Kansas Engineer - Fall 2022

KANSAS ENGINEER THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

FALL 2022

Innovation Starts Here KU Innovation Park expansion will attract new startup tech companies that can draw on research and a ready-made supply of Jayhawk graduates.

16 ENGINEERING FACULTY AMONG MOST CITED RESEARCHERS ON EARTH

FORECASTING WATER AVAILABILITY IN KANSAS

IMPROVING ACCESS TO BLACK LITERATURE

Contents

Fall 2022, Volume 46, Number 1

FEATURES 3

KU Innovation Park Provides Entrepreneurial Spark

5

Lawrence Named America’s ‘Fastest Growing’ Tech Hub

6

Biotech Company with KU Roots Wins National Competition

A KU tradition since 1914

DEPARTMENTS 7

Project Connects Underrepresented KC Youths with ‘OutOf-School’ Opportunities

8

Engineering Professor Wins University Research Rising Award

9

Grant Improves Access to History of Black Literature

11

NSF Project Advances Manufacturing of Renewable and Recyclable Plastics

12

COVID Testing Device Developed at KU Receives Funding Boost

13 ‘Lab-On-A-Chip’ Technology Wins $6.6 Million In Continued Funding 14

Forecasting Water Availability and Allocation in Kansas

15

KU to Lead Research Project on Resilient and Socially Equitable Infrastructure

17

Fortifying Security Operations Centers

18

Charging Electric Vehicles on the Go

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Addressing Workforce Shortage in Microchip Production

20

Grant Enables Investigation into Vital Role of Sex Hormones in Tissue Repair

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Aerospace Engineering Team Wins Valuable Time on Supercomputer

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Steel Bridges Research Will Fortify American Infrastructure

FACULTY NEWS 24

16 Engineering Faculty Members Among Most Cited Researchers in the World

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Engineering Professor Becomes First Woman to Win International Meshing Award

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Chemical Engineering Department Developing New Model for Evaluating Teaching

27

Collins Receives Fulbright Scholar Award

28

Testing New Environmentally Friendly Refrigerant at Watson Library

29

Faculty Achievements

STUDENT NEWS 30

Chemical Engineering Student Wins Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship

31

Engineering Graduate Students Claim Top Honors at International Radar Conference

32

Aerospace Engineering Teams Claim Top Honors in International Competition

33

Student Achievements

ALUMNI NEWS

Cover: With Fraser Hall perched in the distance atop Mount Oread, this aerial overview from KU’s West District shows KU Innovation Park in the foreground.

The site is expected to transform the western gateway of the university in the coming years.

Photo by: Max Jiang, KU School of Engineering

34

Seven Honored with Distinguished Engineering Service Award

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Gift from KU Alumni Creates Scholarship for Hometown Students

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Bisarya Scholarship to Support International Student

39

Estate of KU Alumnus Gives $2M for Engineering, Law Schools

40

Alumni Profiles

FUNDRAISING 42

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KANSAS ENGINEER

RESEARCH NEWS

Donor and Industry Recognition

DEAN OF ENGINEERING Arvin Agah ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS Mario Medina ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION & BELONGING Elaina Sutley ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESARCH Suzanne Shontz EDITOR AND PUBLIC RELATIONS DIRECTOR Cody Howard codyh@ku.edu COPY EDITOR Susie Fagan DESIGN AND LAYOUT Chris Millspaugh Design Kansas Engineer is published annually by the University of Kansas School of Engineering and is distributed to engineering and computer science alumni and friends. Kansas Engineer is not published at state expense.

To unsubscribe from Kansas Engineer, please send an email to records@ku.edu We welcome your comments. Our mailing address is the University of Kansas School of Engineering, Eaton Hall, 1520 W. 15th Street, Room 1, Lawrence, KS 66045-7608. Call us at (785) 864-3881 or send email to codyh@ku.edu.

The mission of the University of Kansas School of Engineering is to provide its students with the highest quality educational experience possible, to generate and apply knowledge through research, development, and scholarly activity, and to serve society, the state and the engineering profession.

The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, age, ancestry, disability status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, gender identity, gender expression, and genetic information in the university’s programs and activities. Retaliation is also prohibited by university policy. The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policies and are the Title IX coordinators for their respective campuses: Director of the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, civilrights@ku.edu, Room 1082, Dole Human Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045, 785-864-6414, 711 TTY (for the Lawrence, Edwards, Parsons, Yoder, and Topeka campuses); Director, Equal Opportunity Office, Mail Stop 7004, 4330 Shawnee Mission Parkway, Fairway, KS 66205, 913-588-8011, 711 TTY (for the Wichita, Salina, and Kansas City, Kansas medical center campuses).

engr.ku.edu

FROM THE DEAN

World-Class Researchers at Work in a Bustling Tech Hub Greetings and “Rock Chalk,” Jayhawk Engineers! I am proud to share with you another year’s worth of outstanding success and amazing achievements for the students, faculty, staff, and alumni from the University of Kansas School of Engineering.

One recurring theme throughout my time as Dean of Engineering is a drive to elevate the stature of our School. On the pages that follow, you will see numerous examples of highprofile research projects, student success and institution-wide initiatives that showcase examples of how KU Engineering is raising its profile on the regional and national stage.

This includes Lawrence’s place at the top of a recent report that revealed the city had the highest growth in tech workers per capita in the U.S. Jobs in Lawrence grew by 16% during 2019-20 — a faster rate than in industry hubs like San Francisco (4.3%) and Austin, Texas (3.4%). KU and the School of Engineering feature an entrepreneurial spirit that encourages and supports startups and can provide the highskilled workforce to sustain and grow these industries.

KU has major plans to exponentially expand the university’s efforts in these areas — particularly through the growth of KU Innovation Park near Clinton Parkway and Iowa streets.

This comprises an ambitious plan to add new buildings near the park over the next decade and a half — including apartments, a grocery store, child care and more to attract new startup tech companies that can draw on research and a ready-made supply of graduates from KU. Research projects conducted at the School of Engineering will be central to these efforts.

Dean of Engineering Arvin Agah

A recent study highlights the degree to which KU is home to a truly world-class research environment. Sixteen faculty members are among the top 2% of scientists worldwide cited by others in research publications. That is roughly 14% of KU Engineering faculty. Earning a spot on this list is a noteworthy accomplishment that requires commitment and dedication and is a sign that research by KU Engineering faculty has served as a foundation for scientists and engineers around the world.

Closer to home, I continue to be impressed and inspired by the achievements and contributions of our alumni. In the most recent academic year, we had the opportunity to bestow seven individuals with close ties to KU Engineering with the School’s highest honor, the Distinguished Engineering Service Award (DESA). Please take a moment to read about the remarkable careers and accomplishments of our 2020, 2021 and 2022 awardees.

I also want to recognize the contributions of the broader Jayhawk Engineering alumni family and donors who continue to provide remarkable, generous support for our students and faculty through mentoring, scholarships and professorships.

All of us at the School of Engineering remain grateful for all your support.

Thank you, and Rock Chalk!

Arvin Agah, Ph.D. Dean of Engineering

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Max Jiang, KU School of Engineering

KU Innovation Park Provides Entrepreneurial Spark

by Joel Mathis

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hen Kevin Leonard was ready to take his research on green hydrogen generation out of a laboratory at the University of Kansas and put it to work in the real world, he didn’t have to look far to find a location for his new company. KU Innovation Park was right there.

The availability of space at the park made it easier for Leonard, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, to procure a National Science Foundation grant to jump-start his new startup, Avium.

“The laboratory space available at KU Innovation Park really helped our Phase I grant be successful,” Leonard said. “The close proximity to the KU campus was a significant advantage for us, and that enabled us to get the technology out of the laboratory and toward commercialization.”

KU Innovation Park helped jump-start Avium — and now KU and Lawrence city and business leaders want to do the same for the park, as it seeks to grow in the university’s West District near Clinton Parkway and Iowa Street in Lawrence.

They’re pressing ahead with an “ambitious” plan to add new buildings near the park over the next decade and a half — including apartments, a grocery store, child care and more to attract new startup tech companies that can draw on research and a ready-made supply of graduates from KU. That’s in addition to proposals that would bring the park itself to a grand total of 10 buildings providing 800,000 square feet of research and office space.

Those new amenities “will allow us to attract new companies at the park and generate new companies,” said Laverne Epp, executive chair of KU Innovation Park. “The idea is to create an environment where small, early-stage companies and large companies can inhabit and collaborate. We see more companies wanting to come to Kansas, specifically to Lawrence to get access to the university and the university’s assets.”

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Formerly known as the Bioscience and Technology Business Center, KU Innovation Park is an independent, nonprofit economic development organization with four founding stakeholders: KU, the city of Lawrence, Douglas County and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. The park’s centerpiece facility is a 50,000-square-foot main “incubator” with lab and office space. A 66,000-square-foot facility is under construction and expected to open soon.

With that project nearly complete, KU and city leaders have started looking ahead at how to grow the park over the next 10 to 15 years.

“Over the past year and a half, the university has been working on an economic development plan,” said Tricia Bergman, director of strategic partnerships for the KU Office of Research. “This plan will benefit the local economy and the state. A key aspect of the plan is the partnership with KU Innovation Park and our combined efforts to develop a continuum of support for KU startups as they transition from the lab to larger facilities while also supplying talent and research expertise to both the early-stage and large companies in the park.”

To support this planned growth, the park needs more than new buildings — it needs to create the conditions to catalyze a community of researchers and entrepreneurs. That’s why they want to put the apartments, groceries and childcare in close proximity to the offices and labs.

“Right now, if you think about the research park as it is — you drive there, you go into your building and you leave.

If you want to go to lunch, you’ve got to get in your car,” said Monte Soukup, senior vice president of KU Endowment’s property division, which owns the land for the proposed park expansion. With the new amenities, researchers and other workers at the park “might grab a cup of coffee, drop off your dry cleaning or go to the grocery store within walking distance of where you’re working.”

And making a walkable community should enable a “kind of random collision between researchers,” Soukup said, enabling incidental conversations between individuals who might not otherwise encounter each other. “That’s where different disciplines meet, where different ideas are discovered.”

Soukup said he expects to see “a lot” of that proposed development happen in the next five years. If successful, it will help draw more companies and researchers like Avium and Kevin Leonard to the park.

“There are so many challenges to go from something working in the laboratory to getting that technology translated to a commercial product,” Leonard said. “I believe that building this community of entrepreneurs will accomplish several things, including helping the local economy, and increase the awareness that great technologies are developed at the University of Kansas.”

“A key aspect of the plan is the partnership with KU Innovation Park and our combined efforts to develop a continuum of support for KU startups as they transition from the lab to larger facilities while also supplying talent and research expertise to both the early-stage and large companies in the park.”

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KU Researchers, Entrepreneurs Capitalizing on Lawrence’s Designation as America’s ‘Fastest Growing’ Tech Hub

by Joel Mathis

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awrence, Kansas is growing tech jobs faster than any other city in America, according to data from a prominent national think tank.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution found that jobs in the city grew by 16% during 2019-20 — a faster rate than in industry hubs like San Francisco (4.3%) and Austin, Texas (3.4%). (A March 2022 report from Axios suggested the Lawrence number might be as high as 19%.) Local observers attributed that growth to the COVID-19 pandemic, which required many workers to do their jobs remotely, as well as Lawrence’s amenities — and, of course, the ability to draw on talent and research at the University of Kansas.

“Lawrence has a great downtown and a strong university,” said Brian McClendon, a tech pioneer who helped create Google Earth before returning to Lawrence as a research professor in the KU School of Engineering. He is now a senior vice president with Niantic Labs, an “augmented reality” company that has opened an office in Lawrence. The city “has fostered many small startups,” McClendon said, and added: “KU is a big factor as many startups have been ‘KU adjacent.”

It’s a distinction that KU officials are working to cultivate — particularly through the growth of KU Innovation Park near Clinton Parkway and Iowa streets in Lawrence. The park is home to numerous startups that have their roots in the university as well as others that want to locate adjacent to the university to leverage student talent and research expertise.

“Lawrence has a culture that supports tech entrepreneurism and provides options to meet their location needs,” said Tricia Bergman, director of strategic partnerships for KU’s Office of Research. “We let people know if they want to be on Massachusetts Street — if they want to get to the coffee shop, to the bar — that’s a great location. Alternatively, if they want to locate directly adjacent to the university then the KU Innovation Park is a great option.”

There’s hope that the recent burst of tech jobs is just beginning.

The Brookings researchers noted a 2021 survey of tech firm founders said that if they were starting their business all over again “their preferred ‘place’ to launch it would be through remote or distributed work.” And indeed, during the early stages of the pandemic, tech employment growth slowed in the industry’s traditional hubs — “and increased in numerous other midsized and smaller markets, including smaller quality-of-life meccas and college towns.”

It’s not clear that trend will continue as the pandemic recedes, the researchers said, but “there’s no doubt, at the local level, that the remote work experiment during the pandemic has shown that cloud-based tools for workers, firms, and entrepreneurs can open up hopeful prospects for tech activity anywhere.” At the same time, they said, the tech sector is “heavily shaped by clusters” of like-minded companies and their workers who have the opportunity to collaborate and exchange ideas in a shared community.

That’s an opportunity for Lawrence and KU, where there are plans to begin transforming KU Innovation Park with new development that will include housing, child care, coffee shops and even a grocery store to attract more startup companies eager to draw on talent found in the university’s labs and classrooms.

“The companies in the park are here because they want KU talent, or they want access to KU research and expertise,” Bergman said. The university can “help accelerate their growth and solve their challenges.”

“As concern about the pandemic ebbs, I don’t think we’re going back to the way things were,” McClendon said.

Indeed, Niantic Labs opened its Lawrence office in May 2022, signaling an intent to stick around for the long term.

“It’s relatively small and it’ll take a while to build out the team,” McClendon said of the new office. That may portend a bright future, both for KU and Lawrence: “Many people are discovering the benefits of working at home or working in a smaller office and will likely stay there.”

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Biotech Company with KU Roots Wins National Competition, Secures Funding to Help Move Research ‘From Bench to Bedside’

by Brendan Lynch

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Clara Biotech’s patented ExoRelease platform is unique in the industry. Current processes rely on bulk isolation, whereas Clara’s “capture and release” technology isolates pure exosomes. This allows researchers to easily isolate and target specific exosomes — including cardiac, neurological, cancer and others — and use them for therapeutic treatments and drug delivery platforms.

Clara Biotech launched in 2018 with a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Cancer Institute and received training through the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program on how to transfer knowledge into products and processes that benefit society. It has seven full-time employees, and its lab is housed in the KU Innovation Park.

Submitted photo

he human body contains trillions of cells at any given moment, each doing highly specialized work to help us function — but they don’t operate in isolation. Imagine a sophisticated FedEx or UPS delivery network empowering communication between our cells. The nano-sized delivery vehicles in this scenario are called exosomes, and a company born from technology developed at the University of Kansas is harnessing the power of these tiny vessels to enable tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs.

Clara Biotech has spent the last three years refining a novel technology to isolate and purify exosomes, which can be used for early disease diagnosis, targeted drug delivery, cancer immunotherapy and other forms of regenerative medicine.

The company was founded by KU Engineering alumnus Jim West and Mei He, former KU professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and chemistry.

Now, the company is poised to commercialize its first product after recently finalizing $1.5 million in seed funding and being recognized in a national competition.

Clara Biotech was the only Midwest company singled out in MedTech Innovator’s Biotools Innovator program, which recognizes the 10 best life science tools startups. The company received $10,000 for securing a spot in the 2021 cohort and a $5,000 best-video award for a one-minute spot introducing the company and detailing what sets it apart.

“Clara Biotech was founded to help move exosomes from the bench to the bedside,” said West, who serves as Clara’s CEO. “Our company is about building a platform that everybody can leverage to bring their products to market and help solve challenges around isolation and purification, which today is one of the number one issues in the field.”

Exosomes deliver genetic information to cells throughout the body. Exosomes from regenerative cells, such as stem cells, can help the body heal and repair itself. Exosomes released from diseased cells might be used for early detection and diagnosis of cancer and other conditions.

But at 100 nanometers in diameter — less than the wavelength of visible light — exosomes are difficult to handle.

Jim West, CEO of Clara Biotech, holds the two checks his company won at MedTech Innovator’s Biotools Innovator program in San Diego in October 2021.

RESEARCH NEWS

KU Awarded $1M to Help Connect Underrepresented KC Youths with ‘Out-of-School’ Opportunities A team led by researchers at the University of Kansas has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help underrepresented Kansas City youths access enriching out-of-school opportunities.

Internships, part-time jobs and other learning experiences are “useful for young people to really learn more about themselves and cultivate their identities,” said Alexandra Kondyli, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering at KU. The grant will fund development of a mobile app and other tools to help teens on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border discover those opportunities — and to connect with transportation services that can get them to where those opportunities are located.

“We want to implement new mobility options young people can use to go to out-of-school opportunities, while minimizing energy consumption and transportation costs,” said Kondyli, the project’s leader. “We’re trying to address accessibility barriers that underrepresented youths are facing.”

KU is partnering with a number of Kansas City organizations on the project, including the Kansas City Public Library, KC Digital Drive, ThrYve and Keystone Community Corporation, as well as transit, bike and micro-transit providers in the area.

Their challenge: In sprawling, low-density metropolitan areas like Kansas City, the physical disconnect between residential areas and OST

Andy White, KU Marketing Communications

by Joel Mathis

Alexandra Kondyli, middle, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, works with KU students in this 2017 file photo.

opportunities — combined with unreliable and inefficient transportation services — creates two fundamentally different experiences: Youths from affluent homes and school districts, who are disproportionately white, have greater access than youths from lowerincome homes and schools, who are disproportionately Black and Latino.

“The motivation is to support the young people in the Kansas City region and to support them in such a way that not only positively impacts their personal and professional growth, but it impacts our city as a whole,” said Andrea Ellis, director of strategic learning at Kansas City Public Library.

The project is also drawing widely from resources at KU, with participation from the KU Transportation Center and

the Center for Community Health and Development.

“It is critical that we address transportation as a determinant or underlying factor that contributes to inequities experienced by youth and families in our communities,” said Jomella Watson-Thompson, associate director for community participation and research at the Center for Community Health and Development.

“A key strategy identified by partners, youth and families is the need to reduce accessibility barriers that impede participation of youth in available positive opportunities in our community, including employment, educational supports and pro-social activities.”

“What we found in our research — and research that our KANSAS ENGINEER | 7

RESEARCH NEWS

partners have conducted — is that students who don’t have afterschool transportation don’t have the same opportunities to get jobs or internships or other ways to improve themselves professionally,” said Lisa Koch, associate director for research, partnership and innovation at the KU Transportation Center. “That gap of being able to have opportunities to grow work skills really impacts them throughout their education and

careers.” She added: “This is a very special grant.”

The grant was awarded through the federal government’s Civic Innovation Challenge, which funds researchbased projects that address community priorities and have the potential for long-term impact. The KU project was one of 17 nationwide to receive backing during the CIVIC Innovation Challenge and one of six on the mobility track.

Kondyli said she hoped the project results in work that improves the lives of Kansas City youths.

“These are folks that are really young, trying to explore opportunities and trying to learn more about what they’d like to be involved with in the future,” she said. “Breaking the accessibility barriers will help educate them further and grow their occupational identities.”

ENGINEERING PROFESSOR WINS UNIVERSITY RESEARCH RISING AWARD TO DESIGNED TO ADDRESS CRITICAL CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY

by Mindie Paget Perry Alexander, AT&T Foundation Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and director of the Institute for Information Sciences, is the leader of one of four major research initiatives the university selected for a Research Rising award in summer 2022.

Alexander’s team and the other three groups will each receive $3 million over five years to support projects that rose to the top of a strong pool of finalists after rigorous review by nationally and internationally recognized experts. The projects align with one or more of KU’s five strategic research areas and will help the university achieve national preeminence in several areas of inquiry.

“These exciting projects bring together University of Kansas researchers from across disciplines to address critical challenges facing humanity. The knowledge, ideas, approaches and solutions generated by these teams will benefit people

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in Kansas and beyond,” said Simon Atkinson, vice chancellor for research.

“What’s more, these teams will be highly competitive for federal research funding, so we anticipate a steady influx of external dollars in the future that will outpace KU Endowment’s initial $12 million investment to help establish these initiatives at KU.”

ABOUT ALEXANDER’S PROJECT Securing Our Worlds: Physical, Digital, Social This project will form an interdisciplinary, multicenter organization focused on finding solutions to otherwise unsolved problems related to safe and secure physical, digital and social environments — ultimately creating more secure and resilient communities.

The principal investigator is Perry Alexander, who will be joined by faculty colleagues in engineering,

philosophy, history and journalism.

The project aligns with two of KU’s strategic research areas: Safety & Security and Human Experience in the Digital Age. Other projects awarded are titled Big Data for Drug Discovery, Growing KU’s Interdisciplinary Strengths in Genomics, and Advancing Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research at KU.

Alexander

RESEARCH NEWS

Grant Will Give Public Better Access to History of Black Literature

by Rick Hellman

When Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prizewinning novel “Beloved” came out in 1987, Maryemma Graham’s community book group in Oxford, Mississippi, started reading it but found its prose difficult to understand and enjoy.

“I went back and said, ‘What book can I give them that makes more sense than Morrison?’ Her linguistic and narrative patterns can be hard for the average reader,” said Graham, a University Distinguished Professor of English at KU and founder of the Project on the History of Black Writing (HBW).

“I was writing people asking, ‘Is there a book similar to Morrison’s, but doesn’t really read like Morrison?’

We had lots of dialogues about it, and I did a survey. Now, a year later, we read Morrison because there was a lot of hoopla about her, and they wanted to be in the flow. But it took a while to read books that had some of the same themes to prepare them to read Morrison. That’s just one story, but what it said to me was I had to be the conduit for discussions of what to read. We’re now creating machinelearning capacity to deliver that information — to say, ‘Here are more books like that, that do some of those kinds of things, that you might want to read.’”

A “Novel-Generator Machine,” a computer tool that will do exactly that, is one of four web-based “portals” proposed by Graham and funded by a newly announced $800,000, threeyear grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The three-year grant will result in the future blnet.ku.edu (for Black Literature Network), a multimedia web platform that will be the access point for all users.

Graham’s collaborators on the grant are Drew Davidson, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and a member of its Institute for Information Technology (I2S); KU alumnus Kenton Rambsy, now assistant professor of English at the University of Texas-Arlington; and Kenton Rambsy’s brother, Howard Rambsy II, a professor of literature at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. KU Libraries are also providing support for the project.

It’s the latest extension of Graham’s HBW project, which she brought with her from the University of Mississippi to Northeastern University and then to KU in 1999. The first stage was to identify and save physical copies of books by Black writers from destruction. The next was to digitize them. And now the organizers are creating tools that will allow both academic researchers and the general public to look at the entire corpus of Black fiction, which HBW has been collecting for nearly 40 years, by using

keywords, themes, data visualizations and other methods that Graham termed “metadata.”

To Graham, it’s a way to keep Black writers from continually falling into obscurity and even further behind in the age of Big Data.

“We have been doing this kind of work in Black fiction for a long time,” Graham said, “and a lot of people don’t have what we have. We only know a very small percentage of the Black fiction that exists. Most works, including some of the most influential ones — often innovative and trendsetting — remain untaught and underread for reasons that we know too well.

“Since we’ve been at KU, our growth has depended upon amazing students whose introduction to interactive technologies pushed HBW forward.

This is the first opportunity we have had to go back to some of those former students, now scholars in their own right, and say, ‘We can finally finish what we started.’”

Another grant from the Mellon Foundation to HBW last year seeks to help HBW incorporate its texts into the HathiTrust Digital Library, a major online database for literary academics, but one that Graham notes charges a

“Since we’ve been at KU, our growth has depended upon amazing students whose introduction to interactive technologies pushed HBW forward.”

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RESEARCH NEWS

Rick Hellman/KU News Service

Drew Davidson (left) and Maryemma Graham at the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center in Nichols Hall.

substantial annual membership fee. The new grant will create a website open to all, even as it honors copyright holders.

And the grant-funded work will help HBW and the English department train scholars to work in the new and growing field of digital humanities, Graham said.

“We’ve been working on this partnership that we have with Drew and ITTC for a while,” Graham said.

“We keep saying, ‘Why do we have to go someplace else to store our stuff?

Why can’t we build what we need here?’ In fact, if KU researchers actively promote interdisciplinarity, then let’s put that to the test.”

“This project is all about taking these digital assets and not just making them easier to find,” Davidson said, “but also surfacing interesting aspects of the work. Just dumping a list of titles on the screen isn’t really going to cut it, in terms of access. So what we need to find is where there are interesting details within the books about the authors, and the networks that connect Black writers over time. And this is another

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case where we’re using a lot of different levels of expertise to try and get at this question. There’s a part of this grant called the Data Rangers, one of Kenton Rambsy’s inventions.”

Davidson said teams of students will be searching through the texts and manually annotating important details.

“So it’s an educational opportunity for them,” Davidson said. “We see this project as being not just a service to the users who are looking for the data, but also a service to our institutions.

Students will help populate the dataset.

We’ll use students to help program the site itself, and we’re going to use students to test the thing, as well.”

“The Data Rangers fills a notable void by creating a community where scholars can hone their tech skills while also being able to focus on Black literature exclusively,” Kenton Rambsy said.

Graham said the prospect of the grant-funded work can help KU recruit students, especially at the graduate level, something she said that HBW has been pretty good at doing.

“We see this as innovative computer

science as well as serving the digital humanities,” Davidson said. “We are going to develop new machine-learning algorithms, and we don’t know what patterns we’ll find yet. We think that we will be able to better surface the answer to the question of ‘What speaks to you in this literature?’”

Graham said HBW continues to value its partnerships as a venue for further public outreach. Working with Howard Rambsy II and SIUE’s IRIS Center, the grant will fund production of a series of podcasts titled “Remarkable Receptions,” audio narratives concentrating on popular and critical responses to prominent Black writers.

Davidson summed up the effort with a comparison to some of today’s digital heavyweights.

“We want to make personalized recommendations — something like a really focused Amazon.com for Black literature — but also provide new ways to engage with the work.”

RESEARCH NEWS

NSF EPSCoR Grant Will Advance Manufacturing of Renewable and Recyclable Plastics

Subramaniam

by Mindie Paget the entire nation,” said NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

To conduct the chemical research, the team will employ state-of-the-art capabilities at KU’s CEBC, Pittsburg State University’s Kansas Polymer Research Center and the University of Delaware’s Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation.

But Subramaniam says that solving the plastic pollution challenge requires more than just chemical innovation.

Public policies are essential as well.

KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research will help develop software for modeling the economics of the new technologies, shedding light on policies that incentivize job creation and energy independence in the U.S. The four-year project is expected to stimulate discovery, innovation and workforce development in Kansas and Delaware. The program will also mentor junior faculty and establish a Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity to support women and underrepresented populations in this career path. The team has strong partnerships with agribusinesses and chemical companies that will also help steer the innovations toward commercialization and promote advanced manufacturing initiatives.

KU’s award is one of nine awards announced by the NSF Sept. 2021 that fund collaborative teams of investigators in scientific focus areas consistent with NSF and national priorities. Both Kansas and Delaware are targeted jurisdictions for the NSF EPSCoR, which stands for Established

Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The 40-year-old program targets areas across the country — about half of all U.S. states — to strengthen their capacity and capability in science, technology and engineering.

Since 2006, KU has received 11 EPSCoR awards totaling more than $72.4 million.

Subramaniam is one of five professors who will lead and supervise specific parts of the research. Others include Alan Allgeier, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and CEBC deputy director; Donna Ginther, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Economics and director of KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research; Timothy Dawsey, executive director of the Kansas Polymer Research Center at Pittsburg State University; and Raul Lobo, Claire D. LeClaire Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.

Max Jiang, KU School of Engineering

Plastics are an indispensable part of today’s society. These nimble polymers help keep foods fresh, cars safe, arteries clog-free and have countless other uses. But the benefits come at a cost. Each year millions of tons of discarded plastic pollute ecosystems, harm animals and exacerbate climate change.

A $4 million award from the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR RII Track 2 program will bring together researchers from Kansas and Delaware and fund work to improve how plastics are manufactured and recycled.

“We’re excited to advance technologies that will help society transition to a more sustainable plastic economy,” said lead investigator Bala Subramaniam, Dan F. Servey Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering at KU and director of KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis.

The research team will tackle two major issues related to plastic manufacturing.

First, they will develop sustainable ways to turn non-food biological resources — like grasses or crop leftovers — into plastic products, helping promote rural economic growth for farmers. Second, the team will find better ways to deconstruct used plastic to turn it into the building blocks for new plastics.

“This award highlights the key role Kansas plays in advanced manufacturing and how they continue to innovate in critical areas such as renewable plastics that will benefit

Anoop Uchagawkar, a graduate student in KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, tests catalysts for making plastic precursors in a laboratory reactor.

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RESEARCH NEWS

Adaptable Home COVID-19 Testing Device Developed at KU Receives Funding Boost

by Joel Mathis

The emergence of new COVID variants shows there will be a continued need for such technology, Soper said.

“Testing will never go away. It’s now becoming more important,” he said.

The LiquidScan device should be adaptable, he said.

“It’s easily tuned to accommodate new viruses, and there’s going to be new variants that pop up every year. We’ll be able to take this test and screen for that,” Soper said.

That versatility means the device will also have other uses. Soper said collaborators at KU Medical Center, including cancer researcher Andrew Godwin, are looking to use it to screen patients for the early detection of ovarian cancer, while others hope to use it as a way to quickly diagnose people experiencing ischemic strokes.

“I have a lot of hope for this technology. This never could’ve

been realized without several things — including, number one, the resource capabilities at KU,” Soper said, referring to the Ralph N. Adams Nanofabrication Facility at Gray-Little Hall.

KU Medical Center has also been instrumental, providing samples for Soper’s team to use as it fine-tunes the device.

“An instrument is no good unless you can test it on real clinical samples,” he said. “This is a great example of teamwork between KU-Lawrence and KUMC.” Soper earned his doctorate in bioanalytical chemistry from KU in 1989 and returned to the university as a faculty member in 2016. Funding to develop the COVID-19 test comes from the National Institutes of Health RADx Program.

Meg Kumin , KU Marketing Communications

An at-home COVID-19 testing device developed by a KU professor is another step closer to hitting the market.

BioFluidica, a company co-founded

by Steven Soper, received a separate $6 million in Series B2 financing in early 2022 to help bring its LiquidScan instrument to production. Soper has spent much of the last two years repurposing lab-on-a-chip technology he had previously developed to give doctors simple tools to more easily and quickly diagnose conditions ranging from stroke to different cancers. The financing should help BioFluidica fund some of the next steps in the process, including testing and FDA approval, as well as marketing.

“Doing something in the research lab is hard and challenging. Taking it to the next level of a consumer product is daunting,” Soper said of the funding announcement. “All of these things have to be in place, and that’s a major undertaking.”

Prototype testing was underway in the summer of 2022, with production possible by the fall.

The LiquidScan reader device measures about 8 inches long, 3 inches wide and 3 inches deep. At-home users would put saliva on the test chip, then use a hand-held electronic reader to analyze the results. The whole process would take around 15 minutes. Users would be able to buy a test for about $10, and the reader, which can be reused many times over, for about $50.

Soper

Researchers in Professor’s Soper’s lab are working to bring lab-on-a-chip technology to the consumer.

12 | FALL 2022

RESEARCH NEWS

CENTER CREATING LAB-ON-A-CHIP TECHNOLOGY FOR MEDICAL TESTS WINS $6.6 MILLION IN CONTINUED NIH FUNDING

by Brendan Lynch

Meg Kumin , KU Marketing Communications

Lab workers at the Center of BioModular Multi-Scale Systems for Precision Medicine discuss latest developments with Foundation Distinguished Professor Steven Soper.

A research center based at KU that develops rapid next-generation tests for a host of human ailments like cancer, stroke and COVID-19 recently earned $6.6 million in continued funding over the next five years from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) as a National Biotechnology Resource (P41) Center.

The Center of BioModular Multi-Scale Systems for Precision Medicine, dubbed CBM2, takes small plastic chips made of the same material as a compact disc and transforms them into marvels of engineering and chemistry that quickly can detect hard-to-diagnose human diseases using saliva, urine or blood from a patient. The liquid biopsies can detect circulating tumor cells, cell-free DNA, viruses and vesicles that are released by biological cells associated with a particular disease.

The technology honed at KU and partner institutions is pushing forward the boundaries of precision medicine, improving and extending the lives of patients, and creating commercialization partnerships as well as new training and education opportunities in the Lawrence-Kansas City region and beyond.

“We develop little $2 widgets made from a plastic by injection molding that can take a liquid biopsy sample and search for different types of markers that can help a physician manage disease,” said CBM2 director Steven Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering, who brought the center to KU when he was recruited from the University of North Carolina in 2016. “To give you an example, this little chip is used to isolate tumor cells out of the blood of cancer patients. A physician will take

a sample of blood from the patient, put it into the chip to enrich the tumor cells from the blood sample — there’s very few of them, maybe about 10 or so — and then we open those cells to look at the genetic composition to help decide: Does the patient have a disease, how to treat the disease, is the patient responding to therapy?”

Of the 50 P41 centers, CBM2 is the only one based in an NIH IDeA (Institutional Development Awards) state — a designation for states that historically have received lower amounts of NIH funding.

“Most of these biotechnology resource centers, as with all big projects, are on either coast,” Soper said. “We’re the only biotechnology resource center that’s funded in an IDeA state, so that’s a big hooray for Kansas and KU — all major NIH centers have high visibility, so we have a very important mission because we’re the only center of these 50 that has these technologies and we’re filling an important niche within the NIH community.”

Much of the work of CBM2 takes place in collaboration with partners that include KU Medical Center (Andrew Godwin, CBM2 co-director), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (Dr. David Kaufman, CBM2 codirector), Louisiana State University (professors Sunggook Park and Michael C. Murphy) and the Wake Forest School of Medicine (professor Adam Hall).

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RESEARCH NEWS

Researchers to Develop New Models for Forecasting Water Availability and Allocation in Kansas

Roundy

by Brendan Lynch

14 | FALL 2022

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo

Climate change, driven by human activity, will alter temperatures and rainfall in Kansas in the coming decades.

But predictions about the timing and severity of the shift remain inexact.

Now, researchers at the KU School of Engineering are teaming up with the Kansas Water Office (KWO) to create models accounting for uncertainty about the state’s future climate so officials who allocate water can better forecast supply and demand of the vital resource.

Their work will expand models used by KWO that depend on data from 1950s drought years in Kansas as a worst-case scenario for water scarcity. The project is supported by a $98,000 WaterSmart Grant from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation and additional funds from the KWO and KU. “This project is a collaboration with the Kansas Water Office to advance hydrological modeling and climate forecasting for the state,” said Joshua Roundy, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, who is leading the effort.

“Now, they take the 1950s drought period and run it through their model, and then use that as a basis to say, ‘We can allow cities to take this much water.’

But with the uncertainties involved in that, wouldn’t it be helpful to consider different scenarios and look forward to the future climate and how that’s going to impact evaporation and streamflow throughout the state? So, we worked together on this proposal to improve uncertainty estimates within water

Perry Lake, one of many reserviors in eastern Kansas.

forecasting using climate models to create new scenarios for their water allocations.”

The new modeling effort will focus on central and eastern sections of Kansas that depend on surface water, incorporating six river basins, 21 reservoirs, 51 inflows and 163 sources of consumptive water use.

“The Kansas Water Office is looking forward to working with the University of Kansas on this WaterSmart grant project, developing more tools and resources to incorporate climate variability to future water supply planning for the state of Kansas,” said Richard Rockel, KWO water resource planner. “This project will allow for a more comprehensive analysis of climate variability as applied to regional water supply issues the state is facing.”

Roundy and his team will use the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) from the World Climate Research Programme to forecast how Kansas water availability could be affected by climate

uncertainties in the coming years.

The CMIP5 models compare multiple emission scenarios and combine them with key feedbacks among the land, ocean and atmosphere.

“It’s a global organization, a whole bunch of modeling groups that run model experiments and compile all that data together, so you have a variety of estimates of what future climate might be like,” Roundy said. “A lot of the models are showing for most of the state maybe a small decrease in precipitation overall. When you break that down seasonally, we’re actually seeing more extreme precipitation in the wetter periods like spring times, but then you’re also getting drier fall and winter times — so they’ll have an averaging effect that overall, there’s not much change.”

Roundy said his group’s work could result in an academic paper intended to show other states and regions an approach for forecasting water supplies.

But his real objective is to help the state of Kansas thrive as climate change raises questions about water availability.

“This is about creating tools for decision-makers to make better decisions,” he said. “It’s great to be able to work with the state and really show the benefit of research at KU and how it is helping state entities improve their systems. Our main goal is to make sure things are going to be sustainable and we have sustainable growth in terms of water availability within cities going forward.”

RESEARCH NEWS

KU to Lead $24M Statewide Investment to Advance Research on Resilient and Socially Equitable Infrastructure

by Rylie Koester Image courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Kansas currently ranks ninth in federal disaster declarations per capita.

Amid changing climate patterns and frequent extreme weather events, historically underserved communities often receive less aid and recover slower from weather disasters.

Now, a new statewide initiative leveraging $20 million from the National Science Foundation and $4 million from the state of Kansas will address this disparity by developing tools that help communities with limited resources prepare for and bounce back from disasters.

The project aligns with the Kansas Science & Technology Plan, which was developed in 2021 and endorsed by the Kansas Board of Regents, who provided matching funds for the NSF proposal.

KU researchers will collaborate on the project with 16 other universities and colleges in the state, as well as with business leaders, emergency planners, health professionals, community-based organizations and other stakeholders.

“Kansans are rightly proud of their ability to recover from natural disasters, but the state faces disasters of a kind and at a frequency we’ve not seen before,” said Simon Atkinson, vice chancellor for research. “The factors that determine resilience are complex and can only be tackled by working across traditional disciplines and leveraging the intellectual resources of all the state’s research universities. That’s why this award from NSF is so important.”

The award is through the NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate

Participating institutions on ARISE, with initial rural and urban testbeds highlighted.

Research-intensive universities leading the research initiatives are highlighted in black; community colleges and universities participating in education and outreach initiatives are in blue. Partnering community colleges are highlighted in a white box. Unfunded collaborators are noted in orange. Organizations classified as minority-serving institutions are labeled with a star.

Competitive Research (EPSCoR) RII Track-1 program. NSF uses EPSCoR to level the playing field for areas in the country whose scientists receive a lower percentage of federal support.

KU will lead the EPSCoR project — called Adaptive and Resilient Infrastructures Driven

by Social Equity (ARISE) — engaging faculty, staff and students from engineering, social science, economics, computer science and other fields.

ARISE aims to advance the resilience of social and economic systems and physical infrastructure, including the systems that support transportation, water and energy sectors across urban and rural areas.

It will leverage academic research capacity in Kansas to transform rural and vulnerable communities typically underrepresented in research.

“The ARISE project lays out a case for infrastructure and community resilience to be guided by principles of social equity and active collaboration between government, industry, notfor-profits and communities,” said Belinda Sturm, professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and principal investigator on the grant. “The project not only builds academic research that converges computer science, engineering and social science, but the project will support community-engaged research KANSAS ENGINEER | 15

RESEARCH NEWS

across Kansas to create sustaining relationships between universities and communities.”

The initiative will be spread over five years, creating capacity for research and education within and between KU, Kansas State University, Wichita State University, community colleges, outreach programs, community engagement and extension offices, and workforce development programs.

“This project provides an incredible opportunity to put Kansas researchers at the forefront of cutting-edge

community disaster resilience research in a way that builds protection and increased access for and with the people of Kansas,” said Elaina Sutley, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and coprincipal investigator on the project.

The project also aims to develop education resources from K-12 to higher education, creating new opportunities in science and technology for Kansans. The project will create an interdisciplinary data science consortium that partners with Kansas

businesses and organizations and trains students to translate their skills into data-driven solutions.

Since 2006, KU has received 12 NSF EPSCoR awards totaling more than $96 million. KU’s EPSCoR program will mark its 30th anniversary this year. Not only has it jump-started the careers of more than 100 new faculty members, but for every dollar NSF EPSCoR pumps into research, Kansas receives more than double that in non-EPSCoR research funding.

Mike D’Attilio of the Kansas Division of Emergency Management

Elaina Sutley

The split image shows the destruction from the tornado in Linwood and flooding of the Fall and Verdigris rivers near Neodesha, both in 2019.

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RESEARCH NEWS

Researcher Will Use NSF Award to Fortify and Improve Security Operations Centers Bardas

by Brendan Lynch contributes to inefficiencies in security operations centers.

“We hope to create a framework that tailors security-focused automation for operational environments, assesses the role of humans in this process and reflects the outcomes in the metrics,” Bardas said. “Instead of putting forward another set of generic automation and metrics guidelines for security operations centers, the framework’s main goal is to link technical capabilities of an organization with its social structure. This way, the landscape for security operations centers can evolve from ‘all defenses need to be successful’ to ‘all attacks need to be successful’ to maintain persistent access — turning the tables on adversaries.”

The KU researcher’s work will use an array of approaches — from designing dynamic abstractions, models and software tools to ethnographic studies and interviews. Bardas said he hoped to account for factors such as stakeholders’ interests and strategic planning as well as provide on-the-ground analysts with ways to input local knowledge about their actual effectiveness into management and policy decisions.

“Security operations centers are sensitive environments, and getting access to these environments is understandably a complex endeavor,” Bardas said. “We’re fortunate to collaborate with external security operations centers from industry, academia and the government sector.

We also have a fruitful collaboration with our KU IT Security Office, and we’re very thankful for their support.”

Further, Bardas plans to utilize KU’s student information-security club, known as the “Jayhackers,” to test the resilience of approaches to security operations centers.

“We’ll take the initial framework prototypes and actually use them in cyberdefense competitions with the Jayhackers to defend our networks, to prioritize events, to quantify how we’re approaching things,” Bardas said. “Often, these cyber defense competitions resemble accelerated SOC environments. Of course, reality can be a little different, but a cyber defense competition would be one avenue of evaluating our framework. By doing so we’re also exposing our students to the framework and to security operations centers — so we’re preparing them for the workforce. Quite a few of our Jayhackers are interested in jobs offered by security operations centers. Through this training, they’ll be in a much better position when they hit the job market.”

Pexels

A prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award from the National Science Foundation will enable a KU Engineering researcher to investigate how to boost effectiveness of security operations centers (SOCs) — centralized facilities that deal with security issues and protect enterprise computer networks for private industry, academic institutions and government organizations.

“Organizations usually deploy security operations centers to manage their network operations, defend against threats in cyberspace and maintain regulatory compliance,” said Alexandru Bardas, assistant professor in KU’s Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) and the Institute for Information Science (I2S), formerly Information & Telecommunication Technology Center.

“Automation and metrics play key roles in the effectiveness of security operation centers,” he said.

“Unfortunately, security-driven automation in these environments is often implemented in ad hoc ways and is not accurately reflected in the metrics.”

According to Bardas, current solutions don’t capture all dimensions of automation. He said enterprise networks usually have either partial technical solutions to security challenges that are both social and technical or social frameworks that don’t fully comprehend the technical components of enterprise network security. The result, he said, is always a one-size-fits-all solution that

A prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation will enable a researcher from the KU Engineering to investigate how to boost effectiveness of security operations centers.

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RESEARCH NEWS

Study Shows Electric Vehicles Could Be Charged on the Go Via Peer-to-Peer System

by Brendan Lynch

18 | FALL 2022

A cloud-based system would match the two BEVs in the same vicinity, likely along major interstates. Like bicyclists in a peloton, the two matched cars could travel close together, sharing charge en route with no need to stop for hours at a charging station. The cars would drive at the same locked speed while charging cables would link the vehicles automatically and physically.

Hoque’s co-authors on the study are Prabuddha Chakraborty, Robert Parker, Jonathan Cruz, Lili Du, Shuo Wang and Swarup Bhunia of the University of Florida.

According to the researchers, vehicles would come equipped with two different batteries for the peer-to-peer BEVcharging plan: a main lithium-ion battery like ones common in today’s BEVs, and a second fast-charging battery used for on-the-go charging. The fast battery, when charged, would then replenish the vehicle’s main battery.

“You don’t want cars to stay connected for a very long time because another car might have to change its route and go somewhere else, and you may not get enough time to charge,” Hoque said. “That’s why we’ve developed the concept of multi-level battery to reduce charging time.

“Just like in your computer you have fast cache memory — but it’s expensive — so you have other type of high-capacity memories that are slower,” he said. “Similarly, for our batteries, we have incorporated this concept. You’ll have small fast-charging batteries, which will be used for peerto-peer charging, and once that small battery is charged, you disconnect, and that small-charge battery sends charge

to the bigger, slower battery.”

In high-density areas, the research team proposes deploying mobile charging stations — huge batteries riding on trucks — that can recharge multiple vehicles at once, something akin to how small military jets can get refueled in midair by a tanker aircraft.

“These mobile charging stations would probably travel major highways where they’re constantly going back and forth,” said the KU researcher. “There would be a number of these, so at a given point of time one mobile charging station is traveling while another is in the station getting ready for the game. These mobile charging stations can refuel or replenish the batteries of multiple vehicles simultaneously.”

The end result of the peer-to-peer system proposed by Hoque and his colleagues would result in more convenience and less “range anxiety” for owners of BEVs and also a cleaner environment. Hoque and his co-authors used sophisticated computer modeling software to measure recharging requirements of BEVs as well as changes to environmental impact of cars in a simulated peer-to-peer system.

Pexels

Every day, Americans see more batteryelectric vehicles (BEVs) on the road.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the market for electric vehicles (EVs) in the U.S. is expected to grow from $28.24 billion in 2021 to $137.43 billion in 2028. The reasons for the switch from internal-combustion-engine vehicles to BEVs are compelling: EVs are cleaner for the environment, cheaper to operate and offer the chance to breeze by gas stations and spend less on fuel.

However, one drawback has made some consumers wary of purchasing a BEV — limited range. Unlike those plentiful gas stations, charging stations for EVs still can be few and far in between, and recharging a BEV’s lithium-ion battery might take hours, making EVs impractical for some longrange road trips.

Now, a KU Engineering researcher has co-written a study in Scientific Reports proposing a peer-to-peer system for BEVs to share charge among each other while driving down the road by being matched-up with a cloudbased control system.

“When multiple electric vehicles are en route, they can actually share charge among themselves while running — they don’t have to stop to do this,” said Tamzidul Hoque, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science at KU. “One car might have abundant charge, and it may not need to go too far, and it can sell its charge to another car — so there’s an economic incentive. The other car, which is traveling a long way, doesn’t have much charge, and not having to stop for recharging would shorten their journey by several hours.”

Charging stations for EVs still can be few and far in between, and recharging a BEV’s lithium-ion battery might take hours. Now, a KU researcher has co-written a study proposing a peer-to-peer system for BEVs to share charge among each other.

RESEARCH NEWS

KU Engineering Develops Curriculum to Address Workforce Shortage in Microchip Production

by Joel Mathis A KU Engineering assistant professor has received a federal grant to explore using “gamifying” techniques to boost the interest of undergraduate students in learning the design and application of electronic hardware.

Tamzidul Hoque led the group that is splitting the $600,000 award from the National Science Foundation. A third of that money will go to KU; the rest will go to the University of Florida (UF), where Hoque’s collaborators Pasha Antonenko, Mary Jo Koroly and Swarup Bhunia are based.

The project could eventually have a direct impact on Americans’ pocketbooks, Hoque said. The supply chain crisis has driven inflation during the last year — with new car prices, in particular, skyrocketing because manufacturers have been unable to import enough computer chips that most modern vehicles rely on. Due to the increasing adoption of electronic devices, the global chip shortage could also affect other industries such as aerospace, defense, health care and information technology.

That’s led to a growing interest in rebuilding the United States’ chipproduction capacity. Intel announced in January a plan to spend $20 billion on a new plant in Ohio, and the company could spend up to $100 billion over the next decade.

But there’s a catch.

Such infrastructure cannot be used without engineers, scientists and technicians with the ability to design, manufacture and use such sophisticated

devices. However, misconceptions surrounding manufacturing jobs among college students, along with the growing popularity of computing jobs related to data analytics and artificial intelligence, motivate students with engineering majors to avoid hardwarerelated courses throughout their studies, according to Hoque.

“The problem we are trying to tackle here is that today in the semiconductor or hardware industry, we don’t have enough workforce, and rapid enhancement to the chip-production capacity is not feasible without that,” Hoque said.

The goal of this project is twofold.

One aim is to get more students interested in chip design and manufacturing. The other is to help prepare students in other engineering professions, such as mechanical and biomedical engineers, to use those chips in their systems.

“That’s why we are trying to develop this new course of the curriculum, which will teach fundamentals of hardware from a system perspective through a hands-on approach to students from any engineering major,” Hoque said. “And we will do that using as many interesting games that can be played on our hardware platform.”

Hoque

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RESEARCH NEWS

$1.25M Grant Enables Investigation Into Vital Role of Sex Hormones in Tissue Repair

by Brendan Lynch

20 | FALL 2022

is likely different in male and female tissues.”

As a teen athlete, Robinson was sidelined from pursuing a serious soccer career because of a knee injury, but that also triggered her interest in the science involved in the body’s recovery, a curiosity that led to her expertise in biomaterials, tissue engineering and biomolecular engineering. “My lab is really focused on connective tissue,” she said. “We do a lot with the knee meniscus. It’s really what we’ve been doing for the past three or four years.”

The KU researcher’s new work aims to develop biomaterial tools to parse out sex differences in tissue repair and how bodies maintain homeostasis, or a necessary equilibrium to promote health and function after changes such as injury.

“There’s some clinical data to show there might be differences in structural tissue components in men and women,” she said. “We know cells are very responsive to their structural environment, and in these engineered systems we can control a lot of factors.

My lab builds polymer-based 3D structures that mimic tissue. We use a technique to generate fibers on the scale of collagen — so nanometer to small micron scale — and know that across the board cells respond completely differently if they’re on a nanometer versus a micrometer fiber, or if those fibers are just randomly oriented or aligned like in muscle or a lot of connective tissue such as the meniscus.

But what if they’re from male or female patients — are those cells responding differently to the structural cues that we

Robinson Image courtesy Jenny Robinson

Our ability to heal and regenerate new tissue after an injury has much to do with biological sex. For instance, following menopause, the loss of sex-hormone signaling in women can lead to degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, where bone and cartilage degrade and become more delicate and brittle because of tissue loss.

Now, a KU researcher has earned a five-year, $1.25 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institutes of Health to study how estrogen interacts with the body at the level of the cell microenvironment.

The results could point the direction for the study of sex differences in human mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), specialized cells that can support a host of other cells by promoting tissue repair and regeneration after injury and represent a key to developing new tailored therapies.

“I’m trying to understand why male and female tissue might regenerate differently and how this leads to the onset of diseases where the tissue does not regenerate well, such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis,” said Jenny Robinson, assistant professor of chemical & petroleum engineering at KU, who will lead work under the NIH MIRA award. “We’re going to approach this question at the level or microenvironment that cells live in, essentially, and see how that might dictate regeneration. We’re looking at estradiol, the most predominant estrogen, and coupling that knowledge with control of the cells’ 3D environment to see, ultimately, what do we need to promote repair, and that

Human mesenchymal stromal cells on fibers.

can engineer and provide for them in the lab?”

Robinson said the end goal is to carry out research that will improve people’s health.

“So many people have to deal with musculoskeletal injuries,” she said. “It affects people’s quality of life. It’s one of the biggest issues that causes disability and unemployment and lack of being able to work in general. Orthopedic injury and degeneration are likely to plague many people. Everyone knows someone that has injured some type of connective tissue.”

RESEARCH NEWS

KU Team Wins Valuable Time on Supercomputer to Research Improved Aerodynamics

by Joel Mathis A team led by a KU professor of aerospace engineering has been awarded time on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. They’ll use it to help solve one of the “grand challenges” in developing the next generation of aircraft.

The group headed by Z.J. Wang, Spahr Professor of Aerospace Engineering, was one of 51 teams around the world to receive the INCITE award from the U.S. Department of Energy in early 2022.

Wang and his colleagues — Joshua Romero of NVIDIA Corporation and Nick Wyman of Cadence Design Systems — will have the use of 590,000 “node hours” of time on the Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The computing time is “so valuable,” Wang said. “If you actually purchased this time from commercial vendors, it’s worth millions of dollars.”

Wang’s project is focused on

developing and applying a technique called “wall-resolved large eddy simulation” — basically, a computer simulation of a wind tunnel test — to predict the performance of highlift configurations on aircraft. Such configurations help airplanes generate enough lift during taking off and landing, but they also create hard-topredict air flows, turbulence and noise.

That makes it tricky to get the design of high-lift configurations just right.

“The large eddy simulation of high-lift configurations is considered a grand challenge in aerospace engineering,” Wang said. “If we are successful in this project, we will have a better understanding of the complex turbulent flow, and valuable data will be generated to enable the development of turbulence and wall models.”

Wang and his colleagues have spent years developing a computational fluid dynamics tool — known as hpMusic — to understand the complex

Image courtesy ZJ Wang

Wang

Complex turbulent flow predicted with a wallmodeled large eddy simulation of the NASA Common Research Model High-Lift Configuration.

turbulence involved, and it has been used by General Electric to tackle complicated turbomachinery problems.

But the challenges presented by highlift configurations are so difficult, Wang said, that some have predicted it might be unsolvable for another decade.

The INCITE award, and the use of the Summit supercomputer, could significantly shorten that interval.

A node hour uses one node on a supercomputer for one hour. The Summit computer at Oak Ridge Laboratory has more than 4,000 nodes and is billed as the secondfastest supercomputer in the world.

Competition for those hours is fierce.

The Department of Energy received 121 proposals — the INCITE competition is open to any researcher or research organization in the world — requesting more than 120 million node-hours.

Those proposals were assessed by 11 peer-review panels of international experts before the awards were made.

The award “is a nice recognition of our reputation and capability,” Wang said. “It validates KU as a leader in high-performance computational fluid dynamics,” he said. “Those 51 teams are selected from all over the world — they represent the cream of the crop in computational sciences and engineering.”

Wang has been at KU since 2012. In addition to GE, Cadence and NVIDIA, his research is also supported by the Air Force Office of Science Research and the Army Research Office.

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RESEARCH NEWS

Research into Steel Bridges Funded by Three New Federal Highway Administration Grants Will Fortify American Infrastructure

by Brendan Lynch Several awards from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to KU Engineering will enable research to improve and lengthen the life of bridges, a critical part of American infrastructure.

“Bridges connect our communities, they provide safe passage of people and goods — and when bridges don’t function, communities and the transfer of those goods don’t function, so they’re absolutely critical to our society,” said Caroline Bennett, professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and Dean R. and Florence W. Frisbie Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, who is acting as principal investigator on two of the new grants.

Bennett pointed to the recent collapse of a 50-year-old Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that injured 10 people as an example of the need to upgrade many steel bridges nationwide.

“These sorts of things are happening with increasing frequency, and when they happen not only does it stop transfer of people and goods but it also really decays people’s faith in our societal functioning and their faith in how our infrastructure works — it decays the faith in this nation,” she said. “All of these projects are focused on improving this. They all speak directly to the heart of making our infrastructure safer, more reliable and better functioning for citizens of the U.S.” Bennett will serve as the primary investigator on a $258,165, 34-month FHWA grant aimed to develop

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improved detailing in steel bridges to prevent constraint-induced fractures.

“This is a specific type of fracture that can happen in fabricated steel components when you have detailing that produces something we call ‘constraint’ — when the structure can’t deform freely, localized stresses can build up such that the structure is not able to deform in the way that we expect as engineers. This can cause a brittle fracture, and that can bring a structure down,” she said. “The type of detailing practices that might lead to this really aren’t well understood, and we’ve had a couple of bridge failures over the last few decades that have been attributed to constraint-induced fracture.”

The KU researcher pointed to Milwaukee’s Hoan bridge failure in 2000 as a classic example of constraintinduced fracture, when three girders of the 1.9-mile bridge fractured with no evidence of prior fatigue crack development.

“It was a miracle that no one died because of that failure,” Bennett said. “We know that was caused by constraint-induced fracture, but in terms of avoiding that type of failure in different details and on a large scale, the advice engineers are given is pretty imprecise. Our job is to characterize constraint-induced fracture to help engineers detail and design structures in a way where this does not happen, and that we can more reliably look at existing structures and figure out whether they’re at an elevated risk

Bennett

Collins

of experiencing constraint-induced fracture. Also, we’ll equip engineers to figure out how to how to deal with this risk and retrofit a structure should it become important.”

Bennett, with fellow investigators and students from the School of Engineering, will use computational simulations and KU’s West Campus Structural Testing Laboratory to characterize the susceptibility of structural stiffener details in steel bridges to constraint-induced fracture, including thick bearing stiffeners, different constraint-relief gap distances between intersecting structural components and continuous welding at the intersection of the flange-webconnection plate.

A second $112,413, 22-month FHWA grant led by Bennett will investigate how to improve university curricula for graduate students studying design of bridges across the nation.

According to Bennett and her coinvestigators, “universities have reduced credit hours needed for a degree in structural engineering to focus on ‘the basics’ of a graduate education, often

RESEARCH NEWS

T. Voekler, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.

Three awards from the Federal Highway Administration to the University of Kansas School of Engineering will enable research to improve and lengthen the life of bridges, a critical part of American infrastructure.

excluding bridge engineering.”

At the same time, codes and specifications governing bridge engineering practice have become increasingly complex, according to the researchers.

“We want to take stock of what is happening in the nation regarding existing university education of engineers who might become bridge engineers — and also take stock of what continuing education currently looks like within bridge engineering — and ask, ‘What can we be doing better?’”

Bennett said. “A lot of people who become competent bridge engineers require significant on-the-job training because they have not had a lot of formal education directly mapping to bridges. So, how can we better prepare and support people who are going to be working as bridge engineers?”

Through a review of curricula, surveys and direct discussions with

engineering faculty across the nation, Bennett and her co-investigators will determine the state of engineering education for bridge design.

“We can provide a really solid capture of what is happening and where the gaps are as well as pathways for people to improve continuing education and engineering education in university settings,” Bennett said.

“We’ll provide guidance on how to implement a backwards design process in both settings.”

William Collins, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering at KU, serves as a coinvestigator on both grants headed by Bennett. Further, Collins will lead the KU portion of a $130,000, 22-month FHWA grant headed by Modjeski and Masters, one of the world’s leading bridge engineering firms.

The investigation will assess effectiveness of ultra-high toughness

(UHT) bridge steel within steel bridge members to improve structural reliability for the fracture limit-state, potentially deeming a fracture-critical designation unnecessary.

“The idea of preventing fracture is a big deal in civil infrastructure, especially for bridges,” Collins said.

“When exposed to colder temperatures, steel structures are more susceptible to fracture-related failures. This is not typically a concern in buildings because buildings aren’t exposed to the elements like bridges are. In addition to these projects, Caroline and I do a lot of work examining different ways to monitor and inspect for fatigue and cracks.

Rather than the design or inspection aspects of controlling fracture, this third project is focused on the material side of things.”

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FACULTY NEWS

16 KU Engineering Faculty Members Among Most-Cited Researchers in the World, Study Shows

KU ENGINEERING FACULTY ON THE LIST:

by Joel Mathis

Aerospace engineering

Sixteen KU Engineering faculty members are among the top 2% of scientists worldwide cited by others in research publications, according to a study from Stanford University.

That number equals roughly 14% of KU’s engineering faculty — an “impressive accomplishment,” said Arvin Agah, dean of the engineering school. “I appreciate the commitment and dedication it takes to achieve this status.”

Stanford researchers created a database of more than 180,000 scientists across 176 subfields — out of nearly 9 million scientists worldwide who had been credited with publishing more than five papers — then analyzed the number of citations that each received. Self-citations were excluded.

This achievement is a sign that research

by KU Engineering faculty has served as a foundation for scientists and engineers around the world to explore new areas of innovation in their respective fields.

“We all hope our work has impact, and that’s what this is a measure of,” said Michael Branicky, professor of electrical engineering & computer science and former dean of the school, who was among the most cited researchers. “It’s proof of the global reach of our research.”

Branicky made the list, having been cited nearly 11,000 times for his multidecade work in such diverse areas

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as networked control systems that share information, like “smart electrical grids,” hybrid systems that combine physical and computer inputs, like airplane autopilots, and robotic motion planning.

He said the Stanford research offered evidence that KU Engineering professors are spreading knowledge beyond their own labs and lecture halls.

“Certainly, what we do helps train our own students in the classroom and the graduate students who are our mentees,” Branicky said. “But it also literally reaches across the world — our work is being followed and transformed by many other scientists.”

The whole purpose of research, he said, is to build a foundation for others to use to create even more new discoveries and ideas.

“Research is like setting course in a forest. You get to a different clearing, and you set up camp — and once you’ve set up camp, other people can go from there and explore other things,” Branicky said. “We all have differing expertise, but it’s a similar story in terms of these mountains we’ve each climbed.”

The list was generated by John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford University, and reflects citations through August 2020.

Ronald Barrett, professor Z.J. Wang, Spahr professor

Chemical & petroleum engineering Cory Berkland, Solon E. Summerfield Distinguished Professor Stevin Gehrke, Fred Kurata Memorial Professor Trung Van Nguyen, professor Mark Shiflett, Foundation Distinguished Professor Bala Subramaniam, Dan F. Servey Distinguished Professor

Civil, environmental & architectural engineering David Darwin, Deane E. Ackers Distinguished Professor Anil Misra, professor

Electrical engineering & computer science Shannon Blunt, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor Michael Branicky, professor Victor Frost, Dan F. Servey Distinguished Professor Rongqing Hui, professor

Mechanical engineering Theodore Bergman, Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor Steven Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor Paulette Spencer, Ackers Distinguished Professor

FACULTY NEWS

KU Engineering Professor Becomes First Woman to Win International Meshing Award

by Rylie Koester Meshing wasn’t always at the center of KU Engineering professor Suzanne Shontz’s research.

She wasn’t even familiar with the concept when she Shontz enrolled in graduate school at Cornell University.

Now, she’s the first woman to receive the 2021 International Meshing Roundtable Fellow Award in the maledominated engineering field.

“It makes it more special knowing that I’m the first woman,” said Shontz, professor of electrical engineering & computer science at KU. “I’m hoping it’s a sign that more women will get more involved in the field over time.”

Mesh generation — or meshing — is the mathematical and computational process of building items out of many shapes. Shontz compares it to building with Legos.

“We’re putting blocks together,” she said, “and we’re building some kind of geometric object.”

Although Shontz was once unfamiliar with the concept of meshing, numerical methods for moving meshes eventually became the focus of her graduate school dissertation. She earned master’s degrees in computer science and applied mathematics and a doctorate in applied mathematics.

Meshing is used for simulation analysis and rendering models in the fields of engineering, medicine and even fashion — leading to better understanding of structures and processes, industry advancements and more.

“Mesh generation is a very important step in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). For complex, realworld configurations, it is often the bottleneck in the CFD simulation process,” said ZJ Wang, the Spahr Professor of Aerospace Engineering.

“Professor Shontz’s research on mesh adaptation, parallel and high-order mesh generation addresses critical needs in the CFD community.”

Sandia National Laboratories gave out the International Meshing Roundtable Fellow Award at its annual conference in 2021. The award recognizes an individual with a distinguished record of research accomplishments in mesh generation and exceptional service in the meshing community.

Shontz has attended the conference for about 20 years. During that time, she has served on the organizing committee, submitted and reviewed papers, taught a short course and given talks. This year, she served on the steering committee and was invited to give a keynote speech on cardiovascular mesh generation algorithms and applications.

“Suzanne’s list of accomplishments and contributions to her research community is impressive both for its breadth and depth,” said Erik Perrins, chair of KU’s Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. “We are fortunate to have her leadership here at KU.” Shontz’s KU lab has advanced knowledge in the field. Researchers created a mesh of the human heart that simulates the motion of a beating heart and have designed algorithms for high-order mesh generation,

parallel meshing, mesh optimization and mesh untangling.

In 2012, Shontz received the 2011 NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House for her 2011 NSF CAREER project on parallel dynamic meshing algorithms, theory and software for simulation-assisted medical interventions.

A decade later, Shontz continues to win awards. She received the 2021 KU School of Engineering Miller Professional Award for Service and was promoted to full professor at the beginning of the fall semester.

She hopes to encourage young undergraduate engineering students, especially women, to pursue graduate school and additional education in the field of meshing. She does this by involving undergraduate researchers in her lab.

“I hope more women over time will get to know about these opportunities and see if it’s something that they might like to do,” Shontz said, “and hopefully grow the field that way.”

From left are images of high-order tetrahedral meshes of the left ventricle myocardia of a normal heart, a heart with dilated cardiomyopathy that manifests as stretched and weakened heart muscle, and a heart with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which exhibits abnormally thick heart muscle. Credit: Fariba Mohammadi, a doctoral candidate in Shontz’s lab, generated these meshes.

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FACULTY NEWS

KU Chemical Engineering Department Wins $100,000 Grant to Work on New Model for Evaluating Teaching

by Evan Riggs and Doug Ward

26 | FALL 2022

Doug Ward

The KU Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Department has been selected to receive a $100,000 award from the Association of American Universities to support projects that lead to better methods for evaluating STEM teaching.

KU is one of only five AAU member departments to receive the award.

Susan Williams, Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor and department chair, will lead the project. She will work with Prajna Dhar, professor of chemical & petroleum engineering, and Andrea Follmer Greenhoot, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and a professor of psychology. Dhar and Greenhoot will be co-leaders of the effort, which will involve all faculty in C&PE. The approach being developed will provide a more holistic assessment of the quality of faculty teaching, one that integrates information provided by multiple perspectives.

“This is critically important work that is often overlooked,” Williams said. “If we want excellent teaching, we need an evaluation system that recognizes the intellectual work that goes into helping our students learn.

We are excited to be part of a process that has the potential to help STEM departments around the country.”

C&PE faculty members Kyle Camarda, Karen Nordheden, Alan Allgeier, Russell Ostermann and Jennifer Robinson round out the project team members.

Universities have long relied on student surveys to evaluate teaching,

Prajna Dhar, professor of chemical and petroleum engineering (middle), works on the AAU Stem Department Demonstration Project with associate professor and project team member Kyle Camarda at CTE meetings of the Benchmarks and TEval initiative. Dhar is a co-leader of the project at KU.

but a growing body of research has pointed to many weaknesses in that approach. The student voice is important, but it provides only one perspective on an instructor’s teaching.

Without a broader evaluation system, many instructors have also been reluctant to adopt teaching practices that lead to deeper learning and greater success for students. That approach, known as evidence-based teaching, also helps close gaps between majority and minority groups.

“Evaluation of evidence-based teaching practices ensure better and more equitable learning experiences for students,” Dhar said. “Working with partners at AAU also gives KU further opportunities to showcase and disseminate this work widely.”

The model builds on the KU department’s work in an initiative to improve teaching evaluation, known as Benchmarks for Teaching Effectiveness,

led by Greenhoot and Doug Ward, associate director at the KU teaching center and associate professor of journalism & mass communications.

The Benchmarks initiative is part of a collaborative project known as TEval, which received a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to improve teaching evaluation. It involves the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Michigan State University.

The chemical and petroleum engineering department’s approach involves creating “peer triads,” teams of three or four faculty members who share teaching strategies and provide each other feedback across the year.

Williams and Dhar were instrumental in helping the Center for Teaching Excellence develop the peer triad approach when they were faculty fellows there. In C&PE’s model, the triads will produce evidence that can be used for the evaluation of individual instructors’ teaching. They will also promote broader curriculum discussions among faculty, helping ensure that courses in the program allow students to gain crucial skills over time.

This AAU award enables C&PE to implement its approaches at scale and to evaluate the success of the program.

Project leaders hope to explore whether different evaluators can reliably and fairly apply evaluation standards, whether the system is feasible and sustainable, and whether it diminishes bias in the evaluation process.

FACULTY NEWS

Collins Receives Fulbright Scholar Award to Finland

by Christine Metz Howard William Collins, KU associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award to conduct research for six months in Finland.

Jointly funded by the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland and the Fulbright Finland Foundation, Collins was awarded the Fulbright-VTT Award in Science, Technology, and Innovation.

Beginning in January 2023, Collins will work with researchers at the VTT Technical Research Center in Espoo, Finland. The research will focus on fracture mechanics, which studies how cracks form and spread in materials.

In particular, Collins aims to identify and bridge the gaps that exist between current industry practices and stateof-the-art work in the field of fracture mechanics.

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers over 400 awards in more than 130 countries.

According to Collins, many industries have practices based on an outdated understanding of fracture mechanics, which can result in overly conservative design codes causing higher costs, or design codes that are not conservative enough that could result in potential failures.

To address this issue, Collins’ proposed work in Finland will include the following: • Compiling and re-characterizing a database of steel fracture toughness, which measures a material’s ability to resist cracking.

• Evaluating fractures at the interface of joints using dissimilar metal welds.

• Identifying areas where current specification can benefit from adopting modern approaches to fracture mechanics, focusing on the energy industry and transportation infrastructure.

Collins

research, which is focused on highway infrastructure. His collaborators in Finland are mechanical engineers who work primarily in the nuclear energy industry. The project aims to use the existing synergies in fracture mechanics to connect civil and mechanical engineering researchers.

“There are many well-respected fracture researchers at VTT, and I look forward to learning from them,” Collins said. “I hope that the relationships I build with them will continue upon my return to KU, resulting in long-term international collaborations.”

The award could also open up new funding opportunities and will result in improvements to the fracture mechanics course Collins teaches at KU. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the U.S. and the people of other countries. Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has given more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

The award will allow Collins to work with materials and applications that are outside of his primary area of

KANSAS ENGINEER | 27

FACULTY NEWS

KU Engineering Tests New Environmentally Friendly Refrigerant at Watson Library

by Joel Mathis

28 | FALL 2022

Meg Kumin, KU Marketing Communications

When researchers at the University of Kansas wanted to test a new, environmentally friendly “chiller system” for large buildings, they didn’t have to go far — they chose Watson Library on the KU Lawrence campus.

“It just makes it easier to monitor,” said Mark Shiflett, Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering.

Two 900-ton York chiller units cool and dehumidify the nearly century-old Watson Library building, and until recently both units used hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants to do the job. But federal law requires most hydrofluorocarbon use to be phased down over the next 15 years, so Shiflett’s team retrofitted one of the chillers to use a new hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) refrigerant called Opteon XP10.

The new refrigerant is “non-ozone depleting” and has a significantly lower global warming potential.

Reduced HFC use around the world is expected to help avoid an average global temperature rise of 0.5 degrees Celsius.

KU is “the first university to test this refrigerant,” Shiflett said. Watson Library offers university researchers the ability to directly compare the performance of the new HFO refrigerant with the existing HFC system.

“We looked for an opportunity on campus where we could retrofit an existing chiller and study the performance, to see if it had the same cooling capacity and energy efficiency,” Shiflett said. “Now we’re going to monitor them side-by-side and compare the performance. This is a great demonstration at a commercial scale of

Watson Library

one of the new refrigerants.”

To execute the retrofit, KU’s Institute for Sustainable Engineering partnered with two companies: Chemours, a chemical company that donated the new HFO refrigerant; and Johnson Controls Inc., which produces heating and cooling systems, and provided labor for the project.

“This is a great example of how industry is partnering with our new Institute for Sustainable Engineering at KU, which is making a positive impact on our environment,” Shiflett said.

That’s also an advantage for the students involved in the project.

Mechanical engineering seniors monitored the baseline performance of the older HFC unit as part of their capstone senior design course. A postdoctoral researcher and graduate student in chemical engineering

monitored the new HFO unit.

“Industry brings relevant problems that need solutions,” Shiflett said.

“The students get to work on applied projects that are important to industry.

That way when they graduate, they’ve got this great experience and become familiar with how industry works. It makes them more competitive when they go out in the workforce to get their first job.”

The Institute for Sustainable Engineering at KU aims to advance global sustainability through transformational engineering, science and education by putting a focus on creative solutions that can be applied to real-world issues that promote the societal, economic and environmental benefits of sustainable and green engineering.

FACULTY NEWS

FACULTY ACHIEVEMENTS KU increased its rank from 49 to 44 for research and development expenditures among public universities in fiscal year 2020 in the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education and Research Development Survey. This includes ninth overall in R&D expenditures in engineering and nonscience fields.

In collaboration with the College for Liberal Arts and Science, KU Engineering Diversity and Women’s Programs received a $500,000, two-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership and Sloan Undergraduate Student Program to create educational opportunities for Indigenous students in STEM fields at KU. Three engineering faculty members were awarded promotion and tenure in 2022.

Faculty promoted to associate professor with tenure: • Esam Aly, electrical engineering and computer science • Emily Arnold, aerospace engineering • Masoud Kalantari, chemical and petroleum engineering Caroline Bennett, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, is the lead researcher on a fiveyear, $7,740,921 grant from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) that will focus on improving the performance of concrete dam infrastructure through the use of fiber-reinforced polymers. Associate professors and co-investigators Remy Lequesne and Jian Li will assist in leading the research.

Will Collins, associate professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, received the 2022 Robert J. Dexter Memorial Award Lecture, which provides an opportunity for early-career faculty to present on their steel bridge research activities to leading steel bridge experts. He was also selected for the 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in Finland.

Justin Hutchison, assistant professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, is a collaborator in KU’s Chemical Biology of Infectious Disease Center, which received a five-year, $11.3M NIH COBRE Phase II Award.

KU received $945,000 as part of a National Defense Education Program to provide high school students summer preparatory courses in aerospace engineering, artificial intelligence and computer science over three years. Shawn Keshmiri, professor of aerospace engineering, will lead the effort.

Anil Misra, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, was named as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Josh Roundy, associate professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, won the Gould Award for Outstanding Educator.

Steven Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor of chemistry, mechanical engineering and bioengineering, received the Irvin Youngberg Award in Applied Sciences. He was one of four KU faculty members to receive the HiguchiKU Endowment Research Achievement Awards, the state higher education system’s most prestigious recognition for scholarly excellence. Soper also received the 2022 Ralph N. Adams Award for significant contributions to the field of bioanalytical chemistry.

Candan Tamerler, Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was named a KU associate vice chancellor for research in July 2022.

Heechul Yun, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, won the Miller Award for Research.

Jie Han, from civil, environmental and architectural engineering, was named a Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor by the university.

KANSAS ENGINEER | 29

STUDENT NEWS

Chemical Engineering Student Wins Prestigious Goldwater Scholarship

by Andy Hyland Submitted photo

Sevart

Mary Sevart, a senior in chemical engineering, is one of a record five KU students to earn a Barry M. Goldwater scholarship in 2022.

Five Goldwater Scholarships represent the maximum possible awards that a single school can receive, and KU has never celebrated five awards in one year before. The award is regarded as the premier undergraduate award to encourage excellence in science, engineering and mathematics.

“We’re absolutely thrilled this year to receive five Goldwater Scholarships, and I’m happy to be able to celebrate with our outstanding recipients. Each of them has demonstrated a remarkable

30 | FALL 2022

capacity to come up with new ways to tackle some of our planet’s greatest challenges,” said Chancellor Douglas A. Girod. “I congratulate all of them on achieving this recognition, and I’m proud of the members of our university community who helped them along the way, allowing them to continue on to even greater heights.”

The scholarships cover tuition, fees, books and room and board, up to $7,500 annually.

Sevart, from Wichita, plans to pursue a doctorate in chemical engineering and aspires to employ solutions to the world’s dependence on fossil fuels through a research career.

“I felt very honored and very blessed to receive this award,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without my research mentors, and I know they’ll continue to help guide me as I go to graduate school.”

As a freshman, she joined the KU Biodiesel Initiative lab of founding faculty member Susan Williams, Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor of Engineering, and has served as the testing lab manager.

Specifically, Sevart participates in research initiatives under the guidance of Williams with a focus on creating a potential fuel source from thermochemical processing of hemp biomass after CBD oil extraction.

She also is the recruitment chair of KU’s Society of Women Engineers and serves as an ambassador for the KU School of Engineering. She

was awarded the NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholarship and earned an Undergraduate Research Award through the KU Center for Undergraduate Research. In fall 2021, she won first place in the poster competition at the national conference for Society of Women Engineers and received a scholarship from the Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel in fall 2020.

IN ADDITION TO SEVART, KU’S OTHER WINNERS ARE: Bryce Gaskins, a junior majoring in biochemistry and Spanish Jessica Miears, a junior majoring in physics & astronomy Sarah Noga, a junior majoring in biochemistry Kade Townsend, a junior majoring in microbiology

STUDENT NEWS

Two KU Engineering Graduate Students Claim Top Honors at International Radar Conference

by Joel Mathis Two KU Engineering students received international recognition for their research on radar systems.

Jonathan Owen and Christian Jones, both doctoral students in electrical engineering & computer science, took first and second place, respectively, in the student paper contest at the 2022 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Radar Conference, a gathering in March of students and researchers from 37 countries. The awards continued a winning streak of sorts for EECS: Jones took first place in last year’s competition, and the department has had a top-three finisher in the contest nearly every year since 2016. Seventy-one papers were submitted from around the world for the contest.

“This in particular is the flagship conference in the field of radar in the world. So being able to have students even get selected to the top five is significant,” said Shannon Blunt, the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. “If from time to time you get a student in the top three, it is a big deal. The fact we’ve had several in the last few years shows KU to be a powerhouse, if you will.”

Owen took first place — along with credited co-authors Blunt, Charles Mohr, Brandon Ravenscroft, Benjamin Kirk and Anthony Martone — for his paper “Real-Time Experimental Demonstration and Evaluation of Open-Air Sense-and-Notch Radar.”

The research examined methods for letting radar and 5G communications systems share the wireless spectrum without interfering with each other, an issue that became headline news earlier this year when Verizon and AT&T delayed launching 5G services near U.S. airports over concerns about flight safety.

“Never before has radar needed to avoid interfering with communications,” Owen said. “It’s a new problem because the spectrum is becoming more congested.”

Jones — along with credited coauthors Blunt, Owen, Zeus Gannon, Dan DePardo, Christopher T. Allen and Benjamin Kirk — took second place for his paper, “Development & Experimental Assessment of Robust Direction Finding and SelfCalibration,” which similarly focused on methods for getting accurate radar readings amid an increasingly cluttered wireless spectrum.

“The work presented by the students from University of Kansas was both of high quality, novel to the field of radar, theoretically sound and practically demonstrated, which landed them in the top five of the conference as reviewed by a panel of judges from all of the world,” said Willie Nel, chief radar engineer for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa and the lead judge for the contest.

“Furthermore, they impressed the panel of judges with a well-presented, clear and concise presentation of their work

and could defend their work well under the stress of a student paper final.”

Owen said KU has given him a firm foundation for his success at the conference.

“We’ve had some great successes within our lab,” he said. “I think the key to success in our lab is that the advisers consistently make sure we have all the resources and connections needed to produce relevant research in the radar field.”

Blunt said KU’s streak of success owes to a tradition of quality going back to Richard Moore, who taught in the department for more than 30 years starting in the early 1960s and started the university’s Radar Systems & Remote Sensing Lab. And EECS gives itself another advantage by working to bridge the “valley of death” between theoretical academic work and realworld radar applications used by government and industry.

“If you look across academia in general, even in the world of radar, there’s a lot of work that’s extremely theoretical. It’s basically applied math,” Blunt said. “We do that as well.

But where we stand out is we take that theoretical work and put it in experimental work. We prove these things work in the real world.”

RadarConf ’22 was sponsored by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

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STUDENT NEWS

KU Aerospace Engineering Claims Top Honors in International Competitions

by Joel Mathis

32 | FALL 2022

AIAA GRADUATE TEAM AIRCRAFT DESIGN, FIRST PLACE The 10-person team designed the “Skyblazer,” a regional jet intended to be more profitable and more environmentally friendly than most current 50-seat models. The KU students designed an aircraft with wings and engines across the top of the fuselage — instead of the traditional below-the-fuselage models — making it possible to load and unload luggage more quickly, which in turn would increase the potential number of flights per day for the aircraft.

Team members were Matthew Griebe, Lendon Jackson, Skyler Jacob, Bhawantha Nilaweera, Raghav Parikh, Renaldo Rivera, Olivia Scharf, Ethan Seiler, Krishna Sitaula and Brennan Wheatley.

AIAA GRADUATE TEAM MISSILE DESIGN, SECOND PLACE The six-person team was recognized for its “RHI*NO” drone, a small reusable unmanned aircraft designed to hunt down and disable enemy drones using nets fired from shotgun shells.

Team members were Jack Barkei, Bobby Bowes, Christopher Eavenson, Samantha Friess, Brian Von Holtz and Alex Welicky.

AIAA GRADUATE TEAM MISSILE DESIGN, THIRD PLACE The three-person team also designed an ultra-small drone to hunt down enemy drones. The “Valkyrie” was designed to be fired from a hand-held

grenade launcher before unfolding its wings and starting its mission.

Team members were Joe Coldiron, Austin Dooley and Nathan Wolf.

VERTICAL FLIGHT SOCIETY, BEST NEW UNDERGRADUATE ENTRANT KU was recognized for its “Asklepios” drone. It was designed to take off vertically, then tilt and fly laterally like a traditional aircraft to deliver medical equipment to hospitals and emergency locations.

Team members were Micaela Crispin, Mason Denneler and Zack Schwab.

Denneler, now a graduate student, said it was exciting to win the VFS honor and break new ground for KU’s already storied aerospace program.

“KU is not known as a helicopter school, but we made it work,” he said.

“I think that this is the kind of thing that you’ll see more of in the future.

Not necessarily this design explicitly, but you’ll see a lot of delivery drones and people movers. I think in 10 to 15 years there’s going to be a lot more of these innovative ways to move people and things.”

Submitted image

Aerospace engineering students from KU once again brought home multiple awards in international design competition, continuing a 40-year tradition of excellence.

Three KU teams were recognized in late 2021 for their aircraft and missile designs by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Additionally, a team from KU won an award for the university’s first-ever entry in the Vertical Flight Society’s international student competition.

“The AIAA sponsors the world’s premier aircraft design competition,” said Ron Barrett-Gonzalez, professor of aerospace engineering. And KU is at the pinnacle of that competition.

Over the last four decades, KU students have won more first-, secondand third-place aerospace design awards in the AIAA competition than any other university in the world.

In addition to that overall success, Barrett-Gonzalez said that since 2010, 24 women and underrepresented populations have been among the university’s winning individuals and teams.

“In many, many ways, diversity powers our teams, which is really great,” Barrett-Gonzalez said.

The design competitions challenge students to participate in a simulated real-world design process, allowing them to gain experience and receive feedback from technical experts who serve as judges. The KU student teams won the following awards:

Winning “Skyblazer” design from KU Engineering.

STUDENT NEWS

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS Melek Ben-Ayed, a senior in mechanical engineering, was nominated by KU’s Office of Fellowships for a Rhodes and Marshall scholarship. He also won the university-wide Rusty Leffel Concerned Student Award Fatima Al-Shaikhli, a senior in electrical engineering, and Eden Surafel Taddese, a master’s student in chemical engineering, were each awarded Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation.

Wambura Chacha, Ph.D. student in environmental engineering, won the J. Lloyd Barron Award from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering.

Amanda Hertel, Elizabeth Lee, Alex Manley, Reece Mathews, Alyssa Morrell and Greta Olsen each received a $1,000 Undergraduate Research Award to work on mentored research and creative projects with KU Engineering faculty.

Hertel also won KU’s Phi Kappa Phi James Blackiston Memorial Fellowship.

Katherine Meinhold and Jeffrey Xu received KU’s prestigious Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Jordan Nutter, a doctoral student in civil engineering, was awarded a best presentation award by the Transportation Research Board.

Amelia Richardson, master’s student in civil engineering, won the Bruce W. Long Scholarship, from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering.

Bioengineering doctoral students Rohit Singh and Jacob Hodge each received research awards during the 19th annual Capitol Graduate Research Summit in Topeka.

Erin Sturd, a senior in chemical engineering with an emphasis in bioengineering, was nominated for a Marshall scholarship.

Ellen Vandewater, a senior in computer science, won the university-wide Alexis F. Dillard Student Involvement Award.

Bhargavi Krishnan, academic advisor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, won the Gould Award for Outstanding Advisor.

Leslee Smithhisler, former undergraduate advisor in electrical engineering and computer science, received KU’s 2022 C.L.A.S.S. award from the Board of Class Officers, which recognizes a KU staff member for distinguished achievements in student services.

The following undergraduate students were named outstanding seniors in the respective majors for the 20212022 academic year: • Locke Award for Most Outstanding senior: Julian Moreno • Aerospace engineering: Julian Moreno • Architectural engineering: Adam Mouak • Chemical engineering: Erin Sturd • Civil engineering: Sydney Crandall • Computer engineering: Katelyn Blackburn • Computer Science: Malena Schoeni • Electrical Engineering: Jennifer Quirk • Engineering Physics: Sandhya Ravikumar • Interdisciplinary Computing: Jonelle Gamble • Mechanical engineering: Rhett Phillips • Petroleum Engineering: Jackson Rogers The following graduate students were named outstanding graduates in the respective majors for the 2021-2022 academic year: Outstanding doctoral student award: MohammadAmin (Amin) Ezazi Outstanding master’s student award: Grant Jurgensen Bioengineering master’s outstanding student: Moustafa Abdelaziz Bioengineering doctoral outstanding student: Aparna Raghavachar Chakravarti Chemical and petroleum engineering outstanding doctoral student: Ankit Verma Electrical engineering and computer science outstanding master’s student: Grant Jurgensen Electrical engineering and computer science outstanding doctoral student: Charles Mohr Mechanical engineering outstanding master’s student: Michael Kitchen Mechanical engineering outstanding doctoral student: MohammadAmin (Amin) Ezazi

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KU Engineering Honors Seven With Distinguished Engineering Service Award

by Cody Howard Seven people with ties to KU School of Engineering received the school’s highest award in a separate ceremonies in November 2021 and May 2022.

The winners of the Distinguished Engineering Service Award (DESA) are Jill MacDonald Boyce, Angela Chammas, Christine-Ehlig Economides, Paul Neidlein, Ronaldo T. “Nick” Nicholson, Richard E. Smith and G. Paul Willhite.

The DESA is presented to individuals who have maintained close association with the school and have made outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and to society.

“Our awardees embody the spirit of the Distinguished Engineering Service Award. They are respected leaders with amazing stories of ingenuity and resiliency. Their contributions to the engineering profession and the university are exceptional and inspirational. The awardees help elevate the stature of KU Engineering. We are proud to call them Jayhawk engineers,” said Arvin Agah, dean of engineering.

Boyce and Smith were recognized in the 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancelation of the 2020 event.

The School of Engineering Advisory Board has given the DESA, the highest honor bestowed by the school, annually since 1980.

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ABOUT THE HONOREES 2020 WINNERS

Jill MacDonald Boyce Anyone who has binge-watched a TV show on their favorite streaming service, utilized the fast-forward or rewind function on their DVR or checked out the latest viral video on their mobile phone can thank one person for how seamless the process has become.

With more than a quarter-century of experience in video compression and standardization, Jill Boyce is recognized as a global leader in modern video coding standards, making important contributions to the efficient delivery of video across multiple platforms.

Her work has been a critical in fueling the growth and ubiquity of the media streaming industry.

Boyce earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from KU in 1988, and in 1990 she received her master’s degree in electrical engineering with an emphasis in communications and signal processing from Princeton University.

Boyce has had a hand in developing an estimated 90% of the coding formats utilized in video playback today, from complex features that viewers take for granted to those that are so seamless they go unnoticed. Many of the standards she developed are the basis for all major video applications and are embedded in hardware or software

in all video cameras, smartphones and online video applications, such as YouTube and Netflix.

Boyce recently founded a new startup company, Vimmerse, where she is the CEO. Vimmerse is developing a platform and tools for creation and storage of immersive video, which allows viewers to navigate within a remote 3D scene.

Richard E. Smith Rich Smith has helped transform Henderson Engineers into a global engineering and building systems design powerhouse. He’s led remarkable growth while fostering a company culture that puts people first and embraces creativity, flexibility and diversity.

Smith earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from KU in 1985 and his master’s degree in architectural engineering from KU in 1991. He joined Henderson Engineers as director of engineering in 1994 and has been the firm’s president and CEO since 2013.

In the mid-1990s when Smith joined Henderson, approximately 80% of the firm’s work was retail. Smith has been instrumental in helping the company grow and diversify into other sectors, including K-12 and higher education, health care, sports and recreation, grocery, workplace, restaurant, warehouse and distribution.

ALUMNI NEWS

Smith has played a pivotal role in business development efforts that have helped land some of the largest projects in company history. This includes the new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport and SoFi Stadium, a revolutionary mega mixed-use entertainment district in Hollywood Park, California, that is home to the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams.

2021 WINNERS

Christine EhligEnconomides With seminal contributions to the development and application of technology in the field of petroleum engineering, and a distinguished track record of leadership in academic and professional settings, Christine EhligEconomides is recognized as one of the nation’s most accomplished and influential figures in her field.

She organized and helped establish new petroleum engineering departments at two universities. She developed methods of analyzing well test data from multilayer reservoirs that became the worldwide standard for the oil and gas industry. She has long advocated for women and underrepresented minorities in the field.

Her career is decorated with some of the most prestigious awards in engineering, including induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.

After graduating from Rice University in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, EhligEconomides attended KU, where she earned a master’s degree in mathematics education in 1974 and a master’s degree in chemical engineering in 1977. She went on to Stanford University and earned her doctorate in 1979. Her dissertation remains a

landmark contribution to the theory and practice in a dominant technology in petroleum reservoir engineering, pressure transient test analysis.

Ehlig-Economides currently serves as a professor and Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Chair at the University of Houston.

Ronaldo T. “Nick” Nicholson Ronaldo “Nick” Nicholson has established a sterling reputation as a leader with a unique ability to bring stakeholders together and build consensus on large, complex transportation challenges. Over his career spanning nearly 40 years, Nicholson has personally supervised and mentored many engineers who have become industry leaders and agency administrators in various public works departments around the country.

Nicholson earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from KU in 1983 and a master’s degree in structural engineering from George Washington in 1991. He spent more than 30 years in the public sector, working for the Federal Highway Administration, Fairfax County Department of Public Works, the Virginia Department of Transportation and the District of Columbia Department of Transportation. He accepted a vice president position at Parsons Transportation Group Inc. in 2014.

At each stop along the way, Nicholson has displayed impeccable leadership to build teams and work toward a common goal.

As vice president and senior program/operations manager at Parsons Transportation Group, Nicholson leads the company’s highway and bridge design teams in Virginia and Washington, D.C. He supervises

more than 70 employees and has contributed directly to technically challenging and politically sensitive infrastructure improvement projects, such as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge replacement over the Potomac River, transformation of the South Capitol Street Corridor and re-introduction of DC Streetcar in northeast Washington, D.C., and the Elizabeth River Tunnel and Hampton Road Bridge Tunnel project in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

2022 WINNERS

Angela Chammas In a long and distinguished career, Angela Chammas earned a reputation as a visionary leader and a skilled strategic thinker who focused on strengthening competitive advantages through the development of new technologies, tools and processes. She was also very passionate about helping organizations and the people within them reach their highest level of performance and business success.

Chammas earned her degree in mechanical engineering from KU in 1979. She began her career as a network service engineer at Southwestern Bell, engineering customer data circuits, managing engineering contracts and supervising circuit design engineering personnel.

Chammas joined the Sprint management team in 1991 where she held a variety of management roles in network engineering, including managing a 24/7 network surveillance monitoring center and overseeing the coordination of the strategic quality integration program for network engineering. She spent 20-plus years with the company, later Sprint Nextel, eventually serving as vice president –

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ALUMNI NEWS

talent management, where she oversaw Sprint’s nationwide enterprise talent recruitment and acquisition process for filling approximately 14,000 positions annually.

Chammas and her husband, George, also a KU School of Engineering graduate, married in 1981. They are both enjoying retirement in Chicago and look forward to traveling and spending more time in his home country of Lebanon.

They have two sons: Nadim, who is a U.S. marketing manager in Denver, and Jamil, a Grammy Award music producer in Los Angeles.

Paul Neidlein A distinguished leader, strategic thinker and civicminded community member, Paul Neidlein has become known throughout his career for a commitment to driving engagement, diversity, inclusion and growth for those who work alongside him. He’s also earned a reputation for providing opportunities for innovation and collaboration among clients and vendors throughout the Kansas City and regional construction market.

Neidlein earned his degree in architectural engineering from KU in 1995 and started his career that same year at Turner Construction in St. Louis before moving to the Kansas City office in 1997. In 2012, he started at JE Dunn Construction, where he continued to grow his career — first as senior vice president of operations before moving into his current role in 2018 as president of the Midwest region. Currently, Neidlein oversees offices in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and North Dakota as well as leading four national divisions focused on mission-critical, sports, federal and justice projects.

Under Neidlein’s leadership, JE Dunn’s

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Midwest region has seen tremendous growth, expanding in all markets, and is expected to surpass $2 billion in revenue in 2022 — its highest ever.

Neidlein lives in Prairie Village with his wife and fellow KU graduate, Tina (B.S., Journalism, ’96; B.A., English, ’96). They have one son, Ty, who is currently a freshman at the University of Arkansas.

G. Paul Willhite With more than a half-century of contributions and dedicated service to KU and the engineering industry, Paul Willhite is recognized as a remarkable educator and researcher who served the academic community, university, state, nation and international societies with the utmost distinction.

His career in academia is decorated with extensive service to the department, the School of Engineering, higher education and the petroleum industry. Willhite is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering and helped launch a key initiative to develop a range of improved oil recovery applications that were affordable for independent operators in Kansas and the region. He also written textbooks that to this day remain the foundational work in petroleum engineering education.

Willhite earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Iowa State in 1959 and a doctorate in chemical engineering from Northwestern in 1962. He joined the faculty at the KU School of Engineering in 1969 and retired in 2019 as Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.

In 1974, Willhite founded and codirected the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP) with Don Green,

professor emeritus of chemical & petroleum engineering. The program was designed to acquaint Kansas producers with the technical and economic potential of enhanced recovery methods for oil and gas fields that were affordable for independent operators in Kansas and throughout the region.

Willhite lives with his wife, Jewell, in Lawrence, where he continues to be involved in several community activities. They have five children, 13 grandchildren and five greatgrandchildren.

ALUMNI NEWS

Gift from KU Alumni Creates Scholarship for Hometown Students

by Michelle Strickland a new engineering building, named Eaton Hall.

John Howard, the current recipient of the scholarship, is a freshman from Burlington. He is part of the Legal Education Accelerated Degree Program, which allows KU students to earn a bachelor’s degree and a law degree in six years instead of seven. He is working toward a bachelor’s degree in political science.

“This scholarship went toward my tuition, and without support I don’t think I’d be able to go to college and do the things I want to do,” he said.

Howard and Robert Eaton have one interest in common: cars. For his birthday a few years ago, Howard bought two 1967 Ford Thunderbirds, one to rebuild and one for parts. Robert Eaton said he, too, had that love for mechanical tinkering starting at young age. He bought his first car when he was 11 years old for $10 and put another $15 in it to get it running.

“Before that, I built a go-cart using a Maytag washing machine motor,” Robert Eaton said. “When I was in high school, there wasn’t one single thing I couldn’t do on a car. However,

“We want to give back to the university and provide someone with a life-changing experience that they might not be able to have otherwise.”

that wouldn’t be true with today’s technology.”

Howard has similar hopes for his Thunderbird, and he also aspires to be philanthropic like the Eatons.

“I appreciate their background, and where they’ve come from, and what they’ve built,” Howard said. “I’m so grateful for this scholarship, and I hope to someday get to where they are and be able to give back like they have.”

Submitted photo

Retired automotive chairman Robert Eaton and his wife, Connie Drake Eaton, both KU alumni, established the Eaton Scholarship at KU with a $1 million gift. The scholarship is awarded to students from their respective Kansas hometowns, Arkansas City and Burlington.

However, the real gift, in Robert Eaton’s view, is the opportunity the scholarship provides.

Robert Eaton came from a family in which no one on either side of his family had graduated from college. His father was a baggage handler on the railroad, and his mother was a beautician.

Connie Drake Eaton’s father died in World War II, and she grew up with her mother and grandparents. Robert and Connie met while they were students at KU. “Going to college had the biggest effect on my life of any single event,” Robert Eaton said. “We want to give back to the university and provide someone with a life-changing experience that they might not be able to have otherwise.”

After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from KU in 1963, Robert Eaton went to work for General Motors.

After 29 years with GM, he became the chairman of Chrysler and then the chairman of DaimlerChrysler AG after a merger with Daimler-Benz. He retired in 2000, and he and his wife now live in Naples, Florida. He is a life trustee on the KU Endowment Board of Trustees.

The Eatons have a history of generous support at KU. In 2003, they gave a $5 million gift toward construction of

Robert Eaton and Connie Drake Eaton.

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Abhay and Mina Bisarya Scholarship to Support International Students

by Christine Metz Howard For Abhay and Mina Bisarya, Feb. 4, 1968, was a day of destiny.

Seeking a sunnier climate, Abhay, an electrical engineering graduate student, decided to transfer from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, to KU, where his maternal uncle was earning a doctorate in pharmacy.

Mina was traveling to KU from Mumbai, formerly Bombay, to pursue a degree in architecture. The plane that Mina was scheduled to travel on had an accident, so she missed her connections and arrived in Kansas a day later than planned. A family friend who knew Abhay’s maternal uncle asked him to pick up Mina at the airport. It was there, waiting for the same ride to Lawrence, where Abhay and Mina first met.

“If she would have come one day early, maybe I would not have met her,” Abhay said.

“It was like destiny,” Mina said.

Over the years, the Bisaryas’ three sons, Alok, Nirav and Mitul, have fondly recounted their parents’ Hollywood-esque meeting. So, when the trio were looking for a way to celebrate their parents’ 75th birthdays and 52nd wedding anniversary, they decided to make a gift to the university that brought them together.

“KU was the beginning of their journey,” Nirav said.

The Bisarya family gave $100,000 to KU Endowment to establish and endow the Abhay and Mina Bisarya Scholarship, which will provide scholarships for international students at KU. The family also provided an additional $5,000 to be utilized for the selection of one inaugural scholarship recipient for this academic year.

For Abhay, a scholarship to fund international students was particularly poignant. When Abhay came to KU, immigration laws did not allow him to arrive in the United States with much cash in hand. Because Abhay was traveling from Scotland, the funds he needed to pay for his college expenses were tied up in the Reserve Bank of India. When it was clear the money wouldn’t arrive in time, a KU foreign student adviser suggested he request a loan through KU. “I was really amazed that a country or a university who hardly knew me would even think about giving a loan to me,” Abhay said. “And I’m so glad they did.”

Today, Abhay and Mina live in Leawood (where they are next door to Abhay’s college roommate and best friend, Hasu Doshi, whom Abhay also met on his first day in Kansas).

Submitted photos

A recent photo of Abhay and Mina Bisarya and one from 1969, a year after the couple first met.

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ALUMNI NEWS

Estate of KU Alumnus Provides $2M Gift for Engineering, Law Schools

by Michelle Strickland The paths they chose were influential in their younger brother’s decision to attend KU. “I went to law school to help my father out in our family construction business,” Dean Frisbie said. “I didn’t intend to become a lawyer. But I used both degrees extensively.”

After graduating from KU, Frisbie served in the U.S. Army before starting his career in California with Standard Oil (now Chevron) as a land use attorney. After five years, he went to work for Coldwell Banker.

“I found out I really enjoyed real estate and commercial development,” he said.

Frisbie started his own property development business in Santa Clara County, California, and it still has several properties, including apartments and shopping centers, in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay area.

But brick and mortar weren’t the only materials he managed: He let a neighbor plant a vineyard on 400 acres of his land to try to increase the property value.

From there, Ledgewood Creek Winery was born. Frisbie eventually sold it to E. & J. Gallo Winery.

The leaders of both schools expressed their gratitude to Frisbie for the generous, unrestricted gifts and recognized his dedication to KU. “This gift helps KU Engineering meet our strategic goals and raise our national profile,” said Arvin Agah, dean of the School of Engineering. “We are grateful to the Frisbie estate for its support.”

Stephen Mazza, dean of the School of Law, shared memories from his

friendship with Frisbie.

“I enjoyed meeting Dean, touring his vineyard, and talking with him about his time at KU Law and his incredible career. He was a great fellow, and I miss him dearly,” Mazza said. “He provides yet another example of how a law degree can lead to great success outside of traditional legal practice.”

Frisbie’s philanthropy came about as a way to give back for what he received as a student.

“Truly, KU was very helpful in all my endeavors,” he said. “Many thanks to the university for all it’s done, for me and for students far into the future.”

Submitted photo

A gift from the estate of KU alumnus Dean Frisbie provides $1 million to the School of Law and $1 million to the School of Engineering.

Frisbie, who earned degrees from both schools, took what he learned at KU to build a life of success in ventures from real estate to vineyards before his death in 2021.

A Mission native, Frisbie attended Shawnee Mission High School (now Shawnee Mission North). He enrolled at KU and earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering in 1951 and a law degree in 1953. He and his late wife, Florence — known to family and friends as Bunny — had two sons, Thomas and James. The couple raised their family in a beautiful home in San Francisco with a view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

“KU was a great experience for me,” Dean Frisbie said during a conversation in 2016. “My law and engineering degrees gave me the ability to work as an attorney doing land and legal projects as well as managing the construction of buildings.”

Frisbie’s engineering roots run deep. His family business was heavy construction: His father was instrumental in the building of Perry Dam near Lawrence and Tuttle Creek Dam near Manhattan, among other projects.

His late brothers, David and Don Frisbie, ran Frisbie Bridge Company in Topeka and built many bridges in the area. Both were also KU alumni; both earned degrees in 1949, David Frisbie in law and Don Frisbie in engineering.

Dean Frisbie

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ALUMNI PROFILES

CATHERINE M. DOWNEN

Submitted photo

NNAEMEKA EZEKWE

Ezekwe

Hometown: Nimo, Nigeria Degree(s) Obtained: B.S., M.S., Ph.D. in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, MBA Year(s) of Degree(s): 1976, 1977, 1982, and 1980 Current Occupation/ Company: Consultant/Retired from BP Americas Current City: Houston, Texas

Daily responsibilities of your job? Before retiring from BP Americas, I was Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Deployment Manager. I managed the deployment of EOR projects in all BP assets in the Gulf of Mexico, Middle East and South America. Low Salinity Waterflooding was the major EOR process that was evaluated for deployment in many BP Gulf of Mexico deepwater reservoirs. Daily responsibilities included building low-salinity waterflood models using VIP and Nexus simulators. Economic evaluations of these projects were an essential part of my daily activities.

Biggest challenges of your job? The biggest challenge of my job was justifying the economic feasibility of low -salinity waterflood projects when oil prices were under $50 per barrel.

How did KU Engineering best prepare you for your job? The key aspect of KU Engineering that best prepared me for my role was my research on EOR using carbon dioxide. The research project helped me to understand the fundamental aspects of EOR principles and applications.

Advice for current students? Take courses on economic evaluation of engineering projects. Many technically feasible projects may not be approved simply because management was not impressed by the economic feasibility parameters of the project.

Favorite memories of KU Engineering and Lawrence?

My favorite memory of KU is taking a walk through the campus in early spring. The campus is incredibly beautiful at this time of the year.

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Downen

Hometown: Lee’s Summit, Missouri Degree(s) Obtained: B.S., Architectural Engineering, M.S., Architectural Engineering Year(s) of Degree(s): 1993, 1995 Current Occupation/ Company: Compliance Assurance Director - TC Programs, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation Current City: Savannah, Georgia

Daily responsibilities of your job? As a program administrator in the Gulfstream Organization Designation Authorization (ODA), I have limited authorities to act on behalf of the FAA in the type certification of new airplanes, or in making design changes to existing airplanes. I oversee a team of airworthiness engineers who contribute to the aircraft design process, ensuring the aircraft are safe and comply with regulatory requirements.

Biggest challenges of your job? Bringing together people with diverse experiences and backgrounds to find simple solutions to complex problems.

How did KU Engineering best prepare you for your job? The Aerospace Engineering Department prepared me to understand the complexity and integrated nature of systems in a modern business jet airplane, as well as the iterative process of developing new technology.

My professors at KU taught me to “walk” with a basic understanding of aircraft design and to ask questions to gain understanding of the details. This gave me the foundation to assume a leadership position with oversight of engineering disciplines beyond what I had studied in school.

Advice for current students? To be a successful engineer, you must have more than engineering knowledge and expertise. Communication, negotiation and networking skills are necessary to lead a group of people toward a common goal or solution. I would advise KU students to look for opportunities to communicate clearly, plan tasks and be responsible for the outcome of a group effort. If you are an introvert, learn how to be comfortable interacting with others!

Favorite memories of KU Engineering and Lawrence?

As a graduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Department, I joined a small group of classmates in designing and building a remotely controlled airplane.

We worked late nights in the basement of Learned Hall to build the parts and assemble our design. Dr. Saeed Farokhi mentored the team, ensuring we ended the semester with an airworthy design. I thoroughly enjoyed the hands-on practical engineering experience and camaraderie within the team. I eventually started dating the team leader, Troy Downen, and we are now happily married with two children.

Fuel the Future

KU Engineering students are preparing for challenging careers, pioneering new technologies and developing solutions to the world’s most pressing needs. What they’re learning today will ensure a better tomorrow for all of us.

Support their learning and research opportunities with a gift today.

ANNUAL GIFTS

(DONATIONS FROM JULY 1, 2021, TO JUNE 30, 2022)

Donor Recognition — Fiscal Year 2022 The high-quality engineering education that KU provides would not be possible without the generous assistance of its alumni and friends who’ve given to KU Endowment. Thank you to the following individuals and organizations who have supported the KU School of Engineering, its departments and students from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022.

Lifetime Giving Members of the Premier Society have provided distinguished levels of support for the KU School of Engineering year in and year out. We are proud to recognize their friendship and loyalty.

DEANS CLUB PREMIER SOCIETY Donors who through their lifetime of support have contributed $100,000 or more to KU Endowment for the benefit of the University of Kansas School of Engineering.

Jon B. Ardahl * & Judith K. Ardahl * CDR Robert C. Dees Roger L. Heckman & Brenda G. Heckman Lee A. Hoffman & Barbara R. Hoffman Samuel K. Nash, PhD * & Harriet S. Nash * John A. Pilla & Mandy E. Pilla Leonard M. Rickards * & Pauline M. Rickards * L.G. Suelter & Micki K. Suelter Larry D. Arnold & Patricia Arnold Philip S. Book * Adrienne Zimmerman Adam * Barbara Mills Adam & P. J. Adam * Frank W. Addis, PhD & Judith Boyer Addis Virginia L. Brunette-Allen & James B. Allen * Robert J. Allison Jr. & Carolyn Grother Allison Adaline L. Ames * Rajagopalan Ananthanpillai & Radhika Rajagopalan William B. Anderson * & Ruth Spotts Anderson * Jane V. Barber * Maynard Paul Bauleke, PhD * & Virginia Bauleke * Clarence J. Beck * & Hazel M. Beck * Barbara A. Becker & Frank J. Becker * Henry H. Benjes, Sr. * Bob Benz & Janet B. Benz Thomas L. Biggs * & Vicki J. Biggs * John V. Bossi * Michael J. Bradley & Susan Fink Bradley Sheila J. Brown William W. Brown Clara E. Buck * William Emanuel Buck * Norman L. Carroll * & Virginia Morie Carroll * Dr. E. Eugene Carter Carl C. Chaffee * & Catherine Clark Chaffee * Paul Chang Masakazu Chikira Thomas W. Childers & Dorothy Brown Childers Joseph A. Christy & Annabel Christy Arthur D. Clark * & Lillian French Clark * Frances Constant * Scott Coons & Elizabeth Green Coons George L. Cooper * & Ruth Jean Cooper * William C. Crabb * & Carol L. Crabb * Wesley G. Cramer * & Mrs. Wesley G. Cramer * David Darwin, PhD & Diane Mayer Darwin * Erwin David * Joseph W. Davison * & Leatha Sanford Davison * Alan F. Deaver * Edward R. Downs * & Katheryn Hancock Downs * Marlene J. Dunwoodie & Duane E. Dunwoodie * Cornelia Drake Eaton Robert J. Eaton

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Alfred Gerald Ferguson * Doris M. Fowler & John P. Fowler II * William E. Franklin * & Marjorie Heard Franklin * Dean R. Frisbie * & Florence W. Frisbie * Walter R. Garrison * & Jayne B. Garrison * Harry T. Gibson & Becky G. Gibson Anne Underhill Gove * Richard M. Haden & Treva Haden * Rolland M. Hamilton * Richard R. Hargrove & Karen A. Hargrove Suzanne N. Heiny & Richard L. Heiny, PhD * Dorothy M. Hellman & Paul L. Hellman * Lester E. Hey * & Anna Kuntz Hey * Joel D. Hill & Brenda Hill Ronald E. Hill, PE Sue Hill * Dr. Kenneth J. Himmelstein * Thomas T. Hirst & Alisa S. Hirst Forrest E. Hoglund & Sally S. Hoglund James Boyd Holecek * Zachary D. Holland & Melissa L. Holland Elizabeth A. Hoover & Richard H. Hoover * Steven B. Hurt & MaryJane J. Hurt Dean L. Hutchinson * Sally L. Jennings * Arthur St.Clair Johnson * & Helen May Johnson * George R. Jones * & Martha M. Jones * Goldie Field Jones * Margaret McKinney Kane Robert W. Keener & Barbara J. Keener * James E. Kegerreis Charles W. Keller * & Marie T. Keller * Deborah Y. Kipp & Robert A. Kipp * Robert A. Kleist & Barbara L. Kleist * James M. Kring Jr. & Donna M. Kring Doris Flood Ladd & J. Bert Ladd * Harold D. Lamping * & Janice A. Lamping * Donald H. Landauer * & Mae Chetlain Landauer * Luceil Lehnhoff * Silvester C. Leonard * Bernard Levine * Kenneth R. Lewis * Wilbur V. Lewis * & Martha Compton Lewis * A. Harold Long * & Mrs. A. Harold Long * John W. Lonnberg * & Ethelyn Soper Lonnberg * Robert S. Lukenbill * & Jenny Lukenbill * Bruce A. Lutz, PE & Michelle West Lutz Max Lynn * Shirley Taylor Lynn * James A. Mandigo * & Helen Jedlicka Mandigo * Craig L. Martin & Diane H. Martin Leon V. Mason * Brian A. McClendon & Beth Ellyn McClendon Ross E. McKinney * & Margaret C. McKinney * Konni Roach McMurray & Brian L. McMurray H. Ronald Miller & Sandra K. Miller John J. Miller * Paul W. Miller * & Virginia Bassett Miller * Paul H. Mitchell & Nancy Mauree Mitchell *

Betty J. Mitscher & Lester A. Mitscher, PhD * Richard K. Moore, PhD * & Wilma S. Moore * Thomas E. Mulinazzi, PhD & Kathryn J. Mulinazzi Mrs. Maria Everett Mullins * Stanley T. Myers & Joan T. Myers Karim W. Nasser, PhD George E. Nettels Jr. * & Mary Joanne Myers Nettels * Steve H. Nguyen, PhD, DDS Michael C. Noland, PhD & Karen Dicke Noland Marvin R. Nuss & Hazel Best Nuss Michael A. O’Bannon * Patrick R. Oenbring & Brenda Austin Oenbring Garrett E. Pack & Linda Daniel Pack Robert P. Peebler & Susie Mastoris Peebler Ted K. Pendleton & Marlene McGregor Pendleton Edwin R. Phelps Jr. * Harold A. Phelps & Donna R. Brady-Phelps Carl O. Pingry III * Mary Ann Powell & Nick Powell Harold P. Reiland Sr. * & Ann Ainsworth Reiland * Allyn W. Risley & Jill Bogan Risley John H. Robinson * & Patricia Odell Robinson * John H. Robinson Jr. & Kyle Simmons Robinson Thomas B. Robinson * & Suzanne Robinson * Stanley T. Rolfe, PhD & Phyllis W. Rolfe Russell T. Rosenquist * David A. Ross & Patricia P. Ross Dave G. Ruf Jr. James M. Secrest * & Betty Gunnels Secrest * Madison A. Self * & Lila M. Self * Dorothy J. Shaad, MD * Emily Baker Shane * John C. Shawver & Molly Shawver E. Palmer Shelton * & Margaret J. Shelton * Joyce N. Shinn & Michael G. Shinn * James E. Smith & Dori L. Smith Robert L. Smith * & Lucille J. Smith * Charles E. Spahr * & Mary Jane Bruckmiller Spahr * Lynne Gerlach Zoellner Stark & Robert L. Stark Wayland A. Stephenson, MD * & Alice Ann Jones Stephenson * Bert F. Steves * Dorothy F. Steves * Gerald A. Stoltenberg James W. Straight, PhD, PE & Roberta Straight * Kurt D. Swaney Robert D. Talty, PhD * & Dorothy W. Talty * Patricia Rozema Taylor * Gregs G. Thomopulos & Mettie L. Thomopulos Stanley S. Thurber * & Alice V. Thurber * Jelindo A. Tiberti II & Sandee Tiberti Tito Tiberti Zoltan J. Tober * & Addilee Tober * Murli Tolaney & Mona Tolaney Mark W. Tompkins & Dianne E. Tompkins, PhD Nicole I. Kirkpatrick & COL. Kenneth F. Troup, USAF, RET * Frank D. Tsuru & Stephanie K. Tsuru

* Indicates donor has passed.

ANNUAL GIFTS M. Eugene Tunison, PhD & Sheryl A. Tunison Leonel E. Tustison * & Helen L. Tustison * Hobert C. Twiehaus * & Martha Tyson Twiehaus * James L. Tyson * Eli William Ulrich * Harrison D. Underhill * Kyle D. Vann & Barbara A. Vann William C. Walker * & Elaine W. Walker * Daniel R. Wall David M. Wall William E. Wall Thomas K. Washburn & Eileen Washburn Joseph L. Welch & Clare A. Welch Joan O. Wertz & H.J. Wertz * C. Keith Willey * Fred S. Williams & Anne Proctor Williams Carl A. Wilson * & Myrtle Lutschg Wilson * Christopher P. Winter & Cassondra E. Winter Carol Jean Witter * Lyle L. Woodfin, MD * Riley D. Woodson * & Virginia M. Woodson * Sharon Young & E. Eugene Young * DEANS CLUB CHAMPIONS Individuals who have given $50,000 or more Rajagopalan Ananthanpillai & Radhika Rajagopalan Jon B. Ardahl * Larry D. Arnold & Patricia Arnold Philip S. Book * William W. Brown Dean R. Frisbie * Florence W. Frisbie * Roger L. Heckman & Brenda G. Heckman Ronald E. Hill, PE Lee A. Hoffman & Barbara R. Hoffman Elizabeth A. Hoover Alan W. Klaassen Craig L. Martin & Diane H. Martin Brian A. McClendon & Beth Ellyn McClendon Paul H. Mitchell Harriet S. Nash * Samuel K. Nash, PhD * John A. Pilla & Mandy E. Pilla Jocarol Robb David A. Ross & Patricia P. Ross Frank D. Tsuru & Stephanie K. Tsuru Thomas K. Washburn & Eileen Washburn DEANS CLUB DIPLOMATS Individuals who have given $25,000 to $49,999 Edward L. Bohannon & Bonnie Lou Bohannon J. Kermit Campbell David Darwin, PhD Christine Ehlig Economides, PhD Donald H. Gordon * Norma A. Gordon * LT Lairy A. Johnson, USN, Ret. Leslie Wynne Lenser Betty J. Mitscher Kerri A. Neschleba & Patrick Neschleba Steve H. Nguyen, PhD, DDS Marvin R. Nuss & Hazel Best Nuss Stanley T. Rolfe, PhD & Phyllis W. Rolfe Joan K. Scott Linda Ellis Sims & Russ Sims Kyle D. Vann & Barbara A. Vann

DEANS CLUB AMBASSADORS Individuals who have given $10,000 to $24,999 Barbara A. Becker James R. Bess CDR Robert C. Dees Brian D. Farquharson Marjorie H. Flemming Gregory S. Grimm & Karen E. Grimm Curtis K. Harshaw & Janice E. Harshaw Julie Hickman Thomas T. Hirst & Alisa S. Hirst James E. Kegerreis Kyle A. Mathis & KaRan Mathis Robert J. Matreci Ross E. McKinney * Richard R. Moderow & Paula D. Neal Michael C. Noland, PhD & Karen Dicke Noland Harold A. Phelps & Donna R. Brady-Phelps Dennis M. Purduski * Dave G. Ruf Jr. Joyce N. Shinn V. Lee Smith & Jerry M. Smith * L.G. Suelter & Micki K. Suelter Gregs G. Thomopulos & Mettie L. Thomopulos Mike Tierney & Kristen Gable Tierney Mark W. Tompkins & Dianne E. Tompkins, PhD M. Eugene Tunison, PhD & Sheryl A. Tunison David B. Wallace * Margaret Read Wallace * Dr. Eugene W. Wester James D. Whiteside Robert E. Willett Christopher P. Winter & Cassondra E. Winter Wiliam A. Wiseman, Jr. & Joy Wiseman Leo W. Zahner III & Margaret Bruggen Zahner DEANS CLUB BENEFACTORS Individuals who have given $5,000 to $9,999 Theodore E. Batchman, PhD Richard W. Bond & Susan Shockley Bond Earnest A. Boyns Linda Zarda Cook & Steven R. Cook Troy D. Cook & Susan Cook Dorothy A. Daugherty Daniel W. Deaver Doug Eason & Becky Alexander Eason, PhD Cornelia Drake Eaton Robert J. Eaton Robert W. Eggert Jr. & Amy H. Eggert Brian A. Falconer & Virginia Lamb Falconer John P. Franklin Jr. Paul B. Fritsch & Michelle Cozad Fritsch Jeff L. Funk Harry T. Gibson & Becky G. Gibson James O. Gibson & Linda Ryan Gibson Warren B. Harrell Jr. & Pamela Harris Harrell Jon J. Heeb, MD & Barbara Givens Heeb Louis J. Heitlinger Kimberly Sedberry Hess & Marc T. Hess Pamela T. Horne & Stephen A. Horne Anthony G. Kempf & Teresa Mulinazzi Kempf Roy M. Knapp, DE & Judith Young Knapp Max L. Mardick & Nancy Mc Kinstry Mardick Michael B. Moore, MD Stanley T. Myers & Joan T. Myers Tim A. North & Janell K. North Garrett E. Pack & Linda Daniel Pack Gregory P. Pasley, PhD & Sonia Martinez Pasley Robert P. Peebler & Susie Mastoris Peebler Jenny Wohletz Pelner & James A. Pelner Linda A. Poyser Jack P. Reid & Jane L. Reid Allyn W. Risley & Jill Bogan Risley Shawna R. Rogers & Jason L. Rogers

Robert L. Skaggs James E. Smith & Dori L. Smith Shawn P. Smith & Maria Avila Smith William A. Sorem, PhD & Shelly Staus Sorem Ryan C. Spangler & Jill Renee Spangler Bill P. Sterbens & Dana L. Sterbens James W. Straight, PhD, PE Allison R. Terry Tito Tiberti Lakshmi Narasimha R. Viswanadha Fred S. Williams & Anne Proctor Williams Denise Y. Wolfs DEANS CLUB PATRONS Individuals who have given $3,000 to $4,999 William E. Benso & Beverly Runkle Benso Thomas L. Biggs * Vicki J. Biggs * Jose A. Gutierrez Robert L. Henderson & Judyth B. Henderson Annabelle Hiegel Joel D. Hill & Brenda Hill Paul Hunt & Stephanie Hunt Timothy S. Isernhagen & Beth Isernhagen Cherie A. Jones & Michael S. Johnson Frank E. Komin & Sharon K. Komin Brian C. Larkin Nathan Markham John R. McDaniel Strauder C. Patton, IV Paul E. Peters, PhD Leonard M. Rickards * Pauline M. Rickards * COL Zachary T. Schmidt & Nicole Mehring Schmidt Benjamin L. Schulte Thomas R. Sheahan & Janet S. Sheahan Robert T. Smith, PE Wilson G. Weisert Jr. & Marsha E. Weisert Joe Wohletz & Mary Wohletz David R. Zornes & Cynthia L. Zornes DEANS CLUB DONORS Individuals who have given $1,000 to $2,999 Diane J. Adamec Arvin Agah, PhD Robert W. Agnew, PhD & Margaret Rose Agnew Robynn Andracsek Wilhelmus A.J. Anemaat, PhD & MaryJo Anemaat Margaret Gartner Anschutz Neal H. Ardahl & Elizabeth A. Ardahl Terry Ryan Axline Stuart R. Bell, PhD & Susan T. Bell Casey R. Biggs & Jacklyn M. Biggs, PhD J. Dennis Biggs, MD & Sheila Pyle Biggs Sidney L. Black & Carolyn Skinner Black Douglas L. Blue Jr. Bertram T. Bone Jr. Jimmie R. Bowden & Helen J. Bowden William H. Boyington Michael J. Bradley & Susan Fink Bradley Ian M. Bradt & Josh Hollingsworth Beverly B. Brown Minter E. Brown & Connie Tucker Brown Brian J. Burke & Helen Burke John R. Burke & Laura L. Burke Robert T. Burkes Grant M. Canaday Bethannie Fought Canter & Jason A. Canter Andres E. Carvallo & Angela D. Carvallo Teresa L. Pfortmiller Castle Stephen R. Cathey & Vicki E. Cathey Angela M. Chammas & George A. Chammas Andy Chapman & Susan Hayman Taylor

KANSAS ENGINEER | 43

ANNUAL GIFTS Michael J. Chun, PhD & Bina M. Chun William C. Clawson, PhD & Marnie S. Clawson Kevin L. Colebank & Laura Colebank Stephen D. Collins Andrew G. Colombo & Maribeth T. Colombo Kenneth F. Conrad & Leslie Sauder Conrad Scott Coons & Elizabeth Green Coons Warren Corman & Mary Corman Steven M. Crowl & Sandi Crowl Colin P. Davidson & Mary D. Davidson Francis Dehaussy Robert L. Dellwig Wesley M. Densmore Duane L. DeWerff Kenneth W. Dietz Edward W. Dillingham Andrew F. Dracon Linda Dotson Drake Bill H. Duncan & Julia Siress Duncan Jason S. Endecott & Virginia L. Endecott Benjamin J. Ewy, PhD & Monica Curtis Ewy Saeed Farokhi, PhD & Mariam Farokhi Andrew S. Flower & Victoria Flower Jane E. Fortin & Paul E. Fortin, PhD John E. Foulston & Peggy J. Foulston David P. Fritz, MD & Jamie E. Fritz Philip D. Gibbs, Jr., P.E. & Jennifer K. Gibbs Philip D. Gibbs, Sr., P.E. & Kathleen G. Gibbs James P. Gillespie & Ruthie B. Gillespie Robert W. Givens & Deborah A. Givens Matthew A. Goering & Vanessa R. Goering Lawrence L. Gore Gary E. Gould & Elizabeth A. Gould Carol E. Grantham Pat L. Green & Don W. Green, PhD Tirzah R. Gregory & Linehan S. Gregory Charles L. Guthrie & Cheryl Guthrie Andrew F. Halaby & Ann Marie Halaby Douglas H. Hall & Judith K. Hall John Hammond Terry A. Hammond, DE & Patricia R. Hammond Jerri Runell Hanus & Daniel J. Hanus Karl J. Harding & Cheryl L. Harding Leaman D. Harris & Judith L. Harris, PhD Doug K. Herbers Michael R. Hess & Kathleen Gilman Hess Richard A. Hiebsch & Vicky A. Hiebsch Brandon L. Hinton Leon Hogan Kelsy Jones Holmes & Jonathon P. Holmes Daniel A. Hope Steven C. Hughes Michael P. Humberd & Lisa K. Dickson-Humberd William J. Hurley & Coleen C. Hurley Emmanuel K. Idun, PhD & Phyllis Afful Idun Deonarine D.J. Jaggernauth Thomas L. Jenkins Gerald E. Jenks & Pamela D. Jenks Brandy Smith Johnson Debra L. Johnson Jeffrey L. Johnson & Sybil Meyer Johnson Jeremy Schley Johnson Leland R. Johnson Jr., PhD Vicki S. Johnson, PhD Daniel L. Jones Robert L. Juett Neil D. Karbank Prabhudeva N. Kavi RADM Gene R. Kendall, USN, Retired Christopher H. Kennedy & Sarah Mahoney Kennedy Stephen E. Kibbee Gregory C. Krekeler Jr. & Karen Goodyear Krekeler Michael R. Kuss & Cheryl L. Kuss Kevin D. Lafferty Orley L. Lake, PhD Les K. Lampe, DE & Karen Craft Lampe

44 | FALL 2022

(DONATIONS FROM JULY 1, 2021, TO JUNE 30, 2022)

Chuan-Tau Lan & Sumy C. Lan Brian G. Larson & Edie Carpenter Larson Patrick A. LeGresley & Jenny Buontempo LeGresley Leo G. LeSage, PhD * & Carolyn Bailey LeSage James R. Lewis & Debra E. Lewis Timothy C. Liebert Lance L. Lobban, PhD Carl E. Locke Jr., PhD & Sammie R. Locke Bruce W. Long & Priscilla T. Long VADM Michael K. Loose, USN, Retired & Carol Stejskal Loose Ludwig Luft, PhD Richard F. Luthy Jr. Susan C. Lyman & Kent L. Lyman Deborah K. Markley Bruce F. McCollom, DE & E. Irene McCollom Timothy A. McFerrin & Cynthia Fraley McFerrin Bill McLennan & Diane D. McLennan Michael E. Meakins Alan J. Meitl Elle J. Meitl James R. Meitl Elizabeth A. Merckens & Brian M. Merckens John L. Meyer, Jr. Brad R. Moore, PE Philip B. Moran & Vicki Moran Brandon W. Morel Thomas E. Mulinazzi, PhD & Kathryn J. Mulinazzi Krista Wendt Murphy & Zach Murphy Catherine Ray Nance & Terry J. Nance Michael S. Nickel & Lisa Karr Nickel Donald J. Nistler II & Carol Poulson Nistler Cynthia Odabasi Michael G. Orth Emma G. Parker Jennifer A. Parks-Lafferty David C. Pattison & Marilyn Miller Pattison James L. Patton & Marilyn S. Patton Bethany Anderson Pearson & James D. Pearson, PharmD Ronald K. Peden & Diana R. Peden Richard L. Peil & Janice L. Peil Ted K. Pendleton & Marlene McGregor Pendleton Steven G. Pennington, PhD Kent A. Pennybaker & Janet Knollenberg Pennybaker Bamdad Pourladian, PhD & Hilda T. Delgado Kent D. Powell & Margaret Shannon Powell Connie Estes Puett Jason R. Purdy & Rachel Dinkel Purdy Karthik Ramachandran, PhD & Sneha Narayanan Nazareno L. Rapagnani, PhD & Phyllis Burch Rapagnani Curtis W. Rink Scott A. Roberts, PhD & Christine Roberts Jennifer Barber Ruf & Dave G. Ruf III Steven E. Rus & Lynn Nugent Rus Lanny G. Schoeling, DE & Jill A. Schoeling Kurt L. Schueler Vicki J. Secrest Mark D. Shaw Colin Sherman Keith A. Shetlar & Kathryn Caldwell Shetlar Charles A. Shoup Raymond J. Shu Curtis W. Slagell & Gayle Slagell Mark D. Smith & Brandi Piper Smith Margaret Moseley Smith & Robert H. Smith, PhD * Scott M. Smith Deborah L. Smith-Wright, MD John Richard Solar Jr. James R. Sorem Jr., PhD & Gentra Abbey Sorem Stephanie M. Spilker Mary Spragg & Todd Spragg Carla Cochran Stallard & G. Scott Stallard Lynne Gerlach Zoellner Stark & Robert L. Stark

Jay A. Stoker & Sandra Coppaken Stoker Peter A. Stonefield & Anna E. Stonefield Michael T. Swink L. B. Thomas & Jann Walker Thomas J. Angelo Tiberti III & Lindsey Fisher Tiberti, PharmD Brian T. Torres & Janel D. Torres Gregory S. Towsley & Julie Ann Towsley Michael L. Treanor, AIA Robert D. Tregemba & Kelli F. Tregemba David Trevino, Jr. Charles F. Twiss Kenneth J. Vaughn & Marilyn L. Vaughn Michelle Poague Veatch Ryan E. Vick & Emily Schulte Vick Marco Villa, DE John E. Virr Lisa Bessinger Voiles & Paul A. Voiles, PE, PTP Joseph B. Wallace III, PE & Barbara J. Wallace George L. Ward & Peggy Tilton Ward Robert D. Warder Cary D. Watson Myrl R. Wear & Carolyn J. Wear David B. Weaver & Laurie A. Weaver Andrea J. Wendel & Aaron Wendel CDR Laurel A. Wessman, USN, Retired & Capt. Lynn G. Wessman, USN, Retired Frank J. Wewers Andrew B. Williams, PhD & Anitra Williams David D. Wilmoth & Julie D. Wilmoth William E. Witwicki Jerome Wohleb Larry E. Wood Richard D. Wunder & Cheryl A. Wunder Zhongchun Yan & Min Wang Mark Yeskie, PhD & Janice N. Yeskie Gregory A. Young & Nancy B. Quigg-Young Irvin E. Youngberg Jr., DE & Diane Youngberg Chi-Liang Yu, PhD Julian A. Zugazagoitia & Nathalie D. Zugazagoitia DEANS CLUB RISING STARS Gifts of $500 or more from alumni who are 35 or younger Alexandra G. Depew Sarah Elizabeth McCandless Ryan J. Pfeifer Nicole L. Rissky Megan K. Teahan Jesse B. Yang CAMPANILE CLUB Individuals who have given $500 to $999 Blackburn Alexander Ben E. Ardahl David M. Barber & Katherine V. Barber Theodore L. Bergman, PhD & Patricia S. Bergman Norman L. Bowers David L. Brackey Diane M. Brock & Michael R. Brock Donald E. Buckholz & Lynn J. Buckholz Harley D. Catlin & Jerree J. Catlin Philip E. Ciesielski Sarah Storms Cindrell & Joshua B. Cindrell Clinton R. Collins, MD James A. Compton Frederic Daireaux Rachelle Depew & James Depew David L. Dittemore Nathan H. Dormer, PhD & Jennifer M. Wiles George P. Evans & Joyce Grist Evans Douglas M. Everhart & Sonja Schonberg Everhart Jerry L. Fife & Marva Hotchkiss-Fife

* Indicates donor has passed.

ANNUAL GIFTS Wayne O. Fink Kristopher S. Fisher & Nicole Fisher John H. Fox & Jeanne B. Fox Marie Wagner Franklin Joseph R. Franzmathes William C. Gautreaux & Christina A. Gautreaux Daniel J. Gleason & Cathy L. Gleason Milton L. Gleason & Deborah K. Gleason Deena Goodman & Philip J. Goodman Frank E. Gordon, DE & Lynda L. Gordon Michael R. Graham Jennifer L. Gunby David C. Harold Ross G. Holzle & Janis Page Holzle George H. Honnold Bannus B. Hudson & Cecily K. Hudson Raja R. Iyengar & Jayanthi K. Iyengar Theodore Ahrens Julian, Jr. Cheryl A. Lambrecht Carol Fenton Larson Bruce Leban Paul W. Leupold Billie J. Lindburg Steven M. Long Gregory J. Mack & Eva M. Mack Thomas M. Mccoy Bob Miller, PhD Bruce J. Morgan & Lynne M. Morgan Nick Nicholson Liam P. O’Shea Richard E. Pancake Robert L. Perkins & Arneda K. Perkins James L. Peterson & Susan McGinley Peterson John W. Pope Shane M. Popp Michael P. Randall & Angela J. Randall Carol A. Reifschneider, PhD Lynette Berg Robe & Mike L. Robe Wendy J. Rosploch David A. Sagerser Alejandro Sanchez G. Joe Scatoloni Hugh Scheurer Jenniter M. Schlener-Thomas Paul A. Shapiro Mark B. Shiflett Mara A. Simpson Janyce A. Smith Jeffrey A. Smith, PhD Norvel L. Smith & Linda Lecture Smith Edith L. Snethen & Donald D. Snethen Robert A. Stuever, PhD & Lisa M. Stuever Melanie J.P. Townsend & Nelson C.E. Townsend Douglas E. Ubben Jr. & Megan R. Ubben Richard H. Umstattd & Chrystyna Umstattd Pedro M. Vargas, PhD Bruce E. Vaughn Carl R. Von Fange & Linda D. Von Fange Xuhai Wang, PhD Alicia Fleming Washeleski Geoffrey R. Wehrman & Mary B. Wehrman Edward Wolcott Tanya L. Woolley & Bill Woolley Gretchen Zahn Harland V. Zamora CRIMSON AND BLUE CLUB Individuals who have given $300 to $499 Edward H. Abbott, PE Brian Anderson Dean M. Andrisevic Robert C. Bearse, PhD & Margaret M. Bearse Creg S. Bishop, PhD Creed E. Blevins Terry Bredemus

Alison J. Brown Keith A. Browning & Theresa C. Browning Amanda M. Carter Margaret Laidig Chatham Audrey Seybert Chritton & Douglas E. Chritton David A. Conrad & Bonnie E. Conrad David W. Crook LCDR Laurence A. Eichel, USN (RET) & Kathleen L. Hardesty Deborah A. English & Joel A. Crown Penny L. Evans Dawn M. Galloway & Matthew A. Galloway William J. Glick Parker S. Gordon Michael J. Gormish, PhD & Denise Hornsby Gormish Elizabeth D. Gregory Kevin J. Harder Zhubo Huang, PhD & Feng Xie Al Jaymand Eric J. Johnson Lee S. Johnson & Janelle Davies Johnson Ernest A. Johnston Jr. & Kathy Johnston Richard F. Juarez & Barbara A. Juarez Christina Mulinazzi Kruse Jeffrey A. Lanaghan Ernest W. Leachty Franco E. Mau & Li-Hsueh C. Mau Larry B. Morgan, PhD & Deborah L. Morgan Melvin G. Oster & Karen M. Oster Steven B. Pontious James E. Quinn & Mary E. Quinn CAPT Stanley J. Reno, Retired & Marjorie A. Reno Tanner J. Rinke Mildred Ellen Robb & Shanto Iyengar Janette Ruess Thomas L. Rutherford Joaquin P. Serrano & Susan M. Figeac Donald Sooby, PE Paulette Spencer, PhD, DDS & Lloyd C. Colberg Michael F. Spoor Candan Tamerler James T. Taylor, USN, (RET) & Rosa Lea Taylor Dean M. Testa & Karen L. Testa Donald B. Trust, PhD Dominic M. Varraveto William E. Woodhouse 1865 CLUB Individuals who have given $100 to $299 Nathaniel J. Abeita & Sara Hettenbach Abeita Meghan Abella-Bowen Joel T. Abrahamson, PhD & Dorea Ruggles, PhD Richard R. Alford R. Tran Alfrey & Barbara Alfrey Gregory L. Allemann Donald R. Allen & M. Jane Allen Bruce E. Alquist Donald P. Amiotte, Navy, Retired Stanley G. Andeel & Gretchen Lee Andeel Gary A. Anderson & Carlene T. Anderson Addison Appleby Katherine U. Arendt & Richard Arendt Michael E. Arp J. Douglas Ashbrook & Marilyn Stone Ashbrook Shannon Snyder Bachman & Randall K. Bachman Jim Ballard Linda Mae Banta Paul Banzet & Barbara E. Banzet Mary S. Barr Richard S. Beamgard & Cheryl Tongish Beamgard Betty J. Beaver Rick C. Bell Laurence E. Benander Nicole Bentz

Fred F. Berry Jr. & Suzanne N. Berry Gregory A. Betzen & Barbara Yannone Betzen Michael A. Betzen Beverly Smith Billings Dr. Robert E. Binda Jr. & Doris M. Binda Edmund J. Bishop, PhD & Kathleen M. Bishop Bruce Bitler & Jeanne H. Bitler Linda Griffith Blackerby John C. Bocox Bruce J. Boggs, Jr. & Phyllis L. Boggs Karen Majors Bogle & Grant C. Bogle Thad M. Bolline & Tamara H. Bolline Philip H. Bozarth & Penny Hinderks Bozarth Phillip G. Bradford, PhD & Dorothy Mueller Doug Bradley & Robin Fry Bradley Catherine M. Brain & David M. Brain Michael S. Branicky, ScD & Danielle M. Olds, PhD Daniel C. Bredemus Elizabeth S. Brewer Marcus A. Brewer Patrick T. Brock Mickey S. Brown & Goldie Boldridge Brown Laurence R. Brown Karen DeGasperi Bryan & David A. Bryan Stephen W. Burke & Sherrill A. Burke Harlan D. Burkhead & Patricia Burkhead Kelley Lyn Butler & Harlan Butler C. Michael Caldwell Gerald R. Callejo Jon M. Callen & Kelly Edmiston Callen COL Harry D. Callicotte, USA, Retired Theodore J. Cambern Jr., DE Roger E. Carmichael Lee A. Carvell & Brenee R. Carvell Xavier Chiappa-Carrara Cindy Chole & Rick Chole Ethan E. Christian Philip E. Chronister & RaNee Chronister Kenneth M. Clark Donald L. Coffman & Jane Middleton Coffman Cynthia A. Cogil David C. Cole & Jacqueline L. Cole Terry D. Collins James P. Compton Cory P. Conklin & Kay Conklin Edwin M. Cooley & Diana Dubrovin Cooley William V. Courtright II, PhD Peter J. Culver, PE, PhD Don B. Cunningham & Nancy L. Cunningham Bruce E. Dauphin Patricia M. Dengler Robert D. Dennett Vickie Pauls Hursh Denning & Donald E. Denning Michael W. Dent & Judith Riebe Dent Rachel Derowitsch & Mark Derowitsch Mike Digman Dee Ehling Dillon & David B. Dillon William M. Dinkel David M. Dixon Douglas M. Dolan & Jennifer C. Dolan David E. Domann & Elizabeth Domann Randy Downing & Linda K. Downing David F. Draxler & Mariclare H. Draxler Art Dublin & Kathy Dublin Daniel G. Duda Darwin L. Eads, PhD & Wizie Eads Thomas C. Eagle, DE & Martha Eagle Thomas F. Edgar, PhD Brian R. Eggold Jeffrey O. Ellis & Carol Lynne B. Ellis Brent L. Engelland & Laura E. Engelland Justin English & Patricia English David M. Evans Muzai Feng, PhD & Cheng Chen William C. Fettes Kenneth J. Fischer, Ph.D. & Sandra K. Fischer Timothy B. Fortin & Jennifer Carter Fortin

KANSAS ENGINEER | 45

ANNUAL GIFTS Dawn C. Franz C. William Frick & Bethany Frick Helen Bush Frick William L. Frick & Laura Frick Lisa A. Friis Victor S. Frost, PhD & Linda Baird Frost Philip N. Garito & Lynne H. Garito Roger Garvert & Anita Barter Garvert Lisa M. Gay & Brian A. Gay Brian C. Gensch Martha George Ferol Beck Gerig Shannon E. Giles Marlene K. Glenn & Phillip A. Glenn James W. Gossett Jimmie L. Grassi Sr. & Janet L. Grassi Sandy Greene & Alan Frommer Diane K. Grimsley & Thomas S. Grimsley Helena Orazem Grinter & Mark J. Grinter Douglas A. Griswold & Margaret L. Griswold Ann M. Groover Elizabeth A. Groover Richard H. Grote & Barbara J. Grote Dobroslawa Grzymala-Busse & Jerzy W. Grzymala-Busse Thomas K. Gurss Susan E. Guthrie Bryan R. Haack Terence D. Hagen James F. Hall Daniel B. Halton James R. Hand & Sharon S. Hand James W. Hanke Jocilyn R. Hansen David A. Hanson & Jodi L. Hanson Marlin D. Harmony & Nancy M. Harmony Beth J. Harshfield Christina C. Harvick & Jeffrey L. Harvick Steven P. Healey & Julie R. Healey Marilyn L. Griggs-Kozloff & Terry W. Heidner * CAPT Arnold Herbert Henderson, USN, Retired Cynthia M. Herod & Johnny W. Herod Bonnie E. Hibbert Cheryl W. Hill & David M. Hill Gerald L. Hiller & Gloria Jones Hiller Sally J. Hoag Rodney J. Hofer & Roberta S. Hofer Carl E. Hoffman Robert C. Holder Zachary D. Holland & Melissa L. Holland Scott R. Holmes & Megan A. Holmes J. Michael Horner, PE & Katie McGreevey Horner Steven N. Houle Steven A. Houlik & Susan J. Houlik Charles E. Huffman Douglas Huffman & Mary Fox Sinclair LaVaughn Hull Kellie D. Hurd Justin Hutchison Laura L. Ice Robert W. Iler John H. Iverson Roger P. Jackson, MD & Sandra M. Jackson Tavis J. Jacobs Barrett T. Jesseph & Jennifer Loftus Jesseph Hong Jin, PhD David O. Johnson, PhD & Elaine E. Johnson Kenneth R. Johnson & Nancy Brown Johnson, PhD Richard L. Johnson Robert Eric Johnson Warren L. Johnson Jr., MD & M. Rebecca Johnson Matthew B. Jones W. Mark Jordan Kathleen A. Kaiser James I. Karr Michael W. Karr & Janet Phelps Karr Basil T. Kattula

46 | FALL 2022

(DONATIONS FROM JULY 1, 2021, TO JUNE 30, 2022)

Charles D. Keaton & Judith Keaton Richard L. Keefover Kenneth C. Keller Joanne Kelley & James E. Kelley, Jr. Ami M. Keltner & Lance W. Keltner James D. Kessinger & Peggy Kessinger Becky Kester Jason J. Kieffaber Frank H. Kirk & Nancy A. Kirk Michael C. Kirk & Julia Turtle Kirk Heather A. Kirkvold, PhD Kirk A. Kisinger & Connie J. Kisinger Julie Peters Knudtson Stuart A. Knutson & Hazel Z. Knutson Mark J. Komen Pradeep K. Kondamuri, PhD Fan Kong & Loletta Yimman Ho Rebecca J. Kraft, EdD & David C. Kraft, PhD Janice C. Kreamer & Thomas F. Kreamer Christine Wiley Kubik Pamela Roger Laborde Gale D. Lantis Richard G. Leamon & Yvonne M. Lazear James Edwin Lee & Jeanette K. Lee Carolyn Wei-Teh Lee-Parsons COL William R. Lennard, USAF, Retired Jianhua Li, PhD & Cuiping Zhao Dion P. Lies Stephen A. Lightstone & Terry L. Lightstone Alan Lilleoien Cole M. Lindemann & Jamie L. Lindemann Sharon Price Love John M. Lubert & Paula H. Lubert Amber Wunder Lucas, PharmD & Kyle J. Lucas R. Scott Lundgren Stephen D. Luthye & Melinda A. Luthye Roger Maeda Erin Lewis Mannen, PhD Megan L. Mansfield John G. Martel & Ida Ana Kellerstrauss Martel Alex L. Martin & Annam Manthiram James L. Martin Marian K. Massoth & Vic Robbins George R. Matocha & Linda Huff Matocha David S. Matos William D. McCaa Jr., PhD J. Gary McEachen & Joann Watkins McEachen Liz McInerney Alan G. McKee, OD & Earlena F. McKee, OD G. Craig McKinnis & Janice E. McKinnis David S. McLeod, PhD Julie Dillon McNerney Richard D. Mercer & Helen Zimmerman Mercer Amir Mesarwi Jane A. Metcalf & Garry W. Metcalf Joseph D. Meyer & Alyssa Meyer Janis Biehler Milham & Allan B. Milham Jeffrey C. Miller Kent E. Miller The Hon. Paul E. Miller & Julia Brown Miller Randy B. Miller John H. Mitchelson & Beverly Ramsey Mitchelson Paul J. Moore & Cynthia Powell Moore Timothy J. Mueller Paul M. Mullin Ray W. Myers & Kim D. Myers Ramish Nadeem Ronald J. Nadvornik & Sally Smith Nadvornik Sharon Roy Nellis Karen M. Nelson Matthew J. Nelson & Susan L. Nelson Richard A. New & Rene Eloise McCorkle New Don R. Nottberg & Leslie R. Nottberg William R. O’Brien Alexander M. O’Neill Danny O’Neill Kelly R. O’Neill

Kevin M. O’Neill Paul F. O’Neill Sean A. O’Neill Kristen Olander Lars Osborne Lucia M. Otto Patricia D. Owens Jace B. Parkhurst Linda K. Parreco & Joseph Parreco Bozenna J. Pasik-Duncan, PhD & Tyrone Duncan, PhD LeDell Pearson & Janice E. Pearson Phyllis Graf Perry Barnard Peter Elizabeth M. Peterson Henry Petroski Brian K. Pheiffer & Dominique Pheiffer Samuel A. Pippert Michelle L. Pleimann Alfred L. Polski William E. Porter, EdD & Dianna Hull Porter Ricky S. Powell Robert F. Prentiss Jessie L. Randtke & Stephen J. Randtke Robert E. Rasberry & Sharol B. Rasberry Tannaz Rasouli Roger L. Ratzlaff Perry N. Rea Jerry D. Rees & Sallie L. Veenstra, MD Virginia Spong Reid David P. Reinfelds Ronald R. Renyer Eric M. Rhoades & Jody M. Rhoades, MD Natalie A. Richards John W. Richardson Jr. CAPT Wendell C. Ridder, USN Retired & Anne H. Ridder Martha Proctor Riedl & Joseph F. Riedl Warren G. Riekenberg, PE & Carol Lee Riekenberg Gerald W. Riley E. S. Riss Carol L. Ritchie Lisa Cave Ritchie & A. Scott Ritchie III Jenifer Sorem Rivera & Robert C. Rivera Carol Helton Roberts Karin K. Roberts, PhD, RN & Steven D. Roberts Thomas H. Roberts & Kimberley H. Roberts Stacy K. Roderman & Brian L. Roderman LTC Matthew A. Ross Randle L. Ross & Elizabeth C. Ross Joseph P. Roth Jr. & Margaret Carroll Roth Charles F. Rouse III & Susan Walker Rouse Emily Reimer Royal Daniel J. Rudolph & Cara Rudolph Larry G. Rusco & Karla J. Rusco Mohammad H. Sadraey, PhD Kristine Salmon & Denis Salmon Joseph D. Sandt, PhD Max L. Schardein John T. Schwaller & Jennifer Pownall Schwaller Cynthia R. Scott & J. William Scott Victor P. Scott & Betty L. Scott Stephanie A. Scurto & Aaron M. Scurto Lowell D. Seaton Robert C. Seletsky Philip A. Shontz & Niu Niu Su Michael Shreve Dennis D. Slattery Kathryn E. Slawson George D. Sloop & Nancy L. Sloop Mark E. Sloop Andrew K. Smith & Kelly Shepherd Smith, PharmD Gregory E. Smith & Sylvia R. Smith Kevin L. Smith Todd R. Smith William D. Smith William M. Smith & Diane Larson Smith

* Indicates donor has passed.

ANNUAL GIFTS C. A. Spaulding III & Susan S. Spaulding Tom Spink, USN, Retired Donald J. Spradling Charles E. Sprouse, PhD & Patricia Huber Sprouse, PhD Douglas J. Squire & Jennifer C. Squire William A. Staggs III & Maxine Mitchell Staggs Sheryl A. Stanley Katherin R. Steinbacher & Frank McMahon John T. Stewart III & Linda Bliss Stewart Ron Stitt & Karla Jo Stitt Kathy B. Strunk & Michael F. Strunk Brian D. Stubbings Eric D. Stucky, MD & Deborah Ling Stucky Larry L. Sukut & Inga Riley Carmack Sam Sul & Anh-Nguyet T. Nguyen, PhD Charlie C. Sun & Mariann C. Sun James M. Symons Charlotte Talley Peng S. Tan, PhD Zachary J. Taylor Jay Templin William R. Thomas & Karine M. Thomas C. David Thorell & Linda M. Thorell Leroy E. Tobler Katherine Topulos Warren C. Townsend Merary Trevino Nathan T. Tritsch Austin E. Tuggle Robert A. Uhlenhop Martin E. Updegraff Virginia Vadnais Harriett E. Van Bebber John L. VanRoekel Charles F. Vaughan & Kristine A. Vaughan K. Craig Vaughn & Cynthia L. Vaughn Paul R. Vernon Subramanian Vetrivelayudham Jack M. Vochatzer, Sr. & Linda K. Vochatzer Hans W. Walther Tracy Clinton Warriner Kurt D. Watson & Sue Watson Elizabeth Waugh & J. Scott McCandless William K. Waugh III & Judith Watson Waugh Michael C. Welch & Carla Sue Welch Lee A. Weltmer Darren V. Weninger Tori Wigle Arthur O. Wilkonson & Leslie M. Wilkonson COL Richard A. Willhite, USAF (RET) Mark A. Willis & Hilde Siegmann Willis E. James Wilson & Phyllis Frick Wilson David L. Wood III, PhD Thomas A. Wood Jr. & Tonia L. Wood Linda Woodsmall-DeBruce & Paul E. DeBruce Rick J. Worner & Lorie Walker Worner Lihua Xing, PhD Judy Yager & Earl Yager Lei Yang, PhD Xiaoqiang Yao Anne Beeson Yarnevich Yezid Yessoufou Yvette Tak-Ching Yuen & Michael S. James Philip T. Zeilinger Yuan Zhao, PhD John A. Zimmerman & Renee A. Zimmerman Robert J. Zimmerman & Annette Russell Zimmerman DONORS Individuals who have given up to $99 Kelly D. Abella Robert Abella Shavonne Abella

Janet Abercrombie Judy Geisendorf Adams & Charles T. Adams Paul J. Ahlenius CDR William D. Aldenderfer John F. Anderson & Michelle R. Anderson Nicholas S. Artz Kemal Ataman Alfred O. Awani, DE & Denise DeVoe Awani Fred Barhydt Deborah S. Barr Clinton R. Bauer & C. Anne Bauer William A. Baugh Jr. David G. Beach Charles E. Beaman & E. Irene Beaman Robert A. Bella Sr. & Elizabeth Lunney Bella Michael M. Belt & Barbara Hines Belt William J. Benne Franklin C. Berrier Sandeep G. Bhat Philip W. Birk Karen L. Blanco & Luis F. Blanco Lori A. Blaylock Clayton A. Bonny Donald N. Booth & Kim Chi Thi Booth William L. Boyd & Susan Boyd Daniel R. Brown Dr. Wayne Mullar Brown & Ann H. Brown Stephen D. Buehne & Nancy E. Buehne Craig A. Buhr & Ellen K. Buhr Christopher L. Burns Martha Schovee Byers, MD Robert Canny Laura E. Carpenter Sharon Menasco Carroll & Roland W. Carroll Jr. Maureen Cassani Michael J. Chapman & Ann Davis Chapman Thomas D. Clark Warren L. Clark Amanda Collins-Baine Arline Lockerbie Colvin CDR James C. Coudeyras Joseph E. Cronin M. Karen Crowe Susan M. Cunningham Natalie J. daCosta Thomas E. Davis & Myrna Frazer Davis Thomas H. DeAgostino & Laura L. DeAgostino James L. Deckert & Phyllis E. Deckert Janice S. Deering Kelly B. Deeter, DDS & Marjorie Jones Deeter Jennifer K. Deines Jeanne DeValk Jeffree S. Dickinson Enid R. Dickson & James W. Dickson Anne Donnelly & John Donnelly Mary Dormer & Lon Dormer James C. Douglass & Helga J. Douglass Annette Dubey Susan B. Dubey Mai Duong Dan W. Durham David L. Durstine Bobbie J. Eaker Amalia Eljammal Adam S. Ellenbogen Michael S. Fitzcharles Thomas P. Frieze Melinda Jones Garrett & Christopher L. Garrett Francis W. Gerlach Donna S. Gerren, PhD & Richard Gerren, PhD John L. Gladson Vicki L. Graf & Mike F. Graf Nancy Graham & William Graham D’Ann Gunn Cheng-Jen Gwo Jessica L. Haberstock Merlin B. Halverson & Judith M. Halverson

Gary W. Hamilton II & Kimberly J. Hamilton Diane P. Harsh & Robert N. Harsh Nathaniel L. Williams, PhD & Leigh Ann Hartman Carol A. Haulotte & Leonard D. Haulotte Scott Hayen & Kelley Jo Hayen Cheryl Ziegler Heck Bryan C. Hedges & Laura Penny Hedges Amy Heisler Maynard M. Herron Paige L. Hildebrandt Ralph E. Hite, III & Donna E. Hite Mary Lynn Holbrook & Reid F. Holbrook Richard L. Horvath & Meredith L. Horvath Susan F. Hruby & Gary E. Hruby James R. Hubbard & Susan B. Hubbard Don L. Hursh & Jane Sullivan Hursh John V. Jackson Feilin Jia, PhD Daniel Jones Jeffery A. Jordan & Amanda L. Jordan Gregory J. Kallos Catherine Kane Kathy Kappes-Sum Christopher Kennedy Kasonia S. Kisangani Peter N. Konstant Edwin W. Korff & Marvel L. Korff Robert E. Lambour Brianna Lane George Z. Li Jilu Li, PhD Robert Y. Li, PhD Carolyn W. London James D. Lord Todd Loveland Nicolle Lucas Jennifer E. Ludlow Rick H. Mason Rodney A. May & Teresa A. May Melinda A. McCoy & Hal W. McCoy II Matthew L. McFarlane & Ebony A. Onianwa Robert McGowan & Kathleen McGowan Kenneth M. McRae & Susan M. McRae Stephen C. Meredith & Rosalie M. Meredith Thomas E. Mertz Joseph W. Morgison & Ronda K. Morgison Marlane A. Morris Frank E. Motley Jason M. Murnane Lewis R. Nash Frank B. Nelson Cooper L. Nickel, MD & Lynda Westervelt Nickel Michael G. Norris & Kory Jurney Norris Gayle Nye Rodney K. Odgers, MD & Karen E. Odgers Terry L. Oldham, USAF, Retired & Kay Oldham Steven Wallace Panknin & Jane C. Panknin Thomas M. Partridge & Kimberly Stewart Partridge, PharmD Achal S. Patel Curtis J. Patterson III & Linda Katz Patterson Kay Blair Patterson, EdD Susan Collins Peach & Donald F. Peach, PE Kent T. Perry & Julianel S. Perry Don L. Pfannenstiel & Mitzi Martin-Pfannenstiel Vo Thien Tri Pham James W. Phelps Eric H. Pippin & Nicole Corcoran Kevin M. Player & Amy G. Player Brooke Porras Gilbert J. Potter & Patty Potter Audrey L. Puderbaugh C. David Quinn & Becky L. Quinn Jeffrey G. Ream & Heather Yord Ream Caleb D. Regan & Gwendolyn Salmon Regan Charles B. Richardson Shirley L. Roberts & Fred F. Roberts, MD

KANSAS ENGINEER | 47

ANNUAL GIFTS

(DONATIONS FROM JULY 1, 2021, TO JUNE 30, 2022)

Andy White , KU Marketing Communications

Brian A. Rock, PhD, PE & Kristie M. Rock, PE Jerusha P. Rowden Jason H. Rubis & Jennifer Shilling Rubis Brian Sayre Ross A. Schaller & Karen Schaller Robert W. Schies & Judy E. Schies Michael J. Schmidt & Tuija K. Schmidt Marcia Kraft Schoenfeld & Fred R. Greenstein Robert L. Siegele & Paula J. Siegele Ann Ardahl Smith Mark Smith Michael D. Stanley Peter B. Stebbins & Patricia A. Stebbins Dr. Paul S. Stein & Cynthia L. Stein Mark E. Stevens Paul D. Stone & Betty J. Stone Mikel L. Stout LCDR Daniel L. Stueckemann, USN, Retired & Cathy S. Stueckemann Carol M. Sykes & Homer W. Sykes, Jr. Belinda B. Thompson Barbara L. Thompson & Willard B. Thompson * Su-Gin Tiong Brenda L. Trainor Henry Treftz Christina J. Trotter Steven J. Tyler & Laura Armato Tyler David G. Underwood & Luanne Underwood Francisco B. Villanueva James C. West, PhD & Jane L. Sittler West Carolyn R. Wilson Carolyn S. Wolff & John Wolff Carol A Wollenberg LCDR Hsin-Fu Wu, USN, Retired & Theresa Wu Olivia Zarth Elinor Zugazagoitia

Industry and Foundation Donors 1517 Fund 2012 Jayhawk Motorsports Team AIAA Foundation Air Power Consultants, Inc. Alarm.com Alberici Constructors American Society of Civil Engineers-Kansas City Section Association of American Medical Colleges Bartlett & West, Inc. Sean D. Biggs Memorial Foundation Black & Veatch Foundation Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Kansas Brand New Box Brown Industries, Inc. Burns & McDonnell Cashco, Inc. Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP Cornejo & Sons LLC DARcorporation JE Dunn Construction Company Evergy, Inc. ExxonMobil Foundation Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc. Garmin International, Inc. Garney Companies, Inc. The Glasnapp Foundation The Golf Guys

48 | FALL 2022

Google LLC H&R Block, Inc. Halliburton Foundation, Inc. Henderson Engineers, Inc. Himoinsa Power Systems, Inc. HNTB Companies Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies Honeywell International Corporation International Foundation for Telemetering Jack & Jill of America, Inc. Kansas Kiwanis Foundation, Inc. Kansas Section American Society of Civil Engineers Kao Family Foundation Robert W. Keener & Barbara J. Keener Foundation Kiewit Corporation Robert & Barbara Kleist Charitable Trust Koch Industries, Inc. KU Alumni Association Lawrence Rotary Club M.S.P.E. Auxiliary Western Chapter Matterport, Inc. McClure Engineering Microsoft Corporation Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs Monarch Cement Company National Society Of Black Engineers National Stone Sand and Gravel Association

NBKC Bank Olsson Associates ONEOK Foundation, Inc. Palomino Petroleum, Inc. Pepsi-Cola Phelps Engineering, Inc. Ripple Labs, Inc. River City Engineering, Inc. SAE International The Schwab Fund for Charitable Giving Security 1st Title, LLC Security Benefit Group, Inc. Smith & Loveless, Inc. James Sorem, LLC South Mountain, LLC Spirit AeroSystems, Inc. SS&C Technologies, Inc. Sunrise Oilfield Supply Tradebot Systems, Inc. TranSystems Corporation Twilio Vertical Flight Society Veterans United Home Loans Villas of Highlands Ranch & Neighbors Wichita Southeast H.S. Buffalo Gals Class of ‘62 The Wonderful Company

* Indicates donor has passed.

ANNUAL GIFTS Cody Howard, KU Engineering

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KANSAS ENGINEER | 49

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