Ingenuity 2014

STUDENTS P. 4

ALUMNI P. 8

FACULTY P. 24

AWARDS P. 25

Creating for Good in Ghana

Married alumni face future as one

Bringing big innovation to nanotech

Faculty join Engineering and Science Hall of Fame, National Academy of Inventors

Ingenuity the russ college of engineering and technology • 2013–2014

SHRINKing fracking’s footprint Jason Trembly and Russ College researchers focus on solving the challenges facing fracking and its future

04

02 | DEAN’S LETTER 04 | STUDENT PROFILE 06 | STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS 08 | RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT 10 | RESEARCH AWARDS

STUDENT PROFILE

12 | ALUMNI PROFILE

Claire Hall, BSChE ’14, digs in with her fellow Russ College teammates on their recent service trip to Ghana, helping bring better education to a rural village and building relationships with its people.

14 | ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENTS 16 | OUR CULTURE

12 ALUMNI PROFILE

What happens when two Engineering Ambassadors find true love? For Russ College alumni Daniel and Sadie Evans, it’s a journey that started in Stocker Center and created their future together.

20 | FEATURE STORY

Editorial Credits

24 | FACULTY PROFILE

Executive Editor Colleen Carow, BSJ ’93, MA ’97, MBA ’05

25 | FACULTY NEWS

Associate Editor Adrienne Cornwall

26 | CLASS NOTES 28 | CO-OP PROFILE 29 | CREATE FOR THE FUTURE

Writers Colleen Carow Adrienne Cornwall Kaitor Kposowa, MA ’14 Arian Smedley Photographers Jill Bateman, MA ’13 Rebecca Miller, MA ’14 Design Ologie, Columbus, Ohio

Share your comments, feedback, and memorable Russ College moments by writing us at ingenuity@ohio.edu or Ingenuity Magazine, Russ College, Stocker Center 177, 1 Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701.

Intelligence floats Senior civil engineering student Sarah Koska jumps for joy as “The Yellow Submarine,” the Russ College’s student concrete canoe team, floats back up to the top of Cleveland’s Hinckley Lake at the first round of the Ohio Valley Regional American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 Concrete Canoe Competition.

For more great student news, see pages 6–7.

Ingenuity | Spring 2014

From The Dean’s Desk Welcome to our tenth issue of Ingenuity magazine!

We thought it only fitting to re-engineer the magazine in celebration of this anniversary and our new creative identity, which we call “Create for Good.” You may have encountered it on our website, in our halls on campus, in Ohio Today magazine, or at one of our alumni events. We think it captures our values about “improving the human condition” (the words of our namesake, Fritz Russ, BSEE ’42, Hon ’75). Or, in other words, it means educating young engineers and technologists to work toward good in both societally beneficial and sustainable ways.

You may shudder at the notion of an engineering and technology college developing a creative identity. That’s for corporations, right? But we always knew there was something unique about this place. And because academic institutions are facing greater competition, and also because we’re proud of who we are, we thought it was time to figure out how to talk about who we are.

I hope this issue is a fresh surprise for you. With a new look and feel, more in-depth stories, more news about students and faculty, and beautiful photography, we listened to you. Thank you for responding to our survey with clear and candid feedback, so we can better articulate Russ College’s strengths. You’re welcome to share more thoughts at ingenuity@ohio.edu.

I hope this issue also makes you stop and think. As thought leaders, we want to evoke and inspire. In last year’s letter, I said that our role in the shale oil and gas area would be one of research, support, technology development, and educational offerings. We come to you now with an in-depth look at what we offer. I couldn’t be more proud, and whether you’re an alumnus, a student, a former or current faculty member, or a Russ College friend, I hope you are, too.

Sincerely,

Dennis Irwin, PhD, PE Dean Moss Professor of Engineering Education Thomas Professor of Engineering Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ College of Engineering and Technology Russ College learning community students played puppetmaster for Athens’ 2013 Halloween Block Party.

As part of the collaborative “Honey for the Heart” art project led by local artists Patty Mitchell and Robert Lockhead—also a mechanical engineer—20 pre-engineering students brought their budding technical know-how to the production, helping build oversized, wearable puppets for a parade. Students got a professional development boost and experienced a creative application for engineering while also growing their teamwork and communication skills.

Photograph by David Hooker, BSJ '92

02

03

STUDENT PROFILE

Ingenuity | 2014 “Being connected to a place like this village is different from classroom experiences,” Giesey said. “When you’re not connected, you may care, but it is centered on you. Connections make our students care because they see how their work affects real people living around them.”

The rural village’s goal? Attract and retain the best teachers it can, a project that started seven years ago to offer better education to the village children, who followed the “obruni,” or “white visitors,” through the village streets every day.

The Ghanaian capital proved to be overwhelming, from the language barrier to the streets lined with stalls hawking a random assortment of wares.

“There were crabs being sold on the side of the road, children’s toys, water bottles, all these things you wouldn’t expect,” Sova said.

One item they needed for the building project was geotech fabric for the septic system design they were planning. After striking out on this important filtration component, they began formulating a plan B on the 14-hour trip to Maase, arriving just before midnight Friday.

They were greeted by a small group of locals and a table set for dinner—including whole fish, which took the group by surprise.

“Most of us hadn’t eaten a fish like that,” said Sova.

Pictured from left to right: Village resident Luanga Ofori, Evan Boso, BSCE ’14, tribal elder Kwaku Ofori, and Mike Felgenhauer, BSIT ’14, take a break from digging the anaerobic digestion pit.

When Cultures Connect

By Adrienne Cornwall / Photography by Evan Boso, BSCE ’14

04

The story of students who traveled across the world to help a community and forge new friendships When four Russ College engineering students departed for Maase in rural Ghana at the start of summer break, they admittedly had no idea what to expect.

“It was really intimidating, but it was still a sense of adventure,” said Nicole Sova, a chemical engineering major from Olean, N.Y., about her arrival in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

The group spent nearly two weeks building a septic system for teacher housing in the West African countryside, and the experience held much more in store for them than they realized: a sense of community with the residents and elders who helped bring their plans and engineering skills to life.

Sova and the rest of the group—including senior civil engineering major Evan Boso of Athens, Ohio, senior industrial and systems engineering major Michael Felgenhauer of Westlake, Ohio, junior chemical engineering major Claire Hall of Tiffin, Ohio, and Associate Dean of Academics Jeff Giesey—are members of Bobcats Building a Better World, a Russ College student organization that helps disadvantaged communities improve their quality of life through environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects.

Along the way, students become internationally responsible engineers and technologists.

Village children play in front of a house on one of Maase’s two paved streets.

On Saturday, they first glimpsed the construction site to find another surprise waiting: a tree had rooted itself in the center of the house.

They quickly got to work removing the tree, testing the soil and surveying the slope of the site with a quick lesson from Boso—the only civil engineering student—on how to use a theodolite, which is used to measure angles.

At the end of the night, they gathered to troubleshoot their designs and put in a call for help to civil engineering student Joe Cook, the group’s president, who was back in the States having dinner with his girlfriend, for a final check on their redesign.

Within a day or so of arriving in Maase, the BBBW team reached the consensus to abandon the original design. Luckily, they had arrived with a plan B—the anaerobic digestion pit—and were able to reach the organization’s president, senior civil engineering major Joe Cook, via phone to consult on the modified design.

Sunday morning, which was Mother’s Day at home in the U.S. and also in Maase, took the group to the village church for a birthday celebration and afterward, to a meal with the village elders of traditional peanut stew and rice.

When students realized they wouldn’t be using Western utensils, the elders demonstrated a more simple design by shaping the rice ball into a spoon with their hands.

“The messier you get, the better the food is,” declared Sova.

As the project continued, each day saw a massive amount of labor—like the two men who dug the massive hole for the tank in a day and a half—and each night saw the students adjusting their designs and plans for the following day.

“We had mass amounts of paper in front of us at the table, and we had all our ideas mapped out in front of us,” Hall said of the late nights, which also included chocolate and games of Uno. “That was the point where I was like, ‘Wow, this is what people do as engineers.’”

The student engineers managed to complete the design and installation of the teacher housing’s septic tank, including an anaerobic digestion pit, a few days shy of their two weeks on site. With the help of village elders, they recruited labor for the digging, masons for the tank construction, and burlap coffee sacks to stand in for the geotech fabric they were missing.

“ Connections make our students care because they see how their work affects real people living around them.”

Their accomplishments are the most recent of several projects completed with the help of Russ College students since 2004, when Giesey initiated the idea in coordination with the village chief, Nana K. Owusu-Kwarteng, who at the time was director of the Institute of the African Child and a PhD student in education administration at OHIO. Over the six trips Giesey has made—plus two more led by other Russ College faculty— service teams have built a solar-powered water pumping system, analyzed the electric power distribution system in the village, and worked on the beginning stages of the teacher housing.

Russ Vision Funds, which support students as they pursue activities beyond the classroom that will develop their meta-engineering and metatechnology skills, made this year’s trip possible by helping cover the costs of the students’ travel and supplies.

Since the group’s departure, residents have put up the roof superstructure, which the next team of Bobcats Building a Better World will help complete with a rainwater collection system in May. Hall hopes to return for this project because, as she discovered, the experience is about more than engineering: to celebrate their final night in Maase, their hosts at the hotel prepared a dinner, bringing together all of the people who contributed to this work toward the future life of the village.

“All of a sudden, at the end of two weeks, I was surrounded by all these people that I was now close with,” said Hall. “I’m a sophomore from Tiffin, and here I am in Ghana, helping this community.”

For a closer look at more photos from the trip, visit www.po.st/ghana. » Colleen Carow contributed to this story.

— J eff Giesey, Associate Dean for academics

05

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS

Ingenuity | 2014

Teams distill hard work into awards

M.A.C.S. team plows to victory once more It was a three-peat in 2013 for electrical engineering students, who took their champion autonomous snowplow back to Minneapolis, Minn., for a third consecutive win in only three contests—against seven other universities—at the Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Autonomous Snowplow Competition.

The team turned “M.A.C.S.” loose on rival Miami University of Ohio at the OHIO v. Miami football game last fall, plowing through the Miami logo and pumping up the crowd. Then, they returned to perform some good at the 2014 competition. Instead of creaming the competition again, former team members acted as ION safety officers and official competition liaisons. See the Miami game action at ohio.edu/engineering/news/multimedia.cfm/.

Green technology is the wave of the future, and the Russ College had two student teams ride it to win at the annual WERC Environmental Design Competition in Las Cruces, N.M., in April. Tasked with creating fully operational, bench-scale designs for solar distillation and nitrate-removing water treatment systems, the chemical engineering students took on the additional lab time on top of senior design projects. They were honored with two $500 judge’s choice awards for their solar distillation and nitrate removal designs and a $1,000 special recognition prize for the bench-scale distillation design. More than the monetary rewards, the students took away a sense of pride in completing the challenge. “Even though we didn’t win first place, I was still proud of our accomplishment,” said team member Liz Cohenour.

Taylor engineers top scholarship win

Ergonomics team folds a better pizza box

Lawless rewarded for service and study

Designing to make a difference

Senior Benjamin Taylor earned a well-deserved award for scholarly excellence and leadership in industrial engineering as the recipient of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) President’s Scholarship in April 2013.

Aside from being the president of OHIO’s student chapter of IIE, Taylor serves as a peer mentor for Learning Communities, as a student grader for two different courses, and as an active member of Students for Liberty, Alpha Lambda Delta, and Tau Beta Pi. The industrial and systems engineering major is also an Engineering Ambassador and senior representative to the department’s Board of Advisors.

Pizza-box folding got an ergonomic makeover by engineering, technology, and science students in a national student design competition, where the Russ College team beat out 34 other teams with its solution to make the task safer and more efficient. Team H-Factor included students from industrial and systems engineering, food and nutrition, and civil engineering working together to solve the complex problem that incorporated engineering, human process analysis, and physiology factors. Their design, which uses a jig to hold the box while it is folded by a worker, won each of them first-place cash prizes and $5,000 in travel funds to meet with the host company, Alabama-based Auburn Engineers.

Juggling the demands of an engineering degree program with a military commitment is no easy feat, and doing it extremely well deserves special recognition. The Award of Merit from the Society of American Military Engineers offers just that, and this year it recognized civil engineering student and Ohio University ROTC service member Joseph Lawless as one of only 20 in his service branch in the country to demonstrate such exemplary performance. Lawless takes service and engineering seriously, as he plans to take his skills to the Army Corps of Engineers before pursuing structural engineering in the private sector.

Mechanical engineering senior design teams have amassed more than $70,000 in competition prizes, including this year’s big win: the $20,000 top prize in the national Ability One Network Design Challenge focused on assistive design for people with disabilities. Winning team EZSqueeze designed a compressed-air machine that relieved much of the physical exertion of transferring thick polishing fluid from large to smaller bottles, enabling more employees with disabilities to do the work and reducing waste by more than 60 percent. Two other teams capped off the year’s winnings with $1,000 gold and $750 silver prizes from the national J.F. Lincoln Foundation college-level design competition in December.

06

Engineers float winning design It’s sink or swim at the American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition. After several years of cracking under water pressure at the regional competition, the 2013 Russ College vessel proved seaworthy as the team submerged it and watched it float back to the surface of Medina, Ohio’s Hinckley Lake. Their modifications to the concrete recipe and canoe design brought “The Yellow Submarine” back to the surface in one piece at the Ohio Valley Regional Conference contest, hosted by the University of Akron. Watch their design story on our multimedia page at www.ohio.edu/ engineering/news/multimedia.cfm/.

Civil engineers make child’s play of crib upcycling Want to see a child light up? One sure bet is to offer a new toy—or four, like civil engineering students at the Russ College did this spring for tots at OHIO’s Child Development Center.

Using 16 of the center’s old cribs that no longer met safety standards, a team from our student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, led by Department Chair Deb McAvoy, repurposed the parts to create two sensory tunnels and two combination painting and chalkboard easels. In December 2013, the students offered a new design—a child-size desk with chalkboard sides—to CDC parents for purchase as a fundraiser for the center.

Weaver aims high for nasa fellowship Senior Matt Weaver is helping to shed new light on water treatment options with his research on a new nanomaterial, based on boron nitride, replacing the existing mercurybased UV lamps that are now standard for treating water. NASA took interest in the technology because of its usefulness in space, where mercury is particularly hazardous from the lack of atmospheric ionization, and this year awarded Weaver a second Space Technology Research Fellowship. Weaver hopes his studies this year under Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Wojciech Jadwisienczak will produce a prototype for a low-cost UV lamp design so that astronauts, who must recycle water in space, as well as terrestrial humans, have a safer method of producing potable water.

Bobcats Flying on the safe side Ohio University’s Flying Bobcats student pilots flew straight to the top of the safety rankings for the fourth consecutive year in the regional Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference competition, hosted by the National Intercollegiate Flying Association at Western Michigan University in October.

With safety-focused events, including navigation, landing, and equipment proficiency, the event showcases the Russ College flight team’s priority to create for good in the cockpit by putting safety first.

Get the inside scoop on what students are up to by visiting the new Russ College news center at ohio.edu/engineering/news

07

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

Ingenuity | 2014

Digging deep for innovation An exciting new application of coal has been enabled by an Ohio University-patented technology: the “Coal to Graphene,” or C2G, process, invented by Russ Professor of Chemical Engineering Gerardine Botte, director of the Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research.

In the energy-efficient and clean process, coal can be selectively manipulated to synthesize a clean, advanced, and high-value material.

Emerging as a promising nanomaterial due to its unique combination of superb properties, the resulting graphene has applications in multiple Ohio markets, such as energy storage, aerospace, electronics, military, lubricants, and elastomers, and others. According to Botte, graphene is currently being produced from graphite in an expensive process—and there are no known sources for graphite in the U.S., with about 70 to 80 percent coming from China. Botte, supported by a $250,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Development, plans to show that all types of Ohio coal can be used for graphene synthesis, opening a new industry for Ohio coal.

A fresh look at dirty work

The Center for Advanced Materials Processing’s Timothy J. Cyders, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is getting down to the nitty-gritty. Thanks to the donation of a $70,000 pump test rig by Seepex, Inc., Cyders is running destructive wear tests to compare machine lifetimes between two kinds of progressive cavity pumps moving an extremely abrasive fluid.

Operating with a unique screw design, the pump is especially useful for moving viscous fluids and slurries, like those encountered in the oil and gas industry. Cyders hopes to use the rig to test and validate a new pump design he’s creating that will improve the efficiency and overall performance of traditional pumping systems.

Safety First

Keeping an ear to the ground

Time to hit the road! When the $160 million Nelsonville bypass opened in October 2013, the hilltop highway project had decades of investment in research and planning by Russ College faculty, staff, and students. Led by Russ Professor Shad Sargand, also associate director of the Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment, a group of faculty, staff, and 12 undergraduate students supported the Ohio Department of Transportation by designing the 8.5-mile stretch to include underground sensors that detect ground movement 100 feet below as a result of abandoned mines. Other sensors can detect movement in slopes and embankments, ground water levels, or slope changes. About 80 percent of the construction engineers working on the project were OHIO civil engineering alumni, who with faculty, staff, and students have saved ODOT more than $22 million in past projects.

08

The next generation of safety engineers are getting a boost from a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) training grant.

The money funds a two-year master’s program in industrial and systems engineering with a focused curriculum on occupational safety. Led

by Associate Professors Diana Schwerha and Gary Weckman, working in the Center for Advanced Systems and Transportation Logistics Engineering, students not only complete coursework but also intern with OHIO’s Department of Safety during their first year, participate in plant tours, attend local and national conferences, and then complete an industry internship. Last summer, students interned at the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation and at the Fairfield Medical Center.

The program’s first cohort graduates in May.

09

RESEARCH AWARDS

Ingenuity | 2014

Almost $1.47 million from Petronas to identify and quantify the key issues affecting the corrosion of materials specifically relating to the integrity of structures for the high pCO2 (partial pressure of carbon dioxide) environments.

in research and sponsored programs

top ten

+ one award

from each additional research unit or department

Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology “Corrosion Prediction and Prevention for Pipeline Materials in High pCO2 Environments”

$708,134 from the Ohio Dept. of Transportation (ODOT) to determine the effectiveness of ODOT’s current methodology for estimating service life of culverts and storm sewer conduits; determine alternative metrics, as necessary, to ensure accurate and reliable service life predictions for newer materials; develop service life estimates using degradation models developed through research on various materials and protective coatings currently used by ODOT; and recommend changes to the second volume of the Location and Design Manual.

Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment

to develop, demonstrate, and commercialize an innovative flowback/ produced-water management process.

Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment “Cost-Effective Treatment of Flowback and Produced Waters via an Integrated Precipitative Supercritical (IPSC) Process”

Center for Advanced Systems and Transportation Logistics Engineering “COMPEAT$ Cost Model Development for 2013”

to establish a collaborative relationship with Hohai University in Nanjing, China, to conduct research on reservoir sedimentation and soil erosion, functions of tainter gates for river navigation and hydraulic structures, and regional curve development and bankfull channel analysis.

Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment

to develop novel resettable stiffness systems that are capable of achieving a similar control performance to the RSASD, but with fewer feedback components.

Civil Engineering “Novel Resettable Stiffness Systems for Response Mitigation of Civil Infrastructure”

“International Supplemental Request for the Books in Classroom”

$1.283 million from the National Science Foundation to assess the potential for holistic waste stream management featuring algal cultivation and processing to manage liquid and solid waste from a house or residential community, and recycle the carbon stream into energy of sufficient quality to power the dwelling in a sustainable manner.

Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment “SEP: Sustainable Housing through Holistic Waste Stream Management and Algal Cultivation”

$400,000 from a consortium of leading oil and gas companies worldwide $697,975 from Ohio State University to conduct research to aid the development of technology for geospatial location and navigation in underground environments using “signals of opportunity.”

Avionics Engineering Center

$330,000 from Engility Corporation to supply flight tests services to the Federal Aviation Administration for engineering evaluation and testing of ADS-B/Wide Area Multilateration Service Volumes in Colorado and other areas, enabling enhanced FAA ATC aircraft tracking in key mountainous areas that present challenges for radar.

Avionics Engineering Center “ADS-B Flight Test Support and Data Collection”

$640,510 from a consortium of leading oil and gas companies worldwide to contribute to the technology base consisting of data, theories, and computer software in the field of naphthenic acid corrosion, to provide an opportunity for industry to cosponsor research in this field and to contribute to the solution and prevention of corrosion arising from naphthenic acid.

Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology “Naphthenic Acid Corrosion JIP”

10

to continue the improvement in cost-estimation accuracy and expanding the functionality of COMPEAT$, software developed by Russ College researchers to enable GE engineers to estimate the costs of manufacturing a new product, while it’s being designed.

$79,547 from the National Science Foundation

“Assessment of ODOT’s Conduit Service Life Prediction Methodology”

“CONRAD: Collaboration Research and Development Effort on Precision GPS/EO Nav/ Navigation Fusion”

$1.729 million from the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America

$630,000 from General Electric Corporation

$327,547 from the National Science Foundation

to confidently ensure that any given transport pipeline (either already existing or in the design phase) won’t suffer from top-ofthe-line corrosion by developing a two-fold approach centered on field experience.

Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology

$70,375 from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers $99,940 from Syngenta to develop a state-of-the-art modeling platform as a predictive tool in a risk assessment system for pesticide applications.

Center for Air Quality “Modeling Atmospheric Pesticide Aerosolization and Volatilization to Predict Environmental and Human Exposure”

“Top of the Line Corrosion Mitigation JIP”

$374,990 from NASA’s Langley Research Center to design, develop, verify, and validate a performance-based cockpit information management system with the aim of improving hazard and state awareness while simultaneously monitoring the accuracy, integrity availability, and continuity of source information used by pilots.

Avionics Engineering Center “A Performance-Based Flight Deck Information Management System for Improved Hazard Awareness and Source Data Integrity”

to simulate the performance of the integrated anaerobic membrane bioreactors, clinoptilolite ion exchange, and GreenBox ammonia electrolysis technologies; provide design variables and optimization of the system for the scale up of the GreenBox into the system; and validate the simulation of the integrated wastewater treatment system.

Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research “Simulation and Analysis of Novel Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment System for Energy Generation at Contingency Operating Locations”

$89,912 from Advanced Micron Devices, Inc. to design, evaluate, and test node, network interface, and router architecture of the exascale system at Advanced Micron Devices in Austin, Texas.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science “Network and Router Architecture for Exascale Computing Systems”

$33,000 from Copper Development Association to perform blind tests on copper tubes of various sizes from six different manufacturers, and to evaluate and compare the mechanical behavior and burst pressures in light of recent work to optimize design criteria.

Center for Advanced Materials Processing “An Assessment of Mechanical Behavior of Copper Tube for Performance-Based Design Criterion”

11

ALUMNI PROFILE

Ingenuity | 2014

111000101010001010010101 01010101000111000 101010001010010101010101010001110001010100 010100101010101010100011100010101000101001 010101010101000111000101010001010010101010 101010001110001010100010100101010101010100 011100010101000101001010101010101000010001 110001010100010100101010101010100011100010 101000101001010101010101000111000101010001 01001010101010101000010001101000010001100 010101000101001010101010101000111000101010 00101001010010010001010100010010001010100 01001000101010001001000101010001001000101 01000100100010101000101001010101010101000 111000101010001010010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 010101010101010101010101010100001000111000 101010001010010101010101010001110001010100 0101001010010001010100010010011

Joined For Good

By Adrienne Cornwall

Few things say romance quite like installing hardwood floors. But in 2012, for the fifth anniversary of their first date, Sadie Evans, BSIS ’06, MS ’08, found herself doing just that. But Daniel Evans, BSCS ’09, MS ’11, managed to top it the following weekend—with a well-planned marriage proposal.

12

Since their first memorable meeting at the Russ College in 2007, Sadie and Daniel had been long been helping each other—and others—as student leaders in the college, members of Campus Crusade, and fellow students.

By the time Daniel proposed, both of them had also found ways to improve society with their engineering degrees—his in computer science, hers in industrial and systems engineering.

They met during one of their many experiences helping others, when Sadie served as a judge for the Stocker Scholarship, awarded to a deserving incoming freshman.

As a candidate, Daniel was fielding questions under the spotlights with fellow competitors at the front of Robe Auditorium from a panel of Engineering Ambassadors and faculty.

He remembers how the judges loomed in the back of the room, a clump of dark figures who’d collectively decide his fate. What he didn’t know was that he’d end up marrying one of them.

“They were all very nervous,” Sadie, a senior industrial and systems engineering (ISE) major at the time, recalls with a chuckle of empathy. “Each of the judges was asking difficult questions.”

So, Sadie threw them a curveball.

“What’s your favorite food?” she tossed out.

Sadie’s opening line had stuck with Daniel, and they’d reconnect at the end of fall quarter when the freshman Stocker Scholars were paired with mentors who were senior Engineering Ambassadors, which Sadie led as president.

The rest is Russ College history. But rather than the college’s unique collaborative community connecting students and faculty and the impact of their work on the outside world, Sadie and Daniel’s chance meetings as students also led them to connect with their future spouse: Between mentoring meetings, hang-outs between classes, and Campus Crusade events, their friendship flourished.

“We realized we had much more in common than engineering,” Sadie says.

He eventually joined the Ambassadors as well, continuing his undergraduate studies as Sadie started the ISE master’s program the next fall.

They glance and grin at each other as they recall their first date, a low-key night of Connect Four and coffee at Donkey Coffee uptown that they kept a secret from their group of friends at the end of fall quarter. But they returned from winter break as an official couple.

Soon after, Daniel—who graduated in three years, thanks to several Advanced Placement credits and strategic scheduling—was a master’s student himself.

Both also took on research assistantships.

“Sometimes I’d be up late working, and she’d bring me doughnuts,” he remembers, shooting a grateful smile at Sadie.

Their support of each other during the very busy years of graduate school wasn’t surprising given their shared interest in helping improve society with their technical skills.

“ We realized we had much more in common than engineering.”

— Sadie Evans, BSise ’06, MS ’08

For her thesis, Sadie developed a model to help the university predict which students would leave their undergraduate studies—and when—based solely on their demographic information. Working with the Office of Institutional Research and her adviser, Associate Professor David Koonce, she determined a number of predictive factors to help OHIO target resources toward those most at-risk for leaving. Other graduate students since have built on this work and her startup data to refine the model’s accuracy and effectiveness.

Now a management engineer at Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio, she analyzes data and processes to improve decision-making at the facility so patients and medical staff have a better experience.

Daniel looks admiringly at Sadie as he jokes, “Sadie saves patient’s lives every day,” but in a sense, both are improving outcomes for people in critical facets of their everyday lives.

After wrapping up his own thesis project—a program in which algorithms are applied to genetic data to identify where in the genome a difference would translate to a mental disability or disease— Daniel became a developer of educational software for teachers and schools, at Software Answers outside of Akron. A few months later, he bought the condo where he’d eventually pop the question.

They fondly remember that it all started on West Green. Today, Sadie loves the fact that she can improve the patients’ experience in the emergency room by analyzing intake and staffing data. The hospital can schedule the optimal number of staff for consistently busy—and consistently slow—periods, which can give a patient more time with their caregivers in an emergency.

On the other side—working from the back end—Daniel’s software helps educators and schools be more efficient and focus on learning, giving the students more time with their teachers in the classroom.

Shop talk at the dinner table is helped by a dose of understanding and respect for the details that are each other’s expertise. With nearly a decade of memories together supporting each other, creating for good, and maneuvering through dinner prep each night in their kitchen, their shared experience helps them answer how these two Russ College grads relate to each other under one roof.

“We can kind of each understand what the other is doing,” Sadie says, looking across the kitchen at Daniel. “Well, sometimes.”

To learn more about how Engineering Ambassadors become engineering leaders, please turn the page.

13

… Continued from Alumni Profile

ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENTS

Ingenuity | 2014

MAKING THE TECHNICAL PERSONAL

By Adrienne Cornwall The Karol A. and JoAnn Ondick Engineering Ambassadors represent the college to prospective students, alumni, and the ohio community, developing networking and communication skills, and building confidence in nontechnical environments.

Rachel Fryan, BSCS ’15, BSVC ’15

Sadie and Daniel Evans displayed budding leadership skills early on in their Russ College careers, so they were natural contenders for becoming Engineering Ambassadors.

Another former ambassador, Bryon Iacianci, BSISE ’10, credits the program and the Russ College with his happiness as an engineer and his success at Parker Hannifin Corporation, where he received an endorsement from Board of Visitors member Jack Myslenski, BSIT ’73.

“The ambassador program allowed us to take a step back from our usual development of technical abilities and made it possible for us to fine-tune our ‘soft skills’ during all of our interactions,” Iacianci said. “As an engineer in a manufacturing setting, the relationships and communication with our folks on the floor can make or break the ability of the team to achieve their goals.”

Whether perfecting first impressions with influential alumni at college events or fielding questions about the Russ College’s rigorous academics during prospective student tours, Engineering Ambassadors quickly learn how to be nimble in interpersonal situations and get exposure to communicating with a range of personalities.

“As ambassadors, the students interact with a wide variety of people,” said Dale Masel, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering and the group’s adviser. “They get a lot of experience talking about themselves and what they’ve done at the Russ College, so they’re prepared, even when they’re meeting people outside of their ambassador role.”

When Sadie Evans served as president of the group her senior year, it was her first opportunity to develop her own leadership style. For current Ambassador Talli Topp, a mechanical engineering senior, leadership also includes thinking on her feet.

“One of the skills I’ve found most useful is being able to handle the unexpected,” Topp said. “You never know what questions someone is going to ask on a tour, and as an engineer, you’ll have unexpected things happen all of the time. Being an Ambassador has given me tools to handle those situations.”

Leadership, confidence, and communication are so important to success as future engineers and technologists that alumnus Karol A. Ondick, BSEE ’55, and his wife, JoAnn, decided to endow the program’s operating expenses with a charitable gift of more than $200,000 in 2012.

“I’ve had firsthand experience of the value of the Engineering Ambassador program through the years,” said Dayton native Ondick, now an emeritus board member of both the Russ College Board of Visitors and Ohio University Foundation Board. “The program goes beyond the classroom. It gives them greater exposure and an outlook on things in a different way, such as what it’s like to be a member of the team and how they can contribute to the college.

This helps them later in life.”

14

Building for the future on a solid reputation

Revving the engine of innovation and entrepreneurship

Raymon Fogg, Sr., BSCE ’53, knows something about building solid things. Since 1959, he’s been innovating designbuild construction services in the Cleveland area, and making sure our construction engineering students are prepared when they graduate, through his service on the Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering Management advisory boards for the Russ College. Ohio University will honor Fogg’s longstanding service as a humanitarian and to the University, both at the college level and as an emeritus trustee of the Ohio University Foundation Board, with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at commencement in May. Tales of Fogg’s reconstruction efforts in Guatemala, Honduras, and Somalia and as a volunteer pilot for medical patients are legendary, as is the legacy of service he’s built in his 60 years as an engineer.

Start-up counseling and funding revved up three fledgling businesses founded

by Russ College students and alumni at the Innovation Engine Accelerator program this summer at Ohio University’s Innovation Center. AccessAble Travel, Razor Dynamics, and Atlas Language Innovations each received mentoring in entrepreneurship, business plan development coaching, and up to $20,000 in start-up funding over 12 weeks before pitching their products to potential investors at the Innovation Engine Showcase. From a website to help ease burdens for disabled travelers to languagelearning virtual games to augmentedreality friend-finding apps, this year’s crop of inventive engineering student companies not only represent half of the six businesses selected for this elite regional program, but also how Russ College students create for good—and how they don’t waste any time getting started.

Putting your internal radio on the road Photograph by Peter Earl McCollough, BSVC ’08

Opening a new chapter with verse

Changing the image of the internet

Although he spent his Russ College career juggling an athletics schedule as an OHIO tailback with his engineering courses, Jesse Owens II, BSIT ’89, returned to campus this year after publishing his first book of poetry. Chronicles of a Different State of Mind explores shapes, experiences, and themes—such as seasons—from Owens’s perspective, and he drew dozens of supporters to his book signing at the Little Professor Bookstore on Court Street in October.

Today’s social media image nexus is Imgur, the image-hosting site that Alan Schaaf, BSCS ’10, created as a “gift to Reddit” during his junior year at Ohio University in 2009. User-driven discussion board heavyweight Reddit has taken hold of 6 percent of all Internet users since its founding in 2005, but image-sharing was a big weakness. Imgur has filled the void and then some, surpassing Reddit’s site traffic with 4.5 billion monthly page views by 130 million unique visitors. And Schaaf isn’t stopping there: His 12-person show run out of San Francisco— employing five OHIO grads, including fellow alum sister Sarah, BSC ’08—is developing the next level of curated image-viewing for on-demand entertainment.

Blast your Internet radio tunes on the road thanks to Livio Radio founder and CEO Jake Sigal, BSISE ’03, MSISE ’05, who sold the company to Ford Motor Co. in June for nearly $10 million. Since founding Livio Radio in his parents’ basement in Ferndale, Mich., Sigal has been wowing Silicon Valley with technology that marries his love of music and his technical know-how.

15

Ingenuity | 2014

OUR CULTURE

New engineering degrees come online

Be an ambassador for good

Virtual-learning opportunities at the Russ College and OHIO’s leadership in online higher education for engineers expanded in 2013 with the launch of two new online master’s degree programs in engineering. With specialization tracks offered online in both the M.S. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Civil Engineering, these new offerings join the successful online Master of Engineering Management degree program launched in 2011, providing advanced curricula to help experienced engineers develop deeper technical expertise. Learn more about our online programs at ohio.edu/engineering/academics/online.cfm/.

Know a high school student you’d like to steer our way? Share our newly developed online viewbook component. Designed as a companion to the print book we send to recruit prospective undergraduates, it highlights eight current Russ College students.

Share this link to help us get the word out about the Russ College, what life is really like at OHIO, and how this group of students plans to create for good. Or take a look yourself for a little inspiration: ohio.edu/engineering/joinus/.

Students school Senator in innovation

Vine visionary soars to stardom

Russ College computer science student Taffie Coler got a surprise visitor this January at her start-up company’s Innovation Center work space—a real, live, U.S. senator. Rob Portman was in town to hear about entrepreneurship and visit the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology, but got a bonus lesson in LiveInteractive’s social media marketing app, which aims to get people out of their seats and into the streets. “LiveIn,” which lets you post, share, and view local events, will be available as a beta launch this spring.

Social media is a fickle thing, but in his first year at OHIO, freshman Logan Paul’s popularity has vaulted—much like he did over Tau Beta Pi’s The Bent statue in front of Stocker Center—to more than 3 million followers on Vine, a new app featuring six-second videos in a Twitter-like news feed.

He celebrated his million-follower milestone in September by releasing Vine videos featuring more than 40 participants and Rufus, OHIO’s beloved mascot. Then in December, as a guest on the Today Show, he shot Vines with anchor and OHIO alum Matt Lauer, BSC ’97, and actor Terry Crews (a.k.a. “the Old Spice guy”) in his signature hilarious style before Pepsi chose him to work the company's “Pepsi Halftime Supervine” event at Superbowl XLVIII.

16

17

OUR CULTURE

Russ award endowment lifts hopes Continuing our college’s legacy of investment in future generations of engineers, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering Ed Russ and his wife, Edith, endowed an award in fall 2013 for an undergraduate civil engineering student. The Russ Ross Award Fund in Civil Engineering— named in honor of the couple’s parents—will first honor an undergraduate in fall 2015. Just as their parents helped them, the Russes hope the award will help students who may face a financial burden to continue their studies.

Ingenuity | 2014

Airline partnership cleared for takeoff The Department of Aviation is doing much more than providing pilot certification to help our students’ aviation careers take off. This fall, the Russ College signed a bridge agreement with PSA Airlines, a regional subsidiary of US Airways, to create a recruiting pipeline that helps student pilots get more flight time in commercial aircraft and interview spots for their pilot training program. PSA Vice President of Safety Randy Fusi said the partnership with OHIO was an easy decision: “OHIO aviation graduates have had great success in our training program, better than any other university grads.” We couldn’t agree more.

Russ Prize goes to laser surgery pioneers When Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ invested in their belief in the ability of engineering to improve the human condition by establishing the Russ Prize in 1999, more than 25 million people had undergone one of the life-changing vision correction surgeries known as LASIK and PRK. The three visionaries who developed the laser ablative photodecomposition behind these surgeries, Dr. Rangaswamy Srinivasan, Dr. James J. Wynne, and the late Dr. Samuel E. Blum, were awarded the 2013 Russ Prize for their contributions to this technology, which has improved vision, increased personal productivity and provided greater economic opportunity worldwide. Both Srinivasan and Wynne visited OHIO to deliver public lectures and meet with Russ College students.

18

Hundreds get their tag on How do you create for good? We asked hundreds of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and prospective students how they want to make a lasting mark on the world with their work in engineering and technology. They wrote it down on vintage-style tags, and we displayed their inspiring words for the world to see. What began as a Russ College event in the Academic & Research Center in January 2013 grew to include recruitment events, our annual Homecoming Tailgate, and advisory board gatherings throughout the year—and it now plays a key role in our undergraduate viewbook, received by thousands of prospective students. Through fun portraits, an art installation, social media, and our everyday interactions, the Russ College community has come together to “tag” themselves and their contributions to improving the human condition.

19

FEATURE STORY

Can fracking fulfill its promise?

Ingenuity | 2014

How Russ College teams are creating new technologies to make the process clean, safe, and cost effective

By Colleen Carow

Russ College students and researchers at the Institute of Sustainable Energy and the Environment analyze "flowback" water generated from an oil well located in the Bakken shale formation.

20

Almost two years ago, more than 20 Russ College faculty leaders gathered at a retreat to learn about hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, and to decide how the Russ College would respond to the shale oil and gas phenomenon in Ohio—in teaching, applied research, and service to the state. The following statement drew the college’s particular line in the sand: “The Russ College recognizes the significance that Ohio shale plays as a means to transition to a sustainable energy future, and is committed to studying, understanding, and providing solutions regarding the

effects of hydraulic fracturing on Ohio’s environment, its infrastructure, its economy, and the health and safety of its people. The Russ College’s expertise is uniquely suited to these tasks.”

But a position statement is empty without action. Since that retreat, the Russ College has embarked on comprehensive studies of this technology. We are innovating improvements, mitigating environmental effects, and understanding the inevitable ripples into the health and financial life of the region.

21

FEATURE STORY

Pictured left to right: Mechanical engineering master's student Mark Hritz, BS ‘12, and Sak Dassard, MS ‘07, PHD ‘13.

Water Wise To horizontally fracture just one shale gas well requires four to six million gallons of water—that is, water, proppants (usually sand or man-made ceramic materials), and a cocktail of additives.

Some of this mixture will return to the surface as “flowback,” along with a host of contaminants.

And it has to go somewhere. It’s trucked miles away to a location with the geology to support storing it underground in an injection well.

Transporting water to and from wells is one of the biggest costs in the industry, says Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Trembly, BSChE ’03, MS ’05, PhD ’07. So what if the flowback could be treated and reused? Trembly, also associate director of the Ohio Coal Research Center, is the architect of a novel process that could prove to be a significant game-changer in the quest to extract oil and gas resources from the nation’s shale formations with fewer environmental concerns.

Supported by the Russ College and Ohio University Office of Technology Transfer, Trembly and his team were awarded nearly $2 million in federal and state grants from the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA) and the Ohio Third Frontier, for the project “CostEffective Treatment of Flowback and Produced Water via an Integrated Precipitative Supercritical (IPSC) Process.” Their goal: to construct and operate a fully integrated prototype capable of treating a barrel per day of flowback water.

The process would address the single largest issue facing the industry—the vast amounts of water that are required to fracture the shale deep underneath the earth. Once used, the vast majority of flowback is injected into a disposal well, while some very limited re-use does occur.

Trembly estimates that treating wastewater on site instead of paying to haul it to an injection well would reduce fresh water needs at fracturing operations by about 30 percent, on top of the transportation cost savings and reduced potential damage to rural roads not designed for such heavy loads.

22

Ingenuity | 2014

“If we can do it economically, it only makes sense to reuse water, instead of pulling fresh water from the watershed and hauling it throughout shale regions,” Trembly says.

The design begins with ultraviolet (UV) and water-softening technologies that remediate bacteria in the water and remove hard-water ions and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM). Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Natalie Kruse Daniels, BSCE ’04, Professor of Civil Engineering Ben Stuart, and their colleagues in the Ohio Coal Research Center and the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology are running experiments with known processes—like those used in municipal water treatment—that can selectively remove the NORM and dissolved solids from water, to see how those methods work with flowback, which has high ionic strength.

In the next step, the water is pumped into a reactor, which is powered by gas from the well, and transformed into a supercritical state. At very high pressures and temperatures, the water takes on properties of both a liquid and a gas. Salt and hydrocarbon byproducts then precipitate out as solids or gasify into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, leaving only clean water that can be reused in place of fresh groundwater for future operations.

The salt can be used for a variety of applications including road de-icing, and the hydrogen can be used to heat the reactor.

“This would be a huge increase in process sustainability,” says Kruse, an Athens-born environmentalist who has worked on stream reclamation since age 10. “If you can safely dispose of NORM and produce clean salts, then they could be reused in another industry.”

Hess Corporation, a leader in the development of unconventional shale resources, is providing

If we can do it economically, it only makes sense to reuse water, instead of pulling fresh water from the watershed.

—Jason Trembly, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering

well operation and engineering insight to support process design and costing activities. Aquionics, an industry leader in UV wastewater treatment, is providing a pilot-scale reactor to determine dosing requirements to remediate bacteria in flowback water, and will develop a commercial-scale UV-reactor design based upon this data. Meanwhile, the Ohio Gas Association is promoting communication with oil and gas producers who are interested as end-users.

The data from the team’s research, which will be conducted over the course of about two years, will be used to provide more accurate cost estimates and develop a commercial-scale unit.

Russ College Dean Dennis Irwin says the project is an example of how the college has staked out ground as a major resource for studying the effects of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

“This is a great example of socially responsible engineering with long-term impact for our region and far beyond,” says Irwin.

The samples, tested at three separate labs, showed almost no hits for organic chemicals.

“It’s fun to find stuff, but then you sit back and realize, ‘Oh wait, this is a good thing,’” Kruse says with a laugh. “Our groundwater resources are pretty good.”

Future groundwater testing that reveals the presence of pervasive organic constituents after the start of any hydraulic fracturing activity, noted Kruse, could be a red flag.

Corrosion Control Researchers at the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology are addressing the challenge of building Trembly’s prototype, which requires carefully chosen materials because flowback is a high-salinity brine that can corrode the steel components used to construct the treatment system at the wellhead.

They’ve performed research for leading oil and gas companies around the globe for more than two decades, simulating and modeling corrosion phenomena encountered during hydrocarbon production and processing—from downhole to the refinery. Now, they can transfer their knowledge to the hydraulic fracturing industry, which faces aggressive environmental hazards including CO2 , a main driver of corrosion.

“Tubular steels have to withstand high pressures and elevated temperatures, while being exposed to corrodents in injected and produced fluids,” says David Young, assistant director of the institute, who is studying a range of alloys for Trembly’s reactor.

“We can advise what types of engineering materials and inhibition strategies can be used to mitigate these corrosion processes.”

Road Worthy Beyond the wellhead, heavy trucking to and from remote injection well sites taxes local roads not designed to carry their weight.

“Our roads grew up from deer paths to wagon paths,” says Bill Lozier, Licking County engineer and associate director of the Russ College’s Robe Leadership Institute.

Civil engineers in the Ohio Research Institute for Transportation and the Environment have worked for 30 years to test, understand, and model the effects of traffic loads and environmental effects on pavement performance. Their mobile labs offer unique capabilities to monitor road conditions.

“Our challenge is to not harm the industry while still protecting the public investment in our road system. Academia and science need to take over, to evaluate the existing road structure—to determine what is needed in terms of less expensive maintenance, or for rehabilitation,” Lozier explains.

A successful commercial-scale design of Trembly’s system could spawn a completely new industry for transporting the reactor on flatbed trucks, vastly reducing the loads traveling these back roads, says Loehr Professor of Mechanical Engineering David Bayless, principal investigator on more than $18

Clearing the Air

Pictured left to right: Graduate students Caleb Hawkins; Taylor Macy, BS ‘14; and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Natalie Kruse Daniels, BSCE ‘04.

million in externally funded research in sustainable energy technologies.

“It is ideal for a small startup,” Bayless says.

“The company developing this as a commercial venture could independently deploy the units, removing risk of water management from the well owner. This has the potential to employ a lot of people in good-paying jobs.”

Future Tense According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the number of issued well permits in the state increased from 24 in September 2011 to more than 1,000 in September 2013.

No other energy resource has made such a dramatic production increase at a revolutionary speed, according to the Handbook of Alternative Fuel Technologies, authored by Russ-Ohio Research Scholar in Syngas Utilization Sunggyu K.B. Lee. Shale gas is considered one of the viable solutions toward energy independence, said Lee, considered a foremost expert in shale oil technology as a patentholder in shale oil extraction technology and author of three other books, an encyclopedia chapter, and 10 refereed publications on the topic.

More wells mean more rigs, more trucks and more workers. OHIO’s Consortium for Energy, Economics and Environment (CE3) is stepping in to help understand the effects.

As director of CE3, a partnership among the Russ College, College of Arts and Sciences, and Voinovich School for Leadership and Public Affairs, Scott Miller coordinates the work of about 40 researchers across the university.

“Part of the full conversation of shale involves capturing the social, economic, and environmental dimensions, in addition to the technology,” Miller says. “The economic and environmental implications of the shale boom in this region are massive.”

For example, each wellhead represents an investment of $6-10 million for a development company. The Voinovich School is currently investigating the supply chain – the flow of

resources from supplier to customer—for the oil and gas industry in eastern Ohio.

“When I look this industry, I see valves, pumps, nuts, and bolts,” Miller says, pointing to a photo of a rig on his computer screen. “These are all things Ohioans make. There’s a huge supply chain behind a drill rig and all of its parts.”

The economic and environmental implications of the shale boom in this region are massive.

—Scott Miller, Director of CE3

The inventory, capabilities assessment, and mapping system developed by the school are helping manufacturers, suppliers, and other businesses source Ohio goods and services, shorten their supply chains, and reduce the risk of supply disruptions.

“Our intention is to identify new policies and practices that will leverage this finite opportunity into something that builds Appalachia Ohio’s social and economic infrastructure into a sustainable and resilient regional economy,” says Miller. “Very few states and regions have done this right.”

Clean Living Hydraulic fracturing has created another area of concern, particularly for the public: the potential impact on groundwater resources.

Through funding from the Voinovich School, the Sugarbush Foundation, and the Russ College’s Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment, Kruse and a team of researchers have taken water samples from about 40 wells, springs, and mine discharges in the region, mainly in Athens and Belmont Counties. Sampling water from private landowners and municipal supplies, the team developed a baseline study of the area’s drinking water before any drilling or injection well activity started.

Groundwater isn’t the only environmental concern. According to Professor of Chemical Engineering Kevin Crist, director of the Russ College’s Center of Air Quality, the only air quality monitoring facility in the region, greenhouse gas emissions in central Ohio are down about 27 percent in the last two years.

New mercury emission rules and the abundance of natural gas—methane—resulting from hydraulic fracturing have led to closings of older, less efficient coal-fired power plants. American Electric Power reported in October 2013 that in Ohio alone, it would retire about 7,000 megawatts of coal-fired, electric generation capacity by early 2016. This leaves energy companies to consider other fuel sources like natural gas, which thanks to hydraulic fracturing is cheap and abundant, and creates about half the greenhouse gas emissions of coal.

“This is good news, especially for Ohio,” notes Crist. “Ohio is a major emitter of carbon dioxide and other pollutants associated with electric power production.”

Frack Forward As one of the country’s rapidly developing domestic energy resources, the shale oil and gas industry and its long-range benefits and downsides remain unknown. In response, the Russ College’s ongoing work includes yet additional studies on eliminating the use of water almost entirely, developing new types of proppants that keep problematic contaminants within the shale seam, finding technologies that enable economically viable CO 2 sequestration for enhanced oil recovery, and developing new cost-effective gas separation technologies.

Our ultimate aim is to address the needs of the public and industry alike, to help create a more sustainable energy future.

—Dennis Irwin, Russ College Dean

» Adrienne Cornwall and Arian Smedley contributed to this story.

23

FACULTY PROFILE

FACULTY NEWS

Dreaming big at atomic scale Savas Kaya, professor of electrical engineering, may work in the realm of the tiny, but his visions are larger than life.

By Colleen Carow

In an effort to bridge the gap between nanotechnology and undergraduate education, Savas Kaya is building an immersive, interdisciplinary, educational platform called the nanOstUdio. Supported by almost $200,000 from the National Science Foundation and matching funds from OHIO’s Nanoscale Quantum Phenomena Institute and the 1804 Fund, the studio will feature interactive learning exhibits about some of the smallest building blocks in our techno-world— nanomaterials and nano-scale devices.

Kaya was researching ways to better integrate science with education, but found that the majority of nanotech-related undergraduate projects consisted of new certificate programs or new courses, and he wasn’t satisfied.

“I didn’t find that creative enough,” Kaya says. “One of the reasons why students may be escaping studying courses and degree programs related to nanotechnology may be because it’s too restrictive or too focused and away from day-to-day lives.”

Housed in a corner of the Academic & Research Center’s large project hangar, the studio will feature a media island so users can virtually explore molecular and nanostructures via computer visualization, play with interactive computer interfaces and games, and watch indepth videos about nanotech developments.

24

Visitors can get hands-on at a demonstration station, testing nanomaterials as compared to conventional ones to understand the different properties of both. The station also offers the inside scoop on advanced microscopes.

Kaya ultimately aims to show guests how we interact with these nanostructures and molecular materials every day and spark interest in learning more about them. Russ College students, as well as the larger university and surrounding communities, including area schools, will be welcome.

To develop the studio, Kaya drew inspiration from his two children, ages eight and six. At visits to Columbus's Center of Science and Innovation, he has watched them interact with scientific concepts in a fun and engaging way.

“Why can’t we do that in the same spirit?’”

Kaya asks. “A studio is a comfortable and accessible environment.”

The studio is already equipped with a tabletop electron microscope, an atomic-force microscope, a scanning tunneling microscope, the interactive media and science station, two large flat-screen monitors, and two work stations.

The state-of-the-art equipment is capable of showing things on the atomic level, but it’s simple to use. That was strategic, Kaya explains, because he wants the space to be inviting for those new to the nanotech world. The tools are small, compact, and

to some extent portable, in order to share the experience with visitors outside the engineering and technology community.

Because the National Science Foundation also wants to better understand what drives undergraduates to the industry, Kaya will work with professors and graduate students from OHIO’s Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education to observe and collect statistics on how undergraduates interact with the technology and what motivates them.

“We may have hit a gold mine,” Kaya says.

“This is a perfect example of how science and education can meet without getting in the way of one another.”

In addition to creating the space for others to experience the world on an atomic scale, Kaya will hire about a dozen students each year to work as researchers during the summer and as studio demonstrators during the year.

One of these students, junior computer engineering major Gregory Pugar, says his nanOstUdio work sparked his interest in nanoscale biomedical engineering. As he considers whether to study it in graduate school, he’s looking forward to sharing his enthusiasm with the community, especially high school students.

“The hope is to spark interest in kids who might not have ever heard of this,” Pugar says.

Ingenuity | 2014

Lee finds fame in Engineering and Science

Walsh praised for studentfaculty bridge-building

Riefler makes mark with pollution-to-paint

Don’t let his modesty fool you: Sunggyu “K.B.” Lee is hall-of-fame caliber in many respects. Globally acclaimed for his research on advanced materials and alternative fuels, as well as his development of clean coal technology, Lee is also well-known for his dedication to undergraduate teaching and for establishing a family dynamic among researchers in his lab. The Engineers Club of Dayton made it formal when they inducted Lee, Russ-Ohio Eminent Scholar in Syngas Utilization and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame in November 2013.

While Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Ken Walsh has been protecting buildings and bridges from earthquakes most of his career, this year he was recognized for building a great rapport with students as well. The University Professor Award, which Walsh was honored with in April 2013, recognizes outstanding teaching at the university—and is the only honor decided entirely by the University student body.

Environmental engineering is turning pollution into art in the lab of Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Guy Riefler. In collaboration with Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing John Sabraw, Riefler and a team of graduate and undergraduate researchers are collecting acidic runoff from abandoned coal mines throughout southeast Ohio and developing a process to turn the sludge’s iron precipitates into pigment for professionalquality paints. Sabraw has developed an entire series of artwork, dubbed Chroma, inspired by the environment and incorporating these paints, which the duo hope to eventually develop on a commercial scale.

Bayless balances energy and environment

Burdick brings the fight to cancer

Botte flips switches with pee-to-power

A sought-after expert in clean coal technology, Loehr Professor of Mechanical Engineering David Bayless was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for his development of engineering technologies that seek to address the nation’s energy and environmental problems. He is best known for his work in combining algal biomass and coal in combustion for electricity-generating applications, an approach that could cut CO2 emissions in half.

Having lost three family members to cancer, Monica Burdick has made fighting the disease her life’s work. The assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and her interdisciplinary research teams study how cancer stem cells work in hopes of figuring out a way to fight them. This new insight is at the forefront of modern cancer research, particularly in late-stage disease treatments, and two of her grant-funded projects will help identify cancer stem cells and a novel in situ diagnostic process.

Their significant initial findings from the first year—supported by the work of several graduate and undergraduate student researchers—were published in 2012 in Frontiers in Oncology. The team will continue its work to move these new diagnostic and treatment technologies from the lab to a clinical setting.

The GreenBox, developed by Russ Professor and “pee-to-power” pioneer Gerardine Botte, converts ammonia from wastewater into energy and clean water through her patented electrochemical process. The industry has taken notice: The venture capitalist showcase Startup Silicon Valley awarded E3Clean Technologies, the company she founded to commercialize the GreenBox, its “Most Likely to Succeed” honor this summer. Also named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, Botte heads the Center for Electrochemical Engineering Research, which recently moved into an expanded lab facility on Mill Street in Athens to make room for the next phase of technological breakthroughs.

» Arian Smedley contributed to this story.

25

CLASS NOTES

Ingenuity | 2014

Russ College alumni carry their passions forward and change the world for the better.

Kyle Felts BSME ’03 is associate manager of production for Tesla Motors, where he and a team are producing a zero tailpipe-emissions car.

Buck Fetters BSIT ’66 retired several years ago from Monsanto Company as director, and continues to consult for various companies and organizations. He and his wife, Sue, whom he met at OHIO, are approaching their 50th anniversary. They have two grown children.

Greg Harvey BSME ’08 is an account manager for the Timken Company. He will be relocating from Chicago to Detroit after completing his MBA at Northwestern University in June 2014.

Mohammed Karim MS ’94 is president of his own company.

Richard Kehl BSME ’58 is retired.

Chris Koening BSIT ’80 is a senior design engineer for Eaton.

Adam Lytton BSCE ’10 is a project engineer for District 11 of the Ohio Department of Transportation.

John Hattersley BSEE ’73 is president of InData Systems, a specialty bar code systems supplier that has patented scanning systems for “invisible” covert bar code applications.

Scott Abramson BSA ’07 marketing manager for Rapid Displays in Chicago, proposed to his girlfriend, Brittany Wasserman, at the Russ College Homecoming tailgate party in October 2013. She said yes.

Michael Bednarik BSCHE ’84 is the Asia-Pacific technical advisor for Exxon Mobil in Shanghai, China.

John Brenner BSCHE ’75 retired from Dow Chemical almost 10 years ago and has moved back to “the land of milk and honey,” in part to cheer on today’s Bobcats.

Raymond Brushart BSISE ’90 is program manager for the Ohio Department of Transportation’s Ohio Local Technical Assistance Program Center.

Charles Canty BSEE ’61 retired from AT&T in 1989. He recently moved from New Jersey to North Carolina.

26

BrYan Davis BSCE ’13 is a project manager at McDaniels Construction Company in Columbus, Ohio (pictured here with Nichole Lowe, BSCHE ’14).

Edwin Murray BSME ’53 is retired.

Richard “Dick” Dickerson BSCE ’80 is CEO of Utility Technologies International Corp. He has run 65 marathons and climbed multiple peaks, including Mt. McKinley, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and Mt. Everest.

Keith Elsass BSEE ’02 is owner of Convomonics.

William Farber BSIT ’85 is vice president of the southeast region of Container Graphics Corporation. His oldest son, Nathan, is a sophomore at Ohio University.

“I design, engineer, market, research, and develop for the field of aviation.”

—connie tobias, AAs ’77, bgs ’78

Justin Hollis BSETM ’13 is a manufacturing engineer at KTH Parts Industries, a tier-one Honda supplier that makes structural components for most Honda and Acura models produced in the U.S. He recently acquired his Six Sigma Green Belt certification from the Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Joe Jachinowski BSEE ’79 is CEO of Mevion Medical Systems, Inc. The company received FDA approval for an advanced radiation therapy system used to treat cancer, and recently treated its first patient in St. Louis.

Matthew Johnson BSCE ’94, MSCE ’96 is principal for Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, and was recently named new design practice leader.

Jose Rivera BSIT ’73 is founder and director of a Honduran food service business that provides technical service in Honduras and abroad. He served in the U.S. Air Force after graduation.

Robb Roby BSME ’94 was recognized in 2013 for his outstanding intellectual property legal work in Managing Intellectual Property magazine’s “IP Stars” Guide. A partner at Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, an intellectual property law firm, he has been counseling clients with respect to patent, trademark, and copyright law issues since 1997.

“I help develop and engineer faster and more efficient tooling for corrugated packaging, reducing the amount of paper pulp, and ultimately, trees that are used.”

R. Jason Hoopes BSETM ’10 is a product engineer for HFI, LLC. Chad Ingle BSCE ’99 manages roadway projects as project engineer for the City of Kettering, Ohio.

Connie Tobias AAS ‘77, BGS ‘78 a captain with U.S. Airways, has completed more than 21,000 flight hours in 68 different aircraft. She was selected to escort the WASP float at the 2014 Rose Bowl Parade, and accompanied 17 of the remaining WASPs, ranging in age from 89 to 94.

Alisha Milbry BSIT ’04, MS ’11 was the Central Ohio National Society of Black Engineers Professionals Chapter Member of the Year for 2012–2013. She is a plant engineering supervisor for UPS.

James Nickum BSEE ’78 is retired and returning to the workforce as an aviation consultant.

Thierry Langlois d’Estaintot MSEE ‘84 recently retired from the European Commission as Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.

Shadi Ramahi BSEE ’94 is Midwest regional sales manager for Metso.

He created the LocationOffers.com app, which allows businesses to target local users, and earned an MBA in 2012 from Oakland City University.

Frank Pochiro BSIT ‘97 a senior process planner at BMW, has held two international assignments in Germany, worked in Mexico, and owned his own business. He and his wife, Kara Leavitt Pochiro, BSED ’99, have two sons, Angelo, 9, and Rocco, 6. They live in South Carolina.

Francis Raber BSEE ’62 is retired.

—WILLIAM FARBER, BSIT ’85

Koussay “Gus” Shaar BSEE ’00 is plant manager at Siemens Renewable Energy, Wind Power Nacelle Manufacturing Plant, where he manages manufacturing projects and business ventures. He completed a master’s in mechanical engineering with a focus in manufacturing systems management from Southern Methodist University.

Jonathan Wilkof BSIT ’05 is a manufacturing engineer and an owner of Stark Industrial LLC, a contract manufacturer of precision metal parts and assemblies located in North Canton, Ohio. He and his wife have a daughter and are expecting their second child in June.

“I help advance technology in space exploration and natural gas development.”

—Jonathan Wilkof, BSIT ’05

Jim Wyllie BSCS ’05, MSCS ’08 is a performance engineering manager at Akamai Technologies. In 2013, he bought a condo, completed a century ride, and lost 30 pounds.

Get in touch. Let us know what’s new with you by visiting www.ohio.edu/engineering/ alumni/update.cfm

27

CO-OP PROFILE

CREATE FOR THE FUTURE

A front row seat for disaster relief

By Kaitor Kposowa

Last summer, Engineering Technology and Management senior Molly Slattery was one of the two first-ever U.S. Army Defense Coordinating Elements (DCE) interns, along with a student from the University of Nevada.

28

Ingenuity | Spring 2014

Who was your superhero?

By Colleen Carow

As part of her role at the Region IV office in Atlanta, she observed a ten-member DCE team collaborate with organizations like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Red Cross in the discipline of emergency management.

“I learned that it takes an entire town to manage disaster relief,” says Slattery, also a cadet in OHIO’s Army ROTC program.

“There is so much coordination that goes into disaster prevention and recovery. It’s amazing how many people work together to get things like that accomplished.”

Slattery became Incident Command System (ICS) certified and interviewed everyone in the FEMA region IV office as a means of learning more about emergency management. “I met high-ranking military leaders and civilians who make the decisions about how to use civilian and military assets to recover from natural disasters, as well as overseas devastation,” she notes.

Slattery will commission as a second lieutenant when she graduates. She then hopes to use her skills to improve disaster prevention and relief by developing safer and lighter military equipment, and developing protocols to cut reaction time, and reduce life-threatening injuries and casualties.

For information about how to connect your company or organization with the Russ College internship and cooperative education program, contact Director of Professional Experiences Dean Pidcock at 740.593.0894 or pidcockd@ohio.edu.

For many chemical engineering majors from the late ‘60s to ‘90s, it was Nick Dinos, now professor emeritus. So much so that more than 80 of them came together to create the Nicholas Dinos Professorship in his honor. Russ College Board of Visitors members Jim Edwards, BSCH ’70, and Debbie Burke, BSCHE ’85, and alum John Baginski, BSCHE ’70, established the professorship with help from another board member, Hank Waters, BSCH ’83.

Edwards says he had some interesting professors, but that none of them impacted his life like Dinos—whom students chose for the University Professor Award not once but three times: in 1975, 1992, and 1997. ”Nick made chemical engineering come to life. Who else could combine Shakespeare with Henry’s Law and come out with something that made sense? He was a professor, but somehow he was one of us,” he says.

Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering Darin Ridgway, who first joined the Russ College on a visiting professorship appointment, has been named the first Nicholas Dinos Professor for his work inspiring generations of chemical engineers. Professorships enable OHIO to recognize, and often to attract and retain, faculty who seem to have superpowers.

Ridgway, the perennial selection by seniors for the department teaching award—as in, 12 times—believes we’re shaped by everyone we deal with, and that we take little things, good and bad, from all those experiences.

“I’m just a guy trying to do a good job every day,” he says.

How will you support our Russ College faculty superheroes?

We invite you to drop us a line at ingenuity@ohio.edu and let us know. You can also recognize them with a charitable gift that honors the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, brandish the Lasso of Truth, or otherwise make a lasting impact on generations of Russ College students. For more info., contact Senior Director of Development Scott Gluck at glucks@ohio.edu or 740.593.2533 or visit ohio.edu/engineering/giving/.

29

Russ College of Engineering and Technology Stocker Center 1 Ohio University Athens OH 45701.2979

visit: ohio.edu/engineering

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Athens, OH Permit #100

Use unless otherwise told

PRSRT. S U.S. Post PAID Athens, Permit #