PIRE Grant Allows UNM Researchers to Study the Chemistry of Biomass

8-11-08 --Abhaya Datye, director, Center for Microengineered Materials, is leading an international team of researchers and students studying large-scale chemical catalysis of biomass materials into fuels, chemicals and materials. Students and researchers working with Datye are investigating how biomass is broken down into chemical components while also looking for ways to convert some of those components into useful products efficiently.

“Biomass is a distributed resource and provides a pathway to capture the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere,” Datye said. “If we could convert this renewable resource into chemicals and fuels cleanly and efficiently, we may be able to find a long term solution to our energy and materials needs. The scope of the problem is such that it demands an international partnership.”

Datye, who came to UNM in 1984, is a respected researcher in the catalysis community. He is a pioneer on heterogeneous catalysis and catalyst imaging. His seminal research on catalyst imaging has provided critical information that forms the foundation of the field.

This is the first year of a $2.5 million, five-year Partnership for International Research and Education Grant (PIRE) funded by the National Science Foundation to foster new international research partnerships and provide international education opportunities for students.

UNM is the lead institution for the grant, which includes the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, University of Virginia, Technical University of Denmark, the Fritz Haber Institute and the Institute for Colloids and Surfaces of the Max Planck Society in Germany, and Haldor Topsoe A/S, Denmark, a large Danish catalyst company.
The program allows 12 graduate students and four undergraduate students from the U.S. to spend up to one semester at the partner institutions in Germany and Denmark.

Although the research program is still being developed, three specific projects have already been defined. The first two projects will focus on hydroxymethylfurfal (HMF), a compound formed during the selective catalytic conversion of sugars. HMF has the potential to serve as a replacement for the petroleum-based building blocks that are currently used in the production of plastics and fine chemicals.

In one project, the team will study the downstream conversion of HMF to useful products. In the second project the team will study the selective conversion of HMF and its derivatives under oxidizing conditions. This project will focus on gold catalysts for oxidation of HMF and its directivities to high-value organic acids.
The third project is conversion of biomass into materials, providing an opportunity to reverse negative environmental effects of burning fossil fuels. The project builds on the work done by UNM’s partners in Germany on conversion of biomass into carbon-based materials.
This release was based on an article by Megan Fleming for “UNM Engineering”, a semiannual publication of the UNM School of Engineering.

Julia Fulghum Appointed as Interim Vice President of Research

4-17-08 -- UNM President David J. Schmidly has appointed Julia E. Fulghum as the interim vice president for Research. Fulghum currently serves as the chair of the UNM Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department.

"Julia has proven herself to be a great asset to the University of New Mexico as an outstanding professor and administrator," said Schmidly. "I think she will serve the campus well in this role and I look forward to working with her as we continue to improve the research programs and services at UNM."

Fulghum says she looks forward to serving in the interim position and has the immediate priority to work with colleagues across campus to facilitate all aspects of on-campus research and also to extend collaboration with UNM’s external partners.

An acting chair will be appointed for the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department; however Fulghum said she plans to remain involved in departmental activities and to return to the department when the current search for a permanent vice president for Research is complete.

Fulghum joined the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Department in 2002, coming in as department chair. She had previously been a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kent State University.

Her research interests include materials characterization with an emphasis on multi-technique correlation and multivariate analysis for non-destructive evaluation of heterogeneous samples using XPS,TOF-SIM, AFM, FTIR, and Confocal microscopy.

Fulghum received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry in 1987 from the University of North Carolina.

El-Genk Appointed Fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety

4-9-08 -- UNM Regents’ Professor of Chemical, Nuclear and Mechanical Engineering Mohamed S. El-Genk has been elected fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety. El-Genk is also the founding director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at UNM.

El-Genk serves on the IAASS Academic Committee to develop international education and training programs in collaboration with other universities in the United States and internationally in the areas of space power and propulsion technologies and the advancement of space safety.

IAASS is a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering international cooperation and scientific advancement in the field of space systems safety and is a member of the International Astronautical Federation.

New Equipment Brings Nanomachining and Nanofabrication Capability to New Mexico

1/1/07 -- A grant of more than $750,000 from the National Science Foundation will allow the purchase and installation of a new focused ion beam system for nanofabrication and nanomachining of materials in the Electron Microbeam Analysis Facility in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences on the UNM main campus. The new instrument will vastly aid research and allow for the development of new courses.

The microscope will be regularly used by more than 50 professors from five departments at UNM, from New Mexico State University and New Mexico Tech. It will be available to other collaborators in academia and industry.

A team of researchers at the Center for Microengineered Materials led by Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Abhaya Datye, Professor of Mechanical Engineering Zayd Leseman, and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Adrian J. Brearley, worked together on the grant proposal, which will directly benefit several departments.

Technical Capabilities and Uses

The dual focused ion beam system consists of an electron optical column for imaging (an environmental scanning electron microscope or ESEM) and an ion column that is used for nano-scale machining. The instrument is equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) system for microanalysis, and an electron back-scatter detector (EBSD) to obtain diffraction patterns of the sample. This combination of capabilities will enable research projects in materials science, engineering, and Earth and planetary sciences.

Faculty in Chemical Engineering will be able to study advanced catalysts for energy conversion and pollution control, durable fuel cells and defect free Ge/Si for low-cost photovoltaics. Other projects will include novel microfluidic devices, ion channels with potential use in DNA sequencing, cell-surface interactions in bio-films and aerosol derived particles for drug delivery.

Electrical Engineering faculty will use the instrument for increasing efficiency of lasers and infrared radiation detectors and to made advances in epitaxial growth of lattice-mismatched materials.

Civil and Mechanical Engineering faculty will use the instrument to improve understanding of scale effects on mechanical properties, particularly at the nanoscale and to enable research of the mechanics of grain boundary sliding and photonic band gap materials as sensors to detect damage in critical facilities.

Research by Faculty in Earth and Planetary Sciences includes studies of deformation and metamorphism in high-pressure metamorphic rocks formed during continental collisions and the nature of fluid/rock interactions in the Earth's upper mantle. This research is essential for understanding the geochemical interactions between crust and mantle. Detailed studies of magnetic carriers in rocks will improve researchers' ability to understand the paleomagnetic record that is necessary for constraining the tactic evolution of complex geologic terrains around the world.

In addition the instrument will transform the ability of researchers to study site-specific regions of the earliest solids formed in the solar system and found in carbonaceous chondrites and comet particles returned by the NASA Stardust mission. The samples will be characterized structurally, chemically and isotopically to study their complex formational and thermal histories.

More information about the instrument and research is available by contacting Abhaya Datye (505) 277-0477; email datye@unm.edu or Zayd Leseman (505) 277-4940; zleseman@unm.edu or Adrian Brearley at (505) 277-4163; brearley@unm.edu.

Space Conference Celebrates 25 Years

Space Technology & Applications International Forum meets February 10-14, 2008

2/12/08 -- They’ve dreamed about space exploration since they were kids. Now many of them sport grey hair. Still dreaming about space, the men and women who do serious space research for private companies and the federal government come every winter to Albuquerque to talk about what’s new, what’s hot, who’s got research money, and how they can get involved in the most interesting projects.

They’ve made the pilgrimage for the past 25 years because the UNM School of Engineering’s Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies puts on a conference that encourages the disparate groups involved in international space efforts to sit down, talk and think about the huge technical challenges facing the human race as it prepares to move beyond the planet Earth.

It is neutral ground for the companies and agencies that compete for the increasingly scarce research money for space projects, a chance to catch up with the latest thinking in the field, and the newest projects. This year more than 500 people are in Albuquerque to spend most of the week talking about space.

The topics range from complex presentations on thermal control in spacecraft through ways to make a business case for generating electricity from solar power on the moon. The scientists examine the latest proposals for operating systems on space vehicles and discuss how to build sustainable living modules on the moon. For the adventuresome, a series of discussions called “Other Concepts and Theories” will feature presentations about the theory of faster than light space travel or the idea of space travel via black holes.

One part of the conference features a space design competition for middle school and high school students. The class project winners this year came from the 6th grade at Madison Middle School in Albuquerque. Individual winners are Shannon Archuleta from Eisenhower Middle School and Sam Pedrattin from Albuquerque High School. The conference is held February 10-14, 2008 at the Hotel Albuquerque. More information is available at http://www.unm.edu/~isnps/staifhome.html.

Professor Abhaya Datye Receives National Science Foundation Award

10/29/07 -- UNM Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Abhaya Datye has received the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center award for 2008.

"Dr. Datye's leadership has resulted in a number of critical research initiatives that have improved the department's visibility and facilitated the hiring of talented junior faculty," said Julia Fulghum, chair of the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering. "He has led the development of the new Nanoscience and Microsystems program, which has an impact not just on UNM, but on the state."

The Ceramic and Composite Materials Center is a collaborative effort with Rutgers University and Penn State University. The Center was established in 1989 at UNM and Datye served as the director from 1994 - 2007.

At UNM, it is the hub of materials research, providing support for characterizations facilities and strong involvement in educational programs such as the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU), the Nanoscience and Microsystems (NSMS) degree program and Integrated Graduate Education Research and Training (IGERT).

Nano Cafe Debuts

10/22/07 -- Interested Faculty and Staff members are invited to an informal gathering of people interested in nanoscience on Thursday, October 25th from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. in room 106 of the Faculty Club at 1923 Las Lomas NE.

The Nano Cafe will provide an opportunity for the Nanoscience community to exchange ideas in an informal atmosphere, and to present research findings with plenty of time available for in-depth discussions.

We plan short talks by faculty, students, and invited guests, followed by a social hour. Refreshments and light hors d'oeuvres will be provided.

The Nanoscience and Microsystems (NSMS) degree program and Integrated Graduate Education Research and Training (IGERT) program is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

For more information, please contact Abhaya Datye at 277-0477 or Heather Armstrong at 277-6824.

UNM School of Engineering Professor, Student Present Work at Workshop in China

8/13/07 -- Engineering graduate student Elise Switzer and her advisor Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Professor Abhaya Datye have returned from a professional workshop on Heterogeneous Catalysis and Surface Chemistry conducted at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics is Dalian, China.

The conference focused on heterogeneous catalysis, which plays a central role in all chemical conversions. Catalysis is so pervasive in modern day chemistry that it is estimated that 60 percent of today's chemical products and 90 percent of current chemical processes are based on catalytic chemical synthesis.

An example of a heterogeneous catalyst we use every day is our car's catalytic converter which takes toxic pollutants caused by combustion such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide and hydrocarbons and quickly converts them to harmless gases like carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The process is so central to modern day chemistry that it is widely estimated that 60 percent of today's chemical products and 90 percent of current chemical processes are based on catalytic chemical synthesis.

Switzer, who received a scholarship to attend the workshop, presented her research on "Nanostructured Catalysts for Direct Methanol Fuel Cells." Datye gave an invited lecture on the "Dynamics and Mobility of Nanoparticles in Heterogeneous Catalysts." The workshop also included presentations from American and Chinese scientists representing both public and private institutional research.

"The U.S. China workshop provided a unique opportunity for us to see first hand some of their capabilities in science and technology," said Datye. "We came back truly impressed by their infrastructure and scope of research being conducted at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. The visit will pave the way for future collaborations."

Following the workshop, students from the Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) Electron Chemistry and Catalysis at Interfaces (ECCI) program of the University of Santa Barbara led a tour to business and industrial regions of Shanghai and Beijing. The tour featured technology centered corporations including Microsoft, Kodak, BASF, General Electric, Accelergy and the Beijing office of the National Science Foundation.

The PIRE program of the National Science Foundation aims to enrich global experiences in interdisciplinary research for U.S. students.

Professor Finds Innovative Solution to Mixing Fluids in Very Small Channels

3/27/07 -- Every cook has a blender to mix ingredients for dishes, but no one has a gadget to separate materials that have already been mixed into a batter. Now a University of New Mexico School of Engineering professor and his collaborators have figured out a way to both mix and separate on an extremely small scale.

UNM Assistant Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Dimiter N. Petsev is working with Suk Tai Chang from North Carolina State University, Vesselin N. Paunov from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom and Orlin D. Velev from North Carolina State University to develop ways to manipulate the components in fluids moving through channels less than half a millimeter wide.

They do it by manipulating electrical fields of alternating and direct current. In their experiments, the fields caused semiconductor diodes to act as self-propelling particles through water in the channels. The direction of the flow is controlled via the electrical field. Details of the experiments have just been published by the journal "Nature Materials".

Petsev believes one interesting potential application for the research will be a faster way to separate proteins in fluid samples to help diagnose diseases. A change in the amounts of some proteins produced in the body can signal changes in the health of an individual before symptoms of a particular disease can be identified. If proteins can be easily separated, it could facilitate rapid diagnosis.

The research applies to mixing components in fluids as well as separating them. Mixing fluids in channels smaller than the tip of a ballpoint pen is difficult, but this research illustrates a way to do that in a very controlled way.

Petsev's research may also allow him to design a sort of pump to move the liquids through the microchannels for a variety of other applications. It's a new development in microfluidics that holds some interesting possibilities for the future.

Petsev's research is funded by the National Science Foundation's Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) and Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) programs.

High School Students Learn About Broken Hearts from Bioengineering Outreach Program

2/27/07 -- Albuquerque High School students are literally learning about broken hearts when School of Engineering students and professors meet with them to talk about tissue engineering.

Students hear a short talk from Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Assistant Professor Heather E. Canavan. Then they touch and interact with implants such as pacemakers.

Canavan gives the students a short "Name that Implant" quiz. The winners will be invited to tour the laboratories at the Center for Biomedical Engineering at UNM, and two or three students will have the opportunity to work in mentored research positions at the university this summer. For more information, see Heather Canavan's outreach site:
http://www-chne.unm.edu/testche/faculty/canavan/lab%20site/outreach/home.htm

The project is funded by the National Science Foundation's program on Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials and is a collaboration with Harvard University, Albuquerque Public Schools, the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute and UNM.

Civil Engineering Students Assessing Pavement on NM Highways

Everyone who drives down a New Mexico highway makes snap assessments of the condition of the pavement, but this summer teams of undergraduate students from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University are examining every mile of every highway in the state. UNM civil engineering teams are evaluating roads in the northern half the state, while NMSU teams are taking the southern half.

The students work a four-day, 40-hour week on contract from the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The teams make careful evaluations of alligator cracking, potholes, crumbling edges or whether heavy trucks have worn ruts into the asphalt. They stop at every milepost and evaluate pavement distresses for one-tenth of each mile.

NMDOT Pavement Preservation Engineer Robert Young said the $15 billion investment in pavement on state highways is the single largest material asset owned by taxpayers and the department works hard to keep it in good shape. For the students, it’s meticulous, time-consuming work and by the end of the summer, the teams will have evaluated 16,000 miles of pavement.

Graduate Research Assistant Ray Waggerman, who correlates the written records and data files, manages five UNM pavement evaluation crews. He also handles expense reports and other record keeping to send current data files to Santa Fe weekly. In addition, he writes the annual report UNM will send to the NMDOT this fall.

“Many of our students are working their first summer job, and they have to learn how to keep expense reports and manage their time,” Waggerman said. “We also do quality assessment of their work.”

For Young, the payoff is in training a new generation of engineers to take responsibility for state highways, but there is also a financial benefit to taxpayers. The contract with the universities is about half the cost of hiring a private contractor to do the work.

UNM Researchers Collaborate on Flood Control and River Restoration Projects

Every time there’s a hard rain on Albuquerque’s west side, tons of dirt and rock wash down the Calabacillas Arroyo and into the Rio Grande. The sediment deposits narrow the 600-foot river bed down to 300 feet and force water to flow harder and faster through the river – a change in flow that interests the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Photo: Research Scientist Christian LeJeune (in cap) demonstrates ground water sampling.

The Corps of Engineers is responsible for flood control on the river, and it also has the job of restoring the vegetation in wooded areas along the banks. Sometimes the two jobs collide, so the Corps of Engineers has turned to the University of New Mexico to find answers. Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Julie Coonrod oversees five contracts for research on a variety of projects.

The Corps of Engineers is currently looking for scientific guidance about how to design projects that encourage native vegetation, control erosion and direct flood waters in a beneficial way. In research terms, that means breaking up the complex question into specific projects.

Monitoring for Erosion
Civil Engineering Professors John Stormont, Coonrod and Earth and Planetary Sciences LiDAR lab director Tim Wawrzyniec along with Research Scientist and recent UNM graduate Jed Frechette are working on a project to monitor bank erosion. They use erosion pins and LiDAR scanning to collect data on the geometry of the banks. The information will be used to predict what will happen to the banks under various conditions, such as the removal of some non-native plant species.

Evaporation and Restoration in the Bosque
Biology Professor Cliff Dahm, is leading the project to map the amount of water released into the air from the plants along the river, a process called evapotranspiration. Biology Research Scientist Jim Thibault and Research Assistant Professors James Cleverly and Kristin Vanderbilt work with Dahm, maintaining databases containing daily evapotranspiration and water table measurements.

As part of the project they are exploring how a wildfire in June 2006 affected the evapotranspiration rates and water table in the Albuquerque area. A separate part of the project also measures evaporative losses from sand in both wet and dry conditions.

Monitoring Sediment
If you drive over the Alameda Bridge in Albuquerque, you can watch sediment build into small islands just upstream of the new diversion dam. The dam was installed to draw water from the river and treat it to be used as drinking water. If you watch over time, you can see the sediment islands build up and wash away as the operators of the collapsible dam carefully manipulate it to move the sediment build-ups down river.

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Associate Professor Grant Meyer and Ph.D. student Ben Swanson are documenting the way the sediment moves down the Rio Grande with aerial photography. They are looking at photos from 1985 through 2006 and graphing ways the river responded to both natural and man-made changes as it flowed through Albuquerque.

This piece of the puzzle will provide information about how sediment affects the efforts to restore the natural flood plain. They are also doing a similar analysis on the Chama River, a simpler system with fewer of the variables that make the Rio Grande so difficult to study.

Ground Water/Surface Water Interaction
Biology Research Professor Emeritus Clifford Crawford established the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program in the Rio Grande Bosque in the 1980s. The long-term project monitors ground water near the river in the bosque through the central Rio Grande valley.

A project involving Crawford, Stormont and Coonrod along with Research Scientist Christian Le Jeune is measuring ground water levels. Graduate student Isaiah Pedro completed detailed soils analyses near each well.

The project also evaluates the health of the riparian ecology in the vicinity of the new Albuquerque/Bernalillo Water Authority Dam in Albuquerque’s North Valley. The Water Authority will soon begin diverting water from the river into a treatment system and graduate student Kelly Isaacson is working on a computerized terrain model tying river flow and ground water depths together.

“We’re working on some visualization tools that show how the flow rate in the river controls the depth of the river in that reach, and how that controls the depth of the groundwater,” says Coonrod. The project will continue after the regular diversions begin and they will be able to determine what impact the water diversion is having on ground water and the riparian forest ecology in the vicinity of the dam.

All the projects provide information that will be used to update and refine models that analyze the way the Rio Grande changes as the seasons, and human impacts alter the way the water flows through the Albuquerque reach of the river.

The models can be used by various state and federal agencies as they prepare flood and restoration projects. Currently 11 faculty members from three departments and a number of graduate students are working on the projects. Their work will continue into 2009.

UNM Civil Engineering and the Alliance for Transportation Research Sponsor Paving and Transportation Conference

12/17/07 -- Engineers and paving professionals will meet on Jan. 7, 2008, to discuss unconventional intersections, street redesign in Albuquerque, pavement problems and solutions, and rail transport issues. The 45th Annual Paving and Transportation Conference will explore the many technical issues involved with transportation in the southwest at the Marriott Pyramid North Hotel and Convention Center in Albuquerque.

The conference features a keynote speech by the Federal Highway Administration Director Butch Wlaschin titled "A Sense of Urgency: America 's Aging Infrastructure." Other speakers include New Mexico Secretary of Transportation Rhonda Faught and Rio Rancho Zoning and Planning Commission Chairman Pat D'Arco.

Conference attendees can participate in technical sessions ranging from alternative funding strategies to concrete and asphalt pavement performance, design and evaluation. A vendor's area in the hotel's atrium will display a range of transportation related products and services.

Online registration forms and a detailed program are available at: http://www.unm.edu/~civil/. For more information, please contact Program Committee Chair, Jim Brogan at (505) 277-1314 or jbrogan@unm.edu

New Study Finds Climate Change to Reduce New Mexico's Supply Water

Costly impacts foreseen for state's economy and agriculture

10/24/07 -- Researchers at New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico today released a new study finding climate change will result in decreased water availability in New Mexico's Rio Grande Basin, cutting the state's water supply and hurting its economy and agriculture.

Photo: UNM Civil Engineering Professor Julie Coonrod discusses a new study on climate change at the Rio Grande during a press conference Tuesday.

The two researchers, NMSU Agricultural Economics Professor Brian Hurd and UNM Civil Engineering Professor Julie Coonrod, note a wide range of climate models predict warmer weather and a change in precipitation patterns in New Mexico, changes the new study finds will lead to a decrease in water supply ranging from a few percent to a one-third in the Rio Grande Basin.

Such water supply reductions will have a significant impact on New Mexico 's economy. The study used a middle scenario of greenhouse gas emissions growth over the 21st century and examined a wide range of potential changes in temperature and precipitation.

"Direct and indirect economic losses are projected to range from $13 million to $115 million by 2030 in the state of New Mexico, and from $21 million to over $300 million by 2080," said Hurd, who has studied climate change and its economic effects for more than a decade. "Traditional agricultural systems and rural communities are most at risk, and may need transitional assistance."

Much of New Mexico 's surface water comes from snowmelt high in the mountains. Warmer temperatures could create a shift in precipitation patterns, leading to more rain and less snow. That would mean less water stored as snow pack and available after snowmelt for rivers and reservoirs, especially during the peak irrigation season in late summer.

Additionally, warmer temperatures translate to earlier seasonal snowmelts. That means the water that makes it to the reservoir has more time to evaporate before it is released to agriculture downstream.

"Purely economic figures don't tell the whole story," said Hurd. "Unfortunately, what we leave out of our analysis might ultimately prove more valuable to our environment, our identity, and to the character of New Mexico."

* Hurd and Coonrod say water supply losses will not only shrink crop acreage and production but could irreversibly alter New Mexico 's landscape and rural character.

"Irrigated lands support more than crops," Hurd said. "They provide habitat for wildlife, open space and scenic vistas for the backdrop to New Mexico 's thriving art, tourist and recreation economies." In addition, the researchers warn of the effects warming and drying would have on New Mexico's forests, rangelands and water quality, including heightened frequency and severity of wildfires, reduced forage for both livestock and wildlife and reduced water quality.

With decreases in available surface water coupled with rising urban populations, Hurd believes pressure to buy water from farmers will intensify. "Water prices will inevitably rise and farmers will find it more lucrative to lease or sell their water than to farm." He also believes clarifying water rights and improved measurement will allow farmers to more profitably manage their water, leading to greater efficiency and mitigation of some of the farm-level economic losses.

"This is something that has already been happening in the state," Hurd said. "Climate change will only make hasten water transfers."

Hurd and Coonrod say with more people and less water in New Mexico 's future, the patterns of water use will either have to be reorganized, or the state risks significant disruption in the services provided by water resources. The research was funded by the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy.

The study is available online at: http://agecon.nmsu.edu/bhurd.

Civil Engineering Professor Receives Distinguished Service Award

10/17/ 07 -- Professor of Civil Engineering James D. Brogan has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Western District of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE is an international association of transportation professionals and has more than 25,000 members worldwide.

Brogan has been a member of the institute for 35 years. He has chaired UNM's Paving and Transportation Conference for the past 20 years. That conference provides the latest information about paving materials, highway planning and design, and mass transportation in a setting that focuses on local and state needs.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities at UNM where he is a tenured professor, Brogan also is the director of the Alliance for Transportation Research Institute.

CE Chair Will Head Aerospace Division of American Society of Civil Engineers

Professor and Chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering at UNM's School of Engineering Arup Maji has been appointed to chair the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The Aerospace Division of ASCE represents more than a thousand members who work in the aerospace sector.

In his new position Maji will oversee the ASCE technical committees on Advanced Materials and Structures, Aerodynamics, Dynamics and Controls, Space Engineering and Construction and Field Sensing and Robotics. Maji says "The ability to address technical needs of the aerospace sector demonstrates the versatility of the civil engineering profession."

He points out that many of the engineers in the aerospace sector; especially the experts in structures and mechanics are civil engineers by basic training. This sector also includes experts working on construction, architecture and habitat for space exploration along with multidisciplinary technologies on life-support systems, space commerce and remote sensing.

This year those committees will be involved in publishing technical reports on "Wind Engineering in Urban Aerodynamics" and "Response of Structures and Materials to Shock and Blast." The society will also organize its biannual international conference, Earth and Space 2008 in Long Beach, California.

Maji has been a UNM faculty member for 18 years. His research interests include precision composite structures for spacecraft components and space based imaging, experimental study of debris transport phenomena in nuclear power plants, smart systems for structural monitoring and application of fiber reinforced plastics for reinforcement and blast mitigation.

Maji holds a B. Tech with honors in civil engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India. He received his M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Miami and his Ph.D. in structural engineering from Northwestern University.

CS Research in the Spotlight

Congratulations to UNM PhD students Navin Rustagi and Amitabh Trehan whose paper, "The Forgiving Tree: A Self-Healing Distributed Data Structure" was accepted at the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2008) conference. PODC is the preeminent conference in distributed computing, with an acceptance rate around 15%. This paper, which was joint work with Thomas Hayes and Jared Saia, describes algorithms to ensure that a network keeps a small diameter, even if an adversary continually deletes nodes in the network.

Congratulations also to former UNM student, Maxwell Young (now at U. Waterloo) whose paper "Sleeping on the Job: Energy-Efficient Broadcast for Radio Networks" was also accepted at this conference. This paper, which was joint work with Jared Saia, Cynthia Phillips (from Sandia Labs), and Valerie King, describes algorithms to enable robust and energy efficient broadcast in a radio network.

Related links: PODC 2008; "The Forgiving Tree: A Self-Healing Distributed Data Structure"; "Sleeping on the Job: Energy-Efficient Broadcast for Radio Networks"; Jared Saia; Navin Rustagi; Amitabh Trehan; Thomas Hayes; Cynthia Phillips

CS Grad Derek J. Smith Profiled, Published in Science for his Work Mapping Influenza

Derek J. Smith, who received his PhD in computer science from the CS Dept, is now mapping influenza mutations at Cambridge University, where he is a full professor in the Zoology Department. His work is a continuation of the PhD and postdoc he did with Department Chair Stephanie Forrest.

He was called "Mapmaker for the World of Influenza" in a recent biographical piece in Science. His work on antigenic cartography is so highly regarded that he was invited to join the World Health Organization group that selects which strain of influenza will be used for the annual flu vaccine used worldwide by 300 million people.
Derek Smith and other CS Dept Alumni, Terry Jones, were authors on a paper published recently in Science magazine called "The Global Circulation of Seasonal Influenza A (H3N2) Viruses", which described the cycle of influenza mutations first appearing in East/Southeast Asia and later propagating to the the world. This work could help improve the vaccine millions depend on each flu season. Related links: Derek J. Smith; Terry Jones; Science biography; Science Article

Complexity and Networks in Nature

Aaron Clauset (a recent CS Dept. alumnus now at the Santa Fe Institute), Prof. Cris Moore, and Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan) published "Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks" (subscription required) in Nature. The paper in the prestigious journal offers a general technique to divide network vertices into groups and sub-groups, and argues that "...hierarchy is a central organizing principle of complex networks, capable of offering insight into many network phenomena." The Nature article was also featured on Slashdot.

Related links: Aaron Clauset; Cris Moore; Nature article; Slashdot Article

CS Research in the Spotlight

Congratulations to UNM PhD students Navin Rustagi and Amitabh Trehan whose paper, "The Forgiving Tree: A Self-Healing Distributed Data Structure" was accepted at the Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2008) conference. PODC is the preeminent conference in distributed computing, with an acceptance rate around 15%. This paper, which was joint work with Thomas Hayes and Jared Saia, describes algorithms to ensure that a network keeps a small diameter, even if an adversary continually deletes nodes in the network.

Congratulations also to former UNM student, Maxwell Young (now at U. Waterloo) whose paper "Sleeping on the Job: Energy-Efficient Broadcast for Radio Networks" was also accepted at this conference. This paper, which was joint work with Jared Saia, Cynthia Phillips (from Sandia Labs), and Valerie King, describes algorithms to enable robust and energy efficient broadcast in a radio network.

Related links: PODC 2008; "The Forgiving Tree: A Self-Healing Distributed Data Structure"; "Sleeping on the Job: Energy-Efficient Broadcast for Radio Networks"; Jared Saia; Navin Rustagi; Amitabh Trehan; Thomas Hayes; Cynthia Phillips

UNM Student Develops Program to Police the Flow of Traffic on the Internet

When you were six years old and something went wrong, your mom made you count to 10, then react as a way of making you stop to think. Now a graduate student from the University of New Mexico is working on a technical protocol that gives Internet Service Providers time to stop and think about traffic flow problems on the internet before they have to react.

Josh Karlin is constructing a protocol with his advisor UNM Computer Science Professor Stephanie Forrest. When finished, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can use it to deemphasize and delay data that suddenly comes from an unexpected source for up to 24 hours, until it is clear the data is coming from a legitimate source. That gives the ISPs a little breathing room to react to potential problems.

Right now, nearly 200 times a day, there are odd glitches in the way internet traffic flows. Most of them are small, disappearing quickly within a few hours, but occasionally there is a major problem such as the one on Sunday afternoon, February 24, 2008, when the website “You Tube” disappeared from the World Wide Web. It’s not clear why, but Pakistan Telecom suddenly rerouted You Tube traffic into an internet black hole, stopping web users in most of the world from viewing the site.

Incidents like this fascinate Karlin. He says You Tube got back online by sending out word internationally that they had a problem. “So what happened is the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that were close to Pakistan Telecom, that were in fact forwarding Pakistan’s data, said oh, this is obviously wrong. We’re not going to propagate it. And then they shut it off. They filtered it out and then suddenly the problem disappeared and You Tube was getting data again.”

Most internet users don’t think much about how the internet works. We assume someone, somewhere is in charge; taking care of problems, settling disputes, and punishing troublemakers. But that’s not true. The internet works because hundreds of independent ISPs work cooperatively together to keep traffic running smoothly.

Every computer in the world connected to the internet has an address. Those addresses come from the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). That entity assigns the numbers, but it doesn’t police them. “The IANA has been giving out these addresses for a very long time, and people have lost track of where they’ve gone,” says Karlin. “So some companies that were given Internet Protocol addresses have folded or sold it to other companies or broken them down into small blocks and given them out to other people, so nobody really knows what’s where.”

For instance, the University of New Mexico has thousands of internet addresses assigned to it. But there is no agency that monitors whether UNM only uses the addresses it has been assigned. So how does any ISP sort out what is legitimate and what is not?

There are several kinds of services that Internet Service Providers could use to stay abreast of suspicious activity on the internet. Some are propriety, for profit, and can be purchased from a number of companies. Karlin, with funding from the National Science Foundation has already designed a protocol that is fast, functional and free to any ISP that signs up. The Internet Alert Registry sends an email to the ISP when there is suspicious activity in the internet traffic flow that might affect its customers. The registry is available at http://iar.cs.unm.edu/index.php.

The suspicious activity could be anything from a transient glitch to a full scale emergency like the You Tube traffic problem. The email alert is like a warning siren that gives system operators notice to look at the problem and take any corrective action they believe is needed to keep their customers fully connected.

The Internet Alert System and the new protocol will eventually work together so that ISPs receive the alert, and their systems can automatically start deemphasizing the suspicious traffic so that potential problems unfold slowly rather than with an instant crash.

Karlin says the internet began as a messaging system between researchers who trusted each other, and so far the system still basically works on the idea that most of the time messages that are being sent around the world are benign. But as more and more people use the system mistakes are made that cause problems. His new protocol treats the mistakes as mistakes rather than attacks and allows for a positive rather than a punitive solution.

Computer Science Professor George Luger to Receive Faculty Acknowledgement Award from University Libraries

1-14-08 -- Computer Science Professor George Luger will deliver a talk on Thursday, January 24, 2008, at 2 p.m. in the Willard Room of Zimmerman Library as part of the University Libraries Faculty Acknowledgement Awards Program. His lecture is titled “Computation of Epistemology: A Probabilistic Perspective.”

Luger’s research in the area of diagnostic reasoning and stochastic languages and modeling has been funded by the National Science Foundation. His work to assist in the development of a program to recognize and interpret space phenomena such as sun spots and solar flares was funded by the National Aeronautic and Space Foundation.

He has worked on a project called “Albatross” for the U.S. Department of Energy through Sandia National Laboratories to help develop a glider that stays airborne by recognizing and using air currents. Current research for SNL involves the Mind Research Network to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify areas of the human cortex associated with various problem solving skills.

Luger has concurrent appoints as a professor in the Psychology and Linguistics Departments in addition to his appointment in Computer Science, which reflects the interdisciplinary nature of his work. More information about his wide-ranging research is available on his Web site at: George Luger.

The University Libraries Faculty Acknowledgement Award is given to members of the UNM Faculty in appreciation for their contributions to the body of scholarly knowledge. This program is a forum for colleagues, students and members of the community to learn about the achievements of UNM faculty members. The event is free and the public is welcome.

UNM Graduate Student is Co-author of Paper in Nature

11-12-07 -- UNM Computer Science Graduate student Sushmita Roy is a co-author of an article published in the journal Nature describing her analysis of the genomes of 12 fly species, part of her internship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last summer.

Roy spent last summer at MIT in the lab of Manolis Kellis, an assistant professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who specializes in developing computational algorithms for decoding the information present in the genomes of organisms.

As part of her internship, Roy played a small part in a large project analyzing the genomes of 12 fly species. The paper describing the project and its results was released this week in an article titled, "Discovery of Functional Elements in 12 Drosophila Genomes Using Evolutionary Signatures," the journal Nature.

In her summer project, she analyzed statistical properties of the fly regulatory network, computationally predicted by Kellis' lab, with nodes representing genes and edges representing regulatory control exercised by a "regulator" gene on a "regulate" gene.

This led to the identification of network nodes with different types of connectivity. Nodes with high-connectivity were themselves regulators controlling important events in the growth and development of flies.

Roy says the edges in the network also had non-random properties. Edges had a higher chance of existing between genes functioning in the same fly tissue, rather than in different tissues.

The identification of these statistical properties helped the researchers to clarify the biological significance of the predicted regulatory network of developing flies, which can provide insight into important developmental events in higher organisms.

The title of the journal article is "Discovery of Functional Elements in 12 Drosophila Genomes Using Evolutionary Signatures." Roy is listed as one of the co-authors on the article.

Roy is working on her Ph.D. in Computer Science applying statistical algorithms to understand living systems. Her advisors, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Terran Lane and Professor of Biology Margaret Werner-Washburne are guiding her efforts to apply statistical algorithms to understand living systems.

Her internship in the MIT summer program was sponsored by the Program in Interdisciplinary Biological and Biomedical Sciences (PIBBS) at UNM and (Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Interfaces program and was arranged by Bruce Birren, director of the Microbial Sequencing Center and co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis program at the Broad Institute at the MIT and UNM Biology Professor Margaret Werner-Washburne.

China Eyes on the Internet

9-11-07 --The "Great Firewall of China," used by the government of the People's Republic of China to block users from reaching content it finds objectionable, is actually a "Panopticon" that encourages self-censorship through the perception that users are being watched, rather than a true firewall, according to researchers at the University of New Mexico and the University of California Davis.

The researchers are developing an automated tool, called ConceptDoppler, to act as a weather report on changes in Internet censorship in China. ConceptDoppler uses mathematical techniques to cluster words by meaning and identify keywords that are likely to be blacklisted.

Many countries carry out some form of Internet censorship. Most rely on systems that block specific web sites or web addresses, said Earl Barr, a graduate student in computer science at UC Davis who is an author on the paper. China takes a different approach by filtering web content for specific keywords and selectively blocking web pages.

In 2006, a team at the University of Cambridge, England discovered that when the Chinese system detects a banned word in data traveling across the network, it sends a series of three "reset" commands to both the source and the destination. These "resets" effectively break the connection. But they also allow researchers to test words and see which ones are censored.

Jed Crandall, an assistant professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico's School of Engineering and former UC Davis graduate, UC Davis graduate students Daniel Zinn, Michael Byrd, and Earl Barr and independent researcher Rich East sent messages to internet addresses within China containing a variety of different words that might be subject to censorship.

If China's censorship system were a true firewall, most blocking would take place at the border with the rest of the Internet, Barr said. But the researchers found that some messages passed through several routers before being blocked.

A firewall should also block all mentions of a banned word or phrase, but banned words reached their destinations on about 28 percent of the tested paths, Byrd said. Filtering was particularly erratic at times of heavy internet use.

The words used to probe the Chinese internet were not selected at random. "If we simply bombarded the Great Firewall with random words, we would waste resources and time," Zinn said.

The researchers took the Chinese version of Wikipedia, extracted individual words and used a mathematical technique called Latent Semantic Analysis to work out the relationships between different words. If one of the words was censored within China, they could look up which other closely-related words are likely to be blocked as well.

Examples of words tested by the researchers and found to be banned included references to the Falun Gong movement and the protest movements of 1989; Nazi Germany and other historical events; and general concepts related to democracy and political protest.

"Imagine you want to remove the history of the Wounded Knee massacre from the Library of Congress," Crandall said. "You could remove 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee ' and a few other selected books, or you could remove every book in the entire library that contains the word 'massacre.'''

By analogy, Chinese Internet censorship based on keyword filtering is the equivalent of the latter -- and indeed, the keyword "massacre'' (in Chinese) is on the blacklist.

Because it filters ideas rather than specific websites, keyword filtering stops people from using proxy servers or "mirror" websites to evade censorship. But because it is not completely effective all the time, it probably acts partly by encouraging self-censorship, Barr said. When users within China see that certain words, ideas and concepts are blocked most of the time, they might assume that they should avoid those topics.

The original panopticon was a prison design developed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. Bentham proposed that a central observer would be able to watch all the prisoners, while the prisoners would not know when they were being watched.

The work will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Computer and Communications Security Conference in Alexandria, Va., Oct. 29-Nov. 2, 2007.

CS Professor Fights a Mathematical Battle to Keep the Virtual World Running Smoothly

2-27-07 -- Jared Saia, assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico School of Engineering, is using mathematics to construct a defense against the spammers, hackers, worm builders, virus constructors and all the other villains of the virtual world. His work is based on a familiar puzzle in the computer science world called the Byzantine Agreement.

A group of Byzantine generals in a range of camps surrounding Constantinople are preparing to attack the city. No general can hope to succeed alone. Almost all must co-operate to be successful. The generals begin to exchange messages, trying to agree on a plan for coordinated attack of the city.

Unfortunately, there is a secret and traitorous faction of the generals that is trying to sabotage the attack. These traitorous generals change the content of messages they are asked to pass along to other generals, send messages proposing different attack plans to different generals, and generally try to prevent a convergence on a single plan. How can the rest of the generals agree on a single plan and win the battle, when the this secret traitorous faction is trying to hard to prevent this?

Computer scientists have spent decades working out answers to variations of this problem first posed in a couple of seminal papers by Lamport, Pease and Shostak. It's a critical question because the virtual world is packed with people bent on disruption of the World Wide Web for fun or profit. So how can people collaborate on projects using the web even if many of the participants are destructive?

A Solution to Defeat the Traitorous Generals
Saia believes web-based projects can survive and function reliably even if up to one third of the people involved in collaboration are working to disrupt it. He's spent years working on algorithms that use powerful mathematical tools such as expander and extractor graphs, and the probabilistic method. Those tools can be used to create large-scale distributed systems that work reliably even when they are under malicious assault.

Saia says the algorithms are complete and tested; now the mathematics must be translated into a workable, commercially viable program. He has just received a National Science Foundation Career award for $400,000 over the next five years. This and past grants he has received from the NSF and Sandia National Labs will allow him to continue his research.

Saia is excited about progress so far. He says the algorithms are robust and are scalable to support systems even if hundreds of millions - a group as large as the entire population of Japan -are participating. But the Saia, the most exciting part is the systems great resistance to attack.

He works with several collaborators including Valerie King at the University of Victoria and Microsoft Research, Vishal Sanalani, a former student at UNM and now at Microsoft Research, and Erik Vee at Yahoo Research.

Engage Brain Before Pushing Red Button

4/25/08 -- Two of your brain's mental networks involved in performing cognitive tasks show measurable changes when you're about to make an error, according to ECE Professor Vince Calhoun and his co-authors in an article published April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sometimes our brain is in a passive resting mode and sometimes it's in a focus mode. Problem is, the brain sometimes slips into resting mode, referred to as default mode, just before we perform a cognitive task. When such momentary lapses of attention happen, we're likely to make an error.

Calhoun's team has found a way to measure the error-predicting changes about 30 seconds before the error occurs.

Monitoring brain activity using fMRI image analysis immediately preceding errors, they found changes in two brain networks. "One network, the default mode, which is usually active at rest, slowly increased in the 30 seconds prior to an error," Calhoun says. "A second network, in the frontal lobe areas associated with sustaining effort and focus, decreased in activity prior to making an error. Hence the brain patterns associated with the resting brain became more active, whereas the regions involved in preventing this were less active."

According to the paper's abstract, "These maladaptive brain activity changes started to evolve ~30 sec before the error. In particular, a coincident decrease of deactivation in default mode regions of the brain, together with a decline of activation in regions associated with maintaining task effort, raised the probability of future errors."

In their abstract for the paper, the authors say that "Humans engaged in monotonous tasks are susceptible to occasional errors that may lead to serious consequences, but little is known about brain activity patterns preceding errors....Our findings provide insights into the brain network dynamics preceding human performance errors and suggest that monitoring of the identified precursor states may help in avoiding human errors in critical real-world situations."

The study data were collected by having participants respond as quickly as possible to arrows made visible briefly on a computer screen. The team used fMRI and applied independent component analysis followed by deconvolution of hemodynamic responses, which enabled them to study error-preceding brain activity on a trial-by-trial basis. The posterior medial frontal cortex was found to have reduced blood flow just before errors, while activity increased in the anterior medial frontal cortex, precuneus, and retrosplenial cortex area, or default mode network.

The researchers' work this week gained the attention of The Economist, The New York Times, Wired magazine, and the U.K's Daily Telegraph, among several others.

Their article, "Prediction of Human Errors by Maladaptive Changes in Event-Related Brain Networks," is available on PNAS' website here, or download a PDF of the paper here (1MB PDF).

ECE Professor Vince Calhoun's Work on Mental Networks Gains International Recognition

4/22/08 -- Two of your brain's mental networks involved in performing cognitive tasks show measurable changes when you're about to make an error, according to ECE Professor Vince Calhoun and his co-authors published an article April 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Their article, "Prediction of Human Errors by Maladaptive Changes in Event-Related Brain Networks," is available on PNAS' website here, or download a PDF of the paper here (1MB PDF). The researchers' work this week gained the attention of The Economist, The New York Times, Wired magazine, and the U.K's Daily Telegraph, among several others.

ECE Assistant Professor Pradeep Sen Discusses Computer Graphics on UNM Podcast

12/4/08 -- Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Pradeep Sen discusses computer graphics for video games and other digital media in an interview with Public Relations Specialist Benson Hendrix. https://www4.unm.edu/unmlive/?p=51

Professional Societies Honor the Achievements of ECE Professor Art Guenther

6/21/07 -- Two professional societies, the Optical Society of America (OSA) and SPIE, have renamed their jointly sponsored congressional fellowship program the Arthur H. Guenther Congressional Fellowship Program to honor a former University of New Mexico professor who died earlier this year.

Guenther was a research professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Center for High Technology Materials and held a joint appointment in Physics and Astronomy. Prior to his work at UNM Guenther was with the United States Air Force for 31 years. He also held positions at both Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs and served as a science advisor to the governor of New Mexico.

The OSA/SPIE Congressional Fellowships are designed to provide a unique public policy learning experience, demonstrate the value of science-government interaction and bring technical backgrounds and external perspectives to the decision making process in Congress. Fellows spend one year working as special legislative assistants on the staffs of members of Congress or congressional committees.

"Just as Art did, Congressional Fellows choose a unique path in their careers - one that combines an uncommon blend of scientific expertise and awareness of the public good," said SPIE President Brian Culshaw. "This is clearly the path less traveled, one that requires enthusiasm, talent and courage to be successful. Art is a role model for the men and women who follow that path of scientific excellence and public service."

UNM Professor and Student Explore Brain Connections in Search of a Disease

4/4/07 -- Schizophrenia is a disease that can't yet be diagnosed with a medical test. Psychiatrists must instead study a patient's symptoms for a long period of time before making a diagnosis. That's a source of frustration for both doctors and patients, so one researcher at the MIND Institute on the University of New Mexico campus is searching for that critical physical clue in the way the human mind works while it's idling.

Photo: Vince D. Calhoun is director of image analysis and MR research for the MIND Institute and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Some of the latest results are in an article written by Trinity College senior Abigail G. Garrity as part of her senior project that appears in the March issue of the Journal of American Psychiatry. Garrity is mentored by Vince D. Calhoun, the director of image analysis and MR research for the MIND Institute and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The paper is based on Calhoun's research in ways to look at brain scans.

The heart of that research is a new way to look at which parts of the brain are activated when it is idling, a state called "default mode." The research looks at the way some areas of the brain are activated when a healthy subject is just lying in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, and how the active areas change when a subject is called on to perform a specific task, such as reacting to a tone. The same test was given to subjects who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but in these patients the "default mode" areas of the brain continued to be active, even when the subject was responding to directions.

That led the researchers to suggest that default mode regions of the brain may be overactive in a way that interferes with normal thoughts and functioning, perhaps interrupting the internal monologue that humans generate and contributing to the delusional thoughts and hallucinations that are characteristic of schizophrenics.

Calhoun's Research
Calhoun has written extensively about independent component analysis, using software to tease out the confusing and overlapping functions of the brain that show up in functional magnetic resonance imaging. He has adapted the software to try to separate patterns in the brain that can be linked to specific activity.

Since much of his research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, his software tool is freely available on his website at http://www.ece.unm.edu/~vcalhoun/ Calhoun also teaches courses on how to work with the software.

Calhoun says his interest is in application, and research is a way to develop the methods needed to solve concrete problems. That's one reason he has spent so much time developing the tools to analyze brain scans. He is one of the few researchers in the world involved in this complex specialty.

He says his specialty developed from his roots as an engineer who also worked for twelve years at Johns Hopkins in the psychiatry department. That taught him about the need to bridge the problems researchers have in developing the tools they need to answer their questions about how the human mind works. He has been at UNM since October 2006, and he says he is now interested in teaching students to apply engineering principles to biomedical problems.

Calhoun is also interested in multimodal data fusion - an exercise that takes different instances of brain imaging scans, puts them together, and looks at the possible implications. He thinks about which parts of the brain are active at various times, looks at how those parts might be linked, and what that might mean for potential treatments.

One of his postdoctoral students is currently looking at a combination of genetic information and imaging information to try to determine what part genetics might play in the development of schizophrenia, and what other things might influence development of the disease.

Prof. Baum Awarded Prestigious Electromagnetics Award

IEEE's Electromagnetics Award is presented to an individual for outstanding contributions to electromagnetics in theory, application or education. Established by the IEEE board in 1996, it is sponsored by four of IEEE's societies: Antennas & Propagation, Electromagnetic Compatibility, Microwave Theory & Techniques, and Geoscience & Remote Sensing. IEEE has the option of presenting this award annually, and it consists of a bronze medal, certificate and honorarium.

Prof. Caudell To Direct Center for High Performance Computing

Prof. Caudell will take over directorship of CHPC from Computer Science Prof. Barney Maccabe, who was appointed interim Chief Information Officer for UNM, effective February 1, following the retirement of William Adkins. Here is a PDF of the announcement by Provost Reed Dasenbrock.

Prof. Caudell To Direct Center for High Performance Computing

1/24/07 -- ECE Prof. Thomas P. Caudell has been named director of UNM's Center for High Performance Computing, an assignement that begins February 1. Prof. Caudell will take over directorship of CHPC from Computer Science Prof. Barney Maccabe, who was appointed interim Chief Information Officer for UNM, effective February 1, following the retirement of William Adkins.

UNM Mechanical Engineering Puts Together Shock Tube Research Facility

7/24/08 -- Two professors in UNM’s Mechanical Engineering Department and their graduate students are putting together a shock tube research facility that will be used to better understand a little known corner of physics. A pressurized tube, combined with an extremely high speed camera able to shoot at the rate of 200 million frames per second will be able to help the researchers better understand multiphase shock acceleration flow physics, and it will allow them to establish quantum benchmarks for anyone who needs to model some processes.

The shock tube and camera will allow them to document with great precision the way droplets and particles move under controlled conditions.
Associate Professor Peter Vorobieff and Professor C. Randall Truman are co-principal investigators working on the project, which is funded by a grant from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Their work on droplets and particles will be used to verify assumptions made in modeling.

Vorobieff and Truman say this grant will give the university a testing capability that can easily be used for the next 30 years. They are currently waiting for some components to be manufactured, but have already begun working with the camera equipment to do initial tests.

ME Formula SAE Racing Team Wins Awards in Competition

7/16/08 -- UNM mechanical engineering students designed, built and raced a small formula-style racing car in the 2008 Formula Society of Automotive Engineers West competition at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.  This is one of seven international competitions that are part of the largest engineering competition in the world.

It was a year-long effort by the student team to design, build, test, train and race the cars.  Eighty-three teams from around the world entered.  The UNM School of Engineering team placed 8th in acceleration, 17th in design, 19th in marketing and 24th overall.

“I am very proud of this year’s team. They were forced to make a major design change in late February, but still developed a highly competitive car,” said Mechanical Engineering Professor and Program Director John Russell.  “Recruiters from Honda, Toyota, and GM sought out members of the team. Earlier in the year four UNM team members were among 22 hired by Honda R&D after an extensive interview process.” Russell said that in job interviews, students were asked what they would do in various situations and instead of answering hypothetically, they were able to say what they actually did on the project.

Students on the team begin a three-semester, for-credit course to learn about racecar engineering in the spring semester of their junior year.  First semester is dedicated to the academics of racecar design.  In the fall, students build the car, and in the spring, they test it.  They master the software required to design the car and manufacture almost all the parts.  The class is an alternative to the required senior design project in Mechanical Engineering.

School of Engineering Student Wins ASEE Competition

4/3/08 -- Scott Lovald won first place in the graduate student category of the American Society for Engineering Education 2008 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference for a paper titled “Investigating the Role of Fluid Dynamics and Wall Mechanics in Atherosclerosis, Plaque Rupture and Plaque Excavation in the Human Carotid Bifurcation.” He coauthored the paper with Tariq Khraishi, Juan Heinrich, Howard Yonas and Christopher Taylor. UNM School of Engineering hosted the conference. It attracted more than 100 participants to Albuquerque the last week in March.

This year’s conference theme was “Current and Future Challenges and Opportunities in Engineering Education.” The keynote speech was given by Neal Shinn, Ph.D., the User Program Manager of the Department of Energy Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT) at Sandia National Laboratories. Shinn provided an overview of CINT and its capabilities, services and structure. He also discussed the user program and explained the proposal process.

Gerhard Salinger, Ph.D., program director in the Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at the National Science Foundation (NSF) discussed funding opportunities that relate to engineering education and describe features of the ASEE sponsored Global Colloquium on Engineering Education.

UNM Professor Thinks About How Robots Can Cooperate

8/14/07 -- Individual robots do individual tasks. They don't work together. They work separately and there's a reason for that. It hasn't been done before. In the field of robotics, only recently have researchers started to develop a theoretical framework to allow robots to work and solve problems cooperatively. Scientists are just beginning to understand how to design algorithms that make groups of robots exhibit global collective behaviors from simple, individual actions.

UNM Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Herbert Tanner wants to take this goal one step further. With the help of a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, he is investigating how different robots can learn how to combine their different capabilities and solve problems that none of them can tackle on their own.

Tanner's grant is a Faculty Early Career Development award in the field of robotics, provided by the Information and Intelligent Systems Division of the Computer Science and Engineering Directorate of NSF. This is basically a bet by the U.S. government that Tanner and his students will find a way to begin solving some of the very difficult details involved in programming robots so that they can work as a team.

Tanner is currently working with doctoral student Wenqi Zhang to provide an outline that lays out what is not known. Tanner says his work with Zhang on the unknown will show what is missing in the theoretical area.

Zhang is using a simple puzzle - the kind children can slide tiles around on to make a sequence of numbers - as a starting point. She is looking at what it would take for robots to work together to solve the puzzle. For example, how would they move the tiles, how would they choose which tiles to move, how would they go about planning a way to solve the puzzle. As part of her doctoral work, she will list the gaps in scientific theory that would stop the robots from solving the puzzle together.

As the work progresses, Tanner hopes to put together swarms of robots that can act as a team, communicate and allocate tasks among themselves, and sort through possible solutions to find a plan of action and execute a task. Ultimately he believes the robots could be used for applications ranging from search and rescue efforts, where they could be sent into difficult environments to look for people, to autonomous construction of structures in space without human intervention or guidance.

School of Engineering Professor Marc Ingber to Direct Program for National Science Foundation

8/30/07 -- Marc Ingber, professor of mechanical engineering, has been appointed to direct the program for Particulate and Multiphase Processes within the Chemical, Biological, Environmental and Transport System Division of the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation.

At the UNM School of Engineering, Ingber does research in modeling viscous fluid flows with suspended particles, emulsions or bubbles, called multiphase flows. That is a major area in the program Ingber will direct at NSF.

His new job includes long range planning and budget development in this area of federally funded research as he works with the NSF administrators to ensure research funding is targeted toward solving the challenges and opportunities in this field. He is also part of an NSF collaborative process, working with other research programs in NSF and in other areas of federal agencies and organizations.

UNM Mechanical Engineering Department Chairman Juan Heinrich says, "Marc's appointment as a program director to the NSF is a well deserved recognition of his long record of scientific excellence and service to the engineering and academic community."

Ingber's authoritative work on modeling of multiphase flow was recognized in 1994, when he was one of the winners of the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for high-performance computing. In 2001