Auburn Engineer Fall 2021 by Auburn University College of Engineering

Also in this issue // M E E T T H E M A K E R S // 2 2

AUBURN ENGINEER S A MUEL

GINN

COLLEGE

O F

ENGI NEER I NG

FA LL

202 1

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID

FA L L 2 02 1

War Eagle

Twenty years ago, the College of Engineering’s then Dean Larry Benefield had a vision for the future of Auburn Engineering. Answering the call, 1959 industrial engineering graduate Samuel Ginn left an indelible mark on Auburn University, generously designating $25 million to engineering education and programming. Ginn was later recognized for pioneering the development of the wireless communication industry, and the university named the College of Engineering in his honor. The impact of Ginn’s first gift continues to this day and his sustained giving, augmented on a yearly basis, has resulted in $50 million in gifts to the college. Thank you for your dedication and support as we celebrate 20 years as the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering!

TA B L E O F CO N T E N T S

Design and Innovation Center gives students hands-on experiences

Entrepreneurs abound in Auburn Engineering

Recent grad’s invention helping to keep the lights on

The college’s game-changing makerspace is open for business.

SwiftSku creators are making life, and business, much easier for independent convenience store owners.

Zac Young’s Wave Timer is improving power line efficiency and safety for line workers.

42 Auburn chemical engineers band together to improve medical imaging Nanoxort is developing a safer contrast agent for medical imaging applications, including MRI and MRA scans.

Chemical engineering professor paves the way for entrepreneurs

Revolutionary method to detect pulmonary hypertension Tom Denney, director of the Auburn University MRI Center, explains how MRI can be a heart catheterization alternative.

Bruce Tatarchuk’s IntraMicron is one of the university’s longest-established licensed start-ups.

ON THE COVER // An Entrepreneurial Spirit From students to faculty, Auburn engineers are forming businesses with global success. Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Michael Zabala is getting athletes back on the field faster with his custom 3D-printed braces. Page 60

CONNECT WITH US eng.auburn.edu @AuburnEngineering @auburnengineers

From the Dean.......................................................................................................................................... 5

@AuburnEngineers

Happenings.........................................................................................................................................6

@AuburnEngineers

It’s My Job.........................................................................................................................................66

linkedin.com/school/auburnengineering

Be the Creed........................................................................................................................................... 68

eng.auburn.edu/flickr

Department Highlights................................................................................................................... 72 Faculty Highlights............................................................................................................................... 84 Awards......................................................................................................................................................... 87

Look for the #GINNing logo to see who we’ve featured on our latest podcasts.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

FROM THE DEAN

FALL 2021 // Volume 31, Issue 2

DEAN Christopher B. Roberts EDITOR AND DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Austin Phillips CONTRIBUTORS Jeremy Henderson Joe McAdory Cassie Montgomery Carla Nelson Virginia Speirs Alyssa Turner Lauren Winton GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Danny Doyle Sarah Rollins Josie Krentz Catherine Della Manna WEB MANAGER Tyler Patterson VIDEOGRAPHY/PHOTOGRAPHY Marcus Kluttz Jim Killian John Sluis Morgan Garrett Visit Auburn Engineer online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos, photos, podcasts and more. You may also submit news items, suggestions or comments by clicking the Contact Us tab. Auburn Engineer is published twice yearly by the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. Engineering Communications and Marketing c/o Editor 1210D Shelby Center Auburn, AL 36849 334-844-2444

One year ago, our campus was filled with uncertainty. As COVID-19 ravaged our nation, a vaccine on the horizon gave us hope for a return to normalcy. One year later, we are almost there. This fall, for the first time since March 2020, Auburn University returned to a new “normal.” Classes are full, most of the campus is vaccinated and masks have been removed for those individuals who are. Cases are on the decline and the future looks promising. While we’ll remain on guard and follow guidelines to ensure we continue to provide a safe learning environment, we’re hopeful this semester is just the beginning of a bright future. Despite the pandemic taking its toll on universities across the nation, I’m happy to report our undergraduate enrollment remained steady, while our graduate enrollment rose to its highest number in our college’s history. In addition, we maintained our Top 30 ranking among public engineering colleges in the recent U.S. News and World Report’s Best Undergraduate Programs. Since our last issue, we officially dedicated the new $22 million, 42,000-square-foot Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory, celebrating with members of the university, community and state officials and partners. In August, our Autonomous Tiger Racing team made history as the first Indy car to ever complete an autonomous lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The team will seek to make more history in 2022 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway… and perhaps beyond. Our students continue to thrive and amaze me, while our faculty pushes the limits of research to drive forward our state, region and nation. You should all be so proud of the resiliency and fortitude shown by our students, faculty and staff this year. I don’t know if I have ever been as impressed as I am in how everyone has pulled together to get through this year with the determination to forge ahead and make Auburn, and the world, a better place than they found it.

War Eagle!

Christopher B. Roberts Dean of Engineering 5

HAPPENINGS

ICAMS Research Team

Auburn to expand Industry 4.0 research, education, training and innovation capabilities with $7.2M DoD award The Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing Systems (ICAMS) at Auburn University is the recipient of a $7.2 million award from the Department of Defense’s Office of Industrial Policy’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program to encourage small and medium-sized manufacturers to adopt the advanced technologies associated with Industry 4.0, or smart manufacturing. The award will allow the center to increase efforts to improve the skills of the next generation of engineers and the existing workforce to take full advantage of those technologies in their operations. “With this award, we are building upon our original mission and expanding our research and services in key areas,” said Gregory Harris, ICAMS director and associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Listen to our podcast with Gregory Harris at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Frank Cilluffo (left) and a panel of national security experts

‘Mount Rushmore’ of cyber experts discuss importance of public, private partnerships

Ashurst named director of Auburn Engineering’s Design and Innovation Center

Federal agencies fighting cyber adversaries must truly integrate their efforts and build a real partnership with the private sector to counter cyber threats, six public and private sector cyber security experts said in October during a special panel discussion hosted by Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security.

W. Robert Ashurst, the Uthault Family Associate Professor of chemical engineering, has been named director of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Design and Innovation Center. Housed on the ground floor of the Brown-Kopel Center, the center serves as a makerspace consisting of student laboratories, shops, project incubators, study rooms, flexible classrooms, computer labs and more.

Companies and federal agencies need to go beyond information-sharing and create a joint operational approach, experts from the White House, NSA, the FBI and CISA said. The discussion was moderated by McCrary Institute Director Frank Cilluffo, who described the participants as “the Mount Rushmore” of cyber security experts. The cyber experts representing the public and private sectors were: National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, Department of Homeland Security CISA Director Jen Easterly, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, NSA Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce and Berkshire Hathaway Energy CEO William J. Fehrman.

Happenings online 6

Robert Ashurst

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

“I feel very strongly that activities in the Design and Innovation Center are especially important for engineering students. I will do my best to make sure that everyone in our college community is aware of this excellent resource and can take advantage of it,” Ashurst said. “I would like the makerspace to become the go-to resource in the college when our students, faculty and staff have ideas to explore, things to make or just tinker around.” As director, Ashurst will assist faculty and students in development and implementation of design and innovation projects, as well as build and sustain industry and agency relationships and collaborations to support student projects.

Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos and photos of all these stories.

HAPPENINGS

McCrary Institute director shares cyber concerns before House committee

Samuel Ginn College of Engineering earns national Top 30 public ranking Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has again been recognized as a national leader, ranking among the nation’s Top 30 public institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs for a third consecutive year. “This consistent ranking validates the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering as a national leader in engineering education and recognizes our efforts to create an exceptional student-centered engineering experience at Auburn,” said Christopher B. Roberts, dean of engineering. “When students come to Auburn, they receive hands-on experience both inside and outside the classroom, backed by expert faculty and unparalleled student support programs. Our alumni have long known this, but more and more, our engineering peers surveyed by U.S. News & World Report are seeing this, too,” he added.

Defense against cyberattacks must begin now with a reformed, diverse effort, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, as he urged members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security in July. Cilluffo was among four witnesses to testify at the hearing “Securing the Homeland: Reforming the Department of Homeland Security to Meet Today’s Threats.” The hearing is a continued effort to advocate for HR 4357 — the DHS Reform Act — so it can better

confront existing and emerging threats and challenges. “The ecosystem has evolved such that in 2021, cyber is the system’s red blinking light — the most imminent threat facing the country,” Cilluffo testified. “Cyber is the area where we must now double down and work the hardest to enhance our capabilities — not at the expense of other missions and threats — but in addition to them.”

NSF awards Auburn $10 million to lead national STEM education initiative for students with disabilities Auburn University has been awarded $10 million from the National Science Foundation to lead a national research effort to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education among students with disabilities. The grant will support a fiveyear program that will grow as it progresses, said Overtoun Jenda, assistant provost for special projects and initiatives at Auburn, whose office will be administering the initiative.

Mechanical and materials programs receive NSF funding for undergraduate transfer students The Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Research and Education Center recently received a grant totaling nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation for a program that will improve the

Frank Cilluffo

Researchers from the College of Engineering and the College of Sciences and Mathematics

The funding for the project will be used to conduct research related to enhancing workforce development opportunities for persons with disabilities. The collaborative research effort is a national project aimed at increasing the number of disabled students entering college and completing a degree in a STEM-related field of study.

Majid Beidaghi, associate professor of mechanical engineering and Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow, is the principal investigator on this project. He believes that many undergraduate transfer students have a hard time transitioning after transferring.

Majid Beidaghi

academic success of undergraduate mechanical engineering and materials engineering transfer students.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

“This program is focused on giving scholarships to students in STEM,” Beidaghi said.

HAPPENINGS

Auburn-led research team develops biochemical breakthrough for renewable fatty acid ester production Researchers from Auburn University, Tuskegee University and Southern Union State Community College

Interdisciplinary faculty team aims to expand plastic recycling options with NSF award When it comes to recycling, not all plastics are treated equally. Multilayer plastics, which make up the majority of food-packaging material, fall into an “other” category of plastics due to their composition. The same process that keeps food products, including meats, juices, cheeses, prepared foods and others safe during transportation and storage makes recycling “quite difficult,” said Edward Davis, associate professor of materials engineering. Faculty from Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences and College of Agriculture, along with faculty from Tuskegee University and Southern Union State Community College, are teaming up in an interdisciplinary effort to research the issue of recycling multilayer plastics with their project “Supercritical Extraction for the Elimination of Endof-Life Plastics.” With the $1.9 million award, funded by the National Science Foundation, researchers will use the unique properties of supercritical carbon dioxide mixtures to enable the separation of the materials used in typical multilayer food packaging. If successful, the project will result in new technology that increases the recyclability of plastic waste, reduces the amount of plastic waste entering landfills and limits the environmental impact of food packaging.

Ongoing, Auburn-led research into biofuel and biochemical production recently got a lot more eyes on it. Supported by a $2 million U.S. Department of Energy award issued in 2018, as well as funding from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, insights from the project led by principal investigator Yi Wang, associate professor in Auburn’s Department of Biosystems Engineering, were recently highlighted by the journal Nature Communications.

Yi Wang (left) and Yuechao Ma

“Our findings represent a breakthrough,” Wang said. “Production of biofuels and biochemicals from renewable resources through biological routes is environmentally sustainable and friendly, and is considered as a possible solution for the pressing issues related to energy crises and environmental deterioration,” he added.

NOAA awards Auburn team $1.5M to research resilient transportation infrastructure As part of its highly competitive Effects of Sea Level Rise program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has selected an interdisciplinary team of Auburn University researchers to lead a $1.5 million project to address increasingly critical needs necessary for resilient infrastructure. The project is also supported by the Federal Highway Administration, which defines “resilience” as “the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions.” “It’s a great honor to be selected from a field of applicants that are, no doubt, some of the most talented scientists, engineers and researchers

in the world on these topics,” said team leader Benjamin Bowers, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering specializing in sustainable and resilient pavements. “The major issues that the Gulf Coast, especially, have dealt with this year due to hurricanes and flooding shows just how important meeting these challenges to our communities have become.”

Listen to our podcast with

Benjamin Bowers

at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Read them all online

Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos, photo galleries and more.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HAPPENINGS

Junior in aerospace engineering wins Air Force research award Emily Wilson’s passion for aerospace research was born in 2011 when Juno XI left the launchpad for Jupiter. Emily Wilson

Wilson is one of two 2021 recipients of the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate Outstanding Scholar Award. “Earning this award was a validation of my work,” said Wilson, a junior in aerospace engineering and Decatur native who grew up in an engineering

Ryota Nakano

family just miles from Huntsville and NASA’s Marshall Flight Center. “This showed that I put in my best effort and it produced something tangible. I had never done an internship before, so I was super nervous. I said to myself, ‘I’m here. I don’t know anyone, but I’m going to try my best.’”

Aerospace doctoral student reaches for the stars with NASA FINESST award Planetary scientists believe that asteroids may hold information about the formation of our universe. Doctoral students such as Ryota Nakano will play a critical role when it comes to decoding that information.

New members of the Auburn University Foundation Board

Sushil Adhikari (left) and Brendan Higgins

New directors, officers appointed to Auburn University Foundation Board

Biosystems faculty to train undergraduate researchers in bioprocessing with NSF award

The Auburn University Foundation has appointed three new directors to its board, including two Auburn Engineering alumni: Shirley Boulware, ’91 chemical engineering of Tyrone, Georgia, and Joseph L. Cowan, ’70 electrical engineering of Braselton, Georgia. Patrick T. Henry, ’85 of Birmingham, was also named to the Foundation Board. The board also named Cheryl Casey, ’83 of Denver, as its new chair and Paul Jacobson, ’94 of Marietta, Georgia, as vice chair. John Morris, Auburn University’s senior vice president for advancement, will serve as the president of the Auburn University Foundation.

A team of Auburn faculty recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to host a REU site, a program where a university hosts 10 undergraduate students to conduct scientific research each summer.

“Through their work to create and enhance relationships with our alumni and friends, our directors help advance the mission of Auburn through philanthropy,” Morris said.

The project will focus on ways to convert waste into new and useful products through bioprocessing. Led by Brendan Higgins, assistant professor of biosystems engineering, and Sushil Adhikari, professor of biosystems engineering and director of the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts, the 10-week program will be offered to a selection of students from a pool of undergraduate applicants studying at universities around the nation who will each be paired to work directly with an Auburn University faculty member.

Nakano is a graduate student researcher in the Space Technology Application Research (STAR) Lab, led by Assistant Aerospace Engineering Professor Masatoshi Hirabayashi. His research at the STAR Lab focuses on uncovering formation and evolution processes of asteroids and comets in the solar system. Nakano is one of the latest recipients of a prominent research award from NASA to further his research over the next three years, with the goal of helping to shed light on the evolution of binary asteroids and potentially contributing to planetary defense and NASA’s future spaceflight missions. The Future Investigators in the NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program supports graduate student-designed research projects that contribute to the science, technology and exploration goals of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Listen to our podcasts with

Sushil Adhikari and Brendan Higgins at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

HAPPENINGS

Auburn Engineering scores big at AU Involvement Awards

competitions, workshops and mentoring.

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering was well represented at the annual Auburn University Involvement Awards held in April.

The Auburn University Rocketry Association (AURA) received the Excellence in Practical Application award at the ceremony. The organization is made up of 244 members that participate in STEM events year-round, including NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative.

Sushil Bhavnani

Additionally, the Student Outreach Association for Robotics (SOAR) was honored as the year’s Outstanding New Organization.

Sushil Bhavnani, the Henry M. Burt Jr. Professor of mechanical engineering, was named Advisor of the Year. Bhavnani, who advises the Indian Student Association, has been an Auburn professor since 1987 and has mentored dozens of students over two decades.

Begun in 2019, SOAR provides its 38 members opportunities to promote STEM Education through robotics

Listen to our podcast with Sushil Bhavnani at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Civil engineering graduate students receive FAA awards, make history

informed choices on funding allocation, emergency planning and decisionmaking of airport operations.

Fernando Cordero and Mitch Fisher, Auburn civil engineering graduate students studying under Jeffrey LaMondia, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, have been selected for the 2021 Graduate Research Award Program sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Rather than exploring physical engineering applications, Fisher’s research focuses on how individual opinions on environmental issues influence travel behavior. The project looks at travel impacts related to a recent European environmentalism movement called flygskam, or “flight shaming,” as well as to the COVID-19 pandemic’s influence on the long-term travel patterns of U.S. passengers.

From left: Fernando Cordero, Jeffrey LaMondia and Mitch Fisher

Cordero will utilize the award to research the U.S. civil aviation system’s understanding of airport resilience against extreme weather events that cause severe disruptions to operations and, ultimately, impact the nation’s economy and security. Specifically, Cordero’s research will provide airport planners and managers with the datadriven knowledge needed to make

Fewer than 10 students receive this funding per year nationwide. According to LaMondia, this is the first year two students under the same advisor have been selected.

Trailblazing alumna encourages Auburn graduates at summer commencement to make their lives into great stories

Listen to our podcast with Jeffrey LaMondia and Nelda Lee at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Standing in front of Auburn University’s summer graduates at Auburn Arena, Nelda Lee encouraged those assembled to make their lives into great stories of achievement, happiness and fulfillment.

encouraged graduates to strive to reach new heights.

The 1969 alumna and Carrolton native recounted memories from her storied career as a leader in the aerospace engineering field during her impassioned commencement address and

Lee, an aerospace and aviation pioneer who was the first civilian woman to fly the F-15 Eagle, beamed with warmth while speaking to her fellow Auburn graduates.

Nelda Lee, ’69 aerospace engineering

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

“We are here today to cheer each of you on and encourage you to go to the next level and achieve all of your life’s expectations and destinations,” said Lee, who went on to a 45-year career with Heritage McDonnell Douglas Co., now a part of Boeing. “You all have reached a milestone destination today. Your time has come to go make your mark.”

HAPPENINGS

Auburn Alumni Engineering Council inducts Class of 2026 The Auburn Alumni Engineering Council inducted seven new members to the group during its annual spring meeting in May. Each council class is active for five years. Class of 2026 Inductees • James Bagley, ’83 mechanical engineering, vice president of the energy finance group for Siemens Financial Services

•

Beverly Banister, ’83 chemical engineering, retired deputy regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4

•

George McGlamery, ’86 civil engineering, senior commercial consultant for ExxonMobil

•

Carl Monroe, ’78 electrical engineering, principal at Munro Advisors LLC

Apple CEO awarded IISE Captain of Industry Award by AU professor, student Apple CEO Tim Cook accepted the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers’ (IISE) Captains of Industry Award at Auburn University in a private ceremony before the annual Iron Bowl in November. Cook, a 1982 Auburn University graduate with a degree in industrial engineering, was nominated for the award by Alice Smith, an IISE Fellow and the Joe W. Forehand/ Accenture Distinguished Professor of industrial and systems engineering with a joint appointment in computer

From left: Alice Smith, Tim Cook and Annie Dorsey

science and software engineering at Auburn. The award is the institute’s highest honor that is bestowed solely on business, industry and government leaders. “It’s an honor to receive this award from IISE,” Cook said when he was announced as the recipient during

•

Scott Murray, ’69 electrical engineering, CEO of Bell Murray Aerospace

•

Cari Parker, ’87 chemical engineering, retired vice president of chemical intermediates manufacturing for Eastman Chemical Company

•

Casey Robinson, ’00 and ’04 civil engineering, distribution operations manager for Georgia Power

the institute’s virtual conference in May. “My Auburn degree in industrial engineering helped to prepare me for everything my career had in store for me, and it is especially meaningful to be nominated by Auburn Professor Alice Smith.” During the May event, Auburn industrial and systems engineering student Annie Dorsey had the opportunity to interview Cook about his industrial engineering background, the importance of ethical business practices, his role at Apple and more. Dorsey joined Smith to present Cook with the Captains of Industry Award.

Auburn Engineering showcases AM expertise with Army Additive Manufacturing Summit Auburn University strengthened its status as the nation’s leading academic institution for additive manufacturing research during the Army Additive Manufacturing Summit hosted in July by the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. More than 100 researchers and officials, including those representing the U.S. Army, NASA, the FAA, General Electric, and ASTM International attended the all-day summit, which was designed to support the Army’s exploration into integrating additive manufacturing

Faculty, including Nima Shamsaei (above), addressed attendees at the Army Additive Manufacturing Summit.

Listen to our podcasts with Annie Dorsey and Nima Shamsaei at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

technology into its ground and air vehicles. “The research being conducted here at Auburn is important to the Army because additive manufacturing is going to provide two different capabilities,” said Maj. Gen. Darren L. Werner, commanding general of the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

“It’s going to give us capability in our organic industrial base to integrate advanced manufacturing techniques, and it’s also going to provide deployability of advanced manufacturing capability that we can potentially move into a forward location to produce repair parts for our combat systems.”

HAPPENINGS

Auburn Engineering wins 19 public relations awards

5 Auburn engineers named to 2021 Spring SEC Academic Honor Roll The Southeastern Conference has released its 2021 Spring Academic Honor Roll, and of the 96 Auburn student-athletes who earned a selection, five are students in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. The 2021 Spring Academic Honor Roll includes the sports of baseball, golf, softball, tennis and track & field. It is based on grades from the 2020 summer, 2020 fall and 2021 spring terms. Listed below are the Auburn Engineering student-athletes who earned recognition from the SEC, along with their majors: Men’s Tennis Diego Chavarria, Industrial and Systems Engineering Men’s Track & Field James Courson, Computer Science David Edmondson, Mechanical Engineering Women’s Track & Field Ashley Carter, Computer Science Hannah Dyal, Chemical Engineering

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Office of Communications and Marketing was recently awarded 19 state, regional and national public relations and marketing awards. The office won five public relations awards from The Council for Advancement and Support of Education District III and the Public Relations Council of Alabama, 11 awards from the Educational Digital Marketing awards and three awards from the Southern Public Relations Federation Lantern Awards. “Our team works extremely hard to tell the unique stories of the faculty, staff, students and alumni

Communications and Marketing

making a difference in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering,” said Austin Phillips, director of engineering communications and marketing. “In a year as challenging as this past one it is especially meaningful to have our team’s work, highlighting how Auburn engineers contributed to coronavirus relief efforts, recognized amongst our peer institutions and by others in the broader public relations and marketing fields.”

8 Auburn students selected to study Alabama matters with fellows from Stanford’s Hoover Institution Eight Auburn University students are the first from the Plains to partner with fellows at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in conducting research and initiatives for the Alabama Innovation Commission. Allison Foster, Andrew Miller, Jordan Windham and Regan Moss were selected by the leadership of Auburn’s Honors College, while Shivam Patel, Madeline Ellison, Emily Schramek and Daniel “Trey” Sims III were selected from the Cupola Engineering Ambassadors in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. Gov. Kay Ivey established Alabama’s first statewide commission on entrepreneurship, technology and innovation in July 2020. In December, the Alabama Innovation Commission, or AIC, announced its partnership with the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank affiliated with Stanford University, to promote innovation and economic growth in Alabama. The Hoover Institution is known for its fellows, leading scholars in areas such as tech innovation, education, business and economic development. The institution is currently under the direction of Condoleezza Rice, an Alabama native, former U.S. Secretary of State and AIC Advisory Council member.

Read them all online

Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos, photo galleries and more.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HAPPENINGS

Graduate students, faculty honored at spring graduate school awards The Auburn University Graduate School hosted the annual graduate student spring awards ceremony, and among the award winners were 15 graduate students and faculty from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. “The graduate school spring awards ceremony is an annual event where we recognize outstanding graduate students and faculty at Auburn,” said Maria Auad, associate dean for graduate studies and faculty development in the college of engineering. “This year, we are thrilled to recognize our deserving students and faculty within the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. We are delighted to have them here at Auburn and we look forward to seeing all they will accomplish in their future endeavors.”

Merriwether Fellows Arash Tehrani, Mechanical Engineering President’s Award Sumaiya Islam, Chemical Engineering Distinguished Dissertation Award Richard Cullum, Chemical Engineering The list of engineering graduate students and faculty that received awards is below: Outstanding Master’s Students Sanjita Wasti, Biosystems Engineering Outstanding Doctoral Students Haishun Du, Chemical Engineering Hemendra Kumar, Biosystems Engineering Tharikaa Ramesh Kumar, Aerospace Engineering Dan Xu, Civil and Environmental Engineering Chao Yang, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Auburn rocketry team takes 12th out of 76 teams at prestigious Spaceport America Cup What’s 12 feet long, 6 inches in diameter and soars to 9,200 feet above Earth at a top speed of 507 mph?

Master’s Thesis Award Vitale Kyle Castellano, Mechanical Engineering Karthik Sridhar, Mechanical Engineering Sanjita Wasti, Biosystems Engineering First-Year Experience Mentorship Awards Duha Ali, Industrial and Systems Engineering Cody Shelton, Aerospace Engineering Outstanding Graduate Mentors Davide Guzzetti, Aerospace Engineering Joseph Majdalani, Aerospace Engineering

teams overall and in 5th place in the “Commercial Off the Shelf” category.

Auburn University Rocketry Association

It’s “Aurea II,” the carbon fiber and fiberglass rocket created by a team of engineering students in the Auburn University Rocketry Association (AURA). Nine AURA members took the

club’s creation (named after Auburn University’s mascot golden eagle) to Spaceport America’s annual collegiate competition in June in Alvin, Texas, where they finished 12th out of 76

Engineering student advisor named Auburn University Employee of the Year

chosen out of 40 Spirit of Excellence winners recognized by Auburn University’s Office of Human Resources.

Laura Olds, an administrative support associate in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Office of Student Services, is one of Auburn University’s newest Employees of the Year. Employee of the Year honorees were

Olds graduated from Auburn in 2006 with a degree in German and literature. Ten years later, she returned to Auburn for a second bachelor’s degree in international trade with a minor in

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

This comes after months of preparation – utilizing safety protocols to build a competitive rocket despite the pandemic. The Spaceport America Cup, previously held near White Sands, New Mexico, from 2017-19, is the world’s largest intercollegiate rocketry engineering contest.

Laura Olds, second from left

business. She has been on staff at Auburn since 2013.

HAPPENINGS

NASA, AU partnership boldly goes where few AM projects have gone before

Faculty research group sparks interdisciplinary quantum research collaboration

The task to 3D print a 10-foot tall rocket nozzle liner demonstrator for a large-scale, liquid rocket engine presented just one problem for DM3D Technologies — the company didn’t have a machine large enough to produce it.

Auburn researchers have established the Auburn University Quantum Systems (AUQuaS) interdisciplinary research group to further the rapidly growing research area of quantum information science and engineering, by spurring interdisciplinary collaboration within the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Science and Mathematics.

So, they built one.

Quantum information science (QIS) is a rapidly growing area of research that encompasses many sciences, engineering and technology applications to understand the analysis, processing and transmission of information using quantum mechanics principles.

Agreement with Robins Air Force Base opens opportunities for collaboration

The collaboration began two years ago after mutual interests in quantum computing and information were determined by Mike Hamilton, the James B. Davis Professor of electrical engineering, and Luke Oeding, associate professor of mathematics, during a flight to the Washington D.C. area on the AU Shuttle Program. Comprised of researchers from the departments of electrical and computer engineering, computer science and software engineering, chemical engineering and materials engineering, and faculty from the College of Science and Mathematics, the group was formed across two colleges to begin furthering the vibrant quantum research area.

The Michigan-based directed energy deposition (DED) firm is the latest leading specialized technology vendor to partner with Auburn University’s National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence on its additive manufacturing (AM) research

and development project with NASA for improving the performance of the liquid rocket engines. Titled “Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT),” the project aims to evolve light-weight, large-scale novel AM techniques such as DED — DM3D’s specialty. RAMPT is funded through the NASA Game Changing Development Program with the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.

Auburn University and Robins Air Force Auburn University and Robins Air Force Base Base (RAFB), located in Warner Robins, officials sign an educational partnership Georgia, have officially entered into an agreement. educational partnership agreement, commemorated with a signing ceremony in the Brown-Kopel Center in September. The agreement strengthens the university’s relationship with the base, opening opportunities for collaborations across common strategic research areas with faculty and students in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. The partnership brings benefits to both RAFB and Auburn Engineering. It will help RAFB to cultivate, recruit and diversify the Air Force workforce, help to develop new technology by engaging with faculty and students, and increase the potential for transfer and commercialization of Air Force technology. In return, Auburn Engineering will gain access to valuable scientific equipment and qualified Air Force scientists and engineers as mentors to students, for collaboration on research and projects and open doors for future career opportunities for students.

Listen to our podcast with Mike Hamilton at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos and photos of all these stories.

HAPPENINGS

Faculty team aims to reduce greenhouse gas with hydrogen energy research

Auburn autonomous racing team makes history at Indianapolis Motor Speedway

College of Engineering partners with Liberal Arts for German dual degree program

Green does not always equal good, especially when referencing greenhouse gas.

Auburn Engineering’s world-renowned autonomous vehicle research program literally lapped the competition this fall — and made history in the process.

In fall 2019, the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering launched a dual degree program allowing students to graduate with two degrees in five years — one in German and one in their choice of six engineering fields.

Sushil Adhikari, professor and director of the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts, and his team were recently granted nearly $500,000 from the Department of Energy-Fossil Energy to produce hydrogen energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste plastics problems. Oladiran Fasina, professor and department head of biosystems engineering, and Tae-Sik Oh, assistant professor of chemical engineering, are the co-principal investigators on the project. To produce this hydrogen energy, Adhikari and his colleagues will blend a coal, plastic and biomass mixture to be gasified and turned into hydrogen energy. The coal will be bituminous coal, the biomass will be southern pine and the plastics will be exclusively household waste plastics. “What we are trying to do is see how this blend will affect the environment,” Adhikari said. “We want to know if the components mix well or not, and we want to see how it will react when we put the material into a gasifier. We also need to see how much it will cost, and that is why we partnered with RTI International.”

Comprised of students in Auburn’s GPS and Vehicle Dynamics Lab (GAVLAB), Autonomous Tiger Racing (ATR) was the first to run the Dallara AV-21 autonomous race car around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in preparation for the first-ever Indy Autonomous Challenge in October. Using LiDAR, GPS-INS, computer vision cameras, radar and other sensors, teams designed a software stack that not only allowed an Indy Lights car to travel at race pace but interpret draft influence and the movements of competitors. “It was exciting to see Auburn’s software controlling the vehicle completely autonomously to make history at IMS,” said David Bevly, the Bill and Lana McNair Distinguished Professor and GAVLAB’s founder and co-director. “It was incredible to see how quickly the car reacted compared to our chase vehicle. You could really see the software at work.”

The idea for the dual degree program began when faculty from both engineering and liberal arts noticed the striking number of engineering students minoring in German. Additionally, exchange agreements signed by the College of Engineering with several German universities, and the fact that there are nearly 90 German companies operating in the state of Alabama, made the idea impossible to ignore. The dual degree is a five-year program, which includes a year abroad in Germany, though it could be completed sooner with advanced placement classes or dual enrollment credits. While in Germany, students spend one semester studying at a German university, and another as an intern. This happens during students’ junior year; they will return to Auburn for another year of studies before graduating.

The team plans to compete again in 2022 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Listen to our podcast with Autonomous Tiger Racing team captain Will Bryan at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

HAPPENINGS

From left: Parvin Fathi-Hafshejani and Masoud Mahjouri-Samani

Auburn robotics team excels in NASA LUNABOTICS Challenge The Auburn University Robotic Mining Challenge Team recently placed 12th in the NASA RMC LUNABOTICS Challenge, an annual competition offering students practical experience in the full engineering lifecycle. This year’s competition included more than 50 teams from across the country which were tasked with designing, building and operating an autonomous robot able to traverse a simulated offworld terrain and excavating simulated lunar soil. For Auburn’s team, the challenge presented an extra dimension of difficulty. “Due to restrictions caused by the pandemic, our team moved into a new lab space, designed and built an entirely new rover,” said team adviser Chad Rose, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “They then held their own against teams carrying over half a design from previous years.”

Listen to our podcast with Chad Rose at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Read them all online Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos, photo galleries and more.

ZY Cheng

Auburn engineers create device that instantly reveals COVID-19 test results

Auburn’s pathogen detection technology may improve food, water safety applications

COVID-19 clinical test results are now available within hours, but can we do better? Scientists and engineers at Auburn University believe so.

A pathogen detection system that rapidly isolates contaminants in large liquid volumes may enable improvements for food and water safety applications.

“We have developed an electronic device based on two-dimensional materials that are modified with antibodies so that it can immediately detect the virus spike protein,” said Masoud Mahjouri-Samani, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering. “When the virus spike protein interacts with the antibody within the testing device, it impacts the electronic properties of the atomicallythin monolayer 2D material. As soon as the lab technician puts the sample drop on the transistor surface, the device responds, and the result is evident.” The promising results show potential toward the development of electronic biomedical sensors based on 2D materials fabricated using conventional semiconductor technologies. The study, “Two-Dimensional-MaterialBased Field-Effect Transistor Biosensor for Detecting COVID-19 Virus,” explains how two-dimensional field-effect transistors, or those that use an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor, are more expedient than the conventional 3D systems owing to their high surface to volume ratio. The paper was published by the American Chemical Society ACS NANO, a recognized leader in publishing nanoscience and nanotechnology research.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Developed by researchers in materials engineering, the technology uses magnetoelastic sensors that, when placed in a magnetic field, resonate to indicate the presence of a pathogen. Professor Emeritus Bryan Chin and McWane Professor ZhongYang “ZY” Cheng have been developing the technology for some 15 years, according to Brian Wright with Auburn’s Office of Innovation Advancement and Commercialization (IAC). Current pathogen detection methods may take hours, or even require overnight shipping or incubation steps to obtain results, according to the IAC. This magnetic system allows for rapid, specific detection of target pathogens in large volumes of fluid, such as wash water, irrigation water, food effluent and beverages such as milk or fruit juices. According to the IAC, this technology has demonstrated its effectiveness for multiple pathogens in multiple sample fluids. The technology also has application for other detection methods, including with smaller samples and on surfaces.

HAPPENINGS

Brown-Kopel Engineering Center receives LEED certification The Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center recently received silver certification by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a green building certification program used worldwide. “One thing that is built into Auburn’s design and construction standards is to seek a LEED silver-level certification design,” said Simon Yendle, university architect and assistant vice president for Auburn University Facilities Management. Notable features of the Brown-Kopel Center that helped achieve silver certification include: diverting 80% of construction waste from landfills, using 34% less water than buildings of comparable program and size, and installing energy efficient air handler units that, when compared to industry baselines, use 20% less energy. The project also prioritized incorporating regional materials, of which 34% of materials by cost are sourced within 500 miles of Auburn, according to Kevin Johnson, architect and principal in the higher education studio at SmithGroup. “There are other things we did, as well,” Johnson said. “The Gavin Garden is a giant roof-deck on top of research space, creating the largest green roof at Auburn. It helps reduce heat island effect, which is common for a traditional roof.”

Graduate students awarded second place at world’s largest hardware security competition Three graduate students in electrical and computer engineering — Yadi Zhong, Yuquiao Zhang and Ziqi Zhou — identified bugs and wrote code to exploit vulnerabilities within computer chips and took second place in the virtual, 33-team HACK@SEC21 — the world’s largest hardware and security competition in August. Advised by Ujjwal Guin, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, the team operated as “AubieTheTiger” and competed against peer teams from Europe, Asia and the Americas. During an advanced level of the competition, participants were provided 48 hours to identify bugs in the Hardware Description Language of a System-on-Chip. The teams were encouraged to use all applications, tools or techniques to discover and exploit bugs during the live, capturethe-flag competition. According to Guin, the team of Zhong, Zhang and Zhou created a timely submission detailing the identity of a bug, its location, the security feature bypassed, the software code used to eliminate it, its security impact, adversary profile and the proposed mitigation. In addition to being recognized by judges as second place worldwide, AubieTheTiger was commended for its findings on ROM Aliasing Issues.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

Professor in aerospace engineering launches fourth edition of classic textbook “Viscous Fluid Flow” Joseph Majdalani considers “Viscous Fluid Flow” to be the one-stop-shop textbook that guided his academic career. “It’s my bible of engineering textbooks,” said Majdalani, professor and Hugh and Loeda Francis Chair of Excellence in aerospace engineering at the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. “I absolutely love this book. Of all the textbooks that I have used, the one that I’ve referred to the most has been this book.” Whereas “Viscous Fluid Flow” previously guided his career in aerodynamics and propulsion, Majdalani was given the opportunity to revise the textbook’s fourth edition – serving as co-author with original best-selling author Frank White. “It’s really an incredible honor to be a part of this encyclopedic textbook because I’ve learned so much from it over the years,” said Majdalani. “It’s a dream come true to be part of this project.”

Listen to our podcast with Ujjwal Guin at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

HAPPENINGS

From left: Associate Dean Maria Auad, Chuanyu Wang and Dean Christopher B. Roberts

Michael Bolt

140 students participate in 2021 Graduate Engineering Research Showcase

Electrical engineering graduate looks to stars, builds vessels to reach them at SpaceX

Auburn Engineering introduces Engineer Together inclusion and diversity initiative

Chuanyu Wang has a breakthrough method to detect cancer in its early stages. The graduate student studying materials engineering developed a cutting-edge approach using goldsilver core shell nano-bipyramids and nanorods to form what scientists refer to as a sandwich immune complex, which target tumor-derived and cancer-hastening exomes.

On a farm in Chesapeake, Virginia, an 8-year-old Michael Bolt sat in his family’s garage prying open his dad’s old laptop, determined to build something new.

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee has launched a college-wide initiative to spread awareness of the efforts the college is undertaking to promote an inclusive and supportive learning and working environment for all students, faculty and staff. Dubbed Engineer Together, the initiative aims to foster a positive and valuable experience for all members of the Auburn Engineering community.

“Nowadays there is cancer therapy we call anti-PD-L-1, but this therapy encounters challenges,” he said. “For example, the patient response rate is low. In this project, we developed for biosensor to sensitively detect PD-L-1, and then we can improve this cancer therapy. We use the biosensor to detect this protein in human bodies, so then it’s a good clue for the doctor to use the medicine to kill the cancer.” Wang’s project, “Profiling Tumor Cell-Derived Exosome Using OnChip Nanoplasmatic Sandwich Immunoessay for Cancer Diagnoses and Immune Checkpoint Therapy,” made an impression upon faculty judges, winning the 2021 Samuel Ginn College of Engineering Graduate Engineering Research Showcase in October held inside the BrownKopel Center Grand Hall. Featuring 140 entries from numerous Auburn Engineering departments and presented by the college’s Council of Engineering Graduate Students (CEGS), the competition allowed students to exchange ideas via poster projects among their peers and compete for cash prizes.

That desire to learn and build new things established a mindset that hasn’t left him. Instead, it led him to Auburn University and then on to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration corporation. Bolt arrived on the Plains and began his coursework in electrical engineering, which led him to become even more passionate about the field and the possibilities it presented. He believes his time in graduate school at Auburn helped prepare him for this role by allowing him to broaden his engineering knowledge by working on various projects. “My job at SpaceX is interesting, in that I have to understand a lot of high-level programming languages to run these big test systems, but I also have to have a really deep technical understanding of the things we are testing, the designs we are doing and why they work,” Bolt said. “I don’t think I’d have that broad skill set without having the advisor I had and being able to work on all the different projects I got to work on,” he added.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

“Engineer Together communicates that everyone belongs here. The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering is for everyone,” said Oladiran Fasina, professor and head of the Department of Biosystems Engineering and a faculty representative on the Inclusion and Diversity Committee. “We want to see our future and current students, faculty and staff come together to support one another as an inclusive and welcoming community.” The Engineering Inclusion and Diversity Committee was established in 2018 to monitor the climate regarding the engagement of diverse student, staff and faculty populations and to coordinate and support activities to improve inclusion and diversity in the College of Engineering. Comprised of students, faculty and staff, this committee has held listening sessions and discussion groups, conducted campus climate surveys, hosted trainings and developed faculty resources, transparently communicating their activities with each of the college’s stakeholders.

HAPPENINGS

Engineering students place second, fourth in Halloween Pitch Competition Two Samuel Ginn College of Engineering students, Wesley Lowman and Christopher Howell, combined to win $2,000 in the third annual Auburn University Halloween Pitch Competition in October, taking second and fourth place, respectively. Sponsored by the Harbert College of Business and the College of Engineering’s Thomas Walter Center, 20 finalists pitched business ideas

Hydrology professor receives $800K NSF grant to research urban stormwater management Thanks to intense and spatially heterogeneous rain events, fastpace urbanization and complex drainage infrastructure, stormwater management in urban communities is growing more complicated by the year. Jose Vasconcelos thinks his investigations into Adverse Multiphase Flow Interactions (AMFI), a poorly understood phenomena caused by the entrapment of air within stormwater systems during periods of extreme rain, can help change that trend. Vasconcelos, associate professor of hydraulics and hydrology in the

an app geared toward elementary students to pique their math interest from an early age by providing them with bite-sized lessons, an intuitive review tool and interactive games.

before a panel of judges and competed for a share of $4,000 inside the Broadway Event Space and Theater at Horton-Hardgrave Hall. Lowman, a junior in computer science and software engineering, earned $1,000 for his business plan, Math+,

He earned an additional $500, winning a special category sponsored by the Thomas Walter Center. Howell, a senior in mechanical engineering, teamed with AuburnMontgomery student Ivan Prusov, to form subscription-based supplement provider RNA Natural. They earned $500 and tied for fourth place.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will serve as principal investigator on a new, nearly $800,000 National Science Foundation grant for research into AMFI. Other partners include the University of Texas and the University of Wisconsin, in municipal collaboration with San Francisco, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio. “Urban stormwater infrastructure will need a multi-billion-dollar investment in the coming years, and challenges associated with increased urbanization and climate change have created more intense inflows than current design guidelines can handle safely,” Vasconcelos said. “This research will look into a class of damaging problems

Jose Vasconcelos

in stormwater infrastructure that are largely ignored by practitioners and designers. “Our team, working in cooperation with various U.S. municipalities, will hopefully present a much more detailed framework and better understanding of the physics of unsteady, two-phase flows in urban water systems, with the goal of improving future designs,” he added.

Industrial and systems engineering associate professor named rising safety star

colleagues and students over the years. I’ve been fortunate to be part of an excellent team.”

Mark Schall Jr., industrial and systems engineering associate professor, has been named a 2021 Rising Star of Safety by the National Safety Council.

A member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the American Society of Safety Professionals, Schall also serves as the Engineering Safety Council chair for the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the director of the Occupational Safety and Ergonomics program of the Deep South Center for Occupational Health and Safety.

The class of 2021 is comprised of 38 honorees younger than age 40, showcasing the next generation of leaders redefining the future of safety and health.

Mark Schall Jr.

“I am honored to be recognized by the National Safety Council as a leader dedicated to workplace safety,” said Schall. “This recognition would not have been possible without the contributions and support of my collaborators,

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

HAPPENINGS

Interdisciplinary research team receives NSF future manufacturing grant for “multi-material additive nanomanufacturing of biodegradable paper electronics”

From left: Michael Hamilton, Shuai Shao, Masoud Mahjouri-Samani and Nima Shamsaei

Current electronics and electronics device printing technologies rely on wet processes such as screen or inkjet printing that require extensive development of inks or solutions with limited sources of functional materials. These inks are often impure, incompatible with biodegradable paper substrates, and printed on eco-unfriendly plastics leading to a huge amount of electronic waste. Masoud Mahjouri-Samani, the principal investigator and assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, and a team of scientists representing multidisciplinary units and centers from Auburn University were awarded a nearly $500,000 grant by the National Science Foundation for their project, “Multi-material Manufacturing of Eco-Friendly and Biodegradable Paper-Based Flexible Hybrid Electronics.” Co-principal investigators are Shuai Shao, associate professor in mechanical engineering; Nima Shamsaei, Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Distinguished Professor in mechanical engineering and director of the National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence; and Michael C. Hamilton, James B. Davis Professor in electrical and computer engineering and director of the Alabama Micro/Nano Science and Technology Center. “The team’s extensive expertise in theory and computation, additive manufacturing, mechanical reliability and micro/nanoelectronics not only guarantees the success of this research but also opens up a new opportunity for future collaborative activities,” Shao said.

Tribology professor honored for grease advancement Robert Jackson, the Albert J. Smith Professor of mechanical engineering, was recently awarded the Ralph Beard Memorial Academic Award by the National Lubricating Grease Institute. This award is given to candidates who have contributed “valuable work in the technical development of greases, grease tests or the promotion of grease usage.” The award honors Ralph Beard, who graduated from Auburn University in 1971. Beard helped to lead the College of Engineering’s Tribology and Lubrication Science Program and start the minor in 2012.

Kadir Sener

USDA grants Auburn engineers $500K for timber, steel structure research Four Auburn University College of Engineering professors from three different disciplines will research the best way to design a sustainable, economically feasible building structure using timber and steel thanks to nearly $500,000 in federal and industry funds, including $237,000 from the USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations Grant program. The goal of the project is not only to provide an environmentally friendly construction option but also a structurally efficient and widely applicable building method. According to Kadir Sener, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-principal investigator on the project, steel and timber are ideal structural partners. The combination of steel and timber have a degree of structural performance that the individual materials could never reach, he said.

Robert Jackson

“Ralph was well known in the tribology industry and was also a strong supporter of Auburn University,” Jackson said. “Ralph wanted to do something for the both the university and industry and try to address a problem with finding graduates with any background in the area. That’s when we came up with the idea of creating the tribology minor,” he added.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

“In order to open the market for mass timber, we wanted to use it with steel structures, since timber alone is not economically feasible for high-rise buildings,” Sener said. “We ended up designing a very sustainable construction system, too.” The industry partners providing financial and technical support for the project include the American Institute of Steel Construction, Softwood Lumber Boards, American Wood Council and Simpson Strong-Tie.

HAPPENINGS

From left: Xiaoyuan Lou, Jack Montgomery and Kadir Sener

Mark Yampolskiy

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support Auburn Engineering in advanced nuclear reactor research

Associate professor awarded $425,000 grant to help prevent sabotage within additive manufacturing

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced two awards totaling $1 million to Auburn University to advance the future manufacturing and construction of advanced nuclear reactors.

Mark Yampolskiy, associate professor in computer science and software engineering and recipient of the prestigious American Society for Testing and Materials International Additive Manufacturing Young Professional Award for 2021, received a $425,000 grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The first award of nearly $500,000, led by Kadir Sener and Jack Montgomery, both assistant professors of civil engineering, is to develop a soilstructure-interaction framework to enhance the regulatory oversight of new generation nuclear power plant designs known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The research team will conduct experimental and numerical studies to develop a modeling framework for improved safety of SMRs. The second award of $500,000, led by Xiaoyuan Lou, associate professor of materials engineering, is for establishing the regulatory basis for qualifying laser additively manufactured stainless steels for nuclear applications. In particular, the research focuses on understanding the effects of microstructural variations from the laser additive manufacturing process on the irradiation-assisted stress corrosion cracking susceptibility of reactor structural components.

The project, titled “Side-Channelbased Detection, Localization, and Investigation of Sabotage Attacks in Manufacturing,” builds on prior work that demonstrated the effectiveness of the power side-channel in reconstructing additive manufacturing systems’ behavior and expanding this into a novel forensic tool used to isolate and visualize sabotaged areas. Sabotage attacks against 3D-printed, additively manufactured components can possibly lead to disastrous mishaps with systems using these components, including, but not limited to, airplanes. Consequently, it could cause injuries, disrupt industrial production or slow supply chains.

From left: Fa Foster Dai, Dongye Zhao and Adit Singh

Three engineering professors among AU Faculty Award winners In recognition of life-changing research, outreach, instruction and creative scholarship, Auburn University’s Office of the Provost presented several faculty members with the university’s highest honors at the Faculty Awards ceremony in November. There were three award recipients from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering: Auburn University Award for Excellence in Faculty Outreach Adit Singh, the Godbold Endowed Chair Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Creative Research and Scholarship Awards Dongye Zhao, the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Graduate Faculty Lectureship Fa Foster Dai, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

“This approach fits well in my current understanding of how the threat of sabotage attacks should be addressed. At some point, when all goals of the project are achieved, perhaps it will help additive manufacturing industry to be safe from sabotage attacks,” Yampolskiy said.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

MEET the

MAKERS 22

F E A T U R E S // D E S I G N A N D I N N O V A T I O N C E N T E R

Ethan Peat, a junior in mechanical engineering, chose Auburn Engineering because of the new makerspace inside the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center.

The big engineering school in Texas had a cool space. Just not cool enough for Ethan Peat. The mechanical engineering junior had thought about heading west after high school, same as his brother. But he wanted more freedom, more resources, more opportunities.

He’d grown up making anything and everything in the basement of his Nashville home: a built-from-scratch minibike; crazy, welded pieces of art, such as the steel dog for his girlfriend, Betsy. She loved gifts, but nothing from the mall, nothing from Amazon. If you were going to give her something, she wanted it to be from the heart. So that’s what he’d do — grab a welder and make her something from the heart. He enjoyed it. He never had to jump through any hoops. He never had to ask anyone’s permission. He wanted to keep it that way. “I’d originally applied to another school, but their makerspace just seemed really restrictive,” Peat said. Auburn’s didn’t. You signed up. You got trained. You had at it. When he thought about the next four years, that’s where he saw himself. The only catch was that, technically, it didn’t exist yet. In 2017, Auburn announced plans for the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center, a $44-million

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Students utilizing the numerous Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printers within the 11,000-square-foot makerspace on the ground floor of the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center.

world-class facility that would boost Auburn’s commitment to providing the best student-centered engineering experience in the country by constructing the best on-campus active learning environment in the country. There would be classrooms, a grand hall, computer labs, a cafe, tutoring services, a design studio. But the 11,000-square-foot makerspace on the ground floor — officially dubbed the Design and Innovation Center — would be the crown jewel. “A lot of big engineering institutions began building these sorts of facilities around that time as the maker movement was growing,” said Garon Griffiths, the center’s manager and 2003 Auburn mechanical engineering graduate who helped launch the Design and Innovation Center. “As long as I’ve been around, Auburn engineers have been known for having strong, practical skills, and the Design and Innovation Center would solidify that reputation moving into the future,” he said. “That was a big idea behind it.”

The idea behind it was all Ethan Peat needed. He’d first visited Auburn as a high school freshman. He liked it, but kept looking; when he came back the spring of his senior year, he stopped. “Brown-Kopel still wasn’t even open, but when I saw the plans for the makerspace, that was it,” Peat said. “That’s why I chose Auburn.” He is not alone. Go up to anyone at a repositionable workbench inside the Design and Innovation Center, and they’re either just like Peat, or knows someone who is. Take Olivia Viguerie, for instance. The chemical engineering sophomore is prepared to start a training session on the Trotec laser cutter. She’s from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She’d planned on staying in-state for college. The makerspace changed her mind. So far, she’s only used it to add to the collection of custom pinback buttons on her blue jean jacket. But that, she said before slipping on safety glasses, will change soon.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // D E S I G N A N D I N N O V A T I O N C E N T E R

Chemical engineering sophomores Anya McDaniel (left) and Grace Kovakas, are both makerspace assistants in the Design and Innovation Center.

Above: makerspace assistant Anya McDaniel trains students on the Trotec laser cutter. Below: chemical engineering sophomore Olivia Viguerie frequents the makerspace.

“At the time, [the Design and Innovation Center] wasn’t even something I imagined myself using that much,” she said, “but it showed just how much Auburn was doing for its students — that it’s doing everything to make sure they’d be successful engineers. It’s a big draw for people.”

and 3D designs into wood. And a prototype shop with one of the most precise laser cutters on the market and scores of Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printers running practically 24 hours a day, not to mention the Creality and Markforged machines. And an electronics shop with more varieties of microcomputers and micrometers and microcontrollers than a Radio Shack catalog.

Andrew McGill, engineering student services coordinator, starts nodding before you finish the question. Yes, absolutely, the room that takes up nearly half the floor beneath his office has made his job infinitely easier. Give the families the inside tour of Brown-Kopel and they’ll get a great view through the interior windows separating the makerspace from the computer stations. Take them outside, and they can peer through the four garage doors that open to a covered pavilion allowing work on large-scale projects. “That’s the thing prospective students pay the most attention to,” McGill said. “You can kind of see it on their faces. It’s like kids in a candy shop.” Only, it’s a woodshop, with Laguna Swift CNC (computer numerical control) routers that allow you to cut or engrave 2D

And a metal shop with a Miller multimatic welder that can, as one student is demonstrating, shape steel into an electric scooter. And a machine shop, with a MAXIEM 1515 waterjet that can cut 4-inch thick metal (or granite or almost anything else, for that matter) with the highest nozzle horsepower on the market, plus the Vectrax lathe and CNC minimill that can chisel, say, Einstein’s face out of a chunk of aluminum. That’s one of Cyrus Lloyd’s creations — one of the pioneers, the guy everyone points to. Want to talk to someone who takes advantage of the place more than anyone? Talk to Lloyd. Want to talk to someone who’s probably there right now? Find Lloyd, he’s around. Want to see someone building a machine that produces parts with sub-micron form accuracy and single digit nanometer-RMS surface finishes? Talk to Lloyd.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Garon Griffiths (left) manages the Design and Innovation Center, while Bob Ashurst, the Uthlaut Family Associate Professor, serves as director.

Griffiths remembers the first time he talked with Lloyd. It was the fall of 2020, right after the first big makerspace interest meetings in one of the Brown-Kopel classrooms. Griffiths needed what they would call MAs — makerspace assistants — to help plan the procedures, the protocols and to even weigh in on what equipment they wanted. Approximately 30 masked students, some on campus for the first time in months, had shown up. In terms of their passion for the possibilities, the cream quickly rose to the top. “There were a handful that stuck around after that meeting that became the core group that really got things going,” Griffiths said. “Cyrus was one of them. I remember when we were talking about the machining shop, he said he’d never been more excited about anything in his life.” Sixteen months later, it’s easy to see why. There he was, just a budding Auburn aerospace engineer from Atlanta fascinated with precision machining, looking to pass the pandemic with something more stimulating than constructing a LEGO Saturn V rocket, when he was struck

with the urge to manufacture his own parabolic mirrors — the kind in telescopes. Just because, as a student in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering who now had access to a Haas CNC Mini Mill 2, he could. No, the makerspace didn’t have the diamond-turning lathe he would need to make the mirrors — very few universities do — but it did have the machines that could make the diamondturning lathe he would need to make the mirrors. So, along with mechanical engineering senior Nicholas Browning, MA lead for the center’s manual lathe and the waterjet, he is. It’s going well. In November, the pair attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Precision Engineering (ASPE) in Minneapolis, connecting with representatives from Professional Instruments, an industry leader in ultra-precision manufacturing. Upon learning of Lloyd’s makerspace ambitions, the company offered two free Biconic air-bearing spindles — a key component in diamond-turning lathes — towards completion of the project.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // D E S I G N A N D I N N O V A T I O N C E N T E R “We hope to see a functioning lathe in a year or so,” he said. “It will allow us to produce parts to the same standards that commercial units can, but for far less money.”

hanging in the window. But when they come inside and get a real feel for what’s happening, woodshop lead MA Walt Gary can tell the appeal of the place extends beyond the cool toys.

And by “us,” he means Auburn. The plan, Lloyd said, is to add the lathe to the makerspace’s machining arsenal, furthering the facility’s capacity for research in areas such as optomechanics, aerospace and even just plain old physics. Lloyd, currently the MA lead for the CNC mill and manual mill, is also using the experience to apply for an undergraduate research fellowship. But the internship from KERN Microtechnik is already in the bag.

“People are almost more excited to learn that everyone running individual shops within the space are just students that genuinely enjoy the work,” Gary said. “I think what makes them really want to be there is the desire for an unstructured creative community.”

When, at the ASPE meeting, Lloyd and Browning told the CEO of the German-based CNC machine developer’s North American division about what they’d been doing outside the classroom for the past 10 months, he handed them his business card.

And that, everyone says, is what they’ll get, thanks in no small part to Grace Kovakas and Anya McDaniel. After using the makerspace to build a fuel cell car for an assignment, per their professor’s recommendation, the chemical engineering sophomores couldn’t get enough. “I was like, ‘this place is cool,’” Kovakas said, “We have to keep getting certified.”

“They have an internship program where they pay for you to live in Germany at their factory for six months and independently work on a project to go onto their machines,” Lloyd said. “He said to email him whenever we want to do it.”

They kept getting certified.

They both plan to.

“You can do anything here, you just have to have the right mindset,” McDaniel said. “If you’re just sitting at home thinking of ideas, and you’re like ‘oh man, I wish we could do that’ — well, in this environment, you can. But it’s still almost like this hidden treasure.”

“None of this would be possible,” Lloyd said, “without the resources at the makerspace.” Stories such as Lloyd’s are exactly the sort Bob Ashurst wants to help write. In August, the Uthlaut Family Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering was named director of the Design and Innovation Center. While Griffiths focuses on day-to-day operations, Ashurst’s role is more big picture. Fundraising. Industry initiatives. Faculty engagement. Spreading the word of Auburn Engineering students just deciding to build a diamond-turning lathe in their spare time to folks up in Huntsville’s technology sector. “Cyrus is nailing it,” Ashurst said. “I’ve always thought something like the Design and Innovation Center was such a good idea, and our hope is to help steward and shepherd those same sort of opportunities. “To me, the best thing we can do for students is to give them hands-on experience using tools and getting a feel for what things are and how they work. Having an appreciation for what’s feasible. You just can’t do that from a textbook in a classroom.”

BUILDING A CREATIVE COMMUNITY The tours will stop outside the prototype shop and people will point their cell phones at the 3D-printed X-wing fighter

Kovakas is now lead MA for the prototype shop. McDaniel is lead MA for the laser cutter and wet lab.

McDaniel and Kovakas and plenty of others are helping turn the hidden treasure into a hangout. The makerspace — the open layout, the interdisciplinary opportunities — is perfect for the sort of collaborations that can foster something close to a sense of family. The student organizations, such as Auburn Off-Road and War Eagle Motorsports and the rocketry club, quickly began utilizing the center, but the teams usually kept to themselves. So would the senior design teams that started showing up. The machine shop folks mostly stayed in the machine shop. The woodshop folks stayed in the woodshop. “I don’t know if you know this,” McDaniel joked, “but if you meet an engineer, they’re probably an introvert.” McDaniel isn’t. She likes talking to people. (The hobby listed on her online Makerspace Assistant bio? “Rambling.”) She and Kovakas began asking people what they were working on. They started debates on whiteboards: Derivatives vs. Integrals — which is better? Defend your answer! Before long, everyone was planning a trip to Six Flags.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Cyrus Lloyd, a junior in aerospace engineering, is using the Design and Innovation Center to build a diamond-turning lathe in his spare time. The ambitious project has led to an internship offer from German-based CNC machine developer KERN Microtechnik.

“The aerospace boys wanted to go to the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center to stare at rockets,” she said. “I was like, ‘no.’” When she’s not building community, she’s building a model of the B2 Spirit Bomber or an anniversary present for her parents. But McDaniel says the leadership experience the makerspace has provided has meant just as much as access to the coolest fabrication tools on campus. Earlier this year, mostly just for kicks, she went to one of the college’s career fairs. She left with an internship offer from Ascend Performance Materials. “They didn’t care about my grades,” she said. “They cared about the makerspace — that I was in charge of the laser cutter, that I had a team under me.” The same thing happened for mechanical engineering junior Jose Arquitola.

whole time talking about my time here. I had only heard of the makerspace before enrolling, but it has changed the course of my undergrad experience entirely.” It’s about to change the course of Ethan Peat’s life entirely. The metal shop lead MA is planning on modeling the ring in CAD, and then printing the model in castable wax resin on the Form 2 3D printer. He’ll turn that print into a casting plaster mold that he’ll throw into the new kiln Ashurst helped procure — they’re calling that room The Bakery — for a 17-hour burnout cycle that will leave a perfect mold of the wax print. Then it’s just a matter of melting the gold and pouring it in. It’ll be a lot of work, yes. But he and Betsy just celebrated their four-year anniversary. And her family seems to like him. It’s time.

“My experience working here is the sole reason I got my coop at IS4S,” said Arquitola, lead MA for the electronics shop. “Seriously, they did not care about my grades — we spent the

“I don’t trust myself to set a diamond in there, though,” he said. “I’ll probably take it to the jeweler for that.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

// B Y J E R E M Y H E N D E R S O N

An Entrepreneurial Spirit From students to faculty, Auburn engineers are forming businesses with global success.

CONVENIENT CONVENIENCE

F E A T U R E S // S W I F T S K U

Mechanical engineering senior Mit Patel, founder and CEO of startup SwiftSku, prepares a 3D printer at the company’s offices inside the Auburn University New Venture Accelerator.

Mechanical engineering seniors Mit Patel and Daniel Mazur walked across the stage in December. They don’t have anything lined up. They haven’t received any offers. They’re not even in the job market. They’re adding to it with SwiftSku.

Yes, the company the childhood friends started as a big data solution for non-franchised convenience stores currently has 16 full-time employees — half in product development, half in sales and support. That’s what a few million in funding and prize money will do for you. In April, after four days of elevator pitches and three finalist rounds, the judges of the 21st Rice Business Plan Competition, the largest and richest student startup competition in the world, deemed SwiftSku the best out of 54 participating companies. It was the first time an Auburn University team has swept the awards at the global competition, through which entrepreneurs have raised more than $3 billion — nearly half a million of which went to Mazur and Patel. SwiftSku won the $350,000 GOOSE Capital Investment Grand Prize, $50,000 Business Angel Minority Association Investment Prize, $25,000 RG Advisory Partners’ CFO Consulting Prize, $25,000 Tiger Cage Competition, the digital category of the Mercury Fund Elevator Pitch Competition, $10,000 Baker Botts’ prize and third place in the Anbarci Family People’s Choice Awards.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Mit Patel demonstrates the advantage of SwiftSku on a Verifone Ruby2 Point-of-Sale system.

Add that to the investment haul earned earlier this year through Y Combinator, a world-renowned startup accelerator that has helped launch companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash and Dropbox, and the 2017 Hoover High School graduates now boast $3.2 million in funding for a company not even two years old. The idea for SwiftSku first came to Patel in 2019. His parents had worked in the convenience store industry for years. He’d spent plenty of long afternoons after school alongside them. “I noticed a lot of inefficiencies and the potential to save countless hours by using technology to optimize their manual processes,” Patel said. “I reached out to Daniel and said, ‘There are all these different problems going on and we’ve got the skillset to fix them for people.’” Operating out of an office inside Auburn University’s New Venture Accelerator stocked with enough energy drinks and protein shakes to fuel a football team, SwiftSku now serves more than 400 stores by offering a centralized hub to analyze scan data from customer purchases, a customer

Mechanical engineering seniors Daniel Mazur (left) and Mit Patel pose with the mascot for Sour Patch Kids candy at the 2021 NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores) Show. The childhood friends co-founded SwiftSku in 2019.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // S W I F T S K U

Mazur is the co-founder and COO of SwiftSku. On one of his office computer monitors is a note reading “I’M OBSESSED WITH GROWTH.”

“ ” There are all these different

problems going on and we’ve got the skillset to fix them.

loyalty program and business analytics. The platform also offers a solution to problems plaguing point-of-sale data tracking in the U.S. Despite independent convenience stores — or C-stores as they’re commonly known — making up one-third of American retail commerce, transaction data is deleted after 90 days, forcing owners at the end of each workday to print lengthy summary reports that frequently reach 15 feet or longer. “With our solution, this priceless transaction data that represents 3.1% of America’s GDP is preserved,” Patel said. “We help owners manage their stores with our backoffice solution that lets them manage their inventory, price book and even remotely manage their fuel pumps,” he added. And they can do it all in the palm of their hand — that, Mazur said, is what gets them. Case in point: the latest

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Patel, co-founder and CEO of SwiftSku, has a note on his desk that reads “I’M OBSESSED WITH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.”

National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show. Held in early October in Chicago’s massive McCormick Center, the huge annual C-store industry event features everything from full-sized demos of the latest car wash technology to unreleased energy drinks. Anything and everything that you’ll soon start seeing at a 7-Eleven, Speedway or a Kwik Trip was on prominent display, promoted with signs, with models, with mascots. The SwiftSku guys just brought their phones. “Yeah, we would tell owners a little bit about what we can offer,” Mazur said, “but when we show them the mobile app interface on our phone, and how many complicated things that they can do without a computer — well, for them, that’s the biggest thing.” The multilingual thing doesn’t hurt, either. Part of how the company bridges data gaps between brands, retailers and consumers is by bridging language barriers.

Of the 153,000 convenience stores in the United States, 96,000 are independently owned; of those, 93% are operated by Indian immigrants, such as Patel’s parents. Patel and Mazur, both first-generation Americans (Mazur’s parents emigrated from Ukraine) developed SwiftSku to serve this majority by providing customer support in Hindi, Gujarati and English. “Having things explained in their native language is also another huge selling point,” said Patel, whose computer monitor bears a note reading “I AM OBSESSED WITH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.” The note on Mazur’s monitor? “I AM OBSESSED WITH GROWTH,” it reads. “Now that our fundraising is over, we’re excited to continue building solutions for mom and pop shops, empowering them to compete against the Goliath chains of the industry,” Mazur said.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

// B Y J O E M C A D O R Y

wave

OF THE FUTURE

Zac Young, ’21 mechanical engineering, began his entrepreneurial journey in 2020, winning multiple pitch competitions along the way.

Zac Young wakes each morning prepared to slay dragons. The recent graduate in mechanical engineering isn’t armed with a sword, shield or helmet. Instead, he’s gifted with determination to tackle problems, neverending curiosity and a tiny gadget that might just be the next big thing in the utilities industry.

“Slaying dragons” started as a joke from a colleague and has quickly become a common phrase around Vulcan Line Tools that always brings a laugh. “When you have a tremendous task in front of you, there’s nothing you can’t resolve if you’re working hard,” said Young, who founded Vulcan Line Tools, maker of the portable Wave Timer. “If there’s a problem, we simply say to ourselves, ‘We’re going to slay that dragon.’ Though my startup has been successful quickly, I don’t have a huge pie in the sky goal of making billions of dollars. I prefer to analyze whatever problem is before us in the moment — even the tiny ones — attacking them and moving on to the next problem.” Before Vulcan Line Tools became an entrepreneurship success, Young spent countless hours with electronic components spread atop his dining room table — where the Wave Timer was born — in the Creekside Trailer Park. “When I was working in the trailer, I was never thinking, ‘Yeah, I can’t wait until this is a multi-million dollar idea,’” said Young,

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Caption

who grew up in Chelsea with a desire to join the U.S. Marine Corps. “It was more like, ‘Hey, how in the world am I going to get this button to connect to a circuit board?’ I was literally beating my head against the wall the whole summer. But I’d focus on one little problem at a time, solve it, then move on to the next problem to solve.” Thus, the Wave Timer was created, one slayed dragon at a time. The Wave Timer is a 5-inch, 3D-printed and half-pound plastic and Nylon 11 apparatus that improves power line efficiency and safety for line workers. “Once placed along a power line, the Wave Timer measures sag, tension and temperature,” Young said. “This allows utilities the ability to ensure the lines are installed correctly and are operating safely. For now, some of the other tools used to do this are either too slow or expensive, so they’re a burden on the workflow. You simply strap the

Wave Timer on the power line and it’s able to measure information and produce data that’s meaningful,” he added. When he realized he was on to something, Young founded Vulcan Line Tools in 2019 and utilized Auburn University’s New Venture Accelerator — 8,000 square feet of office and team collaboration space with resident experts within the Auburn Research Park. There, Young transitioned from an innovative engineer to a full-fledged entrepreneur. “I was working at that old kitchen table when I received a call from Lou Bifano [director of entrepreneurship at Auburn University], and he said, ‘Let’s get you out of that trailer and into a real office.’ Time at the Accelerator with Lou and Scott McGlon [entrepreneur-in-residence] really helped me understand business principles I needed and prepared me to pitch my product,” Young said. “Once you begin pitch competitions, you’re repeating yourself and you get a feel for standing in front of judges,” he added. “It becomes easier and you become more confident in

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // V U L C A N L I N E T O O L S

The Wave Timer is a five-inch, 3D-printed, Nylon 11 apparatus that measures sag and tension, improving power line efficiency and safety for line workers.

yourself and the product you’re pitching.” Practice immediately paid off. Within weeks of moving into the Accelerator, Young wowed judges at the 2020 SEC Student Pitch Competition, winning first place and $5,000. But that was only the beginning. Young’s Wave Timer continued to roll through Auburn’s annual Tiger Cage Business Pitch Competition last spring, winning $27,500, then another $25,000 at Alabama Launchpad. Armed with credibility from industry professional judges, startup capital, an Auburn Engineering degree and with a powerful nucleus of potential customers, Vulcan Line Tools is primed to become a household name in the utility industry. Where it once took months to create one Wave Timer, Young and business partner Hayden Patteson, a 2021 Auburn mechanical engineering graduate from Lakeland, Florida, can make one in 45 minutes and have dozens in stock, ready for delivery. While he was still in college, word of Young’s success quickly spread and a lucrative offer to sell from a billion dollar

company was made, creating arguably the most difficult business decision Young faced. Selling to an investor, or a large corporation, is often the dream of young entrepreneurs. “Let’s just say for a college kid it was a lot of money,” Young noted. “But I’m not really driven by money. If I sold out to them, then went to work for them, I wouldn’t have the freedom to build this company how I want. I’m young. My company’s young. If I’d sold out to them, I would no longer have control of this really cool device and company that I’ve created. I know for a fact that I made the right decision.” Young, who said he could “write a novel about all the stuff he’s learned already” refuses to take anything for granted and offered advice to student innovators. Failure doesn’t always mean failure. “No matter what – go for it! The knowledge and experience you will gain from running a startup, even if it doesn’t succeed, will vastly outweigh anything,” he said. “I’ve had other ideas that didn’t work out before the Wave Timer, even a mobile wakeboard-pulling machine built from the frame of a go-kart. I can’t call them failures. I learned. Lessons learned from ideas that don’t work out can be applied to that one

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Zac Young hopes the Wave Timer can become a useful tool for multiple companies within the utilities sector.

great idea that blossoms. Then you can really sink your teeth into something.”

When you get down, that’s when you need to either change, adapt or just keep plugging away.”

Tough choices will be made.

While the Wave Timer is gaining traction in the utilities sector, Young and Patteson aren’t settling on designing just one device. After all, they’re Auburn engineers. Another gadget is secretly brewing at Vulcan Line Tools. What is it?

“Some of these decisions are going to alter the course of your company, and also personally, for the rest of your life,” he said. “Be careful. Pray about this stuff and go with your gut. Once you’ve made a decision, move forward and don’t look back.” You are the face of the company. “I’ve learned a lot about leadership in the past year,” Young said. “The way you come to work each day impacts the morale of the company. Come in to work fired up and don’t show frustration when something goes wrong, and it will. When that happens, just put on a brave face and figure out how to fix the problem.” You’ll have ups and downs. “Creating a startup is like a roller-coaster ride,” Young said. “You’ll have great weeks, and then you’ll have tough weeks that make you sometimes question yourself or your product.

“We’re keeping this under wraps just a bit,” Young said. “Let’s just say it measures stuff for power lines. We’re trying to expand the product line a little bit. I can’t believe how far we’ve come in a year’s time, so it’s difficult to imagine where we’ll be a year from now,” he added. He added that overcoming challenges has prepared him for what’s ahead. “In a year, I’ve written an iPhone app from scratch, built a device with a circuit board with Bluetooth technology on a kitchen table in a trailer park with no prior experience, pitched to companies with no prior experience, hired and managed employees, managed books for a company with no experience, and most of all, woke up every morning and busted my ass to make this dream come true,” Young said.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

// B Y C A S S I E M O N T G O M E R Y

SAFER MEDICAL IMAGING

O N E N A N O PA R T I C L E AT A T I M E

Nanoxort LLC aims to engineer novel contrast agents for MRI and MRA procedures that improve physicians’ diagnostic capabilities, leading to better patient outcomes.

In the world of diagnostic imaging, physicians often turn to magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to diagnose a wide variety of diseases and conditions. For patients suspected of certain conditions, such as inflammatory or infectious diseases, an MRI contrast agent is used to help improve diagnostic accuracy. Unfortunately, the chemical makeup of the most common contrast agents currently on the market — gadolinium-based contrast agents — can have potential long-term toxicity risks in the bodies of individuals with poor kidney function, which affects a population of nearly 2 million patients globally.

Enter Allan David and the team of Auburn chemical engineers at Nanoxort LLC. In partnership with the Auburn University MRI Research Center, they developed a technology to reduce the toxicity of MRI contrast agents that could make MRI with contrast safer for patient populations that currently receive suboptimal care. David, the John W. Brown Associate Professor of chemical engineering at Auburn University, co-founded Nanoxort in 2018 alongside Tareq Anani and Barry Yeh, both of whom earned a doctorate in chemical engineering in 2018 and were postdoctoral fellows working in David’s lab at the time. Their technology, labeled diffusive magnetic fractionation, enables fine control of the properties of magnetic nanomaterials and is the inspiration for the company’s name. Nanoxort (pronounced nano-sort) refers to the sorting of nanoparticles of different sizes into a homogenous product with optimal properties for biomedical applications. While the company made its official launch in late 2018, the foundation for Nanoxort was laid in fall 2016 when the group participated in the Southern Regional Cohort of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) program at Georgia Tech. There they learned about the MRI contrast industry and were able to evaluate the need for new, safer MRI contrast agents. The team then went on to participate in the national I-Corps program after receiving a $50,000 grant to conduct additional customer discovery in the United States and Europe.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S “We then went on to win the Auburn University LAUNCH award that allowed us to conduct additional preclinical studies,” Anani said. “The combination of identifying a market opportunity and having a patented technology that could solve a significant clinical problem convinced us to start our company, Nanoxort LLC.” And to think, it all started with an email. David first learned of the NSF I-Corps program through Auburn’s Technology Transfer Office, now known as the Office of Innovation Advancement and Commercialization. After attending an information session and presentation on the I-Corps program, David sent out an email to chemical engineering graduate students looking for interested researchers to join his team. Anani and Yeh responded. The rest is history. “Initially when we started out, I was just impressed by their drive and their capability,” David said. “When I compare myself to them at the same point in our trajectories, they were so much further ahead than I was at that point. There was a lot of trust among us.” Trust is an important building block among partners of a startup company. Another is work ethic. The Nanoxort trio has plenty of both.

“

Nanoxort was founded by Tareq Anani, ’18 doctorate in chemical engineering; Barry Yeh, ’18 doctorate in chemical engineering; and Allan David, the John W. Brown Associate Professor of chemical engineering. The trio set out to introduce a safer MRI contrast agent that wouldn’t have the potential long-term toxicity risks of the market’s leading gadolinium-based contrast agent.

that they have something they can present immediately,” David said. “Much of what we we’re proposing is a concept that would be developed. Being a biomedical startup and having that long time to commercialization, obtaining resources is vital. It’s the lifeblood of the company, so we continue to try to pursue all avenues.” One avenue that has proved successful is the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program from the National Science Foundation. This program focuses on transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial potential and/or societal benefit. It serves to support the creation of opportunities to move fundamental science and engineering out of the lab and into the market or other use at scale, or startups and small businesses representing “deep technology ventures,” according to the NSF.

The combination of identifying a

market opportunity and having a patented technology that could

”

solve a significant clinical problem

“I always knew they were working hard. There were times when I would go to the lab and Tareq would look at me and I just knew to leave him alone because he was working on 100 different things and he would come to me when he was ready,” David said. “There were also times when Barry would come to me looking so worn out. It would be early in the morning and I would ask him, ‘why are you so tired this early in the morning?’ He would tell me, ‘I had this idea at 2 a.m. so I came to the lab to test it out.’ I knew if I just stayed out of their way, they would accomplish great things.”

convinced us to start our company.

Despite a lack of formal business training, the three became increasingly good at pitching their business idea at various startup competitions. One challenge they encountered among the competitions is the timeline for developing a biomedical product simply takes longer than other products. “I think some of the other competitors had an advantage in

Now, in their third year as business partners, the Nanoxort team has obtained an STTR Phase I grant and has hired its first full-time employee – Abhinav Sannidhi, also an Auburn chemical engineering graduate. Sannidhi completed his doctorate in 2020 working under Auburn chemical engineering Professor Thomas Hanley and in the same laboratory adjacent to David, Anani and Yeh. “I didn’t feel like I was joining a completely new company with new faces,” Sannidhi said. “I’ve known all of these people for the last four years going back to the start of my Ph.D., so the

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // N A N O X O R T

Nanoxort hired its first full-time employee, Abhinav Sannidhi (right), to fill the role of research and development manager and to serve as the principal investigator of a recent Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Science Foundation to expand their research into the MRA market.

transition was very smooth and the research aligns well with the company’s goals.”

diagnoses; and empathic, putting patient safety front and center.

In his role at Nanoxort, Sannidhi serves as research and development manager and the principal investigator on the STTR Phase I project where the company will be expanding its research outward from MRI contrast agents into magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) to address the need for improved diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

“One of our core guiding principles relies on safety and so, with a safer agent, compared to what’s currently available, there are options that are going to open up for our product that aren’t available to current products,” David said. “There are larger markets out there, including pediatrics and therapeutics, even cancer. The vascular imaging market is really our entry point to these larger opportunities.”

The project, titled “Novel size-changing, gadolinium-free contrast agent for magnetic resonance angiography,” will develop a contrast agent that improves the diagnostic value of MRAs, thereby bringing significant value to radiologists and medical institutions that perform MRAs for diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis, vascular malformations, peripheral arterial disease and in pediatric imaging. “We know we have an advantage for MRI imaging as a contrast agent and we can see a market with immediate need in vascular imaging,” Yeh said. “This is more of a subset of our original target and we think it will be quickly adapted by our customers.” Every decision the Nanoxort team makes is backed by the company’s guiding principles: that the Nanoxort technology be adaptable to the healthcare needs of tomorrow; lucid to produce brighter images that allow for more accurate

Though the team is rarely in the same place at the same time – Anani is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of orthopedic surgery at NYU Langone Health in New York City, Yeh is a senior development chemist at Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, Tennessee, while David and Sannidhi are based in Auburn – they remain in constant communication. “I think our past history together, and the fact that we work well together as a team helps significantly,” David said. “We complement each other and each one of us has our strengths. I think if meetings were left to me and Tareq, we’d spend a lot of time talking about the science and technical stuff — we could talk for hours about that. But early on, Barry did a good job of keeping us on task in terms of the meetings and now Abhinav has taken up some of that, as well. I think we’re kind of like family and when we meet, we’re in sync and we just work well together.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

THE AUTHORITY ON TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH

Auburn engineers are driven to solving tomorrow’s transportation challenges today. From studying the future of driverless vehicles to evaluating asphalt performance on one of the world’s only high-speed, full-scale accelerated pavement test tracks, the Auburn University Transportation Research Institute paves the way toward innovation and discovery in Alabama and beyond.

eng.auburn.edu/autri

OCM - Auburn Magazine Summer 2021 Ad.indd 1

3/30/21 11:52 AM

F E AT U R E S

// B Y C A S S I E M O N T G O M E R Y

MICRON-SIZED

MANUFACTURING THE SMALLER,

THE BETTER

F E A T U R E S // I N T R A M I C R O N

Bruce Tatarchuk (left), the Charles E. Gavin III Professor of chemical engineering, started IntraMicron in 2001. Twenty years later, the company now occupies 50,000 square-feet of manufacturing space in the Auburn Industrial Park.

The life of a faculty member mirrors that of an entrepreneur. Always in pursuit of their next idea, faculty spend their time outside of the classroom applying for funding and then putting that funding to work in the lab or in the field. Crossing from one world into the next wasn’t that much of a stretch for Bruce Tatarchuk.

“My goal was never to be an entrepreneur. Faculty members have to be entrepreneurs because you’re basically pursuing contracts and grants and new government funding channels, but my goal was always to take fundamental research and connect it to societal applications and societal benefits,” he said. “I’ve got to say, even before it was trendy, I wanted to work on not being just a problem-solver; I wanted to be a solution provider.” Tatarchuk spends four days of his workweek as the Charles E. Gavin III Professor of chemical engineering and director of the Microfibrous Materials Manufacturing Center at Auburn University. For the remainder, he is the CEO of IntraMicron, a leading engineering technology manufacturing and development company located in Auburn. Founded in 2001, IntraMicron is one of Auburn University’s longest-established licensed startups. For a 40-year veteran of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Auburn, one might assume he always had a passion for the field. But really, when it came to declaring a major, Tatarchuk happened upon the field by chance. “I had no idea what chemical engineers did. I liked chemistry. I liked math. I liked physics and science in high school and I didn’t want to stay at home in the Chicagoland area and take over the family business, so I decided to go to a university,”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Together with his students and team at IntraMicron, Tatarchuk has helped generate nearly 100 U.S. and foreign patents for research findings. Several of the company’s patents are displayed prominently in the IntraMicron conference room in Auburn.

he said. “I saw chemistry and I saw engineering and I thought, ‘two majors in one.’ So, it was totally random.” After earning a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Tatarchuk completed a doctorate in the field from the University of Wisconsin and found his way to the Plains as an assistant professor in 1981. His excitement for fundamental research first blossomed during his undergraduate studies, expanded throughout graduate school and continued to grow as he made a name for himself at Auburn. With nearly 80 graduate students mentored over the past four decades, his dedication to research hasn’t wavered.

players interested in specialized contracts. Over time, he, his students and his coworkers have generated nearly 100 U.S. and foreign patents for their research findings. “I wasn’t chasing entrepreneurship, but we have licensed things to a host of household names from Fortune 5 companies on down. And, at the end of the day, while there was a little bit of royalty coming back to the university, there wasn’t a lot of impact on the local area,” he said. “We’ve got things that are in electric cars, gas masks, batteries, capacitors, satellites, aircraft — lots of users — and Auburn really wasn’t the benefactor of that because of the licensing model.”

“I was very much into research and graduate student recruiting and started the graduate recruiting program inside the chemical engineering department,” he explained. “We’ve now propagated that same program inside the college to bring the best and the brightest to graduate school here. I’ve been research-focused and centric along with instruction and educating graduate students.”

Tatarchuk and his team of researchers realized that if they flipped the model and began practicing their technology locally, they would be able to make a direct impact on the Auburn community. After being approached by a group of prominent Auburn alumni about starting a small business, the group discussed their idea with university administration. Before Auburn would agree to let them proceed with their startup, they first had to address the potential for a conflict of interest.

In the lab, Tatarchuk and his students were working on catalysts, sorbents and filtration materials, among other technologies, that were gaining the attention of industry

Tatarchuk worked with university officials to draft the university’s first conflict-of-interest mitigation plan prior to company formation for faculty participating in startups.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // I N T R A M I C R O N

IntraMicron products can be found on commercial aircraft in the United States and Western Europe, in military and civilian transportation vehicles and even aboard the Mars Rover, “Perseverance.”

“We have a sacred trust because we’re here at Auburn and we’re spending taxpayers money and others. We’ve got to make sure this is done to the highest standards, something we can truly be proud of,” he said of the need for a mitigation plan. “So, it’s really important that we have the conflict-ofinterest mitigation statement out there because the people of Alabama deserve it and they want to see it.” With the potential for conflict of interest addressed, Tatarchuk and his alumni investors — his so-called “Auburn Angels” — formed IntraMicron with a license from the university in 2001 and became a funded entity in 2002. The company’s name is derived from the products it is capable of producing. “We process micron diameter fibers produced in our plant into highly porous microfibrous matrices on specially modified paper machines. Within this matrix, we can also entrap solid catalysts, electrocatalysts, sorbents or filtration media,” Tatarchuk said. “The fundamental essence of IntraMicron technology is the ability to manipulate high porosity structured reactive materials in the 1-to-100-micron size range. Intramicron simply means ‘within the micron dimension’ – this is where we make our magic happen.” Tatarchuk initially assumed the role of chief technology officer so he could “use big technical words and let the business people do their thing.” But IntraMicron almost didn’t make it off the ground. “Our initial foray didn’t go very well,” he said. “We were significantly below water and had some big debts. There was a meeting of the board of IntraMicron and they were trying

to figure out how to liquidate, how to sell, how to close the doors and pay off as many of our debts as possible.” The solution, according to Tatarchuk, was to pivot the business model. He recommended qualifying several of their products for commercial sale — “the lower hanging pieces of fruit” — and turning their attention to the Bayh-Dole Act, which would allow IntraMicron to conduct governmentfunded research and development. “The Bayh-Dole Act allows small businesses to keep all the intellectual property done under government contracts,” he said. “If we could just sustain ourselves, then we could use small business innovative research contracts and other types of funding elements and focus on what we’re good at. If we adopt that focus, then we can develop innovative new solutions to vexing problems, create value for the company and create technologies that enhance our patent portfolio and propel ourselves like all the other small businesses and nonprofits were doing with government funding vehicles.” With that suggestion, Tatarchuk found himself thrust into the role of CEO. Since the pivot, the company has seen modest growth over its 20-year history, occupying 50,000 squarefeet of manufacturing space in the Auburn Industrial Park. Its product and patent portfolios have also continued to grow, and the company has made a name for itself among prominent manufacturing sectors. “Every time you get onto a commercial aircraft in the United States or Western Europe, you don’t know it because you won’t see it, but you’re using an IntraMicron product,” Tatarchuk said. “We’re also developing high-rate lithium-

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

IntraMicron employs 15 full-time staff, many of whom have completed technical degrees from Auburn University.

ion battery packs with thermal management for military applications as well as major transportation vehicles such as cruise ships.” Perhaps one of the smallest market sector and more esoteric IntraMicron products is the one aboard NASA’s Mars Rover, the “Perseverance.” “On that rover is a microfibrous electrode structure manufactured in our plant that is part of a high temperature solid oxide electrolysis cell that can turn Martian CO2 into O2 for astronauts to breathe or as a fuel oxidizer for returning home,” he said. “This same technology is also a candidate to be used for lunar inhabitations, including the ability to produce oxygen, as well as both fuel and oxidizer. I guess you could say that IntraMicron is on Mars.”

time,” he said. “The goal is to hire good people and get out of their way. And we have some really good ones!” IntraMicron employs 15 full-time staff (not counting subcontractors), many of whom have completed technical degrees from Auburn, and takes on Auburn co-op students from the Department of Chemical Engineering, a number of whom have been subsequently hired as full-time engineers. Tatarchuk credits Auburn’s high caliber students back to the Auburn Creed.

“ ”

“When I first came to Auburn 40 years ago and heard all these people talking about the Auburn Creed, I read it and thought it sounded nice but it must have been invented by somebody at the Chamber of Commerce. It sounded too good to be true – that was my jaded first opinion not knowing too much about the Auburn experience,” he said.

My goal was never to be an

entrepreneur ... I wanted to be

a solution provider.

The company’s success has spurred the creation of another spin-off company, of which Tatarchuk is the managing partner. Formed in 2016, Sour Gas LLC desulfurizes natural gas and biogas using novel oxidative sulfur removal technology developed at IntraMicron. Between overseeing the two entities and maintaining his academic workload, Tatarchuk has learned that there’s one management style that doesn’t work for him. “I can’t micromanage. I had to give that up long ago. No matter how much I get intrigued by stuff, I just don’t have

“And then I lived here for a while and I observed the students and I observed what made our alumni and our students so successful. It was family, faith and friends. It was putting a real emphasis on what matters and their dedication, their intensity, their philanthropic connections to the institution,” Tatarchuk said. “I was a doubter, but the more I hear it, the more I see it, the more I believe it. I guess you could say I’ve been drinking the Auburn Kool-Aid.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

// B Y J O E M C A D O R Y

A NEW

WARRIOR

IN THE FIGHT AGAINST PULMONARY HYPERTENSION

Tom Denney, the Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Donnellan and Family Professor of electrical and computer engineering, believes accurate measures for arterial stiffness can be found via phased contrast imaging, which analyzes blood flow through the pulmonary artery.

Pulmonary hypertension kills roughly 15,000 Americans each year. A researcher at Auburn University, however, has a potential solution.

Tom Denney, the Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Donnellan and Family Professor of electrical and computer engineering, and director of the Auburn University MRI Research Center, believes MRI testing is vital to early detection while routine physical exams rarely reveal the arterial disease. “Many are not even aware they have pulmonary hypertension,” he said. “If you don’t know you have the disease, then you can’t seek early treatment.” Pulmonary hypertension is a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries in the lungs and the right side of the heart which can lead to heart failure, blood clots, arrhythmia and more. Treatment includes a variety of medications,

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Caption

or even surgery, depending on the severity and stage of detection. A common symptom is shortness of breath. “Physicians must go through a large diagnostic algorithm to determine what might be wrong,” Denney said. “Patients might be subject to heart catheterizations, which are quite invasive and are not pleasant.”

(UAB) created Arcus-Med LLC, a start-up that utilizes MRI technology to measure expansion and contraction of arteries leading from the right side of the heart to the lungs, and the blood flow profile.

Denney, an electrical engineer and marketing representative for the IBM Corporation before pursuing academia in the late 1980s, has a better idea.

“Through a technique called phased contrast imaging — which measures the velocity of moving tissue, blood — these procedures can analyze blood flow through the pulmonary artery,” Denney said. “From those measurements, we get a quantity that’s related to the stiffness of the pulmonary artery.

Through 10 years of collaboration, he and a team of cardiologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

“When blood flows, the ventricle contracts and the artery expands. When the valve closes and the ventricle fills with

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // A R C U S - M E D

Auburn University’s MRI Research Center is home to one of the first actively-shielded whole-body 7T MRI scanners in the U.S.

blood, the artery contracts and that keeps blood flowing — like a rubber band. A stiff artery doesn’t do that. What our MRI reveals is how stiff the blood vessel is. Heart catheterizations are invasive, so if we can reduce the number of heart catheterizations, there will be much interest in that.” Denney said MRIs would not replace heart catheterizations, but should be incorporated into the physicians’ diagnostic algorithm. MRIs could be performed prior to right heart catheterizations — providing doctors with information that could potentially be an early indicator of pulmonary hypertension or eliminate pulmonary hypertension as the source of the problem. Denney is chief scientific officer at Arcus-Med, while other team members include: Simin Sanaye, CEO; Barry Kyu, director of business development and global alliances; Ford Fujii, director of global sales and business development; and Himanshu Gupta, chief medical officer. Denney hopes the device can become mainstream one day in the medical community. He encourages innovators from all backgrounds, including fellow faculty peers, to pursue their

entrepreneurial passions. It won’t be easy. It might even take years. But you never know when past relationships will come into play. It took Arcus-Med 10 years to move from idea among scientists to start-up with a patent. “Be patient,” Denney said. “We came up with this idea years ago, and we thought it was a good idea. We started pitching it to people for grants, but we didn’t have any takers. People were saying, ‘Hey, this is a really good idea but we’re not really sure that it will work.’ But that’s the way it goes, you know? When you come up with an idea, you have to show that it works.” During their fellowship at UAB, a cardiologist ran tests on a group of patients. Not only were the tests successful, but relationships built early in his career as an engineer at IBM proved fruitful. “I worked with people in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park – Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill,” Denney explained. “I don’t know how this happened, but somehow I connected back with them. These people had moved up the food chain professionally, did some great things at IBM, then retired and became investors.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S Now a full-fledged professor and MRI specialist at Auburn, the former sales representative pounced. “I gave a presentation and showed them the technology we developed,” he said. “They said, ‘This is a great idea! We’d like to take it to market.’ So, here we are.” Denney said if a researcher believes he or she has a viable business product tied up in a bow and ready to go, “You’re just getting started.” “There is so much more than just creating a product,” he said. “You must navigate working with a variety of people — collaborators, potential investors, etc. — and sometimes people are working for free.” For academic innovators, they must have a conflict-of-interest mitigation plan in place. “Because when you work for a university, there are always rules you must adhere to,” he said. “For me, I didn’t find them particularly burdensome, but it might for others. There are regulations to follow. On one hand, people are saying, ‘If you want something, just go do it.’ Then, in the back of your mind you’re thinking, ‘Is this going to be a conflict of interest?’ But I wouldn’t let that discourage anybody who chooses to take the entrepreneurial route.” Obtaining a patent, of course, brings credibility to any

product, but it’s also a tedious process. Arcus-Med applied for a patent “two or three years ago” before finally earning the patent in January, Denney said. “For those who apply, it’s going to be frustrating but you’ve got to keep hammering away at the process until it’s complete,” he said. “Just know that when you send your patent application, it’s not going to be immediately accepted. The patent office will find things wrong with it, but you’ve just got to respond and correct them. It’s wise to work with a patent agent because patent agents have a certain way of stating things. The field has its own lingo. You must understand the patent lingo to write an effective patent application.” Denney, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electric and computer engineering at Auburn before earning a doctorate at Johns Hopkins, grew up wanting to fix stereo systems and never imagined he’d be exploring arteries. “If you had told me back then I’d be doing this research, I would have laughed you out of the room,” he said. “I’ve always been fascinated with technology. I was always a tinkerer, so I was always taking stuff apart and putting it back together,” he added. Instead of rewiring tape decks and car stereos, he’s helping the human heart.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E AT U R E S

// B Y J E R E M Y H E N D E R S O N

THE GAME

CHANGER 60

F E A T U R E S // X O A R M O R

Michael Zabala, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Auburn University Biomechanical Engineering Lab, founded XO Armor in 2019.

Fall Saturdays have gotten complicated for Michael Zabala, founder and chairman of XO Armor. Rooting for, say, West Virginia or even Clemson hasn’t been that hard. They’re in different conferences. Auburn hasn’t played West Virginia since the “Rain Game” Zabala flew back from Stanford grad school for in 2009. They’ve somehow managed to go four full years without playing Clemson. So, no big deal. Go Mountaineers. Go Tigers.

But, knowing that the work of his hands, the sweat of his biomechanically minded brow, the expertise he gained and cultivated at Auburn University as a mechanical engineering undergraduate, class of 2007, and now for Auburn University as an assistant mechanical engineering professor, and director of the Auburn University Biomechanical Engineering Laboratory (AUBE Lab), helped the evil empire across the state win yet another national championship? He smiles. “Well, you want to help any player get back to the field that you can,” he said. “But, yeah, I kind of had to go to a special place.” And there in the special place, as always, is the Auburn Creed. Belief in the human touch, belief in mutual helpfulness, not just for injured Auburn wide receivers — but for all. That — and, of course, counting on what you eventually start to earn — is the XO Armor story. It began in August 2019. Through Auburn University’s Presidential Awards for Interdisciplinary Research (PAIR)

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F EFAETAUTRUERSE

The custom, 3D-printed padding solutions offered by XO Armor, a startup born out of the Auburn University Biomechanical Engineering Lab, are revolutionizing approaches to athletic protection.

program, Zabala and an interdisciplinary group of Auburn engineers and scientists had recently been assigned nearly $1.3 million to research the additive manufacturing of durable, next-generation implants and orthotics — i.e. exactly what sophomore Auburn wide receiver Anthony “Flash” Schwartz desperately needed. The fastest man in college football had broken his left hand in five places during a preseason blocking drill. Despite dressing out for Auburn’s 2019 opener against Oregon less than one month later, he was a non-factor; ditto the following game against Tulane. Robbie Stewart, Auburn football’s head athletic trainer, had a problem to solve, and he needed to solve it by Saturday’s road-game showdown with Texas A&M. Maybe, he thought, the engineering guy on the other side of the fence could help. Stewart had heard of a custom elbow brace Purdue engineers had built for a Boilermaker basketball standout one year or so earlier. Wasn’t that sort of like the stuff his neighbor Michael Zabala worked on? Orthotics and the musculoskeletal study of athletes and injury prevention?

“(Stewart) didn’t want a bulky carbon fiber cast built from a plaster mold,” Zabala said, “He didn’t really know how we could do it, but he just asked if we could make Schwartz a more customized brace for his hand, and if we could make it quickly.” From scanning Schwartz’s hand with the new Creaform GoScan scanner purchased for the PAIR project, to 3D printing a thin, durable brace that fit perfectly enough for Schwartz to wear under his glove with no one knowing it was even there, it took two days. Up until the Texas A&M game, Schwartz had touched the ball just once, during the previous game against Tulane. He’d had a step on a defender. The pass had been on target. The ball bounced off his fiberglass cast. Incomplete. His next touch? The one with the custom, 3D-printed polymer brace? A touchdown. Early in the game against the Aggies, Schwartz took a handoff with his perfectly protected hand all the way

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

F E A T U R E S // X O A R M O R

XO Armor’s slogan is “Perfectly Tailored Performance.” The Auburn-based startup is currently servicing several Division I college football programs, including Auburn University’s, as well as NFL teams such as the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints.

to the house for 57 yards. Zabala watched from his couch, ecstatic.

One of those people was an athletic trainer at West Virginia University named Zach Foster.

When Auburn’s other star wide receiver, Seth Williams, scored a touchdown later in the game, thanks to the brace Stewart had also asked Zabala to print to protect Williams’ injured left shoulder, he nearly had to pinch himself.

In late November, the Mountaineers had an injured standout receiver of their own, Sean Ryan. Foster reached out to Zabala.

“It was like Auburn biomechanics scored 14 points that day,” Zabala said. Word of the wonders coming out of the AUBE Lab quickly spread. Throughout the season, Stewart continued to grab a golf cart and discreetly zip injured players over to Wiggins Hall for scanning. Within a day, players such as Big Kat Bryant and Joey Gatewood would have the most advanced, customized athletic protective gear on the planet. Auburn basketball players began to take advantage of the technology. So did Auburn soccer players. ESPN’s Holly Rowe reported on Auburn Engineering’s contributions to the Tigers’ success against Texas A&M live from the sideline during Auburn’s game against Mississippi State. Auburn Athletics promoted an article documenting Zabala’s new status as Auburn Football’s 12th man. “A lot of people read that story,” Zabala said.

Ryan was back in action for West Virginia’s upset win over Kansas State the following week. That’s when Zabala knew he might be on to something. “West Virginia obviously didn’t have time to drive their player to our lab to be scanned,” Zabala said, “but we found an app for Zach to download on his phone that he used to get a scan detailed enough to convert into a 3D print file, and he sent that to us. We printed the pad, and shipped it the next day. Proving that it was something we could do remotely is when the potential for offering this technology to athletes outside of Auburn University really became apparent.” It’s grown more apparent by the month. Branding as XO Armor, and setting up shop inside Auburn University’s New Venture Accelerator, Zabala and two of his doctoral students, Jacob Larson and Kyle Castellano, quickly developed their own proprietary scanning app. They began

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S

Pictured inside XO Armor offices from left to right are staff members Nick Smith (intern); Kyle Castellano (co-founder, head of 3D printing), Jake Larson (co-founder, VP of product), Michael Zabala (founder and chairman) and Leo Gray (intern).

sending samples of custom-fit pads to high school and college athletics departments, to NFL teams, to NHL teams. As the company continued to hone its technology, its business and logistics models shifted. Instead of shipping pads to clients, they would ship printers. “We can still print pads in house, but we now give our clients custom 3D printers that allow them to scan their athletes and then print a pad on site,” Zabala said. “Jacob Larson, our vice president of product, wrote code that converts the info from the smartphone scans into a 3D printable model, which was huge, but Kyle Castellano, our head of additive manufacturing and supply chain logistics, who knows 3D printers better than anyone, has been able to optimize this process for us over the past two years. The pads are now even stronger, and we can print them incredibly fast.” Williams’ original additively manufactured shoulder pad took 28 hours to print. “With one of our printers, that now might take three hours,” Zabala said. “Theoretically, if you’re an XO Armor customer with a 3D printer in your training room, you could have a football player injured in the first quarter, and confidently back on the field by the second half.” That’s all Clemson Athletics needed to hear. In May 2021, the Tigers in South Carolina signed XO Armor’s first official contract. Auburn soon followed, as did — officially — West Virginia.

“We now have customers in every Power Five conference except the PAC 12, plus the Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints,” Zabala said. The company also has big plans to soon offer products to individual consumers, specifically targeting youth and teenage athletes. Custom fit soccer shin guards. Custom fit shoulder pads. The list goes on. “You’ll be able to select the gear you want on our app, get instructions on how to scan, and we’ll ship the gear straight to you,” Zabala said. “Think about it. There are 20,000 high schools in the United States.” As for that school down the road? Well, it may just be a matter of time. In December 2020, after hearing that star University of Alabama linebacker Christian Harris injured his left shoulder on the first play of Alabama’s last regular season game, Zabala offered his services. Alabama accepted. They’d seen the results of what AUBE Lab had done for Schwartz and Williams a year earlier. They’d lost to the results. A week later, Harris took the field for the eventual national champions wearing a 3D-printed, customized, Auburn-made shoulder guard for Alabama’s 52-46 win over Florida. His SEC Championship-sealing sack was the final play of the game. He led with his injured, perfectly protected left shoulder. Zabala watched from his couch, trying to not be too ecstatic.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

IT’S MY JOB BY CARLA NELSON

AKASH SHETTANNAVAR ’17 Industrial and Systems Engineering Senior Ergonomist Tesla

Why did you decide to study industrial and systems engineering? During my senior year in mechanical engineering, I opted for a class, Engineering System Design, which introduced me to the basics of systems engineering and topics such as human factors and ergonomics, which influenced my decision to pursue higher education in that field. Auburn’s industrial and systems engineering program was a great fit for me as it offered the occupational safety and ergonomics (OSE) graduate certificate along with industrial and systems engineering courses.

What is your educational background? I earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University in India in June 2012, an occupational safety and ergonomics graduate certificate from Auburn University in May 2016, and a master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from Auburn University in May 2017.

Do you feel your degree prepared you well for your career? Absolutely. All of the industrial and systems engineering teaching staff had great prior experiences from industries, which enabled us to

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

IT’S MY JOB

Akash Shettannavar conducts most of his Tesla job duties from a computer, but also gathers operator feedback from production lines or performs the tasks himself to understand issues or concerns.

understand and learn what to expect for our careers and how to prepare ourselves for future opportunities. I’d like to give a personal shout-out to our occupational safety and ergonomics professors who create an all-hands on deck environment for OSE students, in terms of research participation and learning, which elevated our graduate school experience to the next level. All involved in the OSE program are like close family and I’m grateful to have been part of it.

How long have you been employed at Tesla? I began working at Tesla in May 2016. Among many other duties, I lead the environment, health and safety group in design for environment, health and safety integration into product design and factory development. We perform technical analyses to evaluate, verify and validate designs against regulations and internal standards; create processes and improvements to integrate technology and digital modeling into a systems approach to managing risks; and lead engineering reviews utilizing Virtual Digital Human Model (DHM) Simulations to ensure technical solutions are understood and acceptable for implementation.

Was working at Tesla your career goal? Not exactly, but during my co-op with the ergonomics consulting company Humantech Inc., Tesla was one of the customers who used their product. After learning that, I thought it would be a great opportunity to be part of Tesla. Exactly one year after, while I was attending an applied ergonomics conference in Orlando as a student volunteer, I happened to meet the Tesla ergonomics team and had a great interaction with them and they asked me right there to come work with them.

What do you enjoy most about your job? At Tesla, I work on the ergonomics team which aims to eliminate or reduce work-related musculoskeletal injuries in our workforce. I enjoy the fulfillment of seeing improvements in the product design, equipment and process, which makes the job easier and enables healthy, high performance for our workforce.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

Be the Creed B E T H E C R E E D // S T U D E N T

I believe in the human touch,

which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and

mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all. BY JEREMY HENDERSON

JAIME SCHUSSLER

Facility,” Schussler said. “There’s really no other facility like this in the country.”

Doctoral Student Civil and Environmental Engineering

Stormwater management can be a dirty job. Jaime Schussler, doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, feels like she was born to do it. “I grew up in West Virginia and my parents would always take us backpacking, no matter what the weather was,” Schussler said. “I’ve just always felt a strong connection to water, particularly stormwater.”

The Stormwater Research Facility (formerly the Erosion and Sediment Control Testing Facility) is dedicated to producing innovative and practical solutions for stormwater management. The facility features several rainfall simulators, channelized and sheet flow apparatuses and two large-scale sediment basins that allow controlled evaluations of various water treatments and configurations employed to mitigate construction site pollution and soil displacement. “I really enjoy the extension and outreach aspects of what we do,” Schussler said.

No wonder Auburn feels like home. “One of the main reasons I came to Auburn is for the one-of-a-kind resources, specifically the Construction Stormwater Studio at Auburn’s Stormwater Research

“Auburn allows me to bridge the gap between maybe higher-level research and field practicality, to implement this research in the real world and put theory into practice to help our nation and the world,” she added.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F A C U LT Y // B E T H E C R E E D I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely a n d t ra i n s my m i n d a n d my h a n d s to w o r k s k i l l f u l l y. B Y J O E M CA D O R Y

JAKITA THOMAS

Computers, however, don’t bleed or cry, and Thomas found a new passion. Not only is she a recognized researcher and endowed professor in the field, but she’s a leading advocate for Black women in computing.

Associate Professor Computer Science and Software Engineering

Turns out, Thomas’ mother’s dream was spot-on. Jakita Thomas’ mother, Cora Owensby, once dreamed her daughter stood before a full classroom as a college professor. “I remember thinking how strange that sounded because I had no interest in that career path,” said Thomas, the Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Distinguished Associate Professor in computer science and software engineering. “I was set on being a pediatrician,” she added. That changed after completing her first year at Spelman College. Blood, needles and bodily fluids made her squeamish. The sound of crying children didn’t help, either.

In addition to her time in the classroom, Thomas received a grant to study “Experiencing the Matrix of Power Dynamics for Undergraduate and Graduate Black Women in Computing to Understand their Intersectional Experiences,” at Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Equity in Computing. “The academy is awash in inequities,” she said. “As we engage in research, it has revealed that Black girls and women are contending with this matrix in many different types of contexts beginning with their first experiences with computing in classrooms across the country. This must be transformed if we expect computing to be truly equal.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

B E T H E C R E E D // S T A F F I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men. BY LAUREN WINTON

SUSAN STORY ’81 Industrial Engineering President and CEO, American Water (retired)

“To create a great company culture, everything comes back to the issue of respect for every single person,” said Susan Story, ’81 industrial engineering and former president and CEO of American Water, the largest water utility in the United States. At the time Story was CEO and president of American Water, she was one among only 23 women serving as CEOs of S&P 500 companies. She said her education was a big catalyst for her success. Story was the keynote speaker in 2018 at Auburn University’s spring graduation. In her address, she wanted

students to take away one point from that story: “Others don’t decide your future. You do.” “I have lived the American Dream,” Story said. “When I graduated from Auburn, I wanted to truly make a difference in the world. My goal through my career was to show that companies can be financially successful while also fully respecting and engaging employees, taking care of our environment and making communities stronger because our companies are there. “Because I was willing to work hard and get a great education at Auburn Engineering, I had life opportunities that I never could have imagined,” she added. Story hopes her own journey from Auburn University makes one thing clear: students have the power to harness their abilities, to reach their greatest potential and decide their own futures in engineering or wherever their careers may take them.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

VIRTUAL TOURS VISIT THE ENGINEERING CAMPUS NOW! youvisit.com/tour/engauburn

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

STOPPING THE SPREAD A E R O S P A C E B Y

C A S S I E

E N G I N E E R I N G M O N T G O M E R Y

Being able to predict how droplets are dispersed during coughing, sneezing or speech is critical to understanding the spread of infectious diseases. Aerospace engineering assistant professor Vrishank Raghav is leading a combined $464,846 National Science Foundation (NSF) award, in collaboration with the University of Michigan, to explore this topic. In this project, the collaborative team will take existing industry and academic tools a step further by considering the underlying turbulent flow physics at play.

VRISHANK RAGHAV

Assistant Professor Aerospace Engineering Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow

“Droplet-laden flows are ubiquitous both in engineering applications and in nature. For example, fuel injection in engines, paint sprays, air pollutants, platelets in blood, respiratory aerosols, to name a few,” Raghav said. “Our research group started conducting experiments to quantify speechgenerated aerosols at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this NSF grant will help us continue this work. For this study, we will be using a combination of human subjects and an ex-vivo cough simulator at Auburn University to achieve our goals.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Raghav, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Michigan, will combine 3D timeresolved velocimetry with an extensively validated fluid-particle simulation method, to uncover new flow physics relating the influence of flow interactions on the entrainment and dispersion of droplets. This combined approach will make advances toward the development of improved reduced-order models that could be easily embraced through direct implementation into existing tools. “Such improved quantification of flow physics and the development of reduced-order models will enable better prediction of droplet dispersion, a key step toward understanding the spread of viral infections,” he said. “The methods developed will be used to study the interaction of dropletladen expiratory jets with flow barriers, such as face masks and face shields, and evaluate their efficacy to mitigate the dispersion of expiratory flows and contain outbreaks.”

SUPPORTING FAMILY FARMS THROUGH POULTRY RESEARCH B I O S Y S T E M S

E N G I N E E R I N G

B Y

The poultry supply chain is in high gear after the chicken sandwich wars. Poultry production is the No. 1 agricultural commodity in Alabama, and in the United States, poultry is the most consumed meat. By providing applied research and education to increase the efficiencies of housing, equipment energy and environmental control, the National Poultry Technology Center (NPTC) works to improve the profitability of the many family farms supporting the U.S. poultry industry. “Our emphasis is to improve the economic viability of poultry production facilities to meet market demand,” said Jesse Campbell, assistant extension professor. To preserve a farm from catastrophic loss, the NPTC aids in decisions to implement cost-efficient methods. For a grower in North Alabama, the price of water is economically equivalent to gas after the substantial rise of water costs. The NPTC tackled the problem and implemented a rainwater harvesting system with full-house farm functionality. By capturing and re-filtering the water, the system cut water costs by 190%.

JEREMIAH DAVIS Associate Professor Biosystems Engineering Director, National Poultry Technology Center

A L Y S S A

T U R N E R

“We solve immediate problems through training and fieldwork,” explains Jeremiah Davis, NPTC director. “Our direct stakeholders are the growers, and they need help now.” The facility has provided hands-on workshops to several thousand attendees from over 20 countries and 35 states. Now, the center is re-focusing its efforts on the digitalization of agricultural research to allow its services to be more accessible. Partnering with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, the NPTC expanded its outreach by developing the first-ofits-kind smartphone application, Poultry Farming Toolkit. The app features a service and maintenance checklist accompanied by calculators for minimum ventilation, evaporative pads and radiant heat. For Davis, quantitative data is unable to capture the extent of the facility’s outreach. “We grew up around farming, and we want it to stay,” he said. “We know the center has made its mark after we hear our growers say, ‘You helped me save my farm.’”

JESSE CAMPBELL Assistant Extension Professor Biosystems Engineering

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THROUGH THERAPEUTIC PROTEINS C H E M I C A L

E N G I N E E R I N G

B Y

M O N T G O M E R Y

C A S S I E

ROBERT PANTAZES Assistant Professor Chemical Engineering Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow

For Robert Pantazes, the decision to devote his research to therapeutic proteins was made for two reasons. Professionally, more effective techniques for designing proteins will improve the efficiency and safety of the chemical engineering industry. However, his particular focus on optimizing therapeutic proteins is more personal. “I’m focused on therapeutic proteins in particular because over the course of my life, I’ve had a number of complex health challenges and I’ve been fortunate to always be able to work with really talented doctors who helped me figure out the solutions to those challenges,” he said. “Not everyone has access to the same resources and opportunities that I did and so health has always been a major interest.” Pantazes, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, is furthering his research in therapeutic proteins with a $1.75 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a part of the National Institutes of Health. The award is designed

to support Pantazes’ research lab at Auburn University, where he and his graduate students are developing and experimentally testing computational methods to design therapeutic proteins. Specifically, Pantazes is interested in personalizing medicine to meet an individual person’s needs. This approach, making something to meet a need when a need is identified, differs from the method more commonly used where a therapeutic is prescribed from a pre-selected set of options. There are many situations where personalized medicine could benefit a patient, including when treating a cancer patient or fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria. “Over the next 10 years, what I would like to do is get to a point where we can reliably and consistently design a protein to bind to whatever we want it to bind to,” he said. “The goal of my career is to develop an effective computational method to design proteins for whatever purpose someone might want to use them for.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

PREVENTING SOIL PIPING AND LANDSLIDES C I V I L B Y

A N D

J E R E M Y

E N V I R O N M E N T A L

E N G I N E E R I N G

H E N D E R S O N

Assistant Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Jack Montgomery was recently selected for the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. Montgomery, whose focus is geotechnical engineering, was awarded $531,818 to explore the relationship between soil piping and rainfallinduced landslides in unsaturated soils.

“We’ll be using the geotechnical test chamber to build some near full-scale slope models,” he said.

“This award lets me expand my research and teaching into new areas,” Montgomery said. “This project is specifically focused on piping in slopes, but the findings will apply to many different areas, including dam safety.”

Montgomery, who came to Auburn in 2015, is the fifth Auburn Engineering faculty member — and the third in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering — to earn the Early CAREER Award in a 16-month period, a fact that Andy Nowak, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, feels reflects the college’s commitment to hiring and retaining the best engineering minds in the country.

Much of Montgomery’s previous research has focused on field work or computational analyses. “But this grant will allow me to build some really unique experimental capabilities at Auburn,” he said. Specifically, he plans to take advantage of the 4,700-cubicfoot geotechnical test chamber — one of the few test chambers in the nation included in a university laboratory — inside Auburn’s new $22 million Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory.

The award also involves integrating Montgomery’s research into an outreach program geared toward increasing interest and retention among traditionally underrepresented students in civil engineering.

“Jack has already received plenty of professional accolades,” Nowak said. “But it’s always rewarding when the NSF recognizes the same promise in a researcher that you saw in them.”

JACK MONTGOMERY Assistant Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

SHEDDING LIGHT ON DARK PROTEIN FAMILIES C O M P U T E R B Y

S C I E N C E

V I R G I N I A

A N D

S O F T W A R E

E N G I N E E R I N G

S P E I R S

Assistant professor Debswapna Bhattacharya is using a $1.86 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to further research “dark” protein families. The five-year project aims to develop novel computational and data-driven methods to structurally annotate the “dark” protein families – protein families that are undiscovered by modern structure determination techniques and are inaccessible to molecular modeling. The study aims to gather key information in the understanding of biological systems at the molecular level. “Nearly a quarter of protein families are currently dark, where molecular conformation is completely unknown,” Bhattacharya said. “The key challenge is how to shed light on this unknown protein universe to gain a comprehensive understanding of biology and disease, thereby paving the way to structure-based drug design at a genomic scale.” Bhattacharya’s laboratory focuses specifically on the computational modeling of protein structures.

Computational protein modeling plays a crucial role due to its scalability and wide applicability, he explained. “Latest developments on computational and data science based on artificial intelligence and machine learning are getting more and more matured,” Bhattacharya said. “We now can interrogate a biological system through the lens of computation. We can try to mine biological big data and develop a new generation of data-driven predictive models that can help us understand the unknown protein universe at the molecular level and their impact in human disease.” The MIRA is the second major award that Bhattacharya received in 2020. He was also awarded $557,340 through a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop novel computational and data-driven methods to substantially improve protein structure refinement, bringing protein models closer to biologically relevant experimental accuracy. In 2018, Bhattacharya’s research group earned international acclaim when it placed No. 9 in the world in the Community Wide Experiment on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction.

DEBSWAPNA BHATTACHARYA

Assistant Professor Computer Science and Software Engineering Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

ENCRYPTION FOR THE QUANTUM AGE E L E C T R I C A L A N D C O M P U T E R E N G I N E E R I N G B Y

V I R G I N I A

S P E I R S

Listen to our podcast with Mark Adams at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

As technology continues to evolve, what will it take for the United States military to maintain secure communications? Low-Earth orbit satellites with quantum key distribution abilities, to start. With a recent grant, Auburn University is helping make sure our soldiers have the best communication possible — the unhackable kind. “The Army is interested in secure communications,” said Mark Adams, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and assistant director of the Alabama Micro/ Nano Science and Technology Center. “What we’re doing is supporting an effort to establish secure military communications using small satellites the size of a loaf of bread. We are currently working with them to develop the infrastructure necessary to do that.” The focus of this project is not simply to make an unhackable connection, but to make it resilient, as well. Small satellites allow a low-cost, rapid access to space which provides the Army with a greater degree of mission flexibility.

can also alert users when an eavesdropper is present and the key may have been intercepted by a third party, providing an additional level of security. Adams and his team are working to develop all components of this project, both hardware and software. The physical satellite design has to be discreet yet have both encryption and tracking capabilities. The software needs to be able to transmit communication in protected, low-observable wave forms that would be nearly impossible to hack and have the ability to send clear messages back and forth from sender to receiver. “We have since added some additional elements [to the project] where we’re looking at developing new types of encryption,” Adams said. “We’re working on developing hardware that will allow us to use concepts like quantum key distribution in these small satellites, so we can provide an ultra-secure communication method.”

Quantum key distribution is a crucial aspect to this project. In a typical encryption scheme, a mathematical algorithm called a cipher is used to encrypt and decrypt information. Depending on the length of the key, the encryption is more difficult to break. Because of the continued evolution of quantum computing, typical encryption is not as secure as it once was. QKD provides elevated security not only by creating a shared random key that cannot be recovered, it

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

MARK ADAMS

Associate Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Director, Alabama Micro/Nano Science and Technology Center

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

IMPROVING TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION IN MANUFACTURING I N D U S T R I A L B Y

C A S S I E

A N D

S Y S T E M S

M O N T G O M E R Y

E N G I N E E R I N G

Utilizing a $4.26 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing (ICAMS) will explore the digitalization of manufacturing and become a resource for small and medium manufacturers throughout the country. “The most significant way ICAMS can make a difference is in helping small and medium manufacturers understand the technologies they should be utilizing and helping them understand the need for adopting Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing concepts, therefore really digitalizing the full supply chain,” said Gregory Harris, ICAMS director and associate professor of industrial and systems engineering. There is a growing digital divide between large manufacturers and the small- to medium-sized manufacturers that make up 85% of the industrial base in the United States. These large, original equipment manufacturers have blended their manufacturing physical and virtual domains into an Industry 4.0 environment, achieving positive productivity results.

GREGORY HARRIS Associate Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering

PETER LIU

Assistant Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering

ICAMS researchers hope to help close this gap, in part by promoting advanced manufacturing principles to create a skilled workforce pipeline that starts in high school and continues through community college and beyond. ICAMS is led by Harris and several additional faculty members from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering: assistant professor Peter Liu, assistant professor Konstantinos Mykoniatis, Professor of Practice Lewis Payton and assistant professor Gregory Purdy. “Part of what we’re doing with ICAMS is helping develop the skill base and the skillsets needed so that the community college system and high schools can train students in the new technologies to be potential employees,” Harris explained. “We’re working with industry to train their current employees in these new capabilities and create a more effective system. Finally, we’re training engineers to be able to go out and help design, build and run these systems, thus ushering in the future of manufacturing.”

KONSTANTINOS MYKONIATIS

Assistant Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering

LEWIS PAYTON

Professor of Practice Industrial and Systems Engineering

GREGORY PURDY

Assistant Professor Industrial and Systems Engineering

Listen to our podcast with Gregory Harris at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

FLEXING RESEARCH MUSCLE IN ELECTRONICS

Auburn is blazing the trail in utilizing additive manufacturing for flexible hybrid electronics. M E C H A N I C A L

E N G I N E E R I N G

Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) is one of the most rapidly emerging fields of electronic research in the engineering discipline. By using a breadth of flexible materials, researchers are discovering new ways of making pliable electrical components, such as batteries and circuits. The functionality and practicality of additive manufacturing allows FHE technology to accomplish this goal. Pradeep Lall, the John and Anne McFarlane Endowed Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Vehicle and Extreme Environment Electronics, is a trailblazer of FHE research, especially with additive manufacturing. Lall has been studying flexible hybrid electronics for more than 20 years and has specialized in FHE research since he began his career at Auburn University in 2002. One of the reasons Lall came to Auburn for this research was his interest in design of electronics for operation in extreme conditions and harsh environments, which is a major research thrust at Auburn. “The unique thing we have here at Auburn is we have a very strong background in extreme environment electronics,” Lall said. “It is a wonderful compliment to be able to bring additive manufacturing into the harsh environment community. The bulk of the work has been largely focused on subtractive manufacturing in the past,

PRADEEP LALL

John and Anne MacFarlane Endowed Distinguished Professor Mechanical Engineering Director, National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Vehicle and Extreme Environment Electronics

B Y

V I R G I N I A

S P E I R S

so the fact that we can print things additively brings a higher level of control, now that we can support systems for very long periods of time.” With additive manufacturing, Lall and his team are able to be more creative with the materials they can print, which paves the way for a more flexible product, he said. There are three different platforms for additive creation of circuits that Lall is able to work with – Aerosol-Jet printing, InkJet printing and direct-write and screenprint based methods. These forms of printing allow for a wide range of materials to be used for FHE circuit printing, he said. A very applicable use for FHE technology is its ability to wrap around a curved surface, such as a wrist. One recent project of Lall’s has piqued the interest of companies and organizations such as NASA. The project is an FHE bracelet that has the ability to sense the health conditions of a person in an extremely harsh environment. The bracelet is able to detect potential health risks, such as abnormal pulse, anxiety levels and overall health by monitoring physiological functions, such as cortisol levels, he said. “We have two programs going on with NASA currently, both are very exciting,” Lall said. “They are both related to what is called an astro-sense platform. One of the programs we are attempting to develop is an additively printed human body sensor that can monitor the state of stress in the human body. One of the common indicators of stress is cortisol, which is in the sweat itself, and we’re developing sensors to be able to monitor and correlate the cortisol to a stress or anxiety level that a person may be undergoing. “A second aspect of the program is to develop additively printed sensors of various types to better understand the states where the temperatures are very low,” he continued. “For example, on a planet where there is a great degree of temperature difference on the lighter side from the shady side, there can be a difference of a hundred degrees or more. To be able to explore extreme environments from an unmanned vehicle using additively printed sensors is a technology that has never been available before.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Another recent advancement of Lall’s is the ability to additively print multi-layer antennas, he said. The antennas are designed for data transmission, and can be mounted on the side of airborne, unmanned vehicles and can be conformally mounted on the body of the vehicle itself. This is another technological advancement that has a particular interest from NextFlex National Manufacturing Institute. Lall has worked on a number of flexible-hybrid electronics sponsored contracts encompassing flexible batteries, multi-layer z-axis interconnects, reliability test protocols and flexible encapsulation. Lall serves as the technical-lead for Auburn University’s participation as a Tier-1 founding academic member of NextFlex. In this role, he serves on the Technical Council of the Institute and as academic co-lead of the asset monitoring TWG. Lall is using FHE technology to break the stereotype that rigidity equals strength, he said. Lall wants to prove, with flexible technology, that electronics do not have to be inflexible to be strong. The NextFlex manufacturing institute bridges the chasm that normally exists between fundamental research and technology realization in high-volume manufacturing, Lall explained. “The challenge of flexible electronics is that you need

robustness and ruggedness, but you don’t want it at the cost of flexibility,” he said. “Flexible electronics proves we can have technology that is flexible and robust at the same time. Generally, we like to associate stronger things with more rigid ones.” Lall is a fellow of NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Institute, and they have sponsored him in a number of programs in FHE research. Lall has received over $2 million in financial support from various federal agencies and commercial companies in CY2020 in a number of projects related to FHE manufacturing, design and reliability. Auburn’s capabilities have only continued to grow since he started studying harsh environment electronics at Auburn nearly two decades ago. “Auburn has progressed so much from where we were 20 years ago in terms of the things that we can do,” Lall said. “The resources and the center we have here has grown tremendously and, therefore, our capabilities have grown tremendously.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

D E PA R T M E N T H I G H L I G H T S

NEXT GENERATION OF NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY M A T E R I A L S

E N G I N E E R I N G

B Y

The United States Department of Energy awarded Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering a combined $1.21 million to develop advanced manufacturing technology for next-generation reaction designs and expand the university’s existing nuclear research infrastructure. “In the United States, nuclear power represents approximately 20% of the electricity consumed without greenhouse gas emission,” said Xiaoyuan Lou, principal investigator of both projects and associate professor of materials engineering. “Innovative manufacturing technologies and advanced materials are both crucial to the future economic outlook of nuclear power and the development of next-generation reactor designs.” Through the first award of $1 million funded by the DOE’s Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies (NEET) program, Auburn will lead a joint university-industry team to develop and demonstrate the powder metallurgy-hot isostatic pressing (PM-HIP) cladding and joining strategies to manufacture dissimilar metal pressure retaining components. The traditional approach to manufacture these structures

XIAOYUAN LOU Associate Professor Materials Engineering

V I R G I N I A

S P E I R S

often involves multiple lengthy and costly fabrication steps and requires vastly different expertise, resulting in high manufacturing cost and delayed deployment schedule. PM-HIP can be an alternative solution to handle the design complexity, reduce manufacturing cost and time, and eliminate the burden of in-service inspection. The second infrastructure award of $210,000 supports Lou to enhance the advanced mechanical testing capabilities at Auburn University. Bart Prorok, interim program chair for materials engineering, is the co-PI on the project. Lou said the new equipment acquisitions would boost the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s nuclear research and training opportunities and expand the existing nuclear research programs. “Nuclear power not only ensures reliable and clean electricity for the American people but also supplies propulsion energy to Navy operation and NASA’s space exploration,” Lou said. “These awards provide us opportunities to work closely with the major nuclear technology providers at the forefront of technological innovation.”

KEEPING IT FRESH W I R E L E S S

E N G I N E E R I N G

B Y

A L Y S S A

T U R N E R

YIN SUN

Assistant Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering

Auburn Engineering assistant professor Yin Sun is the coauthor of a new monograph revealing the Age of Information concept and its connections with information theory, signal processing and control theory. Sun collaborated with a research group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce the book, “Age of Information: A New Metric for Information Freshness.”

“Remote surgery is one example of the essentiality of the freshness of information that is needed in real time systems and networks,” Sun explained. “The robot is there with the patient, but the doctor is controlling the machine at a distance. The timely information about the real-time operation and robot arm are necessary for conducting a controlled, safe operation.”

Detailing the analytical tools and insightful results on the generation of information-update packets and the design of network protocols when forwarding the packets to its destinations, the 224-page book is centered around the Age of Information concept. The theory quantifies information freshness and provides an opportunity to improve the performance of real-time systems and networks. Sun notes the concept surrounding information freshness is necessary and present in real-world everyday situations. He describes the importance of information freshness, and the crucial role it plays in an intense setting like robotic surgery.

Although essential to modern technologies and everyday lives, information freshness is a newly developed concept. Sun has recognized the topic’s importance and founded the workshop, Age of Information Workshop, which is affiliated with a leading conference in the area of networking. “It is very important to introduce the latest developments in the research community to our engineering students and show them how useful it is for right now and their future job,” Sun asserted. “I am training graduate and undergraduate students to become future leaders in the field.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS

Sabit Adanur, mechanical engineering professor, was awarded a grant from the State of Alabama ADECAARDEF program for a project titled “Design, Fabrication and Testing of Novel Medical Facemasks to Prevent COVID-19.”

Mark Barnett, professor of civil and environmental engineering, is a co-principal investigator of a four-year, $5 million Alabama Black Belt Rural Wastewater Pilot Project grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

David Bevly, the Bill and Lana McNair Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering, and Scott Martin, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, were awarded a total of $525,000 from IS4S to support the research in GPS-denied

navigation taking place in the GPS and Vehicle Dynamics Laboratory. Additionally, Bevly was awarded a $300,000 grant from IS4S to study intelligent emergency stop mechanics for autonomous vehicles, and Martin was awarded two grants totaling $350,000 from IS4S to study methods of navigation that will overcome jamming or spoofing attempts.

Three faculty from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, assistant professors Imon Chakraborty and Ehsan Taheri, and Roy Hartfield, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor, recently concluded a Phase I STTR project funded by the United States Air Force Agility Prime program titled “Electric Extended Range Airship with Modular Payload.” The $150,000 Phase I project was a collaboration between Auburn University, Research in Flight and Skyborne Technology, an airship manufacturer based in Wewahitchka, Florida. Edward Davis, associate professor of materials engineering, was awarded a 3-year $651,510 grant from the Office of Naval Research titled “Promoting DoN STEM careers via STEM educational

activities” that focuses on the improvement of STEM education in 9-12 grades with particular focus on Naval STEM needs.

David Elton, emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering, has coauthored a textbook titled “Fundamentals of Ground Improvement Engineering” with Taylor & Francis, London.

Xiaowen Gong, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, was awarded $220,000 from the National Science Foundation for his study “Quality-Aware Distributed Computation for Wireless Federated Learning: Channel-Aware User Selection, Mini-Batch Size Adaptation, and Scheduling.” Gregory Harris, associate professor of industrial and

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

systems engineering, and Gregory Purdy, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, were awarded $1.85 million to begin the second year of the Systems Engineering Technology Program Development and Application project from the Department of Defense’s Office of Industrial Policy through its Industrial Base Analysis and Systainment Program.

Peng Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is the recipient of a 2021 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Award, given by Oak Ridge Associated Universities to 35 junior faculty nationally. He is the co-principal investigator of a $523,200 National Science Foundation award titled “Probing novel phases of matter in van der Waals magnet Fe5-xGeTe2” and is the U.S. principal investigator of a $291,159 international joint award by U.S. Air Force Science Lab Asian Office of Aerospace R&D and National Research Foundation of South Korea

F A C U LT Y H I G H L I G H T S for the project “Engineering Exceptional Points in AllOn-Chip Organic-InorganicLayered Hybrid Quantum Devices.”

Elizabeth Lipke, the Mary and John H. Sanders Professor of chemical engineering, and Selen Cremaschi, the Redd Endowed Eminent Scholar Chair Professor of chemical engineering, are the lead investigators on a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant for their project titled “Directing and Controlling Cardiac Differentiation Through Cellular and Microenvironmental Manipulation and Application of Machine-Learning.”

Jia (Peter) Liu, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, and Nima Shamsaei, Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering, received a $498,762 National Science Foundation grant for research titled “Federated Deep Learning for Future Ubiquitous Distributed Additive Manufacturing” with George Mason University. Shiwen Mao, the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and professor of electrical and computer engineering, was

awarded $320,000 from the National Science Foundation for his work titled “Data Augmentation and Adaptive Learning for Next Generation Wireless Spectrum Systems” and is serving as the general chair of the 41st IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM 2022) in London, May 2022.

Daniela Marghitu, professor of computer science and software engineering, has been appointed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to its Committee on the Future of NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). She is also a co-investigator of a $10 million NSF project to lead a national research effort to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics education among students with disabilities.

Konstantinos Mykoniatis, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, and two of his graduate students received

a Best Paper Award at the 33rd European Modeling and Simulation Symposium for the paper “Analyzing the Impact of Vaccination on COVID-19 Spread and Hospitalizations: A Multi-Paradigm Simulation Modeling Approach.”

Anton Schindler, the Mountain Spirit Professor of civil and environmental engineering, was elected to become a member of the Academy of Distinguished Alumni of the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin. The Academy of Distinguished Alumni recognizes the department’s graduates that have made outstanding contributions as engineer practitioner, leader, academic, and/or researcher.

Kyle Schulze, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, recently received $216,634 from the National Science Foundation to study the mechanics and lubrication of human epithelial cells with his project “In Vitro Epithelial Lubrication: Collective Motion, Mechanics, and Fluid Transport.”

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

Computer science and software engineering professors Drew Springall, Dean Hendrix and Daniel Tauritz have been awarded a $299,941 National Science Foundation grant for their project “Transformative Educational Approaches to Meld Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Mindsets,” which seeks to explore educational approaches to combine the AI and security worlds.

Alice Smith, the Joe W. Forehand/Accenture Professor of industrial and systems engineering, was named a fellow of INFORMS and also delivered keynote addresses at six virtual conferences: Troy University Annual Research and Scholarship Conference (keynote, April 2021); IEEE Hyderabad Section (IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecture, May 2021); 6th IEEE Symposium on Analytics and Risk (keynote, July 2021); University of Hong Kong System Analytics Global Leaders Seminar (keynote, August 2021); International Symposium for Production Research (keynote, October 2021); and XV Brazillian Congress on Computational Intelligence (keynote, October 2021).

F A C U LT Y H I G H L I G H T S

Jakita Thomas, the Philpott-WestPoint Stevens Distinguished Associate Professor in computer science and software engineering, was awarded a $160,235 grant from the National Science Foundation for her work titled “Experiencing The Matrix of Power Dynamics for Undergraduate and Graduate Black Women in Computing to Understand their Intersectional Experiences.” Hareesh Tippur, the McWane Endowed Chair Professor of mechanical engineering, and Xinyu Zhang, professor of chemical engineering, were awarded a $489,155 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project

titled “Material Processing and Mechanical Behavior of High-Performance Cellulose Nanopaper made from Cellulose Nanofibers.” The project aims to create green alternatives to traditional fossil fuel derived polymers and polymer composites. A team of researchers from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering was awarded a Best Paper Award from the journal, Ergonomics. The paper titled “Job rotation and workrelated musculoskeletal disorders: a fatigue-failure perspective” was co-authored by associate professors Aleksandr Vinel and Mark Schall; Sean Gallagher,

the Hal N. and Peggy S. Pennington Professor; and Richard Sesek, the Tim Cook Associate Professor. The Department of Chemical Engineering has been awarded a new 3-year GAANN program from the Department of Education for a total amount of $607,000 in federal funds. The Project Director is Jin Wang, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Endowed Professor, with co-PIs Bob Ashurst, Selen Cremaschi,

Mario Eden, Peter He, Chris Kieslich and Robert Pantazes.

R E AD AL L T H E L ATEST

FACULTY NEWS eng.auburn.edu/news

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AWARDS

THE AWARDS GO TO...

The State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame inducted nine individuals to the Class of 2021, including four from Auburn University. From left, the Auburn inductees include Jim Cooper, ’81 civil engineering and founder of Cooper Construction; Cindy Green, ’79 chemical engineering and retired chief sales and marketing officer for DuPont; Beverly Banister, ’83 chemical engineering and retired deputy regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4; and John Thomas, ’60 mechanical engineering and consultant for Lee & Associates.

The State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame inducted nine individuals, including four Auburn University alumni, during a ceremony in August at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center.

The Class of 2021 inductees from the university include Beverly Banister, ’83 chemical engineering and retired deputy regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4; Jim Cooper, ’81 civil engineering and founder of Cooper Construction; Cindy Green, ’79 chemical engineering and retired chief sales and marketing officer for DuPont; and John Thomas, ’60 mechanical engineering and consultant for Lee & Associates.

Beverly Banister ’83 Chemical Engineering

Beverly Banister graduated from Auburn University in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. After college, Banister joined the EPA, working first on remedial Superfund programs, then on water projects, including underground storage tanks and water management. She climbed the ladder at the EPA, eventually becoming director of the Region 4 Water Division. It was in this role that she spearheaded the establishment of standards for impaired bodies of water to address pollutant-loading threats, maintained the lowest National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System backlog in the country and finalized plans to significantly improve water quality in the Charlotte

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

Harbor and Mobile Bay estuaries. Following her tenure in the Water Division, Banister became the director of the Air, Pesticides and Toxics Management Division for Region 4, where she had oversight for all regional EPA air, pesticides and toxics programs. During her tenure in this role, Banister’s leadership resulted in 39 areas, including large population cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Birmingham, moving from a designation of “not attaining” to “attaining” clean air standards, resulting in cleaner air quality for millions of people. During this time, Banister’s work also had international prominence, as she traveled to Shanghai, China, to support air quality planning in preparation for the 2007 Women’s World Cup held in China. In 2019, Banister’s leadership and expertise were rewarded with an appointment as the Region 4 Deputy Regional Administrator, the No. 2 EPA official for the entire Southeast. She retired in that role in 2020. For more than 30 years, Banister has championed and supported special emphasis programs, including establishing the first Women in Science and Engineering chapter in her region. She is also among the loyal alumni and friends whose gifts help elevate Auburn Engineering to new heights through the Engineering Eagles Society. She is highly involved in Auburn’s 100+ Women Strong program, which seeks to recruit, retain and reward female students in Auburn Engineering.

Jim Cooper ’81 Civil Engineering

Jim Cooper graduated from Auburn University in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. In 1991, Cooper founded Cooper Construction with a focus on personal relationships and satisfaction for every client. The company operates as a general contractor specializing in industrial, warehouse/ distribution and multifamily projects whose expertise in private sector development has allowed for continued expansion and successfully completed projects throughout the United States. Cooper is heavily involved in achieving the organization’s vision, and through his relentless efforts has grown Cooper Construction into a $200+ million national company with an additional office in Dallas. In recognition of his lifelong dedication to the construction industry in our state, Associated Builders and Construction named Cooper its 2019 Cornerstone Award winner. Cooper has devoted tremendous time and energy to support the next generation of Alabama’s civil engineers through his service to the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and, specifically, the Department of Civil Engineering. He has served in significant leadership roles on the Civil Engineering Advisory Board and the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council, and was a direct advisor to the dean of engineering during

the creation of the college’s Office of Career Development and Corporate Relations. In honor of his support, the corporate conference room and the office suite in the Office of Career Development and Corporate Relations was named in his honor. Cooper is also a member of Auburn Engineering’s Keystone, Ginn and Eagles giving societies, as well as the university’s 1856 and Samford giving societies.

Cindy Green ’79 Chemical Engineering

Cindy Green earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Auburn University in 1979. Upon graduation, she launched a successful career at DuPont, one of the most successful chemical corporations in the world. In more than three decades with DuPont, Green’s groundbreaking career saw her grow from an assistant plant manager to become one of just three women to serve the company as a business unit president. In leading the DuPont Fluoroproducts, Green was responsible for managing the $3 billion global business unit, including products and brands such as Teflon and Freon, where she placed an emphasis on reducing the company’s environmental footprint. From there, she ascended to DuPont’s chief sales and marketing officer. In this role, she was responsible for corporate brand management, sales and marketing strategies and competency development for each of DuPont’s business units. One of Green’s more public and lasting accomplishments on behalf of the DuPont brand was negotiating and supporting the company’s long-term sponsorship deal with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon and the Rick Hendrick Motorsports team. She retired from DuPont in 2011. Green is an active alumna of the Auburn University Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. She is a founding member of the college’s 100+ Women Strong program, she serves as a member of the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council, as a member of the Department of Chemical Engineering Alumni Council, and she is also a passionate supporter of the Engineering Academic Excellence Program such that the college named the Diversity in Engineering Gallery outside the program’s office suite in her honor. For her professional achievements and dedication to Auburn University and the College of Engineering, she was named as a Distinguished Auburn Engineer in 2017.

John Thomas ’60 Mechanical Engineering

John Thomas earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University in 1960. Upon graduation, Thomas began an exemplary career with NASA that included numerous key engineering positions within NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. His first assignment was as a lead test facility engineer working on rocket engines for the Saturn IB launch vehicle. He then served as a lead systems engineer on

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

the nation’s first space station, Skylab, from its development, its launch from the Kennedy Space Center and flight operations at the Johnson Space Flight Center. In 1986, in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, Thomas led the accident investigation, initializing redesign and recertification of the solid rocket booster, the cause of the Challenger explosion. Later, after his team successfully redesigned the booster’s motor and returned the shuttle to flight, the orbiter returned with a new issue — severely damaged thermal protection tiles that protect the vehicle during reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. Once again, Thomas was called upon to oversee the team as they determined the debris that damaged the tile and recommended solutions to prevent future damage. After a productive career with NASA, Thomas joined Lockheed Space Operations at the Kennedy Space Center as vice president and site director. Later, he became vice president and general manager of a multifaceted service contract for NASA, which included the development of an advanced solid rocket motor. Following his work at Lockheed, Thomas became a member of Lee & Associates, a division of QuantiTech, where he has served for the past 15 years as a mentor and consultant for NASA and the aerospace industry. Thomas is engaged in the community through both his time and philanthropic involvement. He is a member of the Auburn Alumni Association, has presented lectures to aerospace engineering design classes and generously contributed to the engineering gift fund. He is the recipient of the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s 1987 Outstanding Alumni Award, as well as the 2015 Distinguished Auburn Engineer Award. The State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame was chartered by the governor in 1987 to honor those individuals, corporations and projects associated with the state that have brought credit to the engineering profession. A total of 186 engineers, 44 projects and 32 firms have been recognized by the hall. These inductees span across all industries, and personify the impact engineering has played on the economy, quality of life and standard of living for the people of Alabama. The Hall of Fame is overseen by engineering colleges and schools at Auburn University, Alabama A&M University, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Tuskegee University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of South Alabama.

AWARDS

LIFETIME of SERVICE...

Three Auburn Engineering graduates were selected to receive the highest honor given by the Auburn Alumni Association at Auburn’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Awards ceremony in June: Raymond Loyd, ’61 mechanical engineering; Brooks Moore, ’48 electrical engineering; and William Reed, ’70 aviation management.

Five Auburn University graduates, including three Auburn engineers, received the highest honor given by the Auburn Alumni Association during Auburn’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Awards ceremony in June.

Lifetime Achievement Award recipients for 2021 were the late Raymond Elliott Loyd, ’61 mechanical engineering, Fletcher Brooks Moore, ’48 electrical engineering, William Allen Reed, ’70 aviation management and Cecil Stanford “Stan” Harrell, ’58 pharmaceutical science. The Young Alumni Award recipient was John Dykes, ’05 microbiology.

Raymond Loyd ’61 Mechanical Engineering

Raymond Loyd, after earning his degree in mechanical engineering in 1961, was accepted to General Electric’s engineering training program where he became a design engineer in General Electric’s appliance division. Loyd changed the way Americans live through his work in air-conditioning technology and his development of the Carry Cool, the first room air conditioner under $100 to sell profitably. In 1977, Loyd founded Derby Packaging, a startup fabricator of insulation and gaskets. Later, as Derby Industries, the company specialized in global supply chains and inventory management, assemblies and contract manufacturing, spare parts and warranty repairs, retail packaging and distribution and information systems. In 2000, Loyd sold part of the business, but retained the

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AWARDS William Reed ’70 Aviation Management

die-cutting portion, which, as Derby Fabricating, has become a leading die-cutter of nonmetallic materials for automotive and appliance clients.

William Reed earned his degree in aviation management in 1970 when the program was still housed in the College of Engineering. He served as president of the Hughes Investment Company, a wholly owned subsidiary managing the company’s pension and savings-plan assets, before being promoted to vice president of Hughes Aircraft Co. in 1991 and then to the same position with GM Hughes Electronics the following year.

He received the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Distinguished Auburn Engineer award in 2008 and was inducted into the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in 2012. Loyd established the Raymond E. and Eleanor H. Loyd Annual Dean’s Scholarship in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and was a life member of the Auburn Alumni Association. Loyd died in November 2020 and was preceded in death by his wife, Eleanor, and both of his children.

Brooks Moore ’48 Electrical Engineering

Brooks Moore graduated in 1948 with a degree in electrical engineering. He spent more than 50 years working in the space industry, beginning at the Naval Research Laboratory in Panama City, Florida, and later with the U.S. Army’s Rocket Development Team under Wernher von Braun. In Huntsville, he directed the design of control systems for the Redstone, Jupiter and Pershing missile systems, a development effort that led to the 1958 launch of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer. A charter member of NASA when the agency formed in 1960, Moore oversaw the design of guidance, control, electrical and computer systems for the Saturn I, IB and V rockets. He later worked on the development of technology for Skylab, the first U.S. space station, and later the Hubble Telescope and served as president of Control Dynamics until his retirement. For his work with NASA, the Army Missile Command and private industry, Brooks received many special honors, including induction in the Distinguished Auburn Engineer award from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering in 2020 and induction into the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame and the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in 1997. Brooks and his late wife, Marian, have two sons, Larry ’80 and Ronald ’81. He is a life member of the Auburn Alumni Association.

In 1994, he was named CEO of General Motors, as well as chairman and CEO of the GM Trust Bank and as a corporate vice president of General Motors Corporation. Reed retired in April 2006 from the chairmanship of the GM Asset Management Company, the investment management subsidiary of General Motors, responsible for managing $165 billion in benefit fund assets for GM and others. He and his wife, Martha ’69, have established scholarships at Auburn in the colleges of Engineering, Business and Human Sciences. Reed created and manages the Angel Oak Summer Reading Program at Angel Oak Elementary School on Johns Island, South Carolina, and in 2018 was awarded the Angel Oak Award by the Kiawah-Seabrook Exchange Club Foundation. The Reeds have two sons, Brian and Justin. He is a life member of the Auburn Alumni Association. Presented by the Auburn Alumni Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes recipients for outstanding achievements in their professional lives, personal integrity and stature and service to the university. It was established in 2001 to honor extraordinary accomplishments by members of the Auburn family. Recipients of Lifetime Achievement Awards are selected by a committee of Auburn administrators, trustees, faculty and alumni.

VI S I T O U R

MAGAZINE ONLINE AT E NG . AUB UR N. E DU/MAG A ZI NE VIDEOS, PHOTO GALLERIES AND MORE

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

AWARDS

DISTINGUISHED ENGINEERS...

The 2021 Auburn Alumni Engineering Council award winners included T.J. Pruitt, Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer; Ryan Hill, Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer; Brad Corson, Distinguished Auburn Engineer; Gerald Pouncey, Distinguished Auburn Engineer; Regenia Sanders, Distinguished Auburn Engineer; Carol Godfrey, Distinguished Auburn Engineer; Zeke Smith, Distinguished Auburn Engineer; Bob Karcher, Superior Service; and Ed Lewis, Distinguished Auburn Engineer. (Not pictured: Rose-Gaëlle Belinga, Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer.)

Nine outstanding alumni and one longtime

Distinguished Auburn Engineers

employee of the Samuel Ginn College of

Brad Corson graduated from Auburn in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. After starting his career with ExxonMobil in 1983, he was quickly promoted to a variety of technical, operations, commercial and managerial assignments. He was appointed vice president of ExxonMobil Production Company in 2009, and in 2015, he was appointed president of ExxonMobil Upstream Ventures and vice president of ExxonMobil Corporation. Under his leadership, ExxonMobil expanded and made key acquisitions across the globe including in the Permian Basin, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique and Brazil. Since January 2020, Corson has served as chairman, president and CEO of Imperial Oil, Canada’s largest petroleum refiner.

Engineering were honored during a ceremony in September by the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council for their distinguished professional careers. These alumni include six who were recognized as Distinguished Auburn Engineers, three as Outstanding Young Auburn Engineers and the college’s former assistant dean of student services for his Superior Service.

Brad Corson, ’83 Chemical Engineering

In addition to his incredible career as a leader in the oil industry, Corson has graciously given back to Auburn through his time and generosity. He is a member of the Auburn

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AWARDS

Engineering Alumni Council, the Chemical Engineering Council and became a member of the Engineering Strategic Leadership Team in 2018. Corson’s generous philanthropic support includes a Fund for Excellence in Chemical Engineering, as well as programmatic support which resulted in room namings in both Ross Hall and the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center. He is a member of the 1856 Society Legacy Circle, Foy Society and the Engineering Ginn Society.

Carol Godfrey, ’86 Industrial Engineering

Carol Godfrey earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1986 before starting her career in manufacturing and product development. She joined Southwire Company in 2006 as the vice president for marketing and product development. Godfrey was quickly promoted throughout her career at Southwire and served as the senior vice president for products and markets before retiring. As the senior vice president, she expanded

Southwire’s markets in North America and was responsible for leading the development of new products and service offerings, including strategic partnerships, new product manufacturing and acquisitions. While climbing the ranks at Southwire, Godfrey did not stop giving back to Auburn Engineering. She has served on the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council since 2018, the Industrial and Systems Engineering Advisory Board since 2015 and was instrumental in forming the 100+ Women Strong Program, of which she has been a member since 2012. Godfrey and her husband, Gary, helped establish the Dr. Saeed Maghsoodloo Annual Assistantship in Industrial and Systems Engineering. They have also given to the Engineering Keystone Society, and through support of the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center, Café 25 was named in Gary’s honor.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

AWARDS In 2013, Carol was recognized as a Woman of Distinction by Auburn Women’s Resource Center.

Ed Lewis, ’72 Industrial Engineering

Ed Lewis is a 1972 industrial engineering graduate who built a highly successful career in the private sector. He began his career at Textron Corp. before moving on to the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The bulk of his career in the private sector was spent at Mars Inc. where he began as a systems engineer and rose to plant manager and then director of engineering. His time at Mars culminated with his retirement as the vice president of manufacturing and supply chain. Following his retirement, Lewis was called home to serve his alma mater. With the forethought for the future of engineering, he constructed a business plan, assisted in the development of funding and served as a corporate liaison with Siemen’s Corporation for the construction of the Auburn University MRI Research Center. He has helped build relationships with the medical community, specifically the University of Alabama Birmingham, and other engineering medical institutions to position Auburn Engineering as a leader in MRI research. Lewis currently serves as senior advisor to the dean at the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. In addition to his role as senior advisor to the dean, he led the college’s development efforts during the recent “Because This is Auburn” campaign, raising more than $247 million toward support for student scholarships and fellowships, student programs and faculty, and facility upgrades.

Gerald Pouncey, ’82 Chemical Engineering

Gerald Pouncey earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1982 and went on to complete his J.D. in 1985. Pouncey serves as chairman at Morris, Manning and Martin LLP, and has been voted as one of America’s Leading Lawyers for Business by Chambers USA. He was named a Georgia Super Lawyer by Atlanta Magazine, honored as an Energy and Environmental Trailblazer by the National Law Journal in 2016 and named Environmental Lawyer of the Year by the Best Lawyers in America in 2017. In addition to his outstanding law career, Pouncey has given back generously to Auburn Engineering. He has supported building renovation projects in Ross Hall and the Shelby Center. He has also given in support of Keystone and Engineering unrestricted funds. He is a member of the Foy Society, 1856 Society, and Engineering’s Keystone and Ginn Societies.

Regenia Sanders, ’95 and ’99 Mechanical Engineering Regenia Sanders graduated in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and went on to earn a master’s

degree in mechanical engineering in 1999. She serves as the principal at Ernst and Young LLP (EY) and serves as the EY consulting US-central supply chain and operations leader. She has 22 years of experience driving supply chain assessment and transformation projects, spanning sourcing, procurement and planning to fulfillment for Fortune 500 and private equity portfolio companies. In addition to her robust career, Sanders continues to serve Auburn University and Auburn Engineering through her time and philanthropy. She was the national president for the Auburn University Alumni Association in 2020. Her philanthropic support extends to scholarships, engineering unrestricted funds, the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center and 100+ Women Strong. For her support of Brown-Kopel, a space was named in her honor. She is a member of the Auburn Engineering Council, the George Petrie Society, the Samford Society and the Circle of Excellence Society.

Zeke Smith, ’82 Industrial Engineering

Zeke Smith graduated from Auburn in 1982 with a degree in industrial engineering. He has more than 35 years of service with Alabama Power. Throughout his prestigious career with Alabama Power, he was quickly promoted through the ranks. Before his current role, Smith served as vice president of financial and regulatory planning, vice president of regulatory services and director of regulatory and pricing. He currently serves as the executive vice president of external affairs at Alabama Power and as the chairman of the Alabama Power Foundation’s Board of Directors. He serves on the Samford University Board of Trustees, the Business Council of Alabama Board of Directors, the Birmingham Business Alliance Board of Directors, the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame Board of Directors, the Bryant-Jordan Board of Directors and the Birmingham Bowl Executive Committee. Smith serves on the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council and the McCrary Institute Advisory Council. He and his wife, Darlene, established the Zeke and Darlene Smith Endowed Creed Scholarship in Engineering. In service to the state of Alabama, Smith was appointed by the governor as president of the Innovate Alabama commission’s advisory council, the College and Career Ready Task Force, the Tornado Recovery Action Council of Alabama, and the Alabama Workforce Council. For his professional achievements, he was inducted into the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in 2019.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AWARDS Outstanding Young Auburn Engineers Rose-Gaëlle Belinga, ’09 and ’12 Software Engineering Rose-Gaëlle Belinga is a two-time Auburn Engineering graduate, earning her bachelor’s degree in software engineering in 2009 and her master’s degree in software engineering in 2012. She serves as a technology associate for Morgan Stanley. A generous supporter of Auburn Engineering, Belinga has given philanthropically in support of scholarships and the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. She is also a member of 100+ Women Strong. Belinga is a member of the Petrie Society, Foy Society, Engineering Eagles Society and the Computer Science and Software Engineering Advisory Board. She is a recipient of the “Grow with Google” scholarship challenge for Android developers.

Ryan Hill, ’08 and ’11 Mechanical Engineering

Ryan Hill is a 2008 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and went on to complete his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2011. He serves as the research engineer for Integrated Solutions for Systems. A dedicated young alumnus, Hill is a member of the Engineering Eagles Society and has been a Tiger Giving Day donor since the program launched. He is a Young Alumni Council Scholarship donor and an executive member of the Young Alumni Council. Hill’s dedication to Auburn Engineering is showcased in his volunteer service. He has helped Auburn’s mentor and mock interview program for the last few years. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hill collaborated with Auburn Engineering professors to help develop the REInVENT CPAP to emergency ventilator project in the spring of 2020.

T.J. Pruitt, ’05 Electrical Engineering

T.J. Pruitt is a 2005 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Following graduation, Pruitt served as an engineer supervisor for Alabama Power, where he was responsible for managing a team of engineers and line crew for the Clanton region. He currently serves as the contract services supervisor for Mississippi Power.

He has served as the campus recruiter for Alabama Power and Mississippi Power, and assists Auburn students in fulltime, co-op and internship searches with the Southern Company subsidiaries.

Superior Service Bob Karcher, Retired Assistant Dean for Engineering Student Services

Bob Karcher is a 1978 graduate with a degree in theology. He completed his master’s degree in counselor education in 1993 and his doctorate in educational psychology in 2008. Karcher retired as assistant dean of Engineering Student Services, director of Engineering Global Programs and director of Engineering Student Services, while previously serving as director of admissions and assistant director of admissions. Karcher built what is now known as Engineering Student Services from the ground up. The top-notch student support services the college offers as the best-student centered engineering experience in America is what it is because of Karcher. During his time, he continued to build on the student services offered, while maintaining and building on quality, which is evidenced by this building and dream coming to fruition. Similarly, Karcher took the idea of an Engineering Global Program and indeed made it global. What started out with a handful of students, faculty and few alumni volunteers has blossomed to take Auburn engineers to dozens of countries around the world. In retirement, Karcher continues to serve as a consultant with the Engineering Global Program, expanding the horizons and relationships for the College of Engineering, its students and faculty. The Auburn Alumni Engineering Council was formed in 1966 as a group of alumni who work together to support the vision and goals of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. The council meets twice annually to assist and advise the college, and its members serve on a variety of committees geared to the mission and operation of the college. They demonstrate a continuing commitment to move the college to new levels of excellence and take its place among the nation’s premier engineering institutions. The council provides leadership and participation in areas such as academics, development, governmental affairs and public relations.

Pruitt is a loyal Auburn Engineering alumnus, and serves on the Auburn University Electrical Engineering Industrial Advisory Board, the Engineering Academic Excellence Program Advisory Board and the Young Alumni Council. Pruitt was also the first male member of 100+ Women Strong.

ENG. AUBURN.EDU

1301 Shelby Center • 1161 W. Samford Ave., Building 8 Auburn, AL 36849-0001

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID PPCO

Auburn Engineer Fall 2021

Articles inside

It’s My Job

Be the Creed

From the Dean