2010-winter-magazine

University of nevada, reno a magazine from the College of engineering • Winter 2010 • Vol. 2 No.1discover nevada at www.unr.edu

Renewing the FutuRe

Nevada EngineeringWe pursue excellence

College of engineering

Turning ideas into reality

from the dean

Dear Friends,On Feb. 13, 2009, following a national search, I accepted the great

responsibility and honor that comes with the position of Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. It has been almost two full semesters since that time, and I am still quite humbled by my position. The work that the students, staff and faculty accomplish on a daily basis in our college is simply astound-ing. I am truly heartened, as well, by the support alumni, friends and partners in our community consistently show the College of Engineering.

We have needed this strong sense of esprit de corps. We continue to live in extraordi-

narily complex and sometimes confounding times as the state and country continue to pull themselves from recessionary economic times. Our University has absorbed an unprecedented number of budget reductions over the past 18 months. None of the colleges on our campus have been immune from these budget reductions, including the College of Engineering. However, with the help of our faculty, staff, students, alumni, advisory board, colleagues across the campus and the University’s central leadership, the College of Engineering has preserved its strategic positions and is looking with optimism and enthusiasm toward the future.

In fact, difficult times have helped us clarify what we hope to ac-complish in the not-so-distant future. Working cooperatively with all of the departmental, faculty, student, staff and professional advisory leaders of our college, we have formulated several key goals as we view our future critically, strategically, and opportunistically.

Our vision revolves around the central goal that over the next five years to 10 years, we hope to reach measurable national recognition – ranking among the top 100 engineering schools in the country – and, as well, to increase the number of programs and activities with international recognition.

To turn these words into reality, the College of Engineering has first to achieve the following goals:

n Position ourselves as a leading college for the growth and devel-opment of the University of Nevada, Reno and the educational system of the State of Nevada;

A year of establishing vision, working toward goals

Maragakis

n Become a state and regional leader of engineering education;n Become an important factor for the State of Nevada’s economic

diversification.We have identified four major objectives that go hand-in-hand with

the achievement of our underlying vision. They are:n Develop state-of-the-art educational programs that serve the

needs of the state and nation and prepare our students to become national and world leaders in their fields;

n Enhance the quantity and quality of our undergraduate and gradu-ate students, with particular emphasis on increasing the numbers of top quality doctoral students;

n Increase the number of nationally and internationally recognized research programs by developing carefully designed, realistic and focused efforts, considering the strengths of our faculty and our resources, and by pursuing multidisciplinary and multi-institu-tional efforts;

n Develop outreach programs serving the needs of the state and the nation by capitalizing on our educational and research strengths.

This is certainly an ambitious agenda for the next five years. As you will note as you read the pages of this publication, however, our faculty, students and staff are dedicated, have high morale and are working hard to achieve these goals.

A prime example of one of the strategic focus areas we are cur-rently involved in is Renewable Energy. Some of our efforts and accomplishments in this area are featured in this issue of the College magazine. The University is making a concerted effort to become a national leader on this front, and I am pleased to report that the College of Engineering is one of the prime engines in this effort. As you will discover, the Center for Renewable Energy is a product of my belief that we can all achieve great things if we all work together, focused on a common goal.

It is a way of doing business and pursuing excellence that I see each and every day in our College and University.

Sincerely,

Manos MaragakisDean, College of Engineering

RENEWING THE FUTURECovER sToRy

Nevada has all of the resources — sun, wind, geothermal, biomass — to become one of the nation’s leaders in renewable energy.

But before the state’s great natural re-source gifts can be realized, however, some-one must take the lead in organizing this vast array of natural resource riches.

The University of Nevada, Reno, is quickly filling this leadership role with a number of initiatives that promise to trans-form not only the economy of the state of Nevada but to revitalize and revamp the national economy with the creation of new companies, new jobs and an entirely new emphasis on renewable energy and a much-needed investment in the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure.

Recently, the University formalized its renewable energy research efforts in a new collaborative, the Renewable Energy Cen-ter, that will focus efforts and coordinate programs for competitive research with plans to increase Nevada’s national stature in the renewable energy field.

“The University is a leader in renewable energy research education in Nevada, and through this collaborative we can work to make Nevada a powerhouse in renewable energy in the entire country,” Profes-sor Mano Misra, the director of the new Center, said.

“We have research on hydrogen fuels, bio-diesel, wind power, plants to biofuel, geothermal, and the many subcategories and components of these types of renew-able power, and our work is not just be for the sake of research,” Misra said. “We will continue to work to bring together educa-tion and industry to develop these systems here in Nevada, boosting the economy with jobs as well as sales of products and services.”

The University has conducted renew-able energy research for more than 10 years, including geothermal, biomass, hydrogen energy and solar. The University has pioneered new curriculum with its Renewable Energy Minor that began in 2007. The collaboration primarily focuses on the work of four colleges within the university: Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources; Business; Engineering; and Science.

The activities of the collaborative will be overlooked by a council of the deans of the four colleges: Greg Mosier, Business; Ma-nos Maragakis, Engineering; Ron Pardini, interim dean, CABNR; and Jeff Thompson, Science.

Coordinators for the five working groups in the collaborative are: Kwang Kim, hydrogen energy and storage; John Cush-man, biomass; Lisa Shevenell, geothermal;

Ravi Subramanian, solar energy; Mehdi Etezadi, power grid; and Ted Batchman, curriculum.

Coordinating business, public policy, outreach and education for the collabora-tive is Ron Tibben-Lembke, a professor of supply chain management in the College of Business who has a master’s and doctor-ate degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management Science.

“We will be working together in a much more coordinated manner,” said Misra, “opening better lines of communication and cooperation. This gives us even more efficiency and effectiveness to go after grants and ensure we have complementary projects working together.”

He said the new Renewable Energy Cen-ter will encourage the independent voice of the researcher, department or college as well as help them if a broader approach is needed.

“It will help us become less competitive among ourselves and more competitive in the world with renewable energy,” he said.

The Business College is a part of the collaborative to help build efforts to bring the research to the community through the building of new industry and workforce.

“Ultimately, we can become more community-driven and can use our science

RENEWING THE FUTUREWith an unprecedented effort to marshal the University’s many scientific and teaching resources, renewable energy is poised to move to the front

of the campus’ research portfolio.By MIKE WoLTERBEEK ANd JoHN TRENT

Continues on page 3

University of Nevada, Reno • Winter 2010 1

Jeff Ceccarelli, NVEnergy corporate vice president (center in brown jacket), gathers with members of the Renewable Energy Center.

RENEWING THE FUTURE

to help our community,” Provost Marc Johnson said. “We want to make the Uni-versity easier to work with for industry and the business community. We want to train students for the increasingly technologi-cal workforce and build our capacity for research at the same time.”

While the majority of research activities are housed at the main campus, the Red-field Campus off the Mt. Rose Highway in south Reno provides unique opportunities to be a test-bed area for big-scale renewable energy research, and may accommodate re-search projects which are typically housed at the main campus.

“This new collaborative is more a ‘center’ of people, than a place,” Maragakis said. “This brings together a coordination with equal participation. It helps us to let each other know of opportunities for the University, if we should go as a group after grants or funding, or as an individual pro-posal. With the collaborative we can build on our past successes in this arena.”

“We can make an important contribu-tion to the economy of the state,” Maraga-kis said. The collaborative will work with dRI and UNLV to make Nevada a leader in the renewable energy industry.

Misra said an early task for the renew-able energy collaborative is building a one-stop renewable energy web presence so grant-giving agencies, students, faculty and the public can find information fast. A national-scale renewable energy conference is being organized for the fall.

The Renewable Energy Center is a collaborative that fits well with Provost Johnson’s vision for entrepreneurial, com-munity-driven research at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“The complementary expertise among these four colleges is an ideal example for how we can coordinate research efforts, and not just for renewable energy,” Johnson said.

He presented a strategic plan for research and graduate education at the University in April at the Center for Advanced Studies spring meeting. one aspect of the plan is to tie the extensive University research in all disciplines to the community, business and industry.

The University has had several successes in providing research and development of new products and technologies to indus-try through patent agreements and other avenues that have had economic benefit to Nevada.

“What is important to remember is that for many areas of the country, these ideas are in their infancy or have many years of creating a solid research foundation before they are ever even realized,” Maragakis said. “At Nevada, we are unique in that we have already started much of this work. All of these things are happening on our campus, right now — this is not only in re-search and development, but in education, with a number of new majors and minors that the University offers in these highly strategic areas.”

All Misra has to do to reinforce this point is to simply look out the window of his office in the Laxalt Mineral Engineering Building on the University campus.

Northern Nevada’s uncommonly sunny skies are easy to see.

“Talk about the perfect natural re-source,” Misra, one the campus’ most gifted researchers, says. “The sun is almost always

due to recent advances in low-power portable electronics and the fact that batteries provide a finite amount of power, attention has focused on inno-vative methods to harvest or scavenge energy from the environment for practical applications. Energy can be recovered from mechanical vibration, light, and temperature variations. dr. Leang in the UNR Mechanical Engi-neering department and his colleague dr. Mossi at Virginia Commonwealth University are exploring the potential of thin-film pyroelectric materials, such as lead zirconate titanate and lead scandium tantalite, for converting temperature changes in the environ-ment into usable amounts of power for small portable electronics and sensors. Their recent findings have shown that ample amounts of power can be generated with heating rates as low as ten degrees per one second. The team plans to use their energy harvesting devices to replace standard batteries in wireless sensor networks for monitor-ing the structural health of bridges, roadways, and even aerospace systems and components.

A photograph of a thin-film lead zirconate titanate material bonded to a small electric heating element for evaluation. The heating element heats the pyroelectric material and the generated power can either be used directly or stored for later use.

ME professor takes energy harvesting to new level

The complementary expertise among these four colleges is an ideal example of how we can coordinate research efforts, and

not just for renewable energy.‘‘ ’’Continues on page 4

– Marc Johnson, provost.


A most important source of irreversibil-ity of any thermal process is heat transfer across a finite temperature difference. This is especially true for high flux ap-plications such as boiling and evaporation. Porous metallic coatings are known to improve boiling performance because the pores provide a high area-density of vapor-bubble nucleation sites; and, the media can have a very high specific surface area. Richard Wirtz, Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Mechanical Engineering department, and his Boiling Research Group (Bharath Ganja, Paul Laca, Sean Penley and Zenghui Zhao) are developing structured micro-porous coatings, consist-ing of laminations of very fine-filament metallic weaves, that show promise of achieving the target: 5 MW/m2 with a 10 K superheat (surface temperature relative to boiling point). So far they have demon-strated heat flux in excess of 2.7 MW/m2 @ 10 K superheat.

This technology has many areas of application. For example, existing geothermal power plants achieve only about 30% of their ideal efficiency. Improving the efficiency of the reboiler/evapora-tor of the power cycle, by reducing the operating superheat at fixed heat load, would contribute to a significant improvement

in plant efficiency. Very high performance electronic systems (microprocessors, radar systems, directed energy devices) are projected to dissipate in excess of 500 W/cm2 (5 MW/m2). The Boiling Research Group’s structured micro-porous coatings, boiling either a refrigerant or water at sub-atmospheric pressure, show promise of effectively cooling these systems.

The Boiling Research Group’s work is supported by the de-partment of Energy, Intel Corporation and the office of Naval Research.

shining in northern Nevada.”Misra, working with a $3 million

research grant from the U.S. department of Energy, has found a groundbreaking, highly effective way of harnessing photoac-tive material from the sun to generate hydrogen. The catalytic process produces inexpensive hydrogen from geothermal water and takes advantage of a plentiful northern Nevada resource. Misra’s renew-able energy research portfolio is extensive, with more than $10 million in funding for various renewable projects.

Hydrogen, one of the cleanest forms of energy, is more efficient than liquid fuels, and could hold one of the keys to Nevada’s future in becoming a national leader in renewable energy.

Misra envisions a day in the not-so-

distant future when Nevada — with more than 300 days of sunny weather per year — will become the perfect hub to generate hydrogen energy, producing low-cost, no-impact fuel for automobiles and energy for homes and businesses.

“We can utilize this great energy resource from the sun to our advantage to produce hydrogen,” Misra says. “We are uniquely positioned in Nevada because of this. Given the weather in northern Nevada, where on most days we have 10 to 15 percent more sunlight than in other areas of the country, the future of this type of energy is limitless.”

Misra’s work is just one of many ex-amples of cutting-edge research and educa-tion being conducted on the campus of the University of Nevada.

Nevada’s expertise stretches to many areas, including:

Nevada researchers in the College of En-gineering, led by Amy Childress, professor and chair of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, have created novel methods using osmosis and forward osmosis to treat wastewater for potable re-use or for power regeneration. The method not only reduces the footprint of current power regimes, it could also revolutionize how large municipalities in the country effectively optimize their use of water as a power source.

The Center for Civil Engineering Earth-quake Research is home to some of the na-tion’s most important large-scale structures laboratory and a unique world-renowned earthquake simulation facility. Using the

Micro-porous coatings enhance boiling heat transfer

Richard Wirtz, Foundation Professor Emeritus in Mechanical Engineering, center, and his Boiling Research Group are developing structured micro-porous coatings, consisting of laminations of very fine-filament metallic weaves.

College of Engineering4

RENEWING THE FUTURE

largest earthquake shake tables in the nation, numerous earthquake simulations on the bi-axial shake tables have helped improve the design and structural stability of large-scale structures throughout the country. The structures group, led by Ian Buckle, is already leading infrastructure and earthquake mitigation research across the nation. Their efforts are complemented by a cadre of talented seismology scientists in the College of Science that specializes in the study of earthquakes.

Misra, of the Chemical and Metallurgi-cal Engineering department, has devel-oped a novel process — believed to be the first of its kind in the country — to extract biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. The process has important implications in the

world’s efforts to combat global warm-ing through the creation of alternative fuels such as biodiesel while utilizing an inexpensive waste product. Misra’s work on coffee biodiesel has received world-wide attention. Misra and his group are working on a novel process to convert carbon diox-ide to gasoline. In the not-so-distant future Misra envisions a day where the United States will run cars with fuels from carbon dioxide.

The Western Regional Superpave Center, under the direction of Peter Sabaaly of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, is one of the nation’s leaders in promoting the implementation of pave-ment and asphalt technologies. Researchers have evaluated the tolerance of different

paving materials for roads in areas that are prone to extremes in temperature, and provide high-tech, low-cost solutions to paving projects throughout the state and the nation.

Kwang Kim, professor and chair of the department of Mechanical Engineering, has pioneered heat transfer enhancement techniques in condensers for use in geo-thermal power plants, as well as thermal compression of hydrogen utilizing geother-mal energy. Kim’s research is helping close the gap between the possibility and the reality of making geothermal energy less costly and more viable for the nation.

At the Great Basin Center for Geother-mal Energy, led by Lisa Shevenell, Nevada researchers are collecting and synthesizing key data through GIS technology in an effort to produce favorability maps of the state’s geothermal potential.

At the Redfield Renewable Energy Cen-ter on the University’s Redfield Campus, classrooms and research space are being utilized in teaching undergraduate and graduate students about renewable energy through the University’s new renewable energy minor.

Researchers in the College of Agricul-ture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources are at the forefront in the next key evolu-tion in biofuels and their use in Nevada. In the laboratory of John Cushman, professor of biochemistry, microalgae has been devel-oped for biodiesel feedstock, as a sequester of carbon dioxide from coal and gas-fired power plants, and as a way to produce bio-mass, which can be used for heating pellets.

In addition to these projects, Nevada researchers continue to work closely with the faculty of its Nevada System of Higher Education partners, the desert Research Institute (dRI), and the University of Ne-vada, Las Vegas (UNLV). dRI has national and worldwide expertise in such key areas as hydrology, atmospheric science and renewable energy. of particular note, dRI’s Renewable Energy Center has ongoing projects focused on wind energy, hydrogen application and bioenergy.

“These are the tips of the iceberg,”

A research team led by Kwang Kim, profes-sor and chairperson of the department of Mechanical Engineering, is developing a “thermally driven metal hydride hydrogen compressor.” The hydrogen is often gener-ated using electrolysis. once the hydrogen is generated, it needs to be stored and pressur-ized to increase the energy density to allow for economical transportation and use. The traditional gas compressors used to raise the pressure of hydrogen gases are expensive. Moreover, the energy required for compression is significant. The conversion from thermal to potential energy is accomplished through the manipulation of a metal hydride bed, which absorbs hydrogen with an exothermic response and desorbs hydrogen gas at a high pressure with an endothermic reaction. The low-grade “waste” heat or low temperature geothermal sources can be used to compress hydrogen. The research team is developing a working prototype which can produce 5,000 psi com-pressed hydrogen gas through the manipulation of a unique metal hydride bed, called porous metal hydride (PMH) compact.

Additional applications of the technology include thermomechanical artificial muscles, environmentally friendly heat pumps and hydrogen storages.

Professor Kwang Kim’s work is focused on developing a thermally driven metal hydride hydrogen compressor, which is shown here.

Creating the next generation of hydrogen compressor

Continues on page 6


Maragakis said. “It’s not just the College of Engineering … or the College of Agricul-ture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources … or the College of Science … or the College of Business. It really is the whole University uniting in this effort.”

Taken together, the work is creating a critical mass of knowledge in the energy and infrastructure economies of the nation that could give the state a strategic edge in the competition for jobs and businesses.

Lawrence Lieberman, a former dean of Admissions for the Stanford Business School and a member of the Advisory Board for the College of Engineering, said he believes that the University’s “core com-petencies” in these areas can create “unfair advantages” for the institution.

They are “unfair advantages” that could catapult University to the forefront of a new economy.

“The state desperately needs to diver-sify its economic base, and we have the potential to be a leader in renewable energy, and in rebuilding our nation’s bridges and roads,” he said. “There is such great stuff that is going on at the University. The University has extraordinary expertise and in some areas has core competencies that few other areas in the country can claim. The focus of the research and development efforts are directly in line with what Presi-dent obama is trying to accomplish with the stimulus plan.

“Right now there seems to be a real in-crease in demand for expertise, and this in turn can create more jobs — white-collar, clean jobs that basically bring money back into our state.”

Misra, who has spent a distinguished career spanning more than 25 years in developing alternative fuel source tech-nologies, said it’s an exciting time to be a researcher at the University.

“We can lead the nation,” he said. “Peo-ple often say, ‘Why Nevada?’ Well, ‘why not Nevada.’ The timing to become the nation’s leader in finding alternative ways of fueling our cars or heating our homes or powering our computers has never been any better than right now.”

College of Engi-neering researchers in the department of Civil and Environ-mental Engineering are collaborating with researchers in the de-partment of Geological Sciences and Engineer-ing to investigate the use of solar ponds as a renewable energy source for treatment of water using membrane distillation. This com-bined system represents a decentralized, stand-alone unit capable of collecting and storing solar energy as well as purifying water. The team includes Amy Childress, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Scott Tyler, professor of Geological Sciences, and student Francisco Suarez.

The exponential population growth and increase in standard of living are inherently tied to an increase in water and energy use. Using fossil fuels to meet this massive need for water and energy is not sustainable due to the negative envi-ronmental impacts of combustion and its effect on climate change. Current desali-nation systems are unlikely to be able to produce freshwater in a sustainable way unless they use renewable energy sources instead of carbon-emitting fuels.

In membrane distillation, warmer feed solution is in contact with one side of a microporous, hydrophobic membrane and colder water is in direct contact with the opposite side of the membrane. Tem-perature differences of 20 °C or less result in the transport of pure water through the membrane. Such low temperature differences can be achieved through the

use of low-grade or waste heat sources. one method for providing a renew-

able, sustainable source of heat for the membrane distillation system is a salinity gradient solar pond. A salinity gradient solar pond is a saline water body which is heated by absorption of solar radiation and which can provide long-term ther-mal storage and recovery for collected energy. The solar radiation that pen-etrates the pond’s upper layers reaches the pond’s lower layers and heats a highly concentrated brine. This results in tem-peratures greater than 90 ºC, which may then be used directly for heating, thermal desalination, or for other low-tempera-ture thermal applications.

This research investigates the coupling of the salinity gradient solar pond with the membrane distillation system for sustainable production of freshwater. The major advantage of this system is that re-newable energy is used so that little to no electrical energy is required. This system may be a promising solution to decrease salinity in terminal lakes or to treat con-centrate from membrane processes.

Research team produces sustainable freshwater using membrane distillation

The use of solar ponds as a renewable energy source for treatment of water using membrane distillation is a ground-breaking effort led by Amy Childress, professor of Civil Engineering, Scott Tyler, professor of Geological Sciences, and student Francisco Suarez, shown here.


RENEWING THE FUTURE

Researchers in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) are collaborating with scientists in the depart-ment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biol-ogy in the College of Agriculture, Biotech-nology, and Natural Resources (CABNR) to study the potential of using algae to produce a valuable biofuel while simultaneously treating wastewater. Undergraduate Civil Engineering student Kim Rafter worked this summer with CEE Associate Professor Eric Marchand and Biochemistry Professor John Cushman on a research project funded by the office of Undergraduate Research to identify whether nutrient-rich water from a regional wastewater treatment plant could be used to grow algae that could later be processed for biofuel. Results of the project verified that algae could be grown using wastewater as the source of nutrients and the researchers found that high yields of algae were possible using wastewater as the nutrient source.

While algae in river or lake systems are typically viewed by environmental engineers and scientists as a sure sign of pollution, certain types of microalgae can produce oils as they grow. once the algae are grown to a high concentration, these oils can be extracted, processed, and refined for use as transportation fuel. Algal based biofuels are expected to play an increased role in the future of renewable energy for several reasons: (1) algae have a relatively fast growth rate compared to crop-based fuel sources; (2) they can be produced on non-arable land us-ing non-potable or low quality water sources; (3) they can be harvested daily throughout the season; (4) they require much lower land requirements than most other crops; and (5) they do not displace food crops and adversely affect the food market.

one of the main limitations for using al-gae as a biofuel source is the large amount of nutrients that are required to grow the algae (for every 100 pounds of algae produced, about 6 pounds of nitrogen and 1 pound of phosphorus are required). In most cases, this would require a large amount of fertil-

izer to be added to water to support algal growth. However, the nutrients required to grow algae are plentiful in domestic waste-water and many municipalities – including those in the Truckee Meadows – spend a lot of money to remove these from the water. The largest wastewater treatment plant in the Reno-Sparks area is the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility (TMWRF), which treats about 25-30 million gallons per day. TMWRF has an internal, nutrient-rich liquid stream called centrate which the plant produces about 250,000 gallon per day. Nitrogen and phosphorus in the centrate may be an ideal source of nutrients for algal growth and the researchers studied how well

centrate works compared to fertilizer for growing algae. Using centrate as a nutrient source on an “algae farm” could save the treatment plant money since it would lower the amount of waste treated. According to 2008 audit data for the plant, utilizing centrate as a nutrient source for algae growth would save the treatment facility about $7,300/day. over the course of a year, this savings would equal approximately $2.7 mil-lion for the treatment plant. Thus, the ability to use this nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich stream as a feed stock to support an algal biofuel processing facility would constitute significant community savings without even considering the biofuel component.

In light of the favorable results to date, research is continuing to identify if there is an optimum amount of centrate to use and how the oil content of the algae varies under different treatment conditions. If successful, this line of research can result in the benefi-cial use of wastewater in energy production. Furthermore, nitrogen and phosphorus are two of the primary water pollutants regulat-ed in the treatment plant effluent and being able to reuse centrate for algae would have the added benefit of decreasing nutrients in the effluent that flows into the Truckee River and eventually into Pyramid Lake.

Faculty using algae to clean up water, produce biofuels

Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty have partnered with Biochemistry faculty to study the potential of using algae to produce biofuels.

One of the clear byproducts of strong collaboration across disciplines is the sharing of information and learning, which benefits all departments and colleges involved with the biofuels effort.


The fact is, we have a reliable electrical power system in this country; this allows us the luxury of using huge amounts of electric power each day to run our computers and household appliances. The energy control centers at electric utility companies are manned by three groups of operators on a continuous basis to manage the opera-tion and delivery of this power. Running these control centers is similar to flying an airplane: the exact state of the system at any given time must be known for smooth operation. These control centers have ac-cess to the major equipment of the system through a two-way communication scheme for remote monitoring and control. For example, the operators can increase or de-crease a generator output, change the power flow over a transmission line, change the tap setting on a transformer, or drop a load under an abnormal operating condition. The planning engineers constantly carry

out contingency studies to figure out what switching sequences are needed to restore power in case of an outage due to events such as equipment failure, weather and ac-cidents. Also, we often forget that the type of electric energy that we use cannot be stored and genera-tors must stand by to provide what we need as soon as we ask for it.

Unfortunately, the actual electric grid is a much more complicated large-scale system that is reaching its upper capacity limit. Economic, political and environmental rules and regulations at the state and national levels influence and control the addition of major electric utility equipment. due to the limits of the current infrastruc-ture, we have recently been pushing the use of renewable energy. Fortunately, our country receives abundant solar energy and

is referred to as the “Saudi Arabia” of wind. This means that solar and wind generators run on free fuel and air pollution will not increase due to these new “green” generators. Furthermore, the use of electric vehicles could reduce our $700 billion per year dependence on foreign oil.

The major obstacle for the development of re-newable energy resources is the lack of transmission

systems for bringing the generated power to the load center. To sustain reliable operation of the system, we also need new infrastruc-tures and smarter control paradigms. In addition, the recent proliferation of renew-able energy applications is only sustainable through incorporation of advanced tech-nologies which will increase the efficiency of systems monitoring and control.

The term “smart grid” evolved from the proposed Electrical Power Research Insti-tute’s “Intelligrid” of the early 2000s. Smart grid means different things to different people. The power engineering commu-nity tends to classify smart grid applica-tions into three subtopics of transmission, distribution and electrical machines/power electronic systems, and strives to make the operation, monitoring and control of each “smarter” than it is now.

The power transmission system, which is the backbone of the entire electrical system, is a large-scale interconnected

Electrical and Biomedical Engineering helps create a

SMARTER ELECTRIC PoWER GRIdHave you ever worried about not having electricity to turn on appliances or cook

at home after a day of work? do you worry about spoiled food in the refrigerator or freezer due to lack of electrical power?

Figure 1. The essential functions of an electrical power grid (courtesy of DOE).

Dr. Mehdi Etezadi-Amoli, professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, is the coordinator of the Smart Grid Cluster at the University’s Renewable Energy Center.


RENEWING THE FUTURE

network spanning Mexico, the United States and Canada. This network is governed by regional transmission organizations and independent system operators and also involves electrical energy wholesale markets. Under the smart grid umbrella, advanced technologies are currently being researched and applied for faster and better monitoring and control of the large interconnections, as well as reliable integration of large-scale — hundreds of megawatts — renewable power generation.

Power distribution systems can be considered as pockets in the transmission system serving industrial, governmental and residential customers. These are governed by local utilities. Smart grid applications in distribution systems include

smarter metering technologies for efficient integration of distributed small-scale — tens of kilowatts to hundreds of kilowatts — renewable power generation applications, fair pricing mechanisms and remote monitoring and control of electrical power consumption.

Smart grid applications for electrical machinery consist of smarter interfacing

and control schemes for electrical machines by using advanced power electronics circuits and microelectronics. The increased integration of large- and small-scale wind farms require research on advanced energy conversion, monitoring, and control units as well as invention of new efficient storage systems that compensate for the intermittency of photovoltaic and wind resources.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus bill allocates $4.4 billion toward the development of the smart grid. This provides a great opportunity in all three abovementioned aspects of smart grid enhancement and renewable energy research and development.

Figure 2. A simple power system (courtesy of Oncor.com).

Figure 3. The components of a smart grid (courtesy of DOE).

Comparison of today’s grid and the smart grid (courtesy of DOE).


Electrical and Biomedical Engineering (EBME) Professor Andy Trzynadlowski, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and an expert in power electronics, has long enjoyed steady support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and private industry in the area of clean energy.

Back in 1999, Andy received NSF funding for an international collaborative project “Control Techniques for Environmental-Friendly and Energy-Efficient Power Electronic Converters,” carried out with the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland. Power electronic converters constitute an indispensable part of renewable energy systems based on solar, wind, and small hy-dro power sources. They condition the raw power generated by these sources to transfer it to the electrical grid or to off-grid users. The objective of the project was to increase the efficiency and power factor of pulse-width modulated rectifiers. The power factor is a measure of utilization of the electric power entering a given system. Traditional rectifiers, based on silicon controlled recti-fiers, semi-controlled and slow electronic power switches, have poor power factor and they pollute the electrical grid with parasitic current harmonics. Technological advances in the area of fast, fully-controlled switches, such as insulated gate bipolar transistors allow construction of rectifiers whose operational flexibility results in dramatic improvements of the power factor, efficiency, and reduction of current harmonics.

In 2002, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) granted Andy $230K for development of a high-performance generator for wind turbines. In this so-called switched-flux machine, the magnetic flux is produced by high-energy permanents

magnets. The prototype, with a 144-magnet rotor, does not require a gearbox between the generator and the turbine as it produces high-frequency output voltage at low speeds. A US patent on the generator is pending. In 2005, within the scope of the project, a local start-up company Mariah Power (MP) had

their generator tested in EBME’s Electric drives Laboratory. Today, Mariah Power is an established and fast growing player in the renewable energy market.

In 2006, Andy received a $240,000 Na-tional Science Foundation (NSF) grant for the project “Communication Enhancement in Power Electronic Systems Using Spec-tral Nulls”. The fixed-frequency switching operation of the existing power electronic converters generates bothersome acoustic and electromagnetic noise (see Figure 1). The three-year project was aimed at devising such a method of pulse width modulation so that noiseless communication channels can be carved in the spectra of voltage and current transmitted from the source to the load. Gen-eration of the so-called spectral nulls (dips), allows using the power cables as medium for information transfer. For example, if the

NSF, NREL and private industry partner for Clean Energy with EBME

Raw power comes clean

Team of researchers from EBME and Mariah Power with the tested generator.

Rotor of the generator for wind turbines with 144 permanent magnets.


RENEWING THE FUTURE

The EV1 electric car by General Motors.

a firm believer in collaboration with other institutions. He was a visiting professor at the renowned Institute of Energy Technol-ogy in Aalborg, denmark, a pioneer of modern wind energy systems, and at the University of Padua in Italy (where Co-pernicus had been a student and Galileo a professor). He was also a Summer Fac-ulty Fellow at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Annapolis, Maryland, working on a power system for an electric frigate. The editor of the second edition of Andy’s book “Introduction to Modern Power Electronics” (John Wiley) has insisted that an additional chapter, devoted to applica-tions of power electronics in clean energy systems, be added.

NSF and NREL have not been the only supporters of clean energy research in the EBME department. In 2001-02, Andy was involved in the electric car program at the General Motors Advanced Technology Center (GMATC) in Torrance, Calif. (see photo above left). Two projects funded by GMATC dealt with a next generation of the EV1 car (see photo above right). Re-grettably, in a controversial decision, GM terminated the EV1 program in late 2003.

The scale of the described projects shows that the EBME department has established a firm foothold in the national clean energy research scene.

Experimental setup for testing electric machines.

Figure 1. Electromagnetic noise spectrum with spectral nulls.

source is a small wind turbine supplying a farm, the cables, in addition to the load current, can carry information about the wind speed and produces power to be stored in a computer in the farmhouse. other ap-plications, especially smart grid and electric systems of airplanes, spacecraft, submarines, or hybrid cars, can also benefit from spectral nulls in the noise and elimination of separate communication conduits. In April 2009, Andy’s postdoctoral associate in the project, Cristian Lascu, was hired as an assistant professor in the EBME department.

In 2008, Andy and a Louisiana State University professor, Ernest Mendrela, won a $300,000 collaborative NSF grant for “High-Efficiency Gearless Power Conver-

sion Systems with Silent Permanent-Magnet Machines.” The study is an extension of the NREL project, but the investigated power conversion systems can also be employed in small hydroelectric plants and a variety of electric and hybrid vehicles.

Recently, Andy was notified by the NSF that his collaborative $400,000 proposal “Investigation of Fundamental Aerodynam-ic and Power Electronic Issues of Rooftop Wind Panel Systems” has been funded. This collaboration will involve Hamid Rahai of California State University, Long Beach and Radian Belu of the desert Research Institute. The project will be devoted to novel wind-energy devices for residential applications.

As exemplified by his NSF grants, Andy is


By John TrentSay the name Indira Chatterjee to many

of the students in the College of Engineer-ing, and more than likely the response will be a smile, a recognition of a supremely talented teacher who has influenced many students.

In a 21-year career as a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, few have earned a reputation like Chatterjee’s. In 1995, she was recipient of the F. donald Tibbitts University distinguished Teacher Award – the campus’ most prestigious teaching honor. She was given the Silver Compass Award for Extraordinary Commitment to Students in 2005. And, she has been selected and honored as faculty mentor by the Senior Scholar in the College of Engineering on three different occasions.

Given her sterling record, it might have been a bit of a surprise that Chatterjee, at least for the next few years, will be leaving the classroom to become the College of Engineering’s associate dean.

“I won’t be teaching at all,” Chatterjee said recently in her third-floor office in the Scrugham Engineering and Mines Building. “I think I will miss that. I’ve promised my students, though, that I will get them some-one good (to teach her classes).”

College of Engineering dean Manos Maragakis firmly believes that the class-room’s loss will be the college’s gain with Chatterjee’s move.

“Indira is truly a remarkable person, certainly one of our most gifted teachers, but also extremely well-rounded,” Maraga-kis said. “She has so many talents that go beyond the classroom. She is well-suited for this position, which will be one of the more critical pieces for our college going forward.”

Chatterjee’s responsibilities are numer-ous. She will be involved with overseeing the “three A’s” of the college’s operations: advising, assessment and accreditation. In addition, she will also play a role in recruiting. She will also head a college-wide initiative to foster research collaboration within the college in an effort to land major federal research grants, and will work with partnering research institutions such as the desert Research Institute to fortify future collaborative efforts, and will work to help forge new partnerships with private indus-try, both locally and regionally.

Chatterjee, who admits that she enjoys the “people” aspect of being a professor and dealing with students and other professors, said she is looking forward to her new role.

“I do like working with people,” she said. “And for the most part, I have good relation-ships with our faculty. In fact, one of my goals is to get to know the faculty members

in our college that I don’t know well. Every-thing these days is about teamwork. you can’t just work in isolation.”

Chatterjee said she hopes to capitalize on many of the college’s alumni who are already working in private industry as a bridge in furthering the offering of the college’s expertise and talent to the business community.

“We have a number of former students who are working at many of the compa-nies, both large and small, here in town, so those are contacts that could prove to be beneficial,” she said. She smiled as she remembered another student-focused aspect of her former position that could be of help in her new position. “I’ve been the intern-ship coordinator for electrical engineering for all these years, so that should be a help. Even with that background, just over the past few days, there are one or two compa-nies that have been around for a while that have surfaced (as a possible college partner). Everything takes time, and (forming rela-tionships) can take months at a time. If we can give these companies confidence that we have excellent students, faculty and facilities, then we have a good place to start.”

one of Chatterjee’s primary areas of focus will be the fledgling Renewable Energy Center. The Center will focus efforts and co-ordinate programs for competitive research with plans to increase Nevada’s national stature in the renewable energy field. It will be overlooked by a council of the deans from the Colleges of Business, Engineering, Agriculture, Biotechnology and Natural Resources, and Science. The director is a person that Chatterjee knows relatively well – her husband, Manoranjan Misra, a profes-sor of chemical and metallurgical engineer-ing who has long been considered on the

Indira Chatterjee

I have good relationships with our faculty. In fact, one of my goals is to get to know the faculty members in our college that I don’t know well. Everything these days is about teamwork.

You can’t just work in isolation.

A classroom standout moves into administration

‘‘ ’’

Chatterjee


campus’ most gifted researchers. “I’m hoping the center will become self-

sufficient in the sense that we get it started and we get people working together to get grants and establish its reputation,” Chat-terjee said. “It’s an initiative that is repre-sentative not only of the many renewable resources we have in Nevada, but what can hopefully be accomplished on a national scale. I don’t know if it can depend on state funding alone. That’s why it’s important that the researchers, the colleges and the institutions involved must work together to make it work.”

drawing on her instincts as one of the campus’ best classroom teachers, Chatterjee said another important goal is to reinforce the wonder of engineering and renewables for future University students. She is cur-rently developing ideas to help renewable efforts such as solar energy, or wind energy, come alive for young minds.

“It’s always a good thing to have the pub-lic interact with things like wind or solar,

where kids can push buttons and say, ‘oh wow, so this is what happens when you talk about renewable energy,’” she said.

Chatterjee said she has enjoyed working with Maragakis.

“The dean has been very open to sugges-tions and he asks my opinion,” she said. She has been impressed by Maragakis’ seeming never-ending source of energy. “He’s got a lot of energy, he really does,” she said of the Maragakis, a former successful chair of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “I’ve enjoyed watching him in action. I can see why he has been so success-ful. I’ve seen him interact with people – he’s very good at encouraging people to come to him with ideas.”

of course, Chatterjee isn’t bad on interac-tion herself. She hopes that if anything, her new post will simply be a continuation of what she has done best for more than 20 years at the University.

“Whatever I take on,” she said, “I like to make it a success.”

By Sara Lafrance

Many years ago, Vince Lombardi observed, “Individual commitment to a group effort is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

And it is this same level of individual commitment that makes the College of Engineering Advisory Board work so well too. Comprised of prominent members of business, industry, government, and academia, some of whom are alumni as well, this group provides the College with advice and perspective on engineering issues; acts as a liaison between the College and other organizations and institutions; and serves as advocates for the College in promoting its academic programs, achievements, and recruiting activities.

More recently, these volunteer members reorganized their committee stucture to better address College needs. What they

are now working on is impressive:The Academic Excellence and

Assessment Committee focuses on the skills and readiness of graduating students as determined by their employers as well as evaluates current and new programs that the College of Engineering may consider undertaking. The committee also provides support and recommendtions to the dean in developing and maintaining the assessment of programs for ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation.

The Communications Committee addresses greater public awareness for the College. It was instrumental in its recent website redesign and is currently developing a public lecture series on topics of general interest and relevence.

The Corporate Partners Committee establishes mutually beneficial relationshps with companies, especially

in renewable energy and other prioritized and selected fields. Its goal is to utilize the research expertise and technology within the College of Eningeering in ways that will help it obtain additional research funding and investment; enable teaching of the relevant technology components, and contribute to the College’s strategic goal of achieving national recogniton.

Although the College of Engineering Advisory Board meets only three times a year, Committee activities are ongoing. Each has a chairperson who coordinates the group’s activites and ensures progress. There is ongoing interaction with the dean, as well as the faculty, and continual communication between committee members.

It is a strong board that works, one that Vince Lombardi would assuredly describe as “committed!”

College of Engineering Advisory Board committed to excellence

No state funds were used to support this publication. This issue of the “College of Engineering Magazine” was jointly funded by Dale (Metallurgical Engineering ’67) and Lala Placey, an alumnus and friend of the College and by Granite Construction, Inc., a long-time corporate friend of the College of Engineering (COEN). The faculty, staff, and students are grateful for their appreciation of excellence and their generosity.

College of EngineeringUniversity of Nevada, Reno / Mail stop 0256

Reno, Nv 89557 | Phone (775) 784-6937 Fax (775) 784-1390 | [email protected]

CoNTRIBUToRssally Casas

Theresa Danna-DouglasJean Dixon

Claudia ortega-Lukassara Lafrance

Jodi TenenbaumJohn Trent

Mike Wolterbeek

www.unr.edu/engineeringwww.unr.edu/energy


Amorphous Alloy Membranes Prepared by Melt-Spin methods for Long-Term Use in Hy-drogen Separation Applications – Dhanesh Chandra, $975,000, DOE

Hydrogen production via coal gasifica-tion using catalytic membrane reactors is becoming increasingly important. The synthesis gas (syngas) must first be cleaned to remove impurity species via the water-gas-shift (WGS reaction, Co + H2o = Co2 + H2). This is a multi-step process there has a large number of unit operations, and the conventional route incurs a significant thermal (and thus efficiency) penalty due to the overall heat loss. However, hydrogen production from coal is becoming increas-ingly important in the United States for environmental reasons, namely to minimize carbon footprint. In a newly developed CMR process, one can extract H2 from Co2 and H2 mixtures using hydrogen separation membranes. Current hydrogen separation technologies involve ceramic ion-transport, microporous carbon membranes that have much greater thermal stability, and can be operated at temperatures applicable to a one-step simplified approach. Metallic alloys, such as that of Pt//Pd, have shown considerable success but they are expensive. In this work non-precious amorphous metal membranes that are compatible with syngas produced from coal gasification will be used. These have several advantages com-pared to the crystalline counterpart as they have greater permeability, and can be pro-duced in bulk ribbon forms using standard melt spinning technology. Various Ni-based amorphous alloy ribbons will be developed, where the solubility of hydrogen will be monitored, and will check to see if Sievert’s law is followed. The research will involve: (1) volumetric hydrogen adsorption/absorption measurements on these ribbons, (2) differ-ential scanning calorimetry, (3) in-situ x-ray

diffraction by using synchrotron measure-ments to determine pair distribution (interference) func-tions, using Fourier transform, and (4) rib-bon characterization. Standard hydrogen diffusion methodol-ogy, described in the proposal, will be used.

Supramolecular Exchange Membranes for Proton Compact Fuel Cells - Alan Fuchs, Ca-hit Evrensel, and Faramarz Gordaninejad, $600,000, DOD EPSCoR

Alan Fuchs of the Chemical and Ma-terials Engineering department is the PI of this three-year project and is working closely with Cahit Evrensel and Faramarz Gordaninejad in Mechanical Engineering. The group has been working together for nearly three years on fuel cell technologies. The work was Initially part of an NSF STTR, but the project was later funded by doE as well. The earlier work demonstrated the capability of synthesizing nanostructured materials for proton exchange membranes. Fuchs’ group in Chemical Engineer-ing synthesizes new polymeric materials and membranes and characterizes them. Gordaninejad’s group develops fuel cell

devices for measuring the performance of these membranes, and Evrensel’s group models the performance of the fuel cell de-vices. The doE project was focused on the development of novel, composite fuel cell membranes and devices. These membranes incorporate inorganic proton conductors, known as heteropolyacids (HPAs), which allows high temperature performance. The new dod EPSCoR project will provide an opportunity for development of novel polymer membranes known as polyqui-noxalines. These polymers will be used to synthesize nanostructured membranes and HPA surface coated materials. These new materials and devices are being designed for ease of scalability, which will facilitate technology transfer to companies that wish to commercialize the new technologies.

Developing Thermal Conversion Options for Biorefinery Residues – Charles Coronella

Faculty explores alternative energy projects

Coronella Chandra Gordaninejad Fuchs

The faculty of the Departments of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering have received recent research funding in a number of areas of alternate energy, namely hydrogen separation, fuels for fuel cells, and nuclear materials.

Evrensel Misra Vazquez


College of Engineering


chemical and metallurgical engineering

over the past few months, researchers in the Chemical and Materials Engineer-ing department received rave reviews in the media for their work. Here are some samples of the coverage, and the work behind the stories:

“Those researchers in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nevada in Reno are at it again. Last year they showed the world that it was possible to make biodiesel fuel from coffee grounds. This time, it’s chicken feathers.”

– The New york Times (July 27, 2009). The goal of this research is to seek al-

ternative sources for biodiesel production — as we put it, “food for hunger, waste for fuel.” This time it has been shown that the feather meal which is used for animal feed and fertilizer can provide millions of gallons of biodiesel. The total amount of chicken feather meal generated by the poultry industry is 11 billion pounds per year (which can yield 153 million gallons of biodiesel in the U.S. and 593 million gallons worldwide).

Coffee biodiesel research “touches on two of Americans’ great obsessions — coffee and cars…” – The New York Times (Dec. 16, 2008).

Producing fuel from spent coffee grounds is an attractive option compared to conventional food sources such as corn and soybean which tend to drive up commodity prices and reduce the available food supply. World coffee production is estimated to hit 18.3 billion

pounds in 2009, up from roughly 16.3 billion pounds in 2006 according to a december 2008 USdA commodities report. Current coffee consumption can add approximately 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world’s fuel supply. The production of biodiesel using a simple extraction and transesterification process is simple and inexpensive.

The total market value of biodiesel from coffee waste and chicken feather meal is $1 billion per year.

The undergraduate and graduate stu-dents who work on the projects have re-ceived recognition and several awards for their work on these “renewable energy” projects. Last year Jason Strull and Rao Kondamudi received First Prize in the Lt. Governor’s Cup competition, and this year the same group received the Nevada Commission on Economic development (NCEd) Award. The NCEd Award was given for their work on the production of value added cosmetics and medical application of coffee oil.

The Chemical and Materials En-gineering faculty and students have developed another project involving the solar conversion of Co2 to clean energy sources such as dimethyl Ether. Undergraduate students Palkin Zed and york Smith received the 2009 donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup and Lt. Gov-ernor’s Award for the best energy-related business plan called Carbon Gold. The project involves production of gasoline from Co2 using sunlight.

and Victor Vasquez, $100,000 (total award $488,000), DOE

This technology is being developed in partnership with the Gas Technology Institute (Chicago) and the desert Research Institute (Reno).. The overall objective of this project is to study and demonstrate the viability of thermal pretreatment options for processing lignocellulosic residue and waste biomass streams, particularly those charac-teristically produced in the state of Nevada and others, such as rice hulls, to produce uniform feedstocks for themo-chemical conversion into syngas or stable bio-oil, and carbon byproducts. Two main approaches are being explored including wet and dry torrefaction methods. This process is capable of converting diverse lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks into an energy-dense homoge-neous solid, a pretreatment for subsequent thermochemical conversion. In the wet pro-cess, biomass is treated in hot compressed water, resulting in three products, including gases, aqueous chemicals, and a solid fuel.

on the other hand, dry torrefaction, sometimes called low-temperature pyrolysis, is a process in which the biomass is heated in an inert gas environment at temperatures ranging from 200o to 300 ˚C. The torrefac-tion reaction has two products, a solid and a gas. Both torrefaction processes exhibit some common features. The solid product has a higher energy density relative to the start-ing biomass feedstock in both cases. Both solid products are easily friable, and have an aroma similar to wood char.

Infrastructure Support for Solid State Weld-ing of Structural Materials for Advanced Nuclear Reactors – Manoranjan Misra, $289,000, DOE

The department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering has developed a dedicated facility, the Center for Materials Reliability, to enhance a nuclear materials research program. It is involved in develop-ing novel solutions for materials-related issues with particular emphasis on materials for the Nuclear Waste Repository (yucca Mountain Project) and other high tempera-ture applications. For the design and efficient operation of next generation nuclear reac-

‘They’re at it again’Researchers continue to be at forefront of renewables

tors, it is imperative to develop the techno-logical and scientific knowledge and training pertaining to welding of advanced nuclear materials. This is the first of two years of funding of this project.

Solid state welding processes are well suited for such applications, especially for

oxide dispersion strengthened (odS) alloys useful for Gen IV reactors. Since there are no facilities in Nevada for solid state weld-ing, the establishment of the infrastructure for this facility will provide an important component of nuclear metals research at University of Nevada, Reno.


The University’s NEES (Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations) received a prestigious award at the Seventh Annual NEES Meeting held at Honolulu, Hawaii in June for “outstanding Service to Researchers” for their exceptional support of the PAKSBAB (Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building) project. darcey donovan, researcher, made the nomination and a review committee made the award selection.

The description of the award is as follows:outstanding Service to Researchers is

an award to a NEES Site in recognition of research support services that greatly exceeded expectations to ensure project success. This can include facilitating data acquisition/storage, and improving IT capabilities, maintenance and calibration, or safety at NEES Sites. NEES site nominations can be made for service provided to continuing research projects, but should describe a phase or period of research that has been completed.

description of the activity as given by PAKSBAB: Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB) recently conducted a seismic research project at the University of Nevada, Reno NEES facilities, during which we conducted in-plane cyclic tests of straw bale walls as well as shake table tests of a full-scale 14 by 14 house. We received great support and attention to detail from the NEES University of Nevada, Reno team. Sherif Elfass, in particular, went above and beyond the call of duty to assist us. He was generous in sharing his knowledge, encouraging, and a pleasure to work with. Involved from the beginning to the end of the project, he ensured that all details were

being considered and attended to. Support included:

• Technical assistance regarding scope of project

• Twice a week progress meetings, as well as numerous additional meetings and discussions

• Meetings with University experts to discuss earthquake input motion and white noise calibration

• Straw bale wall link design and fabrication • Help with instrumentation plan and safety

frame design and installation • Moving walls into lab, consultation and

assistance moving house into lab • Creation of project page on nees.unr.edu

website • Review and feedback regarding project

related correspondence • Assistance with house demolition • Presentation opportunities

As a result of the outstanding support from Sherif and the NEES team, the straw bale house earthquake simulations were extremely successful and exceeded everyone’s expectations. due to the team’s expertise and professionalism, we met or exceeded our deadlines, and all phases of

the project proceeded smoothly. This is especially noteworthy, considering it was PAKSBAB’s introductory research project, accomplished on a shoestring budget with extensive volunteer assistance. We received superb media exposure as a result of the tests, ranging from local TV channels and newspapers to the New York Times and New Scientist Magazine. The Discovery Channel Canada and BBC have also contacted us regarding possible future stories.

PAKSBAB’s website experienced 83 percent new visits in March/April. PAKSBAB’s building method has tremendous potential to provide safe, comfortable, and affordable housing to poor families throughout the world. our goal is to train local partner organizations which have the capacity to establish sustainable straw bale building programs, with PAKSBAB providing technical oversight as required.

We now have the necessary and convincing engineering evidence that our building system is structurally safe and sound, essential to moving forward and obtaining the approval and funding necessary to expand the scope of our work.

University’s NEES researchers receive ‘outstanding Service’ Award

The NEES team: Ian Buckle, Chad Lyttle, Sherif Elfass and Patrick LaPlace.

Outstanding Service to Researchers is an award to a NEES Site in recognition of research support services that greatly exceeded expectations to ensure project success. This can include facilitating data acquisition/storage, and improving IT capabilities, maintenance and calibration, or safety at NEES Sites.




By John TrentSeptember has been a good news

month for faculty members in the College of Engineering.

In the Sept. 10 issue of The Economist magazine, M. Saiid Saiidi, professor of civil and environmental engineering, shared his findings regarding keeping damaged bridges working. The Economist writes of Saiidi, “He proposes to make the parts most likely to fall out of a substance called shape-memory al-loy, which can ‘remember’ what it is supposed to look like even after it has been twisted drastically out of kilter.”

The article goes on to explain that Saiidi “gained his crucial in-sight by jostling models of bridges on a specially built ‘shake table.’ He found that, rather than failing simultaneously, bridge compo-nents tend to break in a predictable order, and that the failure of one triggers the failure of the next. So, he reasoned, if the pieces that break first can be protected, the rest should never fail.”

Saiidi’s memory alloys are made of nickel-titanium and are very elastic, and can handle much more distortion than steel compo-nents. The article says that Saiidi “… proposes to replace the con-

crete in the area around those metal components with what is known as an ‘engineered cementitious composite.’ This is a substance that is reinforced with short polymer fibres. These give it flexibility, so it does not crack as readily as ordinary cement. The result should be a bridge that can deform in an earthquake without snapping, but which returns, more or less, to its original shape when the quake is over.”

The University’s expertise in earth-quake engineering was also at the

forefront of a Purdue University an-nouncement on Sept. 10. Purdue’s $105

million grant from the National Science Foundation will create a new center for earthquake engineering that will manage 14 earth-quake engineering facilities and allow researchers to easily share data and conduct experiments remotely. The University of Nevada, Reno has long been one of the key partners in the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a nationwide consortium that is helping researchers throughout the country and the world design buildings, bridges and other struc-tures that are less susceptible to earthquake damage.

Earthquake engineers make national, worldwide headlines

In late october, as anxious commuters waited for the San Francisco-oakland Bay

Bridge to reopen fol-lowing the collapse of two steel rods and a crossbeam, the Cali-fornia department of Transportation (Cal Trans) turned to a department of Civil and Environ-mental Engineering professor to serve on a panel to review

and approve the department’s repairs on the depression-era bridge.

Ahmad Itani had conducted tests on portions of the bridge at the College of Engi-

neering’s Large Scale Structures Laboratory since 1996, and was a natural choice for the consulting role.

“The problem was the eastern part of the cantilevered span from oakland to yerba Buena Island,” Itani said in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal. “So we are familiar with the bridge at UNR. It’s an old bridge, built in 1936, and the ability of this structure to withstand an earthquake is very low.”

Itani said the bridge’s age, along with the sheer amount of volume of vehicle weight it must withstand each day as one of the key roadways leading into San Francisco, have combined to bring the bridge closer to the end of its lifespan.

“If I gave you a paper clip and told you to break it, it would just bend back and forth,”

he explained to the Reno Gazette-Journal. “So with age, it is only a matter of time, which is why you replace a bridge after 70 years.

Itani worked with other members of the advisory panel throughout the Nevada day weekend before giving their approval to re-open the bridge to Federal Highway Administration officials.

Itani’s prior experience with the bridge proved valuable as he spent hours in meet-ings as well as on the bridge itself.

“one time, I spent most of the night on the bridge,” he said. “I tell you, it was really cold up there at 4 p.m.

The bridge’s closure in late october was its longest since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earth-quake, when it was closed for a month.

Cal Trans turns to Civil Engineering for Bay Bridge repair consultation

M. Saiid Saiidi, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has made headlines with his research.

Itani


civil and environmental engineering

The year 2009 is shaping up to be a good year for the department of Computer Science and Engineering, its students and its faculty.

Like every other unit on campus, the department is contracting a bit to meet the challenges of the downturned economy and the reductions in state support for the University in general. However, this is partially being offset by the increase in research productivity and external funding that faculty have been able to garner. Indeed, a record number of new proposals have been submitted to various funding agencies during the first half of the year. Many are still under review but several have already received funding and the associated research is underway. There are also a number of existing grants that are moving full steam ahead and producing good results. The total amount of competitively funded research awards for 2009 is expected to top $2 million, while the total externally funded research expenditures for 2009 should be in excess of $1.5 million. This research funding enabled the department to recruit and hire dr. Phillipa Avery as a post-doctoral fellow, and dr. Anya Getman as a research associate professor.

The two new faculty members, Kostas Bekris and Mehmet Gunes, hired a year ago, have been energetic and busy teaching and setting up their research programs and labs, recruiting graduate students and research assistants. Their integration into the department has been smooth and they are now full participants in all aspects of our academic activities. Two other junior faculty members, Monica Nicolescu and Mircea Nicolescu, have been granted tenure and promoted in rank from Assistant Professor to As-sociate Professor. In other faculty related news, Sushil Louis concluded his sabbatical leave while

Sergiu dascalu was granted a sabbatical leave for the spring 2010 semester.

There were 27 students who graduated during the May 2009 graduating ceremonies and joined the ranks of our alumni. Three of them were doctoral students who received their Ph.d. in Com-puter Science and Engineering. We expect to have a total of seven Ph.d. students graduating from our department in 2009. In terms of students, the department’s graduate programs with more than 70 students continue to be the largest in the college of engineering. The Senior Project-open House presentations and poster sessions held on May 1, 2009 were very successful and generated a lot of interest. In addition to students and faculty there were more than a dozen guests who were impressed with many of the student projects. you can find out more about senior projects and other type of student research by visiting http://www.cse.unr.edu/research/student-research/.

Another very success-ful spring event was the Fifth UNR-IGT Spring Symposium which was held at the Knowledge Center of the university. The Symposium featured three invited keynote speakers and a very lively panel discussion on “The Convergence of Casino Gaming and Computer Games: Potentials and Barriers.” There were more than 120 people that attended the sym-posium.

As a new initiative for student recruitment we designed a poster (left) that will be sent to universities and colleges, as well as high schools in Nevada and neighboring states. We have also re-designed our departmen-tal website by giving it a completely new look, more content, and easier navigation and search for information. Visit our website at http://www.cse.unr.edu/.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering is at

the forefront of the latest instruction and research in the field.

Our commitment is to quality undergraduate teaching and

strong graduate research that help our students become

well-prepared, talented and indispensable computing and

engineering professionals.

Computer Science & Engineering

at the University of Nevada, Reno

AlgorithmsMonica Nikolescu, Kostas Bekris, Yaakov Varol

Artificial IntelligenceSushil Louis, Bobby Bryant, Kostas Bekris

Computer GamesSushil Louis, Bobby Bryant, Eelke Folmer, Dwight Egbert

Computer Networks and Internet StudiesMurat Yuksel, Mehmet Gunes

Computer VisionGeorge Bebis, Mircea Nicolescu

Graphics and VisualizationFred Harris

Human-Computer InteractionEelke Folmer, Sergiu Dascalu

Microprocessors and Embedded SystemsDwight Egbert

Parallel and Distributed ComputingFred Harris

Pattern RecognitionGeorge Bebis, Mircea Nicolescu

RoboticsMonica Nicolescu, Kostas Bekris

Software EngineeringSergiu Dascalu, Eelke Folmer, Nancy LaTourrette

Wireless CommunicationsMurat Yuksel, Mehmet Gunes

Ph.D. Computer Science and EngineeringM.S. Computer ScienceM.S. Computer Engineering

B.S. Computer ScienceB.S. Computer & Information EngineeringMinor in Digital Interactive Games

faCulty rESEarCh arEaS

dEgrEES offErEd

www.cse.unr.edu

Department of Computer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Nevada, Reno /0171

Reno, NV 89557-0171Phone (775) 784-6974 • Fax (775) 784-1877

2009 a good year for CSE




computer science and engineering

By John TrentThe attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provide a

grim and haunting reminder of what can happen when the nation is caught unaware by a terror group.

In 2009, the threat doesn’t seem quite so dramatic. or does it?

Lurking is a much more subtle, initially si-lent form of disruption – one that could come via cyberspace – that could ultimately prove even more debilitating for America.

Since the events of 9/11, the nation’s Homeland Security leaders have worried about the consequences of a cyber attack from a nation-state or even a smaller group of individuals. Such an attack could throw an entire system of commerce based on transactions made through the Internet into complete disarray.

A national research consortium that includes computer science and engineering professors from the University of Nevada, Reno, is at the forefront of an effort to elimi-nate much of the potential for cyberspace attacks.

Through a multi-million-dollar contract with the department of Homeland Security, researchers from the Norwich University Applied Research Institutes (which is serving as the prime contractor), the University, the Space dynamics Lab at Utah State Univer-sity, the Farmer School of Business at the University of Miami in oxford, ohio, and the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, d.C., are working to create a financial sector risk management model that would include a threat based simulation of cyber threat and other man-made and natural disruptions. The model also includes application to other key infrastructure areas such as energy, telecommunications and transportation.

The need has never been greater, according to Eric Braman, vice president of Norwich University Applied Research Institutes.

“Cyber Conflict, the use of cyberspace as an attack vector by a nation state or a trans-national actor to conduct a non-kinetic at-tack, has the potential to affect a whole series of critical infrastructures and the impact the ability of the U.S. to conduct business,” Bra-

man said. “As a technological society, we’re dependent on an open and safe Internet to connect a whole host of activities. A potential adversary, through exploit of the Internet, could affect the confidentially, integrity and availability of information, thus impacting decision-making capability of both govern-ment and private sector enterprise. Though a low-probability event, Cyber Conflict has the potential to result in an extremely high-consequences.”

Norwich researchers have been at the forefront of the cyber preparedness effort for several years, having worked at assessing the interconnecting roles and missions of gov-ernment and industry and in recommending strategies to counter cyber threats.

In formulating a far-reaching model that would help government and members of the nation’s key infrastructure industries repli-cate disruption of computers and informa-tion systems and to simulate decision-mak-ing processes of the participants, it became apparent to Norwich that a “deeper bench,” as Braman said, was needed for the project.

The University, which has targeted the areas of computer Artificial Intelligence and Serious Games in recent years by adding

faculty and increasing its breadth of research in such areas, seemed a natural choice for the project.

“Three years ago, we made a conscious effort to recruit more faculty members in A.I. and Serious Games and that has certainly boosted our potential for this kind of work,” said yaakov Varol, professor and chair in the College of Engineering’s department of Computer Science and Engineering. “We have a number of people who have done work with the Navy, and the department of defense with Serious Games simulations. This is not our first foray into this kind of work, although this is the first time that we’ve done work which can be considered critical or sensitive.

“We’re excited about the future of this project.” The financial sector model the con-sortium is perfecting is a fascinating mix of high-tech computer science and high-touch human psychology, according to Ernest W. drew, the Principal Investigator of the Norwich team.

“We need to have some tools in order to deal with the effect of what disruptions could

University plays key role in national consortium to keep cyberspace safe from attacks

Computer Science and Engineering faculty, such as Bobby Bryant, left, and Yaakov Varol, right, not only have played key roles in a national consortium to keep cyberspace safe from terror attacks, they’ve also involved many of their students in the effort.

Continues on page 20


occur within the financial sector if an event were to occur,” he said. “But before you do that, you need to work with the people in the sector, to get a better idea of what they do, at a gross level. We need to know, for example, what a broker-dealer does – what kind of business processes do they have? How many transactions through their system could be disrupted? And then, once you understand that, how do people behave when the system is interrupted.”

drew said University professors such as Bobby Bryant, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, have played a key role in adding the more technical layers to the model that is being developed.

“Bobby and yaakov are helping us apply A.I. to business processes,” he said. “It’s an-other example of the collaborative nature of this project. Norwich is responsible for the underlying simulation and exercise, but each member of the consortium has a very clearly defined role. Nevada clearly has a great deal of strength in A.I. and other types of simulations.”

The consortium’s model that can be used for specialized emergency preparedness exercises is designed to look at disruptions of key infrastructure, such as the financial industry. Potential disruptions a techno-logically driven society can face can run the gamut, from a man-made cyber attack to a natural disaster.

“Every organization has a public face,” he said. “And, they have transactions that they have to do with the outside, whether it’s a broker trying to clear a transaction or a customer who buys a share of IBM. The broker has to know where that share is coming from; they have to get money which may be sitting in another bank in order to complete the transaction. There are many requirements for a single buy or sell to take place.

“Now, if one of those entities doesn’t do what is expected of them, then the system starts to break down. If one entity begins to behave differently, the whole system could quickly go out of balance. Unintended con-sequences of behavior can have a serious impact on the system.”

By John TrentFred Harris, a professor of computer

science and engineering, and three graduate students made a powerful impression upon Nevada U. S. Sen. and Majority Leader Harry Reid and a host of other congressio-nal representatives and staff on July 8-9 in Washington, d.C., with a presentation on Cyber-Physical Systems.

“The amazing things that I have been able to watch here are just the tip of the iceberg of what the future holds,” Sen. Reid said of the presentation. He specifically cited Harris and the three Computer Science and Engi-neering graduate students – Roger Hoang, Richard Kelley and Sohei okamoto – for their excellent research.

The research on such systems spans multiple areas of scientific endeavors. Har-ris spoke on work being done by multiple departments in the College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno to design smarter power delivery systems with the goal of making sure that surprise events in

the power grid don’t lead to brownouts and blackouts in large regions of the country.

okamoto, a Ph.d. student of fac-ulty member Sergiu dascalu, showed off research being done by the University and

the desert Research Institute throughout the state on Cyber-Physical Systems for the environment. These include a network of sensors to detect and measure earthquakes in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, sen-sors to track the environmental conse-quences of activities at the Nevada Test Site, and environmental monitoring systems that deliver information to decision-makers and the public in the blink of an eye, guarantee-ing that the best and most relevant informa-tion available is needed.

Professor, students present at National Science Foundation

From page 19

Along slightly different lines, Hoang, a Ph.d. student of Harris, presented research linking neuroscience and computation, describing work done by the College of Engineering and the University of Nevada School of Medicine to simulate neurons and larger structures in the brain. ongoing work with the simulator is dedicated not only to basic research and robot control, but to the study of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and autism. Hoang also showed how scientists can use advanced computer graphics and virtual reality equipment such as the new six-sided CAVE facility at dRI to visualize their work and speed up the process of research.

While Hoang talked about brain simula-tions that could in the future be used to create intelligent machines, Kelley, a Ph.d. student of faculty member Monica Nicolescu, described his work in develop-ing robots that use social information to understand and predict humans’ behavior and intentions. While the ultimate goal of such research is robots that have social skills and can fluently interact with humans, Kel-ley described more immediate uses of such technology, including surveillance, security and smart homes that are capable of assist-ing the elderly.

Reid was impressed with what he saw: how Cyber-Physical Systems hold the poten-tial to bring about a revolutionary change in all aspects of Americans’ lives. The Senator noted that the type of talent and creativity he had seen was worth the attention of all Americans.

“If we had in this room a bunch of athletes … this place would be loaded with spectators,” he said. “Instead today we have a lot of smart people from our very finest universities … Johns Hopkins … Carnegie Mellon …” Then Reid paused for a moment, then added the best for last, with a smile: “… and the University of Nevada … People who are going to change the world and are already changing the world. you’re changing the world before our very eyes.”

Harris




computer science and engineering

By John Trent

There is a sense of momentum on the University of Nevada, Reno campus right now, one that is emanating strongly from

the department of Computer Science and Engineering in ways that could profoundly affect the region for decades to come.

yaakov Varol, chair of the depart-ment of Computer Science and Engi-

neering, has seen the talent in his department build in the areas of Serious Games and Artificial Intelligence. The day is not far removed when northern Nevada could become one of the major hubs for emerging technologies in these areas and others like them, which impact not only games players throughout the world, but other critical areas such as enhancement of the state’s gaming industry, and national security.

“I really do think Reno, and the Uni-versity, can become a major player in the industry,” Varol said on Friday, April 17 following the morning session of the IGT-UNR Engineering Symposium: Emerging Technologies in Games and Gaming, which took place at the Mathewson-IGT Knowl-edge Center. “If the pieces come together as I think they could, if the stars become aligned properly, Reno could become a major game developing venue.”

Earlier, in one of the presentations, James Kosta, the CEo and founder of 3G Studios, a Reno-based independent game development studio, did nothing to refute Varol’s notion. In fact, Kosta encouraged the gathering of industry representatives, students and fac-ulty to “get people involved with your games … and see if they enjoy them.”

“I’m going to implore you to try and find games that already exist in your life … invent games that people want to play, play

them constantly, and do the proper data col-lection and reporting,” Kosta said.

Kosta was one of several presenters that included donna djordjevich, a senior mem-ber of the technical staff under the Home-land Security and defense Systems Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquer-que, N.M.; Michael Mateas, a computer sci-ence faculty member at UC Santa Cruz who helped launch the game design program at that institution; and Larry dailey, profes-sor of journalism in the Reynolds School of Journalism, Jim Hunt of Bally Technologies, Kosta, Tim Page of 5000ft, a Reno-based independent video game software developer and James Vasquez of IGT, who all joined together for a panel discussion on “The Con-vergence of Casino Gaming and Computer Games: Potentials and Barriers.”

Varol said he hoped the students, in particular, would take away from the day a heightened sense of motivation and excite-ment for the work they are doing at the University.

“Jim Kosta talked a lot about payoff … and one of the payoffs from work like this is professional satisfaction,” Varol said. “And professional satisfaction is not something that you get through extra money or another

corner office. Really, what is interesting about emerging games right now is the fact that people involved with it are doing good work, work that others haven’t done before. They are doing something that is success-ful in all aspects from all angles. There is an excitement to this field, a sense that it is constantly changing and that in order to be successful, you have to put your heart and soul into it.”

The event was made possible from an endowment created by the department of Computer Science and Engineering. This came about 15 years ago, following a $1 mil-lion gift from gaming technology power-house IGT of Reno, a part of which was set aside as an endowment.

Varol said IGT is one of perhaps “half a dozen” of computer and gaming technology companies in northern Nevada – 3G Studios and 5,000ft among them – that have either catered directly to the gaming industry or have served as subcontractors.

Having already produced a number of graduates who have gone on to careers with major companies such as Sony or Microsoft, the College of Engineering is not sitting still as the games field continues to innovate and change.

IGT symposium builds momentum for emerging technology

The spring IGT-UNR Engineering Symposium made use of the University’s most technologically advanced asset, the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center.

Varol


The current research activities at the IBASL, located on the third floor of the Scrugham Engineering Mines building, are supported by a University startup pack-age and an Inter-institutional Biomedical Research Activities Fund (IBRAF) pilot research grant awarded to dr. Xiaoshan Zhu, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering. Aiming to develop two interdisciplinary research programs on biomedical diagnostics and environmental monitoring, two analytical chemistry tech-nologies are being developed at IBASL. one is a novel immunoassay for biomarkers or pathogens using quantum dot labeling and immunocomplex dissociation. This novel assay is targeting to enhance sensitivity and achieve multiplexed detection capacity. It will be embedded into a microfluidics chip to build a point-of-care biosensor. Such a biosensor system is expected to generate a timely and full risk assessment on coronary heart diseases or environmental waters, and also lower analysis cost and reduce labor. The second technology under investigation is bio-separation of pathogenic bacteria/vi-ruses/spores or biotoxin in a representative large volume of water or food sample. The bio-separation technology uses ultrafiltra-tion and fluid techniques to concentrate a large volume of water or food sample in sev-eral milliliters or less, so that the enriched pathogens can be detected for early safety warning.

A research paper entitled “Magnetic Bead Based Assay for C-Reactive Protein Using Quantum-dot Fluorescence Labeling and Immunoaffinity Separation” was submitted to Analyst in 2009 and it is in revision status now.

A research paper entitled “Compatibility of Quantum dots (Qds) with Immunobuf-fers and Its Effect on the Signal/Background of Qd-Based Immunoassay” was accepted by Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (doI: 10.1007/s00216-009-3291-x) in 2009.

A research paper entitled “Micro/Nano-

porous Membrane Based Gas-Water Separa-tion in Microchannel” was accepted by Journal of Microsystem Technologies (doI 10.1007/s00542-009-0903-5) in 2009.

Three research abstracts have been ac-cepted to present at Pittcon 2010, including an oral presentation.

A poster entitled “optical immunoassay for pathogenic bacteria using quantum-dot labeling and dissociation of immunocom-plexes” was accepted to present at the 238th ACS national meeting at Washington dC this August 2009.

A research project interim report entitled

“A Point-of-Care Immuno-Biosensor for the detection of Multiple Cardiac Biomarkers” was submitted to NSHE this July 2009 and highlighted in the NSHE July Newsletter.

dr lZhu has been involved in various outreach activities. He has been mentor to a high school student in the Gifted and Talented Education Program of the Washoe County School district. Grace Lee, a high school student in this program, has been involved in the IBASL day-to-day research routines and has received training in both basic laboratory skills and fundamental scientific or engineering concepts such as buffer preparation, pH sensing, antibody-antigen reaction, quantum dot physics and its applications in biosensors, optical fiber, liquid waveguide, ultrafiltration, etc. She also performed some research literature review, which might guide Grace in making decisions on her future career.

The IBASL also provided a device demon-stration to a group of high school students on Engineer’s day in the College of Engi-neering. A basic concept using optical fiber and liquid waveguide was introduced to these high school students.

Integrated Bio-Analytical Systems Lab (IBASL) provides biomedical diagnostic and environmental monitoring

The Integrated Bio-Analytical Systems Lab, located in the Scrugham Engineering Mines Building, has provided a boost to interdisciplinary research programs on biomedical diagnostics and environmental monitoring.

ABOUT XIAOSHAN ‘SEAN’ ZHU, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Biomedical EngineeringBackground: Zhu received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (specialty: BioMEMs and Biosensors) in 2005 at the University of Cincinnati. From 2005-2008, he worked for yellow springs Instruments (ysI) as a scientist while focusing on microfluidics based bioanalytical devices for environmental monitoring.




Jim Henson, associate chair of the department of Electrical and Biomedi-cal Engineering, recently had a patent

awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark of-fice (USPTo). The patent (Number 7,504,895) awarded 17 March 2009 is titled, “Multi-dimensional Real-array Radar Antennas and Systems Steered and

Focused Using Fast Fourier Transforms.” Radar systems are disclosed that include a

signal generator, an antenna, a switching circuit, an I/Q sampling and signal de-modulation (demodulation) processor, and a FFT processor. The signal generator pro-duces energization signals. The antenna has multiple individual antenna elements. The switching circuit is configured to de-liver the energization signals to a selected antenna element at a respective moment in time to cause the selected antenna ele-ment to transmit a respective radar signal in response to the energization signal. At least one element receives a corresponding return-radar signal before the switching circuit selects a next antenna element to transmit a respective radar signal. The de-modulation processor receives the return-

radar signals from the antenna elements and demodulates the return-radar signals. The processor (FFT) fast-Fourier trans-forms the return-radar signals. The system can include a magnitude processor that determines, from the Fourier transforms, respective magnitudes of the return signals in at least one data plane. The system also can include an imager.

Henson currently has three other patent applications pending at the USPTo – two in the area of high resolution covert mag-netic media formation and one involving methods for the enhancement of range, azimuth, and elevation resolutions for steered three dimensional imaging radar systems.

The Electrical and Biomedical Engineer-ing department is one of the main sponsors of the 12th International Symposium on Microwave and optical Technology (IS-MoT-2009) to be held in New delhi, India from dec. 16-19, 2009.

The other sponsors are; University of delhi, India, IEEE EdS delhi Chapter, India, IEEE MTTS delhi Chapter, India, Society for Microelectronics and VLSI, New delhi, India, IEEE Northern Nevada Section and Photonic Chapter and Interna-tional Union of Radio Science (URSI).The symposium was founded by UNR Professor Banmali Rawat in 1986 and has been held every alternate year in a different country since 1989. Past symposia have been held in Grand Forks, N.d. (1986); Beijing, China (1989); Reno (1991); New delhi, India (1993); Kiev, Ukraine (1995); Beijing, China (1997);

Malaga, Spain (1999); Montreal, Canada (2001); ostrava, Czech Republic (2003); Fu-kuoka, Japan (2005) and Rome, Italy (2007).

More than 300 renowned microwave and optical technology experts from more than 30 countries are expected to partici-pate in this year’s symposium where they will present research papers on the latest developments in microwave communica-tion, antennas, radar, biological effects, microwave and optical devices, metamateri-als for microwave applications, optical com-munication, optical sensing, cellular phones and mobile communication, high power amplifiers and filters, microwave photonics, electrooptics, optical fibers, optical solitons, optical networks, laser technology, optical multiplexing/demultiplexing, and future technologies.

detailed information is available on the ISMoT-2009 web page: www.ismot2009.in/

Several special sessions and short courses in microwaves, antennas and optical areas are also planned. Prof. Rawat is the General Chair of the symposium while Prof. R. S. Gupta from University of delhi, India is the Symposium Chair. The ISMoT is governed by an International Advisory Committee headed by Prof. Rawat and has 30 members from 25 countries including UNR Professor Emeritus Bruce Johnson. Future symposia have been tentatively planned to be held in Czech Republic (2011), Singapore (2013), France (2015) and Australia (2017). For further information, please contact Profes-sor Banmali Rawat, EBME department, University of Nevada, Reno, (775) 784-1457; Fax: (775) 784-6627; e-mail: [email protected].

electrical and biomedical engineering

Henson awarded patent

Henson

Department one of main sponsors for international symposium on microwave and optical technology

NEVADA ENGINEERING ON DISPLAY IN INDIADuring the 12th International symposium on Microwave and optical Technology (IsMoT-2009) in New Delhi, India, Dec. 16-19,

research fields covered will include microwave components and circuits, optical components, microwave and optical communication systems, electromagnetic theory, antennas and more. The College of Engineering is a sponsor of the international gathering.


CURRENT RESEARCH PROjECTS• A. Trzynadlowski, “Communication Enhancement in Power Electronic systems Using spectral Nulls,” National science Foundation (NsF).• A. Trzynadlowski, “High-Efficiency Gearless Power Conversion systems with silent Permanent-Magnet Machines,” NsF.• C.Y. Evrenosoglu, M. Etezadi and T. Batchman, “Assessment of Alternative Energy Applications at the Nevada Department of Transportation,” Nevada Department of Transportation.• Kira Lay and C.Y. Evrenosoglu, “Integration of Renewable Energy Based Power Generation into the U.s. Grid: Benefit and Challenges,” NsF EPsCoR Undergraduate Research Program.• M. Etezadi, “Rapid Charge Electric service station,” Nv Energy.• S. Fadali, M. Etezadi, “Pv Grid Connected system for an Emergency Health Clinic,” NsF.

FACULTY EXPERTISE• Mehdi Etezadi-Amoli specializes in power systems analysis, planning and protection; renewable energy, smart grid evaluation and applications; electromagnetic transient simulations; large-scale system modeling; and neural networks and fuzzy control application to power systems. He is a registered professional engineer in the states of Nevada and New Mexico.• Andrew Trzynadlowski specializes in power electronics; control of electric motors; pulse width modulation techniques; noise, vibration, and EMI mitigation in adjustable speed drives; fault diagnosis in electromachine systems; application of DsPs in power conversion schemes; renewable energy systems; and novel structures of electric machines. He is a Fellow of IEEE. • C. Yaman Evrenosoglu specializes in electric power system analysis, operation and design; integration of distributed renewable energy systems; smart grid applications in power transmission systems; advanced techniques for power system monitoring and control; power system dynamic/static state estimation; fault location along power system transmission and distribution lines; optimal power flow studies; and power system visualization.• Cristian Lascu specializes in power electronics converters; control of electric machinery; active power filters for power systems, microcontrollers and DsP applications; low power analog and digital electronics design; and smart interfacing for wind and solar power system integration.• Sami Fadali specializes in classical and modern control systems; fault detection; physiological modeling; nonlinear and optimum control; fuzzy systems; and engineering education.

The Electrical & Biomedical Engineering Department (EBME) has been actively involved in power system and energy conversion research and teaching over the past 25 years. The department has 11 active courses in the power systems and renewable energy areas and offers a renewable energy engineering emphasis. This option is designed for students seeking a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis on renewable energy. The department recently hired two faculty members to further enhance its research and teaching activities in renewable energy applications in electrical engineering.

EBME has broad range of research, faculty expertise




Working to encourage partnerships among the state’s higher education institu-tions and other health providers or entities,

the Health Sci-ences System (HSS) recently rewarded a round of grants to support collaborative research in the area of health and biomedi-cal research.

The Inter-insti-tutional Biomedical Research Activities

Fund (IBRAF) grants are one-year grants for pilot studies rather than continuing support. The criteria for the awards reflect the mission of the HSS which is to increase collaboration within the health training and health care industry. In order to be eligible, proposals were required to have two or more designated co-principal investigators from separate institutions from within the state’s public universities and colleges or in partnership with outside, health-related entities such as the Nevada Cancer Institute, the Southern Nevada Health district and the Whittemore Peter-

son Institute for Neuroimmune disease. one of the five grants awarded went to

Xiaoshan Zhu, assistant professor of Electri-cal & Biomedical Engineering, as well as da-yue duan, professor of pharmacology in the University of Nevada School of Medicine, and Steen Madsen of UNLV’s department of Health Physics, to research a Point-of-Care Immuno-Biosensor for Multiple Cardiac Biomarkers detection.

Coronary heart disease (CHd) is the leading cause of death in America, resulting in nearly 450,000 deaths annually. It is estimated that 16 million Americans have a history of CHd and many have previously been admitted to the hospital or visited emergency rooms. Zhu, duan and Madsen propose to develop a point-of-care biosensor device that would provide rapid diagnostic and differential information to help evaluate risk and to provide information about the benefits of future treatments.

Each researcher has contributed his own expertise to a multi-investigator, multi-insti-tutional effort to develop a rapid cardiac bio-marker detection chip. Each biomarker tells something unique about the state of health of the patient’s cardiovascular system.

These markers include CRP (C-reactive protein), c-TNI (troponin I) and BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide). All three markers together reveal important information about the diagnosis and prognosis of CHd in each patient. The biomarker tests will be antibody-based and will be able to be run rapidly and simultaneously. This research involves advancing biochemical procedures to be more reliable and sensitive, developing micro fluidics-based analysis platform, and configuring a fiber-based optical detector. Research results will be used to develop a full scale grant proposal for an NIH Explor-atory/developmental Grant Award or an NSF Biomedical Engineering award.

IBRAF grants allow researchers to obtain funded pilot data which further allows them to develop a full-scale grant proposal based on research result. This provides research-ers with a much better chance of obtaining larger grants. Additionally, NSHE system researchers, working together, can develop biomedical research in directions that in-dividuals may not have been able to before, thus promoting additional research capabil-ity and funding to individual institutions.

Zhu a key participant in collaborative research with HSS

Zhu

electrical and biomedical engineering

PLANNED GIFT INFORMATION

If you are interested in providing for any aspect of the College of Engineering in your will or trust, please contact Melanie Perish at (775) 784-6433 or email her at [email protected]. We will be happy to work with you and your advisors on any planned gift or estate planning you would like to discuss.


Chanwoo Park’s research team (Sustain-able Energy Laboratory) at the department of

Mechanical Engineer-ing in the University has been developing computational tools, which allow for engineers to analyze thermal responses of protective clothing and human skin in an effort to provide a proper thermal pro-

tection to military aircraft maintainers. The research has been funded by a

research contract from Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

The Short Take-off and Vertical-Landing (SToVL) aircrafts, next generation military aircrafts, vector jet thrust vertically. The thrust vectoring gives the SToVL aircrafts the unique ability to take off from a short runway or take off vertically if they do not have a very heavy payload and land vertical-

ly (i.e. with no runway). The vertical thrust vectoring creates a new kind of thermal hazard to the aircraft personnel working around the aircrafts. The personnel require a proper thermal protection to keep them from being burned by jet engine exhaust.

The computational tools being devel-oped by Park’s research team allows one to accurately predict the thermal response of the fabrics (as shown in the insets) used for the thermal protection garment under vari-ous thermal hazard conditions including aircraft jet engine exhaust. The simulation tool also determine various fabric/clothing design parameters (e.g., arrangement and number of fabric layers, fabric thickness

and permeability) required to provide an optimized thermal protection and estimate human skin burn using the AFRL’s human skin burn simulation program, BURNSIM. Extensive experimental effort has also been made by the research collaborators at ACT to help us to calibrate the computational models for accurate prediction of the fabric thermal response. The computational tool will have a broad impact on designing ther-mal protection equipment for other thermal protection applications (e.g., fire fighters) and assessment of the human skin burn under various thermal hazard conditions without involving human subject experi-ment or animal testing.

Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) Aircraft (F-35 Lighting II). Source: www.aviation.com & The Seattle Times October 14, 2001

Scanning Electron Microscope Image of the Fabric (NOMEX) Used for Thermal Protection.

Thermal protection with an engineer’s touch

Chanwoo




mechanical engineering

The greatest challenge in the treatment of breast cancer is the control and eradication of this metastatic disease. This study aims at harnessing the body’s immune system to help control disseminated disease as opposed to current cancer treatments that involve tumor antigen loss through surgical resection followed by immunosuppres-sive cytoreductive therapies. It proposes to accomplish this using mechanical injury to the tumor via injection of controllable fluids such as a magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) and application of magnetic field.

MRF is a suspension of ferrous particles in a carrier medium. Under a magnetic field

the particles are aligned similar to a chain along the lines of magnetic flux and causing injury on the neighboring tissue. It is hy-pothesized that this will result in the classic induction of “danger signals”: tumor cell death, disruption of the tumor architecture and release of tumor antigens culminating with recruitment and activation of dendritic cells. Used in combination with immuno-modulating agents such as Cd40 agonistic antibody and IL-2, this treatment will provide activation of the immune response, provide tumor antigen to dendritic cells and maintain cytotoxic tumor-specific T lymphocytes.

This is a collaborative effort between for-mer University of Nevada, Reno researcher William Murphy’s group at the University of California, davis and Cahit A. Evrensel and Faramarz Gordaninejad of Mechanical Engineering and Alan Fuchs of Chemical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. Biocompatible MRF conjugated with different agents described above, electro-magnets with desired fields and mathemati-cal models will be developed at the Univer-sity of Nevada, Reno and animal studies will be accomplished at the University of California, davis.

Miles Greiner, professor of Mechani-cal Engineering, is on sabbatical during

the 2009-2010 academic year. during this time he will be work-ing on projects for the US Nuclear Regula-tory Commission (NRC) and Ar-gonne National Laboratories. For the NRC he plans

to perform a peer review of analysis the NRC performed. In that analysis, they predict what would have happened if spent nuclear transport casks had be involved in four actual severe transpor-tation accidents. For Argonne, he plans to perform an analysis of how hydrogen/oxygen mixtures can build up in some nuclear material storage packages, and how those mixtures might detonate. This is an analysis that will help design-ers make those packages safer.

Greiner performs peer review analysis, projects for NRC while on sabbatical

Greiner

Collaborative effort between UC-davis, Engineering, looks to novel methods for breast cancer treatments

“It is my belief that we can all achieve great things if we all work together, focused on a common goal.” – Manos Maragakis, dean, College of Engineering

Renewable energy … made possible with visionary knowledge of the College of EngineeringThe College of Engineering is striving to help the State of Nevada become the nation’s leader in renewable energy through the work of its talented faculty, motivated students and partners from throughout the University of Nevada, Reno campus.


• V. DEAN ADAMSCivil and Environmental EngineeringAlumni Merit Citation Award from Utah state University

• THEODORE BATCHMANElectrical and Biomedical Engineering and Renewable Energy CenterReceived the Ronald J. schmitz Award for outstanding service to the Frontiers in Education Conference, october 2008

• INDIRA CHATTERjEEElectrical and Biomedical EngineeringAssociate DeanReceived the Ralph E. and Rose A. Hoeper Excellence in Teaching and Advisement Award

• AMY CHILDRESSCivil and Environmental Engineering ChairNevada Women’s Fund Women of Achievement Award

• AHMAD ITANICivil and Environmental Engineeringsecond Place, F. Donald Tibbits, Distinguished Teacher of the year Award

• jONGHwAN SUHRMechanical EngineeringNational science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Award Development of biologically inspired artificial skins that can make aircraft more fuel efficient

• IAN BUCKLECivil and Environmental EngineeringFoundation Professor 2009

• MURAT YUKSELComputer Science and EngineeringBest Paper Award - M. yuksel, K. K. Ramakrishnan, and R. D. Doverspike, “Cross-Layer Failure Restoration Techniques to Provide a Robust IPTv service”, Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Local and Metropolitan

Area Networks (LANMAN), Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, Romania, september 2008

• M. SAMI FADALIElectrical and Biomedical EngineeringCo-authored the book Digital Control Engineering: Analysis and Design

• ERIC wANGMechanical EngineeringWinner of the 2009 Regents Teaching Award

COLLABORATIVE AwARDS• CARL LOONEY & SERGIU DASCALUComputer Science and EngineeringBest Paper Award at the 21st International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE-2008), Honolulu, Hawaii, November 2008.saul Reed, Carl Looney, and sergiu Dascalu “A Recursive HypersphericClassification Algorithm,”/ Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE-2008), November 2008, pp. 156-160

• MANORANjAN MISRAChemical and Metallurgical Engineering and SERGIU DASCALUComputer Science and EngineeringReceived the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology’s Faculty Advisor special Recognition Award

• KEITH DENNETT & LUIS LORIA SALAZARCivil and Environmental EngineeringReceived the outstanding Faculty Award from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

• jEFF LACOMBE, Associate Professor of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering, ERIC wANG, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and ANN-MARIE VOLLSTEDT, Ph.D student/Doctorial Candidate, were awarded the AsEE 2008 Merl K. Miller award. This award is an annual prize for the outstanding Computers in Education Journal paper on teaching/instructional methods. It recognizes the contributions and dedication of Merl K. Miller to the Computers in Education Division (AsEE).

faculty awards & news

DR. GARY NORRIS, CEE DR. RICHARD wIRTZ, ME

EMERITUS FACULTY




CHEMICAL & METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING

DEV CHIDAMBARAM has joined the faculty of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering as an Assistant Professor. He received a B.Tech. in Chemical and Electrochemical Engineering from the Central Electrochemical Research Institute (India), and graduate degrees, M.s. in Materials science and Engineering, M.s. in Biomedical Engineering, and Ph.D. in Materials science and Engineering (2003), from the state of New york at stony Brook. Prior to joining the faculty at Nevada, he was an Assistant Materials scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.y. His research has included extensive studies of protective coatings of aluminum alloys and depleted uranium, environmental remediation, and renewable energy (bio-ethanol production and bio-hydrogen generation). He has received a number of awards and honors, including the Hans-Jurgen Engell Prize from the International society of Electrochemical society, the Goldhaber Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship.

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

ERIC FRITZINGER has joined the faculty of Computer science and Engineering as an administrative faculty. He received his Bachelor of science in Computer science in December of 2004 from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his Master of science in Computer science in August of 2006 from UNR as well. Prior to joining the faculty at UNR, he worked as a software Engineer at Hamilton Company in Reno, Nv.

His duties at Hamilton included software research, architecture, development, and integration for the fluid handling robots that were manufactured, as well as product support for the service staff in the field.

While working as a Teaching Assistant at the University, he won the oustanding TA award for the sTEM disciplines given by the Excellence in Teaching Program across the entire University.

ANYA GETMAN recently joined the Department of Computer science and Engineering as a Research Associate Professor, after contributing as a senior Engineer, Blackbelt, and Manager to Caterpillar, Ford, GE, and IBM. Her B.s., and M.s. at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Ph.D at Binghamton University, evolved from Manufacturing Mechanical Engineering with Robotics, to Electrical Engineering Controls with Artificial Intelligence. she enjoys developing and implementing automation, sensor fusion, nonlinear modeling, controllers and user-friendly interfaces which isolate, track, diagnose, and predict real-time signals in uncertain environments, even when data is incomplete or corrupted. Her tools have included statistics, historical time-frequency mapping, neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, deterministic chaos, wavelets, stochastic petri nets, clustering, controllability and observability mapping, simulation, and testing.

MICHAEL j. MCMAHON jR. has joined the faculty of Computer science & Engineering as administrative faculty. He received a Bachelor of science in Computer science (2004) and a Master of science in Computer science (2007) from the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to joining the faculty of UNR, he was a Database Administrator

/ software Developer at GameTech International, Inc. in Reno. His experiences included architecture, implementation, and support of databases, software systems, and a web portal that drove the daily activities of the company. During this time, he received certifications in Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), ADo.NET, and Windows Forms technologies. He has also acquired in-depth experience with web portals (AsP.NET, Css, XHTML, Javascript) and database development spanning Microsoft sQL, MysQL, and sQLite database engines.

ELECTRICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

CRISTIAN LASCU received the M.s. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from University Politehnica of Timisoara, Romania, in 1995 and 2002, respectively. His area of expertise includes energy conversion and management systems, advanced power electronics, modern electric drives, renewable energy systems with focus on solar and wind power generation and conversion, and microprocessor controlled systems. He worked in Romania, Denmark, Italy, and UsA. since 2009 he is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, University of Nevada. since 2000 he is a reviewer for three IEEE Transactions journals and for related IEEE conferences. He authored/co-authored 13 articles in IEEE Transactions journals and another 24 articles in refereed conference proceedings. Lascu received an IEEE-IAs Prize Paper Award in 1998.

new faculty

Chidambaram Getman Lascu McMahonFritzinger


By John Trent

The equation is indisputable: climate change + global warming = increasing scarcity of water. And for an arid state like Nevada, the equation has taken on a warp-speed kind of significance, with research-ers from the state’s institutions of higher education partnering throughout multiple scientific disciplines to find the best solu-tions to the problem of climate change.

University of Nevada, Reno civil engi-neering student Kerri Hickenbottom is just one example of how student researchers have also been mobilized through a ground-breaking statewide climate change initiative funded by the National Science Foundation

(NSF) EPSCoR program.Hickenbottom is one of 16 students from

Nevada System of Higher Education institu-tions who were awarded scholarships this summer to conduct research as part of the State of Nevada’s EPSCoR Climate Change Program. The Undergraduate Research op-portunity solicitation targeted students in sci-ence, technology, engineering, mathematics and journalism with a focus on teaching or communicating K-12 science or technology.

of the 16 students selected, 11, like Hick-enbottom, were students from the Univer-sity of Nevada, Reno.

Hickenbottom, working with men-tor Amy Childress, professor of civil and

environmental engineering, has conducted a study of three different membrane bioreac-tor configurations. She says the membrane bioreactors (MBR’s) could prove to be a viable alternative to achieve sustainability in wastewater treatment.

“The research aims to investigate the performance differences of aerobic MBR’s, anaerobic MBC’s, and attached growth aerobic MBR’s under the same operat-ing conditions,” says Hickenbottom, who plans to graduate in spring 2010 and then continue her studies as a graduate student in environmental engineering.

Here are brief sketches of the other research projects conducted by the Univer-

HOT PLANET RESEARCH

Engineering students play prominent role in science of statewide climate change

Kerri Hickenbottom is a senior in the civil and environmental engineering program. She is one of two Northern Nevadan student recipients of the American Public Works Association 2009 scholarship. Hickenbottom will graduate in May 2009 and continue her education in civil and environmental engineering as a master’s student.




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sity’s undergraduate students:Lina Castano, biochemistry and molecular

molecular biology: Castano and her mentor, John Cushman, professor of biochemistry, have studied desiccation tolerance, a rare adaptive response of plants that allows them to survive extreme drought conditions. “This kind of survival mechanism is present in ‘resurrection’ plants, and it can be better understood by study-ing it using several scientific approaches including genomics, metabolomics and proteomics,” she says.

david Culverson, environ-mental studies: Working with two mentors, Scott Mensing, professor of geography at the University and Bronwen Haugland, physical sciences professor at Truckee Meadows Community College, Culverson is updating data from four cli-matological divisions of Nevada, in an effort to make “Nevada’s Weather and Climate Hand-book” more readily available to the public and other researchers.

Nichole Joslyn, biochemistry and mo-lecular biology: Joslyn, working with mentor Sean Casey, associate professor of chemistry, is exploring the chemical control of organic/inorganic semiconductor interfaces. The results will address the role of the linking group on the overall molecular orientation and interface electronics. These are areas that are important for improvement of inorganic/organic hybrid semiconductor materials.

Samantha Kertson, chemical engineering: Working with Charles Coronella, associ-ate professor of chemical and metallurgical engineering, Kertson’s research objective is to evaluate efficiency when extracting fatty acids from specific strains of algae located in neighboring areas. “Since fatty acids can be directly converted into renewable energy, it is expected that the outcome of this research will enable a more efficient means for the production of more carbon-neutral biofu-els,” she says.

Kira Lay, electrical engineering: Lay’s pro-posal addresses the benefits and challenges

of integrating renewable energy-based power generation into the Nevada power grid, emphasizing and demonstrating the need for in-depth analysis of the impacts of wind, so-lar and geothermal-based power generation on a sample system. Her mentor is Cansin yaman Evrenosoglu, assistant professor of electrical and biomedical engineering.

Kimberly Rafter, civil engineering: Rafter’s proposed study investigates the pos-sibility of using secondary-treated wastewa-ter to culture algae for the development of a new renewable energy source. “There are numerous benefits of using algae, including its potential to produce high concentrations of biomass that can be used for biofuel,” says Rafter, whose mentor is Eric Marchand, as-sociate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Sean Ross, chemistry: Ross, working with mentor Robert Sheridan, professor of chemistry, is looking at several internal and external effects related to fuel emissions. “We will study the reactivity of carbenes possibly formed upon combustion of hydro-carbons,” Ross says. Ross is also studying the reactivity of carbenes with oxygen to form carbonyl oxides, which are intermedi-ate species of hydrocarbons with ozone, as

well as the carbenes themselves.John Stefka, biology and wildlife ecology:

Stefka is using point count surveys from about 50 sites to gather information on the species of birds in the Truckee River vicinity. “After identifying which birds can adapt to novel habitats, an assessment of the relative abundance and species richness of

the various avian species will be used as a measure of commu-nity response to habitat change,” says Stefka, who is working with mentor Scott Bassett, assistant professor of geography. By studying the adaptive responses of these birds to urbanization, the study will infer the possible adaptive response of the species to climate change.

Alicia Stillwell, mathematics: Stillwell, working with Mark Pinsky professor of mathematics and statistics, is focusing on the design and testing of alternative feedback controlled estima-tors and forecasters for some

simplified models of meteorological systems. Stillwell says that complex systems arising in different application domains accumulate various uncertainties that decrease the accu-racy of numerical forecast. “Consequently,” she says, “present meteorology research has adopted various approaches integrating observations and numerical simulations to enhance the precision of numerical simula-tions of partly uncertain systems.”

Robert Vaughn, environmental engi-neering: Vaughn’s research is focused on improving methods for water reuse. He says one of the most significant obstacles in water reuse is the presence of persistent organic contaminants. He is working to remove one class of contaminant, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP’s). “We need to improve the degradation of PPCP’s in recycled water,” says Vaughn, whose mentor is Edward Kolodziej, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Using soil columns to simulate a recycled water system, PPCP’s will be injected into the soil columns and their levels will be measured as they travel through the columns.”

Kerri Hickenbottom shows the results of her work associated with research on state climate change during a recent poster session.


student news

DOCTORAL PROGRAM GRADUATE ACCEPTS POST-DOC AT OXFORD

The most recent doctoral graduate from Biomedical Engineering program, joshua Larkin, has accepted a postdoctoral research position at oxford University in England. Josh begins work in the fall with Peter Cook, EP Abraham Professor of Cell Biology at oxford. Cook heads a nuclear structure and function research group with a particular emphasis on quantitative approaches to questions in biology. Josh will conduct research on the epigenetic effects of chromatin structure using various molecular biology and fluorescence microscopy techniques on transfected cells. specifically, he will be looking at the specificity with which certain genes are transcribed in different transcription factories. This work, in conjunction with other research by the inter-disciplinary group of biologists, physicists and mathematicians challenges the putative model of transcription in which RNA polymerases diffuse to their targets to begin transcription. The work will help determine the structure of chromatin in interphase nuclei and how this organization affects the regulation of transcription.

Josh received his undergraduate degree from the College of Engineering where he was a dual major in mechanical and electrical engineering. His doctoral work within the biomedical engineering program focused on “Photon Event Distribution sampling” (PEDs), a novel photonics technique in which images are constructed by precisely

measuring the locations of individual photons and assigning an uncertainty distribution to each photon. This technique allows images to be constructed in very dim light and movements as small as a few nanometers to be monitored optically. Best wishes to Josh and his wife, Jenna, as they embark on this exciting venture.

RECENT PH.D. STUDENT RECEIVES NSF GRAND CHALLENGE AwARD

Andrea Achilli received the National science Foundation – Association of Environmental Engineering and science

Professors (AEEsP) Grand Challenge student Paper Award at the 2009 AEEsP Conference for his publication titled “Power Generation with Pressure Retarded osmosis: an Experimental and

Theoretical Investigation.” He also recently completed the Ph.D. program in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) with a dissertation titled “osmotically-Driven Membrane Processes for Water Reuse and Energy Recovery.” His advisors were Amy Childress and Eric Marchand of the CEE Department.

CERjANIC EARNS UNDERGRAD RESEARCH HONOR

Alex Cerjanic, who graduated in August 2009 with a B.s. degree in Electrical

Engineering, won an Honors Undergraduate Research Award during the academic year 2008-2009. His research project was entitled “Design and Fabrication of a Perfusion Electrode

Microchamber for nanosecond Pulsed Electric Field.” His research mentor was Professor Indira Chatterjee. Alex worked on developing a novel microelectrode chamber incorporating perfusion for the study of intracellular calcium changes in chromaffin cells that are found in the adrenal gland when exposed to high intensity nanoelectric pulses. These nanoelectric pulses have potential clinical applications in treating cancer, as well as applications in pure research in physiology and pharmacology. Alex worked on this interdisciplinary project in collaboration with Dr. Gale Craviso, Professor of Pharmacology, University of Nevada school of Medicine. The numerical modeling part of his research will be featured in a journal article in a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation.

STUDENTS EARN HONORSXuan wang, Ph.D. candidate in the

transportation program of the Civil Engineering Department, has won the District 6 van Wagoner Award for the best ITE District 6 technical paper published in 2008, for her article entitled “Evaluation of Lane-by-Lane Detection at signalized Intersections Using simulation.” Wang’s award was presented during the District 6 Annual Meeting held in Denver, Colo., in July. The van Wagoner Award was endowed in 1987 by the van Wagoner family in honor of Wayne van Wagoner, a District 6 member who successfully served the District and was editor of WesternITE between 1980 and 1984, just prior to his untimely death in an auto accident in october of 1985. His wife Patricia continued to serve as WesternITE editor from 1984 until 1990.

Larkin

Achilli

Cerjanic

Wang




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Patrick Hu, also pursuing a Ph.D. in transportation, has won second place in the District 6 van Wagoner Award competition. This is the third year in a row that the University has won the first place and second year in a row to win both first and second places. Zong Tian, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering is advisor to both students.

wICSE PROMOTES SUPPORT FOR wOMEN IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

WICsE (Women Into Computer science and Engineering) is a group of women who are pursuing degrees and careers in, or related to, computer science and computer engineering. The organization’s purpose is to promote an environment of community and academic support for current and prospective women in these fields. This newly formed group will have scheduled study sessions, technical and informational lectures to assist women taking computer science and computer engineering courses. These activities, along with planned recreational outings, are intended to help foster interest, knowledge and camaraderie for members. Women who are not Computer science or Computer Information Engineering majors but are taking classes and/or have an interest in these fields are encouraged to join us. For more information visit our blog at http://wicse.blogs.unr.edu or email [email protected].

CEE GRADUATE STUDENTS HONORED

Xuan wang and Patrick Hu, both students in the transportation program pursuing Ph.D. degrees, won the first and second places for the Best student Paper competition of the ITE Intermountain section in April. It is the third year in a row that the University has won the first place prize, and the second year in a row that students from the University swept the first two places, according to Zong Tian, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

SOCIETY OF wOMEN ENGINEERS HOSTS ‘EVENING wITH INDUSTRY,’ NOV. 3

The University of Nevada, Reno collegiate section of the society of Women Engineers celebrated the 14th annual Evening with Industry event on November 3rd, 2009. It was an evening of networking and enthusiasm for engineering with nearly 200 professional engineers and engineering students attending. over 15 engineering and mining companies were represented at the event. The event took place in the Joe Crowley student Union on the University campus in a ballroom with a striking view of the City of sparks at night. Travis Johnson, P.E., of Nv Energy gave the keynote address entitled

“Electric vehicles are Coming – What’s the Big Deal?”

Dr. Milton Glick, President of University, Dr. Manos Maragakis, Dean of the College of Engineering, and Mary Frederick, Governor of the society of Women Engineers Region A, all shared their thoughts and ideas about engineering and the importance of increasing the number of women in technical fields. This event would not have been possible without the support of all of the company and individual sponsors who attended the College of Engineering, and the Mackay school of Mines and Earth sciences in the College of science.

Women Into Computer Science and Engineering

Left to right: Sadie Thompson, VP and Organizer of EWI, and Shannon McDaniel, President.

Left to right: College of Engineering Dean Manos Maragakis, his wife Mary, and University President Milt Glick at EWI.


student news

Senior Scholar Fall 2008Greg Kraus, Mechanical Engineering• Advisor: Dr. Eric Wang

Senior Scholar Spring 2009Nick Aboumrad, Civil Engineering• Advisor: Dr. V. Dean Adams

excellence in honorS awardBen Seelbinder, Computer science & Engineering• Advisor: Nancy Latourrette

Kasia Nowinski, Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering• Advisor: Dr. Alan Fuchs

outStanding graduate Student reSearcher award 2009Narasimha Rao Kondamudi, Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering• Advisor: Dr. Manoranjan Misra

outStanding international graduate Student award 2009Muhanna Muhanna, Ph.D Candidate, Computer science & Engineering• Advisor: Dr. Sergiu Dascalu

donald w. reynoldS governor’S cup 2009Graduate Winners2nd Place - $10,000 Northern Nevada Nanotubes Team Members: Alison Pyne - FinanceJustin Culver - Chemical EngineeringUmer javed - Chemical EngineeringTim Stutz - Chemical EngineeringStuart Greenfield - Economics • Advisors: Gary Valiere (Mangement) & Alan Fuchs (CME)

undergraduate winner - $5,000 prize Carbon Gold Team Members: Palkin Zed - Materials science and Engineering, MarketingYork Smith - Chemical Engineering• Advisor: Manoranjan Misra (CME)

lt. governor’S award winnerSPresented to Best Energy-Related Business PlanGraduate Winner - $5,000 Prize Appliance2.0 solutions Team Members: Alexander Cerjanic - Electrical EngineeringConnor McCune - Electrical EngineeringAlex Carr - Engineering Physics

Kingsley Anoshiri - Electrical Engineering• Advisor: Yantao Shen (EBME)

nced commiSSionerS’ awardPresented to Business Plan that Best Addresses Economic Development Needs of Rural Nevada$2,500 PrizeClean Bean Team Members: jason Strull – Material science & EngineeringRao Kondamundi – Material science & Engineering• Advisor: Manoranjan Misra (CME)

CHEMICAL & METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING

univerSity rover challenge competition2nd PlaceTeam Members:Travis Fields (ME)Brad Towle (CsE)Blake Poe (ME)Tracey Van Gundy (Geophysics)Harrison Edwards (high school student)Matt weller (Geol. Eng) Gregory Kraus (ME)Matt Savage (CME)Daniel Heywood (home school)Kurtis Clark (CME)

Chris Reede (ME)David welge (ME)Shannon Archer (Hydrogeology)Tommy On (ME)Austin Stanhope (CsE)David Anderson (ME)• Advisors: Jeffrey LaCombe (CME), Eric Wang (ME) & Wendy Calvin (Geophysics)

aiche weStern regional conFerence 2009Paper Competition3rd Place – NAsA Teamjustin Culver (presenting)Tim Stutzman Umer javed

che car competition1st Place - Poster CompetitionShawn Pugh and Kasia Nowinski ParticipantsSchinthia Islam, Rebekah McKenna, Umer javed, Trevor Clizer, Nalin Howard, Annie Lassaline, jimmy Dinh, Madeline Laxa • Advisor: Victor Vasquez

materialS Science competitionAmerican Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC)smart Electronic and Nano-Materials Category 1st Place – Palkin Zed• Advisor: Manoranjan Misra

CIvIL & ENvIRoNMENTAL ENGINEERING

nSF epScor Summer 2009 awardSKerri Hickenbottom Kim RafterAlex Vaughn• Advisors: Amy Childress, Eric Marchand and Edward Kolodziej

concrete canoe competitionWinners of the Nationals 2008 in Quebec, CanadaCorbin McFarlaneRobert Coomesjeff weageljustin Kunert Mark CukrovAndrew DurhamDavid jaymeMitch BrownBenjamin Mach\Michael TaylorKyle HollingsworthChad LyttleBrooke BuzzoneKelly DoyleSuzanne DurrKatie BowdenTiffany Reichert Tarin Strickler • Advisor: David Sanders

The College of Engineering’s concrete canoe team had a banner season in 2009, finishing second at the pacific regional competition.




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midpac competition 2009 : concrete canoeWon every race and finished 2nd overallMitch Brown, Project ManagerAndrew DurhamTiffany ReichertKatie BowdenMark Cukrov jeff weagel jorge GonzalezKatie Ezell Kim Rafter Ray Hooft Angeli Gamez jose Garciajustin KunertTanaya KawakamiKevin Nguyen Austin Youngblood• Advisor: David Sanders

midpac competition 2009: mead paper 1st PlaceRachel Coyner AsCE/AGC student • Chapter Advisor: David Sanders

midpac competition 2009: water treatment 3rd PlaceNicholas Aboumrad - Project ManagerChristine Chiajake Kelgard Alissa EllisBrandon EllisNola MillerKerri Hickenbottom Elizabeth TissierDavid johnson

Nick BrothersZack Recine • Advisors: Keith Dennett & Eric Marchand

BeSt Student paper 2009Given by Institute of Transportation Engineersand the Ban Wagoner Award for best technicalpaper from D-6 published in the ITE JournalZuan wang, Ph.D Candidate • Advisor: Zong Tian

CoMPUTER sCIENCE & ENGINEERING

BeSt Student paperSara Nasser & Adrienne Breland “Parallel Assembler for Fuzzy Genome sequence Assembly”, Proceedings of IsCA’s Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE 2008) , November 12-14, 2008, Pages 13-19. • Advisor: Frederick C. Harris, Jr.

ELECTRICAL & BIoMEDICAL ENGINEERING

nSF epScorKira LayAwarded $4,500 by NsF EPsCoR Climate Change program for her proposal entitled “Integration of Renewable Energy Based Power Generation in to the Us Grid: Benefits & Challenges”• Advisor: Cansin Y. Evrenosoglu

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

doc harriS Speaking competition1st PlaceBryan Young2nd Place Heather Culbertson • Advisor: Kwang Kim

aSme Student proFeSSional development conFerence 2009old Guard Website Contest1st Place – Thomas Kerr2nd Place – Austin Thibault old Guard Poster Contest3rd Place – Tara LewisMechanical Engineering Participants: Heather CulbertsonThomas KerrTara Lewis james RossAustin ThibaultBryan Young• Advisors: Kwang Kim and Candice Bauer

aSme hpvc competitionWinners of the sportsmanship AwardUtility Event1st Placeoverall Utility2nd PlaceMechanical Engineering Participants: jason Ross (Chair) Mike Chilton (vice-Chair) Brett Barlowjohn Bradley Danielle CotterHeather Culbertson Noah GerhTom KerrTara Lewis

Brandon Makridisjohn Malinowski Chris Newman james Ross Erinn Seifman Austin Thibault • Advisors: Jonghwan Suhr & Candice Bauer

outStanding Senior Student awardS and outStanding Senior Service awardSChemical & Metallurgical Engineeringoutstanding senior: Kasia Nowinski outstanding service: Shawn Pugh

Civil & Environmental Engineeringoutstanding senior: Michael Levioutstanding service: jorge Gonzalez

Computer Science & Engineeringoutstanding senior: Xiao Lu Zhangoutstanding service: joshua Hegie

Electrical & Biomedical Engineeringoutstanding senior: justin Schmidhofer outstanding service: Howard Rapp

Mechanical Engineeringoutstanding senior: Hank Thompsonoutstanding service: Tara Lewis

College of Engineeringsenior service spring 2009: Kurtis ClarkMaterials science & Engineering

Aboumrad Clark Coyner Hegie Kraus Levi Lewis

Nowinski Pugh Rapp Schmidhofer Thompson Zed Zhang


student awards

By John Trent

Each summer, when school is out and northern Nevada’s brightest young minds are looking for ways to keep their learning fun, yet interesting, the College of Engineer-ing has the perfect activity for such students.

The college’s ultra-successful Engineer-ing Summer Camps are held each summer. From building “mini-concrete canoes” that compete on the sparkling waters of the fountain outside Getchell Library on the University of Nevada, Reno campus to tours of the vast array of minerals housed in the Keck Museum in the Mackay School of Mines Building to gaining insight through the instruction of civil engineering profes-sors on the inner workings of the typical traffic signal, the experience is both hands-on and memorable.

According to debbie deLauer, K-12 outreach coordinator for the College of En-gineering, the camps usually help spark an even greater interest for students interested in one day studying engineering or one of its many aspects.

“If we can catch the students early, hope-fully they’ll remember the experience and they’ll be back to consider a major in one of our nine engineering programs,” said deLauer.

“The Engineering Summer Camps are one of our great success stories,” added Manos Maragakis, dean of the College of Engineering. “They show young people that engineering is not only a challenging and important field, it can be a lot of fun to study.”

In 2009, there were two camps. The Intro-duction to Engineering Camps, designed for students 12 to 14, were held on June 22-26, and again on July 13-17 and July 27-31. Activities for the 12- to 14-year-old campers involve faculty and staff from Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, Civil and Envi-ronmental Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

The Civil and Environmental Engineer-ing Camps, designed for students ages 14 to 17, were held on July 6-10 and July 20-24. Activities are focused on three areas: earth-quake, environmental and geotechnical.

The five sections of the two camps have an enrollment of about 25 and usually fill well before the K-12 school year is out, deLauer said. The camps offer the students a week-long opportunity to interact and learn from some of the college’s finest professors. Many of the engineering professors have active research agendas with grant funding

that includes a K-12 educational outreach component, which helps unite efforts and provides for a richer learning experience for the students.

The camps also encourage and ac-tively seek students from all backgrounds. Students from all Washoe County public, private and charter schools are encouraged to attend, and a vast array of donors offer financial aid and scholarships for students with an aptitude for math and science. Partners for the camps include community organizations such as Big Brothers Big

SUMMERTIME RITEEngineering Summer Camps swing into action

Engineering Summer Camps have proven to be one of the College of Engineering’s great outreach success stories, showing campers that engineering is a challenging and fun field for a young person to study.




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Sisters, the Boys & Girls Club of Truckee Meadows, and the Reno Housing Author-ity. on-campus partners include the dean’s Future Scholars program in the College of Education – a program that encourages low-income students to attend college and become teachers.

The camps have also made strong inroads in encouraging girls’ interest in mathemat-ics, science and engineering. National studies have shown that girls often lack such encouragement in middle school and high school and drift away from such subjects. In March, the camps received the news that the EWB Fund at the Community Founda-tion of Western Nevada will be providing a $5,000 scholarship. The scholarship is being used to enroll more girls in the camp.

Kevin Chen, a Presidential Scholarship recipient who recently graduated from McQueen High School and was part of the highly successful dean’s Future Scholars program on campus, will be attending the University as a freshman in the fall. Chen said his experience participating in the Summer Camps has been a highlight of his summer.

“It was a really fun way to learn about engineering, and what engineers do,” said Chen, who spent the last two summers working with the middle school students who were enrolled in the camp. “At that age, it’s one of the happiest and most fun times of your life, and there is a lot of learning going on. It’s a great introduction to not only engineering, but to the campus and what it has to offer.”

Added deLauer: “The camps help give the students a glimpse into their potential future as college students, and also gives them access to support that will help make their entry into our engineering programs a success.”

The camps are held in the Harry Reid Engineering Laboratory on the University campus, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration fee is $250. Scholarships and financial assistance are available.

For more information about the Engi-neering Summer Camps, go to: http://www.unr.edu/engineering/outreach/camps.html

n campSThree Intro to Engineering CampsTwo Civil Engineering Camps

n Format• Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. • $250 per camp• Qualified Instructors designed the content

of each camp, including professional guest speakers

• Campers enjoyed lab tours, experiments, classroom lectures, hands-on activities, tours of campus, weekly field trips

• Parents were responsible for transportation • We provided healthy snacks• DFS program provided free lunches for all

campers for first 4 camps, the last week students were required to bring their own lunch

• Keepsake water bottles, t-shirts, and various prizes were given to each camper

• Parents were invited to a celebration ceremony, power point presentations were made by teams of campers and certificates

were given to each camper at end of ceremony

n participant & Financial inFormation• 102 participants (ages 12-17) attended the five

camps• Seven campers attended more than one camp• 93 campers received full or partial scholarships• Total Scholarship $ granted: $18,050 • Each girl received at least a $200 scholarship• Total Scholarship $ granted to girls: $ 7,900• Nine campers paid in full• Total Registration fees collected overall: $7,200

n gender and ethnicityGenderFemale: 31Male: 71EthnicityCaucasian: 74Asian: 7African American: 4Hispanic: 13Middle Eastern: 4

Our College of Engineering is proud of two successful outreach programs that help local students explore how and why math, science and technology are important subjects to learn more about as they prepare for college and the workforce. We help them discover what “engineering” is and how to pursue a career path in various engineering fields. These two programs are:

CAMPS 2009 BY THE NUMBERS

K-12 outreach: Pride for college, community

• our Summer Engineering Exploration Camps were developed to encourage middle school and high school students to partici-pate in week long summer camps to build and explore everything from mousetrap powered cars to earthquakes, bridges and ro-botics. These camps provide young students with a glimpse into their future as engineer-ing students, and access to support that will help make their entry into our programs a success. Thanks to support from Hewlett Foundation, Hawkins Foundation, Harley davidson Financial Services, and several fed-eral grants (NSF, doE, EPA, NASA) we have expanded on the two original themed camps to six camps during the summer months. In addition to promoting the camps to students in all the Washoe County public and private schools, our donors offer financial aid and scholarships for children with an aptitude for

math and science associated with commu-nity organizations such as: Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Boys & Girls Club and the Reno Housing Authority.

• our Mobile Engineering & Education Lab (ME2L) has visited over 100 classrooms and approximately 3000 students since its inception in 2002. Professionals in our com-munity, many prior University of Nevada, Reno engineering graduates, along with current engineering students present lessons in local classrooms connecting engineer-ing applications with the national science standards. Bringing our students into the classroom not only allows them practice in presenting engineering concepts to non-technical audiences, it also allows younger students to see and talk with role models who can share this exciting field of study and career path.


K-12 outreach

In practically every month through-out 2009, a student, or teams of students, excelled in local, regional or national competitions, or embarked on notable and noble undergradu-ate and graduate research endeavors. In addition, faculty found innovative ways to not only continue to excel in the classroom but to pursue ambitious research agendas. Their outstanding performances helped bring renown to the campus, and perhaps just as impor-tantly, bolstered the campus’ morale in the face of challenging economic times.

Said University President Milt Glick during an october town hall meeting: “The culture of this campus and the willingness to understand that this is a tough time … people are doing their best and being extremely positive about it. That’s something special.”

Here is a brief look at a sampling of some of the top stories of 2009 at the University of Nevada, Reno.

dEBATE TEAM MAKES HISToRy … TWICE

In the spring, two young men from differ-ent ends of the state, and from remarkably different backgrounds, teamed together to bring a pair of historic national champion-ships to the campus.

Senior david Pena from overton, Nev., and sophomore Max Alderman, from Reno, won the National Parliamentary debate Association Tournament in Stockton, Calif., on March 30 and captured first place at the National Parliamentary Tournament of Excellence in Berkeley, Calif., on March 23. Pena and Alderman became only third team in the history of collegiate parliamentary debate to win the both honors in the same season.

“This has been one of the most phenome-nal experiences of my life,” said Alderman, a National Merit Scholar who came to debate somewhat late in high school, having been a

“choir kid” for most of his young academic life. “This is the epitome of what we could’ve achieved and we couldn’t have done it with-out the support of the University.”

Pena, who moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 15 and had to learn English in high school, was a four-year veteran of the Nevada debate team. “This was my last year and it was a very good way to finalize my career here,” he said.

CAMPUS WELCoMES HIGHEST ACHIEVING FRESHMAN CLASS EVER

As part of its highest academically performing incoming-freshman class, the University welcomed nine new National Merit Scholars in fall semester 2009. They join the 16 already enrolled, bringing the University’s total to 25. “In addition to our new National Merit Scholars, this year’s freshman class came to us having per-formed better than any others in terms of high-school GPA, ACT and SAT scores,”

said University Vice President Student Services Shannon Ellis. The aver-age grade point average (GPA) for the incoming class increased 0.6 percent from 3.335 to 3.355. Average ACT scores rose to 22.8 from 22.7, and SAT scores to 1062 from the previous year’s 1054. According to data collected by the ACT Program, the national average for 2009 high-school graduates was 21.1. “It’s clear we’re continuing to attract bright and prepared students, and this raises the level of the campus experience for everyone: faculty, staff and students,” University President Milt Glick said.

SCHooL oF MEdICINE, NATIoNAL CoUNCIL oF JUVENILE ANd FAMILy CoURT JUdGES CELEBRATE 40TH ANNIVERSARIES

In January, one of the campus’ longtime national assets, the National Council of Ju-venile and Family Court Judges, celebrated its 40th year on campus. The council has played a key role in serving the needs of those who improve justice for young people and their parents. In September, the School of Medicine celebrated its 40th anniversary with a number of festivities, including a gathering of about a dozen members of the school’s very first class, along with founding dean, George Smith, M.d.

GLICK, JoHNSoN ANNoUNCE STRATEGIC PLAN

In a town hall meeting in early october, President Milt Glick and Provost Marc Johnson announced the final details regard-ing Johnson’s strategic plan presentation to the Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents. “Going forward, our plans are now to move from buildings to people,” Glick said. “We are going to focus on students and faculty and funding for programs. our priority will be to enhance faculty support and to enhance student sup-port.” To do this, Glick and Johnson both

Students, faculty continue to find ways to excel2009: THE YEAR IN REvIEW

University of Nevada, Reno debate champs David Pena and Max Alderman with their National Parliamentary Debate Association trophy.




38



said the campus will increasingly look to become more entrepreneurial, seeking part-nerships in the community and with state programs. Johnson laid out an ambitious list of goals for the campus, including: become a comprehensive university; serve Nevada’s traditional and emerging renewable energy industries; prepare Nevada for the diversi-fied knowledge economy; prepare Nevada youth to participate in the world economy; improve the physical and mental health of Nevadans; enhance sustainable environ-mental quality in Nevada; participate in intercollegiate athletics with an emphasis on student-athletic success both on and off the field; build the University’s infrastructure.

NEW PENNINGToN BUILdING To REVoLUTIoNIZE HEALTHCARE FoR NEVAdA

during the annual Foundation Banquet on Sept. 24, President Milt Glick announced that the William N. Pennington Foundation had committed $10 million to the University for the purpose of a new Health Sciences Building. The Pennington gift, along with

a $2.5 million gift from the Nell J. Redfield Foundation and a $1 million gift from the Thelma B. and Thomas P. Hart Foundation brought the total private investment in the building to $15 million. These gifts, along with $31 million from the Nevada State Leg-islature, will support construction of a new teaching facility. The new facility, which is anticipated to open in fall 2011, will allow the University of Nevada School of Medicine to expand its class size from 62 to 100 students for a total enrollment of 400 students, while the number of orvis School of Nursing stu-dents will double for an eventual total enroll-ment of about 300 students. This expansion is expected to go a long way toward address-ing the state’s shortage of doctors and nurses, and will ensure that our future doctors and nurses will be trained under one roof.

CASPER HoNoREd By CARNEGIE FoUNdATIoN

The Carnegie Foundation for the Ad-vancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) named History professor Scott

Casper as the state winner of its 2008 U.S. Professors of the year award, announc-

ing the award late in 2008. The award, founded in 1981, is the only national program recogniz-ing excellence in undergraduate teach-ing and mentoring. Casper, who has taught at the Univer-sity since 1992, teach-

es upper-division courses on Revolutionary and 19th-century America, the history of the book in America, and the Civil War in American culture, as well as the Core Humanities course “American Experiences.” He wrote the 2008 book, Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine, as well as Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, which won the 1999 Book History Prize from the Soci-ety for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.

Casper

The University’s fall freshman class in 2009 is the highest academically performing class to ever enter Nevada.


the university

By John TrentWashoe County School district students

have known about the College of Engineer-ing’s Mobile Engineering Education Lab for several years. But at no time has this unique outreach arm of the college been more successful, or as far-reaching.

during the recently concluded school year in Washoe County, it is estimated that the Mobile Engineering Education Lab brought a host of fun, interesting and edu-cational engineering activities to as many as 250 kindergarten through eighth grade students each week.

And since its inception in 1997, the Mo-bile Engineering Lab has presented lessons and information to more than 100 schools in northern Nevada, serving more than 5,000 students in the community.

Thanks to private funding from the Mallory Foundation, the Mobile Engineer-ing Lab has generated untold excitement in the areas of mathematics, technology, science and engineering. “It really has been a success story,” said debbie deLauer, the College of Engineering’s K-12 outreach co-ordinator. “We’ve been lucky to have such fantastic (College of Engineering) students who get in front of the school kids and are so enthusiastic about engineering.”

The Mobile Engineering Lab program, which as deLauer said is presented by current College of Engineering students, brings hands-on lessons to K-8 classrooms. Lessons run about an hour for a class of 30 students. The first 30 minutes of the presentation introduces the University of Nevada, Reno and general engineering in-formation, followed by another 30 minutes of specific lessons and hands-on activity.

This is where the fun starts, deLauer said. “We’re hopeful when we begin the presentation that the students know that an engineer isn’t someone who just drives a train,” she said. “We hope that they learn that engineer is about problem-solving, and that mathematics and science can be a fun when it is used to design projects.”

“our Engineering students who go to the schools really help bring these aspects of the profession to life. They reinforce the message that engineering is a way to do design structures, and to create some really cool, inventive products.”

Lessons include introduction to bridge terminology and different types of bridges (where students actually build a miniature bridge); introduction to electrical terminol-ogy and the concept of converting electri-cal energy into mechanical energy (where

students build a simple electric motor); introduction of the terminology of simple machines and forces and motion (where students test various simple machines); gears (where students build a gear system and experiment with different gear sizes and how it affects speed); pulleys (where students build a pulley system and experi-ment with a different number of pulleys and how it affects the system).

These general lessons, which comply with Nevada’s science standards, have an informal, surprisingly fun component that help all students better relate to the concepts being taught. The bridge design lesson, for example, uses K’nex (a learning tool similar to Legos). Students learn how to make a battery from a lemon in another.

In addition, the program also encourag-es students from low-income families who are attending at-risk schools that college is indeed an option.

“When we first visit, many of these students aren’t even thinking about college, or about engineering as a career,” deLauer said. “That’s where our Engineering stu-dents can make such a difference. They’re so great with the kids, and encouragement is a big part of what they try to do when they visit the schools.”

Mobile Engineering Education Lab program rolls to success

To find out more about the Mobile Engineering Lab program, go to: http://www.unr.edu/engineering/outreach/




alumni profile

Wayne Trewhitt is a native Californian, born and raised in the san Francisco Bay Area. His parents are both UC-Berkeley graduates. It was always assumed that he would follow the same course. But when his time came to choose an institute of higher learning, he selected the University of Nevada, Reno’s College of Engineering (which, at the time, was referred to as “UN,” since it then was the only Nevada campus).

To this day, Wayne maintains that it was the best decision. “What I received was a practical education,” he explains, “one that prepared me well for the working world. The university’s small size (which at the time totaled 1,200 students, both undergraduate and graduate), dedicated faculty, and the ability to work for local construction companies during my college years, gave me a solid foundation for the future.”

Wayne’s first position after graduation was with a company that provided services to the Atomic Energy Commission. He spent six months on Christmas Island and he was present for the last three nuclear atmospheric tests. The sights and sounds left a profound impression and, although he was issued minimal protective covering, he never experienced ill effects from the experience.

Upon his return to the Bay Area, Wayne joined his father’s company and began his career path in the field of “garbage.” Initially, the company handled the disposal of san Francisco’s waste. They later expanded into other operations, and formed a subsidiary company that turned an open dump at Mustang, Nevada into a sanitary landfill as well as starting the Lockwood Landfill that now services the Reno/sparks Area and parts of Northern California. over the course

of several years, the family company was sold, greatly expanded, and then portions repurchased.

In 1992, Wayne, with two other experienced private waste companies, formed Nortech Waste, a company organized to design, construct, and operate a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) to meet the needs of California cities that were being mandated by state legislative action to reduce the amount of waste going into landfills. (A MRF is a specialized plant that receives waste material, separates it through a combination of manual and mechanical sorting, and prepares the recyclables for sale to end-user manufacturers). Nortech was initially contracted by the Western Placer Waste Management Authority in Placer County, California to design and operate its 1,400-ton per day MRF. A few years later, Nortech signed a second contract to design and mange the expansion of this facility to a capacity of 2,200 tons per day.

“over the past 14 years,” explains Wayne, “this plant has proven to be the most successful facility of its kind in the United states. our total recovery has reached approximately 47 percent, after much of the commercial/industrial recyclables are removed at the source. We are now planning for the next expansion to meet the anticipated state goal of a 75 percent reduction in waste going to landfills.”

These achievements have earned Wayne many honors. The Environmental Industry Association, which recognizes leaders in the waste industry who have distinguished themselves through significant contributions, named Wayne “Man of the year,” and also inducted him into its “Hall of Fame.”

Wayne’s most recent project is designed to further reduce the waste going into landfills as well as provide a source for alternative energy. Nortech is contracted to supply processed feed stock to a company now breaking ground on a gassification plant in storey County,, that will reprocess recovered waste into ethanol and methanol. “Being an MRF facility,” says Wayne, “we are able to extract the right waste material for this process and exclude any contaminants. The plant produces clean fuel out of organic byproducts, is non-polluting, and is economically viable when the price of oil is above $40 a barrel.”

With this expansion. Wayne returned to his University roots and hired a College of Engineering graduate (Josh Mooneyham) as an intern to help with the design and planning of the feed stock preparation for the new story County plant and the startup of a new landfill operation in Placer County. He could not be more pleased with the result. “Josh has extensive experience with AutoCAD that interfaces with a very sophisticated GPs system, designed to assist in the management of waste placement in a landfill,” says Wayne. “He can look at processes as stepping stones in solving problems. The caliber of his education, as well as the fact that he, too, worked in the ‘real world’ while attending the university, enabled him to be productive almost as soon as he joined us.”

Although Wayne has been in the “garbage” business for over 40 years, he continues to look at new opportunities. “There are so many possibilities in this field,” he states, “I cannot even think about retiring. I am having too much fun.”

College of Engineering • Class of 1962


Wayne Trewhitt

EDwIN OSGOOD ’58 (ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING) is now a self proclaimed snowbird with a home in Goodyear, Ariz. and a great outdoor enthusiast with a cabin in Picabo, Idaho. Edwin and his wife recently celebrated the 40th Annual ski Reunion of osgood’s Army friends at Heavenly valley, Calif. The couple is also busy with two world cruises to Australia and New Zealand in January and Italy and spain in october.

GENE MCCLELLAND ’71 (CHEMISTRY), ’78M.S. (METALLURGICAL ENGINEERING)

After graduation, Gene continued the career he began in 1969 at the U.s. Bureau of Mines until he resigned in 1983 to manage

a metallurgical laboratory in sparks for Bateman Engineering. In 1986 he founded McClelland Laboratories, Inc. Gene’s business was successful and he remains president

and CEo. Currently, McClelland Laboratories, Inc. employs about 50 people, including many Nevada graduates. Gene has authored more than 100 publications and obtained several metallurgical process patents used by mining companies throughout the world during his 40-year career. Gene is a volunteer in several community activities: director, Reno Rodeo Association (27 years); organizing committee of the Legends Reno Tahoe open (11 years); organizing committee of the Ronald McDonald House Charities Golf Tournament. Gene and his wife, Patti, were freshmen at Nevada when they married in 1967.

wILLIAM BAKER ’74 ME, is pleased to announce his son, young Bill, president of TKE fraternity this year, graduated in May with a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno.

jEFF CECCARELLI ’76 CE, Nv Energy corporate vice president, service delivery and operations and president of sierra

Pacific Power, has been named the University’s Alumnus of the year and will be honored during the Homecoming Gala. Jeff has also been appointed as Chair of the College of Engineering

Advisory Board after serving as a member of the board for many years.

MARK FOREE ’80 (CIVIL ENGINEERING was recently named general manager for Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the largest water purveyor in the area. He is a registered professional civil engineer in Nevada and California and has 28 years of experience in planning, design, operation and maintenance of complex water treatment and distribution systems.

DEAN wEITZEL ’81 CE, has joined MACTEC Engineering & Consulting, Inc. in Reno as a senior engineer. He previously worked for the Nevada Department of Transportation for 30 years in various divisions, including materials, bridge, roadway design and construction.

MARK w. YENTER ’81 CE, was recently promoted to the rank of general in the U.s. Army Corps of Engineers. He is the 28th commander and division engineer for the Pacific ocean Division and is responsible for a mission that includes engineering design, construction and real estate management for the Army and Air Force in Hawaii and Alaska for all Department of Defense agencies in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands.

wARREN C. KOCMOND jR. ’82 ME, has accepted the position of chief executive officer at Electroglas, Inc., a leading supplier of

wafer probers and prober-based test handling solutions for the semiconductor industry. Warren has been the chief operating officer of the company since May 2008.

SUSAN MARTINOVICH (BS, CIVIL ENGINEERING, 1983) has been elected the first female vice President of the American Association of state Highway and Transportation officials (AAsHTo). she has worked for the Nevada Department of Transportation for more than 25 years. As Director, she is responsible for the daily

operations of the department that has an annual operating budget of $674 million and 1,700 employees. she currently serves as chair of the AAsHTo standing Committee on Research, vice-chair for

the standing Committee on Highway Traffic safety, and chair of the Leadership and Engineering Management Committee. she is a member of the Transportation Research Board Executive Committee. she is also a member of many other Transportation Research Board committees, including the oversight Committee for sHRP-II, which will oversee the national research activities identified in sAFETEA-LU. Martinovich is a licensed professional engineer in Nevada and California.

EREN ’85 MBA and FATIH OZMEN ‘81 M.S. (Electrical Engineering) for their joint Alumni Relations Awards for outstanding Professional Achievement and Fatih as the recipient of the 2009 James G. scrugham Medal for outstanding Professional Achievement of College of Engineering Alumni.

MONTE MORRISON ’86 CME, has recently joined Magma Energy Corp. as vice president of operations after 11 years with Constellation Energy. Monte has

McClelland

Ceccarelli

Martinovich




alumni news

to the United states. From there he served in Taegu, Korea, during the Korean War; sendai, Japan; and Fort Meade, Md. In 1959, after 11 years of service he retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, accepted a civil service position at Fort Monroe, and relocated to Newport News. In 1969, he retired from civil service and devoted the next 40 years to golf, gardening, enjoying music and the arts, managing his investments and traveling the world with Dorothy.

Irv was a member of the American society of Civil Engineers, society of American Military Engineers, Masonic Lodge, Retired Military officers Association of America,

James River Country Club, Christopher Newport University Lifelong Learning, and st. stephens Episcopal Church. Irv is survived by his wife of 63 years, Dorothy; son Bob (Janice); daughter

Laverne (Rob); three granddaughters, Kim, Trisha and Karin; and six great-grandchildren. view and post condolences on our online guestbook at dailypress.com/guestbooks.

managed multiple geothermal power plants in Nevada, California and Hawaii for more than 20 years. Monte will manage Magma’s power plants, both domestic and international, as well as assist with acquisition efforts. Monte resides in Fallon with his wife of 25 years, Amy (Genkinger) Morrison, and their two sons, Brett and Josh.

BRENDA LEE ’90 CE, an engineer for the Regional Transportation Commission, won a project of the year award from the Nevada Chapter of the American Public Works Association. Brenda was recognized for her work on the U.s. 395 improvements at Clear Acre Lane that included the McCarran Bridge.

SCOTT T. BARNES ‘82 A.A. engineering design tech, ’91 CE, has joined the Reno

office of Colliers International as an associate specializing in the area of land development. scott is passionate about land development and has been involved with several major master planned communities and projects in the Reno/sparks area. scott is happily married to yann Ling-Barnes and his daughter, Clarissa, is a freshman at the University.

TASHA (PALMER) LOPEZ ’99 CME, has been selected to participate in IBM’s Corporate service Corps (a corporate version of the Peace Corps). she will be in Africa through March. Most of her time will be spent working with an umbrella organization that advocates for a better business climate in the industrial sector in Ghana. you can visit her blog at

Eren Ozmen Fatih Ozmen Buck Mrowiec

Wanke

tashaefualopez.blogspot.com if you’d like to read more about her adventures.

DOUGLAS BUCK ’01 CE recently joined Bowling Mamola Group, a civil engineering firm. A licensed professional engineer, Doug’s career experience includes planning, design and construction of potable water, reclaimed water and sanitary sewer facilities for the City of sparks, Truckee Meadows Water Authority, Washoe County Department of Water Resources and silver springs General Improvement District.

DAVID MROwIEC ’03 CE has joined Pen-noni Associates as lead professional engineer diver and senior engineer in its Transportation Technology Department. David has more than five years’ experience with the Nevada Department of Transportation, as well as seven years’ experience as a commercial diver. Davis has also conducted salvage and construction operations and diver in rotation for projects located around the world, as well as non-destructive testing and destructive testing in underwater environments and on submerged structures. He will lead teams on bridge and underwater inspection projects for a variety of clients.

Irvin R. wanke ’36 (civil engineering) died April 17, 2009 at the age of 94 at his home in Warwick Forest. Born in sparks, in 1914, he graduated valedictorian from sparks High school and went on to earn his master’s in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada in 1936. With the outbreak of World War II, Irv joined the U.s. Army and was assigned to the Engineer section, U.s. Army Headquarters, China/Burma/India Theater of War, and New Delhi, India. It was there that he met Dorothy vera smith, fifth generation of the British Raj. At the conclusion of the War, he and Dorothy were married and returned

in memoriam


Chuck jack ’61 (civil engineering) died Jan. 5, 2009, at the age 75. Chuck was born on Aug. 1, 1933 in Crooked Lake, Ind. He went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1961. He was also in the U.s. Army during the Korean Conflict. Chuck would later work as a

civil engineer with the City of Los Angeles for 32 years.

From the City of Angels, came his mentor, Al Liff, who convinced Chuck to begin working for the city as an assistant engineer in sewer design in the East san

Fernando valley, Calif. After seven years of learning and accomplishment with East san Fernando valley, Chuck was promoted to full civil engineer, and in 1968 he moved to street design. Chuck was key in the effort to help rebuild East san Fernando valley streets after the 1971 and 1973 earthquakes. He enjoyed his life, knowing that he “struck gold” because of his contributions to his family and his career. He was a devoted traveler for all his years, most recently during retirement, journeying to Europe and touring the United states in his fifth wheel trailer with his wife.

Chuck is survived by his wife of 54 years, Dorothy, daughter, Linda (Dennis), son Jeff and his wife yumiko, brothers, Doug (Deanne) and steve (Clara); sister, sharon; and two grandchildren, Evan (Amanda), and Leah.

john “johnny” Knemeyer ’42 (electrical engineering) died on July 17, 2008 at sentara

Williamsburg Hospital. Johnny was born “on the Fourth of July,” 1920 in yerington. His early years were spent in Nevada and California. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Nevada where he participated

in various collegiate sports and would remain an avid tennis player. He went east to Pittsburgh to work for Westinghouse Electric Corporation. After two years, he moved to the Hampton Roads area where he took a position at NACA (now NAsA) as an engineer. His career at NAsA-Langley spanned 46 years, retiring in 1990 as the chief of facilities engineering. He was a longtime member of Grace United Methodist Church. John was preceded in death by his parents Edward and Mae. His memory is left to be cherished by his wife of 59 years, Louise; two daughters Linda and Karen (Daniel); two sons Neal and Ken; a grandson, Kevin (Jennifer); a granddaughter, Elizabeth (Brian); four great-grandchildren Brody, Jake, Emma and Andrew; one brother, Franklin and a host of loving relatives and faithful friends. The family will be forever grateful to the staff of Dominion village of Williamsburg and sentara Williamsburg Hospital for their kind and loving care. Condolences can be posted online at www.dailypress.com/guestbooks.

jack wulff, beloved husband, father, sacramento native son and 40 year resident

of Walnut Creek, passed away on July 24 after a long battle with heart disease. He was 80 years old.

A proud native Californian, Jack was born in sacramento on February 20, 1929, to otto and

Clementine Goodman Wulff. He graduated from sacramento High school, class of 1946, and went on to earn his Bachelor of science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno. In 1950, he married his high school sweetheart, the former Jane Lee Farmer, and then spent 18 months as an officer in the U.s. Air Force.

Jack was the state of Californias Department of Water Resources first Chief of Earth Dams Design and was directly in charge of the designs for most major dams in the state Water Project, including oroville Dam, the highest earth-fill dam in the world at the time of its completion. Jack entered private practice in 1968 as Principal Engineer for Design and Construction with Leeds, Hill, and Jewett in san Francisco and later went on to become Chief Engineer, vice-President, and then President of Wahler Associates in Palo Alto and Walnut Creek.

Jack is survived by his wife and love of his life, Jane; son Dave and his wife, Joyce; son Doug and Jim Arata. Jack will forever be remembered for his love of life, his devotion to Jane and his family, his hundreds of dear friends and neighbors, his sense of humor, funny travel stories, beautiful singing voice, and his secret family recipe for gin fizzes.

Knemeyer

Jack

The faculty and staff of the College of Engineering extend their sincere condolences on the passing of these alumni. If you have information on the passing of any alumni member, please send this information to: Sally Casas at [email protected] or mail the information to Sally Casas, College of Engineering, Dean’s Office, Mail Stop 256, UNR, Reno, NV 89557.

Wulff

in memoriam




As Ceo of sierra nevada Corporation (snC), 2009 scrugham Medal recipient fatih ozmen’s leadership and vision propels snC in its exploration of novel and cutting-edge

technologies. With broad technical and business knowledge, fatih uses his insight and experience to anticipate the emerging technological needs of the global marketplace, allowing snC to develop tomorrow’s technologies today.

fatih joined snC in 1981 with a broad engineering background culminating with a M.s. degree in electrical engineering from the University of nevada, reno. He designed and developed numerous high-tech systems and managed several key integration programs during his early years at snC. Known as a creative thinker and problem-solver, fatih continually maintains a strong customer focus, while bringing outstanding strategic management skills and extensive business leadership experience to his position.

With a strong vision for the future of snC, fatih and eren ozmen acquired the company in 1994 and set their plans in motion to expand and grow. as a direct result of their emphasis on integrity, strategic planning, and strong financial and technical management, snC has grown into one of the top performing federal contractors in the United states.

snC continues to be a leader and maintains itself at the forefront of the electronics, communications, space and aviation industries through fatih ozmen’s never-ending enthusiasm, insight and expertise to expand snC through a series of targeted acquisitions. With the ozmens at the helm, snC has grown from a company of 20 employees to a full-service systems integrator with seven business areas in 35 locations in 20 states. today, snC employs approximately 2,000 people – most of whom are scientists, engineers, or technical personnel — and all of whom are dedicated to meeting and exceeding the needs of snC’s diverse customer base. as Ceo, fatih ozmen leads the dedication to quality and service that is a hallmark of the entire organization.

Under fatih ozmen’s leadership snC has received numerous awards, including the 2001 nevada distinguished Business of the year.

as a tribute to fatih and eren’s exceptional leadership, in 2009 snC was nominated as a “Best Place to Work” in a competition hosted by the economic development authority of Western nevada (edaWn), the northern nevada Human resources association (nnHra) and the reno-Gazette Journal. snC employees honored the company by voting snC as one of the top two “Best Places to Work” in northern nevada, above more than 200 other large companies nominated. snC received this award based solely upon the stellar results of anonymous employee surveys focusing on satisfaction in the work environment including: senior leadership’s successful vision, extraordinarily generous employee benefits, team effectiveness, trust with coworkers, feeling valued and people practices, among others.

in addition to his role as an influential businessman, fatih promotes an active lifestyle and was formerly a professional champion bike rider.

Partnered with eren ozmen, this team serves as snC’s top Corporate officers and provides the dynamic leadership and strategic vision that have been the driving forces behind snC’s dramatic success.

Fatih Ozmen vISIONARy lEADER

2009 Scrugham Medal recipient

The James Graves Scrugham Medal was designed to commemorate one of the key figures in the history of the College of Engineering and the state of Nevada. Alumni who have become nationally recognized because of their professional achievements are being honored with this award. James Graves Scrugham was a distinguished Nevadan who was the first Dean of the College of Engineering, a State Engineer, Governor of Nevada, a U.S. Representative in Congress and a U.S. Senator.

Non Profit Org.U.S. PostageP A I DNevada, RenoPermit No. 26

College of engineeringUniversity of nevada, reno / Mail stop 0256reno, nv 89557-0256

ChaNge SeRviCe ReqUeSted

The College of Engineering (COEN) is pleased to announce a new mentoring program. We plan to begin a pilot phase of this program in January 2010 that will focus initially on freshman and sophomore engineering and computer science students. Students will be paired with accomplished engineers and computer scientists who are either currently in professional positions or have retired. Engineering mentors and mentees will explore career opportunities in engineering, computer science and related fields together.

College of Engineering Mentoring Program

HOW IT WORKS

• Interested mentors and students will fill out a short questionnaire to assist with pairing.

• Mentors and students will meet for two semesters, on a schedule customized to fit their needs.

• At the end of the year, each mentor and student will share their experience through an evaluation form.

• Shadowing the mentor for a day at the mentor’s workplace

• Tour of the mentor’s company

• Lunch meetings

• Coffee meetings on or off campus

• Attending professional talks/ seminars/meetings

• Phone and e-mail communication

• Help with resume writing and interviewing skills

TypeS Of acTIvITIeS advanTageS Of MenTORIng

• Give your time and talent to another generation of COEN students.

• Guide them in ways in which you were guided or you wish you had been guided.

• Take advantage of learning about education, engineering, or workforce perceptions from a very different perspective.

• Make an impact – on an individual and on the culture of the COEN.

If you are interested in becoming a mentor or have any questions, please contact Meg Fitzgerald ([email protected]) or Jennifer O’Neil ([email protected]).

2010-winter-magazine

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