raytheon, Schaft, Virginia Tech, NASA’s Johnson Space Center and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design their own systems. The robots are not required to be hu-manoid forms, and several of the competitors are creating machines that look anything but human. For example, a prototype from JPL has three legs and one arm.

Teams from these organizations will be supplied with an advanced robot from Boston Dynamics and will be re-quired to program it in the contest: Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories, RE2, University of Kansas, Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology, TRAC Labs, University of Washing-ton, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cog-nition, Ben-Gurion University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and TORC Robotics….

for precise expertise, U.S. companies – including GE, Boeing, United Tech-nologies Corp. (UTX) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) – are reaching into col-leges to make contact with students far earlier than they ever have. Their involvement extends to advising and shaping curricula so graduates can plug into jobs faster with less train-ing time and cost. …

The stronger focus on applied learning in public universities such as Virginia Tech and Georgia Insti-tute of Technology in Atlanta also is driven by the harsh economics of state budget constraints. …

Peterson, the Virginia Tech stu-dent, said he structured his course

work toward specializations that Boeing and GE need. When he grad-uates with a mechanical engineer-ing degree in 2013, he will have not only experience working at the two companies but also hands-on in-volvement with some of their top projects.

Jobless Graduates He says he sometimes wishes his

classes took time to focus on the theoretical underpinnings of engi-neering. Still, “it makes sense for uni-versities to prepare their students the best way they can for the work-force,” he said, adding that he knows of graduates from other schools who aren’t getting offers. …

a pack of zebras,” said Taylor, 20, who is preparing to enter her ju-nior year at Virginia Tech. “You just realize that it is actually a re-ally good thing to have a different kind of mindset as a female engi-neer. The mentoring program rein-forces that idea.”

At the Virginia Tech College of Engineering 16.7 percent of undergraduate students were women in the fall of 2011. That’s

up slightly from a decade earlier when women made up 15.9 per-cent of the college’s undergraduate population.

Where the Blacksburg program is making strides is in its enroll-ment and retention of freshman women, said Bevlee Watford, the college’s associate dean for aca-demic affairs and the director of its Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity.

Last fall, 20.1 percent of fresh-man engineering students were fe-male, up from 15.6 percent in the fall of 2005. And Watford said that applications among women have been steadily increasing, although she notes that overall applications are also increasing for admission to the nationally recognized program.

She credited the uptick to mar-keting efforts aimed at attracting

12 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

WDBJ-TV (Roanoke, Va.)May 29, 2012

VIRGINIA BUSINESS • June 28, 2012

Getting the last laugh:Once stereotyped as gearheads,

engineering graduates are in great demand

TMC.net • September 8, 2012

Students help students navigate today’s digital technology era

By Gary RobertsonEngineers sometimes feel stereotyped, pi-

geonholed and otherwise misconstrued as nerdy gearheads.

But the pendulum is now swinging the oth-er way. “There’s been a tremendous run-up of interest in engineering,” says Richard C. Ben-son, dean of Virginia Tech’s College of Engi-neering.

He attributes that newfound interest to the fact that engineers now are taking the lead in areas such as space exploration, biomedical research, cyber security and advanced tech-nology, producing culture-changing consumer products such as the iPad and iPhone.

Another reason for engineering’s rise in popularity, he says, is that engineers are do-ing very well in a tough economy. For example, the most recent “Best Undergraduate College Degrees by Salary” survey published by pay-scale.com is dominated by engineering majors, which occupy seven of the top 10 spots.

“I think this country is going to have an in-creasing need for engineers,” Benson says. “We’re not going to be economically prosper-ous by trying to make widgets cheaper than other countries — we are going to lose that battle.

…When the (Virginia Tech) freshman and transfer engi-neering students entered this fall, they were expected to purchase the following items: a convertible tablet personal computer (PC) or alternative combination of devices meet-ing the minimum specifica-tions, the university software bundle, and the engineering software bundle. To some, the choice is not easy.

Enter the Student Technology Council

The origins of the council started in 2004 when Glenda Scales, the associate dean of international programs and in-formation technology for the College of Engineering, so-

PROGRAMROANOKE TIMES(Continued from page 11)

students, mentoring efforts and a residen-tial program that began in 2001 to provide support to women engineering students.

The residential program, named after the Greek philosopher and mathematician Hypatia, is a residential-based learning community for freshman women in engi-neering. It’s a dorm experience and includes other elements such as clustering the stu-dents into certain lab courses and offering a class that explores the issues surround-ing women’s roles in a predominantly male field.

In the first three years of Hypatia, 90 percent of women who participated were still pursuing an engineering degree. That equated to 17.5 percent more than those who had started in engineering but had not become members of Hypatia.

Last year, a record number of female stu-dents applied to Hypatia, with slightly more than a third of the 300 women admitted into engineering participating.

The program was seen as so essen-tial to helping to retain engineering stu-dents that the college added a similar program for its men. Watford said add-ing the residential community for men has only served to improve the efforts of encouraging women to enter the field….

“We’re going to become prosperous by being first with new technologies. That means engi-neers,” he says.

Indeed, judging by the number of applica-tions to Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, by far the state’s largest engineering school, with an undergraduate enrollment of 6,590, the message is getting through.

When Benson became dean of the school in 2005, it received 4,800 applications for 1,200 slots in the freshman class.

In 2010, the size of the engineering fresh-man class was increased to 1,300, but the num-ber of applications kept coming in increasing-ly larger torrents. This year, there were 7,171 applications, a nearly 50 percent increase over seven years.

“We’re turning away students who could do the work,” Benson says, noting that the compe-tition is fierce for admission.

He hopes the school will be able to grow even larger to accommodate qualified Virginia students.

Toward that end, the College of Engineer-ing is constructing a $100 million Signature Engineering Building, thanks to a $25 million anonymous gift — the largest in the college’s history….

licited the help of students to explore the opportunity of in-tegrating Apple’s Power-book laptops into the heavily popu-lated, Windows PC Virginia Tech engineering curriculum.

Instructions were to test virtualization tools, such as Virtual PC, to see if they could effectively run programs like Autodesk Inventor and P-SPICE to use in the classroom. After much debate and ex-amination, they answered the question affirmatively.

Concurrently, Scales tasked a second group of students to test the latest convertible tab-let pc, a mobile computer run-ning an adapted version of the Windows XP operating sys-

tem with a pen-enabled inter-face. The tablets looked to be promising technology at the time and were adapted by the college.

In fall of 2005, the Student Technology Council was of-ficially formed to provide the college their feedback, based on their own personal expe-riences of using certain tech-nology devices. This feedback impacts the college’s decisions, and helps to determine the computer requirements ...

Their faculty advisor, Dale Pokorski, director of informa-tion technology for the College of Engineering, has been with the group since 2009 and views herself as the facilitator. ...

Virginia Tech has a‘dream’ vending machine

By Orlando SalinasAt college campuses all across the country,

you’ll find loads of vending machines, spitting out sodas and snacks all day long.

Virginia Tech has plenty of those, but the Hokies also have a pretty cool, one of a kind 3-D machine.

This machine is called the “Dream Vendor” and it actually creates 3-D models of just about anything your mind can dream up….

“Basically this machine can print almost any-thing you can imagine,” said Chris Williams of Virginia Tech’s engineering department. “ Re-ally you’re only limited by your own imagination and your design ability and this uses a plastic that’s identical to what a lego is made of.”…

Many universities have industrial scale ma-chines, but only Tech has this smaller version that anyone can use to create a dream.

So how much would it take to build a dream ven-dor? I was told about $10,000 dollars and one se-mester….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in the Burbank Leader.)

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 13

HPCWire • January 10, 2012

Virginia Tech’s Feng Unveils HokieSpeed

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM • September 8, 2012

The Unified Theory of Wu

NSF.gov • October 3, 2012

NSF announces interagency progress on Big Data initiative

By Editorial StaffVirginia Tech crashed the super-

computing arena in 2003 with System X, a machine that placed the univer-sity among the world’s top computa-tional research facilities.

Now comes HokieSpeed, a new supercomputer that is up to 22 times faster and yet a quarter of the size of X, boasting a single-precision peak of 455 teraflops, or 455 trillion opera-tions per second, and a double-preci-sion peak of 240 teraflops, or 240 tril-lion operations per second.

By Logan Kugler Wu-chun Feng is way too

busy. An associate professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Computer Science, “Wu,” as he prefers to be called, is occupied on any given day with professo-rial duties, massive technology and computer science education projects, and babysitting the uni-versity’s resident supercomput-er, HokieSpeed.

Wu has adapted to his break-neck schedule accordingly. Long-time colleagues marvel at his ability to work independently on his latest grant or writing project, all while carrying on a high-level conversation without missing a single beat. During a chat, Wu ad-mits he’s running on little sleep for days in a row – even though he recently had to cancel a talk on green supercomputing in Ger-many.

While Wu often finds it hard to say “No” to demands on his time, the type of high-perfor-mance computers he works on don’t have to. Supercomputers like HokieSpeed and Green Des-tiny (another project of his) take advantage of parallel computing, or using multiple processing ele-ments to perform tasks faster.

This power – both on the part of Wu and his computers – pro-motes a significant cross-fertil-ization of high-performance com-puting ideas, which is probably

The National Science Foundation (NSF), with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today an-nounced nearly $15 million in new Big Data fundamental research projects. These awards aim to develop new tools and methods to extract and use knowledge from collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science and en-gineering research and innovation….

Genomes Galore –Core Techniques, Libraries, and Domain Specific Languages for High-Throughput DNA Sequencing

• Iowa State University, Srinivas Aluru • Stanford University, Oyekunle Olukotun • Virginia Tech, Wuchun Feng

The goal of the project is to develop core techniques and software libraries to enable scalable, efficient, high-perfor-mance computing solutions for high-throughput DNA sequencing, also known as next-generation sequencing. The research will be conducted in the context of challenging problems in human genetics and metagenomics, in collabora-tion with domain specialists….

That’s enough computational ca-pability to place HokieSpeed at No. 96 on the most recent Top500 List (http://www.top500.org/), the indus-try-standard ranking of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers.

More intriguing is HokieSpeed’s energy efficiency, which ranks it at No. 11 in the world on the Novem-ber 2011 Green500 List (http://www.green500.org/), a compilation of su-percomputers that excel at using less energy to do more. On the Green500 List, HokieSpeed is the highest-

ranked commodity supercomputer in the United States….

“HokieSpeed is a versatile hetero-geneous supercomputing instrument, where each compute node consists of energy-efficient central-processing units and high-end graphics-process-ing units,” said Wu Feng, associate professor with the Virginia Tech Col-lege of Engineering’s computer sci-ence and electrical and computer engineering departments. “This in-strument will empower faculty mem-bers, students, and staff across disci-

plines to tackle problems previously viewed as intractable or that required heroic efforts and significant domain-specific expertise to solve.”

Still in the final stages of acceptance testing, Feng envisions HokieSpeed as Virginia Tech’s next war horse in re-search. …

(Editor’s Note: Stories on Hok-ieSpeed also appeared on NPR, WSLS, Science News Line, Charlot-tesville Daily Progress, Roanoke Times, EE Times of Europe, The Cutting Edge News.)

why Wu ends up being so busy.“That’s part of the beauty of

computer science and computer engineering: the understanding of abstraction,” Wu says. “The way you can take some things you’re working on and apply them in other ways you might not have otherwise thought of doing.”…

Wu is part of a team of Vir-ginia Tech researchers that are turning the university’s math lab into a supercomputer by harnessing the power of ordi-nary computers anytime they lie dormant.

Called Project Moon, the ini-tiative could have serious com-mercial applications for compa-nies that want a healthy middle ground option between using no infrastructure at all (the cloud)

and entirely local computing in-frastructures. Not to mention the “altruistic” aspects of the project.

“This type of supercomputing has the promise of being able to address some ‘grand challenge’ problems that have been difficult to address,” says Wu. “Things like doing reverse engineering of the brain and finding missing gene annotations in genomes.”

Wu is already pursuing those higher-minded goals by playing a big role in the Nvidia Founda-tion’s Compute the Cure initia-tive, which leverages Project Moon-style desktop computer collaboration to change how cancer research is conducted….

(Logan Kugler is a freelance technology writer based in Sili-con Valley. He has written for over 60 major publications.)

BLACKSBURG, VA, June 12 – Ashwin Aji, of Blacksburg, Va., a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s De-partment of Computer Science, has received one of 12 fellowships awarded worldwide for 2012-13 by NVIDIA, a global technology company.

The $25,000 fellowship will be used in Aji’s research, aimed at researching and developing next-generation supercomputing techniques and tools to tackle large-scale problems, such as epi-demiology and genomic sequence analysis.

Aji is an active member of the Systems, Net-working and Renaissance Grokking Laboratory, known as the SyNeRGy research lab, directed by his Ph.D. advisor, Wu Feng, an associate profes-sor of computer science who holds a Turner Fel-lowship….

NVIDIA Foundation is also supporting Aji’s adviser’s work as Feng received its first world-wide award for research in 2011 that they hope will compute a cure for cancer. …

Virginia Tech doctoral candidate awarded $25K

NVIDIA Fellowship

HPCwire • June 12, 2012

14 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HUFFINGTON POST • May 10, 2012

Antibiotic resistance spreads through environment,threatens modern medicine

HPCWire • April 18, 2012

IBM awards fellowship to Virginia Tech’s Min LiMin Li, a computer science doc-

toral candidate in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, has received an IBM Fellowship, an intensely competitive worldwide program that honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving prob-lems that are fundamental to innova-tion.

By Lynne Peeples Waste from people, pets, pigs and even

seagulls may be playing a significant role in the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections, in-cluding methicillin-resistant Staphylococ-cus aureus (MRSA), a number of new studies warn.

Widespread fear of diminishing returns for modern medicine is becoming amplified, sci-entists say, by the discovery of soils and water-ways polluted with both traces of antibiotics and bacteria encoded with antibiotic-resistant genes, the information that tells a microbe how to evade drugs designed to kill it.

And even if that fortified microbe isn’t ca-pable of causing illness in humans itself, sci-entists add, its DNA could find its way into the more malignant microbes in the environment.

“Antibiotic resistance is likely the biggest public health challenge that we’ll be facing this century,” said Amy Pruden, an expert on antibiotic resistance at Virginia Tech. “We’re in a state of complacency right now. We count on antibiotics working for us, but they

Li, of Blacksburg, Va., who holds a 3.95 grade point average, is advised by Ali R. Butt, assistant professor of computer science and a past recipi-ent of a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Li is originally from Shishi, Fujan Province, China….

“Min Li designed an efficient cloud adaptation platform for data intensive

analytic applications while she was at IBM. At the end of her internship, a patent application for the project was submitted,” said (Ali) Butt, one of her nominators for this fellowship.

“Min Li has published her research at highly-selective conferences, such as Supercomputing 2010, at which the acceptance rate for papers is less

than 20 percent. We are very proud of her research achievements, especially of her receipt of this highly-selective IBM Fellowship award,” added Bar-bara Ryder, computer science de-partment head and holder of the J. Byron Maupin Professorship….

(Editor’s Note: EE Times also car-ried an article on this fellowship.)

By Leslie MacMillanAs I wrote in The Times recent-

ly, a ski resort in northern Arizona will become the first in the world to make artificial snow totally out of sewage effluent this winter.

Last February, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the resort, Arizona Snowbowl, ending a 10-year legal battle waged by envi-ronmental and Native American groups that warned that the waste-water snow would damage wild-life, human health and a mountain considered sacred by 13 Indian

NEW YORK TIMES • October 10, 2012

Those snowy slopes, sprayed with wastewatertribes.

Now, apart from longstanding concern about harmful chemicals in the water that will be used to make that snow – piped directly from the sewage treatment sys-tem of the nearby town of Flag-staff – new research indicates that the wastewater system is a breed-ing ground for antibiotic-resistant genes.

The genes were not detectable in the plant itself but “increased dramatically” at the point of use, meaning that they were found in

places like sprinkler heads, the study said. “This means bacteria is growing in the distribution pipes,” said Amy Pruden, the author and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech.

The study has not been pub-lished or peer-reviewed, but Flag-staff officials are taking it seriously enough to have invited Dr. Pruden to serve on an advisory panel that the city formed last week.

Antibiotic-resistant genes are an area of emerging concern to sci-

entists because they impede the body’s ability to fight disease.

Dr. Pruden suggested that the next step would be to analyze the live bacteria that might be carry-ing those genes through the pipes. She said the initial findings were cause for concern but that such worries “would shift to alarm” if known antibiotic-resistant patho-gens were found in the water. Bac-teria can cause infections in broken skin, and there is a high likelihood of cuts and scrapes during skiing, she pointed out….

are slowly starting to lose their effectiveness.”While progress has been made in the clinical

realm – limiting unnecessary uses of antibiot-ics, for example, and encouraging patients to

TIME • November 2, 2012

Why restoring New York’s power isn’t easy:The trouble with salt

By Olivia B. Waxman …Con Edison’s East 13th

street substation in Lower Manhattan was built to endure a 12.5-foot storm surge. But when Hurricane Sandy hit the Big Apple Monday night, a 14-foot wall of seawater inundated the area, causing a short circuit and an explosion. As a result, more than 220,000 customers were plunged into darkness in

Lower and Mid-Manhattan – the area below 39th street on the East Side and below 31st street on the West Side. Across the sys-tem – that is, all five boroughs of the city plus Westchester Coun-ty – 900,000 customers lost pow-er. For comparison, 230,821 were plunged into darkness as a result of a 9.5-foot storm surge that flooded Battery Park during Hur-ricane Irene in August 2011….

Electricity and water – es-pecially seawater – do not mix. “If you put two wires in normal drinking water, they may not short circuit as easily as when you have salt in the water be-cause salt functions as a conduc-tor,” said Dr. Saifur Rahman, the Joseph Loring Professor of Electrical & Computer En-gineering at Virginia Tech.

See SALT, page 15

take the full course of their prescribed drugs – Pruden noted “mounting evidence that the environment is another important piece of the puzzle.”…

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 15

CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS • October 16, 2012

Levels of antibiotic resistance gene spike downstream of human activity

By Laura CassidayIn river sediments, the level of an antibi-

otic resistance gene carried by bacteria in-creases when wastewater treatment plants and animal feeding facilities are nearby, according to a new study (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es302657r). These types of facilities could contribute to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the environment, the re-searchers say.

Most strategies to curb the rise of antibiot-ic-resistant bacteria have focused on interven-tions at the clinic, such as urging doctors not to overprescribe antibiotics, says Amy Pruden at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. However, she says, increasing ev-idence suggests that antibiotic resistance also spreads from environmental sources.

When humans or animals ingest antibiotics, they excrete both the drugs and bacteria re-sistant to those drugs. The antibiotics and re-sistant bacteria then can enter rivers through

SALT - TIME MAGAZINE - (Continued from page 14)

VOICE OF TECHNOLOGYSummer 2012

Virginia Tech researchers study new ways to use big

data analyticsBy Susan Trulove

University and industry scientists are de-termining how to forecast significant societal events, ranging from violent protests to nation-wide credit-rate crashes, by analyzing the billions of pieces of information in the ocean of public communications, such as tweets, web queries, oil prices, and daily stock market activity.

“We are automating the generation of alerts, so that intelligence analysts can focus on inter-preting the discoveries rather than on the me-chanics of integrating information,” said Naren Ramakrishnan, the Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering in Virginia Tech’s Department of Computer Engineering. He is leading the team of computer scientists and subject-matter experts from Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland, Cornell University, Children’s Hospital of Bos-ton, San Diego State University, University of California at San Diego, and Indiana Universi-ty, and from the companies, CACI International Inc., and Basis Technology.

Within Virginia Tech, the team spans the de-partments of computer science, mechanical engi-neering, and agricultural and applied economics, the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

The project is supported by a potential $13.36 million three-year contract from the Open Source Indicators (OSI) Program of the Intel-ligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the Office of the Di-rector of National Intelligence. Three teams were awarded contracts, with continuation after the first year contingent upon satisfactory progress....

The Virginia Tech-led team calls its project EMBERS, for early model-based event recogni-tion using surrogates....

By Rocky Womack, AFP Correspondent

CHATHAM, Va. — A Vir-ginia dairy has invested about $1.5 million to utilize manure from their cows and convert the waste into energy for consumer use.

In 2010, Vanderhyde Dairy in Chatham had an anaerobic di-gester system installed on their farm, which was their way of figuring out what to do with the thousands of gallons of waste formed on their farm. …

The anaerobic digester converts manure from an organic form to an inorganic form, Vanderhyde says.

Before the digester was in-stalled, the Vanderhydes would spread manure onto a field, but it would take two years for the soil to break it down into an inorganic form.

With the help of the digester, he says the manure will break down and be available within the same year he spreads it. The

wastewater-treatment plant effluents or runoff from livestock operations.…

To stanch the flow of antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the environment, researchers first need to understand the sources of the resis-tance genes, says Pruden.

With this goal in mind, Pruden and her col-leagues looked for two antibiotic resistance genes, sul1 and tet(W), in bacteria along the South Platte River Basin, in northern Colora-do. Sul1 confers resistance to sulfonamide an-tibiotics, while tet(W) makes bacteria resistant to tetracycline….

The South Platte River Basin is ideal to study, Pruden says, because it starts in a pris-tine region of the Rocky Mountains that is far from human-affected bacteria and antibiotics. She uses water sediments from this region as a baseline for natural levels of antibiotic resis-tance genes. The river system then flows past 89 wastewater treatment plants and 100 ani-mal feeding operations….

AMERICAN FARM PUBLICATIONS, INC. • May 16, 2012

Vanderhyde Dairy turning manureto energy in Virginia

waste-to-energy product goes through a 21-day cycle, and as long as a dairy keeps feeding the digester manure each day dur-ing that cycle, then it will keep breaking down the waste.

The farm generates 25,000 gallons of waste daily and pumps it to the digester at 1,600 gallons a minute, says Jactone Ogejo, an

Extension specialist and associate professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

He adds that 15 feet of the manure inside the digester is bro-ken down to produce gas. During the 21 days, he says the manure is heated to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is beneficial….

ROANOKE TIMES • June 18, 2012

Names and changesCompiled by Danielle Dunaway

Y.A. Liu, Frank C. Vilbrandt Professor of Chemical Engi-neering at Virginia Tech, has been named an Alumni Distin-guished Professor by the board of visitors….

Stephen Edwards, associate professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was named the W.S. “Pete” White Chair for Innovation in Engineering Educa-tion by the board of visitors.

“Salt water damages electrical equipment very easily.” …Rahman said that if Con Edison did not preemptively shut

down power in Lower Manhattan, the company would have had to replace more cables instead of just repairing them and drying them out. …

Dr. Rahman suggested that buildings in flood-prone Lower Manhattan could start putting generators higher up so that flood waters cannot reach them. “Many of these buildings in Lower Manhattan have their transformers and backup gen-erator in the basement, in a secure underground space like a bank vault,” he said. “We put things in the basement for safety, but we never thought of the basement getting flooded.” He pointed out that the Goldman Sachs building never lost power because its generator is on top of the building – and suggests more buildings should do that in the future. “Lower

Manhattan, because of September 11th, has gone through a lot of safety and security upgrades but did not take into ac-count flooding situations.”…

16 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

By Mohit JoshiWashington, January

28: Scientists and engi-neers have said that they will have to face a host of obstacles over the next de-cade in providing clean water to millions of people caught up in a water short-age crisis.

The statement was made by a panel of scientists and engineers at a briefing at the Broadcast Center of the National Press Building on the Final Report on the American Chemical Soci-ety’s Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions.

According to Marc Ed-

TopNews.in • April 10, 2012

Tough task ahead for scientistsin solving water shortage crisis

By Julia WhitingThe recent public information session on

chloramine, which the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is planning to put in our wa-ter beginning in 2014, created several broad areas of agreement on both sides. The audi-ence was overwhelmingly in favor of avoiding it, and seemed particularly concerned about its health and environmental effects.

Perhaps more surprising was the consensus on the panel, which was created to represent differing viewpoints. There was general agree-ment among the panelists that granular acti-

THE DAILY PROGRESS (Charlottesville, Va.) • July 4, 2012

Chloramine not the answer

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER (California) • August 9, 2012

Homebuilders sue water districts over copper pipe leaksBy Chris Boucly

SANTA ANA – Two home-builders have filed complaints in Orange County Superior Court claiming drinking water provided by two South County water dis-tricts is corroding copper plumb-ing, resulting in leaks that require hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs….

Marc Edwards is a Virginia Tech civil and environmen-tal engineering professor and a nationally recognized expert

Water-SavingStrategies

for the CPIEdited by Scott Jenkins

By Y.A. Liu Virginia Polytechnic Institute

and State University Chemical Engineering

Reducing freshwater consumption and wastewater discharge at large petro-leum-refining and chemical-production facilities can lower costs, while allow-ing plants to expand production capaci-ties without having to secure additional freshwater resources and without having to enlarge their wastewater treatment plants. The key approaches to saving sig-nificant amounts of water are: improved water management, implementing pro-cess changes that maximize water reuse and minimize wastewater generation; and a corporate-wide focus on the “Four-Rs” - regeneration, recycling, reuse and re-placement.

This article describes the methodology used in several water-saving projects led by the author at large chemical and petro-leum refining facilities in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as proven water-saving technologies implemented. In addition to improved water management and bet-ter use of water-saving technology, the ultimate success of water-saving projects at these large facilities depends on strong support from senior-level corporate ex-ecutives and production managers, corpo-rate-wide training of project teams and a broad effort to promote corporate-wide enthusiasm for water savings. …

WATERWORLDMay 1, 2012

on copper corrosion. Part of his work is to study the causes of pipe failures and how to stop them. He said several legal cases are emerg-ing in California and he expects to be retained as an expert.

“We’ve done probably over a million dollars of research over the last eight years,” Edwards said. “We’ve identified water chemistry, corrosive water, as a key instigator of pinhole leaks.

“We know that other factors are often involved, including ex-

cessive velocity in pipes and poor installation practices, and so each case requires fairly exten-sive forensic evaluation to try to diagnose the possible cause and cures,” he added.

Edwards said the very stan-dards implemented to make drinking water safe might be con-tributing to pinhole leaks. While disinfectants are needed, too much in some waters might be corrosive.

He said research on chlora-

mine has shown it alone doesn’t eat holes in pipes, but “it is pos-sible, even likely, that chloramine plus other factors in the water can be highly corrosive.”

Well-intentioned changes to meet standards might be having unintended consequences, Ed-wards said.

“There’s much we do know,” he said. “We’ve unambiguously prov-en that water can be a cause; not the only cause, but a cause. But there’s a lot we still don’t know.”

vated carbon is the best available technology, because it takes impurities out of the water, rather than adding new chemicals that react with impurities to form even worse chemicals. Dr. Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech called it “holistic” technology.

The World Health Organization and Envi-ronmental Protection Agency both find pre-cursor removal (using GAC filtration) pref-erable to addition additional chemicals that reduce disinfection efficacy and increase tox-ic disinfection byproduct formation, which is what chloramine does….

wards, a panelist from Vir-ginia Tech, the reality today is that the existing plumbing infrastructure is inadequate, and scientists have insuffi-cient knowledge about how to overcome the challenges of providing safe water to people around the world.

Although Edwards stressed the importance of water con-servation in meeting those challenges, he also cited unin-tended consequences of such efforts.

He noted, for instance, that reduced-flush toilets and other water conservation methods are allowing water to remain in household pipes longer. As

it stagnates in pipes, the water could develop unde-sirable characteristics and have unwanted effects on household plumbing.

Edwards also detailed how a change in disinfec-tant from chlorine to chlo-ramine caused leaching of lead into drinking water.

A new study by Edwards and colleagues from Vir-ginia Tech University and Children’s National Medi-cal Center concludes that hundreds of children in Washington D.C. were in-troduced to high levels of lead from the city’s drink-ing water….

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 17

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCHMarch 12, 2012

The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) has recently launched WATERiD, an on-line liviad (sic) in managing the nation’s water in-frastructure.

Developed by Dr. Sunil Sinha, associate pro-fessor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, WATERiD will help the nation address the challenges associated with the aging and deteriorating wastewater and water infra-structure.

“WATERiD is unique in that it allows utilities to share their “lessons learned” and thus avoid re-

WRIC-TV (Richmond, Va.) • June 24, 2012

New water environment research projectenables better communication among utilities

Manufacturingresearch center

nears completionBy John Reid Blackwell

Construction is nearly complete on an advanced manufacturing research center in Prince George County, the center’s executive director told Chesterfield County Chamber of Commerce members Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing, or CCAM, is on Rolls-Royce North America’s Crosspointe campus, where the company has an aircraft engine compo-nents plant.

The 60,000-square-foot center will do re-search for a group of manufacturing compa-nies with operations in Virginia under a part-nership with Virginia Tech, Virginia State University and the University of Virginia.

“Our job is to listen to these companies, and then use the technology and expertise and equipment that will be at our world-class research center, and that already exists at our world-class universities, to solve their prob-lems, but to do it at business speed,” said Da-vid Lohr, CCAM’s president and executive director.

Lohr said he expects the building will be ready for occupancy in early September….

peating mistakes,” explains Dr. Daniel Woltering, WERF Director of Research.

This sharing is accomplished through a “wiki”-like capability for utilities to submit their informa-tion on cost, performance, and capability of vari-ous technologies. Then, utilities can easily access all of the information necessary to assess whether a practice or technology is right for their applica-tion…

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in Wa-ter Online, Underground Construction, and in Re-mote Site & Equipment Management.)

By Times-Dispatch Staff On Tuesday, Gov. Bob McDonnell an-

nounced that Rolls-Royce was considering an expansion of its presence in Central Virginia. ....

Rolls-Royce makes jet engines for some of the most advanced planes in commercial fleets. Its Virginia sites pay tribute to the state’s work force.

Several years ago, executives briefed the Edi-torial Board about the company’s plans. They explained they chose Prince George in large part because of Virginia’s exemplary system of higher education. They cited aeronautical en-gineering programs at the University of Vir-ginia and Virginia Tech….

The happy story suggests that higher ed in Virginia is, ahem, the Rolls-Royce of eco-nomic development.

By John Reid Blackwell Some university lecture halls

are adorned with the likenesses of their founders, or the inspir-ing, engraved words of great thinkers.

A school of engineering building under construction at Virginia Tech will have an in-spiring monument all its own and one appropriate for its mis-sion: a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 jet engine.

Rolls-Royce, which makes

Rolls-Royce has donated a Trent 1000 jet engine to Virginia Tech that will be the centerpiece of its new Signature Engineering Building. Construc-tion workers recently positioned the engine into the foyer of the building where it will hang sus-pended 15 feet above the floor. The building is go-ing up around the engine, and it will remain in a protective cover until the structure opens in spring 2014.

Rolls-Royce said it plans to outfit the new build-ing with interactive kiosks containing information on engine design and advanced manufacturing to inform students about careers in engineering.

“We are honored and delighted to make this engine donation to Virginia Tech,” said Phil Burk-holder, Rolls-Royce, executive vice president, en-gineering and technology. “Rolls-Royce enjoys a strong partnership in higher education with Vir-

VIRGINIA BUSINESS • August 8, 2012

Rolls-Royce donates one of its jet enginesto Va. Tech’s new engineering building

ginia Tech that includes research and develop-ment programs, endowments and internships. We hope our Trent 1000 engine, a modern engineer-ing marvel, will serve as a symbol of excellence and inspire generations of talented students to pursue careers in science and engineering.”

The donated engine is one the company’s early test engines….

(Editor’s note: An article about this gift also traveled on the AP wire service, and was picked up by the following news outlets: WRIC-TV, WVVA-TV, the Republic, WVIR-TV, WVNS-TV, WWBT-TV, WCBD-TV, Daily Journal, WTTG-TV, the Al-exandria Gazette, Lynchburg News and Advance, WSLS-TV, Aerospace Industries Association, Aero-News Network, JustLuxe, Danville Register and Bee, the Petersburg Progress, Roanoke Times, and the Newport News Daily Press.)

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH • August 11, 2012

Biz to Go:Rolls-Royce jet engine donated to Va. Tech

aircraft engine components at its Crosspointe plant in Prince George County, donated the engine to Virginia Tech to display in the atrium of the school’s Signature Engineer-ing Building.

“One of the reasons that I think it was important to make this donation is so the engineer-ing students can be inspired by what they can accomplish,” said Phil Burkholder, Rolls-Royce’s executive vice president for en-

gineering and technology.Burkholder recalled being

inspired by seeing gas turbine engines at the engineering school when he was a student at Virginia Tech….

At 155,000 square feet, Vir-ginia Tech’s Signature Engi-neering Building will contain 40 laboratory instructional rooms, seven classrooms, an au-ditorium and offices. The build-ing is expected to open in early 2014.

Rolls-Royce coming here

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCHAugust 8, 2012

18 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

By Adrienne SeikoMore than two-thirds of all private-sector re-

search and development comes from manufacturers. Where do they get their inspiration? Partnerships between universities and manufacturers, such as the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufactur-ing in Virginia, or CCAM, have played major roles in industrial R&D advancements. A number of major manufacturers, including founding members Rolls-Royce (IW 100/229)  North America Inc., Canon Inc. (IW 1000/86), Siemens (IW 1000/26), Newport News Shipbuilding, Aerojet and Sulzer Metco are al-ready taking advantage of CCAM’s expertise.

The consortium began research activities in 2011, and the facility is scheduled to open this sum-mer in Prince George County, Va., at Rolls-Royce’s Crosspointe plant. CCAM members have the op-portunity to work with institutions such as the Uni-versity of Virginia, Virginia State University and Virginia Tech. …

Rolls-Royce was the driving force behind CCAM’s formation. In 2007 the company was deciding where

INDUSTRY WEEK • April 18, 2012

Want to Grow Your Company?Find Access to R&D

AIRFRAMER • May 10, 2012

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has opened their new Brüel & Kjær Laboratory for Aerospace Vibration and Acous-tics.

The laboratory is part of Virginia Tech’s new National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) Research and Innovation Laboratories in Hampton, Vir-ginia. It contains state-of-the-art instrumentation and equipment for measuring and analyzing vi-bration and sound, and is sponsored by Brüel & Kjær.

NIA’s labs are directed by Christopher R. Fuller, who is Virginia Tech’s Samuel Lang-ley Distinguished Professor of Aerospace En-gineering. Fuller is an expert in acoustics and noise and vibration control and is noted for his distinguished work on control of interior noise and vibration in aerospace applications, launch vehicle payload noise, and other related con-cerns in the automotive and marine industries….

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in Aerospace-Technology.com)

Brüel & Kjaer sponsors aerospace laboratory

at Virginia Tech

DAILY PRESS • March 14, 2012

Aerospace facility opening in HamptonBuilding will tie researchers with investors

By Robert BrauchleAn aerospace research facil-

ity being built by Virginia Tech in the Hampton Roads Center North Campus will be unveiled during an April 12 dedication ceremony….

The Peninsula Technology Incubator located within the facility will allow private com-

to locate its new aerospace facility. Rolls-Royce had centers across the United Kingdom that provided cutting-edge research, and the company thought Virginia could provide the same setup. Rolls-Royce modeled CCAM after its Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in Sheffield and Advanced Form-ing Research Center in Glasgow. “The goal is to cre-ate a center of advanced manufacturing that will at-tract the best and brightest talent,” says Lorin Sodell, plant manager, Rolls Royce Crosspointe.

Bridging Research and CommercializationWith competition so fierce, CCAM’s goal is to

bridge the gap between research and commercial-ization. The group decided to focus on specific ar-eas. “CCAM research attacks surface coating and manufacturing systems issues common to our members,” says David Lohr, CCAM’s president and executive director. “With members pooling R&D dollars and conducting research here instead of on their own production lines, CCAM translates labo-ratory innovation into business improvement faster and more cost effectively than ever before.” …

panies participating in the program to have access to the institute’s faculty as well as potential private investors….

The aerospace institute is a $30 million non-profit re-search and graduate edu-cation program including more than 200 professors, researchers, staff and stu-

dents.…Virginia Tech is one of

nine colleges and universities — including Hampton Uni-versity, Old Dominion and William and Mary — in the research project that aims to be a research hub for aero-space and atmospheric stud-ies.

By Jim MooreTurns out, those bicycle mechan-

ics from Ohio were on to something with those warping wings of theirs. The invention of ailerons and flaps relegated warping wings to the side-lines, but a growing number of aero-nautical engineers are turning back to that page and developing wings that are more distinctly bird-like, able to change their shape to best suit a given phase of flight, or offer more precise control.

AOPA PILOT online • October 4, 2012

Aircraft designers crafting more bird-like wingsThe various approaches hold

promise to produce future aircraft that are more nimble, efficient, and quiet.…

“I think of it as like a bird (that) moves its feathers independently,” said Daniel Inman, chairman of the aerospace engineering department at the University of Michigan.... In-man and a team of students from Virginia Tech got the concept to fly, demonstrating its potential in 2010 and producing academic papers –

and a video posted on YouTube.The aerodynamic advantages of

this approach include better lift to drag ratios and increased roll mo-ments. Controls of this type respond much faster than the traditional. Imagine how fast an Extra 300 might roll with this type of control, and it’s enough to scare a person....

One of his former Virginia Tech students, Onur Bilgen, who earned his doctorate with the wing morph-ing work and now teaches at Old Do-

minion University, said in an email – and has written in various academic articles – that he expects morph-ing wings and control surfaces will eventually become the standard for aviation in general. …

The idea has come full circle in more ways than one: Kevin Ko-chersberger, another member of the Virginia Tech team who contin-ues to research the next generation of wing morphers today, was also

INDIA-WEST • December 12, 2012

Career Moves:Who’s Movin’ On Up

Virginia Tech mechanical engineering Professor Srinath Ekkad has been named Commonwealth Professor for Aerospace Pro-pulsion Systems by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, a five-year appointment. His research focuses on high-resolution surface heat trans-fer measurements for complex geometries.

Ekkad has a bachelor’s degree from Jawa-harlal Nehru Technological University, a mas-ter’s from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.

See WINGS, page 27

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 19

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT: Science • April 24, 2012

Researcher studies turbulence and chemical reactionsBy Marlene Cimons

To the average person, the word “turbulence’” usually means a bumpy airplane ride. To a scientist, however, it represents one of the last great unsolved mysteries of classical physics.

“The bottom line is that we don’t understand turbulence,” says Lin Ma, associate professor in the de-

partment of aerospace and ocean engineering at Virginia Polytech-nic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). “Turbulence is ev-erywhere, but it is one of our last un-resolved scientific questions.”…

Ma is trying to better understand the interactions between chemical reactions and turbulence. “Turbu-lence and chemical reactions happen simultaneously all the time,” he says. “When a jet engine sucks air in, mix-es it with fuel and burns it, you have a chemical reaction under very high speed. These two things happen at the same time. Turbulence by itself is hard enough to understand, and we are adding chemical reactions to it, which makes the problem even more challenging.”

He believes that deciphering the fundamental interactions between chemical reactions and turbulence will provide insights into designing more efficient energy devices with reduced pollutant emissions and at a lower cost. This could mean bet-

ter and cleaner engines and power plants, he says.

“If you make a car engine more ef-ficient, then you can cover the same distance with less fuel,” he says. “When you burn less fuel, you emit less pollutants, and you minimize your carbon footprint.”

Ma is studying turbulence and

chemical reactions under a $400,000 National Science Foundation Fac-ulty Early Career Development (CA-REER) award over five years, which began in 2009. These NSF grants support the research of junior facul-ty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and edu-cation….

A rocket that’s set to launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Fa-cility in Virginia will carry experi-ments by students at four universi-ties, including Virginia Tech.

The launch is set for Thurs-day morning at Wallops Island. NASA says the four university ex-periments are being flown as part of an educational project called

WSLS, NBC Channel 10 • August 23, 2012

Wallops rocket to carry university experiment

RockSat-X, which is designed to provide students hands-on experi-ence in designing, fabricating, test-ing and conducting experiments for space flight....

(Editor’s Note: A version of this story ran on AP and was in 7 other media outlets, including Communi-ty Ideas Stations, KWTX-TV, News Journal, NJ.com, WAVY-TV)

WTOP-FM Online • August 8, 2012

Drones in region’s skiesto forever redefine privacy

By Paul D. Shinkman WASHINGTON — The

Virginia governor’s enthusi-asm for drones has been met with concern from legal ex-perts to the average Twitter user, while others see a tech-nological revolution that will sharply improve law enforce-ment and innumerable facets of commerce and agriculture.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear drones will redefine pri-vacy in the Old Dominion and other jurisdictions nationwide. …

(The) ability for public law to trump civil law, combined with rigorous FAA regula-tions, could be enough to keep drones under control, says Kevin Kochersberger, associ-ate professor for mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech and director of its Unmanned

Systems Laboratory. The uni-versity is one of only a few in the country currently licensed to deploy drones.

“It’s an exciting time for law-yers and judges to be involved, because I think this is all going to come down to case law,” Ko-chersberger says. Most of the UAV research conducted at Va. Tech applies to humanitarian use, which he says will be typi-cal of how the aerial vehicles are used.

Existing Safeguards The process for acquiring an

FAA license to operate a drone makes the use of them safer, Kochersberger says. In 2006, insurgents in Iraq allegedly hi-jacked a drone using only a piece of $26 software, The Wall Street Journal reported, leading some to speculate a similar crisis could occur over American soil.

However, to obtain a li-cense, operators must first prove their drones’ “lost-link procedures” for how the device will operate if it loses its con-trol signal. And most drones are very light, don’t fly very quickly and can only operate for 30 minutes, Kochersberg-er says.

Much of the general con-cern stems from the prolifera-tion in the media and in the public of the word “drone” it-self, he says, which has histori-cally been associated with the military and weaponry. …

“Really, all this push to get more unmanned aircraft into the national airspace is not for military purposes, not for purposes to enhance defense,” Kochersberger says. “It’s really to expand commercial oppor-tunities.”

USA TODAY • Apr. 8, 2012

De Vita wins NSF award to study pelvic

floor disordersRaffaella De Vita, assistant pro-

fessor in the Department of En-gineering Science Mechanics at Virginia Tech, won a five-year $473,000 National Science Foun-dation Faculty Early Career De-velopment Award. Funds will go toward studying pelvic floor dis-orders…

BLACKSBURG, Va. – Mani Golparvar-Fard, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, has developed an augmented reality modeling system that automati-cally analyzes physical progress on large-scale con-struction projects. The system allows a contractor to determine whether a project is on, ahead, or behind schedule, leading to cost savings and reduction in project delivery time.

Without the need for a Global Positioning Sys-tem (GPS) or any other location tracking technolo-gy, the modeling system, named the 4 Dimensional Augmented Reality or D4AR, is able to geo-spa-tially store digital pictures of a building in 4D (3D plus time) and integrates the photos with Build-ing Information Models (BIM) during any and all phases of construction….

The augmented reality system developed by Gol-parvar-Fard also gives the construction industry the ability to automate and remotely monitor the safety,

Interdisciplinary research leads to reduced

construction costs and multiple awards

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING& DESIGN

August 8, 2012

See COSTS, page 23

20 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION • May 11, 2012

EcoCAR competition drives student employment, if not innovation

By Richard FosterEarlier this year, the Internet

was abuzz with stories about Taco-copter, a Silicon Valley startup that aimed to deliver tasty Mexican fare directly to hungry, customers via small, remote-controlled helicop-ters.

That idea never got off the ground, so to speak, but within the next decade people could be seeing a variety of unmanned aerial vehi-cles (UAVs), also known as drones, in U.S. skies. They could perform tasks ranging from finding lost hik-ers to improving your cellphone reception or even writing you a speeding ticket….

“The public historically has been a little timid about new technology — airplanes, fast cars, whatever, you know?” says Kevin Kochers-

VIRGINIA BUSINESS • August 31, 2012

New Role For Drones:Virginia could become a testing area for civilian use

By Paul Basken Four years ago R. Jesse Alley was just another me-

chanical-engineering student searching for purpose when a friend at Virginia Tech opened up a laptop and changed his life.

It was his sophomore year, and he was watching football on TV in the apartment of Kurt M. Johnson, his roommate’s cousin. Mr. Johnson was working on

ROANOKE TIMES • October 20, 2012

Tech team plugs into the futureat ‘EcoCAR 2’ competitionBy Mike Shaw

Members of the Virginia Tech Hybrid Electric Ve-hicle Team spent Thurs-day afternoon in front of the Squires Student Center showing off their latest proj-ect, a 2013 Chevrolet Mali-bu.

Tech’s team is part of a competition called “Eco-CAR 2: Plugging In to the Future” which is a North American competition spon-

berger, director of the Unmanned Systems Laboratory at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering.

“It’s human nature to be a little skeptical of technology, but there are many upsides to this technolo-gy that people aren’t seeing.”

During the last decade, Virginia Tech has received clearance to test a variety of small UAVs for the De-partment of Defense at Tech’s Kent-land Farms experimental agricul-ture site, about eight miles away from the main campus in Blacks-burg.

Kochersberger’s researchers worked on a $1 million-plus con-tract for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, adapting a 200-pound, 6-foot-long Yamaha RMAX unmanned helicopter to lo-cate radiation sources or to sur-

vey damage and monitor radiation levels in U.S. cities after a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb attack.

Tech also is researching civilian applications for UAVs. For example, one professor has been using a UAV to collect airborne mold spores to study the spread of pathogens that can harm wheat crops.

UAVs already are being used in Japan for targeted irrigation and crop dusting, and Virginia Tech is examining similar agricultural uses.

Search and rescue operations and law enforcement applications are other areas Tech is examining. A team of undergrad engineering students will travel to Australia this year to compete in the UAV Out-back Search and Rescue Challenge. In this competition, teams build

UAVs that can locate a dummy in a 50-square-mile search area and drop a payload of water bottles to the “lost hiker.”

UAVs are extremely valuable in disasters such as forest fires, Ko-chersberger says. While manned vehicles are restricted from flying over a forest fire at night, UAVs can fly surveillance missions over a for-est fire for 24 hours in a row, col-lecting valuable data on changing burn patterns. …

In law enforcement, UAVs can “look around buildings and investi-gate large areas that are hazardous without putting anybody in harm’s way,” Kochersberger says. “They do the dirty, dangerous jobs that no-body else wants to do.”…

Managing Editor Paula C. Squires contributed to this report.

sored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The three-year collegiate engineering competition, cur-rently in its second year, fea-tures 15 collegiate teams from North America. The only oth-er ACC school participating is N.C. State.

Plugging In to the Future helps educate future automo-tive engineers through a hands-on, real-world experience. Their ultimate goal is to reduce

the environmental impact of a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu, donated by General Motors, without compromising per-formance, safety and con-sumer acceptability.

Tech’s Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team Communica-tion Manager Virginia Hyer, a senior, said the team is trying to promote sustain-able energy by making a car that’s more environmentally friendly….

a continent wide competition to design environmen-tally friendly cars, and during a break from the game, he showed Mr. Alley page upon page of the comput-er code needed to guide the electronics of a modern automobile. Instantly, Mr. Alley was hooked….

Over the 25 years of its Advanced Vehicle Tech-nology Competitions, the U.S. Department of En-ergy has drawn more than 16,000 engineering stu-

dents like Mr. Alley and Mr. Johnson at 89 North American universities.

A new set of beaming faces shined this past week at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and Spa in Los Angeles, where undergraduates from 15 campuses brought their initial designs before judges evaluating first-year work in the latest three-year competition,

See EcoCAR, page 21

Chemicals or foods that raise estrogen levels dur-ing pregnancy may increase cancer risk in daugh-ters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaugh-ters, according to scientists from Virginia Tech and Georgetown University.

Pregnant rats on a diet supplemented with syn-thetic estrogen or with fat, which increases estrogen levels, produce ensuing generations of daughters that appear to be healthy, but harbor a greater than normal risk for mammary cancer, the researchers re-port in today’s Nature Communications. …

“We have shown for the first time that altered DNA methylations modulated by specific diet in

Breast Cancer Risks Acquired in Pregnancy May Pass to Next 3 Generations

MEDICAL NEWS TODAYSeptember 14, 2012

See RISKS, page 21

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 21

MOTOR TREND • July 5, 2012

Schools Design, Build Chevy Malibu Plug-In Hybrids in EcoCAR 2 Competition

By Alex Nishimoto The future of the automobile seems in con-

stant flux, with internal-combustion tech, alter-native fuels, and electric propulsion systems con-tinuing to advance. These developments make predicting what we’ll be driving in a few years a tall order. But the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has given a group of college students the

See BRAKING, page 22

Automatic braking systems on autos will help save lives,

researchers predictThe second highest cause of automobile crash-

es is rear-end collisions – 17 percent. Thousands of people die. The solution? “It is simple,” said Clay Gabler, professor of biomedical engi-neering at Virginia Tech. “Slow the striking vehicle.”

The concept is simple. Execution is complex and expensive. But in a life-and-death scenar-io, it is worth the investment, agree Gabler and Kristofer Kusano of Herndon, Va., a Ph.D. stu-dent in mechanical engineering. In affiliation with the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Cen-ter for Injury Biomechanics and the Virgin-ia Tech Transportation Institute, they are conducting research on the potential benefit of a suite of collision avoidance systems now avail-able as options on some new cars.

Their research, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals, predicts that the use of three systems may reduce serious injuries by 50 percent.

Gabler and Kusano are looking at three sys-tems that can operate independently or in se-quence to prevent or mitigate a front collision. …

“These systems require radar and sophisti-cated computers. So there is a lot of interest in

TORONTO TELEGRAPHOctober 2, 2012

known as EcoCar2.“Once you get into it,” Mr. Alley said during a

break in the competition, “there’s so much stuff, and it’s so fascinating, and there’s so much depth to it.” He is serving this year as student leader of Virginia Tech’s team….

For the current competition, EcoCar2, each of the 15 teams will be given a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu – a midsize sedan – and asked to re-engineer it to reduce its environmental impact while maintaining or even improving its performance, safety, and consumer ac-ceptability.

The teams are due to receive their cars this sum-mer from General Motors, the lead industry sponsor of EcoCar2. …

Ohio State University, which finished second to Virginia Tech in the first EcoCar series, …

The university teams are made up mostly of un-dergraduates, assisted by a few graduate-level advis-ers such as Mr. Alley and guided by mentors from General Motors. They may not be inventing new technologies, Mr. Rizzoni said, but they are innovat-ing through the adaption of existing technologies….

chance to explore our future’s automotive options through the EcoCar 2 competition.

We headed to Hollywood to see what they de-veloped. EcoCar 2 is a collegiate automotive engi-neering competition that gives students from 15 universities across North America the chance to show what they can do in the field of automotive technology.

Though this is only the second competition to bear the EcoCar name, the Department of Energy has hosted similar 3-year programs for the past 24 years, each with the goal of pushing the envelope of transportation and training young engineers.

The criteria for entry were simple: Build a high-ly efficient plug-in hybrid vehicle and use renew-able energy sources.Teams were encouraged to think big for their projects; there were no restric-tions on the types of components to be used….

Virginia Tech University had a handle on the presentation aspect of the competition. As the winner of the first EcoCar competition that wrapped in 2010, Virginia Tech had high hopes that their E85-fueled plug-in would earn them an-other victory this time around.

WIRED • June 26, 2012

Weaning people onto the ideaof letting the car do the driving

By Doug NewcombWhat will drivers do when

autonomous cars become a re-ality: text or tweet while be-hind the wheel, relax and take in the scenery, catch up on some reading or even some sleep?

While you may be able to kick back once the car takes over, don’t expect to check out. And letting go of the wheel – and full control of the car – will likely happen in stages

to better prepare drivers for when cars inevitably switch to autopilot.

In anticipation of autono-mous vehicles hitting the road – and with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) such as adaptive cruise con-trol and collision avoidance already taking some control from drivers – the US gov-ernment and General Mo-tors worked with the Virginia Tech Transportation Insti-

tute (VTTI) to conduct a study of driver behavior when they aren’t actively driving.

The goal of the Limited Ability Autonomous Driv-ing Systems study, conducted in 2011 in a driving simulator at Indiana University-Pur-due University in Indianapo-lis and with VTTI on a GM test track in Michigan, was to learn how drivers react when a car takes over primary tasks they’re used to performing….

EcoCARCHRONICLE OF

HIGHER EDUCATION(Continued from page 20)

RISKSMEDICAL NEWS TODAY(Continued from page 20)

normal development are heritable and transgener-ational,” said Yue “Joseph” Wang, the Grant A. Dove Professor of Electrical and Computer En-gineering at Virginia Tech Research Center - Ar-lington.

“We also identified key methylation alteration sites that may be involved or responsible for in-creased breast cancer risk, which may serve as novel biomarkers for scientists to develop novel and tar-geted prevention strategies.” ...

Virginia Tech, known as the world leader in real-life driving studies, will correlate Australia driver behavior data. Australia will undertake its first “naturalistic” driving study when 400 cars are equipped with state-of-the-art technology to capture driver behavior. The data will be trans-ferred to the US’s Virginia Tech University, the

THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN • November 13, 2012

Sensors to help drive new road safety bidworld leader in naturalistic driving studies, which will keep a duplicate copy of the data.

The three-year study will mark a major shift in the way road safety data are collected The driver project, being led by the University of NSW, is expected to start late next year or early in 2014 and run for six months....

22 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH • April 29, 2012

Hokies plentiful in NASCAR

USA TODAY • April 24, 2012

Hamlin returns to Richmond as NASCAR conquering hero

IEEE-USA TODAY’S ENGINEERFebruary 7, 2012

Electric Vehicles the Focus of Upcoming IEEE Conference

By Chris McManes The recent IEEE Power & Energy Society’s

Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Confer-ence in Washington, D.C., featured a number of paper and panel sessions on electric vehicles. It offered a preview of what to expect at the up-coming IEEE International Electric Vehicle Conference….

IEEE Fellow Dr. Saifur Rahman, the Jo-seph Loring Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia campus, was a panelist at the Smart Grid conference and will be chairing a session on electric vehicle infrastructure at IEVC. It is a subject he knows well.

Rahman, a member of the IEEE-USA Ener-gy Policy Committee, said that adding a million EVs spread around the country would not dis-rupt the grid at the transmission level because excess capacity exists.

“The problem is if you put two electric ve-hicles on the same transformer on the same street feeding my house, your house and anoth-er neighbor’s house, then you’ve got a problem — just two,” Rahman said….

Rahman is conducting research to see how these other loads can be managed so that charging an EV “becomes invisible to the power company.” …

By Mike BarberThere’s little doubt that Virgin-

ia Tech is known more as a football school than king in NASCAR, mo-torsports might be ranking higher on that ladder, too.

The sport’s rising star crew chief, Darian Grubb, is a product of Virginia Tech’s engineering program.

But Grubb, who helped Denny Hamlin win Sunday at Kansas, is far from the only Hokie around the NASCAR circuit.

“A lot of engineers have an in-terest in racing,” said Kevin Kidd, a crew chief for Joe Gibbs Racing at the Nationwide Series level and another Virginia Tech graduate. “Racing’s a prevalent sport in the state of Virginia. It’s just natural that that connection exists.”

Kidd, a Tazewell native, went to Virginia Tech seeking a career

TORQUE NEWS • July 26, 2012

Virginia Tech goes TTXGP with home built

electric motorcycleBy Nicolas Zart

Going up against MotoCzysz, Brammo and Zero Motorcycles on the TTXGP is no small task. A team from the Virginia Tech College of Engi-neering will bring their home-built electric con-verted motorcycle to the North American TTXGP eGrandPrIx competition.

Technically SpeakingThe 2009 Honda CBR600RR was converted to

electricity and weighs in at 385 lbs. The bike, de-signed, built, and painted by students at the Joseph F. Ware Jr. Advanced Engineering Laboratory will be raced by Matt Kent, an engineer at Good-year Tire & Rubber Co. and professional racer….

As for the future of racing for the Virginia Tech College, it looks pretty clear. The college antici-pates more races and has already begun to work on a new bike for the 2013 season. The new bike will also a use newer version of the Honda CBR600RR....

By Nate RyanBasking in the afterglow of his second Sprint Cup

victory this season, Denny Hamlin naturally will be heading to Richmond, Va., early this week.

Denny Hamlin’s win at Kansas Speedway on Sunday gives him two victories entering one of his favorite tracks — Richmond International Raceway, where he has finished in the top five in seven of his 14 Cup starts….

The No. 11 had only one top-10 finish in the next five races, but Hamlin attributed some of that to the building of a relationship with crew chief Darian Grubb, who joined Joe Gibbs Racing in the offsea-son. Grubb adjusted how the team builds its Toyotas,

and it might be until mid-summer that Hamlin’s fleet fully reflects the crew chief ’s new philosophy….

Grubb, who guided Tony Stewart to five wins and the championship last year, said the communication between the Virginia natives improves each week.

“I know what the inflection in his voice means,” said Grubb, who grew up in Floyd and graduated from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree that has become a valuable tool for head mechanics in NASCAR. “We’ve made our cars better, we’ve made the engine program better, (and) the communication is getting better. All those things add up to a good possibility of a performance, but then the guys on the team did a great job.”

in racing.When David Wilson went to

Virginia Tech to study engineer-ing, he wasn’t eying a career in motor sports.

“I didn’t have racing in my sights professionally,” Wilson, now the senior vice president of Toyota Racing Development, said this week.

Wilson, a 1984 Virginia Tech graduate, has been with TRD since 1989. In his current role, he is responsible for its day-to-day operations.

Todd Meredith, who graduat-ed from Tech in 1992 with an ac-counting degree, is currently the vice president of operations at Joe Gibbs Racing….

On campus, Tech’s Ware Lab is home to a variety of engineering competition teams, including the school’s Formula SAE and Baja

SAE teams.On the Baja team, about 20

Virginia Tech students work to build and race an off-road vehicle designed to be rugged enough to handle roll-overs on dirt tracks and keep going, said Professor Dewey Spangler, the Ware Lab’s manager.

On the Formula team, the aim is to design a racer built for speed. Both programs compete with oth-er schools. The BAJA team recent-ly competed in Alabama, and the Formula team is preparing for an event at Michigan International Speedway.

Spangler isn’t surprised so many Tech graduates find their way into NASCAR garages con-sidering the proximity of the school to NASCAR’s North Caro-lina home and the fact that racing puts to use innovative engineer-ing in an exciting, competitive en-vironment.

“It’s the largest engineering school in the state of Virginia. We produce more graduates than all the other engineering schools in the state combined,” Spangler said. “And there’s a lot of engineer-ing that goes into NASCAR.”…

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in Inside NoVa, Lynch-burg News and Advance, WSLS, Charlottesville Daily Progress, Danville News, and Bristol Her-ald Courier.)

determining how efficient they could be to guide development,” said Kusano.

He and Gabler looked at collisions from the National Au-tomotive Sampling System/Crashworthiness Data System for 1993 to 2008. …

(Editor’s Note: A version of this article also appeared in: Sci-enceDaily, Newswise, United Press International, Product De-sign & Development, R&D Magazine, Individual.com, PHYS.org, BioPortfolio ConsumerAffairs.com, Electronic Component News, News-Medical.net, IEEE Spectrum.)

BRAKING - TORONTO TELEGRAM(Continued from page 21)

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 23

See DRIVERS, page 24

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (Blog) • May 31, 2012

Researchers rack up milestesting ‘quiet pavement’

By Shirley S. WangMANASSAS, Va. – On a recent

sunny spring day, two researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Insti-tute and State University, Edgar de Leon Izeppi and Billy Hobbs, began the meticulous and costly process of sound-testing pave-ment.

The state of Virginia, which

By Phil Rosenthal…Distracted driving is not new.

The head of the National Transpor-tation Safety Board has said it’s “been around since the Model T,” but it probably dates back to right after the invention of the wheel.

As the vehicles have grown more powerful and gained mo-mentum, so, too, has the demand for and supply of consumer tech-nology that – enticing and useful, though it might be – also threatens to distract from critical duties in the driver’s seat.

The result is a collision course

THE VIRGINIAN DAILY PILOT • March 14, 2012

Car technology on collision course with safety regulators

IEEE-USA TODAY’S ENGINEER • August 2012

San Diego Gets SmartBy Chris McManes

Twice this year San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has been recognized for its Smart Grid net-work. So it was fitting that it served as host utility for the 2012 IEEE

launched a quiet-pavement proj-ect last year, is collaborating with Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute to collect detailed sound measurements of all experimental quiet roadways.

The goal is to observe how the salt and sand used to treat roads in winter would affect the new pave-ment over two years…

RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH • March 9, 2012

Tire testing facility boasts breakthrough technology

By Tara BozickALTON – When specialized ma-

chines arrive at the National Tire Research Center at Virginia Inter-national Raceway, the region will offer a full suite of tire testing not available anywhere else, the cen-ter’s new leader said….

Executive Director Frank Della Pia aims for the center to be opera-tional by October after machines de-

veloped by MTS Systems Corp. are installed in the building undergoing renovation at VIR’s Virginia Motor-sports Technology Park.

Della Pia expects to employ 10 to 12 people by December, with ma-chines running tests in 2013. The $14 million center is the result of a partnership between General Mo-tors, Virginia Tech and the Vir-ginia Tobacco Commission….

GM is committed to the center for 20 years and will require all its tire suppliers to test at the facility, said Kenneth Ball, head of the Virgin-ia Tech mechanical engineer-ing department….

(Editor’s Note: A version of this story also appeared on WSLS, and the Roanoke Times ran the article.)

between commerce, consumers and government … phones are just the most obvious form of distraction….

A Virginia Tech Transporta-tion Institute research on com-

mercial drivers found the likeli-hood of danger increased more than 100 times when a driver is texting, emailing or accessing the Internet….

Power & Energy Society General Meeting….

IEEE-USA, which works closely with PES on congressional brief-ings and workforce initiatives, had its exhibit on hand. At least four members of the IEEE-USA Ener-gy Policy Committee attended the 22-26 July conference: Dr. Saifur Rahman, Stan Klein, Dick Wake-field and Dr. Massoud Amin, who coined the term “Smart Grid” in 1998.

Rahman, an IEEE Fellow and founding director of Virginia Tech’s Advanced Research In-stitute in Arlington, Va., thinks SDG&E’s Smart Grid work could

A couple of years ago, Hesham Rakha misjudged a yellow traffic light and entered an intersection just as the light turned red. A po-lice officer handed him a ticket.

“There are circumstances, as you approach a yellow light, where the decision is easy. If you are close to the intersection, you keep going. If you are far away, you stop. If you are almost at the intersection, you have to keep going because if you try to stop, you could cause a rear-end crash with the vehicle behind you and would be in the middle of the intersection anyway,” said Rakha, professor of civil and environmen-tal engineering at Virginia Tech.

He’s not trying to defend his ac-tion. Rakha, director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility (www.vtti.vt.edu/csm.php) at the Vir-ginia Tech Transportation Insti-tute (www.vtti.vt.edu), is describ-ing his research. Since 2005, his research group has been study-ing drivers’ behaviors as they ap-

BIO-MEDICINESeptember 11, 2012

Yellow lights mean drivers have to

make right choice – if they have time

See SMART, page 24

COSTSSTRUCTURAL ENGINEERING & DESIGN(Continued from page 19)

quality, and site layout. His modeling environment allows the “integrated vi-sualization of as-built and as-planned models,” he explained….

At the 2012 Construction Research Congress, Golparvar-Fard received the award for best journal paper from the American Society for Civil En-gineers’ Journal of Construction Engineering and Management for his work on D4AR. …

(Editor’s Note: This article also appeared in Laboratory Equipment.)

GIZMOCRAZED • November 15, 2012

Shake ’n Charge:We’ve seen the Shake-Weight become a huge infomer-

cial success, either as a gag gift or for actual exercise. But what if there was a more practical use for shaking some-thing repetitively? Well, a few scientists created a cell phone charger to solve such a predicament.

It was a team of researchers at Virginia Tech, led by Shashank Priya, that created an emergency charging device that is powered by the movement of your phone.

It uses what is called piezoelectric force to create this en-ergy, and this force can be caused by typing on the phone’s keyboard, speaking into the phone, and (more efficiently) shaking it like a Polaroid picture.

Their prototype device is made of a common piezoelec-tric material, zinc oxide. The pseudo-phone was then sub-jected to 100 decibels of sound waves and generated about 50 millivolts from the vibrations caused by the sound….

A new way to power your cellphone

24 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

PoliceOne.com • February 19, 2012

Easing communication with cognitive radio

The Physical Internet – a con-cept in which goods are handled, stored and transported in a shared network of manufacturers, re-tailers and the transportation in-dustry – would benefit the U.S. economy and significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, accord-ing to a new study by engineers at the University of Arkansas and Virginia Tech University.

If 25 percent of the U.S. supply chain operated with such an in-terconnected system, profits for participating firms would increase by $100 billion, carbon dioxide

In the wake of the season’s most devastating hurricane, a major metropolitan area reaches out to nearby smaller towns for law enforce-ment and firefighting assistance.

Communication between the city’s com-mand center and public safety professionals from these smaller areas is crucial, so the first thing those individuals providing mutual aid do when they reach the impacted area is pull out their smart phones and use an interface to search for public safety networks in range.

The scenario described above might take place much sooner than you might think.

A research team from Virginia Tech has de-livered a prototype device that uses an Android interface to search for nearby public safety net-works, provide push-to-talk capability and cre-

INNOVATIONS REPORT • October 17, 2012

Shared transportation system would increase profits, reduce carbon emissions

serve as a model for other power companies.

“As a U.S. utility, they prob-ably have the best penetration of solar photovoltaics (PV) and electric vehicles, which makes

Smart Grid more meaningful for them,” Rahman said. “In other words, they have more use for Smart Grid technology because of solar PV and electric vehicle pen-etration.

“They are facing the chal-lenges we anticipate happening in this part of the country, and responding to it by being more proactive and technologically ad-vanced.”…

proach yellow lights. Their goal is to determine signal times for intersections that are safer and still efficient.

If a driver decides to stop when instead of proceeding, rear-end crashes could occur. If a driver proceeds instead of stopping, collisions with side street traffic could occur. …

(An article about this work also appeared in: Innovations Report, ScienceDaily, PHYS.org, Medical News Today, mediLexi-con, and ConsumerAffairs.com)

emissions from road-based freight would decrease by at least 33 per-cent and consumers would pay less for goods….

“Our results indicate that the Physical Internet represents a vir-tuous cycle in which manufactur-ers, retailers and transportation providers all benefit in terms of in-creased profit margins and smaller environmental footprints,” said Russ Meller, professor of industri-al engineering and director of the Center for Excellence in Logistics and Distribution….

One major consequence of this

shift, Meller said, would be more predictable short-haul or relay shuttle runs, rather than the pre-vailing point-to-point or hub-and-spoke designs used today. These shorter runs would have many pos-itive consequences – higher profits for stakeholders, savings for con-sumers, better customer service and lower driver turnover rates.

“We predict that a relay net-work would get drivers home more often, which we believe would drastically reduce driver turnover,” said Kimberly Ellis, engineer-ing professor at Virginia Tech

and co-author of the study.(Editor’s Note: This article also

appeared in Material Handling & Logistics.)

ate a bridge between two networks.Charles W. Bostian, Virginia Tech alum-

ni distinguished professor emeritus in electri-cal and computer engineering, says the formal goal of the Office of Justice Programs’ National Institute of Justice-funded project was to solve the interoperability problem by provid-ing intelligent and affordable all-band all-mode radios that find and identify public safety net-works and configure themselves to interoperate with them.

“We use the Android as an input-output de-vice. It’s not functioning as a phone, but we use its internal computer, its speaker, its micro-phone and its touch screen display. It’s connect-ed to another device that is our radio, but there is no reason why the connection could not be

wireless and no reason the phone could not switch between being used as a smart phone and being part of the radio system,” Bostian says….

ROANOKE TIMES • February 16, 2012

Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge laboratory manager collaborating on wireless communication

Virginia Tech and UT-Battelle LLC will collabo-rate on wireless communi-cation and cognitive radio research at Tech, the univer-

sity announced this week.UT-Battelle, which manages

and operates Oak Ridge Na-tional Laboratory, will work with Wireless@Virginia Tech

to pursue joint programs in wireless communications and create software, algo-rithms and research pa-pers….

For the third consecutive year, a team of Vir-ginia Tech doctoral students of the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Sci-ence and Center for Human-Computer Inter-action has won first place in the 3D User Inter-faces contest.

This year’s competition required students to build a computer application that allowed two users to navigate through a complicated 3-D en-vironment without any direct verbal communica-tion. The Virginia Tech team, also the recipient of the “People’s Choice” award, devised a virtual search and rescue scenario that required a rescuer to enter a burning building to look for survivors as a commander monitored progress on an inter-active map of the structure….

THE VIRGINIA ENGINEERSeptember 11, 2012

Computer Science Students Win

International Contest

SMART - IEEE-TODAY’S ENGINEER - (Continued from page 23)

DRIVERSBIO-MEDICINE(Continued from page 23)

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 25

THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE • October 10, 2012

Mine safety projects pitched to foundationBy Ken Ward, Jr.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Mine safety and health experts from around the country gathered in Charleston Wednesday to begin talking about how $48 million in new research money could be best used to help protect the nation’s coal miners.

Three top researchers leading a new foundation put together by U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin

heard presentations from academics, labor lead-ers, industry lobbyists and safety advocates at the Embassy Suites about how the money should be spent.

Keith Heasley of West Virginia University, Mi-chael Karmis of Virginia Tech and David We-gman of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell were named to lead the effort by Goodwin and

Alpha Natural Resources….Heasley, Wegman and Karmis heard presenta-

tions about a variety of topics, ranging from im-proved mine rescue efforts to black lung disease, from miner training to ventilation of underground mines….

(Editor’s Note: This article ran on the Associated Press (AP) wire service.)

By the Associated PressCHARLESTON, W.Va. — Three

experts on mine and workplace safety and health were named today to re-search ways to make U.S. coal mines safer as part of Alpha Natural Re-sources’ settlement with the federal government following the nation’s worst mine disaster in 40 years.

The independent panel selected by Alpha and approved by the U.S. attor-

Virginia Tech professor named to U.S. mine safety panelRICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH • May 14, 2012

ney’s office for West Virginia’s south-ern district includes mining engineer-ing professors Michael Karmis of Virginia Tech and Keith Heasley of West Virginia University, and Dr. Da-vid Wegman, a professor emeritus of work environment at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

The panel will operate as the non-profit Alpha Foundation for the Im-provement of Mine Safety and Health

Inc. It will spearhead mine safety and health research and development without involvement from Alpha or the U.S. attorney’s office….

Karmis’ work at Virginia Tech has included several projects in health and safety, communications and tracking systems….

Funding priorities will be set start-ing this summer. Karmis said other industry experts will be among those brought in for discussions. After care-ful development of ideas, projects would be solicited in the academic and nonprofit fields, and proposals received could be sent to outside experts for their review.

“We don’t want to be criticized that we’re funding research that someone else is (doing),” Karmis said. “We don’t want to duplicate. We want really to charter some new waters. We want to encourage proposals looking forward

to solving real problems.”…(Editor’s Note: This article also ap-

peared in: TheStreet.com, Ventura Coun-ty Star, Associated Press, WTAP-TV, The Republic, Daily Journal, Times Union, WSLS-TV, Aiken Standard, Product Design & Development, WMC-TV, WJAC-TV, Lexington Herald-Leader, WKRN-TV, WJTV-TV, WCBD-TV, WSAV-TV, WTOV-TV, WSLS-TV, the Daily Press, WVNS-TV, WLEX-TV, Charleston Daily Mail, WVVA-TV, Charleston Gazette, WCHS-TV, KFVS-TV, WDTV-TV, WSAZ-TV, WSLS-TV, WJBF-TV, WTTG-TV. WHLT-TV, WVNS-TV, WWBT-TV, Staten Island Advance, Herald-Dispatch, WXIX-TV, WAVE-TV, The Republic, WRIC-TV, WTVF-TV, WSMV-TV, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Saturday Ga-zette Mail, WTOV-TV, Platts, WDRB-TV, Sunday Gazette-Mail, and R&D Magazine.)

COAL AGE • September 14, 2012

Karmis receives awardfrom mining professors’ society

Michael Karmis, the Stonie Barker Chair of Mining and Minerals En-gineering at Virginia Tech, has received the first Gunter Fettweis Award from the international Society of Mining Professors. This award recogniz-es active SOMP members for accomplishments in education, research, and professional service….

By Betsy IsaacsonCrashing at friend’s houses, bless-

ing our gas stoves and plugging into trees, New Yorkers are all wondering – why does it take the power so long to go back on?

Con Edison’s said it could take as long as four days to restore power in Manhattan, and as much as a week in the outer boroughs. For many of us, desperately trying to preserve the flickering life of a laptop or cell-phone battery, that seems too long to ponder.

Here’s why it will take that long, whether we like it or not.

HUFFINGTON POST • October 31, 2012

Hurricane Sandy power outages:Why it takes Con Edison days to get the lights back on

According to Virginia Tech pro-fessor and infrastructure expert Saifur Rahman, an electrical grid like New York’s has several key parts, each of which are essential to getting electricity to homes. First, there’s the generator – a power plant that gen-erates electricity for large swaths of the city. That power is then pushed, at very high voltage, across transmis-sion lines – thick bundles of metal ca-bles that handle enormous amounts of juice. Power from transmission lines is then sent into transformers, machines that bring down the volt-age of the electricity, before sending

it into small distribution lines, which transport that electricity into our homes.

All of these pieces are uniquely vulnerable. “Power lines are under-ground in cable trenches, and if they get flooded, you have short circuit possibilities,” says Rahman. Small or backup power generators, he con-tinues, are often in basements which flood and short-circuit the generators when a storm hits, and “substations that contain transformers are open air and they’re subject to storm dam-age.” …

Unfortunately, electrical grids

don’t work like the web: “On the in-ternet,” says Rahman, “there is a mesh of networks which has multiple alter-nate paths to get your data from point A to point B in various ways. Electri-cal power systems are not built that way for many reasons, one is cost, so in many cases you have one primary route and maybe a secondary route and that’s it.” If the primary distribu-tion route for electricity to a cluster of homes is down, Rahman says, the sec-ondary route can get overwhelmed very easily, “and sometimes, in the case of New York, you may have lost the primary and the secondary.”…

26 Headlines VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

NORWOOD, Mass. (BUSINESS WIRE) – Analog Devices, Inc. (NAS-DAQ: ADI) today named four strate-gic advocates to the Analog Devices University Program. Strategic Advo-cates serve as distinguished advisors who provide insight and guidance to the company’s ongoing mission to promote and support hands-on, active learning at engineering uni-versities throughout the world….(including)

• Kathleen Meehan, associate professor, Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-ing, Virginia Tech ...

By Brian Fuller Quietly, while we worry about the

state of engineering education, the university engineering curriculum is being disrupted before our very eyes.

It began about five years ago when we saw the beginnings of an approach to learning that’s now ramping pretty quickly. In 2007, the Mobile Studio project came onto the scene. In short it was a lab-in-a-box approach that put scope capa-bilities in the hands of engineering students. No need to book lab time, plus you can do your experiments in your dorm room or at Starbucks. …

Lab in a boxThe $99 Digilent Analog Discov-

ery Design Kit and the more ad-vanced $199 Digilent Analog Ex-

EE TIMES • May 2, 2012

Disruption in the engineering classroom

CITYBIZLIST (Boston, Mass.) • June 26, 2012

Analog Devices names university program strategic advocates

By Kathleen MeehanBuild the lab and they will come

– and stand in line. Put the lab online and students can carry out experiments anywhere. That’s the basic premise behind the “Lab-in-a-box” model Virginia Tech de-veloped a few years ago – out of necessity.

Virginia Tech’s department of electrical and computer engineering currently has about 625 undergrad engineering majors enrolled in beginning circuits and electronics classes, all competing for just 48 lab seats. With three hours of lab per week, that would be 39 lab sections to schedule. Im-possible.

Instead, we built a better mouse-trap, then put it online. Now, many

plorer Design Kit allow students to build and test a wide range of an-alog and digital circuits using their own PC without the need for any other equipment.

“We did it because students com-ing in had never touched a resis-tor before. And the first time they were was second semester of their sophomore year. They were unsure of electrical engineering was,” said Kathleen Meehan, associate pro-fessor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-neering at Virginia Tech.

In an interview earlier this year, she, Clint Cole, Digilent’s presi-dent and founder, and Dave Babicz, ADI’s director of global alliances, laid out the financial value propo-sition: A lab bench costs $5,000-

$10,000 to replace; to establish a classroom is at least $100,000 and another $100,000 to man the labs.

“And that wasn’t in the cards giv-en the budget cuts we were endur-

ing,” Meehan said. “So doing ex-periments outside the classroom was the only way to establish a circuits lab and get them engaged in the process earlier.”…

EE TIMES • September 10, 2012

Why engineering studentsneed a virtual lab bench

more engineering students get to experience hands-on learning wherever they are, which is espe-cially important today. Thanks to recent enhancements, our vir-tual lab bench keeps getting better while the cost per student is down to the price of a textbook. …

Our students love Lab-in-a-box. The kit allows them to design, build and test various DC and AC circuits at home. Students build self-confidence as they learn to build a circuit with “real” physical components instead of “symbolic” parts. …

(Kathleen Meehan is asso-ciate professor of electrical and computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. She can be reached at kameehan@vt.edu.)

“Professors Connor, Meehan, Robertson and Bowman are out-standing educators teaching at some of the best engineering schools in the country. They are passionate about preparing the next generation of en-gineers to succeed in the workforce and possess a keen, first-hand un-derstanding of the needs of today’s engineering students,” said Samuel Fuller, chief technology officer, Ana-log Devices. …

(Editor’s Note: This article also ap-peared in Business Wire, XML-Jour-nal, Individual online, and Analog Devices.)

LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER • June 14, 2012

Walz to be dean of UK’s college of engineeringJohn Y. Walz, a professor and head of the chemical engineering

department at Virginia Tech, has been named the 10th dean of the University of Kentucky College of Engineering. He will begin Sept. 1.

Walz will replace Thomas W. Lester, who is stepping down from the posi-tion he has held since 1990. ….

CE NEWS • December 4, 2012

Virginia Tech engineer defines globalization rubrick for constructionthat conducts experiments and develops simula-tions that examine, model and improve systemic change in engineering networks of industrial and societal importance. One of the key areas of re-search, his Civil Engineering Network Dynam-ics Lab (www.cend.cee.vt.edu/index.shtml), in-vestigates the impact of globalization dynamics on design and construction project performance.

Taylor has identified two key advancements for companies to become and stay globally competi-tive: a Global Self-Assessment Tool, or G-SAT, and the hiring of a person to span the cultural bound-aries.

The Construction Industry Institute, the Na-tional Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are funding his work in this area….

BLACKSBURG, VA. — Imagine going in for a performance evaluation and the only object in the room is a report saying your work is not up to par. No explanations are provided, and no one is avail-able to you to ask how to improve your efforts. This feeling of frustration is one many construc-tion companies face in their efforts to go global.

Looking into the abyss of globalization for the design and construction industry and the poten-tial difficulties of cross-cultural partnerships is John E. Taylor, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech.

Taylor has created a unique lab at Virginia Tech

At Virginia Tech’s Robotics Lab, Dr. Dennis Hong’s team contin-ues work on a new kind of robot. It’s capable of doing things which no robot has done before. Robbie Harris has the story. ...

NPR (RADIO) • November 20, 2012

Virginia TechRobotics Lab

VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING Headlines 27

Stop using email for everythingHow some companies have found new ways to communicate and collaborate

By Joel MathisEmail simply doesn’t offer execu-

tives the same opportunity to direct-ly monitor and guide Seva stores, he said.

The company now uses email al-most exclusively to remind customers that it’s time for a new appointment.

And as a side benefit: Employees don’t get distracted checking email

MACWORLD UK • July 23, 2012WASHINGTON POSTCAPITAL BUSINESSOctober 2, 2012

See FIREWORKS, page 28

when they should be attending other tasks.

Social media to the rescueWhile some companies are build-

ing their own tools, others are discov-ering new off-the-shelf technologies for managing their internal commu-nications….

Aditya Johri, an assistant profes-sor at Virginia Tech, studies compa-

nies using alternatives to email. In the end, he thinks companies will be slow to replace it altogether. Email is still the best way to document a compa-ny’s internal communications — an important feature for companies fac-ing legal liability issues.

“I won’t say companies are leaving email,” he said, “but they are chang-ing their dependency on email.”…

L-3, Virginia Tech open cybersecurity

centerBy Marjorie Censer

Defense contractor L-3 Com-munications and Virginia Tech are set to formally open a cybersecu-rity research center in Arlington on Friday.

The center, located in Virginia Tech’s Ballston research center, is meant to give L-3 employees ac-cess to the university’s labs and equipment and Virginia Tech’s fac-ulty and students a chance to col-laborate with L-3 on cybersecurity research….

Charles Clancy, who heads up Virginia Tech’s Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Se-curity and Technology, said the collaboration would give students and faculty more real-world expe-rience.

“Cybersecurity in particular is an area where the needs are pretty significant,” he said. “By having [the] university and a company working together so closely, we can significantly shorten the lead time between innovation and so-lution.”…

MSNBC.com • July 3, 2012

Enjoy setting off fireworks,but be sure to protect those eyes

Studies show the blasts themselves don’t injure peepers, it’s the projectilesBy Stephanie Pappas

This Independence Day, protect your eyes. More than 2,000 people need medical attention each year for eye in-juries caused by fireworks, and new research finds it’s the projectiles themselves, rather than the blast, that cause most of those injuries.

In the new study, researchers used eyes from cadavers to find out, through high-speed video and pressure sensors, what happens when the human eye is subjected to the ex-plosive power of fireworks. They found that the pressures involved aren’t enough to injure the eye on their own, as previously had been believed.

That leaves the actual projectiles hitting the eye as the main source for the 2,100 or so eye injuries caused by fire-works in the United States each year. Most of these happen during Fourth of July celebrations.

“For the first time, we’ve been able to prove through this research that it’s not the blast or explosion that is causing the injuries but it’s some sort of projectile,” study research-er Stefan Duma, a biomedical engineer at Virginia Tech, told LiveScience.

In any explosion, the first danger comes from the shock wave, which can cause severe internal injuries due to sud-

New combinations of medical imaging tech-nologies hold promise for improved early dis-ease screening, cancer staging, therapeutic as-sessment, and other aspects of personalized medicine, according to Ge Wang, director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Biomedical Imag-ing, in a recent paper that appeared in the ref-ereed journal PLoS One.

The integration of multiple major tomo-graphic scanners into a single framework “is a new way of thinking in the biomedical imaging world” and is evolving into a “grand fusion” of many imaging modalities known as “omni-to-mography,” explained Wang, the lead author of the article.

Wang has a history of “firsts” in the imag-ing world, including the first paper on spiral multi-slice/cone-beam CT in 1991, on biolumi-nescence tomography in 2004, and on interior tomography in 2007.

HealthCanal.com • November 26, 2012

Scanning innovation can improve personalized medicine“The holy grail of biomedical imaging is an

integrated system capable of producing tomo-graphic, simultaneous, dynamic observations of highly complex biological phenomena in vivo,” Wang said….

The potential clinical applications for om-ni-tomography may improve personalized medicine. “As an example enabled by interior tomography, an interior CT-MRI scanner can target the fast-beating heart for registration of functions and structures, delivery of drugs or stem cells, and guidance of complicated proce-dures such as heart valve replacement,” Wang said.

Omni-tomography as a unified technology “also gives leverage to a greatly reduced radia-tion dose when MRI-aided interior CT recon-struction is implemented,” Wang asserted. On the other hand, “it can generate higher-resolu-tion details in MRI images.”

The reduction in radiation dosage is a hot topic in the CT field. Medical X-rays, in use for more than 100 years, only accounted for about 10 percent of the total American radiation exposure in the late 1980s. The subsequent growth of the use of various medical x-ray im-aging methods now accounts for approximately half of the total radiation exposure of the U.S. population….

the pilot who played the role of Orville Wright in the December 3, 2003, reenactment, on the centennial, of the first flight of the Wright Flyer. That, Kochersberger noted in an email, was the first morphing wing design to fly.

WINGSAOPA PILOT(Continued from page 18)

News Office,College of EngineeringVirginia TechBlacksburg, VA 24061

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDBlacksburg VA

24060Permit No. 28

By Steve DaleHere’s what can happen if you

leave your window open a crack, your pet can fall out. Really, it hap-pens. It happened to Brittney Kirk in Boston.

Her cat tumbled out the window and fell 19 stories.

She landed on a patch of grass, and somehow incurred only mi-nor injuries. Dazed and confused the cat was picked up, and identi-fied because she is microchipped (thank goodness for microchips).

In a 1987 study of 132 cats brought to a New York City emer-gency veterinary clinic after falls from high-rise buildings, 90% of treated cats survived and only 37% needed emergency treatment to keep them alive. One that fell 32 stories onto concrete suffered only a chipped tooth and a collapsed lung and was released after 48 hours….

Cats are essentially arboreal an-imals: when they’re not living in homes or in urban alleys, they tend to live in trees….

“Being able to survive falls is a critical thing for animals that live in trees, and cats are one of them,” says Dr. Jake Socha, a biomecha-

The engineering students at Virginia Tech were chosen as the most philanthropic in the country for 2012 as well op-erating the nation’s best Student Engineers’ Council, accord-ing to the results of the recent annual competition hosted by the National Association of Engineering Student Councils (NAESC) at Purdue University.

Among the various accolades, Virginia Tech Student En-gineers’ Council was cited for its allocation of over $100,000

Student Engineers’ Council Wins Bestin Nation, Most Philanthropic for 2012

THE VIRGINIA ENGINEER • June 12, 2012

to the University’s College of Engineering in the past year, as well as more than $1 million in the past ten years.

This money was used for various engineering projects in-cluding: partially funding more than 30 engineering orga-nizations such as the internationally award winning hybrid electric vehicle team; the outdoor-terrain motorsport team; and the Baja and Formula Society of Automotive Engineers’ teams….

den changes in pressure. It had been suggested that fireworks can create shock waves strong enough to inter-nally injure the eye, Duma and col-leagues wrote in the July 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Asso-ciation.

The study is part of a larger Depart-ment of Defense effort to examine the injuries associated with explosions

such as those from improved explo-sive devices (IEDs). Before building up to those sorts of large explosions, though, Duma and his colleagues started with small charges so that they can look at how damage changes as explosions grow in size….

(Editor’s Note: A version of this article ran on the Reuters News Ser-vice, and appeared on WHTC-AM,

WebMD, Thomson Reuters – India online, L.A. Times, ABC News Ra-dio, ABC News, WEMP-FM, KBIO-AM, KABC-AM, International Busi-ness Times (Hong Kong), Morning Call, BioPortfolio, WLYH-TV, KGO-AM, KSFO-AM, 100wapi.com, The Daily Press, Chicago Tribune, Carriage Towne News, Akron News, The Virgin-ia Engineer, and WHP-TV.)

Cats don’t always land on their feet

nist at Virginia Tech university. “The domestic cat still contains whatever suite of adaptations they have that have enable cats to be good up in trees.”…

ILLINOIS OUTDOORS, INC. • March 28, 2012

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) – Researchers at Virginia Tech are hoping a new laboratory will help develop advanced technology for unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles.

The Blacksburg school recently celebrated the opening of the Kentland Experimental Aerial Systems Laboratory. It is being shared by the Col-lege of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering.

The 2,000-square-foot lab will be used by students and faculty members to conduct research that will examine everything from the spread of airborne plant pathogens using unmanned aerial vehicles to the creation of more high-tech submarines….

WWBT-TV (Richmond, Va.) • September 27, 2012

Va. Tech research lab aims for the sky and sea

FIREWORKS - MSNBC - (Continued from page 27)