WVU Statler College Spring Issue of Engineering WV magazine

BENJAMIN M. STATLER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND MINERAL RESOURCES

VOLUME 16 ISSUE 1

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A GREAT E R PU R PO SE

In the Spotlight

Appreciated and

Valued In appreciation of WVU’s employees, the 2019 Value Coin was presented to Statler College faculty and staff members who represent the core Mountaineer values of service, curiosity, respect, accountability and appreciation.

Awardees from the Statler College include (from left to right) Debangsu Bhattacharyya, Rick Pritt, Jason Gross, Candy Cordwell, LaDawn Weaver, John Zaniewski, Powsiri Klinkhachorn, Marilyn Host, Jason Dean, Beth Corcoran and Mike Brewster.

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In the Spotlight

Valenti receives recognition for military communications VALENTI

Matthew Valenti, professor and interim chair in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, has been awarded the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Military Communications Conference Award for Sustained Technical Achievement.

Established by the Military Communications Conference (MILCOM) board in 1998, the award recognizes individuals who have made important technical contributions to the field of military communications, as documented by a record of high-quality unclassified technical papers and presentations at MILCOM conferences.

“I am honored that my work at WVU on military communications has been recognized by the MILCOM conference board,” Valenti said. “This award would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of the WVU wireless communications research lab’s graduate students over many years.”

The award is given once per year and is the top career achievement award presented at the leading conference on military communications.

“Our work not only helps to ensure the safety of our military personnel but also helps to keep people connected after a natural disaster, for instance, by using a resilient network that we recently designed in collaboration with industry for the island of Puerto Rico,” Valenti said.

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Valenti serves as director of the Center for Identification Technology Research, where he manages the WVU site in the multi-university NSF Center. His work has been funded by the U.S. Navy, Army and Air Force, either directly or in collaboration with industry and small businesses.

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U.S. Navy recognizes Browning A WVU professor received a rare research award from the United States Navy for his contributions to a critical research effort.

Patrick Browning, assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, was presented the award — only given in unique circumstances — by John Fiore, technical director of the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division.

“For the Navy, this is a big deal. It has everything to do with allowing our sailors to come home, and we appreciate that,” Fiore said.

“I tell my students all of the time, the folks who are working on this project, the work that we’re doing is impacting people in a real way — our men and women in uniform — not necessarily tomorrow, or next month, but eventually we’re giving them more safety out of what we’re doing,” Browning said. “We always keep that as our primary focus. Regardless of what’s going on, what’s critical is that taxpayer monies are going into helping us put our brains to work to help our men and women in uniform stay safe. That’s great in it of itself, and this award is just the icing on the cake.”

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Other mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty involved in the project include principal investigator and Professor Wade Huebsch, Teaching Assistant Professor Chris Griffin and Engineering Scientist Josh Bintrim. Each member of the project received a coin from Fiore on behalf of the U.S. Navy in recognition of their work.

The details of the research project, “Characterization of Unsteady Aerodynamics for Unstable Free-Flight Bodies,” are designated for official use only and are restricted.

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A saving grace underground: WVU engineers utilize robots to improve mine safety

Spring 2020

VOLUME 16 NO. 1

INTERIM DEAN Earl Scime earl.scime@mail.wvu.edu | 304-293-4157 DIRECTOR Marketing and Communications J. Paige Nesbit jpnesbit@mail.wvu.edu | 304-293-4135

STORE CLOSES 4/19/20

DESIGNERS Ruthie Deely / Olivia Miller / J. Paige Nesbit

ALL PROCEEDS BENEFIT STATLER COLLEGE STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

WRITERS Kimberly Becker / Stacy Elsa / Olivia Miller Pam Pritt / Jake Stump EDITORS Angela Caudill / Ruthie Deely / Kathy DeWeese / Olivia Miller / Michelle Moirai J. Paige Nesbit / Adrianne Uphold

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16 It’s electric:

Hand in Glove: WVU researchers test safety measures for coal industry

Exploring the brain in a new way 20 Enter the exosome 22 Statler College selects new dean 48 Leah Berhanu award 51 Beauty premium 56 International collaborations 58 Thompson named to NAI 66

Follow. Like. Share.

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ADDRESS West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources PO Box 6070 Morgantown, WV 26506-6070 statler.wvu.edu

WVU develops transportable, carbon-neutral energy source

@wvustatler

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CHANGE OF ADDRESS WVU Foundation / PO Box 1650 Morgantown, WV 26504-1650 e-mail: info@wvuf.org www.connecttowvu.com

WVU awarded grant for cell and molecular biology and biomedical engineering programs

MISSION STATEMENT

The Statler College mission is to prepare students for success in their professional careers; to contribute to the advancement of society through learning, discovery, extension and service; and to stimulate economic well-being in West Virginia and the world through technical innovation, knowledge creation and educational excellence.

50 Music to my Engin‘ears’:

Engineering West Virginia is published twice each year, in spring and fall, for the alumni, friends and other supporters of the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

WVU engineering student selected as finalist for AES MATLAB Plugin Student Competition

Copyright ©2020 by the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. Brief excerpts of articles in this publication may be reprinted without a request for permission if Engineering West Virginia is acknowledged in print as the source. Contact the director for permission to reprint entire articles.

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Developing ‘critical’ rare earth elements from coal waste

PHOTOGRAPHY M.G. Ellis / Olivia Miller / Nicholas Morales J. Paige Nesbit / Brian Persinger / Jennifer Shephard / Dale Sparks / Hunter Tankersley

CONTENTS FEATURE STORY 24

DEPARTMENTS

A Greater Purpose

8 Dean’s Message

FORWARD BY GENERAL (RET) ROBERT H. FOGLESONG, USAF

9 Research and Development 46 Engineering 360˚ 60 Our Alumni 62 In Support 65 In Memoriam

On the cover: Meet Aubri Parades, an industrial engineering student who is committed not only to her education, but to serving her country as a cadet in the Army National Guard.

The WVU Board of Governors is the governing body of WVU. The Higher Education Policy Commission in West Virginia is responsible for developing, establishing and overseeing the implementation of a public policy agenda for the state’s four-year colleges and universities.

WVU is an EEO/Affirmative Action employer — Minority/ Female/Disability/Veteran

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Dean’s Message

EARL SCIME Did you know that we have 72 veterans currently enrolled in the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and another 64 students serving in the WVU ROTC?

WVU is well known as a supportive institution for veterans and we are thankful for their service to the nation.

As you flip through these pages you will find stories that celebrate the successes of our students, faculty and staff, highlighting how research in the College will improve the lives of West Virginia citizens.

Also in this issue, you will read about a truly transformative gift from the Wadsworth family. Their gift to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will impact students for generations to come. I hope you will enjoy learning about Moe and JoAnn, their family, their achievements and their dedication to the University. There are countless other alumni who have made significant gifts to the Statler College this year and their generosity will help students complete their educations with less debt and financial stress.

Later this spring, hundreds of students will receive degrees in engineering and will continue their journey of making the world a better place through the art and science of engineering. I have been privileged to join our students and faculty on this journey during the 2019-2020 academic year. In this edition, you will be introduced to the next dean of the Statler College, Dr. Pedro Mago.

I have no doubt that he will be as impressed as I have been by the commitment to excellence exhibited by everyone in the College.

In closing, I want to express that I have thoroughly enjoyed my time serving as dean of the Statler College. We are on track to invest in new academic and research programs and thereby provide new opportunities for learning for our students and increase the competitiveness of our research programs. With a multitude of challenges facing the world, I am counting on our students to make the world a better place through their talents and service. I am confident that the College will continue to pave a new path forward as leaders in innovation and research for the benefit of West Virginia and the world.

Interim Dean of the Statler College Oleg D. Jefimenko Professor of Physics and Astronomy

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This edition of Engineering West Virginia Magazine will explore stories of students and staff who have served honorably in our nation’s armed forces, some traveling to over 20 countries before finding their way to our campus.

Their unique experiences add to the richness of perspectives shared in our classrooms and allow our students to explore ideas from multiple angles. Great change occurs when a myriad of educational and personal experiences come together to solve problems.

Research and Development

WVU engineer uses AI to improve profitability and flexibility of coal-fired power plants WRITTEN BY JAKE STUMP

One West Virginia University chemical engineer is tapping into artificial intelligence to prolong the lives of power plant boilers.

Due to frequent and rapid loading, power plants are subjected to excessive creep and fatigue damages, which often lead to the failure of critical boiler components, Bhattacharyya said. This causes power plants to operate inefficiently.

Here’s how power plants work: Coal or natural gas is combusted inside to produce high-pressure steam that is then used in a steam turbine to generate electricity. A boiler incorporates a furnace to burn fuel and generate heat, which is transferred to water to make steam.

“The boiler is at the heart of the power plant,” Bhattacharyya said. “During startup, the boiler is gradually heated up increasing the steam temperature and pressure to their nominal values.”

With power plant boilers, there’s a lot of starting up and shutting down.

Depending on the length of the idle time before the startup is initiated, startups can be categorized as hot, warm or cold startups. Cold startups can cause significantly more damage to the boiler health in comparison to hot or warm startups. During shutdown, the boiler is gradually cooled and the steam pressure is decreased.

Many power plant boilers start up and shut down several hundreds of times a year.

This is where AI can play a role, in predicting the behaviors of the boilers by “learning” the inner workings of the system, Bhattacharyya said.

“AI models will be used to describe the complex phenomena in the boilers that are time-varying,” he said. “For example, external fouling of boiler tubes by fly ash and slag is an extremely complex phenomenon being affected by various operating conditions, such as the gas flow field, coal and ash particle shape and size distribution and hardware design.”

A tool to monitor the online health of the boiler can be developed to understand the impacts of load-following and can eventually help plants develop advanced process control strategies for improved flexibility, higher profitability and reduced forced outage without compromising safety or reliability, Bhattacharyya said.

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Debangsu Bhattacharyya, GE Plastics Material Engineering Professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, received a $2.5 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to develop an online monitoring tool, using AI, for boiler systems at coal-fired and natural gas power plants.

BHATTTCHARYYA

“As the system learns, it eventually keeps improving the estimation accuracy,” he said.

The project is part of a larger initiative from the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy that allocated $39 million toward a total of 17 research projects aimed at improving the reliability, performance and flexibility of the nation’s existing coal-fired power fleet.

Bhattacharyya’s model will be tested at Barry Power Plant, a coaland natural gas-fired electrical generation facility in Alabama.

“Even though each boiler is different, the framework proposed can be readily adapted to the monitoring of practically any power plant,” he said. “A key goal of the project is to develop the framework so that it is easy to understand and implement for broader acceptability by and applicability to a large number of power plants.”

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WVU researchers tackle rising healthcare costs with artificial intelligence

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WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

Donald Adjeroh, professor and associate chair in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, has assembled a team from the Statler College, WVU Health Sciences, West Virginia State University and three campuses of the University of Arkansas System to work on a $4 million project funded by the National Science Foundation.

ADJEROH

According to Adjeroh, AI can be used to assist physicians in making more efficient and effective diagnoses, which could mean the difference between life and death for a patient.

“This means that humans (doctors and healthcare professionals) can spend more of their time on other things, such as more face-to-face interactions with patients,” Adjeroh said. “This also means that the doctor’s time will be used more efficiently, leading to an overall reduction in costs to hospitals or clinics, which in turn will be passed down to the patients.”

AI technology has unique advantages over human diagnoses, including the ability to sift through large datasets and recognize patterns that are associated with certain diseases or outcomes, which humans may find very difficult to do on their own in a similar time frame.

“One of the most pressing problems facing the United States today is the rapidly increasing cost of healthcare,” Adjeroh said. “For states such

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as West Virginia and Arkansas, the rising cost of healthcare poses an even more critical problem.”

West Virginia and Arkansas consistently rank among the top states in the U.S. for obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, heart disease and deaths, Adjeroh explained.

“The burden of poor health standing in general is felt not only in healthcare costs, but also in available workforce, lost productivity and even in academic achievement,” said Partho Sengupta, Abnash C. Jain chair, chief of cardiology and director of the Center for Cardiac Innovation at the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute.

Sengupta will work with Adjeroh and Gianfranco Doretto, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, to use AI techniques to detect cardiovascular diseases before symptoms begin to surface, which will give healthcare professionals a head start on preventing the disease from developing to a critical stage.

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The integrative project aims to address research challenges associated with AI, including new privacy methods to protect an individual’s health data, establishing trust in AI results, improved efficiency in data analysis

by AI systems and a study of the misinformation and health-related propaganda found on social media.

“We see this challenge as a unique opportunity for a technology-driven transformation of the economy in West Virginia and Arkansas, with a real potential for important scientific discovery in both AI and smart health applications,” Sengupta said.

The four-year project led by WVU will build on previous research efforts by the Statler College and the Center for Cardiac Innovation.

To coincide with the research activities, the project will involve high school students in STEM-related activities through the Health Sciences and Technology Academy, led by its director, Ann Chester.

Students participating in the program will conduct experiments by using smartwatches or other wearable devices provided by the grant to monitor their own health.

In addition, students will be trained on AI and big data techniques, and how these can be applied to address problems in healthcare.

“AI can be used to assist physicians in making more efficient and effective diagnoses.”

—Donald Adjeroh “Digital health is an important and growing area of research that has real potential for translation into practice,” said Pradeep Fulay, previous associate dean for research in the Statler College. “Don and Partho have shown great leadership in forming this multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team and I look forward to seeing what breakthroughs will emerge that can ultimately help the citizens of West Virginia.”

Other WVU faculty involved in the project include Don McLaughlin, Nasser Nasrabadi and Xin Li, from the Statler College, as well as Marie Abate, Ivan Martinez and Valerie Satkoske, from Health Sciences.

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Research and Development

A saving grace underground: robots improve mine safety WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

Injuries and deaths caused by roof collapses and falling debris, common culprits for underground mine accidents, could be prevented by the unlikely force of robots and drones, thanks to the work of WVU engineers.

Ihsan Berk Tulu, assistant professor of mining engineering, along with Jason Gross, Yu Gu and Guilherme Pereira, from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, are developing an autonomous robotic system to monitor the structural integrity and safety of underground mines.

By using a combination of remote vehicles that consist of an unmanned aerial vehicle attached to an unmanned ground vehicle, the team will provide high-resolution 3D maps for assessment of pillar and roof damage.

The researchers were awarded a $750,000 grant from the Alpha Foundation to conduct this research on the health and safety of underground miners.

“Ultimately, this project will develop an early warning system that will notify the mine engineers for elevated hazardous conditions in underground stone mines,” Tulu explained.

The researchers will leverage similar technology to what is currently under development for underground tunnel rescue operations by the WVU robotics team to develop the robotic system. The system will then be deployed to Laurel Aggregates underground stone mine in Lake Lynn, Pennsylvania, for testing.

“The autonomous robotic early warning system for monitoring stone mines will enable a rapid response to detected degradations in pillar and roof stability,” Tulu said. “Successful development and deployment of this system is expected to reduce injuries of underground stone mine workers.

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Located a few miles north of Morgantown, Laurel Aggregates is a large surface and underground limestone quarry operation that produces approximately three million tons of construction aggregates per year. Richard Rohrssen, manager of operations and engineering, Barry Fink, vice president and general manager, and Brian Cramer, underground superintendent, are leading the effort for Laurel to support the WVU research team. Rohrssen (’09, civil engineering) and Fink (’82, mining engineering) are both graduates of the Statler College. “As WVU engineering graduates, Barry and I are excited to be supporting the WVU team in their effort to develop this technology,” said Rohrssen.

Researchers from the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources are developing an autonomous robotic system to monitor the structural integrity and safety of underground mines. Pictured from left to right are Berk Tulu, Guilherme Pereira, Yu Gu and Jason Gross of the Statler College, and Barry Fink and Richard Rohrssen of Laurel Aggregates.

According to Tulu, in underground mines in the United States, “fall of ground”-related accidents are one of the leading causes of injuries. This occurs when part of the roof or a pillar collapses. Although underground stone mines have generally experienced good ground stability, a recent mine pillar collapse in Pennsylvania and reported roof fall accidents highlight the potential safety impact on miners.

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“While the initial problem is associated with pillar stability and design, the techniques developed in this research would be adaptable to the underground coal and metal/nonmetal mining sectors,” said Tulu. “The autonomous robots’ mapping ability would also be adaptable to facilitate search and rescue efforts in case of an accident.”

“Miners’ safety is a number one priority in the mining industry,” said Vladislav Kecojevic, the Robert E. Murray Chair and Professor of Mining Engineering. “Research grants such as this one from the Alpha Foundation will allow our WVU engineers to leverage state-of-the-art technology into an underground environment and contribute toward an ultimate goal of zero fataland non-fatal injuries in our nation’s mines.”

“Successful development and deployment of this system is expected to reduce injuries of underground stone mine workers.” —Ihsan Berk Tulu

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Berk Tulu, assistant professor of mining engineering, studies a map with personnel from Laurel Aggregates, a large surface and underground limestone quarry near Morgantown. Pictured left to right are Barry Fink, Tulu, Brian Cramer and Richard Rohrssen.

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Research and Development

Developing ‘critical’ rare earth elements from coal waste WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

West Virginia University mining engineers are developing a method to create a self-supply of rare earth elements in the United States from coal waste.

“Rare earth elements are critical to the high-tech industry and to national defense, but we heavily rely on China to supply these elements,” said Qingqing Huang, assistant professor of mining engineering. “Right now we have an urgent need to develop our own supply chain in the country.”

While the knowledge of rare earth elements occurrence in coal material dates back more than 50 years, recent restrictions in the supply of rare earth elements has sparked a renewed interest in finding a method to extract these elements from coal and coal byproducts in an economical and sustainable fashion.

According to Huang, China supplies more than 80 percent of the global consumption of rare earth elements and possesses approximately 37 percent of the worldwide reserves. To prevent a disruption in the supply of these elements to the U.S., the U.S. Department of Energy is investing millions of dollars in projects to develop a domestic source from coal and coal refuse.

“We have been successful in the lab producing highly enriched rare earth products; now we are moving to scale up that testing,” Huang said. “This is exciting because it is something that has not been done in the past and will provide a critical domestic source of rare earth elements if successful.”

“Rare earth elements are critical to the high-tech industry and to national defense.” —Qingqing Huang 14

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R&D IN BRIEF FULAY TO STEP DOWN AS ASSOCIATE DEAN OF RESEARCH

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Over the past several decades, the global demand for rare earth elements has been on the rise, Huang explained. Rare earth elements play a vital role in not only national defense applications, but also the modern high-tech industries, including cell phones, televisions, batteries and clean energy technologies.

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Pradeep Fulay, associate dean of research in the Statler College, stepped down from his administrative post of seven years, effective December 31, 2019.

To further support her research in examining the occurrence of rare earth elements in coal and coal byproducts, Huang has been awarded the 2019 Freeport-McMoRan, Inc. Career Development Grant by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration.

Fulay was appointed to the position in May 2012 to lead the College’s faculty in research, research program development, intellectual property and commercialization activities.

During his tenure, faculty members have won numerous awards, including NSF CAREER awards, Presidential Early CAREER Awards and have been appointed to the National Academy of Inventors.

Grant recipients are chosen from all nontenured faculty members in the mining and mineral processing/extractive metallurgy field in the U.S. The program has been implemented to combat long-term challenges that threaten these U.S. academic degree programs, as well as the looming faculty deficiencies associated with retirement over the next two decades.

With the financial support given by the award, Huang will be able to expand her research team and purchase new equipment to advance the projects. She will receive $300,000 over the course of three years to better participate in research activities that are necessary to achieve tenure and promotion.

“The best part has been being able to see how far we have come from not having an office of research to now witnessing the unprecedented successes of our faculty,” Fulay said. “It has been a pleasure to work with faculty across the College and also across campus.”

“The SME Career Award is the most prestigious national recognition of junior faculty in mining, mineral processing and extractive metallurgy,” said Vladislav Kecojevic, Robert E. Murray Chair and Professor of Mining Engineering. “Qingqing is an inspiring teacher and scholar conducting outstanding research in an exciting field. Her cutting-edge research is not only highly relevant but also critical to a sustainable development of our mineral resources for the benefits of our communities, environment, economy and national security.”

Between May 2012 and December 2019, 224 new awards were received, totaling $66,421,139.

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Qingqing Huang, assistant professor of mining engineering, conducts a froth flotation test to separate carbonaceous materials from coal waste.

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Upon stepping down, Fulay will return to the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and contribute to the College’s mission as a faculty member.

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Research and Development

It’s electric: WVU breaks new ground in developing transportable, carbon-neutral energy source

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WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

Electricity is something we rarely think about — we expect it to be there, flowing hundreds of feet over our heads, powering every facet of our daily lives. But what if we didn’t have giant towering power lines above us and instead the electricity flowed under our feet?

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Engineers in the Statler College have figured out exactly how to make this a reality.

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John Hu, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and the Statler Chair in Engineering for Natural Gas Utilization, alongside Debangsu Bhattacharyya, professor of chemical engineering, have created a liquid form of electricity that can be transported from coast to coast using existing infrastructure.

The carbon-neutral fuel created can be stored for extended periods of time and is more easily and inexpensively transported, so it can be delivered and distributed more efficiently. That means these fuels offer a unique opportunity to reduce both the need for energy imports and carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

The carbon-neutral energy source has the potential to not only improve American economic and energy security, but reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well, Hu explained.

“From an economic and environmental point of view, the technology of transforming renewable electricity to a carbon-neutral energy carrier has a strong impact to the region, nation and the world as well,” Hu said. “The technology can immediately solve the stranded renewable electricity issue.”

By taking advantage of the unutilized, “stranded” electricity from solar and wind farms, the researchers successfully converted electricity into ammonia, a liquid energy carrier.

“Once you turn electricity into liquid ammonia you can basically either sell it as fertilizer or generate electricity again. The key is that because ammonia is a liquid you can ship it from coast to coast using the pipelines, railways or by truck,” Hu said.

Electricity generated from solar and wind farms are only as reliable as the amount of sun shining or wind blowing in the area at a given time.

The modern industrial ammonia production uses the Haber-Bosch process, a century-old method that changed the agriculture industry and was a major contributor to the growth of global population. The Haber-Bosch process requires huge capital and energy investment, which means it is only economical at large scales. The innovative approach of WVU’s research team will use low temperatures and pressure, resulting in the production of ammonia at a small modular scale with higher profitability than the Haber-Bosch process.

“Once you turn electricity into liquid ammonia you can basically either sell it as fertilizer or generate electricity again.” —John Hu As states along the West Coast begin their transformation towards clean and renewable energy, they must determine the best way to manage the time lag between production of electricity by solar and wind farms, and its demand by people.

According to Hu, the demand for electricity is at its peak after 3 p.m., when people begin to arrive home from their day jobs. Coincidentally, at this time the sun is setting and the wind is dying down, which means no new electricity is being produced. On the flip side, the morning and early afternoon, when the demand for electricity is low, are when the most electricity is available for consumption.

“The lack of infrastructure in the power grid does not allow the efficient transmission of the excess renewable electricity generated during off-peak times, therefore the renewable electricity in certain regions becomes stranded,” Hu said.

“The success of the technology development can benefit not only the ammonia industry, but also other industries where small-scale distributed production mode is required,” Hu said.

Hu has received $1.65 million in funding over two years to build on the accomplishments of the Phase I project from the United States Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy.

WVU received Phase I of the award from ARPA-E’s Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-Dense Liquids program in spring 2017. REFUEL projects aim to accelerate the shift to domesticallyproduced transportation fuels.

The project is being supported by the WVU Center for Innovation in Gas Utilization in Research, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Shell and Malachite Technologies Inc.

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Research and Development

Hand in glove: researchers test safety measures for coal industry WRITTEN BY PAM PRITT

While researchers at WVU were testing coal miners’ safety gloves to help reduce lost-time accidents, they went a step further.

Eduardo Sosa, a research associate professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Marta Moure, a post-doctoral fellow from Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain, reduced the need for future physical testing of the gloves through computer simulations.

Their research involved testing with hand models that included wooden dowels, 3D printed bones and, eventually, cadaveric hands.

“Ultimately what the mining industry and miners need is to select the most appropriate glove for their safety concerns,” Sosa said.

The process was a nearly two-year journey across engineering disciplines and the WVU campus.

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Faisal Alessa, a Ph.D. student in industrial and management systems engineering, used an accident database analysis to find that a significant number of hand injuries in coal mines come from dropping objects such as drill steel, roof bolts, rocks and tools. He found that these injuries have caused a loss of nearly 900,000 production hours from 2000-2018 across mines in the country.

Based on this information, Sosa and his team designed and built a testing

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WVU President E. Gordon Gee interviews Eduardo Sosa and team members Faisel Alessa, a Ph.D. student from Saudi Arabia, and Trevor Brison, a mechanical engineering student from Morgantown.

The research process goes from 3D printing, to molds, formation of joints, gel case, latex glove to simulate skin then test in each glove.

“Ultimately what the mining industry and miners need is to select the most appropriate glove for their safety concerns.” —Eduardo Sosa apparatus to conduct controlled impacts to replicate the weight and impact of dropping hexagonal drill steel typically used in roof bolting operations.

hands to study the level of forces on the hand during an impact, as well as the level of damage produced by the impactor.

From a field of 45 glove manufacturers, Sosa narrowed the scope to nine that protected, in varying degrees, the metacarpal bones, joints and soft tissue of the hand, and included different combinations of thermoplastic rubber and fabric layers. For filler, the team started simply — wooden dowels roughly the size of a man’s fingers in a latex glove. The glove offered no protection and the dowels had no soft tissue or joints, so the damage from the falling roof bolt did not replicate injuries a coal miner would receive in a similar accident, but provided valuable initial information about the range of forces resulting from the controlled impacts.

He had specific requirements: the hands had to be from males 30-to-60-yearsold and could not have had an illness that could significantly affect the bone condition.

Sosa moved on to develop a more realistic surrogate hand including the creation of 3D printed “bones” based on laser-scanned actual bones. Next they developed a form, also constructed with the 3D printer, and poured medical grade synthetic ballistic gel which better represented the soft tissue of the hand.

For the impact tests each hand specimen was divided into four zones — fingers, knuckles, the metacarpal region and the thumb. The hexagonal impactor hit each finger, each knuckle and each metacarpal bone for a total of 15 hits per hand specimen and per glove. Then each test was repeated five times, and average impact reaction forces were calculated for each position and each type of glove for nearly 250 impacts.

While the synthetic gel hands provided a decent representation of protectionto-injury, it still wasn’t quite an actual hand in those gloves, so Sosa turned to another part of the WVU campus for assistance. Through the WVU School of Medicine and the Human Gift Registry, Sosa’s team got access to cadaveric

After five months of preparation, including bio-safety training and vaccinations to protect them from potential biohazards, Sosa and his team were able to move their equipment to a lab at WVU Health Sciences to begin the final phase of testing.

They performed the same tests in the same way they had with the synthetic gel hands but had the advantage of capturing X-ray images after the impact tests that revealed the actual bone and soft tissue damage.

“As expected, different glove models offer different levels of dissipation of impact forces; also, the stiffness of the different surrogate hands we have been using influences the forces measured during the impact tests,” Sosa said. “If we use the same type of hand wearing different gloves, we have an equal basis for comparison.”

Physical testing is always “complicated and resource-intensive,” Sosa said.

His team will continue using their experimental results to calibrate the computational models of the hand they are developing for further testing of impact scenarios and glove materials.

The work was done in collaboration with, and partly funded by, the Department of Mining and Industrial Extension.

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Research and Development

Exploring the brain in a new way: researchers record neurons to understand cognition WRITTEN BY JAKE STUMP

Where is Waldo?

Whether we’re searching for Waldo or our keys in a room of clutter, we tap into a part of the frontal region of the brain when performing visual, goal-related tasks. Some of us do it well, whereas for others it’s a bit challenging.

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“Our new paper is one of only a few papers that have reported on the human pre-SMA using this technique.”

—Shuo Wang One West Virginia University researcher set out to investigate why, and what specifically this part of the brain, called the presupplementary motor area, does during searching.

NESBIT

To find out, Shuo Wang, assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, took on the rare opportunity to record single neurons with electrodes implanted in epilepsy patients.

He found neurons that signaled whether the target of a visual search was found and, if not, how long the patient had been searching for the item.

This suggests that the pre-SMA contributes to goal-directed behavior by signaling goal detection and time elapsed since the start of a search, regardless of the task.

WANG

It may be the first time scientists have identified neurons in the human pre-SMA that represent search goals, Wang said.

These findings contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive aspects of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, which are linked to dysfunction of the pre-SMA, he said. Similarly, pre-SMA hyperactivity is a frequent observation in people with autism.

Wang’s research, done in collaboration with Ueli Rutishauser, associate professor of neurosurgery, and Adam Mamelak, professor of neurosurgery, both from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Ralph Adolphs, professor of biology, from the California Institute of Technology, was published in leading neurology journal Brain.

“The brain has about a hundred billion neurons,” said Wang, who is part of the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. “Only a few labs can look at the activity of single neurons in humans. Similar recordings have been done in the hippocampus and amygdala, which are brain areas important for memory, for many years. However, recordings in the pre-SMA are very rare. Our new paper is one of only a few papers that have reported on the human pre-SMA using this technique.”

The epilepsy patients who participated in the study were undergoing invasive seizure monitoring at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Wang and his collaborators performed concurrent recordings of eye movements and single neurons in the patients while they were performing a memory-guided visual search task. They managed to record 182 single neurons in nine patients.

“We piggybacked on a clinical procedure – the patients were in our monitoring unit waiting for seizures to occur,” Mamelak said. “We used modified depth electrodes, which are implanted to monitor seizures, to record the activity of individual neurons and to observe their activity during our task. This is currently the one possibility to look at the activity of single neurons in humans.”

During the goal-directed visual task that patients performed, patients were asked to find an object or face located among a number of other items shown on the screen. During this task, the researchers found that 40 percent of neurons signaled whether a currently fixated item was the search target.

Wang and his colleagues further addressed these two questions: 1. Do pre-SMA neurons signal target detection as such or rather the need to indicate such by a button press (part of the experiment asked patients to respond with a button box)?

2. Do pre-SMA neurons signal detection of targets, regardless of the form specified?

“We analyzed the same neurons in all three tasks and found that the target response was independent of motor output, the format of the search and an explicitly-defined search cue. This shows that these signals are of an abstract cognitive nature,” Rutishauser said.

“Our data supports the view that dysfunction in the pre-SMA might manifest in poorer ability to perform goal-directed behaviors such as searching for an item in a cluttered room,” Wang said.

“Hopefully our research can drive strategies to improve cognitive functions in patients with disorders of the pre-SMA.” The research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Autism Science Foundation, RNI, the Dana Foundation, the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

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Research and Development

Enter the exosome: how cancer and immune cells communicate WRITTEN BY STACY ELSA

Cells can’t text each other the way we can, but they can still communicate.

One way they send each other messages is through exosomes — tiny, spherical “packages” of information they emit.

“If we imagine that an individual protein is like a sentence, then an exosome is like an entire book,” he said.

Not just the ‘garbage can of the cell’ Klinke and his colleagues wanted to learn how the “books” of information that tumor cells send out might interfere with our body’s ability to detect and battle tumors. But first they had to find out what the cancer cells were stashing in their exosomes to begin with.

WVU PHOTO

So, they collected exosomes secreted by melanoma, a type of cancer that strikes pigment-producing cells, and identified the types of proteins and RNA they contained.

KLINKE

David Klinke, a researcher with the WVU School of Medicine and Cancer Institute, is deciphering the contents of exosomes that cancer cells release. Studying the information exosomes contain and how they influence other cells may suggest new targets for cancer immunotherapy.

“Exosomes are like little balls of information relayed between cells,” said Klinke, an associate professor of chemical engineering in the Statler College.

They house multiple proteins, which are the building blocks of cells.

They also contain RNAs that provide instructions for making new proteins and manipulate what genes do.

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The researchers discovered that the melanoma cells seemed to selectively package certain proteins and RNAs in their exosomes while withholding others. This finding contradicted the long-held assumption that exosomes contain a random assortment of the cell’s contents.

“Early on it was thought that exosomes were kind of the garbage can of the cell, where everything in it was a representation of what’s in the cell,” Klinke said. “In the last 10 years or so, there’s been a re-recognition of exosomes. Folks have gone back to the literature and realized they’d seen these things before but didn’t really know what they did. More recently, researchers have been able to separate them out and figure out ways to isolate them. Now we’re at the stage of, ‘Well, what do they do? What role do they play in cell communication?’”

R&D IN BRIEF Subduing the immune response Next, the team stimulated T cells — a type of immune cell that detects and destroys invaders — so that, under normal conditions, they would recognize melanoma and kill it. Klinke likens the process to getting a flu shot.

Initially, when the researcher exposed the T cells to melanoma, the T cells responded as expected: they quickly multiplied to swarm the cancer. But once the researchers added melanoma exosomes to the sample, “T cells stopped proliferating,” Klinke said. “The exosomes essentially suppressed their response.”

The results were published in FEBS Journal, the international journal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, in 2018. This year, Klinke and his colleagues — Christina ByrneHoffman, Cassidy Bland, Audry Fernandez, Stephanie Rellick and Wentao Deng — won FEBS’ Richard Perham Award for the publication. FEBS invited them to present their findings at the FEBS Congress in Krakow, Poland, this summer.

The team’s results indicate that cancer cells may use their exosomes to avoid eradication by subduing T cell activity.

“Exosomes create an environment for tumor cells to survive,” Klinke said. “If an exosome is a book of information, it influences how the immune system reacts to its environment. But, if we look at how the immune system reads the information and how that influences the T cell, maybe we could engineer immune cells to ignore or dispose of exosomes that they encounter.”

“If we imagine that an individual protein is like a sentence, then an exosome is like an entire book.” —David Klinke

NESBIT

“Each T cell recognizes a unique pattern,” he said. “This is why you get the flu vaccine. You want to pre-activate those T cells to recognize certain patterns that we expect to see in this year’s flu.”

LIU

LIU NAMED INTERIM ASSOCIATE DEAN OF RESEARCH Xingbo Liu, Statler endowed chair professor of engineering and associate chair of research in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at WVU, has been appointed to interim associate dean of research, effective January 1, 2020.

Liu currently oversees one of the largest research groups at the University, with a group of approximately 20 graduate students, professionals and post-doctoral research fellows.

“I am hoping to work with the dean, department chairs and faculty to develop strategies and plans for growth in key areas for which faculty are uniquely positioned to conduct world-class programs,” Liu said.

Liu hopes to establish new research centers, improve existing research centers, facilitate and support key hires, improve connections and communications with funding agencies and provide support for proposal development and project execution.

“I am excited to welcome Professor Liu to the leadership team of the Statler College,” said Interim Dean Earl Scime. “His extensive research experience and leadership in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering has well prepared him for this new role. I look forward to working with him in 2020 as we advance the research agenda of the College.”

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Feature Story

science and service ««« ««« «««

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PURPOSE WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

SUBMITTED PHOTOGRAPHS BY FEATURED ALUMNI, STAFF AND STUDENTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY J. PAIGE NESBIT GRAPHICS BY RUTHIE DEELY AND OLIVIA MILLER

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Feature Forward | General Foglesong

Think engineering and military science are different?

Not so fast WRITTEN BY GENERAL (RET) ROBERT H. FOGLESONG, USAF

Almost everything we do successfully involves excellence and teamwork. Anybody surprised by that? Probably not! Said another way, rarely is someone successful all on their own — and nobody is successful without learning the skills necessary to produce something extraordinary in their profession. For me — and I think I can speak for all of us military veterans with engineering degrees from West Virginia University — that excellence and teamwork started at WVU. In my case, the hardest, and most satisfying professional things I have accomplished were earning an engineering degree — or three — at WVU and earning the right and privilege to wear the colors of the United States military. For me, one led naturally to the other. More on that later.

GENERAL (RET) ROBERT “DOC” FOGLESONG GENERAL USAFE 2003 COMMANDER, ALLIED AIR COMPONENT COMMAND RAMSTEIN AIR COMPONENT COMMANDER, U.S. EUROPEAN COMMAND, RAMSTEIN AB, GERMANY VICE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE AIR FORCE 2001-2003 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE APPALACHIAN LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION FOUNDATION WVU EDUCATION BS CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 1968 MS CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 1969 PHD CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 1971

PHOTOGRAPH BY VIRIN,USAFDE.AF.MIL

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JOINT AIR POWER COMPETENCE CENTER,

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Actually, there’s a great deal of common ground between the two advocations: engineering and military science. Both employ a common set of principles that serve as guidelines for how professionals and their teams execute. That common ground includes core values like integrity, excellence and courage.

Never knew an engineer or a soldier, sailor, airman or a marine who didn’t put integrity at the top of the list of their personal and professional character traits. Never knew anyone in either profession who didn’t capture excellence in their professional and personal lives. After all, who wants to be a “satisfactory” engineer or soldier? You have to possess the courage to pull the trigger on integrity, excellence, etc. in the engineering profession. Similarly, courage plays a central role in practically every military operation.

We, the military, have thousands of engineers employing skills obtained at schools like WVU. There are great opportunities on the cutting edge of technology in nearly every aspect of military operations. But, to be fair, I am obligated to point out some fundamental differences in the two professions: engineering and military science. The practical application of the basics of thermodynamics can be uniquely different. Engineers build bridges — the military sort of unbuilds them! Engineers design refineries — the military often makes sure they don’t work!

Engineers build great airframes out of components put together in efficient production lines — the military takes those same components apart in a very abrupt production!

But, back to where I stated that my engineering education led naturally to how I engaged in the next phase of my professional and personal life in the military. WVU, and my engineering education in particular, shaped my way ahead. In addition to the core values I noted above, the sense of teamwork that was necessary to complete major projects, the drive to ensure one had the right and ethical solution to complex challenges, and the ability to prioritize tasks all originated in classes with instructors in the school of engineering at WVU. So, while I can’t solve partial differential equations anymore (not sure I ever really understood those pesky things), I still count on the professional foundation that was laid in classes and labs in that big white building on the Evansdale campus. There are many WVU engineers who stepped into a military profession and had productive careers. To a significant degree, I blame the college of engineering at WVU and the logic and passion nurtured there for any success we may have had.

Mountaineers Go First!

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Feature | Statistics

270 APPROXIMATELY*

VETERANS ON WVU CAMPUS

196 APPROXIMATELY*

338

248

%

'%%

'(%

"%%

CURRENT SERVICE

MEMBERS on WVU CAMPUS RESERVES | NATIONAL GUARD

38 90 26

72

158

248 ROTC Enrolled at WVU

STATLER COLLEGE

ENGINEERING STUDENT VETS

= Statler Army ROTC = Total Army ROTC at WVU = Statler Air Force ROTC = Total Air Force ROTC at WVU

= veterans = reservist = active guard/reserve

AIR FORCE ARMY

SERVICE

NAVY COAST GUARD UNDECLARED *Statistics gathered for this feature are estimated from several organizations at WVU and are subject to change.

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YOU FOR

YOUR

MARINES

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THANK

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FEATURE STORY:

VETERANS LOUNGE

LOCATIONS • Davis College Lounge • Downtown Library • Evansdale Library • HSC Veterans Lounge • Mountainlair Veterans Lounge (Mountaineer Bunker)

WHERE HAVE THEY

SERVICES FOR

BEEN?

VETERANS

CHRIS MCCALLISTER

ON CAMPUS

AUBRI PAREDES

• Free tutoring, printing, computer and coffee • Designated veterans counselors at Carruth Center • Priority registration • Waived application fees

STACY FIKE DAVE SOLLEY HOWARD FELL SARAH SOLIMAN LOGAN SHERIDAN

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Howard Fell

Fell poses on the ladder of a T-38 Talon, supersonic jet trainer at Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) Reese AFB, Lubbock, Texas, in 1990.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (RET) HOWARD FELL LIEUTENANT COLONEL US AIR FORCE 1989 WVU EDUCATION BS INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING 1989

a view

from above the clouds When children choose what they want to be when they grow up, it is unlikely that they follow through with their proclamation of becoming an astronaut or a musician. For Howard Fell, it was a different story. His dream was to fly airplanes and that is exactly what he did.

Growing up in Weirton, West Virginia, Fell graduated from high school in 1985 and enrolled in the industrial engineering and Air Force ROTC program at West Virginia University. By the time he graduated in 1989, he had a bachelor’s degree and was officially an officer in the United States Air Force.

Fell credits the study habits and discipline he learned in the Statler College for helping him be successful in Undergraduate Pilot Training.

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In 1993, Fell waits for takeoff from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in the cockpit of C130 Hercules during Bosnian War to deliver food supplies on behalf of the United Nations.

“Pilot training was pretty difficult and time consuming,” he said. “You didn’t have time for anything except studying really. So, those habits I picked up in school helped.”

After graduating from pilot training, his career in the Air Force would be more eventful than he anticipated.

Throughout his 26-year career, Fell would serve in the Yugoslav wars and Iraqi wars, with countless missions in between, flying the workforce of the Air Force combat airlift fleet, the C-130 Hercules.

“Some of my earliest missions were flown in South America in support of the war on drugs against the cartels in the early 90s. We resupplied radar sites and transported personnel and equipment throughout the South American theatre of operations from our base in Panama.

In between deployments, Fell worked as an airline pilot, a career he still has today. He admits that he was ready to retire from the Air Force when the September 11 attacks were carried out on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“To be honest with you, I was thinking about getting out earlier because the airline career was going well — then 9/11 happened. Of course then I wanted to stay in and do something about it ... and you can’t let your buddies go without you.”

Fell would end up deploying for four tours serving in Iraq and Afghanistan carrying troops into Fallujah, the location of some of the heaviest combat of the Iraq War. For Fell, it’s during the moments when he’s not thinking about his time flying around the world performing

combat missions, when long-forgotten memories pop up and surprise him.

“I remember hearing about a guy in Iraq after they had held their first elections,” he recalled. “He walked through all of that warzone for 15 to 20 miles, some old guy, he dipped his finger in a thing of ink and put his fingerprint on the bottom of the paper.

“Most of us feel like it’s an honor and a privilege to serve — it alters who you are, for the better mostly.”

—Howard Fell “He didn’t have the ability to write or sign his name, so he just put his fingerprint on the bottom of the paper,” he continued.

In a time when the U.S. is facing deep political and ideological division, Fell often wonders if his service was worthwhile.

“Well, I feel fortunate that I was able to do it and sometimes you see what’s going on and wonder if it was worth it,” he said. “People get so wrapped around the axle, it makes you wonder if it did any good.”

Fell sitting on a disabled Iraqi S-60 AA gun in Northern Iraq, 2004.

Although, he admits that his military experience was ultimately

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Fell receiving an award from the Air National Guard on the occasion of his retirement in August 2015.

rewarding, particularly in terms of the connections he made with people and the global perspective he adopted along the way.

“The experiences alter who you are as a person,” Fell explained. “You’re not as selfish. You think about things that maybe other people don’t. You realize what America has to offer because we’ve been to places that don’t have the same opportunities. People take for granted what we have here.

“Most of us feel like it’s an honor and a privilege to serve,” he continued.

“It alters who you are, for the better, mostly.”

Fell chose to retire from the Air Force in 2016, but wasn’t quite ready to let go of his career as an airline pilot.

Today, he flies long distance from a base in Miami, flying to Europe and deep South America on the Boeing 777.

“I had done enough,” he said. “It takes a lot of your time away from your family. I was working both jobs at the same time, so, I was doing 23-24 days a month between the two.”

Outside of his airline career, Fell remains active in the veteran community, serving on the board of directors for the Pittsburgh Fisher House, an organization that provides a “home away from home” for families of veterans and active duty military who are hospitalized. Families stay for free, lifting their financial burden and allowing them to focus on their loved one.

“I just feel pretty fortunate that we live where we do and hopefully we can preserve it for as long as possible for the next generations,” Fell said.

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Aubri Paredes

Aubri Paredes’ day doesn’t start out quite like most of her fellow classmates. As a member of the Army ROTC at West Virginia University, her day begins with ruck marches, pushups, pullups and cardio training all before the start of her 8 a.m. Design of Productive Systems class.

“When I tell my friends that I wake up for physical training at five in the morning, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I could never do that,’ and it’s just a part of my life now,” she said. “You’ve already started your day accomplishing so much and it feels really good.

Although some days I am exhausted from the training, other days it serves as an excellent motivator. A lot of times I say that being in the military has saved my life.”

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ARMY ROTC CADET AUBRI PAREDES CADET ARMY NATIONAL GUARD 2017 WVU EDUCATION BS INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING PROJECTED GRADUATION 2020

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Aubri Paredes

Paredes participates in the Army ROTC Troop Leading Procedures lab.

Paredes poses with her mother and father after graduating from basic training in April of 2015.

She admits that coming to Morgantown was a culture shock.

Paredes’ family immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic when she was six years old. First landing in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and later following her father’s military career to Alabama, then Texas, relocating to Germany and finally to what she now considers home, Rahway, New Jersey.

She explained that her father’s military career was a big influence

“... you just do it. It helps you stay on track and really stay on top of your goals.”

—Aubri Paredes on her decision to join the National Guard.

“Because of him I grew up with so much military influence, but what ultimately led me to joining was paying for school,” Paredes said. “I couldn’t afford school on my own and I didn’t want to graduate with crippling debt. I

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Paredes during her annual training with the 115th Engineering company in Hohenfels, Germany.

also didn’t want to put that burden on my parents.”

Paredes completed advanced individual training in Fort Lee, Virginia, in 2015. She graduated as a Distinguished Honor Graduate, having the highest academic score in her class. Upon graduation, Paredes was released to her first unit and assigned to the 50th Chemical Unit in Somerset, New Jersey.

She made the choice to become a Mountaineer after she was assigned to the 201st Bravo Battery unit in Morgantown, working as a petroleum lab specialist.

“Looking back, I’m really glad that I came here. I do really like it. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone and helped me develop a new perspective and skillsets that I didn’t even know I could have,” she explained.

Before she became a soldier, Paredes had her sights set on studying

industrial engineering. “I chose industrial engineering because I love learning about business processes and solving problems, and I like to be challenged,” she explained. “I really enjoy calculus and science as well. I found it was the perfect major because it was the perfect integration of both.”

As an Army ROTC cadet, Paredes is required to participate in physical training every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, as well as a weekend drill every month and a two week annual training every summer.

Some drills required a week of sleeping in the field at Camp Dawson in Preston County or Fort Pickett in Virginia. As a petroleum lab specialist, her responsibility was to drive the fuel truck, driving from site to site refilling large military vehicles with fuel.

On top of the demands of her industrial engineering curriculum, she takes an extra elective course through Army ROTC and serves as vice president of communications for Culturas WVU, an association for Latinx, Hispanic students and allies on campus.

“Being an engineering major has definitely been difficult at times because of ROTC; there were a lot of times when I didn’t think I could do it and didn’t think that it was worth it,” Paredes said. “It takes a lot out of you.

You know, I can’t stay up late like my friends and study because I have to be up so early. So, during the day, I’m just bombarded with work, so I don’t have to do any at night.”

“I’m really glad that I came here. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone and helped me develop a new perspective and skillsets that I didn’t even know I could have.” —Aubri Paredes

The lessons Paredes has learned through her military career and her academic career have served as a complement to one another. Her military career giving her the discipline and maturity needed to become a successful student, while her academic career has helped her learn to think critically in order to solve difficult problems.

“Being in the military provides a very different perspective and forces you to mature. You’re thrown into a very structured environment that doesn’t allow room for excuses,” she explained. “It really shapes you to be this person that is like, ‘Okay, I understand that I have to get this done,’ and you just do it. It helps you stay on track and really stay on top of your goals. It really helped me build a good work ethic and have discipline.”

Paredes now works in the 115th Engineering Company (unit) in Clarksburg. As a cadet, she shadows officers, takes accountability for soldiers in the unit and assists in the daily operations of drill.

“Studying industrial engineering has been a huge help for my job in the military. Truthfully, it makes the problems that I come across in my job seem way easier because in school you’re working through these really technical mathematical problems,” she continued.

She credits the tutoring resources offered by the Statler College for helping her get through tough classes, as well as her adviser Jack Byrd, emeritus professor of freshman engineering.

“Jack Byrd was my adviser and he was my saving grace. He’s like Mama Bear. I’ve never met a person who goes so above and beyond for his students,” she expressed. “He’s helped me out so much. If it wasn’t for him, I think I would’ve changed my major when I was struggling at first.

“He’s an amazing person all around. He believed in me when I didn’t even believe in me,” she continued. “He offers so much to his students. I developed so much under his guidance.”

After graduation in May 2020, Paredes will commission as a 2LT in the National Guard on an eight-year contract in New Jersey, allowing her to be closer to home. Paredes plans to advance in her military career and continue serving as an officer in the National Guard.

“I love being in the military. I wasn’t born in the USA, but this country has given me so much,” she said. “I’m happy to serve.”

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Dave Solley

a mission to

accomplish In the halls of the Statler College, most students know Dave Solley as an adviser in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

What many students don’t know is that he spent 22 years serving in the United States Army Aviation Branch as a commissioned officer.

In the two decades before he made his way to Morgantown for his last assignment to lead the Army ROTC program at West Virginia University, Lieutenant Colonel Solley was stationed in 11 different places around the globe.

Solley’s time in the Army Aviation Branch came with several deployments.

His unit was sent to Saudi Arabia after only two weeks at his second duty station in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to serve in Operation Desert Shield and

LIEUTENANT COLONEL (RET) DAVE SOLLEY, 2006 LIEUTENANT COLONEL US ARMY 2006

WVU EMPLOYEE PROFESSOR OF MILITARY SCIENCE 2002-2006 ADVISER MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE WVU EDUCATION EDD CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION, PROJECTED GRADUATION DECEMBER 2020

Desert Storm in the Gulf War. “We had just had our second son two months earlier, which made it really hard to leave,” he said.

Solley in summer 1980 during his freshman year of cadet basic training at West Point, New York.

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When Solley and his unit arrived in Saudi Arabia, the temperature was well over 100 degrees.

“We lived for about six months in a parking garage,” he said. “We worked out of the airport, and the living quarters were in the parking garage that was attached. They set up cots for everyone. There were at least 1,000 of us living in the parking garage. It had open sides.

It was just row after row of cots and then clotheslines hanging up in between the poles.

“It was miserable because it would get so hot and the concrete would retain that heat,” he continued. “Even at night when it would cool down, you would still just lay there and sweat.”

A typical day for Solley in Saudi Arabia would start at 5:30 a.m. The first thing on the agenda was cardio training, followed by a quick shower.

He would show up at his post at 8 a.m. and work the entire day until 9 p.m. or later.

Solley was working in logistics in the Aviation Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division at the time, but even as he was planning the movement, supply and maintenance of military forces, he was still an active pilot.

Solley participating in training mission in Alaska circa 1987.

“Flying is a lot more fun, obviously, but logistics is also important,” he said.

After concluding the tour, Solley’s military career took him

Solley during active duty in Desert Storm discovering a dropped fuel tank circa 1991.

to Germany for a three-year tour and then back to the States to Oklahoma, where he worked in the Depth and Simultaneous Attack Battle Lab. “We were working on a project in Korea where we were trying to help them detect long-range artillery launches,” he said.

Over the years, Solley would take 21 trips to Korea, while simultaneously taking weekend classes to obtain his MBA from Cameron University.

“You always have some sort of mission to accomplish, and I think that has had a big impact on me.” —Dave Solley “It took me about a year and a half. I did a lot of studying on airplanes,” he said. “This was before online courses, so it was different than it is now.”

His last flying assignment was on a Boeing AH-64A Apache Attack Helicopter, the aircraft that represents the backbone of the U.S. Army attack helicopter fleet.

At the time, he was the operations officer for an Attack Helicopter Battalion, responsible for planning

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and supervising the training of approximately 350 soldiers.

“My service was not as intense as what some of the students experience now, but war is an ugly business,” he explained. “I personally think it should always be the last option.”

Solley retired from the military in 2006 and began his position as the undergraduate program coordinator of mechanical and aerospace engineering in 2008.

He credits his military experience for shaping his leadership style and work-driven mentality.

“I think it made me goaloriented,” he said. “You always have some sort of mission to accomplish, and I think that has had a big impact on me.”

Reflecting on his 22 years serving in the military, Solley conceded that in the months following his retirement, he didn’t foresee missing the camaraderie of the military.

“You just don’t make friends like you did when you have those hard and challenging times you go through,” he said.

Now, Solley is working on completing his Ed.D. in curriculum and instruction in the WVU College of Education and Human Services. His research is focused on identifying the traits that student-veterans learned from their military experience that has helped them become successful students.

“It’s been rewarding,” Solley said. “It’s also challenging working full-time and also studying for a doctorate. There’s a lot of homework on weekends and nights.”

Ultimately, he hopes that his research will help veterans become better students by applying some of the lessons they learned in their military service to their academics.

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Chris McCallister

CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 3 (RET) CHRIS MCCALLISTER CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 3 US MARINE 2011 WVU EDUCATION BS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 2019 MS MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING PROJECTED GRADUATION 2020

After 10 deployments spanning across 28 countries, Chris McCallister decided it was time to take on a new challenge.

He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps when he was only a junior in high school. After graduating in 1992, McCallister didn’t waste any time. He left Doddridge County for basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina, to accomplish what he had set his mind to do many years earlier.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do. I didn’t have any other plans,” he said. “From about third grade, I knew I wanted to be a Marine,” he said.

from scout-sniper

to engineer McCallister awaits departure for his first deployment to Iraq at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

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After completing the grueling basic training that only Marines have to endure, McCallister completed his Military Occupations Specialties job training in infantry, the main combat force on the ground.

“It was basically just a bunch of shooting and carrying heavy packs and running around in the woods,” McCallister said. “I think the goal of it is to teach you what a horrible mistake you’ve made. Then you go to your first unit.”

His first deployments proved to be uneventful, first traveling to Okinawa, Japan, with a rifle platoon unit. After six months spent in Okinawa, his unit was deployed to Haiti, serving in Operation Uphold Democracy.

His military career started to intensify when his unit was deployed to protect the U.S. embassy in Liberia, West Africa.

“There was a civil war going on there, so, the ambassador called us in to defend the embassy. It got exciting a few times, but it was mostly just sitting on the rooftops watching the civil war happen,” McCallister said. “It was a warzone.

As long as they didn’t point their guns at the embassy, we didn’t interfere.”

Throughout the next decade, McCallister took on various roles, joining a scout sniper platoon, teaching a mountain scout-sniper course at the Mountain Warfare training center in California, leading sections on several missions during the Iraq War and eventually becoming an infantry weapons officer, also known as a gunner.

Before the invasion of Iraq happened in 2003, McCallister spent four years teaching at Mountain Warfare, training a small group of fellow Marines to ski and rock climb for military purposes. He volunteered to go to the Republic of Georgia to train one of their mountain battalions when the Iraq War began.

“I think one of the biggest things I got out of it was being able to see things all over the world as they really are, not as they look like they are on TV.” —Chris McCallister

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“While I was there during that four months, the invasion of Iraq happened and was over,” he said.

“You know, George Bush was on the aircraft carrier declaring victory and I’m like, ‘I’ve missed the war while I was over here doing this.’ Little did I know that the war was far from over.”

McCallister would be deployed to Iraq three times. First as a section leader in the 81mm Mortar Platoon, providing support to fellow soldiers executing missions on the ground. Then as a section leader for a Mobile Assault Platoon, driving around the Iraqi desert in Humvees looking for explosive devices placed in the road and watching the rivers for suspicious activity.

After 23 years spent serving in the Marines, McCallister’s global travels allowed him to experience the everyday life of different cultures, even in a warzone.

“Even Iraq was beautiful at times, as long as the road doesn’t blow up that day. If you can look past all of that, there’s beautiful stuff everywhere. I’m really kind of lucky I got to see a lot of the world,” he said.

He notes that after a quarter of a century, you’re not the same person at the end. Regardless of whether you’re in the military or not.

“I think one of the biggest things I got out of it was being able to see things all over the world as they really are,” he said. “Not as they look like they are on TV. When you’re watching the news, what you’re seeing may be accurate, but you’re only seeing a small slice of reality.

Drama pays the bills with the media.

“You’re not going to write a story about some guy plowing his field in Iraq, but I saw that every day,” he said. “I saw seven-year-old girls leading donkeys around with huge bales of hay on the top of them. I thought that was really cool.”

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Chris McCallister

“Since sniper school, I’ve always been interested in physics. Once I learned that engineering was really just applied physics ... it was an easy choice.” —Chris McCallister

Chris McCallister participates in a military ski mountaineering instructors course in the Sierra Mountains of California in May 2004.

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He explained that even in a warzone, most of it isn’t war.

“Most of it is just day-to-day activities that people do,” he said. “There are still things that they have to do. It’s definitely not like the movies. As you get older, you’re going to realize that this is just cyclical.”

Today, McCallister is working towards his master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering following the completion of his bachelor’s degree in the same field of study from the Statler College in 2019. Under the direction of Professor Wade Heubsch, he is partaking in critical research efforts for the U.S. Navy.

“It hasn’t been as hard of a transition as you might think, I was kind of worried about being older than everybody, that it would be a big deal and it would be a big barrier, but it wasn’t like that at all,” he said.

He jokingly recounted teaching himself algebra and trigonometry six weeks before he took the SAT. “That was dramatic,” he said.

He admits that he never considered studying engineering in college, but talking to fellow officers in Iraq who had backgrounds in mechanical engineering sparked his interest in the topic.

“Since sniper school, I’ve always been interested in physics. Once I learned that engineering was really just applied physics and talking to the other officers about it, it was an easy choice,” he explained. “I always like to do really hard stuff, and this seemed like the hardest thing I could do.”

For now, McCallister’s primary focus is his education, laying the military chapter of his life to rest.

Sarah Soliman

A career that forged a path to enlisting Sarah Soliman’s journey to becoming a member of the Air National Guard is quite different than other service members. A 2007 biometric systems and computer engineering graduate and Statler College Advisory Committee member, Soliman joined the military on an enlist-to-commission contract on West Virginia Day, June 20, 2018, at age 33, after having the opportunity to work as a field engineer in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

Graduation photo from Officer Training School 2ND LIEUTENANT SARAH SOLIMAN 2ND LIEUTENANT, MARYLAND AIR NATIONAL GUARD 2019 WVU EDUCATION BS COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING/ BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS 2007

Flight 1-13 after an Officer Training School Commander’s Challenge at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

While working out of Iraq and Afghanistan as a traveling technician, Soliman would commute via helicopter from base to base, using biometrics technology to secure the identity of persons coming in and out of the base and provide foundational information to track down high-value targets.

“That experience was incredibly helpful and exposed me to the different military services and what it meant to serve,” she said. “It also exposed me to the language and culture of the military. It really helped set the stage for my future career.”

Soliman was largely inspired by her sister, Becky Campos (née Lovell), who is also a 2008 graduate of the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the West Virginia Air National Guard, to make the final jump to join the military.

Today, Soliman works as a technical analyst for the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that provides public policy research and analysis to a wide range of policymakers, including the United States Armed Forces, in addition to her affiliation as a second lieutenant in the Maryland Air National Guard.

She was selected as part of the first class of 22 fellows in the Air Force Ventures program. As part of the program, Soliman will travel to the San Francisco Bay Area on behalf of the Air Force to shadow a venture capital firm and learn about risk management and investing.

“I’m really looking forward to this year ahead when my military career will start to take shape and I’ll get a better understanding of what roles are needed. The energy, opportunity and room for growth feels a lot like freshman year at Statler,” Soliman said.

Following the conclusion of the program, Soliman will travel to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi to complete a six-month cyber operator training course before returning to the Maryland Air National Guard’s 175th Cyberspace Operations Squadron.

“The career field is changing so much and that’s a part of what makes it so exciting,” she said. “I am going in with the idea that I’m here to learn and I’m here to help shape this career field as it comes together.”

MINOR POLITICAL SCIENCE 2007

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Y,

Stacy Fike

a greater

purpose “Right now, there is a sailor getting ready to start his shift. He is stepping onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and his face is becoming numb because of the cold wind over the bow,” Stacy Fike said as she recalled her time serving in the United States Navy.

“It is dark and he is hoping for moonlight. He is telling himself over and over, ‘Don’t get too close to the edge,’ because of the deep ocean below,” she continued. “He is frantically trying to stay focused, while not getting ran over by an aircraft, or blown over the edge by their exhaust. He is scared, but he is doing it for a greater purpose other than for his own life.”

After serving 23 years in the U.S. Navy as a chief petty officer, Fike wishes that she could do it all over again.

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AEC (AW/SW) (RET) STACY FIKE AEC (AW/SW) US NAVY 2010 WVU EDUCATION BS ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PROJECTED GRADUATION 2021 VFW EDUCATION / POTOMAC STATE COLLEGE OF WVU AA DEGREE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AA DEGREE MATHEMATICS

Fike receiving an award in AS Cubi Pt, AIMD, Philippines.

“I am proud to have served our country,” she continued. “I would do it again if I could, to stand by the sailors who are serving now.

It means a lot to me because of them, my shipmates.”

Being raised in a military family, Fike has called many places home over the years, from Colorado, to Iowa and Missouri. Her career path has been largely influenced by her father and grandfather, along with a desire to do something special and challenging in her life.

“My parents taught my brother and I to be independent and that we could achieve anything we set out to do,” Fike said. “My dad offered to pay for my college, but I told him I would pay for it myself.”

Fike never imagined that she would serve in the Navy for over two decades. She knew that after only two years she could have had most of her college education paid for, but she wanted more of the thrill and adventure that came with being a sailor.

During her tenure, Fike was deployed five times, twice on the USS Enterprise, and once each on the USS Washington, USS Roosevelt and USS Truman.

As an aircraft electrician, she troubleshot and repaired electrical systems for F/A-18 aircrafts. Over the years, she advanced in her career, performing various jobs in various positions. As a maintenance control chief, she was in charge of the maintenance being performed by all squadron personnel.

She also signed the aircrafts ‘safe for flight’ before the pilots could fly them.

Fike being reenlisted in NAS Oceana VA, AIMD.

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Stacy Fike

Thinking back on the years, one particular memory still stands out to her. While stationed in the Philippines working in the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department, Mount Pinatubo erupted, leaving most of the island devastated. She recalled earthquakes rippling through the island every two hours for three days.

“I was scared like never before,” she said. “I lived on the third deck and I started seeing cracks in the walls.

Buildings were caving in because of the weight of the sand. Survival mode kicked in for everyone to find food, water and candles.”

“In the military, people create a special bond, with no regard to age, race, sex or nationality.” —Stacy Fike While reflecting on her service, she expressed that at times being the only female in most commands, she felt as though she would have to work harder to prove herself.

Fike on the flightdeck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise performing an inspection on an F/A-18 aircraft.

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“Really, there are zero prejudices in the military. I was treated the same as everyone else, with respect,” she explained. “In the military, people create a special bond, with no regard to age, race, sex or nationality.”

It is this camaraderie with her fellow sailors that brought her back to the Navy year after year.

After making the decision to retire in 2010, Fike joined the Mountaineer family in fall 2019 to finish an electrical engineering degree she started many years earlier.

“While on sea duty, it was impossible to take college classes because of the deployments,” she said.

“However, I was able to take some classes while on shore duty. So, really, I have been working on this electrical engineering degree for 23 years. I’ll finish what I started.”

Out of all of the positions she could have chosen for her military career, she gravitated towards becoming an electrician.

“I chose to be an electrician, probably because of my grandfather’s influence,” she said. “After he left the Army, he built a television and radio repair shop where he would work long hours and I would watch him using funny gadgets, strange test equipment and weird components. I was fascinated, especially when he built things like solar panels for his house.

“I still have his old test equipment, which is so old it should be in a museum. He had a plethora of electronic TV tubes,” Fike said. “Every time I worked on something with tubes, I was sure to think about him.”

As a non-traditional student, Fike says she faces similar challenges as most others, but that’s not stopping her from continuing to pursue a

passion that she’s embraced for most of her life. “You are never too old,” she said. “Learning is a lifetime journey.”

After graduation, Fike plans to enroll in a master’s program at West Virginia University to study both electrical engineering and mathematics.

“My experience at the Statler College has been wonderful. I received a warm welcome from the College’s veteran’s representatives,” she said.

“I’ve had the opportunity to learn from true professionals, and I’ve met

Stacy, with her husband Blane, and fellow students present a wireless transmission device from a transformer that the group built together.

some extremely smart, talented and hardworking fellow students of whom I have gained a great amount of respect for.”

Her husband, Blane Fike, who served 26 years in the Navy, started this educational journey alongside her. Come spring 2021 they will both have a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

“Blane and I want to work to make a positive impact on the community and to help other students,” she said. “We are enjoying our experience at WVU and feel that any veteran would have a positive experience here.”

Veterans of WVU Members Tyler Baylor, Andrew Chancey, and Amanda Neff perform silent drill for the Marine Corp. 244th birthday.

“Our organization is important because the challenge of a veteran coming back to school is immense. A lot of times veterans go to school with zero support. Our club helps supplement that lack of support with others that know what it’s like to be in that position.”

Veterans of WVU weere recognized at the Veteran’s Appreciation Game.

Logan Sheridan is the current president of the Veterans of WVU organization on campus. Sheridan, a native of Tampa, Florida, is an aerospace engineering graduate student conducting research in astronautics.

For the past nine years, he has served in the United States Air Force, with two deployments taking him to Qatar and Turkey. Today, he serves in the West Virginia Air National Guard.

To Sheridan, the Veterans of WVU organization is a highly valuable resource offered for student-veterans.

“Our organization is important because the challenge of a veteran coming back to school is immense,” he said. “A lot of times veterans go to school with zero support. Our club helps supplement that lack of support with others who know what it’s like to be in that position.”

The organization, which has approximately 25 members, strives to give student-veterans the opportunity to build a network and community with other veterans on campus, while also assisting them with any issues or questions they may have while adjusting to college.

“In our organization, veterans can help other veterans who are going through the same struggles of going to college,” he explained. “The organization also allows studentveterans to socialize, make friends and create a network in their college and within the University.”

The organization holds monthly meetings and various events throughout the year. Sheridan’s favorite event is the Veteran Appreciation Day, where veterans are recognized at a home WVU football game in November.

—Logan Sheridan President Veterans of WVU

TECHNICAL SERGEANT LOGAN SHERIDAN 130TH AIRLIFT WING US AIR FORCE 2016 WVU EDUCATION BS AEROSPACE ENGINEERING 2019 MS AEROSPACE ENGINEERING PROJECTED GRADUATION 2021

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Engineering 360˚

WVU awarded grant for cell and molecular biology and biomedical engineering The biomedical engineering program in the Statler College and the Biomedical Sciences program in WVU Health Sciences received a grant worth over $1.28 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences/National Institutes of Health to support the cell and molecular biology and biomedical engineering postdoctoral training program.

The new program will enhance training of the next generation of scientists in biomedical sciences and biomedical engineering related areas.

“This program is unique and will integrate life science and engineering faculty to provide an unmatched training environment to educate the next generation of students in advancements related to human health,” said Cerasela Zoica Dinu, professor and associate chair of chemical and biomedical engineering.

Career and professional development experiences in communication, collaboration, teamwork, mentoring, networking and leadership will be an integral part of the program.

This new training program is expected to enlarge the recruiting pool of talented students and enhance the attractiveness of WVU and West Virginia. “This new opportunity is expected to foster even stronger interdisciplinary infrastructure between our two campuses, to create new knowledge in areas that impact the health and well-being of West Virginia’s citizens and to alleviate diseases such as diabetes, cancer, addiction, respiratory and heart disease,” emphasized Gene Cilento, professor of chemical engineering and dean emeritus of the Statler College.

The program is a collaboration effort between the Statler College and the WVU School of Medicine and School of Pharmacy.

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BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING PROGRAM

The undergraduate biomedical engineering program is one of the top in the nation after graduating just two generations of students.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which has set the educational standard against which professional engineers in the United States are held for licensure, recently made the designation. The accreditation is proof that a collegiate program has met the standards essential to produce graduates ready to enter the critical fields of STEM education.

Established in 2014, the biomedical engineering degree in the Statler College is the first program in the state to receive this prestigious accreditation. The bachelor’s program focuses on developing the engineering skills of its students and applying them to materials, processes and procedures used in the fields of medicine and biology with the overall goal of improving healthcare.

RECEIVES

ACCREDITATION

“This national and international peer’s recognition of our program quality in terms of its learning outcomes and their implementation is not only a validation of our team efforts but a testimony of the quality of graduates and quality education they receive,” said Cerasela Zoica Dinu, professor and director of the biomedical engineering program. “By promoting excellence in education we not only serve our profession, but ensure the educational growth and lifelong learning experiences for our students to make them active contributors to the society they integrate with.”

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A GLOBAL PLAYER

BRADY

KECOJEVIC

Joshua Brady, interim director of the Department of Mining and Industrial Extension, was selected as the department’s permanent director, effective October 2019.

Vladislav Kecojevic, the Robert E. Murray Chair and Professor of Mining Engineering, has been awarded the Medal of Honor by the president and board of directors of TH Georg Agricola University in Bochum, Germany, for his contributions to strengthen the international academic network in education and research.

“I want to build on our amazing success in serving the great state of West Virginia,” Brady said. “We have expanded our horizon within the mining community across the country and even globally. The West Virginia Manufacturing Extension Partnership is working all over the state to increase productivity, lower costs and increase employee retention.”

Established in 1816, TH Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences is one of the most internationally recognizable institutions in mineral resources engineering. The acclaim recognizes Kecojevic’s contributions and commitments to global engagement and service throughout his career.

Brady has been a member of the extension faculty since 2014, he also directs operations at WVU’s Academy for Mine Training and Energy Technologies, training more than 4,000 miners annually.

He previously served in safety-related positions with Murray American Energy Corporation, CONSOL Energy and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration.

In his nomination of Kecojevic for the award, Jürgen Kretschmann, president of TH Georg Agricola and 2018-2019 president of SOMP, stated, “In the mining academia today, WVU is a global player with an excellent reputation and network. This is without a doubt result of the outstanding efforts of Dr. Kecojevic,” he said. “He is one of the few truly global players in mining academia.”

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AmeriCorps worker joins Statler College enrollment and outreach team

MARINO

A new AmeriCorps VISTA position in the Statler College will assist the office of enrollment and outreach in fulfilling their diversity pledge, which focuses on increasing diversity and retention in the College.

Brooks Marino, a native of Woodbridge, Virginia, holds a B.A. in religion and culture, with a focus in sustainable community development and minors in Appalachian studies and green engineering from Virginia Tech.

His primary responsibilities will involve increasing College-wide diversity, networking with students, parents and alumni to understand where improvements can be made, and conducting research on where the College can expand recruitment efforts of both undergraduate and graduate students.

A NEW RESOURCE FOR SUCCESS

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In September, the Lane Department held a grand opening for its new Learning Center, which is dedicated to providing academic support for students of the Statler College enrolled in foundational courses offered by the Lane Department in the subjects of computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering.

According to Matthew Valenti, professor and interim chair of the Lane Department, the center was created in direct response to students approaching leadership during the previous academic year and recommending that the department provide tutoring support for sophomore-level courses. The students suggested that the tutors be Lane students, since learners feel more comfortable seeking peer-to-peer assistance from other students who recently completed the same classes.

Elaine Eschen, associate professor of computer science, has been named the center’s director and will be assisted by a student manager, Justin Romeo. The center will be staffed by a rotating set of tutors to ensure that at least four highachieving students are always available to assist their peers, with a total of 12 student tutors.

STATLER COLLEGE SELECTS NEW DEAN

PHOTOGRAPH BY MSU

WRITTEN BY KIMBERLY BECKER

Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Maryanne Reed announced the appointment of Pedro J. Mago as the new Glen H. Hiner Dean on January 31. Mago most recently served as department head and PACCAR Chair Professor at Mississippi State University. His WVU appointment will begin July 1, 2020.

“Pedro Mago is exactly the right leader for the Statler College at this time in the life of both the College MAGO and University,” said WVU President E. Gordon Gee. “The College, with its world-changing discoveries, research and innovation efforts, is a key contributor to the economic future of our state and nation. I am confident that under his leadership and expertise he will guide the College to new opportunities and even greater success.”

Mago is currently a tenured professor and head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at MSU, the largest department in the Bagley College of Engineering and the third-largest department at Mississippi State. He served in that role as well as the PACCAR Chair Professor since 2014. Mago also has served as assistant and associate professor;

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director of the Micro Cooling, Heating and Power (Micro-CHP) and BioFuel Center; co-director of the Department of Energy Southeast Clean Energy Regional Application Center; and co-director of the Southeastern Center for Industrial Energy Intensity Reduction, all at MSU. His research area has been energy systems and is currently focused on combined heat and power systems, building energy simulation and waste heat recovery technologies. Mago is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Hearin Faculty Excellence Award at MSU; the 2013 Bagley College of Engineering Academy of Distinguished Teachers Award; and the 2013 Bagley College of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Researcher Award. He also held the Tennessee Valley Authority Professorship in Energy Systems and the Environment from 2010 to 2014.

Mago was named fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2013.

“I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to serve as the next dean of the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources,” said Mago. “I am very impressed with the quality of the faculty, staff and students of the College. I am excited and optimistic about the future of the Statler College, and I look forward to working closely with faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni and community leaders to elevate the College to new levels of excellence, distinction and contributions.”

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Petroleum and natural gas student receives Leah Berhanu Memorial Award WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

WRIGHT

Torey Wright, a sophomore petroleum and natural gas major and Arabic studies minor, has been awarded the 2019 Leah Berhanu Memorial Award by The Thrasher Group.

The award honors Leah Berhanu, a civil engineering student at West Virginia University and Thrasher Group intern, who was tragically killed in an auto-pedestrian accident on February 1, 2018.

“Leah was an intern with Thrasher and her characteristics were just unique,” Wright said. He recalls her sorority passing out wristbands in her honor shortly after the accident that read, ‘Mountaineers take care of Mountaineers’ on one side and ‘Leah’s Legacy’ on the other.

“I would have loved to have met her; I feel like we would’ve crossed paths eventually. For me to be told that I have the same characteristics as someone as amazing as that, there’s no way you can’t meet someone like that,” he said. “It meant everything to me.”

Wright received the award at the Leah Berhanu Memorial luncheon held by The Thrasher Group. The event hosted Thrasher’s summer interns and Berhanu’s family. The award was based on an essay and presentation given by the interns.

Wright earned $1,000 for the award, which he applied to his tuition costs.

An Atlanta, Georgia native, Wright first traveled from his then-home, the United Arab Emirates, to WVU’s campus on a fieldtrip with his baseball team. It was during this visit that he fell in love with the campus and realized that he wanted to become a Mountaineer in the future.

“I always knew that I wanted to be an engineer and WVU seemed to be the right fit,” he said.

During summer 2019, Wright served as a utility division intern in the oil and gas division for The Thrasher Group, where he worked under project manager Tom Marion.

“There are a lot of things that you learn in an internship that you don’t learn in the classroom,” said Wright. “I think that internship was very, very beneficial to me.”

Throughout his internship Wright traveled with his peers to field sites across West Virginia and was exposed to the daily life of an engineer.

“I think getting to meet everybody was my favorite part.

Just making those connections. Getting to meet everybody and being in a positive workplace. I think that was the most important thing for me,” Wright said.

Wright is also a student assistant at the Engineering Learning Center for freshman engineers. In the future he hopes to pursue graduate education and eventually serve as a project manager.

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Music to my Engin‘ears’: WVU engineering student finalist for AES MATLAB Plugin Student Competition

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KOLAR

WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

John Kolar has been playing music since the age of 12. When deciding on a career path, the Morgantown native knew he wanted a career that would combine his love for music with his passion for math and science.

This pursuit led him to West Virginia University to study electrical engineering, music technology and physics — a combination that he hopes will land him a job in the audio industry.

After a summer spent as an applied engineering research intern with the audio equipment company Bose, Kolar put his audio engineering skills to the test by creating an audio plugin for the Audio Engineering Society’s MATLAB Plugin Student Competition.

“The goal of the competition was to create a plugin within MATLAB, a common engineering tool, to create a software package to process audio,” Kolar said.

When analog was commonplace in audio engineering, a plugin was something that would be physically plugged in, but with new advancements in technology, plugins are created and manipulated digitally, Kolar explained.

Kolar named his plugin “The Dynamizer.”

“With this plugin, you can manipulate the volume and specify which frequencies of the volume you’re going to

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manipulate,” Kolar said. “You can also change the tonal characteristics of whatever you want to.”

Kolar submitted his plug in to AES, along with a fiveminute video explaining his software package. He was selected as one of six finalists and traveled to New York City in October to demo his plugin at the AES Pro Audio Convention.

“Talking to all of the other students and judges, getting their feedback, and discussing ideas and the different processes they used to make their plugins was very helpful to me,” Kolar said. “If I was going to go back and do it again, I would do it completely different even with the same project.”

Kolar was awarded honorable mention for his plugin.

This semester, Kolar will be recording a five-song EP with his alternative rock band, Stray Tuesday, for his independent study with Mark Benincosa, instructor of music technology in the WVU School of Music. He will be using his audio plugin to produce the EP. Kolar received funding from the Statler College student engagement opportunity fund, which gives opportunities to students to experience experiential learning, the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and the College of Creative Arts to travel to the convention.

ZANIEWSKI

EMERITUS PROFESSOR PUBLISHES TEXTBOOK ON LONGWALL MINING Syd Peng, the Charles E. Lawall Chair Emeritus of mining engineering, has published a 3rd edition textbook on longwall mining. The new edition builds on previous work by Peng, who wrote the 2nd edition of the textbook in 2006 and summarized longwall mining technology as practiced in the U.S.

For over two decades, John Zaniewski’s research has focused on the needs of West Virginia, specifically towards improving the techniques and technology to create better road conditions in the state.

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ZANIEWSKI RECEIVES ACCOLADE

As the asphalt technology professor in the Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Zaniewski has assisted in the development of many asphalt standards that are used in practice throughout the state and country.

PENG

In acknowledgement of his contributions to the transportation industry in West Virginia, Zaniewski has been named the 2019 American Society of Highway Engineers of North Central West Virginia Honoree of the Year.

To receive one of the top awards in the state of West Virginia for work in transportation, nominees must exhibit exemplary experience in the transportation industry, significant impacts made throughout the state, involvement in professional engineering societies and research performed focusing in highways and transportation.

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A LEADER IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Shahab Mohaghegh, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering, has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence research since before scientists and professionals in the oil and gas industry were particularly interested in the topic.

ADVANCED MANUFACTURING WORKSHOP

Recently, Mohaghegh was presented with the Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers for his pioneering work in the application of AI and machine learning to petroleum and natural gas engineering problems.

MOHAGHEGH

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WVU researchers hosted an industry workshop in December for teachers and professors to learn more about changes in the field of manufacturing.

According to Thorsten Wuest, J. Wayne and Kathy Richards Faculty Fellow and assistant professor of industrial and management systems engineering, a revolution is happening; all the digital devices that we use in our daily lives are making their way to the shop floor.

The award recognizes outstanding achievements in or contributions to the advancement of petroleum engineering in the area of reservoir description and dynamics.

2019 Ruby Fellow

Several instructors and high school counselors from neighboring states attended the workshop. Wuest hoped to change the mindset on advanced manufacturing and prove that manufacturing is not a dangerous, dirty, or loud profession.

Seven students pursuing doctoral degrees at WVU are receiving funding through the Ruby Scholars Graduate Fellows program.

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Nicholas Winch, a native of Walkersville, Maryland, received his bachelor’s degree in engineering from Elizabethtown College. He plans to conduct research on sustainable energy sources, specifically solidstate batteries, with the goal of increasing safety and efficiency while earning his doctoral degree in materials science and engineering at WVU.

“It’s a high-tech workplace and we need to adapt our education system to provide for that workforce,” he said.

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Engineering 360˚

32ND HOANG

PUMPKIN

DILLIE

COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENT NAMED

HOMECOMING QUEEN

Another week of Homecoming activities at West Virginia University culminated with the crowning of Thaiddeus Dillie and Teresa Hoang as the 2019 king and queen.

Selected by their peers during two days of voting, Hoang and Dillie were surrounded by members of the Homecoming Court, the Mountaineer Marching Band along with the Alumni Marching Band, and tens of thousands of cheering fans, including alumni, attending the “Stripe the Stadium” game at Milan Puskar Stadium.

Hoang, from Hurricane, is a senior computer science major with an emphasis in cybersecurity minoring in mathematics and a member of the Honors College. She serves as a student ambassador and teaching assistant for the Statler College and teaching assistant for the Department of Mathematics. Hoang is also an active member of the Student Government Association, Society of Women Engineers and Mountain Honorary. She was sponsored by the Chi Omega Sorority.

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HUNTER TANKERSLEY

ANNUAL

DROP Hundreds of pumpkins plummeted 11-stories from atop the Engineering Sciences Building at the 32nd annual Pumpkin Drop in October. It was team 153 from Doddridge Middle School in West Union that went home with the top honors. Their pumpkin landed just one foot and two inches from the target, earning them the $100 first prize.

Team 140 from Pocahontas County High School in Dunmore finished second, and team 80 from University High School in Morgantown finished third.

287 pumpkins in total fell from the sky, covered in various padding devices and parachutes to soften the impact; however, only 39 pumpkins survived the fall.

BACK-TO-BACK

CHAMPIONS The mine rescue team took home its second-straight first place finish in the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration — 2019 Eastern Collegiate Mine Rescue National Competition.

WVU bested teams from Virginia Tech, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Kentucky to win the event, which was held at the WVU Dolls Run Mine Training Center in Core, West Virginia, on October 26. WVU also won the Combination Team trophy for having the best overall combined score in the Mine Rescue Problem and Smoke Competition, placing first in both.

HUNTER TANKERSLEY

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The team was led by mining engineering major Thomas Wetzel.

Joining Wetzel on the team were Erica McCauley (mining engineering/ geology), Lauren Masterson (mining/civil engineering), Shannon Seitz (mining engineering/geology), Jeremy Diehlmann (mining engineering), Richard Shipe III (mining/civil engineering) and Jay Pollock (mining engineering).

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CHANCE ENCOUNTER FUELS STUDENT’S INTEREST IN FILM PRODUCTION A chance encounter with a production designer and an invitation to assist in the film production of “Feast of the Seven Fishes” has fueled WVU industrial engineering major Anthony Basil’s desire to add film producer to his resumé.

Basil stumbled on the production of the movie on the same day he decided to build a replica of the PRT and drive it across Morgantown while shooting a reaction video. During his travels, he met a production designer who invited him to assist in the film’s art department.

Shortly after he joined the art department, he became intrigued with the concept of producing movies and was promoted to production design intern. He continued to take on more responsibility, including videographer and content editor and post-production. Ultimately, Robert Tinnell, the movie producer, asked him to create a documentary about the making of the movie.

WEST VIRGINIA’S FIRST SPACECRAFT The satellite Simulation to Flight-1 (STF-1), West Virginia’s first spacecraft, is about the size of a loaf of bread, and it’s exceeded all expectations.

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The spacecraft, which was developed by NASA IV&V and carried multiple experiments provided by WVU researchers and alumni, was expected to remain in orbit for only three months; however, it has successfully completed a full year in orbit, collecting data and performing four different experiments.

The team who contributed to the experiments flown on STF-1, organized by the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium, included multiple WVU faculty, students and alumni.

NEW COMMITTEE IN STATLER COLLEGE TO ADVANCE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION EFFORTS WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER ELLIS

The Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University has established a new committee to advocate for the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) of students, faculty and staff in the Statler College.

The announcement, made by Earl Scime, interim dean of the Statler College, illustrates a new path forward for the College as it advances in education and research endeavors.

“By recognizing that our differences are our strengths and actively eliminating barriers that prevent equal opportunity for all persons, our College will promote diversity and equity that transcend social barriers while advancing academic excellence,” Scime said. “I want our College to be a place where we honor the worth of every individual and provide a learning and working environment where all people are encouraged to succeed and excel.”

Including representatives from every academic and extension unit in the College, the committee will serve as a resource for faculty, staff and students to be informed about opportunities and issues related to diversity and to promote and identify barriers to inclusivity across campus.

The committee, led by Cerasela Zoica Dinu, professor of chemical engineering and associate chair of biomedical engineering, will work closely with Meshea Poore, vice president for DEI at WVU. The first priority of the committee is to develop an organizational infrastructure where established procedures and resources are easily accessible to all. Specific efforts will concentrate on recruitment and retention of diverse populations of students, faculty and staff, trainings to increase the understanding and application of DEI concepts, all aimed to foster an inclusive culture and a diverse, thriving community that supports creative accomplishments.

While the College has had several programs in place for both recruitment and retention of undergraduate students, as well as procedural strategies for recruitment of faculty, Scime explained that formalizing the process and establishing this committee will provide an in-house infrastructure that is customized to the College’s needs.

“This will further advance our institutional mission while promoting a both welcoming and respectful academic environment,” he continued.

Throughout the 2019-2020 academic year, the committee has been working with the vice president’s office, faculty senate and DEI initiatives in other colleges at WVU in developing the College’s strategic DEI plan.

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Connecting innovation with education President of Emerson delivers Hiner Lecture Mike Train, president of Emerson, presented “Hype or Hero: How Internet of Things and Digital Transformation are Impacting Industry and Jobs,” in October as part of the Glen H. Hiner Distinguished Lecture Series.

Train began his career with Emerson, the multinational Fortune 500 company that manufactures products and engineering services for a wide range of industrial, commercial and residential markets, in 1991. He first joined the organization as an international planner and advanced to serve in a variety of leadership roles prior to his most recent appointment as the executive president of Emerson’s Automation Solutions business. Now as president of Emerson, he drives the company’s focus on software and digital technology development, major investments, international growth and global shared service organizations.

Following the end of the presentation students were given the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session with Train and Earl Scime, interim dean of the Statler College. The questions covered topics such as incorporating sustainability in business production, leadership skills and best practices and pursuing a passion with engineering.

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GOVERNOR JIM JUSTICE DELIVERS ANNUAL POUNDSTONE LECTURE

Governor of West Virginia Jim Justice delivered the Poundstone Lecture in September as part of the Department of Mining Engineering’s William N. Poundstone Lecture Series at the Erickson Alumni Center.

“Gov. Justice has built a very successful professional career and his presence at this lecture series creates excitement, confidence and curiosity among mining engineering students,” said Vladislav Kecojevic, the Robert E. Murray Chair and Professor of Mining Engineering.

Following the lecture, students and faculty members had the opportunity to

connect with Justice and other industry professionals.

“Giving students an opportunity to connect with the highest office in our state provides reinforcement of the potential that lies ahead,” Kecojevic said. “Having Gov. Justice speak as a Poundstone lecturer acknowledges the importance of mineral resources to the state and recognizes the contribution of the Department of Mining Engineering educating future leaders in this fourth industrial revolution, promoting sustainable mining practices for the state, nation and world.”

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HYPERLOOP TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGIES

Hyperloop One Visit

SCIME

West Virginia has a shot at landing a development center for a high-speed pod-and-tube transportation system, Virgin Hyperloop One. Representatives from the company visited with state and local government officials and researchers from WVU to discuss the possibility of hosting the certification center in West Virginia. Several factors weigh into which state will host the center, including a financial package, available land, proximity to the nation’s capital and local expertise.

Earl Scime, interim dean of the Statler College, and Hota GangaRao, Maurice A. and Joann Wadsworth Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, spoke with Virgin Hyperloop One representatives about the expertise and facilities available in the Statler College that would be beneficial to the production of the innovative transportation system.

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There’s no beauty premium in college football: Aggressive features = higher pay for coaches WRITTEN BY JAKE STUMP

BROWN

Football was never intended to be a beauty pageant, and this study by West Virginia University researchers backs it up.

In fact, if you’re a handsome heartthrob coaching an NCAA Division I team, you might get a penalty flag when it comes to pay.

Using a face recognition and machine learning approach, a multidisciplinary team of WVU researchers found that head coaches with a more aggressive appearance earned a salary premium. More attractive football coaches, on the other hand, faced a salary discount.

football is a very aggressive sport, and an unattractive face might signal mental and physical toughness, viewed as a desirable characteristic in this market,” said Brad Humphreys, economics professor in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics.

And for WVU fans, just because you’re probably already wondering, Neal Brown ranked among the top quarter of attractive coaches.

In recent years, economics research has shown discrimination against unattractive workers. That outcome, called the “beauty premium,” refers to the idea that more attractive people earn a premium in labor markets, specifically in fields involving interpersonal interaction.

PERSINGER

Former WVU football coach Dana Holgorsen was ranked “substantially less attractive.”

“One explanation for the attractiveness discount and aggressiveness premium may stem from that fact that American

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Humphreys wanted to see if this theory applied to college football coaches, who are, in many cases, the face of their university’s sports program.

Traditionally, in studies like this, volunteers are recruited to examine photos and rate each person’s physical attractiveness on a scale, such as from one to five, with five being the most attractive rating.

But as the old adage goes, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and Humphreys wondered if there was a more objective way to conduct the research. He reached out to Guodong Guo, an associate professor at the Statler College, who has extensive expertise in facial recognition and machine learning technologies. Guo has developed algorithms that can predict a person’s body mass index based on a photo.

“The key idea is to analyze the facial attributes by using computational techniques, so that the analysis can be performed in a large scale, avoiding the biases caused by human raters, as well,” Guo said.

The research team, including Humphreys, Guo and graduate students Yang Zhou and Mohammad Iqbal Nouyed, used data from three sources: • Salary information for all NCAA Division I head coaches from 2014-2016.

• Photos of all NCAA Division I head coaches from 2014-2016.

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Adult Faces Database, which contains 10,168 facial photos from the adult U.S. population. This database was utilized to help identify and predict facial characteristics applicable to the coaches’ photos.

“We adopted a learning-based approach, which uses deep neural networks to learn feature extraction from a given set of face photos with the labeling of facial attributes, such as the attractiveness and aggressiveness,” Guo said.

“After learning by the computer, the network can analyze a test face photo, and estimate the related attributes.”

The researchers have decided to not publicly release the full list, as it would likely drum up endless social media debate and controversy, Humphreys said.

But their working research paper mentions a few examples. Tracy Claeys, head coach at the University of Minnesota in 2015 and 2016, has among the lowest attractiveness scores in the sample. On the other end of the spectrum, Tony Levine, then-head coach of the University of Houston, has among the highest beauty scores.

On the aggressiveness scale, John Bonamego, formerly of Central Michigan University, ranks low while Jim Harbaugh, of the University of Michigan, ranks high.

The researchers contend that their study is the first to find evidence of an aggressiveness premium, which can extend economists’ understanding of observable factors influencing labor market outcomes.

The overall results surprised Humphreys, who has studied sports economics, marketing and sports gambling.

“I’ve been interested in this ‘beauty premium’ literature for some time,” Humphreys said.

“You know, ‘it’s not whether you’re really good at your job. It’s just what you look like.’ That actually converts to higher earnings in some labor markets.

“With college football coaching, it’s a highprofile occupation. In most states, the head football coach is the highest paid public employee. And they go into the houses of 18-year-olds trying to convince them to come play football. You’d think being physically attractive would be helpful in those situations, but it’s not.”

HOLGORSEN

A sign that this research is completely unbiased, Guo, the computer scientist, was asked if he knew where Brown and Holgorsen fit on the scale.

“To be honest,” Guo said, “I’m not familiar with those two people.”

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MORALES

In essence, a computer program measured attractiveness and aggressiveness based on certain facial features associated with those

traits. The method identified 68 separate facial landmark points like eyebrows, eyes and lips.

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International Collaborations China

England

A global mindset: new academic program at WVU will encourage cross-cultural collaboration

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Engineering in an unpredictable world: WVU students travel to London to discuss future sustainability of the planet

Billy Fox, an industrial engineering major, and Karoline Edmonds, a computer engineering and biometric systems double major, with David Wyrick, associate dean for academic affairs and professor in the Statler College, at the 2019 Global Grand Challenges Summit in London, England.

Two engineering students had the opportunity to collaborate with students from around the world in an effort to develop creative solutions to solve the most pressing challenges our society will face in the future. The challenges were identified by an international group of leading technological thinkers and determined the topics of conversation at the 2019 Global Grand Challenges Summit in London, England.

Karoline Edmonds, a double major in computer engineering and biometric systems, from Ashland, Kentucky, and William “Billy” Fox, an industrial engineering major with a minor in sustainable design from Glen Dale, West Virginia, traveled to the summit in September and connected with students from the United States, United Kingdom and China.

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Representatives from the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology at the China University of Mining and Technology discuss a possible collaborative academic program with members of the Statler College.

In a major step towards preparing students to succeed in the global market, the Statler College and the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology at the China University of Mining and Technology are teaming up to create a 3+1+1 academic program that will allow eligible students from CUMT to study at WVU. “For undergraduate students at WVU, it will allow them to work closely on projects with Chinese colleagues in their upper division courses,” said David Wyrick, associate dean for academic affairs and professor in the Statler College. “They will develop the global competency skills expected by the industry.”

The academic program is designed to allow students from CUMT to have a yearlong study abroad experience at WVU to complete the requirements of their bachelor’s degree, taking courses primarily in chemical engineering, mining engineering and mechanical engineering. After receiving their bachelor’s degree, which is awarded by CUMT, students will have the chance to apply for the Master of Science in Engineering program offered by the Statler College and complete it in the course of a year.

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Biomedical student awarded Gilman Scholarship to study neuroscience in Denmark ULMAN

A biomedical engineering major who wants to pursue bridging the gap between the technical world and the healthcare sector has been awarded a Gilman Scholarship to study in Denmark.

Hana Ulman, a senior Honors College student from Martinsburg, West Virginia, plans to pursue a doctoral degree in collaboration with the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Center to study the use of computer programming to create predictive models for disease manifestation and treatment.

Denmark

“Throughout my time at WVU, I have been given countless opportunities to expand my love for science and medicine at the Statler College,” Ulman said. “The ASPIRE staff helped me perfect my application for the Gilman Scholarship and provided the guidance and encouragement needed to believe in myself and, now, I have the opportunity of a lifetime to study in a top, internationally-ranked biomedical engineering program.”

Ulman will continue her studies this fall at Aarhus University in Denmark, taking classes in neuroanatomy, neurotransmission and brain disease, statistical analysis of neuroimaging data and data science bioinformatics.

The U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship enables undergraduate students to gain skills that are critical to the country’s national security and economic prosperity while gaining an enriching cultural and career-building experience.

Brazil WVU students to experience global travel, research as part of international partnership

Barbero textbook translated Ever Barbero’s textbook, developed from his graduate-level course on advanced mechanics of composite materials, has been internationally translated. The textbook, “Finite Element Analysis of Composite Materials Using Abaqus,” shows how powerful finite element tools address practical problems in the structural analysis of composites. Barbero, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been internationally recognized for his work on material models for composite systems.

According to Barbero, unlike other texts, this one takes the theory to a hands-on level by actually solving problems.

An international partnership is expanding a gateway of cross-campus collaboration while opening avenues for West Virginia University students to travel, conduct research and explore a global perspective.

Fernando Mezzadri, professor in the department of physical education and pro-rector (provost) of planning, budget and finance at Universidad Federal do Parana in Brazil, met with representatives from the WVU College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences and Fernando Lima, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering in the Statler College and chair of the WVU Brazilian Steering Committee, to foster opportunities for student and faculty partnerships.

“The goal is to hopefully recruit some of students from Brazil to come and study at WVU and to give opportunities to those students and help UFPR set up their Ph.D. program in chemical engineering,” Lima said.

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PROUD OF OUR ALUMNI

Our Alumni

KUTSCH CAMPRIANI

Niccolò Campriani, a 2011 industrial engineering graduate, retired from his successful 16-year rifle career after he won three Olympic Gold medals in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games.

Three years after his retirement, Campriani is coaching a group of refugee athletes who just started a new sport, and helping them qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

In an effort to reconcile with the sport and himself, Campriani set out to help local refuges from his local area, Vaud, Switzerland, and help them reach the minimum qualifying score for the 10m air rifle. He hopes to inspire other Olympians to do the same.

The journey of the three selected refugees is being documented by the Olympic Channel original series “Taking Refuge: Target Tokyo 2020,” which will air in early 2020.

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WVU EXTENSION SERVICE

CAST AND CREW OF BARNWOOD BUILDERS HELP WEST VIRGINIA’S 4-H’ERS

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OLYMPIC CHAMPION COACHING REFUGEES

THE SEEING EYE PRESIDENT AND CEO RETIRES AFTER 13 YEARS Jim Kutsch completed his master’s in computer science at WVU in 1973, and went on to have a highly successful career in telecommunications and as president and CEO of The Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey. Kutsch has officially retired as CEO of the organization, a position he held for 13 years.

The Seeing Eye provides specially bred and trained dogs to guide people who are blind. Throughout his impressive tenure, he led the organization in completing three strategic initiatives to sustain the organization in the future. In honor of him and his wife’s commitment to the organization, the Board of Trustees established the Jim and Ginger Kutsch Fund for Apprentice Development.

The crew from “Barnwood Builders,” led by WVU safety management alumnus Mark Bowe, visited WVU Jackson’s Mill to film an upcoming episode featuring students from the Northern Panhandle. The WVU Extension Service Ohio County 4-H’ers focused on working as a team, honed their critical thinking skills and used their know-how to solve problems.

“I’m really proud of these young people. They give me so much hope for the future. The group did a tremendous job working together to complete various tasks – from start to finish. This was such a great way to give them a hands-on experience that allows them to grow, while making mistakes and solving problems,” Bowe said.

This is a return visit to WVU Jackson’s Mill by Bowe and his crew. In 2018, the Barnwood Builders worked with a team of WVU leaders to construct a new arts and cultural building at the Mill. The project was so successful that he wanted to take it a step further by helping young people gain new perspectives and skills to help them succeed in the future.

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ROSEPILER

WVU alumna Amy Rosepiler, PE joined Burgess & Niple leadership team, being elected an owner of the firm effective January.

Rosepiler began her career with B&N shortly after earning a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in civil engineering from WVU. She currently serves as the director of the Columbus, Ohio, Roadway Design Section and has led numerous complex urban design projects during her 16-year career with the firm. These projects include roadway, complete streets, roundabout and bicycle/pedestrian facility design; aesthetic and utility design coordination; and drainage design. She has been involved in numerous committees, panels and conferences over the course of her career through a number of organizations, including the national Transportation Research Board.

Kerri Phillips, an aerospace engineering alumna, has been inducted into the American Institute of Aeronautics Class of 2020 Associate Fellows. This distinction recognizes individuals who have accomplished or been in charge of important engineering or scientific work, have done original work of outstanding merit or who have otherwise made outstanding contributions to the arts, sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics.

THRASHER NAMED NCAA TOP TEN ATHLETES AND FINALIST FOR NCAA WOMAN OF THE YEAR Former WVU rifle standout and biomedical engineering alumna Ginny Thrasher has achieved numerous accolades following her first place finish in the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Most recently, Thrasher has been honored as one of the 2020 Today’s Top 10 Award winners, chosen from 10 NCAA student-athletes across all sports and divisions, and has been included as one of nine former collegiate student-athletes selected as finalists for the 2019 Woman of the Year Award by the NCAA.

Thrasher capped a brilliant, four-year Mountaineer career with three All-America first team honors in 2018-19, bringing her career All-America count to 12. She won individual national championships in both smallbore and air rifle in 2016, and led West Virginia to two team national championships (2016, 2017), two national runner-up finishes (2018, 2019) and four Great America Rifle Conference Championships. She also earned five individual conference titles.

SPARKS

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CIVIL ENGINEERING ALUMNA JOINS FIRM LEADERSHIP TEAM, ELECTED TO OWNER

The Springfield, Virginia, native is THRASHER the first WVU student-athlete to be selected as a finalist since the award’s inception in 1991. She also is the only rifle athlete among the 2019 finalists and is the only nominee to advance in the selection process not sponsored by their school’s core conference.

The first gold medalist at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (women’s air rifle), Thrasher has competed internationally several times representing the United States. She was the 2016 USA Shooting Athlete of the Year and a 2016 AAU James E. Sullivan Award finalist, as one of the top amateur athletes in any sport. She remains a member of the U.S. National Shooting Team and hopes to compete in the 2020 Olympic Games.

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In Support

WADSWORTH FAMILY MAKES $6 MILLION GIFT WRITTEN BY OLIVIA MILLER

Two loyal alumni have continued their history of giving with a $6 million gift that will expand opportunities for students, increase support for faculty, research and other programs in the Statler College.

In total, the Wadsworths have donated $8 million to the Statler College, along with many decades of service and time to the department and College. To honor their contributions and dedication to the department, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering will be rededicated as the Wadsworth Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Maurice “Moe” Wadsworth, a Clarksburg native who earned a degree in civil engineering from WVU in 1951, is one of WVU’s esteemed alumni. Wadsworth and his late wife, JoAnn, a native of Hagerstown, Maryland, who also graduated from WVU in 1951 with a degree in psychology, met at their freshman mixer in 1947. The pair have been philanthropic supporters of the University since 1976.

“The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering gave me the basic building blocks I needed to be successful in my engineering career,” Wadsworth said. “We are happy to be in a position to give back to the department and support the University.”

The family’s gift will provide resources that allow the department to reach new heights in scholarly and educational excellence. The funding will establish the Maurice and JoAnn Wadsworth Endowed Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, named faculty and graduate fellowships and the Wadsworth Engineering Opportunity Fund. The gift will ensure the department is able to recruit and retain talented and productive professors and researchers while attracting top students.

“This generous contribution made by Maurice and JoAnn Wadsworth to the department will provide our students with an experiential learning platform that will enable them to compete in the fast-paced world of the

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industry,” said Hema Siriwardane, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering. “The gift will also allow us to recognize and retain outstanding faculty members. I am grateful to the Wadsworth family for this transformational gift that will shape the future of the department.”

Between 2005-2016 the family gave significant contributions to establish the Maurice A. and JoAnn Wadsworth Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Wadsworth Graduate Fellowship and the Maurice and JoAnn Wadsworth Civil Engineering Faculty Fellow.

“This is an important gift for the College as we prepare future innovators and leaders in the field of civil and environmental engineering,” said Earl Scime, interim dean of the Statler College. “We are grateful for the generous and visionary support from the Wadsworths.”

After a two-year stint in the Air Force, Wadsworth spent his entire professional career at Gannett Fleming, Inc., in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His dedicated leadership helped build the company into one of the leading planning, design and construction management firms in the nation.

He served as a bridge design engineer, chief computer engineer for the transportation division, director of transportation, senior vice president for administration and president and chairman of the board. At the time of his retirement in 1996, the firm employed approximately 1,500 employees in 25 offices. Wadsworth was a professional engineer in 23 states and has authored numerous papers.

“The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering gave me the basic building blocks I needed to be successful in my engineering career,” Wadsworth said. “We are happy to be in a position to give back to the department and support the University.”

—Moe and JoAnn Wadsworth

MOE AND JOANN WADSWORTH

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In Support

Statler College raised $6,136,750 from 235 gifts!* MATCHED

Statler College

Advisory Committee Match

$16,750

MATCHED Interim Dean Earl Scime’s Student and Young Alumni Dollar-for-Dollar Match

$4,431

Amount Raised Leaderboard 1. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources 2. WVU Extension Service 3. WVU Medicine Children’s 4. HSC Charleston Campus 5 . Chambers College of Business and Economics

$6,098,886.36 $1,351,643.55 $1,213,359.04 $259,950.00 $249,560.77

MATCHED

MATCHED WVU Faculty and Staff

Alumni and Friends Match

Dollar-for-Dollar Match

Industrial and Management Systems Engineering

$15,000 Current Students

$784

$25,000 MATCHED

Leidos Statler College

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Match

MATCHED

$2,200

Dollar-for-Dollar Match

Recent Graduates

First-Time Donor

$10,000 $3,648

WVU raised $11,311,418 from 4,040 gifts *University-wide matching opportunities (not mentioned above) also contributed to Statler College’s success.

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In Memoriam

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Peyton R. Brown, 33, of Morgantown, passed away on September 22. Brown studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at WVU. He served as a corporal in the United States Marine Corps Reserves where he graduated his basic training class as the Honor Cadet. He worked construction for the Mylan Park Aquatics Center, was a licensed West Virginia auctioneer, a certified mechanic and was an emcee for Funomenon Entertainment for 15 years. He is survived by his parents, his sister, Chelsea Brown Prince and her husband Travis, his best friend and companion, Regina Cappellini and numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.

Paul T. Daniell, 60, of Morgantown, passed away on October 12. A native of New York City, New York, he earned both his master’s degree and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from WVU. He worked for Union Carbide and Dow for many years in research and development. After his retirement from Dow, he joined the faculty at DANIELL Marietta College. In 2018, he joined the faculty in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at WVU and was inducted into the Academy of Chemical Engineers Hall of Fame.

Daniell is survived by his wife, Debra, his sons Benjamin and Joshua Daniell, and his stepdaughters Erica Bailey and Amber Rowe.

George Keller, 86, of Charleston, passed away peacefully on October 7. He worked at Union Carbide for 36 years and achieved national and international acclaim for contributions in separation science and catalysis. He was known for mentoring junior scientists and recruiting top-notch engineering students.

KELLER After his retirement from Union Carbide, he and others founded the Mid-Atlantic Technology Research and Innovation Center where he served both on the board of directors and as the chief engineer. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and was recognized as one of the top 100 chemical engineers of the modern era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 2017, he was awarded the Distinguished West Virginian award. Keller was also a member of the Statler College Advisory Board. He is survived by his children, George III, Perry, Karen and Amy, and his grandchildren George Keller IV, Sam Keller, Ella Slack, Keith Holbrook, Laura Caulfield, Michael Bays, Kristen Bays, Amelia Keller, Arlo Bays and Oma Bays.

Emory Kemp, 89, passed away on January 20. A Chicago, Illinois, native, Kemp received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois, a master’s degree from the University of London and a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from the University of Illinois. After completing KEMP his Ph.D., he began teaching at WVU as an associate professor of civil engineering and would later serve as chair of the Department of Civil Engineering. Kemp served as president of the

Vandalia Heritage Foundation, Public Works Historical Society, and Society for Industrial Archaeology; member of the board of directors of the West Virginia Independence Hall Foundation and West Virginia Humanities Council; and a founder of the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Janet Kemp, his children, Mark Kemp, Geoffrey Kemp and Alison Anderson, his grandchildren, Paul Anderson, Colin, Mairwyn and Sayward Kemp and Adrienne, Max and Josie Kemp-Rye and cousin John Kemp.

Jerry LeMasters, 79, passed away on January 18. LeMasters held a degree in chemical engineering and United States Army Services from WVU. His career began at Firestone International Company, where he enjoyed a 44-year career. LeMasters retired from material development at Bridgestone Akron Technical Center in 2009. He was a member of the GumDippers and the Herzo Base Survivors following his time spent on a military base in Germany while serving in the U.S. Army. LeMasters is survived by several nieces, nephews and great- and great-great nieces and nephews.

Steven Ray Musgrove, 65, of Fairmont, passed away at his home surrounded by immediate family on September 15, after a courageous battle with cancer. A native of Bethesda, Maryland, Musgrove held a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from WVU. Formerly employed at U.S. Steel, Eichleay Engineering and Doddridge Controls, he was a lead engineer, designing and implementing computer technology and overseeing various projects. He is survived by his sisters, Debra Kay Hetrick and Lisa Fay Treadway and her husband Tim, and niece, Kaelin Rae Hetrick, of Fairmont.

Roger D. Radcliff, 63, passed away on July 5. A native of Huntington, Radcliff received his Ph.D. from the Statler College. As professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science at Ohio University, Radcliff served as associate dean of the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, associate chair and graduate chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, director of the Ohio Space Grant Consortium, a NASA Summer Faculty Fellow and longtime adviser for the Society of Women Engineers. As a professor for 30 years, he made his students his top priority. He is survived by his daughter Mallory Ann Radcliff, his mother Mary Radcliff, his sister Becky Vilseck, his niece Jessica Cisco, his nephew Jonah Vilseck and three great-nieces and nephews.

Keith Stanek, 77, passed away on September 30. Stanek grew up in the Chicago area and earned a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology. After teaching at ITT for two years, he spent 10 years as a professor at WVU where he received an Outstanding Teaching Award. At WVU, he was instrumental in gaining national recognition for the College as a research center. In 1980, he was named head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Tech. He later would take a similar position at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Mary Sandra, five children, eight grandchildren and one greatgrandchild.

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BENJAMIN M. STATLER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND MINERAL RESOURCES

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National Academy

Thompson named Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors Greg Thompson, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, which is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.

Thompson, a member of the Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions, has led research in the areas of heavyduty diesel engine emissions, mechanical design and thermal system design.

“It was within this research conducted through CAFEE that created the environment where lessons would be learned and later applied to the application of the technology used to measure in-use emissions from mobile sources,” Thompson said. “Our initial research provided a building block for commercial systems to measure emissions from mobile systems and ultimately led to the systems utilized to discover the high-emitting Volkswagen diesel vehicles.”

Thompson also created a sensor pod for the Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport craft that can be adapted to other aircrafts. The pod allows for a suite of sensors to be deployed out of the back of the aircraft without modifying the air frame and can be used to detect objects, such as when you are looking for a lost person.

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“The nomination as an NAI Fellow was an unexpected pleasure,” said Thompson. “I am appreciative for the recognition from the NAI and look towards continuing to advance the development of intellectual property.”

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2020

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ENGINEERINGWV MAGAZINE

SPRING

THOMPSON

INTRODUCING THE

STEMzone

AT THE STATLER COLLEGE

The STEMzone is a bright, visually-stimulating space where students have access to items such as hand tools, 3D printers, Legos, STEM kits and more.

This new creative, collaborative space covers the growing needs in K-12 STEM education and outreach has opened in the Statler College and is the first of its kind on the WVU campus.

“With the STEMzone being opened, we can now host groups of up to 35 people in a space where we can focus, have uninterrupted learning and work in teams.”

—Cate Schlobohm, Statler College Outreach Coordinator The space will also be utilized by student organizations to host seminar speakers and meetings in a fun, creative, non-classroom setting.

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For inquiries or events contact: Cate Schlobohm / (304) 293-0399 cate.schlobohm@mail.wvu.edu www.statler.wvu.edu/outreach

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BENJAMIN M. STATLER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND MINERAL RESOURCES

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Non-Profit Organization US Postage PAID Morgantown, WV Permit No. 34

ENGINEERING W E S T

V I R G I N I A

West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources PO Box 6070, Morgantown, WV 26506-6070 Address service requested

ORDER OF THE ENGINEER AND THE PLEDGE OF THE COMPUTING PROFESSIONAL

CEREMONY

Open to all engineering and computer science alumni and professionals The Order of the Engineer and Pledge of Computing Professionals establishes responsibility in the engineering profession by pledging to adhere to and uphold a set of ethical and moral behaviors throughout the duration of their career in an engineering or computing-related field.

Ceremony Event/Date/Time: Wednesday, May 13, 2020, at 3:30 p.m.

Erickson Alumni Center Morgantown, West Virginia Check-in 3 p.m.

Attendance is mandatory.

One-time fee of $25 for each event.

Register online or for more information visit: orderofengineer.eventbrite.com and/or pledgecomputing.eventbrite.com No annual dues.

Please include ring size for little finger on working hand upon registration.