Around the Quad

New chapter of Alpha Sigma Mu advances materials science at Case

Front row, l to r: Menghong Wang, Madeleine McAllister, Sharon Chen, Claire Nelson Back row, l to r: David Scannapieco, Zhe Ren, Benjamin Palmer, Samantha Lederman, Lauren Homack, James McGuffin-Cawley

Materials science has been growing as an industry and as a field of research, and now there’s an honor society at the Case School of Engineering to encourage professional fellowship.

Ten students and a professor were inducted into a newly formed Case chapter of Alpha Sigma Mu, the honor society for materials professionals, May 8 at Nighttown.

The Case chapter of the prestigious honor society includes six undergraduate students, three graduate students and one materials science professional — James McGuffin-Cawley, PhD ’84, the Senior Associate Dean of the Case School of Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering.

Organizers of the chapter, including professors Sunniva Collins and Mark De Guire, hope to enrich a growing program by rewarding stellar students and pulling professional mentors into the fold.

“It helps our students because it recognizes the best of the best,” said De Guire, PhD, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “So there’s the recognition. Then there’s the call to lifetime service and high professional standards.”

Students chosen for the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Sigma Mu represent the top 25 percent of their class at Case and have contributed to the department or the profession through volunteerism and leadership.

Established in 1932, Alpha Sigma Mu encourages and recognizes excellence in materials engineering. It’s a growing field, thanks to the emergence of additive manufacturing and the increasing importance of renewable energy, biomedical devices and advanced metals, ceramics and polymers.

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering at CSE is made up of 12 faculty members who teach and advise about 100 students, roughly split between graduate and undergraduate programs.

The first three graduate-student members of the society are Benjamin Palmer, Zhe Ren and Menghong Wang. The first six undergraduate members are Sharon Chen, Lauren Homack, Samantha Lederman, Madeleine McAllister, Claire Nelson and David Scannapieco.

The Case Alumni Association has helped most of the inductees with scholarships.

Professor Mark De Guire chats with graduate student Menghong Wang at the induction dinner.

Engineering’s Roger Quinn honored as a top university researcher

Professor Roger Quinn is a big reason that, from the robotics labs in the Glennan Building, come robots that can walk, crawl, climb and slither. He helped to pioneer biologically inspired robotics and make the nimble machines a Case specialty.

Quinn, who opened his bio-robotics lab in 1990, inspired a generation of students and researchers who take cues from animal anatomy to design stronger, more agile robots. In April, the university recognized him as one of its most prolific scholars with a Faculty Distinguished Research Award.

The Arthur P. Armington Professor of Engineering, Quinn is seen as an international leader in bio-robotics, a researcher who has made seminal contributions to the emerging field.

His work in a “very thorough and elegant way, combines solutions from engineering for the control of walking robots with findings from biology, in particular neurobiology,” one of his colleagues wrote in a nominating letter.

It now stands as a “hallmark in the field of motor control research, bridging neurosciences and engineering,” another colleague wrote.

Meanwhile, he has graduated 34 doctoral and 77 master’s students, delivered more than 150 scientific lectures at national and international conferences, and secured eight patents, the university reported.

That’s not all. As faculty adviser to the CWRU Cutters, he has guided Case engineering students to three first-place finishes at the national Robotic Lawn Mower Competition.

A second chance at life helped to make an author of Professor Mike Adams

Professor emeritus Maurice “Mike” Adams Jr. may be the happiest engineer in town. He recently published three books that tap his engineering expertise. Better yet, in February, he reached his five-year remission date.

That, the doctors say, means he’s cancer free.

“God was good to me,” said Adams, who retired in 2015 from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Case School of Engineering. “It was a one-year trip to hell and back but I made it through.”

Authorship and cancer treatments went hand in hand.

The warning sounded in 2014, when he had a pair of wisdom teeth pulled. His jaw was slow to heal and his dentist sent him to a specialist, who spied the cancer. Adams, who lost his wife to lung cancer, retired from Case after 33 years on the faculty.

His cancer was discovered early enough to be treated successfully, though rather dramatically. A surgeon removed his right jawbone. Adams came away feeling physically fine but emotionally bereft. Along with being an engineer and a professor, he’s a concert-level clarinetist. Or was.

When he realized he could not play his beloved clarinet at the same level, he set the instrument aside. And began to type.

“I’m not going to complain,” he said. “I’m alive and well. I said to hell with it. I started writing books.”

The books tapped engineering knowledge gleaned in the labs on Case Quad and during 14 years in private industry, with employers like Westinghouse and Worthington.

Maurice Adams performed a Mozart clarinet concerto in 2013 in Harkness Chapel CRC Press published Power Plant Centrifugal Pumps and Rotating Machinery R&D Test Rigs in 2017 and Bearings in 2018. Adams is at work on another book, this one on machine design and development. He’s ready to teach again, should the opportunity arise. And he takes pride in the fact that all four of his sons became mechanical engineers. “I’m loving life,” he said. “I’ve got lots to be happy for.” You can reach him via mla5@case.edu

Globally minded engineering students find a new stream of support

Members of the Humanitarian Design Corps have enjoyed some success engineering solutions to problems and challenges in remote corners of the world. They thought alumni and others might be willing to help them as they practice globally minded engineering.

Turns out they were right.

The group’s first crowdfunding campaign, launched in May, exceeded its initial goal by collecting more than $5,000 from 30 donors. (You can still give at www.casealum.org/hdc).

The money will help students travel to some of the group’s ongoing projects, including a water system that corps members designed in a remote village in Costa Rica and a solar energy system they are building in a national park in Malawi.

The four-year-old student group, popular among engineering majors, promises real-life engineering lessons and social impact. It’s had no problem attracting student interest: about 50 young men and women belong to the corps.

The new stream of support means they can take on more challenges — and maybe make a bigger impact.

Investors are excited about new optical storage technology

Kenneth Singer, PhD, the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve, thought he could transform the archival storage industry with a patented, multi-layer film that can be written with existing Blu-Ray laser technology.

Six years since the launch of his startup, Folio Photonics, that vision is coming together.

In May, the Solon-based company announced a seed funding round had attracted $8 million from investors led by Refinery Ventures of Cincinnati, and that the former CEO of Panasonic North America, Joe Taylor, had joined the board. Pavey Investments and Capital One Partners of Cleveland also invested in the company. Folio Photonics was founded in 2012 as a spinoff from the Center for Layered Polymeric

Systems at the Case School of

Engineering. It licensed optical data storage technology developed at CliPS, a National Science Foundation-funded science and technology center founded and directed by Professor Eric Baer and the late Professor Anne Hiltner.

The company said in a news release that unlike existing archival storage solutions, its terabyte-scale multilayer DataFilm Discä “delivers an extremely long shelf-life, small environmental footprint and low total cost of ownership.”

Their initial product is aimed at the burgeoning data archiving market, a critical need for cloud storage, business and government.

The technology was developed by Singer and his team in labs at CLiPS, which is housed in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering. The invention “involves the design of a multilayer film capable of being written with existing Blu-Ray laser technology and produced in a highly scalable roll-to-roll process,” according to the release.

Steven Santamaria, the company’s CEO, told Crain’s Cleveland Business the company plans to expand its staff of 14 and hopes to have its technology commercially available by 2021.