Pitt Engineer - Fall 2008

fall ’08/winter ’09

The Changing Face of Engineering Education

Center Dedicated

Oil from Coal

Under Construction

Albert G. Holzman Learning Center Opens

Swanson School Professor’s Quest for Energy Independence

Alumni Get Firsthand Look at Benedum Hall Transformation

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Dean’s Message The alumni magazine of the Swanson School of Engineering

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hen the Michael L. Benedum Hall of Engineering opened in 1971, it was a state-of-the-art instructional and research facility built to house a growing engineering school. It also demonstrated the University’s commitment to engineering education and to ensuring Pitt engineers would have the foundation they needed to play an integral part in our society.

Features Old School: Swanson School Experience Evolves with the Changing Face of Engineering........ 2

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Departments Around the School..................................... 7 Research Features.................................. 10 Student News......................................... 12 Alumni Notes.......................................... 14

Dean Gerald D. Holder and Joan Holzman at the Albert G. Holzman Learning Center dedication in October 2008

Today, shortages in the nuclear and power industries are a reality; the influence of sustainability on construction, design, business, and industrial processes has created an opportunity; and technological advancements are a necessity. Engineers are needed now more than ever. In December 2007, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg announced that Benedum Hall would undergo a complete transformation to accommodate modern research and academic needs, so students in the Swanson School of Engineering would be better prepared to meet local, national, and global engineering challenges.

I am happy to report that we are making progress in providing improved facilities for our new and existing talent. Construction is well under way on the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation building, several floors of Benedum Hall tower, and the Benedum Hall auditorium. When the Transformation Plan for Benedum Hall is complete, the tower and auditorium will be remodeled into the facilities our students require to be competitive in today’s working world.

In fact, work already has been completed on one exemplary facility. The Albert G. Holzman Learning Center, named in honor of the former industrial engineering professor and department chair, was made possible by the support of Pitt engineering alumni and friends who rallied together to fund this facility for future engineers. I was humbled to see more than 100 attendees at the learning center’s dedication on October 3, 2008 (see story, page 9). Bopaya Bidanda, Ernest E. Roth Professor and chair, Department of Industrial Engineering, noted that ours is one of the only industrial engineering programs in the nation to have such a cutting-edge instructional and learning facility equipped with some of the most advanced instructional technology available today.

In October, we offered tours of the construction in Benedum Hall to members of the Pitt Civil Engineering Alumni Club and to attendees of our second annual Alumni Academy during Homecoming weekend (see page 15). It is always a pleasure to see the interest Pitt engineering alumni have in their school and its success, and I was proud to be able to welcome the largest reunion classes in history back to campus (see Homecoming 2008 recap, page 16). I look forward to seeing more of you on campus, and I encourage you to follow closely the progress not just of our nationally ranked school, but also of the transformation of Benedum Hall.

The method by which instruction takes place in the Holzman Learning Center is a perfect example of how the Swanson School is addressing the evolving needs of students. Some of you will remember attending class equipped with a slide rule; today, computers and programmable whiteboards have become fixtures in the classroom. (See cover story, page 2, for a look at the new face of engineering education at the Swanson School.)

Hail to Pitt,

If you cannot make it back to campus, the evolution is just a click away: www.engr.pitt.edu/transformation.

Gerald D. Holder U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering

10 13 Gerald D. Holder U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering Sonia Gill Director of Marketing and Communications/Editor Teralyn Iscrupe Associate Director of Marketing and Communications/ Contributing Writer Kelly Kaufman Communications Manager/Editor Don Henderson Assistant Creative Director/Designer Chuck Dinsmore Production Coordinator Sarah Jordan Rosenson Editorial Assistant Niki Kapsambelis Karen Hoffmann Contributing Writers

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On the Cover Saying good-bye to the days of sitting through 50-minute lectures and solving problems with slide rules, today’s Swanson School of Engineering students engage in collaborative problem solving in the classroom, complete with access to real-time computer simulations.

Awards 2006, 2007, and 2008 IABC Golden Triangle Award of Excellence, Magazines: 4-Color Design 2005 Western Pennsylvania Printing Industry Award, Best of Category Have a comment or story idea for Pitt Engineer? Contact Sonia Gill at 412-624-2640, or send an e-mail to sgill@pitt.edu.

The University of Pittsburgh is an affirmative action, equal opportunity institution. Published in cooperation with the Department of University Marketing Communications. UMC66438-0209

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F E AT U R E

Old School:

In addition to the student computers, the classrooms are equipped with an instructor’s console with a computer, USB ports for plugging in various media, and the capability to write on the projection screen. The instructor also can control student computers by locking them out of anything except what’s presented on the screen, so they can’t Web surf instead of paying attention.

“It allows you to be much, much more interactive with the students [and] be more hands-on in our lectures as well as our labs,” explains Bursic. “Students today aren’t just going to sit there and passively listen to a lecture; that’s not what they expect. All the learning research tells us that students learn better when they do rather than just listen.”

Bursic says research on learning development conducted at Pitt helped influence the classroom’s design. In addition to the Holzman Learning Center, other technologically advanced rooms are sprinkled throughout the building and geared toward the content of the courses held within them, across many departments. At least two more classrooms—one for bioengineering, another for mechanical engineering— are planned for the near future.

Swanson School Experience Evolves with the Changing Face of Engineering

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In the early 1980s, when Karen Bursic was an undergraduate engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh, professors were elusive figures who stood at the front of lecture halls dispensing knowledge to captive audiences.

Casual conversations were rare; office hours were formal affairs arranged by appointment. For the most part, a college education was something students passively absorbed.

Nearly 30 years and three degrees later, Bursic is now an assistant professor of industrial engineering and undergraduate program director. She marvels at the evolution that has transformed her alma mater into today’s Swanson School of Engineering, and she views the changes that are taking place through the lens of an alumnus who came up through the

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ranks during what are quickly becoming the “good old days.”

Building Problem Solvers In contrast to her own experiences, Bursic typically spends only 10–15 minutes of a class lecturing before giving students a problem to solve. Instead of lecture halls, students often sit in state-of-the-art classrooms that resemble meeting rooms, where they work at tables equipped with one computer for every two people.

The idea is to encourage collaborative problem solving, explains Bursic.

“In the real world, that’s what they have to do. That’s the reason it was structured that way, and it takes students a while to realize that,” she says.

Built with the help of donations from more than 200 industrial engineering alumni and friends, the classrooms are part of the Albert G.Holzman Learning Center, a 4,000-square-foot facility that opened for the fall 2008 semester. It is named for Albert G. Holzman (BSIE ’49, MSIE ’54, PhD ’58), who was the department chair for more than two decades before his untimely death in 1985.

And while the Department of Industrial Engineering is the fifth oldest in the nation, “we’re demonstrating that our curriculum is current with what’s going on in the real world,” says Bursic.

Out from Behind the Podium Larry Shuman, senior associate dean for academic affairs, says the trend toward new teaching styles began almost a dozen years ago. In addition to research generated at Pitt, the Swanson School also relied on an Arizona State University model for active and cooperative learning, which urged schools to get students working in small groups.

“We’ve made a major emphasis to go from straight lecturing to active or cooperative learning, which is consistent with the way engineering education is going,” Shuman says. “We may have jumped on it a little sooner than others. Where we’ve led is in creating classrooms that really facilitate this.”

“The idea is to get the instructor to move out from behind the podium and become as much a coach as he or she is a straight lecturer.”

Larry Shuman, senior associate dean for academic affairs

Although not all faculty members have adopted the style, most have, he says.

it’s harder to motivate themselves,” McCarthy notes.

“The idea is to get the instructor to move out from behind the podium and become as much a coach as he or she is a straight lecturer.”

To address the problem, McCarthy spearheaded an effort to get a National Science Foundation grant that paid for a redesign of the curriculum. An initial planning grant to pay for assessment strategies was worth $100,000; during the next five years, the school received nearly $1.4 million to implement the ideas.

Because students bring different learning styles to the classroom, changing the teaching method throughout the course of a 50-minute class only makes sense, Shuman says. Without varying the approach, he estimates, 75 percent of the class loses its grasp on the material at some point. “[Putting more of an emphasis on] active learning doesn’t say lecturing is out,” he explains. “What it says is lecture for 10–12 minutes, then have a different activity.”

Sticking to Fundamentals The evolution of teaching methods has had a dramatic effect, not only on the school’s facilities but also on its curriculum. As with the tangible design of the classroom, the information taught is changing to better align with student learning styles.

For decades, chemical engineering students took a dozen or more small classes, each representing a piece of the discipline’s puzzle. By the time they were seniors, those pieces would, in theory, start to fall into place.

But as Associate Professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow Joseph McCarthy puts it, “You’re leaving yourself a pretty small margin of error if you’re waiting for the lightbulb to turn on when they’re seniors.”

McCarthy says too many upperclassmen were struggling with the foundation concepts of engineering and had to keep returning to the material before they mastered it.

“If they don’t see what all the puzzle pieces are when they’re taking the class,

“It was almost like starting a whole new department,” recalls McCarthy, who was aided by Associate Professors Robert Parker (chemical engineering) and Mary Besterfield-Sacre (industrial engineering).

“As you transition from a 14-class curriculum to this new one, there’s a lot of time that everyone on the faculty has to put in.”

Starting in September 2003, the department switched to its current “six pillar” curriculum, with each class representing one of the six fundamental ideas behind chemical engineering. Woven into the lecture time is a set of laboratory experiences that once had been the sole domain of seniors. Under the new design, students supplement their studies with hands-on work throughout their undergraduate years.

“We were careful when we were putting these concepts together to try and bridge theory and practice in the classroom,” McCarthy says.

To test the design’s success, faculty used concept mapping to gauge student knowledge of chemical engineering as a whole.

Under the new curriculum, sophomores scored almost as high as the seniors who were tested under the old method.

The curriculum design was so well received that, in 2008, the team won a Carnegie Science Center Award for Excellence in the university/postsecondary educator category. Currently, the school is exploring funding sources that would allow it to expand curriculum changes to other departments.

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Lauren Byland, associate director of freshman engineering and coordinator of student recruitment, leads an information session for prospective students.

From Oakland to Beijing When Shuman first arrived at the Swanson School in 1969, desktop-sized calculators were cutting-edge technology that retailed for about $2,500 and represented a big step up from their predecessor, the mechanical adding machine.

Students were polarized by the Vietnam War, and the school was still teaching about vacuum tubes.

“You didn’t have a whiteboard; you had a blackboard. You didn’t have access to computers. There were no PCs,” Shuman says. “It was a different time.

We were educating students for a different workplace.”

In earlier times, a corporation like General Motors might have hired 10–12 percent of a graduating class. Today it is significant when a single company hires three students. Typically, graduates do not go to one company and stay there

The Changing Face of Enrollment for their entire careers, nor do they even necessarily stay in the United States.

Globalization and outsourcing have combined to almost guarantee that engineers will work abroad themselves or collaborate with overseas colleagues at some point in their careers. To help prepare students for that environment, the Swanson School has built an array of opportunities for international experience to fit most schedules and goals.

In addition to the award-winning Plus3 program—which gives freshmen the opportunity to travel to Brazil, Chile, China, or Germany—the school’s offerings include an international requirement for industrial engineering majors, which may expand to other disciplines, says Shuman.

The Swanson School now also has a full-time staff member, Kristine Lalley, dedicated to international engineering education.

“The ability to operate internationally has got to be part of a modern engineering education,” says Shuman. “It’s going to make students more aware of the world that they’ll be operating in.”

Several Swanson School students who complete the Plus3 program go on to participate in INNOVATE (the International Technology, Innovation and Leadership Conference), which includes a 10-day study trip to sites in Asia. A course built around INNOVATE uses interactive videoconferencing to allow Pitt, Rice University, and the University of Tulsa to teach the course jointly—a trend Shuman hopes to expand.

“Just as easily as we go to Houston, we can go to Beijing, and I would hope in the future we would start to see that,” he says.

When Lauren Byland introduces high school students to the possibility of a career in engineering, she often finds that it’s better to show than to tell.

Byland, associate director of freshman engineering and coordinator of student recruitment, likes to bring current Swanson School students with her when she talks to students from Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Intermediate Unit about the school’s engineering apprenticeship program.

A typical day will include at least one tour of the lab space at the Swanson School. These tours enable prospective students to engage one on one with current students.

“Admissions does a tremendous job here,” says Byland, who cites the example of a special bioengineering program that targets students nationwide through PSAT and SAT scores and partially pays for their trips to campus. “It’s hard to present engineering; it’s easier to show it.”

In earlier years, the Swanson School relied on a single career day to recruit high school seniors. But during the 2007–08 academic year, 537 students came unannounced for tours. Byland surveys them to find out what leaves a lasting impression.

Members of the Freshman Engineering Leadership Team (FELT), clockwise from top left: Shea Betz, Brad Hawken, Justin Rowe, Amanda Kirlin, and Brittany Coleman

“They love seeing the labs firsthand, and I think it’s going to get even better when we’re done with all the renovations,” she says. “They fall in love with Pitt.”

The volume of outreach is paying off, and the dividends are reflected in the demographics of the current classes.

For example, in 1995, the Swanson School received 752 applications; for fall 2007, it received 2,245, and 450 students enrolled.

In 1996, the first year for the current scale, the average combined SAT score for the incoming class was 1195. Thirtytwo percent of the students had been in the top 10 percent of their graduating classes. In 2008–09, the average combined SAT score is 1314, and 56 percent of the students were in the top 10 percent of their classes.

“I see students with perfect SAT scores who are here for bioengineering and go on to med school,” says Byland.

Though the field is not yet back up to the levels of its heyday in the 1960s, it’s on the rise, she notes.

“Engineering is one of the best fields you can be in right now. Currently, there are still more job openings than there are students to fill them, and a lot of engineers are retiring,” she says.

In addition to recruitment efforts, she also credits a cultural shift in society with increasing interest in Increasing Diversity in Student Enrollment engineering.

25 “When I was in high school, engineering wasn’t really promoted,” she says. “But AP math and science classes are creating more confidence in students.”

20.95% 20 Students from Underrepresented Ethnic Groups

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Females

11.83% 10

5 1.32% 0

1.14% 1970

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Climbing SAT Scores (Incoming Engineering Freshmen)

Undergraduate Enrollment Growth

1350

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1300

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Pitt engineering students participating in the INNOVATE program traveled to Singapore and Vietnam during spring break 2008.

1,800 1,700

1200

1,600 1150

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1,300 Chris Yoder, a senior industrial engineering major, visited Cairo, Egypt, as part of Semester at Sea in summer 2008.

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1050

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AROUND THE SCHOOL

Faculty Headlines

Working for a Living Traditionally, the Swanson School has been home to the working student. In past generations, some worked full time while pursuing their dream of a college education.

Appointments Mark Redfern, W.K. Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering, has been appointed associate dean for research. Redfern also is vice chair of the undergraduate bioengineering program, professor of industrial engineering, and professor of otolaryngology. He holds a PhD in bioengineering from the University of Michigan. The research of Redfern and Rakié Cham, associate professor of bioengineering, in the Human Movement and Balance Laboratory on preventing slips and falls among the elderly has been featured widely by scientific and popular sources, including the NBC Nightly News (visit www.engr.pitt.edu/ news/media to view the video). Redfern is associate editor of several journals, including the Journal of Applied Biomechanics and IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering.

Today, students are getting an earlier leg up on building their résumés thanks to the Cooperative Education (Co-op) Program. The program started in 1910, was suspended in the 1930s because of the Great Depression, and was reestablished in the mid-1980s. It reached the largest enrollment in its history with 672 active students in 2008, says Maureen Barcic, Co-op Program director, noting the program’s strength.

The program encompasses all engineering disciplines and covers 15 states as well as a handful of students who work at international sites, Barcic says. That growth represents a lot of legwork on the part of the staff, who have worked hard to provide opportunities for the students.

Mechanical engineering student Eddie Halusic (far right) completed three co-op rotations with BMW Manufacturing Co. in Spartanburg, S.C., working mainly in the quality management area of the Analysis Center. Today, the Co-op Program offers students work rotations across the United States and around the world.

University side, and companies went from hosting one or two students to 20.

grow and change and really become certain that they’re in the right field.”

“When this first started back in 1987, we really had to convince employers and students that it was a good program,” explains Barcic. “It’s a commitment on both ends to spend a year at one position. We had to do a pretty big grassroots effort, cold calling companies every day of the week.”

Co-op students typically begin the first of three work rotations in their sophomore years and finish as seniors. They are paid an average of $15 an hour, and, in 2007, 60 percent of the students who responded to a program survey had been offered fulltime jobs. Employers include successful Pittsburgh companies like ANSYS, Inc.; P.J. Dick Incorporated; and MSA.

Grades for co-op students typically go up after they’ve had some work experience, she says.

Word-of-mouth endorsements from students helped promote the program on the

“It’s such an exceptional program for the students,” says Barcic. “We see them

“They come back understanding why we’re making them do group projects and work together,” she says. “The old notion that engineers sit in a corner with slide rules and calculators and work alone is just not true today.”

“[The Co-op Program is] such an exceptional program for the students. We see them grow and change and really become certain that they’re in the right field.”

Maureen Barcic, Co-op Program director

“I think some of the things they’re doing at work apply back to the classroom, and vice versa,” she says.

Karen Bursic, industrial engineering assistant professor, agrees.

Today’s Swanson School student tends to be bold, socially conscious, and globally aware, says Bursic, who laughs when she recalls, “I had nothing to relate my experiences to. I worked at Wendy’s.”

There are some instances in which students learn through their co-op experiences that they would prefer to enter another profession. Barcic recalls one young man who was not able to choose between medicine and civil engineering until he completed two rotations with an engineering company. Thanks to the job experience, he decided to enroll in medical school.

H. Aalborg (BSEE ’23) in the radio test department of what was then Westinghouse E. & M. Co. in East Pittsburgh, Pa. 6

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“I see that as a success, too,” she says.

J. Karl Johnson has been named interim chair of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. Johnson is the leader of a multi-university grant through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to study hydrogen storage in complex metal hydrides and a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the separation and transport of gases using carbon nanotubebased membranes. He has been actively involved in promoting simulation and modeling across the University as codirector of the Center for Molecular and Materials Simulations and the new University-wide Center for Simulation and Modeling. Johnson holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Cornell University.

He also is a W.K. Whiteford Professor and National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Faculty Fellow.

GRANTS RECEIVED Eric Beckman (ChE), Robert Enick (ChE), and J. Karl Johnson (ChE) received funding to assist General Electric Co. in the development of new solvents for the efficient absorption of CO2 from gas mixtures. Mary Besterfield-Sacre (IE) received an NSF grant for “Assessing Technical Entrepreneurship Learning in Engineering Education.” She will collaborate with the

Department Code Bioengineering (BioE) Chemical & Petroleum Engineering (ChE) Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)

Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) Industrial Engineering (IE) Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science (MEMS)

Visit us online at www.engr.pitt.edu/news/publications.html to view the detailed list of faculty accomplishments in the Web component of Around the School.

National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) on this Phase II Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement project. Melissa Bilec (CEE) and Amy Landis (CEE) received funding through the Green Building Alliance for their research project, “Investigating the Environmental Life-cycle Assessment, Performance, and Life-cycle Costing of Expanded Polystyrene for Construction Materials and Supplies: Focus on Insulating Concrete Forms.” They also are working together on the Biodiesel Fuel Feasibility Study, which is funded through the intergovernmental agreement Pitt has with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and, together with Joe Marriott (CEE), received funding from NCIIA to create a new class, Beyond Design for the Environment: Improving Products, Processes, and Actions. Bilec and Marriott are working on the research project “Market Analysis of Construction Materials with Recommendations for the Future of the Industry,” which is funded through PennDOT. Allen C. Cheng (ECE) was awarded a grant from Microsoft Research to support his interdisciplinary research project, “A Mobile Platform for Continuous Real-time Monitoring and Automatic Detection of Cardiovascular Disease.” Cheng also received an NSF grant to develop selfadaptive threat-detection techniques for bio-implantable system-on-a-chip. Tracy Cui (BioE) received funding for her National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 application, “Improving the Chronic Neural Recording via Biomaterial Strategies.”

Lance Davidson (BioE) was awarded funding for a Beginning Grant-in-Aid proposal to the American Heart Association, titled “Role of Fibronectin during Pre-cardiac Cell Migration and Establishment of the Heart Forming Region.”

Anthony J. DeArdo (MEMS) and C. Isaac Garcia (MEMS) received a grant from the North American steel industry to establish an undergraduate area of concentration in ferrous physical metallurgy within the materials science, mechanical engineering, and engineering physics majors. They additionally have received a grant from Nucor Corp. (USA) and Ternium (Mexico) to study the development of Mary Besterfield-Sacre (second from left) with students at the Itaipu Dam in Brazil w w w. e n g r . p i t t. e d u

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RESEARCH BRIEF

Willie F. Harper Jr.

cost-effective, high-strength ERW steel line pipes for the oil and gas industry. Larry Foulke (MEMS); Larry Shuman (IE); Mark Redfern (BioE); and Don Shields, director of corporate relations, are leading three government grants as part of a federal effort to expand the U.S. nuclear energy workforce.

The Swanson School will use the grants, totaling $750,000, to bolster the nuclear engineering undergraduate and graduate certificate programs based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Peyman Givi (MEMS) received two new grants: one from NASA Headquarters to research “Large Eddy Simulation of High-speed Turbulent Combustion via the Filtered Density Function” and another from NETL to complete the project “Assessment of Turbo-chemistry Models for Prediction of Fuel Composition Effects on GTC Emission.” Jeffrey Kharoufeh (IE) has received a grant from NSF, titled “A Mathematical Framework for the Performance Evaluation of Large-scale Sensor Networks.” Xu Liang (CEE) has been awarded a DOE grant for her research to study mega drought and its implications for climate change. Marlin Mickle (ECE), Peter J. Hawrylak (ECE), and students in the RFID Center of Excellence are developing a system to improve bridge safety and streamline the bridge inspection process.

Bilec is assisting on the project, which is funded by PennDOT. Piervincenzo Rizzo (CEE) was awarded an NSF grant for “Collaborative Research: Novel NDE/SHM Approach Based on Highly Nonlinear Dynamics.” The project is part of a collaborative effort between Rizzo and faculty at the California Institute of Technology. He also has received a grant from PennDOT for “Collaborative Research: Sensing Technology for Damage Assessment of Sign Supports and Cantilever Pole Structures.” Shuman; Bilec; and Kristine Lalley, director, international engineering initiatives, with support from the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, will lead a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant, which is funded through the U.S. Department of Education.

FIPSE allows for an exchange program between two academic institutions and fosters international graduate and undergraduate academics. Luis E. Vallejo (CEE) and J.S. Lin (CEE) are the principal investigators of a two-year project funded by PennDOT to study highway subsidence due to long wall mining.

Radisav D. Vidic (CEE) was awarded a DOE grant to study the use of treated municipal wastewater for cooling in thermoelectric power plants. This project is a collaborative effort with Carnegie Mellon University. Jörg Wiezorek (MEMS) was awarded funding from DOE to conduct a project, titled “Electron Density Determination, Bonding, and Properties of Tetragonal Ferromagnetic Intermetallics.”

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Willie F. Harper Jr., associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, made a significant breakthrough in understanding the biochemistry and microbial ecology of bacteria that remove ammonia from wastewater. Harper has been studying nitrification, the process of biologically removing ammonia from wastewater. Working closely with colleagues in microbiology and chemistry, he discovered that hydroxylamine, a key intermediate formed during nitrification, can cause the microbial communities to become inhibited and disaggregated, ultimately interfering with the removal of ammonia. This exciting discovery may explain why nitrification suddenly fails. “The microbial communities that perform nitrification are widely regarded as being relatively weak and slow growing,” Harper says. “These findings show that nitrifiers are sometimes inhibited—not because they are inherently fragile but because they produce an intermediate that can cause damage. The negative effects include disaggregation, a reduction in the number of functional genes, and a deleterious shift in the overall microbial ecology. These results may challenge our current thinking about nitrification and could have significant impact on the development of new and hybrid technologies being deployed for removal of ammonia from wastewater.” This research was performed as part of an interdisciplinary collaboration of engineers, chemists, and microbial ecologists at the University of Pittsburgh, Auburn University, the Technical University of Denmark, and the Université de Lyon and is in press for publication in Biotechnology & Bioengineering.

NEWS MAKERS Chemical engineering faculty members Joseph McCarthy and Robert Parker and Mary Besterfield-Sacre, industrial engineering, received the 2008 Carnegie Science Center Award in the university/postsecondary educator category for their innovative work in redeveloping the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. They were featured on Our Region’s Business, produced by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and WPXI Channel 11. Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/ news/media to view the interview.

Chemical and industrial engineering faculty were featured on Needy Our Region’s Business, which airs on Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate.

Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/news/media to view the interview.

to the editorial board of the international journal Geomechanics and Geoengineering. Savio L-Y. Woo (BioE) received an honorary professorship from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA). He also will serve as chair of the International Advisory Committee of the School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering at BUAA.

dedication Savio L-Y. Woo (left) received an honorary professorship from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (BUAA).

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION Dan Budny (CEE) received the International Engineering Educator Award, presented by the International Society for Engineering Education. This award is given each year to the top engineering educators around the world, and Budny is the second American to receive it. Anthony DeArdo (MEMS) was appointed Distinguished Professor at the University of Oulu in Finland. He was one of four professors from around the world selected by the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme to lead and advise a research project at a Finnish university.

Peyman Givi (MEMS) was elected Pitt’s representative to the Council of Institutions of the Universities Space Research Association. Marina Kameneva (BioE) was elected a council member of the International Society of Biorheology. C.C. Li (ECE) earned fellow status in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Howard A. Kuhn (MEMS) received the 2008 Gold Medal from ASM International.

Steven R. Little (ChE) received a 2008 Beckman Young Investigators award. He is the first from Pitt to receive this award. Alan Russell (ChE/BioE) was named codirector of a new multimillion-dollar federally funded institution, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will be dedicated to repairing battlefield injuries through the use of regenerative medicine. Other Swanson School faculty involved include Prashant Kumta (BioE/ MEMS) and William Wagner (ChE/BioE). Wagner has been named a fellow of biomaterials science and engineering by the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering. Wagner is the first fellow from Pitt. Michael Sacks (BioE) was named a 2008 fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and received a 2008 University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award.

Luis E. Vallejo (CEE) was named

On October 3, 2008, more than 100 faculty, staff, alumni, and friends gathered on the 10th floor of Benedum Hall for a special dedication ceremony. The latest and most advanced instructional facility in the Swanson School officially was dedicated as the new Albert G. Holzman Learning Center, named in honor of the former professor and department chair who served for more than two decades in that role. Holzman also was the first industrial engineer to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering. The center was made possible by gifts from faculty, alumni, and friends.

The facility consists of a smaller executive classroom with movable tables and laptops and a larger teaching facility with team-based workstations, two LCD projectors, and a digital tablet that allows the instructor to draw directly over illustrations or notes projected on the screen or on the students’ computers.

Industrial engineering department chair and Ernest E. Roth Professor Bopaya Bidanda says the Holzman Learning Center creates a distinct advantage for Pitt’s industrial engineering program. “We are truly fortunate to have such a remarkable teaching space. Our students and faculty now have one of the best facilities anywhere, and we are especially grateful to those alumni and friends who helped make this possible. Not only is it a great resource to us, but it has given us the opportunity to honor the memory of Al Holzman in a way that honors all he accomplished.”

Members of Al Holzman’s family visited campus in October to help dedicate the Albert G. Holzman Learning Center, located on the 10th floor of Benedum Hall.

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research features

Fuel from Coal: A Swanson School Professor’s Quest for Energy Independence

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t a Sasol research facility in South Africa, Badie Morsi watches coal travel down a conveyor belt on its way to becoming diesel fuel and sees the future.

Morsi dreams of a day when the United States—and Western Pennsylvania—won’t have to import oil but can use reactors similar to the one at the Sasol research facility to make it.

The professor and director of the petroleum engineering program at the Swanson School has spent much of his career working to improve the process of making synthetic fuel from coal, natural gas, or even garbage.

Morsi is a petroleum engineer but trained as a chemical engineer. “I wanted to do something in an area I considered to be the bottleneck of chemical engineering, which is reactor design,” he says.

With his students and postdoctoral researchers, Morsi has built several reactors in his lab in the basement of Benedum Hall. The reactors work on the process of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, first developed in Germany in 1922.

The process is making a comeback in popularity as oil prices increase. Sasol has built two reactors in Qatar that produce 34,000 barrels of synthetic fuel a day from natural gas.

Fischer-Tropsch reactors combine bubbles of synthetic gas— made from any of the sources mentioned above—with particles of a catalyst like iron or cobalt. The gas reacts on the catalyst surfaces to produce liquid fuel, forming suspension, or slurry.

Morsi’s 10-foot-tall insulated reactor is one of the most advanced in academia. It holds a large volume of liquid and uses very fine particles. Temperature control and quality control are high. The sensors snaking out from the reactor report to Morsi and his colleagues in real time what the reactor is doing.

Because of safety issues, Morsi’s reactor does not produce actual fuel. Instead, it uses substitutes like nitrogen or helium gas. He and graduate student Laurent Sehabiague have developed sophisticated but user-friendly software that models and optimizes the Fischer-Tropsch slurry process.

Even with the state-of-the-art equipment, Morsi installed windows in the reactor so he could look inside. “People thought we were crazy when we drilled windows, but we wanted to see how the gas bubbles behave,” he says. The bubbles are important: the smaller the better, because there is more surface area per unit volume for mass and heat transfer.

Morsi’s work has made him valuable to governments and companies around the world. His current and past collaborators include INTEVEP Venezuela, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Texaco, and Sasol.

One of the benefits of the process Morsi is developing is that the fuel produced does not contain any sulfur. The U.S. Air Force invited him to speak about how jet fuel made this way would be better for airplanes.

Badie Morsi (lower left) with researchers in his Benedum Hall laboratory

Morsi points to the technology’s potential to create jobs in the country and the region, especially in light of the history here. “Pitt has the oldest petroleum engineering department in the world.

The first oil well in the US was drilled in Western Pennsylvania in 1859,” says Morsi. “We need to revive that [legacy].”

“I hope one day this country can become independent of oil imports,” he says. “I’m not going to give up.”

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Strengthening Bamboo—and Research

K

ent Harries is bouncing around in a Jeep in the remote Darjeeling region of India when suddenly his life flashes before his eyes. A large military truck is coming the other way down the one-lane road, and he knows it is not getting out of the way. He and student Derek Mitch hang on as the Jeep driver veers out of the truck’s path, narrowly averting disaster.

Soon Harries, civil engineering assistant professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, and Mitch, a senior in the Swanson School, reach their destination: a construction site where houses are being made out of bamboo, not wood, concrete, or steel. Bamboo is a more eco-friendly material, but it faces the drawback of being seen as backward in a country with First World aims.

“If you’re going to use bamboo in India, your implementation has to be very, very good,” says Mitch. “If there is any kind of defect, it won’t be used.”

At the site, Mitch and Harries notice a house that isn’t being built with the correct method for that particular type of bamboo.

The bamboo is splitting. “If other people see this, they’re never going to want to use bamboo,” Mitch thinks.

Under Harries’ guidance, Mitch investigates the splitting issue and determines that a universal test that is practical to use in the field and that will give good results across all types of bamboo is needed.

The trip is part of the Undergraduate Research in Sustainable Engineering program in the Swanson School’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. The 5-year-old program gives undergraduate students the opportunity to research an engineering problem related to sustainability and to be able to work independently on a project of particular significance to them.

“It’s an opportunity to expose them to what research is like and see if graduate school is something they’d want to do,” says Mascaro Center Codirector Gena Kovalcik.

The program, funded by a combination of individual donors, the Heinz Endowments, and John C. “Jack” Mascaro (BSCE ’66, MSCE ’80), has received highly positive evaluations from students. Several students have come back for a second year.

Students from each of the six Swanson School departments have participated in the program, providing opportunities for interdisciplinary research. It’s now open to non-Pitt students as well.

Students have the opportunity to publish their results in journals.

For the past two years, the program has enabled students interested in an international experience to study for four weeks in Brazil at the State University of Campinas.

In addition to using bamboo as a building material, students in the program are investigating topics like nanocomposite materials that can produce clean energy, assessing sea-level rise in the Pacific Ocean, and making solar cells.

Mitch says the program has shown him what going to graduate school will be like. “As an undergrad, you do the assignment and chug through until you get the right answer,” he says. “In this program, it works the other way; you have to figure it out on your own.

I had no idea what academic research was like until this summer.”

Students aren’t the only ones benefiting from the program.

“Undergraduate research is a very important aspect of my research program, because it’s how I recruit graduate students,” says Harries. About Mitch, he adds: “He’s an outstanding young prospect for graduate school. I want to keep him around.”

For more information about the program, visit www.mascarocenter. pitt.edu/prospective-students/ undergraduate/urp.php.

Students participating in the Undergraduate Research in Sustainable Engineering program visited India, where they helped design and construct eco-friendly bamboo houses.

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S tudent N ews

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Bartholomew Bacak, a bioengineering major, has earned a Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition undergraduate research fellowship in computational neuroscience. The award will support Bacak’s research and education in computational neuroscience during the 2008–09 academic year, which will include focusing on computer modeling under the direction of his faculty advisor, Henry Zeringue, assistant professor of bioengineering.

The following bioengineering PhD candidates won prestigious national fellowships: Kelly Clause was awarded an American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship for her research project, “Role of Mechanical Forces in Cardiomyocyte Induction from Skeletal Muscle-Derived Stem Cells in 3D Culture”; Chad Eckert was awarded an AHA Predoctoral Fellowship for his research project, “Quantifying the Ability of the Mitral Valve to Adapt to Abnormal Stress States Following Repair”; Bryan Brown was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) for his research project, “ECM Scaffolds and Macrophage Polarization-induced Tissue Remodeling”; and Melanie Ruffner, who also is completing an MD while at Pitt, was awarded an NIH F30 Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA for individual MD/PhDs

Antonio Gonzalez, a bioengineering graduate student, has been selected to receive a 2008 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) award. Gonzalez will conduct his research at the Musculoskeletal Research Center (MSRC), and his doctoral thesis study will involve understanding the effect of electrospun bioscaffolds on the healing of ligaments and tendons. The only other MSRC student to win the award was Serena Augustine in 2007. In addition to the NSF Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) fellowship and the Alfred P. Sloan Scholarship he received in 2007–08, David V.P. Sanchez, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering, also received an NSF GRFP award in the spring.

of Diamondlike Photonic Crystal Template Using Twodimensional Diffractive Optical Elements.” Xu is a graduate electrical and computer engineering student studying under Kevin Chen, associate professor and Paul E. Lego Faculty Fellow.

FingerSight, the brainchild of bioengineering students Samantha Horvath and Brock Nichol, debuted at SIGGRAPH 2008.

for her research project, “IL-4 Overexpressing Dendritic Cells and Exosomes for Treatment of Type 1 Diabetes.”

Matt Hohman, Tara Moyer, and Ann Voltz were selected to attend the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Undergraduate Student Paper Competition, held at the IIE Annual Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to present their senior design project. The group was one of 10 finalists to be selected, and they received funding from IBM to assist with travel expenses. Bryan Norman, associate professor of industrial engineering, served as the group’s advisor. The senior design project helped Goodwill Industries International with a plan to increase the amount of donations processed in its stores by redesigning store layouts, determining best methods, and creating standard times for backroom operations.

Collin Otis, a mechanical engineering graduate student, was one of only five graduate recipients of a scholarship through the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program. NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate manages and administers the program in cooperation with the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Antonio Gonzalez

Among the most prestigious, competitive, and sought-after graduate fellowships, the GRFP award provides three years of support—consisting of a stipend, education allowance, and international research travel allowance—for graduate study leading to a research-based doctoral degree. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and is designed to provide opportunities for advanced education that prepare students for a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary careers through its strategic investments in intellectual capital.

NSF GRFP fellows are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.

These individuals will be crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.

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Bioengineering PhD candidates Sagi Perel, M. Chance Spalding, and Andrew Whitford coauthored the paper “Cortical Control of a Prosthetic Arm for Selffeeding,” recently published in Nature.

The senior author of the paper is Andy Schwartz, professor of neurobiology.

Gaurav Shukla, a student in the joint MD/PhD program in bioengineering, has been accepted into the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Predoctoral Fellowship Program in Clinical and Translational Science for 2008–09.

Shukla is working in the lab of George Stetten, professor of bioengineering.

Di Xu’s research work is highlighted as the cover story of the July 21, 2008, issue of Applied Physics Letters. Xu is a coauthor of a paper titled “Holographic Fabrication

Samantha Horvath and Brock Nichol, bioengineering students, were invited to the leading graphics conference SIGGRAPH 2008 to present FingerSight, an invention developed and built under the direction of Stetten.

FingerSight is a new concept in sensory substitution and remote control for the visually impaired, as well as for those who simply want to wave their hands and have things happen. FingerSight is patent pending. Please visit www.fingersight.com for more information.

Dave Torick, a civil and environmental engineering graduate student, collaborated with Peace Corps volunteer Keith Task (BSChE ’05) to build a rock crusher that will help Ugandan villagers with HIV/AIDS earn extra money by making gravel from boulders, an otherwise laborious venture undertaken with only basic tools. “This machine’s not going to save the world, but I hope it makes some people’s lives a little easier,” Torick said. “I’d love to hear that people could afford medicine that they couldn’t before, or that they got to take a day off instead of working every day of their lives. That’s been my driving force.”

Read the full story online! Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/news/ rockcrusher.

In May 2008, student members of the Pitt chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) traveled to Africa to complete the first assessment phase of the Makili Fish Farm Development Project, which aims to implement a sustainable fish farm in the community of Makili, Mali. The chapter analyzed the data acquired on the trip to finalize pond construction plans and identify public health goals for the community and returned to Africa for the

Dave Torick stands next to the rock crusher he helped build that will enable Ugandans with HIV/AIDS to earn extra money.

first phase of implementation in December 2008. EWB is a nonprofit humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in developing communities via grassroots engineering initiatives. With each community it affects, EWB pledges to address problems affecting health, sanitation, the economy, technology, and education with an appropriate and sustainable solution. Established in spring 2006, the Pitt chapter of EWB has continued to grow in numbers, motivation, and experience. To learn more about the Pitt EWB chapter or to support its current project, please send an e-mail to ewb.usa.pitt@gmail.com.

Members of the Pitt chapter of Engineers Without Borders traveled to Mali in May 2008.

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A L U M N I N otes

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N. Catherine Bazan-Arias (BSCE ’92, MSCE ’94, PhD ’99) has been elected at-large director of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Bazan-Arias is a senior staff engineer at DiGioia, Gray & Associates, LLC, in Pittsburgh, where she specializes in geotechnical and structural engineering projects such as the management of coal combustion products and transmission line siting and design. Previously, she was a senior lead engineer with GAI Consultants, Inc. Bazan-Arias also is a member of Engineers Without Borders and is on the editorial board of Geo-Strata magazine.

She has served as director of ASCE Pittsburgh Section and chaired the section’s Geotechnical Group.

Andrew Deao (BSCE ’04, MSCE ’08) was appointed a new director of ASCE Pittsburgh Section. Deao has been involved with the organization for the past three years. One of his key areas of focus will be to strengthen Pittsburgh’s civil engineering industry by working with local students. Prior to his appointment, he completed a term as president of the Younger Member Forum within ASCE Pittsburgh Section. In this role, he demonstrated strong leadership in organizing significant events with industry and political leaders within the region. He also significantly grew the size of the organization. Deao is a geotechnical designer in Gannett Fleming’s Geotechnical Services Group and brings five years of experience to this position. He has served as the designer for a variety of diverse projects,

Michael J. Ostaffe (BSEE ’86) has joined ESAB Welding & Cutting as vice president of product management and development for filler metals for North America. He will be responsible for driving ESAB’s programs forward in product management, product research, and development of filler metals as well as presiding over marketing communications for all products in North America.

including bridges, roadways, airports, and buildings.

Darlene Gambill-Motley (BSIE ’80) has been appointed head of the Department of Management at Robert Morris University with responsibility for the undergraduate business, Master of Science in human resources, and Master of Science in nonprofit management programs. The undergraduate business program is the largest at Robert Morris University.

John Kovacs

Frederick T. Harnack (BSME ’76) has been appointed general manager, operational excellence, of U.S. Steel.

Reporting to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John H. Goodish, Harnack is responsible for implementing the company’s operational excellence initiative, which will focus on continuous improvement, technology advancement, and standardization activities that will enhance efficiency and drive operational performance across the company.

Douglas A. Jackson (BSEE ’90, MSEE ’94) has been promoted to director of operations and maintenance for the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN). Jackson is responsible for the daily operations and maintenance of the 250-mgd wastewater treatment facility to ensure permit requirements. This includes oversight of four rotating operations crews, tri-axle/mobile equipment operators, skilled craftsmen and laborers responsible for the maintenance of the plant, 95 miles of interceptor system, operating equipment and vehicles, and wastewater education to certify workforce skill level to meet operational and technological requirements. Jackson began his career with ALCOSAN in 1990.

John Kovacs (MSCEE ’96) has been named Civil Engineer of the Year by ASCE Pittsburgh Section.

This prestigious award recognizes his professional accomplishments and contributions to the

Timothy J. Miller

civil engineering community. Kovacs is a vice president and regional office manager for Gannett Fleming, Inc., an international planning, design, and construction management firm. He is responsible for managing the Pittsburgh regional office operations, which involves office administration, technical supervision, and management of civil design.

Timothy J. Miller (BSChE ’85, MSChE ’87) recently joined RETTEW, a comprehensive engineering, planning, and environmental consulting firm serving the mid-Atlantic region. Miller will focus on developing RETTEW’s various business sectors— primarily the municipal and environmental engineering markets—in the firm’s central and south-central Pennsylvania regions, which include Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Juniata, Lebanon, Lancaster, Mifflin, Northumberland, Perry, Snyder, and York counties.

Burhan Sandikci (PhD ’08) has been named assistant professor of operations management at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Sandikci was advised by Andrew Schaefer, associate professor of industrial engineering; Lisa Maillart, assistant professor of industrial engineering; and Mark Roberts (School of Medicine).

The October 2008 meeting of the Pitt Civil Engineering Alumni Club (CEAC) was held at the Swanson School of Engineering. Alumni were welcomed by Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Chair Radisav Vidic and received an update about the Transformation Plan for Benedum Hall from Dean Gerald D. Holder. Guest speakers John C. “Jack” Mascaro (BSCE ’66, MSCE ’80), founder and CEO of Mascaro Construction; Ed Elinski, senior project manager; Nate Martin (BSCE ’98), on-site superintendent; and Colin Gibbons, on-site project manager, discussed the development of the building for the Swanson School’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation and its green construction focus. Attendees toured the construction in Benedum Hall tower and auditorium and the new Mascaro Center building. Alumni and students then gathered on the balcony of the Learning Research and Development Center overlooking the construction to discuss career opportunities in construction management and sustainable construction.

John Wesdock (BSEE ’90) has received a NASA Space Flight Awareness award.

This award is given to individuals who have demonstrated exceptional support to the Human Space Flight program, and it is among NASA’s highest honors. Wesdock currently is a program manager at ITT Corporation, where he performs engineering services in support of NASA and other government agencies. He has authored or coauthored 15 papers on satellite and space communications.

Dean Gerald D. Holder and Jack Mascaro (BSCE ’66, MSCE ’80) attended tours of the transformation of Benedum Hall as part of the Pitt CEAC October meeting.

Friends We Will Miss William B Wylie Jr. (BSMEE ’48), of Pittsburgh, Pa., passed away on December 28, 2007.

Stanley Zabetakis (BSEE ’49), of Sun City Center, Fla., passed away on July 15, 2008.

Douglas A. Jackson

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Homecoming 2008 On October 24, 2008, more than 125 Swanson School alumni, faculty, staff, and friends joined the Office of Development and Alumni Relations under a clear tent on the patio of Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall to celebrate Homecoming 2008. After a family-style celebration that included a balloon and airbrush artist, the Pitt Panther and cheerleaders, the Swanson School SAE team, Class of 1958

a chocolate fountain, and a Pittsburgh-themed buffet dinner, the group gathered under the tent and on the lawn to watch the spectacular fireworks display over the Cathedral of Learning and William Pitt Union.

Visit www.engr.pitt.edu/alumni/photogallery to view more photos from Homecoming 2008, including photos of Alumni Academy attendees touring the new construction at Benedum Hall.

This year also brought to campus the largest number of reunion class celebrants yet.

Class of 1968

Class of 1983

Class of 1998

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A L U M N I N otes

Alumni Profiles

Pitt Engineers Never Retire

C

‘Into the Wild Blue Yonder’

F

For John Schoeppner, the familiar chorus of the U.S. Air Force song could be interpreted quite literally as a summary of his entire military career, having spent the better part of his adult life far above the ground. In 1960, Schoeppner graduated from Pitt with a BS in mechanical engineering and a positive experience in the campus Air Force ROTC chapter. Judging from the collection of model planes he has accumulated over the years, one might assume he went on to learn a little about flying— something Schoeppner only modestly will admit. “You could say I know which way is forward in the cockpit,” he says.

With more than 3,000 military flying hours and certification to fly seven different combat and training aircraft, Schoeppner does not openly boast about his flying accomplishments, which include 154 combat missions during the Vietnam War. The F-105 Thunderchief model is his favorite among his collection because that is what he flew in Vietnam. “There were many times when I wondered if this might be my last flight, but the F-105 was a great plane and always came through for me.”

After Vietnam, Schoeppner went on to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. From there, he began a series of successive steps up within the ranks, which included serving as commander of the 3246th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida and deputy chief of staff at the Air Force Systems Command headquarters at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. In 1988, his last assignment took him back to Edwards, where he had been a young test pilot nearly two

John Schoeppner (BSME ’60)

John Schoeppner (left), then a test pilot, pictured with legendary pilot Chuck Yeager

decades before. Now, he was a two-star major general and was assigned to be the commanding general. He remained there until his retirement from the Air Force in 1991.

“My 31 years in the Air Force were simply remarkable,” Schoeppner says. “I got to know presidents, foreign dignitaries, astronauts, and even a few movie stars. As a test pilot, though, the highlight of my time there was getting to personally know Chuck Yeager.” (Yeager, in addition to earning a Congressional Medal of Honor, was famous for becoming the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound.)

Managing the base was not all glamorous. Schoeppner was responsible for the oversight of more than 18,000 employees and an $800 million annual budget. “I was known for not spending much time behind a desk,” Schoeppner says. “I would always say, ‘Aircraft accidents never happen in the commander’s office.’ My time was better spent out working directly with the folks on the flight line, in the hangars, and anywhere else that might enhance flying safety.”

Following his retirement from active duty, Schoeppner moved to Orlando, Fla., to join Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin Corp., as a director of international business development for electronics, missiles, and fire control systems. He remained there until retiring in 2006. Today, he calls St. Petersburg home and can be found during baseball season cheering on his hometown Tampa Bay Rays. In February 2008, he attended an alumni reception in Tampa hosted by U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering Gerald D. Holder, which brought back memories of his days at Pitt.

“It’s hard to believe this much time has passed, but I’m proud to see everything my engineering school has gone on to accomplish,” Schoeppner says. “Pitt is truly a very special place that prepared me well for a career I never could have imagined.”

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Company loyalty, a concept that defines much of Pittsburgh’s prominent industrial past, is a fading trend today—but not for Stephen Tritch. On July 1, 2002, Tritch was named president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric Company, where he has worked since 1971. He previously served in such appointments as senior vice president, nuclear fuel, overseeing the provision of nuclear fuel products and services to nuclear power plants throughout the world. He has accomplished such feats as managing the integration of the former ABB Nuclear business unit into Westinghouse, serving as senior vice president of nuclear services.

The year he started working for Westinghouse also was the year he earned his BS in mechanical engineering at Pitt. “I attribute much of my success to the solid foundation I received at Pitt,” says Tritch. “In my years at Westinghouse, I have done my best to recruit from good schools that are close to Westinghouse locations, and Pitt has always been one of the best.” Tritch once recruited a group of promising engineering graduates from a school in Wisconsin about 10 years ago. After they had been in Pittsburgh for five years, they realized they wanted to be closer to family and returned to the Midwest. “It is hard to find people with roots in the area who want to stay in Pittsburgh, but we have hired many engineers from Pitt, and I am happy to have maintained a good relationship with the school,” adds Tritch.

Today, Westinghouse employs more than 300 Pitt alumni, most of whom are engineering graduates.

That trend is expected to grow, as nuclear energy once again becomes a key component in meeting U.S. energy demands as well as existing high demand in Europe and Asia. To prepare for this growth, Tritch led the planning for a new and dramatically larger Westinghouse headquarters, one that could not fit on the company’s current site in Monroeville, Pa. After reviewing many options, which included the possibility of relocating out of Pennsylvania, the company decided to build a new corporate campus on an 83-acre site in the northern Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry. Plans call for the construction of four buildings, with space available for a fifth, to accommodate approximately 5,000 employees.

The first building is expected to be completed in June 2009. In making this commitment, Tritch says Westinghouse is positioning itself to be the undisputed leader in its field.

A new campus and new buildings are not the only source of change for Westinghouse. Tritch stepped down as president

Stephen Tritch (BSME ’71) at the new Westinghouse headquarters in Cranberry Township, Pa.

and CEO on July 1, 2008, but will remain with the company as chair of the Westinghouse Board of Directors.

“This was obviously a difficult decision,” Tritch says, “but the timing was right, as we recently changed ownership from BNFL and became part of Toshiba Corporation, completed the plans for the new headquarters, and landed a major contract to build four new nuclear plants in China. The company also signed the first contracts for new nuclear units here in the United States since the 1970s. I don’t know how I could go out feeling any better about the future of Westinghouse than [I do] right now.”

With a little more time in his schedule, Tritch also is stepping up his involvement with the Swanson School, where he has been named chair of the Board of Visitors. He is succeeding Thomas Usher (BSIE ’64, MSIE ’66, PhD ’71), who has served as chair for the past decade. “I am honored to be presented this opportunity and look forward to continuing to help Dean Holder build a world-class engineering school,” Tritch says.

In addition to his service to the Board of Visitors, Tritch also is a Pitt trustee, and he and his wife, Tami, have funded the creation of the Stephen R. and Tami A. Tritch Engineering Legacy Fund, a permanent endowment that provides unrestricted income to help meet the Swanson School’s greatest needs.

“It’s an easy decision for me to give my time and support to Pitt,” Tritch says. “Who knows where my career might have led me without my Pitt experience.”

A schematic rendering of the future headquarters of Westinghouse Electric Company

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A L U M N I N otes

I am a

Chasing a Dream

P

Perry Jones, age 6, stands in a field on his grandfather’s Virginia farm. He hears a buzz and looks up to see a plane flying overhead.

Engineer

“Grandpa, that’s what I want to do when I grow up,” he says eagerly. “I want to drive that airplane.”

“Perry, if you want to drive that airplane, you can do it,” his grandfather tells him.

Jones would go on to become the first Black airline pilot for Pan Am. His education at Pitt—mechanical engineering with a concentration in aeronautical engineering—helped him achieve that dream.

Perry Jones (BSME ’59) Glen Ridge, N.J.

Having received an athletic scholarship to attend Pitt, Jones competed on a championship track and field team and served in the Air Force ROTC. When he graduated, he was offered the highest-paying job of anyone in his major at Lockheed Martin Corp. There, he worked on a team that tried to solve the problem of vibration in the airframe of the Electra airplane. A few of the planes had exploded because vibrations were causing weakness in the metal.

“I was almost afraid to open my mouth,” he says. “All these people have their PhDs and master’s degrees, and I just have a BS in mechanical engineering.”

Finally he raised his hand and said, “Well, why don’t we just put a tuning fork in the airplane?”

The engineers on the team looked at each other and said, “That might be a temporary fix.”

Four hundred fifty-pound tuning forks were installed on the airplanes to negate the vibrations that were causing the problems until the original design flaw could be corrected.

“That was my big contribution to the aviation world, right out of university,” says Jones.

After Jones left Lockheed, he was sent to Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas for what he expected to be pilot training. One of only 10 African American second lieutenants in a class of 240, he and his fellow Black classmates were sent to navigation training instead.

Edward Russavage

BS, Electrical Engineering, 1989 Hingham, Mass.

Karen Bursic

BS, Industrial Engineering, 1984 MS, Industrial Engineering, 1987 PhD, Industrial Engineering, 1990 Pittsburgh, Pa.

After flying as a navigator for two years, Jones happened to meet the wife of the head officer at the base, a one-star general. Later, over lunch, the officer learned Jones wanted to be a pilot and wrote him a ringing endorsement for pilot training.

In 1965, Jones walked into the Pan Am offices in the San Francisco airport. Only three years earlier, in a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision, Marlon Green had won his fight with Continental Airlines to become the first Black pilot for a major airline in the United States. Jones was hired and flew with the company until 1991, when Delta Air Lines, Inc., bought Pan Am’s European routes.

Jones also served as president of the national Organization of Black Airline Pilots, which reaches out to young underrepresented students to get them interested in aviation. “Even though it’s still a work in progress, we’ve made tremendous inroads to increase numbers of minorities in the industry,” he says.

He visited Pitt last October during Homecoming and was impressed with the latest happenings in the Swanson School.

“My degree is becoming more and more valuable, because the University has established itself as one of the leading universities in this country,” he says.

Maddie Allen-Sandoz BS, Civil Engineering, 2010 Kutztown, Pa.

John Richter

BS, Industrial Engineering, 1975 Gibsonia, Pa.

Foundations for Greatness The Campaign for Engineering www.engr.pitt.edu/campaign Are you proud to be a Pitt engineer? Send your photo to sgill@pitt.edu.

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Swanson School of Engineering 416 Cathedral of Learning 4200 Fifth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15260

fall ’08/winter ’09

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Center Dedicated

Oil from Coal

Under Construction

Albert G. Holzman Learning Center Opens

Swanson School Professor’s Quest for Energy Independence

Alumni Get Firsthand Look at Benedum Hall Transformation

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