Philanthropy at Texas (March-April 2011)

at texas March/April 2011

A New World of Possibilities University scientists are revolutionizing how we address the grand challenges of the day

Everyone can be a philanthropist Herman and Joan Suit visit the telescope atop Robert Lee Moore Hall.

In the stillness of a UT library, a medical pioneer was born.

A medical student from Houston, Herman Suit was spending the summer of 1950 at UT studying nuclear physics when he discovered the Stark Library and its collection of rare books.

Suit loved the solitude of the library, the breeze blowing through the windows, and the free rein he was given to browse the stacks.

It was there, as he was doing extra credit for a physics class, that he read about the use of radiation to treat cancer of the larynx. He was hooked, and he decided to change his medical specialty to radiation oncology. He went on to break new ground in using proton-beam therapy to attack tumors, and until 2000 he served as chief of radiation oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and as a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Still a lover of books, Suit and his wife, Joan, have created charitable gift annuities to support two of their passions — libraries and astronomy. Their gifts will support professorships in UT’s School of Information and College of Natural Sciences.

You can be a philanthropist, too. Contact our Gift Planning team to find out how you can ensure your family’s future and still support the university you love.

Doctor Scholar Philanthropist

“ I’m a Texan, and our state university is important to me.”

To learn more: giving.utexas.edu/giftplanning • 866-488-3927 • giftplan@www.utexas.edu

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cover rendering: ices; contents photo: nathan russell

Thinking outside the (gift) box, a pair of philanthropy-minded young alumni saw their wedding as an opportunity to help future students.

A NEW WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES How UT’s ICES is blazing paths to knowledge that could help us all horns of plenty What private giving is making possible higher learning Doctoral student Craig Weinschenk applies engineering science to help firefighters

Reprinted from

March/April 2011

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Philanthropy at Texas

A New World of Possibilities How UT’s ICES is blazing paths to knowledge that could help us all

For centuries the quest for knowledge has relied on the two pillars of the scientific method: hypothesis and experimentation. The process has served us well, but it has its limits. Scientific inquiry is the work of humans, after all, and we’re slow. What if lengthy and complex inquiries could be completed much more quickly and efficiently? Our ability to improve our quality of life would be unprecedented.

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n emerging mechanism of scientific inquiry is making this possible. Simulation-based engineering and science provides a new path to knowledge that complements and extends hypothesis and experimentation. This new third pillar to the scientific method combines advances in mathematical modeling with computer performance to revolutionize how we address the grand challenges of the day — those problems that must be surmounted in order to achieve a sustainable, economically robust future.

So what is UT’s role in this new arena? Look no further than the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, or ICES for short. Launched in 2003 and now hitting its stride, ICES is an umbrella, an incubator, and a catalyst rolled into one. It provides an infrastructure for programs in computational engineering and sciences that is unique in academia and that underscores the wide-ranging interdisciplinary applications of this emerging field.

J. Tinsley Oden, an eminent engineering and mathematics

The Alcalde March/April 2011

professor at UT and the director of ICES, said in the Bulletin of the International Association for Computational Mechanics, “Computational engineering and science ... is being heralded as one of the most important developments in recorded history. It has created a revolution in engineering, dramatically expanding the scope and fidelity of engineering analysis and design. It has enabled the study and prediction of a myriad of events, including the behavior of aircraft, ships, automobiles, trains, and space vehicles; of electrical circuits, computer chips, waveguides, and antennas; of machine parts, piping systems, oil reservoirs, submicron devices, semiconductors; of galaxies, supernova, black holes; of bio and biomedical systems, blood flow, cellular structures; of ocean currents, geological events, the atmosphere and weather; of every conceivable product in modern technology and all natural phenomena in the physical universe.

“It will thus impact virtually every aspect of human life, our health, communication, security, transportation, and quality of

ICES director J. Tinsley Oden

life and it will open vistas not available before to the human species. This is the great promise of computational engineering and science.”

Whew. Let’s take a closer look at just a couple of those areas, energy and medicine.

photo: andrew yates; background rendering: ices

Fuel for the Future As our energy needs continue to grow, we must optimize the use of our limited energy resources even as we minimize their environmental impact. How we obtain and use fossil fuels is particularly important. One promising tool is carbon sequestration.

Carbon dioxide is among the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned, such as during the oil-refining process.

The ability to safely dispose of it is a kind of Holy Grail for the industry. Researchers in the ICES Center for Subsurface Modeling are exploring how to collect CO2 and store it underground. But first we must know how it would behave underneath the earth’s surface. That’s where computer modeling comes in.

Just as a weather forecaster observes the atmosphere to predict the weather, virtual models of underground fluids can predict whether a site would be suitable for carbon storage. These sites could be vast: about half as large as Texas. By modeling how fluids behave underground, researchers can also help us extract the most oil possible from rock formations and bring it to the surface. ICES is working with corporate partners like Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and IBM to foster frequent and open communication between researchers and the corporate community and be a gateway for launching and conducting collaborative research efforts.

Medical Miracles Some of the most promising work at ICES is in the world of medicine, particularly drug development and the treatment of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Until now the practice of medicine has been reactive, based on past observation. Advanced modeling, however, can help determine with a high degree of probability what will work on an individual’s unique anatomy.

Each year more than a million Americans suffer acute heart attacks, and almost half of them die. Cardiovascular disease is the world’s leading cause of death and the most costly component of health-care spending. Simulation-based engineering and science could help take the guesswork out of patient care and identify the best treatments before they are administered. It may also prove invaluable in designing new cardiovascular medical devices.

Cancer is the second-most common cause of death in the United States. One difficulty in treating it is that people’s bodies are so different. Working with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, ICES is discovering ways to tailor treatment to the individual. Technology now being tested shows exactly what is going on inside a patient during treatment. Real-time feedback guided by predictions of computer models depicts how a patient’s body is reacting to therapies, allowing diseased cells to be destroyed in minimally invasive ways while protecting healthy cells. The next step is to model tumors to see how fast they are growing and how they will react to chemotherapy and radiation. That will bring us much closer to the ultimate goal: curing cancer.

Investing in ICES

With 90 participating faculty and hundreds of graduate students representing 17 academic departments, ICES offers researchers the ability to collaborate on interdisciplinary projects to simulate the workings of the human body, design new medicines, study physical phenomena, and perform engineering analysis and design. Headquartered in the cutting-edge ACES Building, ICES faculty hold positions in the Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences, McCombs School of Business, and Jackson School of Geosciences.

The University is seeking $12 million to complete funding for a $48 million permanent endowment. The objective? Nothing less than attracting the world’s foremost scientists and engineers so that they can look into the future — and change it. Learn more about ICES and how to help at giving.utexas.edu/ices , or contact Joe Youngblood at jbyoungblood@austin.utexas.edu or 512-475-7085.

The Alcalde March/April 2011

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Philanthropy at Texas

Horns of Plenty What private giving is making possible

Music fans — and romantics — take note. There’s a new way you can support the

Butler School of Music, thanks to a pair of philanthropy-minded young alumni. Kathryn Hutchison and Rami El-Farrah met in a music class when Kathryn, BM ’08, was an undergraduate and Rami, MM ’07, DMA ’10, had just begun work on his master’s degree. They were drawn closer when both performed — Kathryn on oboe, Rami on saxophone — in the Wind Ensemble, UT’s elite wind band. Cupid’s arrow struck, as it has for so many on the Forty Acres, and Rami and Kathryn were married last May. That would make for a charming story on its own, but it’s not the whole story. Rami, now teaching and performing with Austin’s Bel Cuore Quartet, and Kathryn, an outreach coordinator in the Butler School, knew they wanted to do something charitable in lieu of a traditional wedding registry. “When we were choosing what kind of project to support,” Kathryn says, “it was obvious that the school had played a huge part in bringing us together. Creating a scholarship was the perfect fit. We have so many happy memories at UT, and this gives us a chance to share that experience with students here forever.”

The couple established the Kathryn Hutchison and Rami El-Farrah Endowed Scholarship in Oboe and Saxophone because they know firsthand of the acute need for scholarships for both of those instruments. They also stipulated that the recipient participate in a University ensemble, be it the Wind Ensemble, Symphony Orchestra, Jazz Ensemble, Longhorn Band, or any of several other options. There are benefits, Kathryn says, when a student performs in such a group. “She studies with our top faculty, interacts with a wide variety of other students, and enhances the educational experience of her peers.” Not to mention the dating possibilities!

Help music students by contributing to this scholarship — or endowing your own. For more information visit music.utexas.edu/development .

Take a region that understands

the need to provide the best possible education for its young people and team it with the state’s premier institution of higher learning, and you have a winning combination. That’s why alumni and friends in the Rio Grande Valley community are working with the University to fund scholarships that will bring the Valley’s best students to UT. The Rio Grande Valley Scholars Program will provide a number of $10,000 renewable scholarships to Valley residents who demonstrate financial need and show excellence in academics, leadership, and community service. Scholars will be chosen by alumni and friends who are community leaders from the Upper, Mid, and Lower Rio Grande Valley and who value the longstanding relationship the area has with UT. Dr. Nolan E. Perez, BA ’93, Life Member, who practices medicine in Harlingen and sits on the UT Development Board, has been helping the University attract fellow investors in the scholarships. A robust permanent endowed fund will help bridge a gap, says Perez, for students and their families who never thought it possible to attend UT. “The time is now,” he says, “for those of us who have benefited from a first-class education at UT Austin to ensure that future generations of Valley students can do the same.” Learn more at giving.utexas.edu/rgv .

Philanthropy’s Impact on Graduate Students

Research Campus, he uses supercomputers in the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to simulate fire situations in order to understand how flames grow and how air impacts fires. He also gets hands-on training from the Austin Fire Department in order to better understand how fires work and how best to handle them. “I attack the fire problems from both the experimental and computational side,” he says. “We want to improve science and technology, but we’re trying to adapt everything we do to assist firefighters.”

Early on in his time at UT, Weinschenk had a profound moment while attending a firefighting cadet class. “They give fire science lectures, and instructors were quizzing students and asking questions,” If your house ever caught fire, it’s a safe says Weinschenk. “The fact that they asked bet you would want the firefighters who for my input made me think, Wow, there’s show up to have met Craig Weinschenk, really a chance to do something good here.”

MS ’07. A master’s-turned-doctoral student in mechanical engineering, he has been studying fire science since he arrived at UT in 2006. After applying to graduate programs across the country, the New Jersey native began making the rounds to visit the universities. It was almost immediately after he set foot on campus that And do something he has. Weinschenk, Weinschenk met mechanical engineering who Ezekoye calls “a rising star” in fire professor Ofodike Ezekoye and realized research, has co-authored a paper that was what he was meant to do — even if it came published in Fire Technology and served as a surprise to him at the time. as president of the UT chapter of the “I met Dr. Ezekoye and we started talking Society of Fire Protection Engineering. about some other research he was doing,” He says it has been “amazing” to be at says Weinschenk. “I saw a melted fire UT for the past four-plus years. He has helmet and asked him about it. We talked greatly enjoyed working with Ezekoye, about my friends, many of whom are fire- who he calls “one of the smartest people fighters. Dr. Ezekoye said, ‘We have a grant I have ever met.” coming through. Do you want to work on “There are so many opportunities” for it?’ And now I’m in Texas.” graduate students to grow at the UniverWeinschenk, a recipient of the Meason/ sity, says Weinschenk, who is on track to Klaerner Endowed Graduate Fellowship in receive his PhD in May. “In addition to Engineering and other endowed funds, is conferences, it’s discussions with other using engineering science to better under- academics and professors. There is so much stand firefighting tactics and to bridge work going on. If you talk to anyone around the gap between science and real-life the country and say that you do research firefighting situations. Though there is a at UT, it has a credibility that is rare.” dedicated “burn building” on UT’s Pickle – Lauren Edwards

Sweet music: Newlyweds Kathryn Hutchison and Rami El-Farrah found a unique way to thank the Butler School for bringing them together.

Nolan Perez practices gastroenterology and internal medicine in Harlingen.

photos (clockwise from top): nathan russell, marsha miller, adriana dominguez

“ We want to improve science and technology, but we’re trying to adapt everything we do to assist firefighters.”

“Philanthropy at Texas” is compiled and edited by Jamey Smith in the University Development Office. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome at jjsmith@austin.utexas.edu. For more philanthropic news and information, including ways you can give to UT, visit giving.utexas.edu .

The Alcalde March/April 2011