impact spring 07 - purdue engineering · construction engineering and management makarand hastak...

PURDUE

WINTER 2006

NONPROFIT ORGU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDPURDUE

UNIVERSITY

Purdue Engineering • 1435 Win Hentschel Blvd., Suite B120 • West Lafayette, IN 47906

SUMMER 2007

In this issue of Engineering Impact, we look at globalization. Our technologies have connected the world and have created a global profession. What are the implica-tions for our graduates? Where will their careers take them, and how will they work with their colleagues to accomplish their goals? Against this changing backdrop, we in the College of Engineering are examin-ing how international involvement on our part fits into our three-part mission of discovery (research), learning (education), and engagement (outreach). We’ve also

established the Global Engineering Program in order to better equip our students (and faculty) to become what ABET, the U.S. engineering ac-creditation agency, calls “global engineers”—practitioners who combine the requisite technical and professional skills with global competency, and who can thus develop effective engineering solutions with people of different cultural backgrounds. Turn to page 12 for more on global initia-tives within the College of Engineering (“Engineering in 360˚”). Also in these pages, you’ll hear the voices of distinguished alumni including Mike Eskew, chairman and CEO of UPS, and Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India, on the reality of globalization in the work-force (see “First Person,” page 16, and “Mosaic,” page 30). And you’ll get a chance to meet four remarkable Purdue students: two American-born studying abroad right now, and two non-Americans, thousands of miles from home, studying here in West Lafayette (see “Students Abroad: A Virtual Roundtable,” page 18). Their experiences and perceptions of living in another culture crystallize for us just what this issue’s discussion of globalization is all about. Enjoy!

Leah H. JamiesonJohn A. Edwardson Dean of EngineeringRansburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

FROM THE DEAN

AdministrationDean Leah H. Jamieson

Associate Dean, Academic Affairs Klod Kokini

Associate Dean, Graduate Education and Interdisciplinary Programs Audeen Fentiman

Associate Dean, Research and Entrepreneurship Jay Gore

Associate Dean, Resource Planning and Management Vince Bralts

Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education Mike Harris

Assistant Dean, Interdisciplinary Research Melba Crawford

Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Education Teri Reed-Rhoads

Director, Advancement Michael Stitsworth

Director, Financial Affairs Christopher Martin

Director, Marketing and Communications Rwitti Roy

Director, Strategic Planning and Assessment Carolyn Percifield

Schools, Departments, and DivisionsAgricultural and Biological Engineering Bernie Engel

Aeronautics and Astronautics Tom Farris

Biomedical Engineering George Wodicka

Chemical Engineering Arvind Varma

Civil Engineering Kathy Banks

Construction Engineering and Management Makarand Hastak

Electrical and Computer Engineering Mark Smith

Engineering Education Kamyar Haghighi

Environmental and Ecological Engineering Inez Hua

Industrial Engineering Nagabhushana Prabhu

Materials Engineering Alex King

Mechanical Engineering Dan Hirleman

Nuclear Engineering Vince Bralts

Engineering ImpactDirector, Marketing and Communications Rwitti Roy

Editor Lisa Hunt Tally

Contributing Writers Kathy Mayer,

Cynthia Sequin,

Emil Venere

Editorial Assistants Mica Gould,

Kristen Senior

Designer Swapnil Mathkar

Engineering Impact is published twice a year by the Purdue University College of Engineering. The magazine is distributed free to more than 72,000 alumni and friends of the College of Engineering. Produced by the Engineering Communications Office. Purdue is an equal access/equal opportunity university, committed to the development and nurturing of a racially, socially, and religiously diverse community. Tell us what you think. Please send your letters to: Engineering Impact, Purdue University, 1435 Win Hentschel Blvd., Suite B120, West Lafayette, IN 47906; e-mail: [email protected]. In doing so, you grant us permission to publish your letter in part or in whole in an upcoming issue. We reserve the right to edit letters for length or clarity. Moving? Alumni should send change-of-address notices to Development and Alumni Information Services, Purdue University, 403 West Wood St., West Lafayette, IN 47907. Other readers may send address changes to Engineering Impact (see contact information above).

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Summer 2007

COVER

12 15

Engineering in 360˚Expanding Purdue’s research network in India

22 An environmental engineering professor blogs his way around the world

FACULTY IMPACT

28 Purdue’s new Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Development

RESONANCE

29 2007 Distinguished Engineering Alumni

ALUMNI NEWS

32 Night lights

APERTURE

30 Three views on offshore outsourcing

MOSAIC

18 Impressions and expressions from four students abroad

STUDENT IMPACT

1617

Mike Eskew: leadership in an age of globalization Uzia Galil: Global companies, personal medicine

FIRST PERSON

26 Dick Freeman’s fascination with aviation and Amelia Earhart

ALUMNI IMPACT

2 Featuring “Around the Fountain,” “Prime Numbers,” and news from across the College of Engineering

VANTAGE POINTSINSIDE ENGINEERING IMPACT

VANTAGE POINTS

12

22

3

30

purdue engineering impact

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am an electrical engineering major from New Delhi, India. I will be graduat-ing in May.

What were you working on in the lab

just now?

I was working on my homework for ECE 595, “RF MEMS for Intelligent Communication Systems.” I was simu-lating a problem about MEMS switches and writing a code for MAT-LAB.

Do you have a lot of work to do

before spring break?

I have an exam tomorrow. And I have a lot of work to do for the senior design course.

2

VANTAGE POINTSVANTAGE POINTS

AROUND THE FOUNTAIN

Swap

nil M

athk

ar

Electrical and computer engineering senior Mehul Jain on life as an engineering student and an international student at Purdue.

March 7, 2007 • 6:30 p.m. Lobby of the MSEE building

Swap

nil M

athk

ar

Electrical and computer engineering senior Mehul Jainand

March 7, 2007 • 6:30 p.m.

Do you have any plans for

spring break?

I’ll be here for spring break doing work for the senior design course. Unfortu- nately, just work, work, work.

What do you do in your

free time?

I love watching movies. I really liked Finding Netherland because of Kate Winslet. I also really enjoy The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Why did you decide to come to America to get your bachelor’s

degree in engineering?

There is more of an emphasis placed on practical education in America. Purdue is supposed to be one of the best engineering schools in the world, although I never knew much about engineering before I came here. I heard it was a good profession, and I enjoy technology.

What was your fi rst impression of

the Purdue campus?

When I fi rst drove through Purdue, I noticed the buildings were labeled with Greek symbols. [Laughing] I assumed all the buildings had Greek names!

What cultural difference has been

the most diffi cult to overcome?

When I was in school in India, the same students were in all your classes, so you took classes with all of your friends.

When is the last time you saw your

family?

I have not seen them since last August. But my parents and my sister will be coming out for my graduation in May.

What are your future plans? Will you

be returning home?

I’ll be working with Sprint after gradua-tion as a network developing engineer in Kansas.

What’s been your best experience at

Purdue?

I was the president of the Purdue Engineering Magazine in 2005. It’s a student-run magazine which goes to all undergraduate engineering students and engineering faculty at Purdue. We worked on everything from writing articles to collecting funds to design-ing the magazine. It was very similar to running a business. It gave me an opportunity to work with students from different majors, and I got a chance to learn more about dealing with people.—INTERVIEW BY KRISTEN SENIOR

Summer 2007 33

A new biofuels process could potentially meet all U.S. transportation needs.Chemical engineers at Purdue have proposed a new environmentally friendly process for producing liquid fuels from plant matter—or biomass—potentially available from agricultural and forest waste, providing all of the fuel needed for the entire U.S. transportation sector. The new approach modifi es conventional methods for producing liquid fuels from biomass by adding hydrogen from a “carbon-free” en-ergy source, such as solar or nuclear power, during a step called gasifi -cation. Adding hydrogen during this step suppresses the formation of carbon dioxide and increases the effi ciency of the process, making it possible to produce three times the volume of biofuels from the same quantity of biomass, says Rakesh Agrawal, Purdue’s Winthrop E. Stone Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering. The researchers, who include Agrawal, Navneet R. Singh, a chemical engineering doctoral student, and chemical engineering professors Fabio H. Ribeiro and W. Nicholas Delgass, are calling their approach a “hybrid hydrogen-carbon process,” or H2CAR. A conventional method for turning biomass or coal into liquid fuels involves fi rst breaking down the raw material with a chemical process that “gasifi es” it into carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydro-gen. Then those constituents are turned into a liquid fuel with other processes. “In the H2CAR concept, hydrogen would be harvested by splitting water molecules, possibly with a well-known method called electroly-sis,” says Agrawal. “Then the hydrogen would be added during the gasifi cation step, making the process more effi cient by suppressing

the formation of carbon dioxide and converting all of the carbon atoms to fuel.” When conventional methods are used to convert biomass or coal to liquid fuels, 60 percent to 70 percent of the carbon atoms in the start-ing materials are lost in the process as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, whereas no carbon atoms would be lost using H2CAR. “This is the fi rst concept for creating a sustainable system that derives all of our transportation fuels from biomass,” Agrawal said. To grow enough biomass for the entire nation’s transportation needs using the conventional method for producing biofuels would require a land area 25 percent to 55 percent the size of the United States, compared with about 6 percent to 10 percent for the H2CAR process. A federal study indicates that 1 billion tons of biomass is potentially available every year from agricultural sources such as crop wastes, animal manure, grains, and other crops. The remaining biomass could come from sources including fuel wood from forests, wastes left over from wood processing mills and paper mills, and construction and demolition debris. “Further research is needed to make this a large-scale reality,” Agrawal says. “However, we could potentially use H2CAR to provide a sustainable fuel supply to meet the needs of the entire U.S. transporta-tion sector—all cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes.” Agrawal presented the new concept in April at the second Hydrogen Initiative Symposium, sponsored by Purdue’s Energy Center at Discovery Park. —EMIL VENERE

H2ydrogen Harvest

Summer 2007

Rakesh Agrawal: “This is the fi rst concept for creating a sustainable system that derives all of our transportation fuels from biomass.”

Rakesh Agrawal: “This is the fi rst concept for creating a

purdue engineering impact4


Skyscrapers at Nanoscale?Purdue engineers lay the groundwork for ‘vertically oriented’ nanoelectronics.

Purdue researchers have developed a technique to grow individual carbon nano-tubes vertically on top of a silicon wafer, a step toward making advanced elec-tronics, wireless devices, and sensors using nanotubes by stacking circuits and components in layers.

The technique might help develop a method for creating “vertically oriented” nanoelectronic devices, the electronic equivalent of a skyscraper, says Timothy S. Fisher, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the work with Timothy D. Sands, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering.

“Verticality gives you the ability to fi t more things into the same area, so you can add more and more layers while keeping the footprint the same size or smaller,” Fisher says. “But before we can even think about using nanotubes in electronics, we have to learn how to put them where we want them.” The engineers fi rst created a “thin fi lm” containing two layers of aluminum sandwiching one ultra-thin layer ofiron using electron-beam evaporation, a standard process employed in the semi-conductor industry. The engineers then used anodization to selectively create tiny cylindrical cavities and turn the fi lm into a “porous anodic alumina template” less than 1/100th the width of a human hair in thickness.

During the process, an electric fi eld was used to form a precisely aligned array of nanoscopic holes, turning aluminum into porous alumina, the oxidized form of aluminum also known as aluminum oxide.

A mixture of hydrogen and methane gas was then fl owed into the template’s holes, and microwave energy was applied to break down the methane, which contains carbon. The iron layer acted as a catalyst that prompted the carbon nanotubes to assemble from carbon originating in the methane, and the tubes then grew vertically out of the cavities.

“You get a single nanotube in each pore, and that’s important because we can start to think about controlling how and where to put nanotubes to verti-cally integrate them for future electronic devices and sensing technologies,” Sands says.

“The pores in the template and the nanotubes that grow in the pores really self-assemble once you set the process in motion,” says Purdue colleague Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering, who used two types of electron microscopes to take images of the nanotubes emerging vertically from the cavities. The NASA-funded research is based at the Birck Nanotechnology Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park, the University’s hub for interdisciplinary research.

The cavities form within seconds, and the nanotubes take several minutes to fi nish growing. The holes vary in width from 30 to 50 nanome-ters. Carbon nanotubes, which were discovered in the early 1990s, might enable industry to create new types of transistors and more powerful, energy-effi cient computers, as well as ultra-thin “nanowires” for electronic circuits. Reaching that potential promise, how-ever, won’t be possible unless carbon nanotubes can be integrated with other parts of circuitry and devices, Sands says. —EMIL VENERE

From cavities in a specially designed template, researchers are growing individual carbon nanotubes.

Summer 2007 5

New Research May Have Many Seeing Clearly

A new coating could nix smudges and fogging on windshields, eyeglasses, and goggles

Materials engineers have created a new type of coating that attracts water yetbeads oils—traits that are usually mutually exclusive—promising potential applications such as “self-cleaning” eyeglasses and antifogging car wind-shields and ski goggles.

The coating, a single-molecule-thick layer of polyethylene glycol tipped witha Tefl onlike “functional group” made with fl uorine, repels the oil but not the water. “This is important because oil normally sticks to surfaces that attract water, a property we call hydrophilic. However, we now have [a coating] that’s hydrophilic but that oil doesn’t like,” says Jeffrey Youngblood, an assistant professor of materials engineering.

When a fl uid lands on a glass sur-face, it forms beads having a distinctive

curvature determined by the “contact angle” of the substance. The higher the contact angle, the more a material is likely to form beads. According to Youngblood, “This material maximizes oil’s contact angle while minimizing water’s contact angle.”

The material prevents fogging by not allowing water to form beads on surfaces. “If you place a droplet of oil and a droplet of water right next to each other, the water will move underneath the oil and cause it to fall off of the surface,” says Youngblood, who is working with materials engineering doctoral student John A. Howarter.

Youngblood came up with the idea while skiing several years ago. Ski goggles are currently coated with anti-fogging materials that prevent water from beading, but this material doesn’t work well if smudged with oils.

“I accidentally got a fi ngerprint on this surface, and I started thinking, ‘Would it be possible to design a material that would work as an antifogging coating yet also resisted fi nger grease?’” says Youngblood.

Eyeglasses coated with such a material would automatically shed fi ngerprints and other oily fi lms when rinsed with water, eliminating the need to clean the surface with a cloth or to use soap. Such a material might be used as a permanent coating on glass surfaces and could be added to liquid window cleaners to prevent fogging.

“We are going to try to develop a material to put in window cleaners,” Youngblood says. “We have also had discussions with a few companies about this and a patent is pending, but commercialization is still at least a few years away.” —EMIL VENERE

A highlight of Purdue’s celebration of National Engineers Week, Colin Powell came to campus on February 22 to meet with engineering students and, in the evening, address an overfl ow crowd on the subject of leadership. In the speech “Diplomacy: Persuasion, Trust, and Values,” the former secretary of state and retired U.S. Army general discussed the process of forging alliances. “National Engineers Week is a time to celebrate engineering, but it is also an opportunity to broaden our perspectives by bringing distinguished speakers who can talk with everyone—engineers and non-engineers alike—about critical grand challenges,” says Leah Jamieson, Purdue’s John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering and the Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “These challenges include everything from health care to energy and from education to national security.” National Engineers Week also featured the 44th annual Distinguished Engineering Alumni Convocation (see page 29), the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, and other student activities. —LISA HUNT TALLY

Colin Powell Headlines National Engineers Week CelebrationHis theme: leadership. A highlight of Purdue’s celebration of National Engineers Week, Colin Powell came

to campus on February 22 to meet with engineering students and, in the evening, address an overfl ow crowd on the subject of leadership. In the speech “Diplomacy:

general discussed the process of forging alliances. “National Engineers Week is a time to celebrate engineering, but it is also an opportunity to broaden our perspectives by bringing distinguished speakers who can talk with everyone—engineers and non-engineers alike—about critical grand challenges,” says Leah Jamieson, Purdue’s John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering and the Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

to national security.” National Engineers Week also featured the 44th annual Distinguished Engineering Alumni Convocation (see page 29), the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, and other student activities.

Jeffrey Youngblood thought of the idea while skiing.



NEXTRANS Center to Open at PurdueA new $13 million U.S. Department of Transportation center will develop next-generation transportation solutions.

Purdue will be the home of a new U.S. Department of Transportation center designed to improve regional transportation effi ciency and safety, better coordinate “intermodal” commercial freight shipping to strengthen the regional economy, and upgrade the highways and infrastructure of the future.

The $13 million NEXTRANS center, scheduled to open next spring at Discovery Park, the University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, will involve more than 50 faculty members from multiple universities who work in such wide-ranging fi elds as civil, electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering; management; computer science; and psychology. Purdue’s two major partners are the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ohio State University.

“One of the most basic elements will be to look into factors that are enabling innovation, such as information technology, wireless communications, and new types of sensors and detectors,” says Robert Bernhard, Purdue’s associate vice president for research. “At a simple level, this means being able to constantly keep track of factors such as how fast cars are traveling, how many vehicles are moving on a given road at a given time and what the traffi c density is, and to communicate this information back and forth from the transportation infrastructure to the trans-portation vehicle fl eet.”

NEXTRANS will focus on integrating three overall areas: mobility, safety, and infrastructure renewal, with an emphasis on developing an “intermodal transporta-tion system,” meaning a system that effi ciently coordinates the movement of freight and passengers using a combination of highways, rail, airport, waterways, and pipelines.

“As the crossroads of America, Indiana is positioning itself to become the transportation and logistics hub of the world economy,” says Indiana Department of Transportation commissioner Thomas Sharp. “With Major Moves, we are investing $12 billion to improve and expand Indiana’s transportation system for the next generation. With 80 percent of the nation’s population living within a day’s drive in Indiana, our state is positioned to make transportation our competitive advantage in a global marketplace. To capitalize on our advantage, we need a freight transporta-

tion system that runs seamlessly across various modes, and an environment where data is freely shared between the private and public sectors.”

Long-term issues will include “transporting raw and fi nished products associated with ethanol and biofuels plants and using pipelines to move products, which would help to reduce trucking-related congestion,” says Kumareas Sinha, the Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and di-rector of Purdue’s Joint Transportation Research Program.

As for safety and traffi c fl ow, having access to vital information in real time would make it possible to be more responsive to problems, such as accidents, and to reroute traffi c on the fl y. Wireless technologies, together with new types of sensors and detectors, could be used to develop a system that enables vehicles to constantly commu-nicate with each other, relaying traffi c and safety data that could be used to warn drivers about problems ahead.

“This information will come to you through your personal digital assistant (PDA), cell phone, and other devices,” says Srinivas Peeta, NEXTRANS direc-tor and a professor of civil engineering.

The center is one of 10 “university transportation centers” in the nation’s 10 federal transportation regions. NEXTRANS covers Region Five, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. While Purdue and its two major partners will work on all aspects of the center, Purdue will lead work focusing on interactions between the driver and vehicle, Ohio State will focus more on vehicle information and control, and the University of Illinois will lead efforts in infrastructure renewal. —EMIL VENERE

Purdue civil engineering researchers test detection equipment designed to improve traffi c effi ciency.Purdue civil engineering researchers test detection equipment

Summer 2007 7

Lin

MILESTONES

Pho

to p

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ded

by N

ASA

Elected: The National Academy of Engineering elected Rex Reklaitis, Purdue’s Edward W. Comings Professor of Chemical Engineering, as a member for “developing the theory and application of batch design, scheduling and optimization tools, and for outstanding contributions to education.” Reklaitis has been on the Purdue faculty since 1970 and served as head of the School of Chemical Engineering from 1987 to 2003. He is co-director of Purdue’s Pharmaceutical Technology and Education Center and deputy director of the multi-university National Science Foundation-funded Engineering Research Center on structured organic particulate composites, of which Purdue is a partner. His current research interests are the development of model-predictive tools and process systems engineering approaches for pharmaceutical products and processes for development and manufacturing.

Awarded: NSF Career Awards to Chelsey Baertsch, assistant professor of chemical engineering, Jianghai Hu, assistant professor of electrical andcomputer engineering, Xiaojun Lin, assistant professor of electrical andcomputer engineering, and Marika Santagata, assistant professor of civilengineering.

Hu

Baertsch

Santagata


Designated: Nick Delgass as the Maxine Spencer Michols Professor of Chemical Engineering. Karl Smith as the Cooperative Learning Professor of Engineering Education.


Counted: Vladimir Shalaev,

the Robert and Anne Burnett

Professor of Electrical and

Computer Engineering, among

the “Nano 50,” the top 50

innovators in nanotechnology,

by Nanotech Briefs, the

monthly digital publication of

NASA Tech Briefs.

Honored: Doug Adams, associate professor of mechanical engineering, with the certifi cate of appreciation and the Medal of Achievement from the U.S. Army Stryker Program. Jan Allebach, the Michael J. and Katherine R. Birck Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as a 2007 International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) fellow. Melba Crawford, assistant dean for interdisciplinary research and profes-sor of agronomy, civil engineering, and electrical and computer engineering, as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for applica-tions of satellite data and airborne LIDAR imagery. Jay Gore, associate dean of research and entrepreneurship and the Vincent P. Reilly Professor of Mechanical Engineering, as a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Ben Hillberry, professor emeritus of mechanical and biological engineering, as a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Mario Rotea, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, as a fellow of IEEE for contributions to robust and optimal control of multivariable systems. Ness Shroff, professor of electrical and com-puter engineering, as a fellow of IEEE.

Allebach

Crawford

HillberryGore

Rotea

Shroff

Hastak

Appointed: Michael Harris, professor of chemical engineering, as associate dean of engineer-ing for undergraduate education. Makarand Hastak, associate professor of civil engineering, as head of Construction Engineering and Management (CEM). Timothy Sands, the Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering, as director of the Birck Nanotechnology Center.

Sands

MILESTONES

Adams

Counted

the Robert and Anne Burnett

Professor of Electrical and

Computer Engineering, among

the “Nano 50,” the top 50

innovators in nanotechnology,

by

monthly digital publication of

NASA Tech BriefsShalaev

Delgass

Designated:as the Maxine Spencer Michols Professor of Chemical Engineering. Karl SmithLearning Professor of Engineering Education.

Smith

Harris

Summer 2007 9

The Boeing Leadership Award recognizes excellence in promoting a diverse and inclusive climate within the College of Engineering. This year’s award went to Anastasios Lyrintzis, professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

Professor of materials engineering Keith Bowman received the Mentoring Award for nurturing and developing graduate students and junior faculty.

For his achievements in discovery, learning, and entrepreneurship, and for his innovative research in information and shape sciences, Karthik Ramani, professor of mechanical engineering, was presented the Research Award.

The Team Award was given to the Discovery Informatics Team, whose research focuses on improving catalyst design. The team mem-bers (shown from left to right and top to bottom) are Mahdi Abu-Omar, associate professor of chemistry; Chelsey Baertsch, assistant profes-sor of chemical engineering; Gary Blau, research professor at Discovery Park; James Caruthers, professor of chemical engineering; Graham Cooks, Henry Bohn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry; Nick Delgass, professor of chemical engineering; Hugh Hillhouse, assistant professor of chemical engineering; Michael McLennan, senior research scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, Fabio Ribeiro, professor of chemical engineering; Kendall Thomson, associate professor of chemical engineering; and Venkat Venkatasubramanian, professor of chemical engineering.

MILESTONES

Faculty Excellence Awards

Only nine years after obtaining his PhD, Eric Stach, associate professor of materials engineering, is recognized as a leader in the in situ study of nanoscale deformation processes. Stach received this year’s Early Career Research Award.

For his contributions to shaping the academic and professional careers of engineering students, Douglas Sutton, associate professor of civil engineering, received the Advising Award.


In 2003 the U.S. ranked as both the world’s largest producer of energy and its largest consumer of energy, producing 1.63 billion tons of oil equivalent* and consuming 2.28 billion tons.

ENERGY

The largest consumption per head (in kilograms of oil equivalent): United Arab Emirates (9,707), Kuwait (9,566), and Trinidad & Tobago (8,553).

How reliant are countries on different sources of electricity? The country that gets most of its electric power from oil is Yemen, at 100%; from hydropower, Paraguay, at 100%; from coal, Poland, at 95.1%; from gas, Turkmenistan, at 100%; and from nuclear, Lithuania, at 82.2%.

For the time period 2005-2010, Andorra ranks first in life expectancy (83.5 years), followed by Japan at 82.8 years. The U.S. ranks 40th, at 77.9 years—tied with Portugal. Swaziland ranks last at 29.9.

HEALTH

Highest population per doctor: Congo-Kinshasa, at 71,958, followed by Malawi at 46,241 and Tanzania at 45,864. Lowest population per doctor: Cuba, at 170, followed by Estonia at 212.

Tokyo still reigns as the world’s largest city, with a population of 35.3 million.

URBANIZATION

The world’s fastest-growing city (average annual growth, 2005-10, %) is Niamey, Niger, at 5.71, followed by Kabul, Afghanistan, at 5.39.

Countries having the highest percentage of population living in urban areas are Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, all at 100%. (The urban population of the U.S. is 80.8% of total U.S. population.)

The world’s slowest-growing city: Dongguan, China, at –2.75.

Who’s kindest to Mother Earth? According to the environmental performance index, which ranges from 0 to 100 based on six categories, including environmental health, sustainable energy, and air quality, New Zealand ranks highest, at 88.0, followed by Sweden (87.8) and Finland (87.0). The U.S. ranks 28th, at 78.5. Lowest-ranking: Niger at 25.7.

ENVIRONMENT

Biggest loss of forested land (average annual change 2005-05, in thousands of hectares): Brazil, at –3,103, followed by Indonesia at –1,871 and Sudan at –589.

Who ranks highest on the Innovation Index? The index reflects the adoption of new technology and the interaction between business and the scientific sector, including measures of the number of patents granted and higher education enrollment rates. First: the U.S., at 6.66, followed by Finland at 6.43 and Taiwan at 6.19.

BUSINESS CREATIVITY AND RESEARCH

Highest economic growth, 1994-2004 (average annual % increase in real GDP): Equatorial Guinea ranks first, at 20.9, followed by Bosnia (17.4) and Liberia (12.8).Lowest economic growth: West Bank and Gaza (–2.8), Zimbabwe (–1.9), and Sierra Leone (–0.8).

ECONOMICS AND TRADE

Biggest exporters, as % of total world exports: the Euro area (17.03), followed by the U.S. (12.06) and Germany (9.33).

10

PRIME NUMBERS

The World, RankedAround the planet, the human race faces a number of “grand challenges” that will require everything our ingenuity has to offer. Among those challenges: the need for healthcare solutions, new energy sources, environmentally friendly technologies, and security for all peoples. On these pages, a sampling of rankings that provide a glimpse, in numbers, of our global condition circa 2007. —LISA HUNT TALLY WITH MICA GOULD


*The ton of oil equivalent is the amount of energy released by burning one metric ton of crude oil.

Summer 2007

In 2003 the U.S. ranked as both the world’s largest producer of energy and its largest consumer of energy, producing 1.63 billion tons of oil equivalent* and consuming 2.28 billion tons.

ENERGY

The largest consumption per head (in kilograms of oil equivalent): United Arab Emirates (9,707), Kuwait (9,566), and Trinidad & Tobago (8,553).

How reliant are countries on different sources of electricity? The country that gets most of its electric power from oil is Yemen, at 100%; from hydropower, Paraguay, at 100%; from coal, Poland, at 95.1%; from gas, Turkmenistan, at 100%; and from nuclear, Lithuania, at 82.2%.

For the time period 2005-2010, Andorra ranks first in life expectancy (83.5 years), followed by Japan at 82.8 years. The U.S. ranks 40th, at 77.9 years—tied with Portugal. Swaziland ranks last at 29.9.

HEALTH

Highest population per doctor: Congo-Kinshasa, at 71,958, followed by Malawi at 46,241 and Tanzania at 45,864. Lowest population per doctor: Cuba, at 170, followed by Estonia at 212.

Tokyo still reigns as the world’s largest city, with a population of 35.3 million.

URBANIZATION

The world’s fastest-growing city (average annual growth, 2005-10, %) is Niamey, Niger, at 5.71, followed by Kabul, Afghanistan, at 5.39.

Countries having the highest percentage of population living in urban areas are Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, all at 100%. (The urban population of the U.S. is 80.8% of total U.S. population.)

The world’s slowest-growing city: Dongguan, China, at –2.75.

Who’s kindest to Mother Earth? According to the environmental performance index, which ranges from 0 to 100 based on six categories, including environmental health, sustainable energy, and air quality, New Zealand ranks highest, at 88.0, followed by Sweden (87.8) and Finland (87.0). The U.S. ranks 28th, at 78.5. Lowest-ranking: Niger at 25.7.

ENVIRONMENT

Biggest loss of forested land (average annual change 2005-05, in thousands of hectares): Brazil, at –3,103, followed by Indonesia at –1,871 and Sudan at –589.

Who ranks highest on the Innovation Index? The index reflects the adoption of new technology and the interaction between business and the scientific sector, including measures of the number of patents granted and higher education enrollment rates. First: the U.S., at 6.66, followed by Finland at 6.43 and Taiwan at 6.19.

BUSINESS CREATIVITY AND RESEARCH

Highest economic growth, 1994-2004 (average annual % increase in real GDP): Equatorial Guinea ranks first, at 20.9, followed by Bosnia (17.4) and Liberia (12.8).Lowest economic growth: West Bank and Gaza (–2.8), Zimbabwe (–1.9), and Sierra Leone (–0.8).

ECONOMICS AND TRADE

Biggest exporters, as % of total world exports: the Euro area (17.03), followed by the U.S. (12.06) and Germany (9.33).

11

Figures are taken from The Economist: Pocket World in Figures (2007 ed.).


Late this summer, before they’ve set foot on campus for the fall semester, a group of Purdue Engineering stu-dents will have the opportunity to travel to Singapore for a two-week course titled “Culture, Creativity, and Invention.” And because the course is open to students of all levels— pre-freshmen through graduate students—incoming fresh-men can enroll and get a taste of a foreign environment before they’ve even learned what it means to be a Purdue Engineering student. That’s a new model for study abroad in Purdue Engineer- ing, and it reflects the drive and innovation with which the College of Engineering intends to expand its educational efforts to develop students who can function as global engineers and global citizens. Forty-plus years ago, Marshall McLuhan popularized the phrase global village to convey a world collapsed in space and time by mass media. Since then, the term globalization has become commonplace to refer to the economic chang-

es—the increasing prominence of multinational companies, the controversies over outsourcing—taking hold as a result of a shrinking world. For 21st-century engineers, globalization’s implications are profound. When ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) formulated its Engineering Criteria 2000 for accrediting U.S. engineering programs, the agency set a requirement that graduates demonstrate “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context.” The National Academy of Engineering’s Engineer of 2020 report, published in 2004, echoes the importance of the global context for the future of engineering, cit-ing concern that if today’s students aren’t appropriately educated, “America’s engineering preeminence could be lost.” American engineers, the report notes, will need to be based abroad or travel around the world to meet custom-ers, have proficiency in more than one language, be open

b y L I S A H U N T TA L LY w i t h K AT H Y M AY E R

Engineering used to be all about technical skill. By the 1980s came calls to include professional competency in the well-rounded engineer’s skill set. Now in the spotlight: a third dimension, global competency. How can Purdue educate engineers to work with people who define problems differently from themselves?


Summer 2007 13

coordinates most Purdue Engineering study and intern abroad programs, aiming to increase the level of internation-alization and overseas study and internship opportunities for engineering majors as well as the level of international exchange of Purdue Engineering faculty members. The GEP team, drawn from across the College of Engineering, con-tinues to synthesize an integrated portfolio of opportunities, programs, and partnerships. “The imperative for global engineering has become widely recognized in the last handful of years,” Hirleman says. “Global educational experiences used to be kind of a luxury, especially in engineering, where accredited curricula don’t have much fl exibility. But now, being prepared to immediately function in the global workplace is a necessity.” In the last three years, 314 Purdue Engineering students have taken engineering courses and/or conducted engineering intern-ships in 29 countries. Beyond traveling, studying, and working in other countries, Hirleman envisions changes for students in their campus coursework at home. ‘We need multiple pathways for stu-dents to raise their global competence. We envision globally inspired homework problems and projects in our courses, where you must comprehend that different cultures defi ne and solve problems differently,” he says. Indeed, says GEP assistant director Yating Chang, “part of my job is to support our faculty in identifying opportunities and including global themes in their regular courses.” Dale Harris, the executive director of Purdue’s Engineering Professional Education program (formerly Continuing

to different ways of thinking and different social values, and appreciate how socioeconomic changes affect the U.S. and other countries. Against that backdrop, the engineering method as it’s often framed—Given, Find, Equations, Diagrams, Solutions—falls short. What engineers need in addition, say educators, is global competency, the ability to work effectively in multicul-tural global environments or, more specifi cally, the ability to work effectively with people who defi ne problems differently than they do. As ABET frames it, the global engineering professional functions in three dimensions: technical com-petency, professional competency (including leadership and teamwork skills), and global competency. Global engineering professionalism is complex, encompassing language skills, knowledge of world affairs, economics, the sociopolitical impact on problem defi nition, the ability to respond to cultural differences, and the ability to function on global teams tasked with technical work. At Purdue, the College of Engineering launched the Global Engineering Program (GEP) in 2005 to address the need to better educate students for a fast-paced, interconnected, and diverse world. “Our graduates,” says Dan Hirleman, the William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of the School of Mechanical Engineering and GEP’s founding (and interim) director, “must work effectively in multicultural environments and in the global engineering profession.” GEP’s vision is for Purdue to achieve preeminence in educating engineers for global professional competence and in global collaborations for research and education. GEP

Attributes of the 3-D EngineerGlobal/cultural competence: work effectively in diverse and multicultural global environments; language; world/global affairs and policies; international relations; global product platforms; economics/outsourcing; sociopolitical impact on problem defi nition; global citizenship; perceive/respond to cultural value differences

Professional competence: leadership; teamwork; communication; decision-making; recognize and manage change; synthesize engineering, business, and societal perspectives; multidisciplinary; innovative; strong work ethic; entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial; curious and persistent lifelong learners

Technical competence: science and math; engineering fundamentals; analytical skills; open-ended problem defi nition and solving; integration of analytical, problem solving, and design skills

Team global: Dan Hirleman, interim director of the Global Engineering Program, expects the organization’s entrepreneurial approach to lead to greater internationalization experiences for students and professors. Assistant director Yating Chang came on board last year.

Vincent Walter


Global Opportunities Fair: Organized by GEARE’s student chapter in the group’s inaugural year, Purdue’s fi rst annual Global Opportunities Fair attracted some 300 students and nine companies. “As future engineers and professionals, we need to be ready for global and cultural exchanges with all kinds of people, and we need to be able to defi ne and solve problems from an international perspective,” says GEARE member Francisco Montalvo, a Purdue mechanical engineering junior from Quito, Ecuador. “The fair [gives] students the opportunity to personally talk with representatives from international companies.”

14 purdue engineering impact

Engineering Education) is actively identifying opportunities. He arrived at Purdue three years ago with a keen interest in globalization, backed by years working on global-design issues in the telecom industry and experience leading an internationally connected telecom-research center at Stanford. At Purdue, Harris has developed the graduate-level course “Globalization and Engineering,” which examines globalization’s impact on engineering practice. The course is offered in a classroom setting and, for the fi rst time this summer, as a distance-learning course. Among other content, says Harris, “Globalization and Engineering” introduces students to the globaliza-tion of R&D, which drives a lot of job creation. In addition, EPE has ongoing initiatives to increase the number of distance-learning enrollments from outside theU.S., primarily with corporate partnersin India and China. Currently, 12 per-cent of EPE enrollments are by studentswho don’t live in the States. “What compels these initiatives to increase the numbers,” Harris says, “is strategic

interest. Both Purdue and the College of Engineering recognize the need for a global presence. Distance education is one way to reach out.” Another way is through Purdue’s Global Engineering Alliance for Research and Education (GEARE), a program that originated in the School of Mechanical Engineering and is nowunder the GEP umbrella. GEARE com-bines a domestic and international corporate internship with one semester of study abroad and a two-semester design team project that includes stu-dents from highly regarded international partner universities. Purdue’s SURF (Summer Undergra-duate Research Fellowships) program also has an international component, which landed biomedical engineering senior Jenna Miller in Spain last sum-mer. “From a scientifi c perspective, I believe there is some global unity,” she says. “Outside of the scientifi c world, many disparities must be overcome before common ground is achieved on a global scale.” She’s seen that stereo-types often prevail. “It’s often easy to perceive individuals as representatives

of an entire nation. At times I have felt like an American ambassador on topics ranging from music to international rela-tions.” Much of the work ahead will be in global understanding, not just in the lab, Miller adds. At Purdue, the momentum for global understanding is strong. Just last year, the University received the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the world’s largest international education organization, and Hirleman received the 2006 Achievement Award from the International Network for Engineering Education and Research. The number of Purdue Engineering majors in courses abroad has reached an all-time high at 140 participants for the 2006-07 year. The College of Engineering is factoring global competency into its curricular-reform planning, and the School of Mechanical Engineering is taking steps to imple-ment a global engineering certifi cate. The time is ripe for more exploration and innovation. In the 21st century, the well-rounded Purdue engineer must function in 3-D. •••

Vin

cent

Wal

ter

Summer 2007 15

In February 2007, a Purdue delegation joined with Indian dignitaries in signing a memorandum of understanding that will lead to research collaborations between India and the University, including exchanges of researchers, students, and faculty among Purdue and Indian universities. Purdue president Martin C. Jischke de-scribed the initiative as “sowing seeds that…may blossom into new partnerships for businesses in Indiana and other parts of America, new markets, research ideas that can be developed by companies here, and new markets for our products to India’s growing middle class that already numbers more than 300 million people.” Led by Discovery Park, the University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, Purdue has a number of additional memoranda of understanding in the works with govern-mental, academic, and commercial institutions in India. Potential areas of research include biofuels, energy, agriculture, IT, and healthcare engineering. Says Discovery Park assistant director Pankaj Sharma, “We want to make Purdue a preferred U.S. institution for research collaboration with India.” Jay Gore, the College of Engineering’s associate dean for research and the interimdirector of Discovery Park’s Energy Center, attended the February 4 signing in New Delhi. He talks below about the memorandum of understanding and what it means for the College of Engineering.

How do Purdue Engineering researchers and students benefi t? It’s the foundation for developing cooperation between the government of India and Purdue University in the areas of science, engineering, and technology. Engineering is a very strong piece of the cooperation. Our engineering research program has received unprecedented access to potential multidisciplinary mega-projects in the rapidly developing Indian economy. We have received many partners for the global elements of our proposals for funding to the federal government. Our students have received access to rapidly developing multinationals and national laboratories in India for Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF), internships, co-ops, and even permanent jobs. What does India gain?Through this cooperation, India gains a multidisciplinary research philosophy and an understanding of methods for conducting multidisciplinary research. The model for academic institutions being engines of direct economic development is new to the Indian scenario, where academic institutions have focused mainly on the educa-

Expanding Purdue’s Research Network in India

Expanding Purdue’s Research Network in India

tional mission. Purdue know-how in deploying multidisciplinary research for economic development is valuable.

What else is signifi cant about the agreement?Purdue has a great brand identity in India, and our alumni have impacted the country in very real ways. The current science advisor to the prime minister, Dr. C.N.R. Rao, is a Purdue chemistry alumnus and the fi rst Secre-tary of the Department of Science andTechnology in the central government of India. Dr. Arcot Ramachandran, aPurdue mechanical engineering alum-nus, is still actively working as the chairman of The Energy ResearchInstitute (TERI). India’s economy has been growing at 8 percent a year since 1991, and many Fortune 100 corpora-tions are establishing large research and development centers in India. Manylarge corporations such as Cummins Inc. are also sponsoring research in Indian academic institutions. Just as Indian software programmers have been competing on the strength of costand quality, Indian researchers are poi-sed to compete on cost and innovation. Purdue Engineering research will need to collaborate with global researchers including those from India. The MOU that our delegation signed provides the framework for collaboration.—INTERVIEW BY LISA HUNT TALLY

From left to right: Pankaj Sharma with Charles Rutledge, Purdue’s vice president for research; Jay Gore; and, from India’s Department of Science and Technology, T. Ramasami, secretary; Yashpal Kumar, adviser and head, international cooperation; and Bhushan K. Jain, adviser, international division.

Photo cour tesy of Pankaj Sharma


Building Leaders in an Age of Globalization

The world is changing. Business is changing. Our society is changing. And the way we teach and nurture our future leaders must also change. In times of extraordinary transforma-tion, it’s natural to feel that we are unique and experiencing changes no one else ever had to deal with. But if you think back to what Abraham Lincoln and the Congress of 1860 were facing, that situation was remarkably similar to what we’re going through today. No, I’m not talking about the Civil War. I’m talking about an often over-looked issue of that day: a transforming economy and jobs. Then, sweeping economic change threatened a largely agricultural economy and a rural, insular way of life. In quick succession, steamboat service was introduced; scores of canals were constructed; thousands of miles of railroad track were laid; and countless telegraph lines were strung throughout the nation. Almost overnight, large numbers of what had been generally self-suffi cient local economies found themselves caught up in a changing and expanding national economy. Competition came from producers in many parts of the country, and even from industries abroad. There was tension then, too, but Lincoln’s administration pushed forward

policies encouraging Americans to own property and establish businesses, and assigned a role for government tosupport the economic, educational, and technological changes taking hold at the time. One of those policies wasto pass the Morrill Act, which estab-lished land-grant universities, of which Purdue was one of the fi rst. The administration also established a transcontinental railroad. The rest is history: a collection of states became a nation, and a climate for Americans to capitalize on innovation and emerging technologies was created. The stage was set for the American economy to dominate the 20th century. Now, we must compete in a 21st-century world economy. As a father, a citizen, and someone who cares deeply about global trade, global prosperity, and global harmony, I feel it is our mis-sion to help prepare people for a world that is coming closer together through trade. Specifi cally, at UPS we look for six particular traits in future employees as we engage further in world trade: • We need people who are trade-

literate, that is, people who understand the basics of 21st-century trade and economics. • We need people who are both sensitive to foreign cultures and conversant in different languages. In 1976, I was among the fi rst wave of American UPS’ers to work in our fl edg-ling international operations. During the buildup of our business in Europe, we were challenged with integrating 16 acquired companies. Unfortunately, our attitude was often, “You stand over there and watch how we do this, then do it exactly the same way.” Well, that didn’t work, and our business suffered. Things got better only when we found the right blend of UPS culture, capabili-

ties, and local knowledge. • We need people who are techno-logically savvy. In the area of engi-neering alone, the U.S. ranks 17th in producing new talent. As a Sputnik-inspired engineer myself, this con-cerns me. We have more than 5,000 engineers at UPS, and that demand will only increase in the coming years. Technology is central to our mission at UPS of being able to serve every customer—whether they’re in Boston or Bangkok—as if they’re our only customer. Without these kinds of capabilities it would be impossible to compete in a global economy. • We need people who can learn how to learn, who are capable of managing complexity. While information is much richer today, complexity and uncer-tainty have not abated. In fact, they’ve increased. • Finally, we need people who are ethical. Business integrity and diploma-cy have been under the microscope in recent years. That’s too bad, because the vast, vast majority of American business leaders, like educators, play an essential and honorable role every day of their lives. Our actions and our beliefs are not only shaping the percep-tions of our companies abroad, they are also forming impressions about our na-tion and the ideals for which it stands. It’s a huge responsibility, one we must manage with care and diligence. All of us play a part in succeeding in this complex, challenging, invigorating, and opportunity-rich world of change. Purdue Engineering is doing its part by promoting international opportunities and thereby preparing future leaders.With a global perspective, these 21st-century Purdue engineers will not only function in the world economy but thrive. •••

Building Leaders in an Age of Globalization

The world is changing. Business is

Mike Eskew

Mike Eskew (BSIE ’72) is chairman and chief executive offi cer of UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company and a global leader in supply chain services. This essay was adapted from his speech “Education in an Age of Globalization.”

VANTAGE POINTSFIRST PERSON

17Summer 2007

Personal Medicine: Knowledge-Based Multilegged Companies Can Lead the WayAlthough countries like the United States, which represent the world’s major markets and suppliers, are responsible for most of the global companies of our time, small countries like Finland, Sweden, Ireland, and Israel also want to be recognized as players in the global market. They defi nitely need to base their economic growth on those worldwide markets, because their own local market cannot afford such growth. Therefore, the obvious question arises: What is their relative advantage? In Israel, we recognized that building knowledge-based industries was the only chance to develop our economy, and we started creating those compa-nies, the fi rst of which—Elron Electronic Industries—I founded in 1962. We real-ized that we needed real partners, with management and marketing capabili-ties, both in the U.S. and in Europe. At home, we have continuously strengthened academic education and industrial R&D and increased the number of talented graduates in scien-tifi c and technological areas. But the most important element was to focus our efforts on specifi c industries, like defense, semiconductors, communica-tion, and healthcare. In the healthcare fi eld, the talent avail-able in Israel, in collaboration primarily with American and European R&D, will in the long run result in worldwide multilegged knowledge-based compa-nies dedicated to “personal medicine,” which will have one major purpose: to shorten the time between great research and the benefi t for the patient by providing adequate tools to the clini-

cian and guidance to the patient. Information technology for healthcare does not know boundaries. I thought a few years ago that the way to promote it was by creating a very effi cient personal computerized medical record, which will also include important genetic information. I created the Galil Center for Telemedicine and Medical Informatics at the faculty of medicine of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology to support research and its implementation in these fi elds. In the meantime, both the U.S. and the United Kingdom have committed that between 2010 and 2015, every citizen will have his own personal electronic health record. One of the major problems still is for physicians at different clinics in different parts of the globe to interpret the different standards used by various hospitals, medical centers, HMOs, and so on, because too many of them developed their own systems. Global companies have been looking for solutions. For instance, the Israeli company dbMotion Inc., accepted worldwide, came up with a solution—the virtual patient record—that enables healthcare organizations to securely share medical information, namely, by logically connecting a group of care providers and organizations worldwide, without data centralization or replace-ment of existing information systems. It is well recognized today that the use of information technology (IT) in healthcare stands 10 to 15 years behind industrial, fi nancial, and many other sectors. We hear today at con-ventions around the world that there

is a real revolution in IT for healthcare, including personal medicine. This will be achieved by taking advantage of the best solutions and by creating global business around it. Moreover, an important benefi t will be achieved by providing clinicians with new tools (mostly software) that will help them re-duce the frequency of errors in medical practice. The number of articles found today in this area is increasing daily. All the above obviously has a tre-mendous impact on education. The emerging concept of the global profes-sion of “physician” indicates what the physician’s competence should be, once he takes full advantage of the IT tools developed worldwide for personal medicine. I wish to conclude by expressing my admiration for Purdue’s Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, and I hope that its mission—to “catalyze the transformation of healthcare-delivery systems by applying the principles of engineering, management, and sci-ence”—will also have a global impact in the near future. •••

Uzia Galil

Uzia Galil (MSEE ’53), known as the pioneer of Israeli high-tech, is chairman, president, and CEO of Uzia Initiatives and Management Ltd. (Israel).


Q. How long is the fl ight from

your home base to the place

you’re at now?

Patrick: Approximately 22 hours.

Rachit: About 18 to 19 hours of fl ying

time and 9 to 10 hours of waiting at the

various airports.

Laura: Between 4 to 5 hours.

Paul: Between 8 and 9 hours.

Q. What’s been the biggest

surprise or biggest adjustment

thus far?

Patrick: Having to drive everywhere.

In Kenya, literally everything is in the

Students Abroad:A Virtual Roundtable

Meet four Purdue engineering students: two American-grown (Paul Imel and Laura Palac), one from Kenya (Patrick Ndai) and one from India (Rachit Biyani). Paul is currently in Germany; Laura, in Mexico; Patrick and Rachit, at Purdue. What’s it like to live, work, and study so far from home? Below, through e-mails, these students give us a glimpse.

neighborhood, e.g., grocery stores,

hospitals, etc. The other shocking

thing is that there are few family-owned

businesses. In Kenya, most stores are

owned by one of your neighbors and

not by a corporation.

Rachit: The biggest adjustment

would have to be food. Back in India,

the staple diet for most people is rice.

Besides, I am also a vegetarian, so the

options of dishes is pretty limited for

me! During my fi rst year in the dorms,

I didn’t particularly like the food, since

not a whole lot of

vegetarian food

was available, and mostly what I ate

was fast food. Now that I stay off cam-

pus, I cook more often than I eat out.

Laura: The amazing warmth and

friendliness of the people [in Mexico].

Paul: The biggest adjustment is not

being able to express myself effectively.

Even [if] you know enough German to

start a conversation, it doesn’t mean

you know enough to fi nish it without

crashing and burning and leaving

both parties dazed and confused.

Q. What kind of language

barriers are there?

Patrick: None.

Rachit: Well, initially there were some

problems regarding my accent. People

found it hard to understand what I was

saying, and sometimes it was really

embarrassing! The pronunciation of

certain words I found to be different

here—for example, the words route

and often.

Laura: Not much more than a few

words here and there.

Paul: Lots of Americans think that

Patrick NdaiMajor: Electrical and computer engineering

Year in college: PhD student

Hometown: Nairobi, Kenya

Institution currently attending: Purdue

Speaks which languages: Kiswahili, English,

Kikuyu

Future plans: Kenyan politics

Paul: Lots of Americans think that

VANTAGE POINTSSTUDENT IMPACT

Vincent Walter

Summer 2007 19

continued on next page

most Europeans can speak English.

Some do (mainly the younger crowd),

some know a little, and some know

none at all. It’s a safer bet to just

assume the person doesn’t speak

English and try your best in German

until they seem to understand or sud-

denly start talking in English. (I guess I

have quite the American accent.)

Q. What differences in culture

are most striking?

Patrick: I fi nd it strange that even

though someone might not particularly

like you, they still use “please,” “thank

you,” etc., and say it with a smile on

their faces. At fi rst, it was particularly

diffi cult to understand whether some-

one was happy with you or mad at you.

Rachit: In the U.S., there are two

major languages, English and Spanish,

whereas in India we have 23 offi cial

languages. The lifestyles are pretty

different. For example, in India we just

have Sundays as holidays, whereas

here Saturdays and Sundays are both

holidays. And the sports we play are

different. In India, cricket is the national

sport. Here, there’s football (not soccer)

and baseball.

Laura: Stress is something that barely

exists here. The typical attitude is very

passive, easygoing.

Paul: I see many wind farms on the

train through the country to work.

People here are very environmentally

conscious. I’m often told of the very

cold, snowy winters Berlin used to get

12 to 15 years ago. People blame the

change on global warming. So along

with this, people recycle everything—

and much more meticulously sort

garbage into various recycling bins.

Q. How is education or work dif-

ferent from what you’ve experi-

enced in your home country?

Patrick: The classrooms are signifi -

cantly smaller here, and the facilities

are present and in working condition.

Kenya’s classrooms are much larger,

and facilities don’t always work.

Rachit: In India, education is more

theory-based, whereas there is a prac-

tical aspect to education here. Even the

textbooks have more illustrations and

applications than would be found in a

textbook back home. Most good

universities here were established in the

late 1800s or early 1900s, whereas in

India, the good universities were very

recently established. Back in India, it

is extremely competitive to get into a

really good college like the IITs [Indian

Institutes of Technology], given that the

number of good colleges is not a lot.

The system of education is very fl exible

here, i.e., you can change your major

easily, and you can do a whole lot of

courses that are not related to your ma-

jor in any way. In India, it’s really hard

to change your major once you begin.

Laura: The Tec is a private school,

and they keep track of everything. It

is very much like a high school atmo-

Rachit BiyaniMajor: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Year in college: Junior

Hometown: Calcutta, India

Institution currently attending: Purdue

Speaks which languages: English,

German, Hindi, and Bengali

Future plans: Will think about it after I graduate! Will think about it after I graduate!

Photo cour tesy of Rachit Biyani


Q. What do you like best and

least about the country you’re

currently in?

Patrick: Best: That the systems work,

e.g., no potholes on the roads, mail’s

delivered on time, the DMV is (sort of)

effi cient, etc. Basically, that institutions

do what they are there for. Least: I

don’t like dealing with corporations,

particularly if I have to call a customer

service rep.

Rachit: What I like the best: Times

Square, New York City. There’s no

place like that in the world. What I like

the least: the cars (I don’t really like GM

and Ford).

Laura: The food: It tastes amazing,

but it can also be the source of various

digestive problems….

Paul: Best: The fact that Germany

affords me the opportunity to try new

things. Least: Although Berlin, com-

pared to other major European cities,

has a somewhat lower cost of living,

everything except the 30-cent loaves of

bread at the corner Turkish bakery

seems to be rather expensive. To use a

public restroom almost always costs

money. And overall, the euro/dollar

exchange rate has not been kind to me.

Q. Any preconceptions of the

country you’re in now that were

confi rmed? Overturned?

Patrick: Confi rmed: That some

Americans are spoilt, which leads them

to become quite smug and, sadly, quite

ignorant about anything beyond their

borders.

Overturned: I always assumed that in

a country with so much, there would be

no poor/homeless people.

sphere. The textbooks are often the

same editions as the ones at Purdue,

and in English, but oftentimes they only

contain SI [metric] units. There is about

20 percent as much homework per

week as there is at Purdue.

Paul: People seem to not prefer

vague, open-ended assignments or

requests like my Canadian colleagues

and I are used to across the Atlantic;

they seem to prefer them to be detailed

and have systematic steps toward a de-

fi nitive goal. Not that they need things

spelled out for them—they just seem to

prefer more organization. People here

are also extremely focused on their

work while on the clock. I don’t see

quite as much joking and socializing as

I have in American companies. But they

are still very friendly and as productive

as anywhere else.

VANTAGE POINTSSTUDENT IMPACT

Laura PalacMajor: Mechanical engineering


Hometown: Strongsville, Ohio

Institution currently attending: ITESM (Tecnológico

de Monterrey, Mexico) with the GEARE program

Speaks which languages: English and Spanish

Future plans: To apply the experience I have gained

with GEARE to a future global career

Photo cour tesy of Laura Palac

Summer 2007 21

Quite true in Lafayette but not in

major metropolotan cities.

Rachit: I had always thought of

America as being a cultural melting pot,

with a diverse and disparate group of

people. After coming here and meet-

ing so many people, my notion has

certainly been confi rmed. There are

so many cultures I found here that for

once I forgot which continent I was in.

Laura: Monterrey is very close to the

border, so the culture here is very simi-

lar to that of the USA. I was surprised

that it was not more “Mexican.”

Paul: Confi rmed: The beer and food

taste great, the girls are pretty, the rail

and bus system is amazing, and the

soccer fans are hardcore.

Overturned: People don’t wear

lederhosen on a regular basis.

Q. What’s the benefi t of study in

another country? Would you do

it again? Would you recommend

it to other students?

Patrick: I’ve come to learn how to

deal with people [of] different cultures

and races. I’d defi nitely do it again. In

fact, I think everyone should take the

time to visit another country that is

vastly different from their own. Despite

the cost, such an experience allows

you to learn what is good about your

country and how to change what’s not.

Rachit: This international experience

is certainly very benefi cial. I have met

so many people from the different parts

of the world and learnt about their

cultures. I have a better idea about the

lifestyle of people in the U.S.

This has given me a much greater

exposure to the world, the way things

work in different places.

Laura: Any type of international expe-

rience is an eye- and mind-opening

experience. It helps you to appreciate

what the world has to offer, both

in your home country and in a foreign

one. In the U.S.A. right now there

is such a push for integration, but this

type of tolerance cannot be taught

better than [through] an international

experience. It is best learned, like

everything, in practice.

Paul: So far so good. The biggest

benefi t is everything is different. Living

in North America, we sometimes forget

that there is a whole rest of the world

out there besides what we see on the

news. And in today’s shrinking world, a

little understanding can go a long way. I

would do it again in a heartbeat.

—INTERVIEWS BY LISA HUNT TALLY

Paul ImelMajor:

Aeronautical and astronautical engineering


Hometown: Portland, Indiana

Institution currently attending: Currently an

intern with Pratt & Whitney Canada Customer

Service Centre Europe; in the summer, will be studying at Universität Karlsruhe

in southern Germany. All of this was made possible by the GEARE program.

Speaks which languages: English like a native, and broken German (but I’m getting better)

Future plans: Short-term: Learn German well enough to talk to the local girls. Long-term: Die

with a smile on my face. In between: Hopefully graduate before I retire so I can get a fun and

interesting job in the aerospace fi eld (maybe one that involves using my hopefully improved

German) and live out the rest of the American Dream

Currently an

Service Centre Europe; in the summer, will be studying at Universität Karlsruhe

Photo cour tesy of Paul Imel


Magellan’s Travels

Imagine: You’re living in the American heartland and planning the trip

of a lifetime. Where would you want to go? My inspiration came from

Magellan—Ferdinand, that is, the Portuguese explorer (1480-1521), who

was the first European to circumnavigate the globe. With my wife, I’m

currently in the midst of a round-the-world trip, which will last a year

and cover four continents (Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe), some

45,000 miles, and one sabbatical. We left the States in July last year and

are currently halfway through our travels, with Africa and Europe before

us. Here, some glimpses into what we’ve seen and learned thus far.

— SURESH RAO

The Insulated Tourists July 26, 2006 BEIJING, CHINA In the Barbary Coast days, people used to be Shanghaied. You know, you get drunk, pass out on the street or some other seedy place, and wake up in the morning on a ship, conscripted to be on the crew headed to Shanghai, China. In our case, we arrive voluntarily, of our own accord, on a comfortable jet plane in China’s capital city. Call it being Beijinged, 21st-century style! We are picked up at the airport by a nice young lady who is to be our tour guide in Beijing. She is bilingual and knowledgeable, with an ever-present smile. We are certainly not monolin-gual; my wife and I, between us, can speak four languages fluently and can get by in at least two others. But Mandarin—beyond ni hou (“hello”) and xie xie (“thank you”)—has always been difficult for both of us.

We step out of the old terminal, and there is a car waiting to whisk us away to the downtown hotel. The smog and

sounds of the rush-hour traffic outside the tinted windows do not penetrate the air-conditioned car with its plush seats.

We are now the insulated tourists. We have paid for this protective cocoon to ride through the first few days in the Orient, to buffer the change, perhaps. There are those brave souls, traveling solo. I admire them—plunging into China, with the help of only a guide-book they are clutching, and riding the local buses and trains.

It finally gets to you, realizing that you are disconnected from the real Beijing. Guided tours of the usual tourist attrac- tions just aren’t enough, even if they are to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, the Ming Tombs, and the like. You have an urge to get out and interact. To smell, feel, and touch, as it were. So, at first light, as the city slowly awakens, you put on the running shoes and go out for a morning jog. Now you are in the city. The locals mostly ignore you.

Then, there is an elderly woman out for her morning walk. She stops. And she stares as I approach her. As I pass

by her, I greet her with my now well-practiced ni hou and keep running. She seems to relax, and a smile crosses her face, and she responds with a courteous bow. There. Now you are a part of this city, interacting just a bit. It is a start. Gray Skies & Blue Moods August 1, 2006 SHANGHAI, CHINATry making a list of 10 major cities of the world with the most polluted air, and you will soon find out that almost two-thirds are in China. With the eco-nomic boom here, the ratio of cars to people has been growing dramatically.

All this, of course, means that the skies in modern China’s cities are always gray. Low-hanging, heavy smog shrouds buildings and obscures your views. Our tour guide in the city of Chengdu (in Sichuan province) would explain the smog as politically correct “water vapor” resulting from the many rivers that crisscross the valley. We politely nod in agreement, all the while wondering if she actually believed what she was telling us. Aren’t people’s moods often a shade of blue? Well, maybe or maybe not.

The urban Chinese might see the smog as a necessary evil for their economic well-being. We, on the other hand, needed to see the sky and catch a few rays. Shanghai was a relief in this regard. The city has taken several measures to curb air pollution. All of the scooters must run on LPG [lique-fied petroleum gas] or are powered

An environmental engineering professor blogs his way around the world.

VANTAGE POINTSFACULTY IMPACT

Summer 2007 23

Photos courtesy of Suresh Rao

continued on next page


Photos courtesy of Suresh Rao

by electricity. The number of cars in the city is restricted (but there are still more than 4 million cars on the roads). Shanghai easily has the best air quality of all the cities we visited in China.

Our tour guide in Shanghai told us, “If you want to see 500-year-old history, go to Beijing. If you want to see 1,000-year-old history, go to Xian. But if you want to see the future of China, come to Shanghai.” Well, at least in terms of air pollution, I certainly hope Shanghai is the future. Other major cities havebeen through this cycle: rapid growth, suffocating air pollution, and thenrecovery. Just think about London or Tokyo or Los Angeles. We have to pause and wonder how long China’s growth can be sustained, say, past the 2008 Summer Olympics (in Beijing) or the 2010 World’s Fair (in Shanghai). With a history stretching back fi ve millennia that has seen the rise and fall of numerous dynasties, we know the people of China can adapt and persevere but rise up phoenix-like when the opportunity presents itself. China has always been a country of contrasts and extremes—one that needs to be reckoned with, whether the Dragon is slumbering or roaring.

Floating Airport August 10, 2006 KANSAI, JAPANThe old airport is in the middle of thecity, and expansion is out of the ques-tion. Economic projections are for con-tinued boom times. You want to put theregion on the world’s radar screen. So, you build a new international airport, but where? No problem. You make your own island in the sea. That’s what the plan-ners and city fathers decided in 1987 about where the Kansai International

Airport should be located, on a man- made, rectangular island about 3 kilometers offshore in Osaka Bay. Ten thousand workers literally had to move mountains (three of them). It took 10 million work hours over three years to fi ll 20 million cubic yards of earth to build up the island 30 meters above the seafl oor. The island sits just above the waves! The terminal is designed to withstand earthquakes and typhoons. And it passed the tests. It withstood the GreatKobe earthquake in 1995 and the 1998typhoon. But the island sinks as the fi lled earth settles. Engineering prob-lems are not the real problem, though. The economic bubble burst, as we know, just as the airport was being completed, sending the Japanese economy into a tailspin from which they are just beginning to recover. So, this beautiful $15 billion airport sits underutilized. We were told that things are changing slowly for the Kansai koku (“airport”). For the fi rst time, they made a small profi t. The Japanese economy is making a slow comeback. I would hate to see this engineering marvel sink into the ocean not for geotechnical reasons but for fi nancial burdens.

Fairways & Runways: Can They Cross? August 11, 2006 BANGKOK, THAILANDThe spanking-new Boeing 777-200 we were on from Osaka begins its slow descent for landing at the Bangkok International Airport. I have the window seat and had been enjoying the view below. We have just fl own over Vietnam and Laos and crossed into Thailand.

But now below us are the fl at expanses of green, wet rice fi elds dotted with rural communities. Then, from outskirts of Bangkok city the density of houses quickly grows, colors change to brown, and the complex network of roads and alleyways can now be seen. Finally, we are almost over the airport, and the captain announces that we are about to land.

We are losing altitude quickly, and the cars that looked like ants just a minute ago are now looking actually like cars. We can even see people in their back yards or on the streets. Then I see it. The golf course is right next to the airport, with several groups of golfers out enjoying themselves. Okay, that is wonderful, right? As we come down some more and land, I realize that there is no security fence around the airport perimeter. The golf course and the airport properties are contiguous. Back yards of some houses along the golf course are also right up against the active runways. No fence. Nothing.

I am immediately thinking about all the security issues. There do not seem to be any military or police cars patrol-ling the property. Are there super-duper detectors all over the place? Will sirens blare and machine guns get tripped once you cross the invisible infrared beams? Or could terrorists just walk in or out any time anywhere? Then I notice that the golf course fairways run parallel to the runway we just landed on. The sand traps and the putting greens are not so far away from the runways.

No buffer. I am wondering if any

Suresh Rao and his wife, Keiko, will visit four continents in one year.



24

errant golf balls might ever have hit one of the landing planes. Now we turn right and head to the terminal, and I notice that the group of golfers I had watched a minute ago is now calmly walking across the connecting runway to continue their game on the other side!! What the….? No, they do not seem to be too concerned or in a great hurry. Does the control tower give them clearance? Or, somebody in the control tower sticks his head out and just yells, loudly, “Fore!!!!!” What kind of life insurance do these golfers have? Does their insurance agent know? Is there a special exception? As I leave the plane, I stop to ask the Singapore Airline stewardess about what I had just seen but still can’t quite believe. She has made this run several times, and smiles as she says, “Yeah, I have never seen it anywhere else. I don’t know their system here.” I have to head off to pick up my baggage and see what other surprises the city holds offer me. I am the curious type. I needed to know. So, what else? First thing I do when I get to my hotel room is to fi re up my laptop and open Google Earth to locate the Bangkok International Airport (code: BKK). Guess what? I was only half right. The golf course is inside the airport! Yes, all of the fairways, the sand traps, the putting greens—the whole enchilada—are right in the middle of two runways. Now that is a unique land-use plan if I ever saw one.

Finally, Down Under!August 14, 2006 PERTH, AUSTRALIAPerth is said to be the most isolated city in the world. The Australian con-tinent is about as wide as the conter-minous U.S., and the transcontinental

fl ight from Perth to Sydney takes about the same time as fl ying from New York City to Los Angeles. But it is a vast expanse of essentially unin-habited and hostile land in the interior.

Perth is a small city, about one-twentieth, in comparison to Beijing or Xian or Shanghai or Tokyo or Osaka or Bangkok or L.A. All of Western Australia has a population of less than 2 million, and about 1.3 million call Perth andFremantle [a nearby Australian city] home. To the east, about 500 kilome-ters along the Great Eastern Highway, lies Koolgorlie-Boulder, mining settle-ments. It is another 2,000 kilometers east, just past the Great Australian Bight, before you reach Adelaide, the capital of South Australia (my next stopon this Oz odyssey). Sydney on the southeast coast is at least 4,000 kilo-meters away.

Heading westward from Perth, you will have to fl y across the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean to Johannesburg or Cape Town (also on my itinerary) inSouth Africa before you hit land. And, fi nally, to the north, I guess Jakarta is the largest city, because Darwin in the Northern Territory, about 4,000 kilometers away, doesn’t quite qualify as a city either. So don’t blame the residents of Perth if they have a sense of isolation living in this remote but beautiful setting. But wait: isn’t paradise supposed to be set apart from the rest of the world? Perth is a stunningly beautiful city, and I’m looking forward to running along the Swan River or on the trails in Kings Park. It’s just 6 o’clock, and the sun isn’t up yet on this lovely early spring morning. We have arrived just in time for our second spring of the year: the Southern Hemisphere version! I strap on my running shoes and am out the

door. I look to my left and try stepping off to cross the street to begin my jog and……VROOM……VROOM……two cars speed by, only inches away from me. I had forgotten that they drive on the “wrong side” here and wasn’t awake enough to remember to look to the right fi rst and then left and then right again. I came pretty darn close to being a road casualty, even before my sabbatical began. Lesson learned, and jet lag cured!

Feeling Almost Local August 18, 2006 PERTH, AUSTRALIAWhat makes you feel like a local when you arrive in a new place? I think, beyond the obvious big things, it is a collection of a lot of little things that defi ne your everyday experiences. The big things fi rst, just to get them out of the way: Some say that to be a local you have to be born and raised in a place; you know, earn it as a birthright. When we lived in Hawaii, you were either a kamaaina (local) or a malihini (visitor). Local hotels and other estab-lishments often have discounts for ka-maainas. Being born in Oahu, our son was a native kamaaina, but we werelocal residents, which also qualifi ed us for kamaaina rates. But, ask some NewEnglanders, and they might say that if your roots don’t go almost all the way back to the Mayfl ower, you aren’t quite local. When asked where they are from, many of my friends usually say, “Well, all over!” I wanted to buy a phone card to make international calls home and was at the major phone store in the mall. The nice young man helping me suggested that I get the “sei gudai” card. At least, that

takes about the same time as fl ying from New York City to Los Angeles. But door. I look to my left and try stepping

Summer 2007


25

Suresh Rao, Purdue’s Lee A. Rieth Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering, is on sabbatical in Perth, Australia, doing collaborative research at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientifi c and Industrial Research Organisation) Land and Water. He is keeping a travel-blog, from which this article is adapted.

is what I thought I had heard. I wanted to be sure, so I said, “Sorry, can you repeat that?” With a slightly amused look, he says, “Sure, mate. No worries. Yeah, get the sei gudai card. You get me?” In a fl ash, I realize that he wants me to buy the “Say G’Day” card! He, with a bright smile, adds, “Yeah, mate. Paul Hogan isn’t the only one in Aus- tralia who talks like that!” Part of feeling like a local, I reckon, is to have these conversations without tripping yourself up or tripping up the locals.

Who Is on Your Money? August 19, 2006 PERTH, AUSTRALIAI’ve discovered that in my wallet there is all this funny money. None of it is the good old greenbacks that I carried from home or the other currencies that I had collected while traveling through China, Japan, and Thailand. I have now traded them all in for the new multi-hued, high-tech, polymer bank notes of the Australian currency. By the way, Australia is the fi rst country to have its bank notes made of polymer, both because they provide greater security and they last four times longer than paper currency. Here is one special thing about the Australian bank notes. Unlike our dollar notes, and other than the fi ve-dollar note, their notes depict two national heroes. Each note honors one man and one woman. What a nice gesture, and we could certainly learn to emulate our more “evolved” Aussie friends on this one. The $100 note features the soprano Dame Nellie Melba (after whom the Peach Melba is named!) and Sir John Monash, the famous general, engi-neer, and administrator (for whom an Australian university is named).

But who pays by cash anymore, eh? We all just pull that credit card out of the wallet. Go fi gure. It is a universal phenomenon, whether in communist-in-principle-but-capitalistic-now-in-practice China, the Land of the Roaring Dragon, or in formerly-socialist-leaning-but-now-free-market-frenzied India, the Land of the Galloping Elephant, or here, in the land Down Under. It is the human condition, I’m afraid, a part of the process of what we Americans think of as one of our inalienable rights to the pursuit of happiness. Mind you, not achieving happiness, but just trying to buy it! We are an optimistic lot as a nation, in spite of all the problems we face at home and overseas in what we see as an unstable and dangerous world. Other nations in the Western world appar-ently don’t have the same optimism as the Americans. But the Australians do share our bright outlook on the future. Could a sense of isolation—separation from the rest of the world by the great oceans—be one explanation?

Getting Ready for the Trip BackMarch 27, 2007 PERTH, AUSTRALIAWe arrived in Perth seven months ago, and now it is less than three weeks to our D-Day (Departure Day), when we start our long journey back to the U.S. The stress of packing and shipping ourbelongings has taken hold. We are coping with the mixed feelings of get-ting back home after our sojourn in this beautiful city. The successful research collaborations, many new friendships that developed, the inside look into the Australian way of life, and of course an outsider perspective on the U.S.—all these have been highlights of the sab-

batical. Of course, the excitement of the travel through Africa and Europe is ahead of us. Here are some updates on the three airports I mentioned. The Beijing Capital International Airport will under-go a major expansion to add a third runway and a new terminal in time for the Olympics. But under the 11th Five-Year Plan, by 2010 a second interna-tional airport will also be built to accommodate the expected doublingof passenger load to 60 million a year. In Bangkok, the brand-new Suvarna-bhumi International Airport has replaced the aging Don Muang airport at which we had landed. Japan’s Kansai airport is planning an expansion, to add a second 4-kilometer-long runway to bebuilt on 542 hectares of new land to becreated by land-fi lling almost 300 million cubic meters of earth, rock, and sand. Finally, I have now read the contro-versial book 1421, written by Gavin Menzies, which makes the case for the Ming Dynasty Chinese to have fi rst cir-cumnavigated the world in 1421, a few decades before Magellan or any of the European explorers. So, I might have to reconsider the title for my blogs? •••

Rao’s travels have combined sightseeing (facing page) and collaborative research (right).


Volumes to TellAgainst the backdrop of his own fulfi lling career in aviation, Dick Freeman has pursued

the Amelia Earhart mystery since the 1970s.

When 9-year-old Richard “Dick” Freeman (BSAE ’50, MSIM ’54) met Amelia Earhart on the Purdue campus in the 1930s, he was already passionate about fl ight. “When she said something about my having pretty blue eyes,” he recalls, “I said, ‘Yes, and I’m interested in airplanes,’ and she replied, ‘I encourage you to continue.’” His father, Verne Freeman, a Purdue agriculture faculty member and associate dean, had taken his son to campus that day. “I was stoked,” the younger Freeman says. Around the same time, the boy took his fi rst plane ride, circling Lafayette and West Lafayette. “I remember saying, ‘I’m really in the air.’”

From Young Dreams to Purdue Degree

His interest in aviation never waned, fueling his education, career, pastimes, and even a documentary fi lm. All the while, he remembered that day in the Armory when the aviator, who had been a visiting women’s counselor at Purdue, stood on a wooden platform to speak. Her twin-engine Electra, funded by $40,000 from the Purdue Research Foundation, was at the Purdue Airport. Nearly 40 years passed before he decided to learn more about her and her 1937 disappearance. That was prompted by a chance encounter on a trip to the Marshall Islands. The oft-repeated speculation that she crashed into the Pacifi c Ocean and

died in its depths is not what hap-pened, Freeman believes. Earhart landed on a different island than intended in her fi rst round-the-world fl ight, he says, and she lived until April 2002. Freeman’s own venture in aviation began as a Purdue undergraduate in air transportation, which included learning to fl y. He also earned a degree in naval science and tactics and a master’s in industrial management, all as a Boilermaker.

Industrial Executive, Missile Designer

After fulfi lling military duties on a stint in Korea, he spent 20 years in industry—

Amelia Earhart

VANTAGE POINTSALUMNI IMPACT

Summer 2007

than had been told. Freeman believes Earhart survived a crash on a different island and was imprisoned for several years in the Shangtung Province of China. When the prison was evacuated in 1945, those released sent 10-word telegrams to family members. One, addressed to G. P. Putnam, Earhart’s husband, read, “Camp liberated; all well. Volumes to tell. Love to mother.” That’s the second item that convinced him she lived longer. Freeman believes Earhart returned to the U.S., but not to Putnam, who had since remarried. She lived near her sister in Roslyn, Virginia, using a different name and living to be 104, he says. What he learned in his search proved to be a dilemma for Freeman. He has often spoken to children’s groups about Earhart, and he understands the reverence for her. “I think the American public is per-fectly happy believing she went down in the ocean,” he says. “We want to believe she was a heroine who plunged into the ocean.” Meanwhile, Freeman’s fascination with aviation and Earhart continue. “I’ve fl own millions of miles, and my interest in fl ight continues. But today, I’m mostly a voyeur.”—KATHY MAYER

27

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fi ve at General Motors in Ohio, then four at Ramo Wooldridge, a division of TRW, in Denver. In 1962, he accepted a post to man-age the missile programs at Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles, where he was involved in designing the Maverick, an air-to-ground tactical mis-sile still in use today. “Hughes is where I really used what I learned at Purdue—fl ight control and stability of missiles, primarily air-to-surface,” Freeman says. After six years, he moved on to E-Systems Inc. in Dallas for four years, then Rockwell International in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1974. That year, he founded his own company, Inter-national Pacifi c. For the past three decades, he has provided engineering consulting services on electronics products and some aerospace applica-tions from his base in Corona del Mar, California. Freeman has twice been recognized by Purdue for his career achievements, in 1973 as a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus and in 1999 receiving the Outstanding Aerospace Engineering Award, along with Neil Armstrong and others.

Long Interested in Old Planes

Throughout his life, Freeman main-tained his passion for aviation. He even contemplated buying old aircraft, visiting the Marshall Islands looking for them, and once coming close to owning an old Zero fi ghter aircraft, a Mitsubishi A6M5, Model 21, likely used at Pearl Harbor. He was also involved in producing a two-hour documentary, Zeros of the Pacifi c, for Japan’s Nippon Television. “Essentially, it was about some old aircraft and artifacts that remained at

one of their World War II bases in the Marshall Islands.”

The Earhart Search

On one of these trips to the Marshall Islands in the 1970s, he stumbled on news about Earhart contradicting prevailing beliefs. A local island iroje, or chief, was helping him locate old planes. Freeman would sketch what he was interested in, and the man would say if he’d seen such a plane. When Freeman drew Earhart’s Electra, the man told him, “I saw her land.” In halt-ing English, he told of her plane’s wing breaking off and beach landing. “I was stunned,” Freeman recalls. “At that point, I wasn’t searching for her. I was looking for World War II aircraft with the idea of restoring them.” The exchange set him on a course to learn more. His search has been long and intense, and his home shows it. An entire room is loaded with books, documents, avia-tion artifacts, propellers, and photo-graphs. “My wife won’t let the cleaning lady in there,” he laughs. His quest brought him back to Purdue many times to access Earhart materi-als in the library’s special collections, which led to his serving on the library advisory committee. Two items convinced him Earhart did not die 70 years ago on the fl ight from New Guinea for Howland Island. The fi rst is a May 13, 1938, telephone transcription from the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, a branch of the National Archives. It’s a conversation between Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and Eleanor Roosevelt’s secretary, Malvina Thompson “Tommy” Schneider. And it indicates there was more to the story

Dick Freeman

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Dick Freeman


From Early-Stage Research to Patients’ Hands

The largest single endowment in Purdue’s history aims to accelerate the commercialization of biomedical technologies through the new Alfred Mann Institute.

In a joint news conference March 16 at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, the Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering gave a $100 million gift to endow the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue University. The university-based institute is designed to enable the commercialization of innovative biomedical technologies that improve human health. “Through Purdue’s Alfred Mann Institute for Biomedical Development, we are participating in a new model of university technology transfer for a new century,” said Purdue president Martin C. Jischke at the news confer-ence. “Through the Purdue Research Park, we already have an effective strategy for technology transfer. But we now can enhance our capabilities to meet the growing need to translate our faculty members’ discoveries into useful products. Our agreement states that preferential consideration will be given to Indiana companies wanting to license the university technologies that are further developed by the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue. This univer-sity-private sector partnership can have a tremendous impact on economic development in Indiana and elsewhere, and on the well-being of people every-where.” The Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue is the third of a minimum of 12 such institutes that the Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering plans to create at select entrepreneurial research universities by 2012.

VANTAGE POINTSRESONANCE

commercialization of biomedical technologies through the new Alfred Mann Institute.

Purdue president Martin C. Jischke signs an agreement creating the $100 million Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue. Standing, from left, are Alfred Mann and Indiana governor Mitch Daniels.

Biomedical engineering associate professor Ozan Akkus conducts research on crystals such as monosodium urate and calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate. These crystals can accumulate in the synovial fl uid and lead to gout, which results in severe infl ammation and arthritis in joint spaces. This research could help improve diagnosis of the crystal species in synovial fl uid samples.

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Summer 2007 29

VANTAGE POINTSALUMNI NEWS

Alfred Mann, a successful serial medi-cal device entrepreneur and prominent philanthropist, said his goal is to build a bridge between academia and industry to move these health-related products to doctors and their patients in an accelerated process. “[Purdue’s] proven track record of interdisciplinary research and its extraordinary aca-demic leadership and entrepreneurial spirit were key in its selection for this partnership,” Mann said. The institute’s agreement is between the Purdue Research Foundation, which oversees the Purdue Research Park, and the Alfred Mann Foundation. The institute will be housed in 30,000 square feet at Purdue’s Discovery Park, where researchers use a multidisci-plinary approach to advance research. “The Alfred E. Mann Institute at Purdue is a visionary approach to filling a critical need on our campus,” said George Wodicka, head of Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. ”It provides the expertise and resources to rapidly develop our early-stage technologies and efficiently bring them to the patients who need them most.” The institute will help identify approxi-mately two new biomedical projects per year out of the hundreds at Purdue with commercialization potential, growing to as many as six ongoing projects when in full operation. “The product development conducted by the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue will result in a substantially greater probability of the technologies reaching the market and the patient than if the technologies were handled through the traditional steps used by universi-ties,” said A. Stephen Dahms, Mann Foundation president and CEO. —CYNTHIA SEQUIN WITH KRISTEN SENIOR

Purdue’s 2007 Distinguished Engineering Alumni

Allen H. Alley (BSME ’76): As founder and president of Pixelworks Inc., Alley helped make the company a leading provider of system-on-chip ICs for the advanced display industry. He now serves as deputy chief of staff in Oregon’s Governor’s Office. Marcia P. Alstott (BSME ’79): Alstott is vice president of operations at Sun Microsystems Inc., one of the world’s leading database manage-ment companies, and oversees some 200 people located around the world. Robert A. Altenkirch (BSME ’70, PhD ’75): As president of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Altenkirch has completed a building program begun by his predecessor; introduced new programs in indus-trial design, bioinformatics, and mathematical biology; and participated in economic development projects with the city of Newark. C. J. Chang (PhD ’79, Civil Engineering): Chang served as director general of Taiwan’s Institute of Transportation and was responsible for planning and implementing a comprehensive multimodal transportation plan for Taiwan. Now he serves as the president of Chung Hua University. William H. Gerstenmaier (BSAAE ’77): As the associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA, Gerstenmaier oversees the programs for the International Space Station, the space shuttle, space communications, and space launch vehicles. John H. Hager (BSME ’58): As the assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Hager helps execute President Bush’s New Freedom Initiative to provide opportunity for individuals who come through the system of special education and vocational rehabilitation. Michael Ott (BSChE ’74): President, CEO, and owner of Polysciences Inc., Ott has steered the company to success in a niche market, the production of very pure materials for custom specialty applications. Rick Roberts (BSChE ’76): As the senior vice president of manu-facturing at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP, Roberts oversees process safety and personal safety, duties that draw on his skills in engineering and human relations. Joseph P. Schoendorf (BSEE ’66): An executive partner in Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, Schoendorf supports entrepreneurs who build world-class technology companies, particularly in such areas as computing infrastructure, consumer Internet and media, enterprise software, mobile technology, and semiconductors. Thomas Weldon (BSIE ’77): Weldon is past president and current chairman of the board of The Innovation Factory (TIF), a medical device incubator company that employs a hands-on management approach to the creation of life sciences technology. At Purdue, the Weldon Foundation’s generosity transformed the biomedical engineering depart-ment into a named school.


VANTAGE POINTSMOSAIC

Business BangaloredFrom X-rays read in Australia to computer troubleshooting calls answered in India and back-office operations

handled around the world—all for U.S. firms—thousands of jobs once filled stateside are now offshore, and the

term Bangalored, in reference to India’s high-tech city, has entered the lexicon to refer to American layoffs due to

outsourcing.

For companies, outsourcing can mean lower payroll costs, helping them better compete in a global marketplace.

For offshore workers, it often means employment opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have. For many U.S. work-

ers, it prompts fear that they may be unemployed. Is offshore outsourcing a competitive threat or a competitive strength?

Answer: Offshore outsourcing without balance is a competitive threat to the U.S.Without positioning myself as an isolationist, I do have concerns about the high level of offshore outsourcing by U.S. companies. I feel that left unchecked, it could greatly harm our country, not only in the immediate loss of jobs here, but also, and even more alarming, in loss of expertise and production capabilities in this country. I believe we should tread carefully in this realm, striking a balance that preserves expertise and, with that, many jobs. I do understand that companies often enjoy a competitive edge price-wise because offshore outsourcing costs can be less than U.S. employees. But we must be concerned with the long-term effects this can have on our country’s strength. We’ve seen negative impacts because of the decline and even loss of various U.S. industries. Some may say that outsourcing software development is different. But it isn’t. Might we lose our expertise to do software development in this country because of offshore outsourcing? I’m concerned that our universities, too, may be contributing to the threat. Our universities are helping build universities in other countries. While this certainly has merit, could it be a factor in declining strength here at home? Could this assistance eventually lead to transfer of cutting-edge research to facilities now being developed elsewhere?

The people who lose jobs here also concern me. We have a moral respon-sibility to help people throughout the world, but we also have to find a point of balance. Not outsourcing offshore isn’t realistic in today’s world. But I think companies may look too much at what they can save rather than believing in the future of this country. That may be especially true in some intellectual areas. And I hope hindsight never shows it was true in military arenas. We can’t close our eyes to the need for long-term balance. Otherwise, we’ll lose our expertise—and perhaps more—here in the U.S.

Barry Epstein BSEE ’61, MSEE ’63

President, EcoStatic Systems LLC

Summer 2007

I would like to see continued econo-mic development at home. Currently, the majority of graduate students in ECE at Purdue are international. Assuming this trend nationwide, it’s easy to see why companies have a hard time finding U.S. students with graduate degrees. Perhaps that could be eased by making the path to citi-zenship easier for people with proven records of contributing to the U.S. economy and working within the legal immigration framework. For example, graduating with a U.S. degree or employment at a university for several years would result in citizenship. —INTERVIEWS BY KATHY MAYER

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Answer: Offshore outsourcing is a competitive strength.Hiring the best talent, wherever that may be—in the United States, India, China, Israel, or Europe—is about much more than cost arbitrage. It’s about companies accessing IQ and innovation, which makes offshore hiring a critical component of competitiveness for the U.S., the biggest beneficiary of globalization. This is becoming even more critical because of the expected talent shortage in the U.S. as the population ages and our education system struggles to generate enough high-end talent to meet demand. We see this, for example, in the need for more computer scientists. This skill gap can be addressed partly by immigration and partly by taking advantage of talent wherever it exists in the world. The ability of companies such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Boeing, Caterpillar, and others to utilize worldwide talent allows them to create world-class products. And that actually creates jobs in the U.S., rather than the implication that offshore outsourcing cuts jobs. Clearly, there are winners and losers in globalization at the individual, firm, and national level. Singapore, for example, owes its prosperity to globalization and its ability to continuously adapt. Individuals, companies, and countries who can adapt can take advantage of change rather than be hurt by it. Those are the ones

Answer: Offshore outsourcing presents challenges we must address.I see outsourcing as more a challenge than a threat, but it is an issue that must be handled more tactfully. Global economic development cannot and should not be avoided. However, outsourcing must be executed with respect to the individual. If it’s done solely for cost purposes, it’s detrimental. Hiring engineers just because they’re cheaper doesn’t say much in terms of the people you hire and disregards individual creative potential. The criteria should be in hiring the best-skilled employees possible, regardless of their origin. Also, outsourcing does threaten jobs here and has hurt many people, particularly in the automotive industry. Outsourcing makes sense, though, when you locate your engineering workforce where the products they develop will be used. Someone in the same location may better understand the needs there. That’s true, too, for customers in the U.S. I think you need to match your workforce with your customer base. If the majority of your customers are in the U.S., the majority of your workforce should be, too. I believe everyone deserves educational and job opportunities. Being born in the U.S. doesn’t give you a divine right to those privileges. At the same time, I see the U.S. as a place that provides a good environment for those opportunities, and

What’s your take on this issue? Write to us at [email protected]

Adam Fruehling Doctoral student

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

who tend to be winners. Those who do not adapt end up losing. For workers, the key is to make sure that you continuously learn, grow, and acquire new skills and that you are willing to take risks and go where opportunities are, perhaps even to another country. If you’re not able to, someone else will. For globalization to continue suc-cessfully, it’s vital to ensure that more people in every country gain from it rather than lose. Otherwise, social and political backlash could curb it. This, then, creates a responsibility for busi-ness and government to focus on both competitiveness and job creation.

Ravi Venkatesan MSIE ‘86

Chairman, Microsoft India

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VANTAGE POINTSAPERTURE

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This image of Earth’s city lights was created with data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite program Operational Linescan System, which NASA uses to map urbanization. The brightest spots are the most urbanized but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare Western Europe to China and India, for example.) See “Prime Numbers” on page 10 for a numerical quick look at our world.

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