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Interdisciplinary labs in Drosdick Hall enhance research for Villanova Engineers

Interdisciplinary research is at the heart of the Villanova Engineering experience, and Drosdick Hall was designed with collaboration specifically in mind. The building’s nearly two dozen state-of-the-art laboratories are centered around topical areas of research, facilitating creativity and innovation across fields of expertise. Explore some of Drosdick Hall’s signature labs that contributed to a 60% increase in Engineering research space on campus.

Giunco Family Hydraulic and Sediment Dynamics Laboratory

Villanova’s Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty are international leaders in the field of stormwater management and urban hydrology. Over the past 20 years, faculty and students have retrofitted Villanova’s campus into one of the first and leading green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) research sites in the country. With more than 20 GSI locations on campus—including rain gardens, wetlands, green roofs, pervious concrete, permeable pavers and bioswales—researchers have been measuring the success rates of various GSI in filtering stormwater for years.

Now, with the addition of the Giunco Family Hydraulic and Sediment Dynamics Laboratory in Drosdick Hall, faculty and students can advance their GSI research using a more controlled environment. Thanks to a $1.4 million National Science Foundation grant, a new 50-foot, one-of-a-kind hydrology flume has been installed in the lab, with the ability to mimic numerous real-world scenarios.

The flume can be used to research diverse topics such as urban hydrology, sediment movement, soil stability and strength, fluvial processes and sediment capping technologies. Additionally, to further test how GSI handles various conditions, members of the Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems team invented GSI trays that can be inserted into the flume, making the device the only one in the world with its capabilities.

“This is the next level in stormwater research,” says Virginia Smith, PhD (above), associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We can now bring our live systems into the lab, perform controlled tests in the flume, and then implement them at our real-world sites on campus and around Philadelphia.

“What’s going on here at Villanova is really unique,” she adds. “The new lab is a leading hub on surface water hydrology and sediment transport, and a research center for our many partners in the midAtlantic region.”

In addition to the 50-foot flume, the lab also includes a 20-foot flume for instrumentation, four lysimeters, a weigh tank that holds 2,000 pounds of water and a sump pump.

L3Harris Technologies Heterogeneous Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory

Autonomous vehicles are the future of transportation. While much research is focused specifically on self-driving cars, Mechanical Engineering Professor Hashem Ashrafiuon, PhD (above), goes beyond cars to multivehicle systems. “My students and I are looking at how different modes of autonomous vehicles—boats, submarines, drones, air and ground— can work together to form a network and perform a task, like a search-and-rescue effort,” he says.

The new L3Harris Technologies Heterogeneous Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory (HAVLab) provides the College with a unique world-class lab facility for the development, implementation and testing of autonomous vehicles. Using innovative robots and drones, and small-scale unmanned air, underwater, surface, ground and amphibious vehicles, students and faculty can develop and test algorithms for cooperative missions between intelligent vehicles operating in different mediums for use in search and rescue, mine-sweeping and fighting forest fires.

The lab includes a cage/fly space equipped with netting, a motion-capture system and a separate control room with workstations. The lab also features a one-of-a-kind, 4.5-foot-deep, 16-by-10-foot in-ground research vessel, allowing researchers to test unmanned boats and submarines.

“While the lab is primarily used for mobile robotics research, its capabilities are endless,” says Garrett Clayton, PhD, associate dean for Graduate Studies, professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Control. “This is a shared, interdisciplinary facility. It’s a resource that is available to other researchers in the College, across campus, in the community and other universities. Any work that involves tracking 3D location and orientation can be done in the space.”

Dr. Clayton is working in the lab on a Sports and Performance Engineering research project investigating ACL knee injuries in female soccer players. Using infrared balls in the lab, Dr. Clayton and his students are collecting data on the forces and factors that might contribute to risk of injury.

Meanwhile, Arash Tavakoli, PhD, has been utilizing the lab to research human-machine interaction on construction sites. The assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering is working on a framework to enhance collaboration between construction workers and robots by developing holistic context-aware strategies based on workers’ cognitive states.

Conti Sustainable Energy and Materials Research Laboratory

In the Conti Sustainable Energy and Materials Research Laboratory, faculty members from Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemical and Biological Engineering and Sustainable Engineering share a new cutting-edge facility to conduct research on novel materials and technologies that generate and store clean energy.

In the lab, Pritpal Singh, PhD (above), professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is developing new ways of understanding the condition of batteries to extend their service life. His findings have applications in humanitarian engineering, with the potential to improve the quality of life for residents of developing countries around the world.

An expert in renewable energy systems, Dr. Singh is researching ways to repurpose nickel metal hydride batteries from hybrid vehicles to power off-grid solar energy in Fiji.

“In Japan, the government only allows cars to run for 10 years,” after which they’re shipped to Fiji, Dr. Singh says. “Once the car batteries expire, there’s an opportunity to reuse and repurpose the batteries to provide solar energy to Fijian homes that otherwise would not have electricity.”

Dr. Singh’s graduate students, meanwhile, are studying additional battery types to improve performance and identify alternative uses. In one project, Sustainable Engineering PhD student Scarleth Vasconcelos ’19 MSSE is using a magnetic field probing process to identify degradation in lead acid batteries, with a goal of expanding their lifespan. In another, Viviana Villavicencio Vallejo ’21 MSEE, an Electrical Engineering PhD student, is examining lithium-ion batteries for signs of early failure, using a technique called nonlinear electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

Within the same lab space, faculty in Chemical and Biological Engineering are working on ways to reduce carbon emissions from industrial processes through carbon capture and storage, as well as researching reusable plastics.

The electrical engineering equipment in the lab includes an electrochemical spectroscopy unit with power booster, power supplies and electronic loads (up to 50 volts/100 amps) along with two Tenney Jr. thermal chambers for environmental testing.

Dicciani Biomaterials and Polymers Laboratory

Laura Bracaglia, PhD (above), assistant professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is dedicating her career to improving health care through innovative biomedical engineering. In the new Dicciani Biomaterials and Polymers Laboratory, she works with both undergraduate and graduate students to design delivery vehicles for chronic inflammation medications.

“My work is focused on nanomaterials for drug delivery,” says Dr. Bracaglia. “We’re studying and building new biocompatible materials that can be added to drugs to transport therapies efficiently and effectively within the body. The biomaterials provide an added layer of design control to the drug. They encapsulate the specialized drug, such as a nucleic acid, protecting it and delivering it to a specific part of the body for activation at a certain time.”

Within the new open shared lab space, multidisciplinary researchers from the departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering work side by side on varying biomaterials projects.

“The shared lab is fostering new ideas between investigators and departments,” says Dr. Bracaglia. “There is a lot of overlap and collaboration of resources and expertise.”

In addition to traditional chemistry wet-lab facilities like benches, chemical fume hoods and analytical equipment, the Dicciani Lab also boasts instruments typically found in medical lab spaces, including a bone saw and biosafety rooms with space to culture cells and dissect human tissue samples.

“This is an exciting time for Biomedical Engineering at Villanova,” says Michele Marcolongo, PhD, PE, the Drosdick Endowed Dean of the College of Engineering, a professor of Mechanical Engineering and an expert in biomaterials and engineered biomedical solutions to treat disease. “The combination of this new lab and the recent launch of the new Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering will contribute to advancements in health care, medical devices and biotechnology.”