Rensselaer School of Engineering Fall '10 News Magazine

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RENSSELAER ENG INEER ING

2010

Going Back to Basics…and Out to the Cutting Edge: Chemical and Biological Engineering

175 Years of Civil Engineering

Design Lab Students Push Wind Turbine Technology Forward


2010

CONTENTS

Letter from the Dean :: pg 3 (Cover) Going Back to Basics…and Out to the Cutting Edge: Chemical and Biological Engineering :: pg 4

175 Years of Civil Engineering :: pg 12

Design Lab Students Push Wind Turbine Technology Forward :: pg 18

News Briefs :: pg 22

News Briefs

School of EngineeringRensselaer Polytechnic Institute110 8th StreetTroy, NY 12180-3590 USA(518) 276-6203eng.rpi.edu

David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D., P.E., F. ASCEDean of Engineering

Opinions expressed in these pages do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the policies of the Institute.

©2010 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

“ Our engineering graduates are among the most highly recruited in the

country and are recognized as being leadership bound. Our faculty and

students are working together in our labs and research centers to solve

some of the most pressing challenges our nation faces today. Advances in

materials, energy, computational modeling, bioengineering, transportation,

water, and disaster resiliency are just some of the areas in which our

students and faculty are making significant contributions.”

David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCEDean of Engineering

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Letter from the Dean

This is a tremendously exciting time for Engineering at Rensselaer. This Fall, we welcomed more than 650 first-year engineering students to campus and one of the largest and most highly qualified groups of new graduate students in our School’s history. Selected from increasingly large and talented pools of applicants, the quality of our newest engineering students is proof-positive of the high value placed on an engineering degree from Rensselaer.

Fall 2010 also marks an historic occasion at the Institute, the 175th anni-versary of the awarding of the first civil engineering degree in the United States. The history of civil engineering at Rensselaer is simply extraordinary. We can count iconic civil engineers and pioneers such as Washington Roe-bling (Class of 1857, engineer of Brooklyn Bridge), George Ferris (Class of 1881, inventor of the Ferris wheel), Ralph Peck (Class of 1934, considered by many to be the founder of the field of soil mechanics) and Admiral Lewis B. Combs (Class of 1916, co-founder of the U.S. Navy Seabees) among our many outstanding civil engineering graduates—and our future is just as impressive. This year we welcomed three new faculty in the Depart-ment of Civil and Environmental Engineering: incoming Department Head Dr. Chris Letchford, an internationally recognized expert in wind engineer-ing; Dr. Philippe Baveye, a renowned environmental engineer with expertise in hydrologic and soil sciences, appointed to the Kodak Chair in Environ-mental Engineering; and Dr. Cara Wang, an Assistant Professor working in the area of transportation systems.

These are exciting times both for the School of Engineering and for the Institute, despite the significant fiscal challenges facing higher education today. As has always been the case, Rensselaer stands firmly committed to ensuring an exceptional educational environment, hiring and retaining a world-class faculty, and building an infrastructure befitting a world-class research university. If you have been on campus in the last couple of years, you have witnessed the physical transformation that has taken place at Rensselaer—a re-envisioned campus community for the next century.

The next chapter at Rensselaer promises to be a bright one and the entire campus leadership is committed to placing Rensselaer among an elite cadre of national research universities. We are well on our way, but like all great universities, we must rely on the generous support of our alumni and friends to realize our ambitious goals. No one realizes the value of the Rensselaer engineering degree more than our loyal and dedicated alumni. I call on all of our alumni to seek ways to partner with the School of Engi-neering and help ensure we can provide a world-class education to genera-tions of engineering students to come.

Thank you for your continued support for Engineering at Rensselaer.

David Rosowsky, Dean of Engineering

David V. Rosowsky, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE Dean of Engineering

News Briefs

“ This fall we celebrate 175 years

of civil engineering at Rensselaer,

welcome 12 new faculty and

one of the largest and best

qualified groups of new

students in our history.”

4 | Rensselaer Engineering

Going Back to Basics…and Out to the Cutting EdgeHere and there, you’ll find an engineer focusing on one very specific, fundamental phenomenon that could

change the face of many fields. It’s especially true in chemical and biological engineering—

and even more so at Rensselaer.

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From microbial communities to

misfolding prions, thin films to

complex fluids, the researchers

in Rensselaer’s Department

of Chemical and Biological

Engineering routinely zero in on

watershed phenomena. This is just

as true of the newer professors—

even graduate students—as it is

of senior faculty. Here is just a

sampling of what’s happening now.

Going Back to Basics…and Out to the Cutting Edge


When Peptides Cross Barriers

Natural peptides have their limitations. The building blocks of proteins don’t travel well across biological borders: the skin, for instance, or the blood-brain barrier.

If they did, vaccines would be much easier to deliver, and the lives of people with schizophrenia much better.

That’s why Assistant Professor Pankaj Karande is making synthetic peptides. In one project, he researches pathogenic peptides that could help transport vaccines across the skin barrier. “The peptides on the outer wall of pathogens have distinct signature patterns,” explained the assistant professor, whose work as a graduate assistant—developing an insulin skin patch for diabetics—led him to this effort. “We are looking to synthesize a peptide with an opening for attaching vaccines. Then, if we place this peptide on the skin, it triggers a response in the immune cells just beneath the surface.”

Other synthetic peptides, meanwhile, could help deliver drugs where few drugs have gone before. “For many neurodegenerative diseases, current drugs do not produce good outcomes because they don’t make it into the brain,” Karande said. “Natural amino acids cannot cross the blood-brain barrier. With the right amino acids, these synthetic peptides could pass the barrier and deliver the drugs—or serve as pharmaceuticals themselves.”

People with skin cancer have a vested interest in another aspect of Karande’s research: the design of personalized medicines for melanoma. If his vision comes to pass, doctors would take a melanoma biopsy from a patient and send it to a lab for high-throughput drug screening. From this, the lab would identify the precise drug formulation for fighting the cancer in that particular patient.

Keeping Proteins Apart

Protein aggregation can cause devastating diseases: mad cow, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, and Alzheimer’s, among others. If researchers knew how aggregation worked, they might be able to cure the results.

That explains Assistant Professor Peter Tessier’s research. Tessier is investigating the fundamentals of aggregation and misfolding to solve a whole range of thorny problems in medicine, from Alzheimer’s to infections that cross species. Ultimately, his work in engineering proteins that resist aggregation could generate breakthroughs in treating such diseases.

Many of the problems come to us courtesy of prions—highly infectious protein particles made famous by mad cow disease. While some prions play a positive role, subtle differences in the structure of others enable them to carry virulent infections. By observing natural prions in yeast, Tessier and his lab are close to understanding their most basic mechanics, including how they assemble and cross species barriers.

On another front, Tessier examines the dynamics that make some aggregations toxic and others harmless. “Sometimes cells promote aggregation as a storage mechanism for important hormones, which are released when needed,” he observed. “The challenge is to encourage toxic aggregations to rearrange into non-toxic forms.”

In this context, his team has studied the effects of resveratrol, an antioxidant in red wine that may have beneficial properties for humans but (judging from the current research) only at extremely high doses. They are close to developing what Tessier calls “exciting alternative molecules that do what resveratrol does but would be far more attractive as therapeutic candidates.”

Tessier’s latest project seeks to explain how the behavior of antibodies may be better controlled and used for treating human disease. He will investigate how antibody self-association and behavior can be modulated systematically by exposing loops on the antibody surface to various solvents.

karande

tessier

Karande, Tessier, and Collins with their respective research teams

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Planned Communities, Bacteria-Style

No microbe is an island.

“More complex processes need more than one organism to make them work,” said Assistant Professor Cynthia Collins. “As a research community, we’re very good at culturing microbes individually, but not at engineering them to coexist.”

Collins aims to change that with her research into microbial communities. Her lab is engineering bacteria to communicate more effectively with one another (and filter their communication) on such issues as their population density.

“We want to create a division of labor in a biochemical framework to fine-tune the functions of a community of bacteria for a specific application,” Collins explained. To that end, she is trying to add control mechanisms to her microbial communities. “We have to ask the question ‘What’s the best way to generate the response we want?’”

The Collins’ group is also studying the community behavior of bacteria to reduce the potential for infections and biofouling. As part of that effort, a Collins experiment (in collaboration with Professors Joel Plawsky and Jonathan Dordick) took flight on the NASA space shuttle this past May. Bacteria may be more virulent in a low-shear environment, which exists both in space and in the human body; to understand the dynamics behind this, the experiment is quantifying the structure and properties of ground- vs. space-based biofilms.

Those applications are legion. By using engineered communities in chemical processes, engineers might be able to control hospital-acquired infections, accelerate the production of biofuels, improve wastewater treatment, and do many other things besides.

collins

Recent Awards and Distinctions in Chemical and Biological Engineering

Junior faculty:Cynthia Collins• The National Academies Keck Future Initiative Seed Award in

Synthetic Biology to develop a novel platform for engineering synthetic interkingdom communication

• Micro-2 experiment led by Collins in orbit on NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis, with the goal of studying bacterial and biofilm growth in microgravity

Pankaj Karande• 2010 Award from the Goldhirsh Foundation for Cancer

Research to study peptide mediated drug transport across the blood-brain barrier for treatment of tumors

• 2010 Award from Alzheimer’s Association to study tight junction binding peptides for drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier

Peter M. Tessier• 2010 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to

study and control aggregation and phase behavior of proteins via loop engineering

• 2010 PEW Scholar in Biomedical Sciences by PEW Charitable Trust for his research in misfolding and aggregation of proteins

• 2008 Award from Alzheimer’s Association to study protein aggregation and associated diseases

Patrick T. Underhill• 2010 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to

perform multiscale modeling of collective behavior of bacteria

Senior faculty:Ravi Kane • 2009 ACS Young Investigator Award from the Biotechnology

Division for his research on nanobiotechnology• 2008 AIChE Young Nano Investigator Award for his work in

the area of nanobiotechnology (specifically for the design of polyvalent nanoscale therapeutics)

Georges Belfort• Honored as one of the top 100 Modern-era Chemical

Engineers by AIChE

Jonathan Dordick and Ravi Kane• 2009 Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Creative Research Award

B. Wayne Bequette, Joel Plawsky, and Howard Littman• Elected Fellows of AIChE


Young Researchers Explore Separation

As piano has its Van Cliburn medals and poetry its Yale Younger Poets prize, so biotechnology has its Peterson Award, given each year by the Biotechnology Division of the American Chemical Society to graduate students with the single best presentations in the United States.

Four of the past nine poster winners have come from one lab: that of Steven Cramer, Rensselaer’s William Weightman Walker Professor of Polymer Engineering.

His last two winners—Melissa Holstein in 2009 and Christopher Morrison in 2007—have already made major contributions to the lab’s ongoing work in novel bioseparations. The stakes are extremely high: more efficient separation techniques can dramatically reduce the cost and delivery time of high-purity pharmaceuticals to treat disease.

Holstein and Morrison approach the overall objective from two different but complementary angles. Holstein’s fundamental research into multimodal chromatography has shed new light on the binding mechanisms between proteins and ligands; the multiple options for binding the two (hence the term multimodal) enable the binding process to proceed more efficiently. Bioengineers will use Holstein’s findings to optimize the design of the ligands to, in turn, optimize their binding efficiency, a key to the separation process.

Morrison, in his research, has used high-throughput screening to identify and evaluate the most effective selective displacers for protein purification in ion exchange systems. These displacers can be used to bind onto either the protein or the impurities attached to the protein, thus pulling one away from the other and rendering the protein purer. “This proof of concept study demonstrates selective displacement as a viable and effective separation technique which has the ability to dramatically increase the selectivity of ion exchange systems,” Morrison wrote in his award-winning poster.

cramer

holsteinm

orrison

Professor Cramer and his research team

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Transfer Across Industries

If you had to choose the poster child for the “one idea, many applications,” you could not do better than Joel Plawsky.

Plawsky studies essentially one phenomenon—transport processes, particularly in thin films—but the ripple effects may one day reach all manner of fields: microelectronics, biofilms, LEDs, and sensors, to name a few.

Since he began his research, his lab has developed new nanostructured thin films, new ideas about dielectric breakdown in semiconductors, new methods for examining heat transfer, and a new model to predict the stability of evaporating thin films.

All this and more in a well-established field. “Thin film research for heat transfer had already made great strides,” Plawsky said, “but we are just now entering into an age where we have control of surfaces on the nanoscale. That will allow us to tailor those surfaces and probe the fundamental relationships between surface science, interfacial phenomena, and engineering.”

Plawsky recently placed an experiment aboard the international space station. A constrained vapor bubble (CVB) in a miniature wickless heat pipe is enabling Plawsky to study those “fundamental relationships” occurring at the three-phase (solid, liquid, gas) contact line in microgravity.

“We will continue to push the fundamental limits of these phenomena,” Plawsky said. “Biological applications beckon, but there are still many physical and chemical applications that would be very useful. That’s part of the appeal of my work: each new potential application inspires me to ask ‘why not?’ and just try it.”

plawsky

Professor Cramer and his research team

The RPI/NASA CVB team controlling operations of the CVB from NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Back Row (l-r) Ron Sicker, Arya Chatterjee, David Chao. Front Row (l-r) Mike Johansson, Joel Plawsky, Brian Motil.

NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer installing the CVB Module (in his hand) on the LMM (background).


The Solids in Fluids

Patrick Underhill often zigs when others zag. He investigates phe-nomena at all levels—especially the broad area between micro and macro. Put this kind of thinking at the service of fluid dynamics, and you can generate some serious advances.

Complex fluids are Underhill’s stock in trade: he studies the microstructures within these fluids to understand their macroscop-ic effects. And while many colleagues in complex fluids focus on paints and polymers and such, Underhill focuses more on biologi-cal systems.

Sometimes, though, that’s not where he starts. In his work on biopolymers, Underhill uses models of synthetic polymers (like polystyrene) to understand DNA—the exact reverse of the process many researchers employ. “We can use this approach to understand how to manipulate biopolymers using microfluidic devices,” he said. “For instance, if we could design devices to conduct rapid separations of DNA, it would enhance the precision and effectiveness of diagnostic tests.” His use of multiscale modeling complements the work of others at the macro and micro scales.

Applications for a second avenue of Underhill’s research—swimming microorganisms—cross the spectrum from labs-on-a-chip to nanorobots. Microbes have such small mass that they cannot use inertia (as humans do) to propel themselves in fluids. And yet some-how, in high concentrations, they find a way to interact in vigorous swarming patterns. How do these swarming communities use fluid dynamics to coordinate their behavior, and what effects might they have on humankind?

The answers to the second question are wide-ranging indeed. Swarming microbes might, for instance, accelerate the spread of infection. Understanding this behavior will help researchers interrupt it or use it for an alternative, positive purpose. When placed on a chip, the microbes might be able to mix or pump fluids where building nanoequipment to do so is extremely difficult. Their activity could serve as a model for engineering nanoro-bots. There may even be a climate change dimension: by swarming in nature, organisms may have a profound effect on the way ocean currents move.

Here, too, multiscale is key. “Researchers have looked at similar group dynamics in birds and locusts,” Underhill said. “How do they communicate to organize the entire group? We can see that a large number of single organisms can generate complicated—and substantial—results.”

How do swarming communities of microorganisms use fluid dynamics to coordinate their behavior, and what effects might they have on humankind?

underhill

Left, a simplified model of an organism in the center, with lines

representing the flow generated by the organism as it swims.

Right, results of a simulation with a large number of organisms

interacting with one another. The swirling flow illustrates how

organisms work together as a group, which has important

implications for how the group behaves.

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An Aversion to Water

Water droplets bead up on the surface of a lotus leaf or nonstick skillet. Hydrophobicity of such macroscale surfaces can be mea-sured via the angle of contact between the surface and the droplet. The more hydrophobic the surface, the more the water droplet beads up and the larger the angle.

Far more difficult is the measurement of hydrophobicity when the surface is nanoscopic.

“At the nanoscale, we can’t really put a water droplet on a protein surface or on a nanopar-ticle—which can be as small as one-billionth of a meter in length—and measure contact angles,” said Shekhar Garde, the Elaine S. and Jack S. Parker Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, who oversaw the project.

Fortunately, graduate students in the Garde lab, Sumanth Jamadagni and Rahul Godawat, have discovered a way to make the measure-ment through an understanding of water at the molecular scale. The result could make a huge impact on a wide range of applications: the design of nanoscale patterns on surfaces, the design of drugs to treat diseases, the understanding of how proteins talk to each other in complex biomolecular networks.

With the measurement quandary before them, Jamadagni and Godawat performed molecular simulations of water next to nano-scale interfaces of various chemistries, focusing specifically on the behavior of water at the interfaces. The findings turned up a sur-prise: an excellent correlation between the surface’s hydrophobicity and fluctuations in the density of the adjacent water.

This correlation—and the method it produced—could lead to a more robust approach for characterizing the hydrophobicity of proteins, biomolecules, and other complex and het-erogeneous surfaces. Those characterizations, in turn, may generate a deeper understand-ing of protein interaction and binding, two keys to pharmaceutical design.

This and related research projects were featured on the covers of two top ACS journals, Langmuir and Journal of Physical Chemistry. The theoretical aspects also appeared in two very prestigious journals: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Physical Review Letters. Jamadagni received a number of awards, including the Karen and Lester Gerhardt Best Ph.D. thesis prize at Rensselaer.

garde

Researchers at Rensselaer have discovered a new, more

precise method for measuring the hydrophobicity of nano-

scale interfaces, which could have important applications

for the future of drug discovery. Left, a snapshot from a

molecular dynamics simulation shows a protein (center)

embedded in water.

jamadagni

godawat


Since the early 19th century, the Department of Civil

and Environmental Engineering has built a storied past

with innovations that improved humankind’s lot. Now,

as the department turns 175, faculty members are

confronting the most urgent problems of the age—from

climate change to terrorism—and finding ways to both

understand and address them.

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Delivering needed supplies to Haiti. Designing safer levees for New Orleans. Creating a worldwide system to detect the next disaster. Discovering what the world’s smallest creatures can tell us about climate change.

There’s more to civil and environmental engineering at Rensselaer than the Brooklyn Bridge.


Edwin Bryant CrockerClass of 1833

Edwin Crocker, a lawyer who relocated to Sacra-mento from the Midwest and was named associate justice of the California State Supreme Court in 1863, became the legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad Co.

Hiram F. MillsClass of 1856

One of the foremost hydraulic engineers of his time, Hiram Mills was a pioneer in the development of sanitary engineering in America.

Theodore JudahStudent in 1837

A transcontinental railroad visionary, Judah constructed the first rail-road in California, helped organize the Central Pacific Railroad Co., sur-veyed routes across the Sierra Nevada, and served as the railroad’s agent in Washington, D.C.

William B. CogswellClass of 1852

Credited as the founder of the alkali industry in America, Cogswell focused on the industrial production of sodium carbonate. In 1881, his company became the largest manufacturer in the U.S. of soda ash and its derivatives.

Washington RoeblingClass of 1857

An engineer, bridge builder, and industrialist, Roebling prepared the detailed plans and speci-fications for the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

Emily Roebling

When husband Wash-ington became ill, Emily oversaw construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Among the first women leaders in the manage-ment of technology, Emily earned a law degree and championed women’s suffrage.

Seeking Answers for Katrina. Then came the 21st century—and one of the most devastating storms ever. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Rensselaer’s civil engineers took up investigations from a multitude of angles. Professor Thomas Zimmie and other experts examined the levee damage firsthand, noting the impact of overtopping, the effectiveness of emergency patches, and the decision process behind the levee configuration. That led to testimony before one U.S. Senate committee and an extensive report to another.

Building on that investigation, Professor Tarek Abdoun used the might of Rensselaer’s 150 g-ton centrifuge—one of four in the United States at the time—to test a carefully constructed model of the 17th Street Canal levee. The test yielded insights into the possible causes of the levee failure, among them a layer of weak clay beneath the levee that may have caused the entire structure to slide.

Still other researchers focused on the emergency response. Professor William “Al” Wallace won a National Science Foundation Small Grant for Exploratory Research to investigate the FEMA and Coast Guard responses to Katrina. And Professor José Holguín-Veras explored the logistical challenges that take place when a massive flow of information, donations, and people descends on the event site.

Building on a substantial legacy.

In 1835, Rensselaer became the first school in the United States to issue a civil engineering degree. Some 50 years later, Washington Roebling, Class of 1857, realized his father’s vision of a span across the East River by becoming chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge—then the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Other famous graduates soon followed. George Ferris, Class of 1881, invented the carnival wheel that bears his name. Ralph Peck ’34 became a world leader in geotechnical engineering, consulting on projects from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and urban rapid transit systems to dikes for the Dead Sea.

Taking On the Biggest Challenges. Many of these projects, like the Brooklyn Bridge, seek to change the face of a region. In that tradition, today’s faculty look to change the face of the world—by making it safer, cleaner, and more sustainable—read among the many projects that aim toward this goal.

Professor Tom Zimmie (right)

with Les Harder from the

California Department of

Water Resources at the site

of a key levee breach in New

Orlean’s devasted 9th Ward

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Alexander J. CassattClass of 1859

As president of Pennsyl-vania Railroad, Cassatt’s crowning achievement was the construction of the Pennsylvania Terminal in Manhattan, which required tunneling under the Hudson River.

Leffert L. BuckClass of 1868

Buck designed and built the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City in 1903, the longest bridge in the world at the time. In the 1870s, he erected the Verrugas Viaduct in Peru, a remarkable bridge, at its time the highest in the world.

George FerrisClass of 1881

He conceived the Ferris wheel for the World’s Columbian Exposition. It rose 250 feet and carried 36 cars, each with a capacity for 40 passengers, revolving under perfect control, and stable against the strongest winds from Lake Michigan.

Garnet BaltimoreClass of 1881

Baltimore, a civil engineer and landscape designer, participated in the design and building of bridges, railroads, canals, and waterways around New York state, including supervising the extension of the notoriously dif-ficult “mud lock” on the Oswego Canal.

Frank OsbornClass of 1880 Kenneth Osborn (pic-tured) Class of 1908

The Osborn’s led the design of more than 100 stadiums in America, including such icons as Fenway Park (1912), Tiger Stadium (1912), and the original Yankee Stadium (1923).

Sensing tomorrow’s flood. What if researchers could detect the next trouble spot for a dam or levee break? The traditional visual inspection is like “a medical doctor conducting an annual checkup based solely on the external appearance of a patient,” said Associate

Professor Mourad Zeghal.

So Zeghal is leading an effort to sense trouble on every level. Under his integrated system, satellite-based radar would capture images—accurate to the millimeter scale—to measure the shift or sinkage of levees. On the intermediate scale, a network of high-resolution GPS sensors would track the movement of structures. And underground arrays of sensors around each levee will pick up real-time data at critical points of the flood-control system.

How important is this research? Important enough for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to award Zeghal $7 million for the four-year project.

Bolstering today’s structures. In the wake of the Katrina research, Professor Tarek Abdoun (left) and colleague Professor Ricardo Dobry (right) have been conceptualizing and testing new

designs for more sustainable levees. But not every disaster is a natural disaster. For the past four years, the Department of Homeland Security has asked the two researchers to investigate the impact of human-made dynamic loading—such as terrorist acts—on tunnels and levees. The findings, according to Abdoun, should go a long way toward making society safer in the future.

The best way to help Haiti. Everyone wanted to help in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. But how do you get all this help to the people who need it, when they need it? That was the question before Professor José Holguín-Veras, one of the world’s foremost

experts in humanitarian logistics. Just weeks after the quake, the Rensselaer professor traveled to the Dominican Republic to find ways of expediting relief efforts—not only for this, but for future events as well.

During his time in his native country, Holguín-Veras took a careful inventory of the relief policies, procedures, preparations, and infrastructure in place, identifying both efficient operations and areas for improvement. The data will help him refine mathematical formulations of the logistics process, develop short-term forecasting tools to assess future needs, and create mechanisms to control the flows of non-critical supplies.

Associate Professor Zeghal is leading a multi-million dollar project to develop a system for monitoring and assessing the condition of aging levees and dams.

Just weeks after the

Haiti earthquake,

Professor Holguín-

Veras traveled to the

Dominican Republic to

find ways of expediting

relief efforts—not only

for this, but for future

events as well.

William Gurley (1839) and Lewis E. Gurley (1845), partners in W&LE Gurley, Troy, N.Y., one of the first manufacturers of precision surveying instruments.


Predicting concrete failure. With so many U.S. bridges and structures in a state of disrepair, a deeper understanding of

concrete—specifically, how it fails—could help avert catastrophe. In the pursuit of that understanding, Assistant Professor Gianluca Cusatis and his team seek to develop computational technologies for the simulation of concrete mechanical behavior, including its performance in the face of blasts and other disasters.

The results could be far-reaching. With new models, numerical methods, and algorithms, engineers could not only better prevent failure in a catastrophic event, but also design safer, more reliable, more durable structures for the future. Cusatis’s work could also apply to polymers, biomaterials, nanomaterials, and even sea ice, all of which share patterns of behavior with concrete.

Building wood taller. Wood structures can’t rise more than two or three stories without being vulnerable to collapse in a disaster. Associate

Professor Michael Symans aims to change that, investigating technologies that would allow building much higher—a critical step toward safe, sustainable construction in a world where wood is the predominant building material.

Symans’s research involves the design of seismic damper walls, which use air-resistance systems to absorb the impact of an earthquake or similar event. In the process, he has achieved several firsts, including the world’s first seven-story wood structure, which resides on a massive shaking table in Japan. The test of a smaller building, on a table in Buffalo, New York, appeared live via webcast on CNN.

In search of Antarctic microorganisms. Glacial ice contains significant amounts of dissolved organic matter (DOM). What happens

to it when the ice melts? That question sent Associate Professor James (Chip) Kilduff to Antarctica recently as part of a team to study microbial communities.

“It is not well known how DOM and carbon locked in glacial ice will respond to climate change,” Kilduff explained. “Since frozen environments comprise 25 percent of the Earth’s surface, large-scale melting could potentially release a great deal of carbon into the atmosphere as global temperatures rise.”

The key is to learn how DOM forms and changes over time—and there’s no better place for observing that than the pristine Antarctic environment. Kilduff ’s major role was to use his own reverse osmosis technology to isolate the DOM from glacial streams for further study.

Emil H. PraegerClass of 1915

Rensselaer’s most prolific civil engineer of the 20th century, Praeger put his stamp on projects from the New York City parks system to the White House.

Clay P. BedfordClass of 1924

As president of Kaiser Aerospace & Electronics Corp., Bedford managed projects, including: chief engineer for the Central Highway in Cuba; trans-portation superintendent for the Boulder Dam; and general superintendent for the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams.

William H. WileyClass of 1866

In 1876 Wiley entered the publishing business with his family, under the firm name of John Wiley & Sons. Once in charge, Wiley established the firm as America’s premier publisher of scientific and technical books.

Mordecai T. EndicottClass of 1868

Known as the “Father of the Civil Engineering Corps,” Mordecai Endi-cott was the first of many distinguished Rensselaer graduates to lead the Navy’s civil engineering efforts.

Professor Symans is working on

making wood strucures taller—

a critical step in a world where

wood is the predominant and most

sustainable building material.

Photo: Colorado State University

Amos Eaton surveyed the district along the Erie Canal in 1824 the same year he cofounded the Rensselaer School with the support and patronage of Stephen Van Rensselaer.

In 2000, the United States Congress designated the Erie Canal-way a National Heritage Corridor, recognizing the national signifi-cance of the canal system as the most successful and influential human-built waterway and one of the most important works of civil engineering and construction in North America.

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Rerouting traffic—and cutting emissions. What would happen if big-city businesses accepted deliveries during the night? In Manhattan, it could mean major relief from traffic congestion, lower emissions levels, and higher economic performance.

That’s why Professor José Holguín-Veras is leading a $1.9 million pilot project, funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Transportation, that involves 20 receivers taking night deliveries from about 25 carriers. His team will poll businesses on the types of incentives, including tax breaks, that would get them to shift more deliveries to off-peak hours over the long haul.

“You don’t have to move every single truck to nighttime delivery,” Holguín-Veras said. “If you move only 10 percent or 20 percent, the congestion savings will be significant.”

John Alexander Low WaddellClass of 1875

John A.L. Waddell built a reputation as one of the 20th century’s best known and highly respected bridge builders. He has more than a thousand structures to his credit in the U.S. and Canada, as well as Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, and New Zealand.

William Pitt MasonClass of 1874

A pioneer in sanitation chemistry, Mason was an unusual combination of chemist, engineer, and medical expert. Through his studies of water analysis and supply, he became a major contributor to the world’s knowledge and understand-ing of the need for pure municipal water supplies.

Milton BrumerClass of 1923

Brumer was chief engineer in charge of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world in 1965.He also built the Throgs Neck Bridge and the George Washington Bridge in New York, and was chief engineer of the suspen-sion for the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia.

Admiral Lewis B. CombsClass of 1916

Admiral Combs was a co-founder of the U.S. Navy Seabees in 1942, and later returned to Rensselaer as Head of the Civil Engineering Department, retiring in 1962 as an emeritus professor.

Ralph B. PeckClass of 1934

An acclaimed international expert in the field of soil mechanics, Ralph Peck has helped to change the face of the Earth through his discov-eries of the way soils behave. President Ford awarded Peck the National Medal of Science in 1974.

Alan M. VoorheesClass of 1947

Alan Voorhees began his ca-reer as a planning engineer for Colorado Springs and became one of the world’s leading city planners and traffic forecasters. He was the planner of most of the metro systems built in the free world in the 1960s and 1970s

Associate Professor

Kilduff joins an

interdisciplinary research

team collecting water and

ice cores to study the

microbial communities

found in Antarctica.

Professor José Holguín-

Veras is working to alleviate

downtown New York City’s

infamous congestion

and boost its economic

performance.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Earthquake Engineering Simulation maintains a 150g-ton centrifuge with a 3.0 meter arm radius and maximum payload of 1.5 ton spinning at 100g and maximum acceleration of 150g.


Larger, Higher, Stronger…and Workable Design Lab students push wind turbine technology forward to the delight of GE Renewables

The machine head alone is the size of a small bus. Each blade spans more than half a football field. The latest towers stand 50 stories high.

The dimensions of wind turbines present extraordinary challenges on several levels. So when leaders at GE Renewables set out to resolve them, why would they turn to undergraduate students?

It makes sense when those students are part of Rensselaer’s Design Lab.

eng.rpi.edu | 19

Larger, Higher, Stronger…and Workable Design Lab students push wind turbine technology forward to the delight of GE Renewables

The machine head alone is the size of a small bus. Each blade spans more than half a football field. The latest towers stand 50 stories high.

The dimensions of wind turbines present extraordinary challenges on several levels. So when leaders at GE Renewables set out to resolve them, why would they turn to undergraduate students?

It makes sense when those students are part of Rensselaer’s Design Lab.

photo: Mark Anderson ‘79


The Case for StudentsFor wind turbines to gain wide acceptance and viability, they need to make progress on a laundry list of criteria: energy capture, manufacturability, strength, stiffness, and above all, cost. Driving each blade through a tiny town is the stuff of trucking night-mares, so transportability presents a major issue.

Putting students on these issues makes more sense than you might think. “Industries want to explore out-of-the-box solutions, but are equally concerned about the expense in engineering time and the uncertainty of the outcome,” said Bharat Bagepalli, principal technologist at GE Renewables–Wind Energy, who served as key stakeholder for the Design Lab projects. “Sponsored design projects in aca-demia allow us to cost-effectively explore ideas that fresh minds can come up with; these might otherwise be overlooked.”

Given the long history of GE Energy/Power Systems with the Design Lab—26 projects totaling more than $1 million in funding—it made sense to get the cur-rent crop of students involved. With that in mind, Bagepalli approached the lab for fresh thinking on three design challenges:

1. A two-piece blade for easier transport—with all the superior aerodynamics of the one-piece blade

2. A tower with the same height but less weight

3. A nacelle that serves as both a machine head cover and a structure on which

components can be mounted

Tales From the Real WorldDivided into three teams by background and interest, the students set to writing a statement of work—and quickly picked up a lesson from the real world. “The state-ment of work was continually revised as the project evolved,” said Evan Frank, a senior on the Tower Concepts Team. “Working with a set of evolving sponsor expectations was a great learning experi-ence. We came to view the statement as a working document, and in the end this philosophy led to the satisfaction of the sponsor, professors, and students.”

That wasn’t the only lesson. Early on, Frank and his student colleagues had to revise their whole concept of team. “At the start, we all envisioned a classical workflow with a team leader and other positions that stayed relatively constant,” he explained. “We found, however, that the classical model was not conducive to the project. By the end of the first few weeks, we would elect subteams to handle various tasks; fol-lowing the completion of these tasks, the whole team would reconvene to redistrib-ute new tasks to new subteams.”

The projects being worked on by

Rensselaer engineering students

are directly related to solving

the equation of developing cost

competitive clean energy.

Challenge 1: Students created multiple

blade designs that were modeled and

thoroughly tested, shown here is the

angled dovetail design.

jCreating a two-piece blade for easier transport

fresh thinking on three design challenges

designlab.rpi.edu

eng.rpi.edu | 21

All in all, the students brainstormed dozens of concepts for each turbine component, involving everything from I-beam lattice towers to honeycomb nacelle frames. Every concept was compared with GE requirements, plus and minuses sorted out, and ideas refined or rejected. Eventu-ally team members decided on a handful of ideas that, in their opinion, deserved further inquiry. “To our delight,” Frank recalled, “we generated designs that GE was interested in.”

Bagepalli echoed this. “I have been pleas-antly surprised by some of the design ideas generated by the students,” he said, “and the creativity and thought process that went into them—especially the careful consider-ation the students gave to cost.”

Talking to the BossThe results were enough for Bagepalli to arrange a meeting between the students and Gary Mercer, GE Wind Energy’s senior executive general manager in Greenville, South Carolina. In an early morning video-conference, each team had 10 minutes to present its top three concepts to Mercer.

The results were very good indeed. “The GM at Greenville was pleased with our efforts and reiterated the proposed valid-ity of the distinguished designs,” Frank recalled. “Our impression was that GE is happy to have a series of new concepts as they move forward with their design process.”

Mercer was certainly pleased with the result. “The economics of clean energy (renewable energy) and therefore wind turbine design are challenged as compared to more traditional forms of power genera-tion,” he said. “Engineering innovation is playing a big role in reducing cost by increasing power density and reliability. The projects being worked on by Rensse-laer engineering students are directly related to solving the equation of developing cost-competitive clean energy. It is the engineer-ing profession that is going to play the lead role in creating a cleaner future. Energy challenges are huge and complex and I feel a renewed sense of excitement when I see RPI’s talented students preparing to meet the needs of tomorrow.”

Everybody WinsThe students’ performance delighted everyone on the GE side. “Overall, I found them to be very talented and creative,” Bagepalli said. “They were often self-organized, understood key strengths of the individuals on their team, and made best use of their available talent. Honestly, several students appeared to be well ahead of many engineers in industry today.”

As for the students, they saw industrial engineering up close—a priceless lesson for the world after graduation. “The skills I learned through the Design Lab experience cannot be taught from a textbook,” Frank observed. “It provided in-depth interaction with GE engineers and executives as we worked together toward a common goal. In essence, it was as close to an industrial engineering experience as I could get with-out actually being an employee.”

“The skills I learned through the Design Lab experience cannot be

taught from a textbook.”

— Evan Frank, Design Lab student

Challenge 2: Among the many

designs students created and tested

was this module tower design. It not

only met the challenge, but offered

more flexibility and transportation

options over traditional desgins.

kA tower with the same height but less weight

lA multi-use nacelle

fresh thinking on three design challenges

.

Challenge 3: Shown here is a

rear view of the nacelle showing

the load mounting brackets and

how they connect to the network

skin. One inspiration for this

design came from analyzing

NASCAR® roll cages.

designlab.rpi.edu


News Briefs

National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Development Award Recipients

The CAREER Award is given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers and is one of NSF’s most competitive awards, placing emphasis on high- quality research and novel education initiatives.

Anak Agung Julius, Assistant Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering. CAREER research: Computational analysis of hybrid systems

Peter Tessier, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. CAREER research: Protein thermodynamics and aggregation

David T. Corr, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering. CAREER research: Engineering, evaluation, and theoretical modeling of biological soft tissues

Patrick Underhill, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. CAREER research: How transport phenomena affect biological processes

Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc, Assistant Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering. CAREER research: using nanoparticles heated by an alternative magnetic field to fight cancer

New Faculty

Ryan Gilbert, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering. Research: Development of novel biomaterial scaffolds for the treatment of spinal cord injury

Shiva Kotha, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering. Research: Cell and tissue mechanics, mechanobiology, multi-functional materials, and development of minimally invasive modalities for imaging and treatment

Hiroki Yokota, Professor, Biomedical Engineering. Research Areas: Mecha-notransduction of bone and joint cells, molecular imaging, bone adaptation, computational genomics and proteomics

Chris Letchford, Department Head, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Research: Wind engineering

Philippe Baveye, Kodak Chair in Environmental Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Research: Hydrologic and soil sciences

Cara Wang, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Research: Transportation systems.

Department of Civil and Environmental EngineeringDepartment of Biomedical Engineering

2010 Rensselaer Davies Medal Recipient: James K. Mitchell ’51, University Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech.

David Mendonça, Associate Professor, Industrial, Systems and Management Engineering. Research Areas: Cognitive processes underlying human decisions in managing critical infrastructure systems

Sandipan Mishra, Assistant Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering. Research Areas: Dynamic Systems and Control, Modeling and Control of Micro/Nano-scale Manufacturing Processes, Data-driven Control System Design

Riccardo Bevilacqua, Assistant Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering. Research Areas: Guidance, navigation, and control of space systems

Johnson Samuel, Assistant Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering. Research Areas: Micro/nano-scale Manufacturing, Design of Advanced Materials for Manufacturing, Biomedical Manufacturing and Green Manufacturing

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering Davies Medal

The Davies Medal is awarded for distinguished engineering achievement by Rensselaer alumni.

eng.rpi.edu | 23

Outstanding Professor AwardMark S. Shephard, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering

Outstanding Team Award pictured above (l to r) with Dean Rosowsky (2nd from l)

“Thermal Management in Microelectronics”John Wen, Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering

Michael K. Jensen, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering

Yoav P. Peles, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering

Research Excellence Award Senior Faculty

Pawel J. KeblinskiMaterials Science & Engineering

Research Excellence Award Junior Faculty

Matthew A. Oehlschlaeger, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering

Leila Parsa, Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering

Deanna M. Thompson, Biomedical Engineering

Education Excellence Awards Classroom Excellence

Ravi S. Kane, Chemical and Biological Engineering

Daniel J. Lewis, Materials Science and Engineering

Education Excellence Awards Education Innovation

Mark W. Steiner, Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering

The outstanding faculty of the School of

Engineering is a community of scholars

working together to create an environ-

ment that engenders respect for all and

build a culture that is conducive to

learning and discovery.

The 2010 Excellence Awards for the

School of Engineering recognize and

celebrate exceptional achievement in

teaching and in research, individually and

in teams, by junior and senior faculty.

Helping Hydrogen: Student Inventor Tackles Challenge of Hydrogen Storage

Determined to play a key role in solving global dependency on fossil fuels, Javad Rafiee, a doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has developed a new method for storing hydrogen at room temperature.

Rafiee has created a novel form of engineered graphene that exhibits hydrogen storing capacity far exceeding any other known material. For this innovation, which brings the world a step closer to realizing the widespread adoption of clean, abundant hydrogen as a fuel for transportation vehicles, Rafiee is the winner of the 2010 $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize.

$30,000 Lemelson-MIT Collegiate Student Prizes Awarded

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDRensselaer

Polytechnic Institute

School of EngineeringRensselaer Polytechnic Institute110 8th StreetTroy, NY USA 12180

This Fall, we welcomed more than 650 first-year engineering students to campus, and one of the largest and most highly qualified groups of new

graduate students in Rensselaer’s history.

Rensselaer School of Engineering Fall '10 News Magazine

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Transcript of Rensselaer School of Engineering Fall '10 News Magazine