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ACCORDING TOTHE DEAN

Given the unrelenting pace

of technological change,

successful researchers

must be visionaries.

The real challenges lie on

the horizon, and the ability

to identify these challenges

and the determination to

address them is one of the

qualities that distinguish

our faculty. Its the reason

that the National Science

Foundation honored the

Engineering School by

naming it as the site of one

of just four new materials

research centers funded

nationwide.

Richard W. Miksad

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EN GI N EER I N G W ETL AN DS TO P R OTECT

TH E EN V I RO N M EN T

Its only been in the last 20 years that weve begun tounderstand the full benefits of wetlands. Acre for acre,wetlands support more plants and animals than any othertype of ecosystem, providing crucial rest stops and nestingareas for migrating birds and critical spawning grounds for fish. Inmany cases, wetlands serve as a buffer between large bodies of water and land, dissipatingthe energy of storms and preventing shoreline erosion. Because they can absorb largequantities of water, they can also help control flooding.

Civil engineering professor Shaw Yu is interested in wetlands for yet another of theirremarkable qualities: they act as natural filters, slowing the flow of water and removingcontaminants through a variety of physical, chemical, and biological processes. As anengineer, Yu is not simply interested in protecting existing wetlands. He helps create newones, using engineering principles to reproduce these natural filtering systems.

Yus work has attracted widespread attention. He has played an important role in a programimplemented by the Virginia Department of Transportation to build mitigated wetlands.Many of these wetlands collect highway runoff as their water source, and Yus research hasdocumented the ability of these wetlands to purify road runoff. By the end of 1999, thedepartment had created over 230 new roadside wetlands.

Yus research work has also attracted the attention of officials in the rapidly industrializing,densely populated nations of Asia. He played an instrumental role in creating the Water

Environment Research Center at the National Taipei University of Technology, which ischarged with researching the sustainable use of water, offering workshops for watermanagement professionals, and promoting international collaboration. He has shepherdedthe creation of a series of alliances, between the University of Virginia and the NationalTaipei University of Technology as well as between the School of Engineering and theNational Taiwan University, to promote the exchange of scholars and students interested inwetlands construction.

In 1999, he assembled a team of experts and traveled to mainland China at the request of itsgovernment to discuss methods of preserving and extending wetlands in the Yellow RiverDelta. Water quality in Chinas second-largest river had deteriorated because of industrializa-tion and extensive fertilizer use.

International collaboration is extremely important, he says. Our goal is to createtechniques that work in a variety of economic, social, and physical environments.

AREAS

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THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

AND APPLIED SCIENCE

e n g i n e e r i n g t h a t m a k e s a d i f f e r e n c e

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E N G I N E E R I N G A T U V A

a r o u n d t h e w e b

VOLUME

THREE

NUMBERONE

Environmental Engineering at U.Va.

www.cs.virginia.edu/~civil/envir.html

U.Va. Stormwater Group Homepagewww.people.virginia.edu/~enqstorm/

Water Environment Research Center

www.ntut.edu.tw/~wwwwec/English/fp.htm

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in theLAB

A P R O J E C T W I T H A P O I N T

Bennetts engineering background had another

lasting consequence. It increased his awarenessof inefficiencies in the healthcare system.

For eight years, he served on committees at

Bon Secours hospitals in Richmond that looked

at the effectiveness of collaborative groups and

proposed ways to improve their performance.

Now after almost 20 years in practice, hesdecided to devote himself full-time to tackling

these issues on a larger scale. He establishe

Medical Reengineering Consultants toadvise hospitals as well as insurance andpharmaceutical companies on such issues asimproving disease management. And whenhe found out about the Executive MastersProgram in Systems Engineering in FallsChurch, he decided that a return to U.Va.would give him the knowledge andcredentials needed to make this new ventura success.

The Engineering School truly offers lifelonglearning, he says. I am finally putting aname to things Ive been doing intuitively fo

a long time. At the same time, the systemsapproach has enabled me to see the problemconfronting the healthcare system from amuch larger perspective.

After 35 years, BOB BENNETT has returned again to the Engineering School at the University of Virgibecause the knowledge and intellectual training he received as an undergraduate proved so valuableGraduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1967, the cardiologist is currently studyingsystems engineering in our Falls Church Executive Masters Program and preparing for a new careeradvising the healthcare industry on process improvement.

alumni

www.executivemasters.com/

Bob Bennett took an unusual route inpreparing himself for medical school. Ratherthan study biology or chemistry, he studiedmechanical engineering at the Universityof Virginia. After all, the study of machinedesign, his concentration, has obviousapplications to the study of the human body.Bennett found, however, that the intellectualrigor he gained at the Engineering Schoolgave him another advantage. At U.Va., you

were trained to analyze a situation and thenrespond, a critical skill when working withpatients, he says.

A L I F E L O N G L E A R N E R

A number of our Technology, Communications, and Culture faculty have been recruited by

College of Arts and Sciences to teach required classes in the Department of Historyby Mdean of the College and himself a historian. We appreciate the vote of confidence!

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Assistant Professor Bill Walker feels it is important to convey to students hisconviction that engineers, like lawyers and physicians, have a responsibility to apply their skills pro bono to help groups who couldotherwise never afford their services. Not surprisingly, when this biomedical engineering professor was presented with the challengeof designing a cheap, safe, secure needle disposal system that could be used by public health workers in developing countries, he

jumped at the opportunity to involve students in the project.

Walker was approached by Janine Jagger, the director of U.Va.s International Healthcare Worker Safety Center, and Dr. CharlesSagoe-Moses, a top public health official in Accra, Ghana. People in Ghana, like poor people around the world, are of necessity avidrecyclers. They rinse used syringes in tap water and reuse them, inadvertently creating a huge public health risk.

Walker is using the project not only to underscore the importance of public service by engineers, but to give his studentsfirsthand exposure to engineering design. With Walkers guidance, a team of undergraduate and graduate studentsformed the Syringe Disposal Design Team. Starting with two dozen possible designs, they devised a quantitativemethod to rank them according to criteria established for the project and chose two for further development.

I really encouraged students to take the lead on the project and learn how to

make decisions as a team, Walker says. I acted as an adviser.

The students wrote a successful funding proposal to the National CollegiateInvention and Inventor Association and received a $20,000 grant. Theyare using the funds to refine the two designs, conduct a market analysis,and construct prototypes. If all goes according to plan, the team willseek corporate partners interested in licensing the technology andmanufacturing the products.

www.med.virginia.edu/bme/needle/gnsd.html

www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases

PROFILE

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Courtney Salthouse capped off four years in the Engineering

School by spending her summer after graduation as an intern inthe Capitol Hill offices of Virginia Representative Virgil Goode.I think it will serve me well in my career to have a better under-

standing of how government works, she says.

In Congressman Goodes office, Salthouse fielded inquiries from con-stituents, both on the phone and in writing. The range of issues that

people contact their congressman about is pretty broad, she observes.And it was very important to Mr. Goode to deal with them appropriately.

Her experience doing research in the Engineering School stood her in goodstead. Salthouse also attended briefings and sat in on committee meetings.

Overall, Salthouse was impressed by the quality of the leaders she encounteredon the Hill. My internship changed my perception of politicians and the political

process, she notes. All the interns I met said that their boss was the greatest. She

also had the opportunity to hear other notables, including Bob Dole, Sam Donaldson, andJohn Lewis, speak as part of a series of presentations organized for congressional interns.

Inspired in part by Salthouses experience, the School of Engineeringis formalizing its own summer internship program in Washington inconjunction with MIT. Targeted at second- and third-year students,it is designed to give undergraduates exposure to engineeringpolicymaking at the national level through internships in governmentagencies, think tanks, and trade associations.

When U.Va. thinks big about small things, it pays off. The U.Va. Engineering School has just won a five-year,$5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish an ambitious new Center for Nanoscale

Design. It is one of just four new NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers fundednationwide.

The grant will strengthen U.Va.s position at the forefront of materials research in areas

ranging from novel electronic devices to fabrication of materials at the atomic level.It will also serve as an education resource for both high school and university

students, according to Robert Hull, principal investigator and professor ofmaterials science and engineering.

What is truly exciting about the grant is that it allows us to pursue ourinterests, to fund fundamental research in areas we select, Hull says.

The center will allow us to recruit two new outstanding facultymembers and bring together about 10 current faculty members

from several departments. The funds also will allow a dozentop graduate students to work in the center, as well as providingresearch experience for several dozen undergraduates.In essence, were creating one of the most outstandingnanotechnology groups in the country.

The NSF award will reinforce an already strong programin materials science research at the University. TheDepartment of Materials Science ranked twenty-first inthe country in the most recent U.S. News & World Reportstudy. The school is planning to raise $14 million in newfunding to construct a building to house the new center.

Theres no stopping the School of

Engineeringor our supporters.

We reached our original goal of $37.5

million two years ago, exceeded our

AWARDEDgra nts

SEAS STU DEN TS ON TH E H I L L

in theCLASSROOM

second goal of $50 million, and

hope to have raised $80 million

by the end of June 2001.

E F N E W S E X C E E D I N G E X P E C TA T I O N S

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er,

es-march-1-2000.html

http://ginsburg.ipm.virginia.edu/nanoprint/index.html

U.VA. CONSOLIDATES LEADERSHIP IN NANOTECHNOLOGY

E N G I N E E R I N G A T U V A

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e n g i n e e r i n g t h a t m a k e s a d i f f e r e n c e

The University of VirginiaSchool of Engineering and Applied Science

Thornton HallCharlottesville, Virginia 22904-4246

804.924.3072www.seas.virginia.eduwww.seas.virginia.edu/impact

U . S . P OS T A GE

NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION

P A I D

CHARLOTTESVILLE

PERMIT NO. 164

T h e U . V a . E n g i n e e r i n g S c h o o l h a s j u s t w o n aF I V E - Y E A R , $ 5 M I L L I O N G R A N T

FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

f e a t u r e d i n s i d e

Small technology start-ups run into a wall when they

try to secure financing. Commercial lenders shy

away from these businesses because they have no

physical assets that can serve as security. At best,

lenders insist on an accelerated payment schedule

that can increase the risk of failure. A new company

in Charlottesville, Mosaic Collateral Asset Management

Inc. (MCAM), has stepped into the breach by offering

banks and investors a guaranteed purchase price for

intellectual property owned by a loan applicant.

This effectively allows the bank to treat intellectual

property as collateral.

Developing the mathematical models to predict

the likely value of intellectual property is a project

being tackled by systems engineering professor

Peter Beling and his colleagues. The automated

prediction capabilities of the models allow them to

limit the scope and number of judgments required

of evaluation officers, resulting in a faster and

more objective evaluation process.

The initial phases of this work

were conducted under a

$30,000 Innovation Award from

Virginias Center for Innovative

Technology (CIT) and MCAMs parent company,

Mosaic Technologies. CIT recently

honored this project as the Best University

Research and Development Project in a statewide

competition. Beling and his associates are

continuing this work under a $600,000, three-year

award from MCAM.

CONNECTIONindustry

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO FINANCING START-UPS

www.m-cam.com

www.sys.virginia.edu/~ferg

volume threenumber one

THE WORD IS GETTING OU

Last year, applications an

acceptances from Thomas Jefferso

High School, one of the be

magnet schools for scien

and technology

the nation, increas

dramatically. As

result, we have

students from Thom

Jefferson in the cla

of 2004, compar

to eight in 200