Annual report 2010

University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering Annual Report 2010

Enhancing research collaborations

advancing engineering education

CONTENTS

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Dean’s Welcome

Research Foci

Benedum Hall: Growing, Greener, Together

Bioengineering: Treating the Tiniest Tickers 14 16 Sustainability:

Gas Drilling Waste + Acid Mine Drainage = Clean Water?

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Manufacturing: Novel Properties at the Nanoscale

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Nano: When It Rains, It Won’t Freeze

Departments

Energy: Running Cell Phones and Laptops Using Their Own Heat

24 Bioengineering Chemical and Petroleum Engineering 26 Civil and Environmental Engineering 28 Electrical and Computer Engineering 30 Industrial Engineering 32 Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science 34

Photography: Benedum Hall photos on cover and pages 2, 6, 10, and 11, taken by Ed Massery, © 2009 Distinguished Alumni, p. 42, taken by Johnny Bell Photography.

36 Diversity Student Profile 38 Development and Alumni Relations 41

A Message from Our Dean

the Christian Science Monitor. Dr. Gao also received the Carnegie Science Center’s 2010 Advanced Materials Award for his work on “hard rain”—coatings that prevent icing of freezing rain on a solid surface.

Gerald D. Holder

Other standout faculty accomplishments in the past year include Harvey Borovetz’ $5.6 million federal contract to develop PediaFlow, an implanted ventricular assist heart pump for infants and small children with heart disease.

(See Research Foci, p. 14) Even with all the progress we’ve made in the last year, we’re not resting on our laurels.

As Benedum Hall continues to change and develop, the investments we are making now will lead to heretofore undreamed-of collaborations and productive combinations in the future.

Gerald D. Holder

U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering

80 U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering, in the new Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, part of the $100 million in renovations to Benedum Hall.

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1997–98 1999–00 2001–02 2003–04 2005–06 2007–08 2009–10 Research Expenditures (miilions)

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The new space for the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation was dedicated just a year ago, and now is a time when the study of sustainability is particularly important.

One of our faculty, Di Gao, has developed a technique for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by separating oil from water through a cotton filter coated in a polymer that blocks oil. It’s been featured in numerous media outlets, including Discovery News and

Also in the area of sustainability, Radisav Vidic and Eric Beckman’s research recognizes that Marcellus Shale gas is important for Pennsylvania economically, but that we must make sure we develop it in a way that will not cause problems for ourselves in the future. They will lead a three-year, $1.06 million project to better manage the wastewater generated by the extraction process used on the Marcellus Shale.

Annual Report

With the latest improvements to Benedum Hall, we’re truly progressing as a school. Our state-of-the-art labs with amenities such as clean rooms and incubators allow for improved faculty productivity and research collaboration.

The next several months will see us open our bioengineering and nanoscience floors. The availability of space has made the Swanson School more competitive in the recruiting process for sustainability, bioengineering, nanoscience, energy, and manufacturing.

Benedum Hall: IDEAS FEED IDEAS

Growing, Greener, Together

The green roof on the plaza of Benedum Hall.

Underneath are levels G, B, and SB.

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One of the two green roofs on Benedum Hall, this one atop the auditorium.

Whiteboards in Benedum hallways allow students to collaborate on engineering problems.

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Changes are happening fast in Benedum Hall. Just a year ago, the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) opened the doors of its new space.

The bioengineering and nanoscience floors will be open and occupied within the next several months. The energy floor, coming later, will bring together more than 50 faculty and 150 students who do energy-based research. And the third floor, devoted to computation and innovation, will include high-tech classrooms for working on projects collaboratively.

Collaboration is the theme of many of the building’s redesigned facilities.

“We’ll bring faculty from different disciplines together so they might enhance ideas and discussions that happen in the hallway and lounge,” says Gerald Holder, U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering.

One of the immediate impacts of the renovations has been in the area of recruiting. “It helps us to attract faculty when we have a new space that meets their research needs immediately,” Holder says.

“While the reputation of the school is of course determined primarily by scholarship, the Benedum renovations impact our reputation indirectly by allowing the scholars to be better scholars,” he adds.

The renovated facilities include not only special labs with clean rooms, incubators, and imaging equipment, but they also incorporate sustainability concepts like green roofs and energy-saving lights that are motion- and lightsensitive. Sustainability is built into the edifice itself.

The MCSI was developed as a collaboration between alumnus Jack Mascaro, Pitt Facilities Management, the building’s architects, and input from Swanson School faculty. “Jack Mascaro had the vision for providing a tangible space for the center so that faculty and students working in these areas could be housed together,” says MCSI Codirector Gena Kovalcik.

The renovations in MCSI have been helpful in getting faculty from different departments together. “We’re seeing collaborations develop that we wouldn’t have seen if it weren’t for that space, to a great extent because these faculty and their students are neighbors now,” says Kovalcik. For example, Melissa Bilec and Amy Landis of civil and environmental engineering, Alex Jones of electrical and computer engineering, and MCSI Deputy Director Laura Schaefer, who holds an appointment in mechanical engineering, are conducting a project to create a better lifecycle assessment for the building. This project spurred collaboration to write a multimillion dollar proposal to NSF’s Emerging Frontiers for Research and Innovation program, which was granted in August.

ideas and discussions

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Benedum Hall: Growing, Greener, Together

Inside the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation building, which uses natural lighting as one energy-saving tactic.

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“I really believe that’s when innovation occurs—when different people bring different perspectives to the table,” says Kovalcik. “In the long term, I think you’re going to see a lot of innovations coming out of the center because you’re getting all these separate backgrounds using their expertise toward a single goal.”

Bilec commented on the space for the graduate students, which prominently makes use of open space and daylight: “I think it’s made our students more productive and fostered a greater sense of community.”

“I go into the open space and I see our graduate students talking and mingling and sharing information on their research, and it’s exciting,” says Kovalcik.

That translates to improved student recruitment, too. Today’s students are highly conscious of sustainability when they look at colleges, notes Holder: When other schools that evaluate institutions see the investment that Pitt is making in facilities, student advisors will be aware of the school’s reputation as a place with state-of-the-art research and a focus on sustainability. “The people who make recommendations are conscious of the investment we have made,” he says.

See more online at www.engr.pitt.edu/transformation/photos.html

collaboration

One of Benedum’s new mixed-research labs which allow for greater faculty and researcher collaborations.

Research Foci

Research Foci

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Harvey Borovetz, distinguished professor and chair, will help lead a $5.6 million federal project to continue developing a pediatric ventricular assist heart pump. He will collaborate with Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

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Bioengineering: Treating the Tiniest Tickers Every year, almost 2,000 American babies die because of congenital heart defects.

Another 350 develop severe cardiomyopathy leading to heart failure. While older patients have access to sophisticated technology like left ventricular assist devices, no such devices are approved for babies and toddlers. The current technology for infants requires that they be fully anesthetized, and can only be used for a few weeks before severe complications develop.

Harvey Borovetz, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering, and his collaborators were awarded a $5.6

knowledge

million federal contract in January 2010 to continue developing PediaFlow, an implanted ventricular assist heart pump for infants and small children with heart disease.

PediaFlow is made of a titanium alloy and is about the size of a AA battery. Blood is drawn through it by a high-speed rotor that floats within its housing due to magnetic levitating forces. It is one of four projects comprising the Pumps for Kids, Infants, and Neonates (PumpKIN) Preclinical Program, a $23.6 million effort sponsored by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Borovetz and colleagues began developing PediaFlow more than five years ago. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC leads the project’s clinical work. This latest contract will give them the opportunity to complete the necessary PediaFlow development and testing to proceed to clinical trials. Their goal is to prove that it can pump to clinical specifications, that it is gentle to the babies’ blood, and that it performs reliably. The ultimate goal is to develop the technology to the point that an application can be submitted to the FDA and be approved for clinical testing.

a pediatric ventricular assist device that Dr. Wearden would feel comfortable using with his patients in Children’s,” says Borovetz.

The project reflects a partnership that has existed for decades between Pitt’s Schools of Engineering and Medicine. “It’s pretty special when bioengineering can work so closely and mesh so seamlessly with physicians,” says Borovetz. “That’s what’s so unique about what we do here at Pitt.”

Other collaborators on the project include Carnegie Mellon University; Goleta, Californiabased LaunchPoint Technologies; and Salt Lake City-based WorldHeart Inc.

“With the knowledge that we’ve developed over the past five years, we want to develop Learn more about PediaFlow research by visiting www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/pumpKIN.

Sustainability: Gas Drilling Waste + Acid Mine Drainage = Clean Water?

More than two-thirds of Pennsylvania sits atop the Marcellus Shale formation, which experts estimate contains up to 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas with about $500 billion worth of recoverable gas, an enormous economic opportunity for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

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Radisav Vidic, chair and William Kepler Whiteford Professor, and Eric Beckman, codirector of Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering, will lead a $1.06 million project to better manage the wastewater generated by the extraction process used in Marcellus Shale. Vidic is pictured here with post-doctoral researcher Elise Barbot.

About a year ago, Vidic began looking into the Marcellus Shale’s environmental issues, and quickly realized that water management was an important one. The technique for mining the Marcellus Shale is known as hydraulic fracturing—hydrofracturing or “fracking.”

“By reusing the acid mine drainage readily available at many gas drilling locations, we can manage acid mine drainage from older mines and wastewater from current drilling operations, both of which are serious environmental concerns,” says Vidic.

This creates another technical challenge.

To reuse the high-salinity water, traditional friction reducers that people are using in the field won’t work.

“If the water has very high salinity, you can’t pump it using traditional chemicals that have been developed for river water or tap water,” says Vidic. “You have to develop technical solutions that will allow you to reuse these salty waters.”

Because traditional friction-reducing agents don’t work at high salinity, Vidic asked Eric Beckman, a polymer chemist, to develop new friction reducers that do.

To solve two of our commonwealth’s biggest environmental problems with one method would be a coup. “It’s a joint approach for the holistic management of water, based on solving two key technical issues,” says Vidic.

Learn more about Vidic’s water reuse research at www.waterreuse.pitt.edu.

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“Some people think the Marcellus Shale can do more for Pennsylvania than coal and steel ever did, so we should do our best to develop the resource,” says Vidic. “But we have to do it in an environmentally responsible way so we don’t end up with issues that are going to come back and haunt us.”

At the same time, Pennsylvania has a big problem with acid mine drainage (AMD), a waste product of coal mining operations.

Vidic wondered: What would happen if these two waste waters were mixed?

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The U.S. Department of Energy recently selected the University of Pittsburgh as one of nine national partners that will develop techniques for curtailing the possible environmental and health hazards associated with tapping the massive natural gas reserves lying beneath Pennsylvania and surrounding states. Radisav Vidic, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Professor and Eric Beckman, codirector of Pitt’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and George M. Bevier Professor of Engineering, will lead a three-year, $1.06 million project to better manage the wastewater generated by the extraction process used in the Marcellus Shale.

Hydrofracturing operations use a lot of water and produce highly contaminated water as a waste product. The current technology for water treatment isn’t necessarily suited to handle that level of contamination or dissolved salts.

These ideas transfer

Manufacturing: Novel Properties at the Nanoscale At the smallest scales of measurement,

Shankar has received grants from the NSF, among others, to learn how to mass manufacture nanomaterials with tailored structures.

Complementing this, Shankar’s team has shown that a machining process involving metal cutting offers a prototype that realizes these processing conditions within a convenient and scalable manufacturing framework.

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But the challenge with that tiny scale is mass manufacturing. “If you’re manipulating materials at a very small scale, there’s always a question of ‘Is that manufacturable?

What about mass production of materials with nanoengineered structures?’” asks Ravi Shankar, assistant professor of industrial engineering. “To have a technological impact, we need to find ways of mass-manufacturing nanomaterials.”

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materials act differently. Some properties can be enhanced in ways that wouldn’t be possible with traditional manipulation.

One component of his research group is focused on first determining how various combinations of processing conditions result in interesting nanograined materials which are still extraordinarily strong, but also overcome their brittleness and thermal instability.

These ideas transfer to any other manufacturing process. This research brings elements from manufacturing engineering, metallurgy, nanoengineering, and aspects of electron microscopy.

Nanograined metals are substantially stronger than conventional metals. The problem is that enhancing one set of properties, like strength, seems to cause substantial deterioration of other necessary properties, like ductility and stability. Although you end up with an exceptionally strong material, it is brittle.

An interesting spinoff from the machining research is to investigate the surface that is left behind, which also has nanograin properties. “There’s a lot of interest in creating components with nanograined surfaces to enhance a range of functional properties including resistance to wear, fatigue, corrosion, and so on,” Shankar says.

Shankar is investigating how to achieve a more optimal balance of properties, and how to do it within a mass-manufacturable paradigm.

In addition to the NSF, Shankar has received support from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, The Institute of Hazardous Materials Management, and Pitt.

Want to know more about Ravi Shankar’s research?

Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/industrial/faculty-staff/shankar

Ravi Shankar, assistant professor of industrial engineering, holds a modulated machining device that can be used to create particulates composed of nanograin structures. Shankar has received grants from the NSF, among others, to learn how to mass manufacture nanomaterials with tailored structures.

Nano: When It Rains, It Won’t Freeze Di Gao, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, has developed an easily applied coating that repels water and keeps ice from building up on solid surfaces.

The immediate applications for the coating include power lines and airplanes. Power line icing can cause huge problems, especially in places where homes are heated with electricity.

A recent paper by Gao and Pitt doctoral student Liangliang Cao presents the first evidence of anti-icing properties for superhydrophobic coatings. They tested the coating outdoors, overnight, in freezing rain to determine its real-world potential. The treated side had very little ice, while the untreated side was completely covered.

It will take longer for the coating to be approved for the aviation industry. Even putting a new screw in an airplane is a 10-year approval process, says Gao.

The coating prevents supercooled water from icing on contact with a solid. When supercooled water hits the ground, it is called freezing rain.

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To learn more about Gao’s research, visit www.gao.pitt.edu

Sunlight is a well-known source of renewable energy. The sun’s heat can be used for power: After all, the only difference between heat and light is wavelength. Devices to capture thermal (heat) energy are called thermophotovoltaics (TPV).

When something is hot, it gives off thermal radiation. For example, those cameras in the airport that screen for flu are measuring the infrared radiation from your body.

Di Gao, assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, has developed a coating that repels water and keeps ice from accumulating on solid surfaces.

The hotter the object, the more energy it emits. The sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But this is obviously too hot for common use. “During most common industrial processes, you can’t have such a high temperature,” says Bong Jae Lee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

To capture the energy from cooler items, Lee realized it would be possible to use TPVs positioned near a hot furnace, for example, to capture that energy and generate electricity.

Because the energy generated by TPV is much lower than that of a solar panel, Lee uses nanoscale phenomena. “If we put the device very, very close to the source, we can enhance energy capture,” he says. “Even though the temperature is low compared to solar energy, for example, because of the nanoscale phenomena we can extract a considerable amount of energy from the hot object.”

However, maintaining a 100-nm gap between two flat surfaces is very challenging.

No one has yet succeeded in creating a nanoscale TPV device. Lee and S.K. Cho,

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Energy: Running Cell Phones and Laptops Using Their Own Heat

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“We could see the coated and uncoated sides very clearly, like night and day,” says Gao.

Gao’s latest work, which could represent one solution to cleaning up the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, is receiving media attention from places like Discovery News and the Christian Science Monitor. He has developed a polymer that repels oil but not water. “With the oil spill, we realized this is where we might make some contribution,” he says. Stay tuned for the latest news.

associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, are using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to build a nanoscale TPV device for the first time and measure its performance.

“Maintaining a distance of 100 nanometers is one thing: The second challenge is that we need to have a vacuum environment,” says Lee. Without a vacuum, the TPV device would eventually heat up and neither receive thermal radiation nor generate electricity.

Cho’s background in vacuum packaging and MEMS fabrication makes him a valuable member of the research team.

A chip’s temperature gets close to 100 degrees Celsius. Lee’s long-term vision is to take that heat and use it to generate electricity. And he would like to see it happen in every electronic device. “During fabrication, you’d put it in the chip so that it would be in the device itself, he says. “People wouldn’t even know it’s there. That way we can save some energy.”

“It could be a reality” in the future.

Lee and Cho’s work to develop the nearfield TPV device has been supported by a grant from the Swanson School’s Center for Energy.

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DePartments Departments

22 2010 Bong Jae Lee (left), assistant professor, and Sung Kwon Cho, associate professor, are using microelectromechanical systems to build a nanoscale thermophotovoltaic device for the first time.

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Research expenditures* for 2010:

$40,847,847

*includes bioengineering faculty in the School of Medicine

Department of Bioengineering

Given the interdisciplinary nature of Cui’s research, she closely collaborates with faculty in Pitt’s School of Medicine and throughout the Swanson School of Engineering’s departments and research institutes.

She has played an instrumental role in establishing Pitt’s neural engineering PhD track, which has attracted many top graduate students nationwide, and today serves as co-coordinator of the program.

Want more? Visit us online to • read an update about the collaborative Engineering Research Center (ERC), “Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials”; • watch video coverage of our research exchange with North Carolina A&T, during which more than 60 middle and high school students learned about skin tissue engineering as an outreach component of the ERC; and • learn about our latest NSF CAREER Award winner, Lance Davidson, whose research spans the fields of biology, tissue engineering, and bioengineering, as he seeks to learn how embryos use molecular-, cell-, and tissue-scale processes to shape tissues and organs in order to aid in the construction of artificial tissues. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/bioengineering

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Cui has more than $2 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation,

Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Her ongoing NIH R01 research project, “Improving Chronic Neural Recording Performance via Biomaterial Strategies,” recently received an administrative supplement from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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Could human thought someday control computers? Assistant Professor Tracy Cui’s research on neural tissue-electrode interface and neural tissue engineering aims to learn how brain tissue responds to implanted chips. Her team is developing biomimetic approaches to seamlessly integrate the man-made chips with neural tissue for longlasting performance. “I want our research to contribute to improving the quality of someone’s life,” said Cui. “Think about how patients suffering from paralysis or who are otherwise unable to use their arms or hands might benefit from an innovation that allows them to communicate with a computer directly through their brain.”

Tracy Cui, assistant professor, researches neural tissue-electrode interface.

She has more than $2 million in research grants and closely collaborates with engineering faculty in many departments and in Pitt’s School of Medicine.

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2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 BioE PhDs Awarded

Pitt established the first petroleum engineering program in the world in 1910, which turned 100 this past year.

Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

Ipsita Banerjee, assistant professor, received a $2.2 million, five-year New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health to unravel how stem cells develop into mature cells and possible techniques for influencing their growth to suit specific organs.

27 Ipsita Banerjee (left), assistant professor; Keith Task (middle), chemical engineering graduate student; and Maria Jaramillo (right), bioengineering graduate student.

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Want more? Visit us online to • watch a video of Di Gao’s technique for separating oil from water via a cotton filter coated in a chemical polymer that blocks oil while allowing water to pass through, developed in response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

• find out more about Anna Balazs, who was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, guest editor with Soft Matter, and received an Energy Frontier Research Center grant.

• read Götz Veser’s paper, “Exceptional high-temperature stability through ‘distillative’ self-stabilization in bimetallic nanoparticles,” published in Nature Materials.

• learn more about Joseph McCarthy’s presentation to the NAE educator’s symposium in 2009. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/chemical

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Banerjee will investigate the process through which embryonic stem cells become mature, organ-specific cells and how scientists can control that development. Using a bottom-up approach, Banerjee will cultivate stem

Banerjee is collaborating with faculty across the Swanson School of Engineering and the School of Medicine on research projects such as identifying the effect of mechanical cues on stem cell differentiation and understanding the effect of cellular patterning and spatial distribution on tissue functionality. She is pictured here with Keith Task, chemical engineering graduate student, and Maria Jaramillo, bioengineering graduate student.

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“I want to take a completely different approach to addressing the complex process of cell development, which will potentially advance our understanding of regenerative medicine and stem cell bioengineering as a whole,” Banerjee said.

cells into pancreatic cells, noting molecularlevel information that could be integrated into dictating cell development, such as the influence of environmental factors and gene and protein networks.

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Civil and Environmental Engineering

new faculty members hired in the last 5 years

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Faculty members Jason Monnell, Melissa Bilec, Amy Landis, and Willie Harper, with student researchers.

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By using laboratory investigations and life-cycle assessment (LCA) tools, Pitt faculty members Jason Monnell, Melissa Bilec, Amy Landis, and Willie Harper are investigating sustainable energy alternatives including oil and algae-based biofuels.

Faculty specializing in LCA (Bilec and Landis)

have partnered with experimentalists (Harper and Monnell) to form a cross-disciplinary investigation team that can create a model for the different sustainability-related inputs and outputs and calibrate the model using the experimental results. This partnership is synergistic because the outcomes from

each side provide mutually beneficial feedback and highlight the importance of the outcomes. They are putting these tools to use in assessing the bioremediation potential

of oil-based biofuels grown on reclaimed marginal lands as well as the efficacy of combining algae-based biofuel production with wastewater treatment systems.

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Want more? Visit us online to • learn about the first cradle-to-grave LED streetlight study led by Pitt faculty members Melissa Bilec and Joseph Marriott.

• read the media coverage of Ronald Neufeld’s study about how green rooftops help delay overflow of rainwater into sewage systems.

• learn more about Anthony Iannacchione, Pitt’s new director of mining engineering, 2009 Krumb Lecturer, and recipient of the Syd S. Peng Ground Control in Mining Award. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/civil

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Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering create more opportunities for students and working engineers to appreciate the importance of human factors. They will learn techniques to handle these factors in engineering system design. A new student group of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society will be instituted to facilitate student involvement in research and professional activities related to human-centered design in the real engineering world.

Mao hopes to use this research to inspire new techniques for advanced control and to design HMI interfaces that best use human control commands. This research also will promote the understanding of neural organization and mechanisms for movement control, learning, and information processing.

Mao’s other grants include another NSFfunded project on dimensionality reduction in the control of the human hand, which requires regular collaboration with Mingui Sun, professor of neurological surgery in Pitt’s School of Medicine.

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Mao’s award is the third NSF Career Award the department has received in the past four years.

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The educational component of this project will

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Zhi-Hong Mao, assistant professor, is the department’s latest recipient of a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. Mao’s research will evaluate the capabilities of neural control in human-machine interaction (HMI), aiming to quantify rates of information exchange between humans and machines by studying physiological responses and noting human constraints and limitations.

of 2010’s PhD graduates and post-docs accepted tenure stream faculty appointments

Want more? Visit us online to • read about and view an image of the recent research findings that Steven Levitan, John A. Jurenko Professor, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about artificial cells that communicate and cooperate like biological cells and follow each other like ants. Levitan collaborated on this paper with Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering, and post-doctoral researchers German Kolmakov and Victor Yashin.

• view the press coverage received by Marlin Mickle, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and executive director of the RFID Center of Excellence, as an expert on antenna technology during the release of the iPhone 4.

• learn more about Jun Yang, associate professor, who published a paper with colleagues in the Department of Computer Science in IEEE Micro that was selected as among the top papers in 2009 in the area of computer architecture.

• learn more about Luis Chaparro, associate professor, and Steve Jacobs, assistant professor, who, along with Juan Manfredi, vice provost for undergraduate studies and professor, Department of Mathematics, were awarded a grant from The MathWorks, Inc. for development of a course in software-defined radio. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/electrical

Zhi-Hong Mao (left), assistant professor, with PhD student Mircea Lupu

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Publications: Tenure Stream Faculty Current NSF Grants: Tenure Stream Faculty

Department of Industrial Engineering

33 Jeffrey Kharoufeh (right), associate professor, with PhD student Guvenc Degirmenci.

Kharoufeh notes, “My research applies to a broad spectrum of systems and can impact many disciplines. Wireless sensor networks are currently being deployed to monitor air quality, ecosystems, the structural integrity of bridges and roadways, manufacturing processes, and for military surveillance.

Want more? Visit us online to • read about the $3.6 million partnership Associate Professor Andrew Schaefer will lead with the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System to establish a Veterans Engineering Resource Center, with the goal of streamlining the delivery of health care services.

• learn more about Associate Professor Mary Sacre’s presentation to the NAE educators’ symposium, during which she and Associate Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Joseph McCarthy discussed their novel approaches to engineering education at the inaugural Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) symposium.

• learn more about Ravi Shankar, assistant professor and author of more than 35 publications, who received a 2010 Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/industrial

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Jeffrey Kharoufeh, associate professor, is evaluating the performance of large-scale, query-based wireless sensor networks in an effort to ensure the timely dissemination of critical, sensed data. Funded by the National Science Foundation, his research will create mathematical models to evaluate key network performance metrics such as the overall energy expended by the network, the expected network lifetime, latency, and the proportion of queries (or requests for data) that fail to be answered on time.

Ultimately, his research aims to answer a few fundamental questions: How sensitive is the query success rate to variability in data expiration times? What is the impact of sensor failures on overall network performance? And how can the network operating parameters be optimized and/or controlled to ensure resilience in complex, uncertain operating environments?

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On August 1, 2007, the sudden collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota resulted in thirteen fatalities and nearly one hundred injuries.

Although the bridge had received poor safety ratings in 2001 and 2005, tragically, it was not replaced prior to its catastrophic failure.

In 2008, the new I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge – a state-of-the art structure equipped with 323 sensors, was erected in its place. Engineers have been advocating the use of small sensors linked via a wireless network to continuously monitor complex systems with the goal of mitigating the risk of catastrophic failures. However, small, low-cost sensors have limited performance capabilities and energy reserves, and are subject to potentially harsh operating environments that can cause them to fail, leading to vulnerabilities when the information they convey is time critical.

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I am interested in learning the fundamental performance limits of these kinds of sensor networks and finding computational solutions to make communication more efficient and reliable.”

Kharoufeh is pictured here with his PhD student, Guvenc Degirmenci.

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2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 IE Research Expenditures per Tenured/Tenure Stream IE Faculty

Publications : Tenured Stream Faculty

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Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science down to the atomic level using electron microscopy to identify the details of the mechanisms responsible for degradation and the property improvements.

Want more? Visit us online to • learn more about the NRC Fellowship Grant supporting Kimber and Wiezorek’s research.

• read about Peyman Givi, William Kepler Whiteford Professor, who was named Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, “For Pioneering Contributions in Mathematical Modeling and Computational Simulation of Turbulent Combustion.”

Givi is the first faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh to receive this honor.

• learn more about the distinguished career of Anthony J. DeArdo, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and director of the Basic Metals Processing Research Institute (BAMPRI), who was named recipient of the 2010 Benjamin F. Fairless Award from the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST).

• learn how the research of Jung-Kun Lee, assistant professor, will produce advanced versions of the technology used in solar panels and flat-panel displays and lead to more efficient transport of electricity. His research is funded by an NSF CAREER Award. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/mems

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35 Mark Kimber (left), assistant professor, and Jorg Wiezorek, associate professor

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This research is currently funded in part by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and includes the collaboration of two graduate students, engineers and scientists at the Materials Center of Excellence at the Research and Technology Unit of the Westinghouse Electric Company also located in Pittsburgh, and Ravi Shankar, assistant professor of industrial engineering (read his story on p.18), who is developing a quantitative understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the degradation of the properties and performance of materials used in critical structural components in nuclear power plant reactors.

The team also collaborates with Anirban Jana of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to computationally model the physics of turbulent jets interacting at different temperatures.

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Mark Kimber, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Jorg Wiezorek, associate professor of materials science, are investigating ways to extend the lifetimes of nuclear power plants, a critical step for meeting the increasing needs for cleaner electrical power. To understand this, the team is learning more about the harsh conditions experienced by key reactor components, and then engineering the materials to better withstand degradation under these conditions. They then modify the surfaces and microstructures of nuclear-grade steels and nickel-base alloys by novel deformation and laser processing followed by thermal annealing treatments. This alters the internal structure of the materials and leads to enhanced performance in the extreme environments seen by reactor components of nuclear power plants. They also investigate the internal structure of the materials modified by exposures to in-service conditions

The University ranked of Pittsburgh’s nd Swanson School of Engineering was

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Want more? Visit us online at

Diversity

Although Dickerson is funded through Levitan and Chiarulli’s research team, Pitt’s Engineering Office of Diversity continues to expand funding opportunities for underrepresented graduate student groups.

This past year, Pitt became a participant in the Educational Advancement Alliance’s graduate fellowship program designed to provide financial assistance to students who have received an undergraduate degree from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Pitt will welcome aboard three HBCU STEM Fellows this fall, each receiving $72,000 toward a Master’s degree.

The Swanson School of Engineering Office of Diversity provides a continuous pipeline of support for students from traditionally underrepresented groups as they prepare for, enter, and graduate from the University of Pittsburgh as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors.

INVESTING NOW activities are designed to support and reward the high academic performance of high school students who are underrepresented in STEM careers.

Recruited in the spring of their eighth grade year, students participate in activities through the twelfth grade. Each year, about 175 students from the metropolitan Pittsburgh area participate. Data show that over the last decade, 100 percent of INVESTING NOW participants have enrolled in college, approximately half into a STEM major.

Deitrick Franklin

Samuel Dickerson

Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/diversity to learn more about Deitrick Franklin, the Swanson School’s inaugural scholarship recipient of the Karl H. Lewis Impact Alumni Endowment Fund.

100%

of Pitt INVESTING NOW participants enroll in college.

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The mobile nature of the product would enable medical professionals in rural medical clinics in developing countries to more easily perform diagnostic tests for diseases such as AIDS. This product idea stems from Dickerson’s current research under co-advisors Steven P. Levitan, John A.

Engineering freshmen entering Pitt last fall enjoyed a scavenger hunt that helped them to become familiar with the University’s campus.

Organized by the Pitt EXCEL Program, the scavenger hunt was part of the Summer Engineering Academy (SEA). During two weeks in August, SEA participants live on campus and learn essential study skills to prepare them for the transition from high school to college.

SEA, offered to incoming freshmen for six years, is one of more than a dozen programs offered to current students by the Engineering Office of Diversity.

Jurenko Professor of Computer Engineering, and Professor Donald M. Chiarulli, in the Department of Computer Science.

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Samuel Dickerson, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won first place in the annual Big Idea Competition sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence. Dickerson won Best New Product Idea for his idea of a low-cost, portable cytometer, a device for counting the number of cells in a fluid sample like blood.

www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/diversity

in North America by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) for the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to women in 2009.

Want more? Visit us online to read more about Bhavna Sharma’s project and other student achievements and awards.

STUDENTS

www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/students

Kent Harries (left), William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and PhD candidate Bhavna Sharma

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An international engineering award and a 10,000-euro prize went to a team of students from the University of Pittsburgh and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur (IITK) for their ongoing project in the Indian Himalayas to design, build, and popularize bamboo structures. The

team received an Engineering Silver Award presented by Mondialogo, a global initiative of German automaker Daimler and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that encourages intercultural collaboration.

The Pitt-IITK team was among 30 teams

chosen from 932 research proposals from 94 countries.

The Pitt group is led by PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering Bhavna Sharma, who is also a recipient of an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) from the Swanson

School’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. Sharma is pictured here with Kent Harries, William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who serves as the project’s faculty advisor and leads student trips to India for fieldwork.

intercultural collaboration

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1200 1150 1100 1050 1000 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Incoming Freshman SAT Scores (averages) 2250 2150

1950 1850 Leonard Berenfield (BSME ‘64) (left) with Thomas Gilbert, research assistant professor in the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering.

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1450 1350 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 Undergraduate Enrollment 360 340 320 300 280 260 240 220 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 PhD Enrollment

Alumnus Leonard Berenfield (BSME ‘64) pledged $1.5 million to establish The Berenfield Family Engineering Legacy Fund for Bioengineering. His gift will support research in the areas of pediatric cardiac surgery and cardiopulmonary regenerative medicine, fields in which the Department of Bioengineering has earned national recognition for research excellence.

Berenfield, whose son and grandson were born with heart defects that required surgery, is an avid supporter of pediatric cardiovascular research and wishes to see continued advancements in technology and medicine in this field.

According to Harvey Borovetz, chair and Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering and the Robert L. Hardesty Professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery, the gift will help the Swanson School and Department of Bioengineering support, retain, and recruit outstanding

graduate student researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and prominent faculty members, all of whom will help further strengthen Pitt’s position as a leading bioengineering research institution. The opportunity to collaborate across disciplines promotes translation of the research from the laboratory to the clinic, and, ultimately, to pediatric patients. The research and gift are part of a collaboration developed by Borovetz and Peter Wearden, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of mechanical circulatory support at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Borovetz is renowned for his research on pediatric heart assist valves, which is currently supported by a $5.6 million federal contract (see “Treating the Tiniest Tickers,” p.14).

Berenfield is pictured here on a tour of the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine with Thomas Gilbert, research assistant professor in the Departments of Surgery and Bioengineering.

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Goal: $179.000,000

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2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 Progress toward Campaign Goal

Pictured left to right are Pickard, Fischione, Massaro, Dean Holder, Novak, and Kramer.

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required support

2010 Distinguished Alumni The Swanson School of Engineering has honored its top graduates through the Distinguished Alumni Awards since 1964.

Francis J. Kramer Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, 1971 President and CEO II-VI Incorporated, Saxonburg, Pa.

Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

Anthony A. Massaro, Jr. Bachelor of Science in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, 1967 Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (Retired) Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc., Sarasota, Fla.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Department of Industrial Engineering

Wesley C. Pickard

Francis E. Novak

Bachelor of Science in Mining Engineering, 1961

Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering, 1966

Synergy, Inc. Chief Financial Officer (Retired), Washington, D.C.

President and Chief Executive Officer (Retired) Stellex Monitor Aerospace, Inc., and Stellex Precision Machining, Inc., Amityville, N.Y. and Wichita, Kan.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

John Choma, Jr. Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, 1964; Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, 1966; PhD, 1969 Professor of Electrical Engineering and Former Chair of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif.

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

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Swanson School of Engineering

Dean Holder (left) and William Stanchina (right), chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, presented John Choma (middle) with his Distinguished Alumni Award during a special ceremony in Los Angeles.

Want more? Visit us online to:

Paul E. Fischione

• learn more about Berenfield and his generous gift.

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, 1978

• view photos of alumni events, including Homecoming 2009, the Distinguished Alumni Banquet reception and awards ceremony, and our 2010 Golf Outing.

President E.A. Fischione Instruments, Inc., Export, Pa.

• read our alumni e-newsletter or recently renovated award-winning alumni magazine, Pitt Engineer. www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport/alumni

www.engr.pitt.edu/annualreport2010

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