Melissa Green, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), has been named an of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The prestigious title is awarded to those who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics. Green will be officially inducted at the AIAA Associate Fellows Recognition Ceremony on January 6, 2020, at the AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando, Florida.

Green teaches mechanical and aerospace engineering courses and researches experimental fluid dynamics. She studies the organization of fluid motion in coherent structures to understand fluid phenomena in a range of applications. In particular, her group has investigated biologically-inspired fluid problems, such as fish propelling themselves through water, and fundamental aerospace problems such as flow separation over delta wings.

Green has completed research for the Office of Naval Research to and to contribute to the design of underwater vessels that mimic, and even improve upon, the movement of marine wildlife. Her group was also previously funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study fundamental unsteady flow separation in aerospace applications. More recently, she has started to explore the use of as an immersive method for data visualization and communication.

Green says, “Since I joined ���ϲ����� in 2012, my participation in AIAA and its Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee has played an important role in how my research group has grown. To then also be recognized as having made a significant contribution to AIAA, and to my community in general, is a great honor.”

Professor Cliff Davidson shows off his collection of medals earned at his 99 marathons. He will run his 100th this October.

When the gun goes off at the Empire State Marathon this October, Professor Cliff Davidson will hit an extraordinary milestone—100 marathons in less than 19 years.

Davidson, an environmental engineering professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, ran his first marathon in 2001 shortly before his 51st birthday. That experience quickly gave way to running five marathons a year, on average.

Davidson runs 10 kilometers, outdoors, every other day—including during Central New York’s notorious winters. These “short” runs keep him in shape for the big races, but that’s not why he’s out there. Davidson runs because he loves to.

“It’s the feeling of being free when I’m out running that I love,” says Davidson. “I also love being outdoors. I never could stand spending long periods indoors. I don’t go on treadmills. I want to be outside, engaged with my surroundings.”

Davidson is the Thomas and Colleen Wilmot Chair in Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and a renowned expert in his field. Despite a career of outstanding accomplishments and a heavy workload, he remains a consistently kind and modest man—brilliant and unassuming. He spends his days teaching, researching, writing grant proposals and serving as an academic program director, among many other responsibilities. Running provides a respite from the hard work and helps refresh his intense focus.

“I find that running is a great time to think about my research, my next paper or to plan a class problem. It stimulates those kinds of thoughts and is also a wonderful way to celebrate after a big proposal goes in. You can just let your mind go,” he says.

Davidson’s adoration of nature and fresh air is what led him to both running and environmental research. On any given day, you’re likely to find him atop the OnCenter in downtown ���ϲ�����, tending to instrumentation and vegetation on its one-and-a-half acre��. The centerpiece of Onondaga County’s green infrastructure initiative, it is one of the largest green roofs in the Northeast.

Davidson initially set out to be an electrical engineer but found that the discipline didn’t provide enough opportunities for him to work outdoors. Even today, as an accomplished and renowned researcher, he chafes at the idea of being stuck behind a desk or in a lab day after day without outdoor recreation.

“Doing environmental work like the green roof is perfect for me,” he says. “When I was coming up as an assistant professor, I heard a lot of full professors say they didn’t have time to work in the field anymore. I am never going to want to give up the hands-on work.”

And, running is no different. Davidson will confess that his recovery time from a marathon has gone up with age, but he remains the picture of health as he nears 70. He takes special care to avoid injuries, especially in the winter. He says, “I always wait for the snowplows to come through.”

While his runs are often solitary and contemplative, it is Davidson’s love of community that makes him return to marathoning so frequently. Davidson appreciates the camaraderie that forms during marathons.

He says, “Marathons are very social. You’re meeting people. You’re talking to people. It’s kind of like being at a party. It’s never boring. You’re always chatting with somebody. If your pace is a little different or somebody you’re running with is getting tired, you wish each other well, and pretty soon somebody else comes up. I’ve met so many interesting people this way.”

With 99 marathons and a lifetime of fascinating research under his belt, Davidson might be the most interesting person in the Empire State Marathon this fall. If you find yourself running alongside him, the miles will pass quickly, you’ll learn a great deal and you’ll have a richer experience for having met him.

Abdallah Yabroudi ’78, G’79, chief executive officer and managing director of DCC, offers a one-of-a-kind program that places civil engineering students in a four-week internship at DCC’s headquarters in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). In doing so, he has created an immersive experience that is unrivaled in civil engineering education.

In this innovative program, students are taught by DCC engineers and partake in learning sessions in a high-tech classroom and at a range of construction sites. There, they see how concepts of civil engineering apply to actual multimillion-dollar projects.

“This is something that I love to do because I never had the chance to participate in something like this when I was an undergraduate student. Students should have the chance to work on real-world projects because it’s so important for them to learn why they are studying. In my opinion, it’s the best, and almost the only way that students can gain practical skills,” says Yabroudi.

The program was founded in the late 2000s as part of a $5 million gift from Yabroudi to the College of Engineering and Computer Science—establishing him as the biggest donor in the college’s history. He named the program after the two faculty members who had the most significant impact on him during his time at ���ϲ�����.

When the Dubai program first launched, Yabroudi converted space in DCC’s headquarters into a high-tech classroom to host participating students. Working with Professors Sam Clemence,��James Mandel and Eric Lui, and with insight from contacts in the School of Education, they developed a strict curriculum for the program that includes class time, lectures, presentations and pop quizzes.

Abdallah Yabroudi

Yabroudi also hosts a cohort of students from Lebanese American University for the program. This extends the benefits of the experience to learning to work and learn alongside international peers. And, participants have opportunities to unwind and experience the Middle East with trips to the desert and an indoor ski resort. There is also a longstanding tradition of a student basketball tournament during the trip—a testament to Yabroudi’s love of Orange hoops.

After ten years, the format has been fine-tuned, but the early success of the program provided a strong foundation for how the program operates today.

“Every year things get better,” says Clemence. “Abdallah has the students learning directly from DCC’s project manager in charge of planning all of their construction projects—massive $100 million projects. He brings them to sites that range from a big hole in the ground, all the way up to projects where they’re putting in the marble finishes. Students see the full scope of how buildings are constructed.”

R.J. Walker ’09 was a member of the very first class. Today, he is a structural engineer for AECOM—one of the top civil and environmental engineering companies in the world. He recalls the experience as a challenging, rewarding experience that ultimately positioned him to attain his career goals upon graduation.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” says Walker. “You typically don’t get that right kind of exposure as an intern. I was able to take the theory learned in class and see it implemented in the real world. That connected a lot of dots for me and really benefitted me in my career. Plus, it definitely looks great on my resume.”

Haley Bigando ’19 G’21, who participated in the ninth year of the program, echoed Walker praise for the program and was impressed with Yabroudi’s ardent commitment and generous nature.

“Mr. Yabroudi is very passionate about the growth of future engineers, and he inspires passion in us—not just for engineering, but for learning,” says Bigando. “He is intimately involved with all aspects of the internship. I was amazed that a CEO of a company with an annual construction budget of 500 million to a billion dollars showed such devotion to us and our learning. It’s extraordinary.”

Bigando graduated in May and has returned to campus to complete work on her master’s program in civil engineering. She recently nominated Yabroudi for the prestigious Tau Beta Pi Distinguished Alumni Award, and Yabroudi became one of the four highly accomplished individuals to receive the honor in 2019.

Yabroudi’s contributions to ���ϲ�����, its students, and the world of construction are nothing short of remarkable. While his influence reverberates through the success of ten cohorts of interns, Yabroudi is quick to remark on the seeds of his success established at ���ϲ�����.

“The success I have found in my profession stems from the education I received at ���ϲ�����—particularly from Dr. Clemence and Dr. Mandel,” says Yabroudi. “I want tomorrow’s engineers to receive the same kind of quality education and care that I received as a student, and to have experiences above and beyond what I had at the time. I’m proud that this internship has accomplished this for so many.”

A native of Jerusalem raised in Lebanon, Yabroudi studied business administration before coming to ���ϲ����� in the late 1970s to study civil engineering. Yabroudi earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in industrial engineering before returning home to Dubai to work for this father’s company—DCC. Under his 35 years of leadership, DCC has experienced unprecedented growth and is recognized as one of the leading contracting companies in the UAE and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Yabroudi is the recipient of ���ϲ�����’s highest alumni honor, the George Arents Award, and was recently named a Tau Beta Pi Distinguished Alumnus.

The internship was recently .

The workshop was attended by representatives from the National Security Agency, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, as well as the U.S. military, academia and industry.

Cyberattacks happen every day. From Equifax to Facebook, even the biggest companies struggle to protect our data, and they often fail to do so. But breaches that expose personal and financial data are only part of the problem. There are cybersecurity systems around the world that protect people’s very lives.

Earlier this month, ���ϲ����� hosted its second annual Enduring Assurance Workshop. The three-day, invitation-only meeting convened a team of experts who are devoted to thwarting attacks on the systems that military and intelligence agencies rely on to carry out their missions safely and effectively. Attendees included representatives from the National Security Agency, the U.K. Ministry of Defence, and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, as well as the U.S. military, academia and industry.

A collaboration between the (ECS) and the (OVMA), this year’s workshop followed the theme “Making Mission Assurance a Reality.” The attendees addressed cybersecurity risks to U.S. Department of Defense missions; the architectural, functional and security requirements that impact data flows; securing the U.S. Air Force’s software-centric electronic warfare operations; and mission assurance and security by design.

“I am proud to say that the majority of people who attended are either ���ϲ����� alumni who are now working in government, industry or academia, or cyber experts who we have collaborated with extensively,” says , professor of electrical engineering and computer science in ECS. “Each participant is invited because they are grounded in both the theory and practice of mission assurance, risk management, and cybersecurity.”

“The OVMA is proud to support this important cybersecurity work which offers significant value to our country’s national security,” says OVMA Executive Director Ron Novack. “This initiative aligns well with the University’s commitment to serve veterans and speaks to the authority and caliber of the University as a recognized leader in this emerging field.”

Cybersecurity is a “wicked problem”—a problem that is unstructured, open-ended, systemic, multi-dimensional and operates in an evolving environment. By bringing leading cyber experts in this crucial field together, the University further establishes its reputation as a leader in cybersecurity and military affairs.

“Together, we are working to ensure that truly trustworthy systems are conceived, designed, tested, verified and operated, and that all stakeholders’ needs are addressed,” says Chin. “We’re protecting those who protect us.”

It is estimated that illnesses in dairy cow herds cost farmers more than $2 billion annually in the U.S. A startup led by alumnus Chuck Stormon ’83, G’86 has a solution that could revolutionize the industry. The company, Acumen Detection, has created technology that allows dairy farmers to definitively detect contagious pathogens in their herds earlier, and more accurately, than ever before, allowing them to improve the health of their cows and helping them optimize their milk production. Farmers use this data to prevent disease outbreaks, rather than just treating them when they arise.

Years before Stormon had any inclinations to serve dairy farmers, he was mastering computer engineering at ���ϲ�����. He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree and had started his Ph.D. course work when his entrepreneurial side took over. He halted work on his Ph.D. and started a company based on an artificial intelligence chip that he had designed in grad school. It was the first of six successful companies that he cofounded. Stormon also established a venture fund for seed-stage startups.

His wealth of experience ultimately led him to his current position as CEO of Acumen, which indirectly brought him full-circle back to the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). Acumen’s headquarters are in the ���ϲ����� Center of Excellence (CoE) alongside many of the college’s research labs and industry partners. Professor Edward A. Bogucz, a former dean of the college, is the founding executive director of the CoE. Another former ECS dean, Professor Laura Steinberg, will step in as the CoE’s interim executive director when Bogucz returns to the ECS faculty this fall. Acumen also has lab space in Upstate Medical University’s Central New York (CNY) Biotech Accelerator, whose proximity and partnership with the CoE form the CNY Innovation Crossroads.

Acumen Detection’s products, the Acu-POLARIS system and assays, use “real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology” to identify Mycoplasma and other mastitis-causing pathogens by analyzing their DNA in just three hours. Anyone can efficiently operate the system right at the farm—no chemistry degree required. The system’s software guides through each step in the process.

On the same day that farmer identifies a pathogen, they can begin to treat the sick cow saving countless lost hours and gallons of wasted milk. Other solutions require farmers to send samples to a lab to identify the pathogens, adding days or weeks to the process.

“Illnesses can spread rapidly through a herd,” says Stormon. “With our product, a farmer can detect the contagion before a cow begins to show symptoms and isolate the infection there.”

Chris Terra, the general manager of RedTop Jerseys in Chowchilla, California, is a current Acumen customer. He says, “In our 6,000-head Jersey herd, we test 150 to 200 cows a week for Mycoplasma and Prototheca with the Acumen Detection system. We run composite samples from up to five cows on one test, and if one comes up positive, we just re-run the test for each cow. We act fast because in a herd this size, one or two Mycoplasma cases could turn into 20 or 40. With Acumen, we are able to learn in three hours what used to take seven days. This makes it easier to stop outbreaks and prevent positive cows from contaminating the herd.”

To date, Acumen serves dozens of farms, vets and milk labs throughout the U.S. and Canada. Stormon is confident that number will continue to grow as farmers learn about Acumen’s groundbreaking technology. Their detection system and assays are currently available through various dairy distributors. To learn more about Acumen, visit acumendetection.com.

Stormon credits his experiences at ���ϲ����� with setting him on the successful career trajectory that he enjoys today. As a student, he was mentored by Professor and Dean Emeritus Brad Strait ’58, G’60, G’65, who taught him about the importance of win-win partnerships between researchers and industry through the Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering at ���ϲ�����. CASE’s mission inspired Stormon and Strait’s support was formative for him as a young entrepreneur.

He says, “I think ���ϲ����� does great work in the area of entrepreneurship. CASE helped me on my entrepreneurial journey and now new activities around entrepreneurship, like the Blackstone Launchpad and the Invent@SU invention accelerators, carry on in that tradition. Entrepreneurship is an important part of any effective education ecosystem, and ���ϲ����� has properly made it central to their mission. I’m proud to live and work in a community of committed individuals who give of themselves daily to pay-it-forward and create the entrepreneurial ecosystem we enjoy today.”

Santita Ebangwese (left) and Shikha Nangia

���ϲ�����’s ranking as a top-tier research institution demonstrates a perpetual commitment to creating new, diverse knowledge. And, extraordinary research does much more than produce unique scientific insight. It also sparks remarkable educational experiences and outcomes for students in every discipline.

’s biomedical research group in the is a prime example. In 2015, Nangia received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award to study the blood-brain barrier which blocks toxins, as well as crucial medications, from entering the brain. Her research group, which includes undergraduate and graduate students alike, uses computer modeling to identify ways to open and close the blood-brain barrier to deliver medical treatment to the brain non-invasively.

“Think of the blood-brain barrier like Velcro,” said Nangia. “On one side you have blood, and on one side you have the brain. The cells between them are jam-packed to prevent the chemicals from the blood to get into the brain. What we need to do is open up the spaces between the cells. The prongs of the ‘Velcro’ are made up of proteins, known as tight junctions. If we can understand the structure of these proteins, we can design ways to open the tight junctions when we need to get medicine through and then close them back up.”

The research group’s ever-proliferating knowledge of tight junction barriers also extends beyond the brain into other parts of the body, such as the kidneys. They have extended their research into related areas as well, such as the disruption of the blood-brain barrier due to traumatic brain injuries. No matter where their focus is directed, the work contributes another level to the college’s hands-on, experimental learning pedagogy.

Undergraduate students in the Nangia Research Group are recruited from Nangia’s classes and through multiple programs that sponsor undergraduate research at ���ϲ�����, including the NSF-funded ���ϲ����� Biomaterials Institute Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), NSF CAREER REU, the Engineering and Computer Science Leadership and Ambassador Scholars Programs, and the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Research Program. She has welcomed 24 undergraduates into her lab in the last four years.

Inspired by the subject matter and Nangia’s approachability, alumna and current bioengineering graduate student Santita Ebangwese ’19 joined the team during the spring of her junior year. As an undergraduate researcher in Nangia’s group, she studied tight junctions in the intestines. Her work advanced the group’s research and served as Ebangwese’s honors thesis project. Her involvement in the lab was on top of an already busy schedule. Ebangwese was a member of the ���ϲ����� Orange’s women’s volleyball team and has now joined the women’s soccer team. Despite multiple commitments, Ebangwese was recognized as a ���ϲ����� Scholar and 2018 ACC Volleyball Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Ebangwese says, “Dr. Nangia acclimates students to the research by going back to the basics. She understands that we each have different levels of understanding on computational modeling, biochemistry and more. She breaks it down so everyone understands the purpose of the research, and she fosters an environment to ask questions for further understanding. My research experience contributes greatly to my understanding of bioengineering and opens doors to new possibilities in my future.”

Ebangwese, now a graduate student, is still a part of the research group. She plans to get as much research experience under her belt as she can before pursuing medical school to become an orthopedic surgeon. She isn’t the only student augmenting her education and earning recognition by contributing to Nangia’s research.

This spring, Katie Piston,�� a Tillman Scholar��and bioengineering Ph.D. student in Nangia’s group, was awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship is for her work to develop a computational model of tight junctions disrupted by head injuries understand chronic traumatic encephalopathy and blood-brain barrier dysfunction and help uncover better treatments for brain injuries. The highly selective fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines nationally.

Piston finds a special camaraderie unites the lab. She says, “we all come from different educational and geographic backgrounds. No two students are the same, which is helpful in troubleshooting problems and bouncing ideas off each other. The weakness of one group member may be the strength of another, and the environment created promotes teaching between fellow students. We all know that the success of any one of us is a reflection of the group as a whole and therefore always help each other.”

Students whose work is funded by Nangia’s career award are also earning recognition in the broader biomedical engineering field. Nandhini Rajagopal G’16 was invited to present a computational method for generating the energy landscape of transmembrane protein association at an international in Easton, Massachusetts, in July.

In addition to Piston’s fellowship, Rajagopal’s presentation and Ebangwese’s ���ϲ����� Scholar recognition, members of the research group have been winning awards and fellowships that will make them more attractive candidates for future degrees and jobs.

Flaviyan Jerome Irudayanathan G’18 earned an internship with Genentech, a noted biotechnology corporation. Huilin Ma G’15,’19 was awarded an All-University Doctoral prize and has gone on to become a postdoctoral fellow at John Hopkins University. Nangia herself received an award for��Outstanding Contributions to the Student Experience and University Initiatives��for enhancing the undergraduate experience for students.

Whether it’s in bioengineering or other vital disciplines offered by the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the school’s robust research activity is a pivotal contributor to the student experience and positive student outcomes.

“We are an intelligent and hardworking group of individuals,” says Ebangwese. “We’re willing to go the extra mile because that is the environment that Dr. Nangia fosters in her lab. We are successful because she cares, and so does the rest of the cohort, we work together, so everyone learns and produces work with high standards. I love being a member of this research group.”

Tapan K. Sarkar

, an internationally renowned professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, has been awarded the 2020 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Electromagnetics Field Award. The award—reserved for top researchers in the field globally—recognizes Sarkar’s outstanding contributions to the efficient and accurate solution of computational electromagnetic problems in the frequency and time domain, and research in adaptive antennas.

Sarkar is a highly accomplished IEEE Fellow and has been a faculty member in the college since 1985. His research interests focus on numerical solutions of operator equations arising in electromagnetics and signal processing with application to system design. His other research has included analysis and design of electromagnetic radiation from computers and other devices; radio and television towers; satellite and cable broadcasting systems; design of mobile adaptive communication systems, including antennas analysis; and intelligent signal processing.

Sarkar has authored or coauthored more than 400 journal articles, 300 conference papers, and multiple chapters and books. His research has been cited more than 23,000 times, establishing an outstanding h-index of 71. Sarkar also served as associate editor for many of IEEE’s publications, including IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility and IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He served as president of IEEE’s Antennas and Propagation Society in 2014, and is a distinguished lecturer of the society.

Sarkar earned a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, a master’s degree from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and master’s and doctoral degrees from ���ϲ�����. He also holds honorary degrees from Universite Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand; Politechnic University of Madrid and Aalto University.

Bush Technical Founder Bill Bush, ���ϲ����� CoE Research Engineer Brian Carter, Elton Zhang ’19, and Chaohe Chen ’19 work on the micro-chiller breadboard.

While many people work in climate-controlled buildings, certain jobs require workers to toil in oppressive heat. Military personnel, firefighters, construction workers and many others don’t have many good options for keeping cool in their line of work.

This spring, a team of ���ϲ����� mechanical engineering students completed a senior capstone project to help solve this problem by designing a wearable system that provides “personal cooling.” ��The battery-powered system, a portable micro-chiller, will be compact and lightweight.

Affixed to a worker’s belt, it will connect to a tube-lined vest worn close to the wearer’s skin. Water circulates��through the vest where it draws heat from the wearer and then through the micro-chiller where it is continually cooled. The team designed the system to operate up to four hours on a single battery charge and provide the wearer with temperature control through a smartphone app. They aim to create a product that will sell for under $2,000.

The students’ work is the second phase of a three-year project for , a one-man technical consulting and contracting company that specializes in compressor technology. With his operations headquartered in the , Bill Bush oversees the students’ efforts and provides the micro-compressor technology that makes their design possible.

Under the advisement of Bush and their faculty advisor , this year’s student team advanced the project by designing a “breadboard” prototype and conducting experiments that demonstrated that their concept could work. This year’s work was completed by Matthew Barni ’19, Chaohe Chen ’19, Joseph DePalma ’19, Molly Donovan ’19, Sarah Mathison ’19 and Elton Zhang ’19.

“I’ve seen engineers design a great system that can’t be realistically made and scaled,” says Bush. “With the working unit this team built, we can develop our parameters, uncover limitations, and gather the data to inform how to run a real system that can be built and rebuilt at a reasonable cost.”

Bush established his relationship with ���ϲ�����’s College of Engineering and Computer Science through a research partnership with . Khalifa turned to Bush to develop a tiny micro-scroll compressor for a project sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop .

Bush says, “When Dr. Khalifa first told me what he wanted me to design, I didn’t think it would perform. We gave it a try, and we actually beat our target by 17 percent. This started with a sketch on a napkin, and now we’re contemplating a factory design to produce these.”

The wearable personal micro-chiller that the students designed relies on a similar system.

Bush hopes that next year, a new team of mechanical engineering seniors will be tasked with creating a functional prototype of the personal micro-chiller that is small enough to be worn comfortably. There will also be an opportunity for computer science students to develop an application that controls the device.

Bush is also an adjunct professor in ECS, teaching senior design lab sessions. Given his experience and involvement with Khalifa’s high-profile research, Bush located his company’s operations in ���ϲ�����CoE’s cutting-edge research facility. Last year, Bush Technical won funding from ���ϲ�����CoE’s Innovation Fund that supported a team of mechanical engineering students who completed a capstone design project that focused on manufacturing the micro-scroll compressor. Bush Technical is an exemplar of ���ϲ�����CoE’s mission to connect companies with students and faculty to develop new technologies.

Both Bush and his students, speak positively about the project’s potential and the experience. From providing authentic engineering experience for the students and skilled labor for a small local tech company, the partnership offers clear benefits for everyone involved as well as an opportunity for innovation to bloom.

“By getting paired with an actual company, it definitely simulates working in the real world. This project was almost a mini-internship,” said Donovan. “It’s been a really cool experience.”

No pun intended.

Pramod K. and Anju Varshney

For the first time this fall, the Pramod K. and Anju Varshney Endowed Graduate Scholarship will be awarded in the . The scholarship will provide financial assistance to graduate students pursuing a doctoral degree in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

��is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of ���ϲ�����’s��, and an adjunct professor of radiology at Upstate Medical University.

He and his wife, Anju, have been members of the ���ϲ����� community ever since Pramod joined the college as an assistant professor in the seventies. He has spent his entire professional life as a faculty member at ���ϲ�����, and in their 43 years in Central New York, their devotion to students in the classroom, and in life, has produced a worldwide community of alumni with a strong affinity for their alma mater.

As an educator and researcher, Pramod is renowned for his seminal contributions in the area of information fusion. His body of research also focuses on distributed sensor networks and data fusion, detection and estimation theory, wireless communications, physical layer security, image processing, and radar. Over the years, he has supervised the dissertations of over 60 Ph.D. students. His instruction and mentoring have launched and boosted the careers of many.

Throughout the years, the Varshneys’ support of students has extended far and beyond academic success. They commonly welcome students into their home and help ensure that they feel a sense of belonging, something the Varshneys think is especially important for international students. Pramod credits Anju with fostering these connections. He says, “She creates a family environment. Because of that special connection, we can go to any part of the world, and my former students are there to welcome us, including in industry here in ���ϲ�����.”

Anju adds, “Pramod’s students are like adopted sons and daughters. When our sons were young, they called them aunts and uncles. All these years later, the students are like nieces and nephews to them. We call them our academic family.”

She says that she and Pramod were inspired to establish this scholarship as a way to “give back to the establishment that has supported them all these years.” Its goal is to promote research by supporting a student in the midst of completing a ���ǰ� ��doctorate program.

“These fields have defined the societal changes that have taken place, and all of us are beneficiaries,” says Pramod. “These fields will continue to evolve very rapidly. Our scholarship provides fuel to this technological evolution. When I first came to ���ϲ����� in ’76, there were no personal computers. It was all mainframe. Then came laptops, smartphones, autonomous vehicles, sensors everywhere, the internet of things. That is all because of research in these fields.”

The scholarship will further establish the Varshneys’ legacy on the ���ϲ����� campus, but don’t mistake this as a signal of the end of their contributions to the community. They both have much more to give and no immediate plans to retire. Their current “academic family” includes seven current Ph.D. students, two master’s students and many other research contributors, with more joining this fall.

“It’s important to us that we can give back while we are here, not after we move on to the next stage in our lives,” says Pramod. “We want to see the impact firsthand. We are here to stay.”

The Varshneys hope that they will be able to increase the scope of their scholarship through the additional support of alumni gifts. If you would like to contribute to the Pramod K. and Anju Varshney Endowed Graduate Scholarship Fund, .

Katie Piston, Thomas Welles and Jane Pascar

���ϲ����� graduate students Jane Pascar, Katie Piston and Thomas Welles ’17 have been awarded 2019 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. This highly selective fellowship program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Each recipient is contributing to fascinating research with the potential to benefit humanity in three distinct ways—stopping the spread of disease, treating brain injuries and reducing automobile emissions.

Pascar, a biology Ph.D. student in the Center for Reproductive Evolution (College of Arts and Sciences), studies the complex relationship between microbes and their hosts. Different factors—such as climate, or a host’s diet and habitat—can influence these microbial communities. Working with Associate Professor ��and Weeden Professor , Pascar uses computational techniques to analyze microbial sequencing data from the world’s deadliest animal—the mosquito.

“Mosquitoes transmit diseases like malaria. Nets and insecticides decrease the number of mosquito-related illnesses, but additional solutions are still needed,” says Pascar. “Researchers are developing ways to control mosquito populations biologically. Still, there are gaps in our knowledge. By investigating the role microbes play in a mosquito’s life, I hope to contribute to more effective preventative methods to help stop the spread of dangerous diseases.”

Piston, a Tillman Scholar��and bioengineering Ph.D. student in Associate Professor ’s research group (College of Engineering and Computer Science), is contributing to knowledge of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is associated with repeated head injuries, which damage blood vessels in the brain and disrupt the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a selectively permeable barrier of cells that form physical barriers called tight junctions. The BBB lines the brain’s more than 400 miles of microvasculature and prevents potentially harmful chemicals in the bloodstream from entering the brain.

“CTE is a growing health crisis for our nation’s veterans and contact sport athletes. Since 9/11, more than 300,000 veterans have returned home with brain injuries,” explains Piston. “I am developing a computational model of tight junctions that have been disrupted by head injuries to fill in the knowledge gap between CTE and BBB dysfunction. Ultimately, our contributions could help uncover better treatments for brain injuries.”

Thomas Welles ’17, a mechanical and aerospace Ph.D. engineering student in Associate Professor ’s Combustion and Energy Research Lab (Engineering and Computer Science), seeks to increase the efficiency and fuel economy of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. Today’s engines rely on catalytic converters to reduce emissions. Welles’ hybrid system replaces the catalytic converter and alternator system with a solid oxide fuel cell stack to produce electric power and cleaner emissions.

“The auto industry is faced with producing vehicles with the lowest possible environmental emissions, but they are still mostly building vehicles that solely burn fossil fuels,” says Welles. “With our fuel cell research, we may be able to reduce emissions more than any current technology.”

The NSF also recognized two additional ���ϲ����� students with honorable mentions: Julia Giannini (Arts and Sciences), for her physics of living systems research with Associate Professor , and Lucie Worthen (Engineering and Computer Science), for her environmental engineering research. Worthen is co-advised by the Thomas and Colleen Wilmot Chair in Engineering ��and Assistant Professor .

The NSF awards about 2,000 new fellowships and 1,500 honorable mention recipients annually from more than 12,000 applicants. In addition to notable recognition, each fellow is provided three years of financial support in the form of a substantial stipend. The University also receives a cost-of-education allowance for each fellow. Honorable mention is considered a significant national academic achievement.

The complete list of 2019 fellows and honorable mention recipients is available at .

U.S. Air Force Col. Colonel William E. Young

This spring, the University hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on risk management for human and cyber security. The cross-University collaboration was led by U.S. Air Force strategist Col. William E. Young, creator of the Air Force’s cybersecurity doctrine. The doctrine, System-Theoretic Process Analysis for Security and Its Derivative Functional Mission Analysis, serves as the foundation for the Air Force’s mission analysis methodology. Under Young’s instruction, workshop participants learned how to systematically and rigorously develop system-level constraints based on Air Force missions and unacceptable losses.

“To manage risk, you need to know in detail how your system or operation functions, what control you have, why you do what you do, and what losses are unacceptable,” explains College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) Professor . “This knowledge allows you to set priorities, make the best use of limited resources, and anticipate threats that could destroy you or your enterprise. It’s the difference between being in control and being controlled by bad circumstances.”

Young commands the 53rd Electronic Warfare Group at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. His organization is the free world’s largest mission data software reprogramming center, with more than 1,200 engineers, operators, analysts, intelligence professionals, IT professionals and maintenance personnel. It provides network operations, software development and cyberdefense for Air Force and joint warfighters around the globe. His methods are based on the work of his Ph.D. advisor, Nancy Leveson at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an internationally renowned safety expert.

“SU has a long history of collaborative research and education with the Air Force, specifically the Air Force Research Laboratory.��Because of this shared history, our organizations have an abiding understanding for one another, which enables us to support each other uniquely,” says Chin. “SU’s faculty and staff contribute to the Air Force’s capabilities, and Air Force leadership teach in our programs. By doing so, we integrate theory with practice.”

ECS sponsored the interdisciplinary risk management workshop along with the College of Law, the Falk College, the Whitman School, the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations, the Office of Government and Community Relations, the Office of Research through a CUSE grant, the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs, and the School of Information Studies.

Ian D. Hosein

��is on a roll. Since the first of the year, his research in developing new materials with advanced capabilities has earned him the selective 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (NTFA) and front-page coverage in two journals, Physica Status Solidi A and Advanced Engineering Materials. These accomplishments follow a productive 2018 in which the assistant professor in biomedical and chemical engineering earned a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and .

“Ian’s research is remarkable. It makes us very proud that his work is receiving this level of recognition,” says , chair of the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “These accolades are further proof that he is among the top young researchers in this field. Our students benefit greatly from his expertise and guidance.”

Hosein was awarded his 2019 3M NTFA for his proposal, “Advanced Polymer Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage.” His work was selected from more than 100 nominations from over 60 academic institutions across the country. He is set to receive $45,000 in funding over three years and will participate in a showcase of his research at 3M’s Science & Engineering Faculty Day this summer.

His research, “,” will be featured on the cover of Advanced Engineering Materials this July. Here, he and his research team—Hansheng Li, Fu-Hao Chen, and Saeid Biria—detail their work “writing with light” to photocure an array of rod-shaped pillars at the microscale. The array forms a surface structure on a transparent material that prevents water, fog and ice from collecting on its surface, making the material ideal for windows, solar panels and eye wear.

In February, his research, “,” was highlighted on the cover of Physica Status Solidi A. This work improves the amount of sunlight solar panels can collect to help allow solar energy to take on a larger share of our energy solutions. Along with Biria and Chen, Hosein uses arrays on the surface of a solar panel to allow more sunlight to be absorbed when it hits the panel over a wider angular range, such as over the course of a day or across seasons.

“I am pleased and humbled to have received these recognitions,” Hosein says. “It’s exciting to be able to contribute materials research that is acknowledged and honored by industry and academia. I hope that it will significantly advance our knowledge in this key discipline and be used to improve technology in a range of applications.”

Miguel San Martin ’82 of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stands with a full-scale mock-up of the Curiosity Mars rover.

When a spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere, terror sets in on Earth.

Following a smooth, quiet cruise across the expanse of space, a NASA Mars lander nears its final destination. Eighty miles above the alien surface, the vehicle begins a mechanical metamorphosis as it abandons propulsion and communications systems and begins a turbulent, hypersonic descent. As it falls, its heat shields glow red hot, reaching temperatures over 2,500 degrees, leaving a bright amber streak in its wake. Suddenly, there is a jarring lurch as a massive parachute deploys. The lander’s freefall slows, but it continues to plunge toward oblivion at speeds exceeding 800 miles per hour. Less than six miles from the ground, pyrotechnics pop and spark as the craft sheds its shields to reveal robotic appendages. The craft breaks free from its remaining shell and courageously discards its parachute with a mere half mile to drop. Propulsion rockets spray from all corners of the lander, bracing against a catastrophic collision with the unforgiving ruddy red desert below.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Miguel San Martin ’82 is on pins and needles. For nearly seven minutes, he and his team have been cut off from the vessel that represents countless hours of work and deep commitment. When the spacecraft jettisoned its communications systems upon entering Mars’ atmosphere, it sacrificed all contact with its earthling makers. And so, until it lands (…if it lands) and powers on, there is only silence. San Martin and his team are forced to wait, anticipating a simple beep signaling a successful landing.

After a silence that seems to extend for eternity, their patience is rewarded. The lander sends a simple, calm affirmation across the void. A triumphant beep. When it finally comes, relief and elation course through NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in waves. They’ve landed on Mars.

San Martin has lived through scenarios like this four separate times as a leading contributor to the Mars Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity lander missions. Each time, he experienced “seven minutes of terror” as the vehicles executed the landing phase of their mission entirely automatically. All told, he has survived 28 heart-pounding minutes. And each time, he has been rewarded with that glorious beep.

Just 22 years before he experienced the success of the Pathfinder mission, San Martin was a boy in Argentina with sky’s-the-limit dreams. He was fascinated with electronics. He often bombarded his family members with questions about how the equipment on his family’s farm worked or how his radio was able to receive a wireless signal. He was so persistent that they had to take turns answering his barrage of questions.

“My first passion was engineering. From a very early age, I was curious about everything,” says San Martin. “I remember following the Apollo missions and seeing a rocket launch in the news and being fascinated by it. The clincher was Viking, the first mission to land on Mars. I followed it in magazines and over my short-wave radio for years before it was ever launched, but when I saw its first photo from the surface of Mars on the cover of a newspaper, I said, ‘this is what I’m going to do.’”

Upon hearing that his son’s ultimate goal would be to work for NASA, his father recommended San Martin complete his education in the United States. With a poor grasp of the English language and little knowledge of his options in American universities, he set out for Cornell, based on the past success of a family friend who attended there. San Martin completed an English as a second language course there but was not accepted to Cornell’s engineering program. After that disappointment, he had a choice—return home or forge on in an unfamiliar land. He chose the latter.

San Martin pulled out a map and discovered that ���ϲ����� was near. He bought a ticket for a Greyhound bus and went directly to ���ϲ�����’s admissions office to plead his case. To his delight, he was accepted. By the end of his first year in the electrical engineering program, he was at the top of his class, in love with the community, and content to complete his bachelor’s degree at ���ϲ�����. He met his wife and self-appointed public relations agent, Susan San Martin, at Buggsy’s Back Alley Bar. She studied law at ���ϲ����� and worked a cash register at Peter’s Groceries to pay for tuition.

“���ϲ����� was the place where I transitioned from Argentine culture to an American way of life,” recalls San Martin. “I didn’t know how to achieve what I wanted to achieve, but after four years, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I found out that I could succeed in this culture and in my discipline. I had no idea if I was going to survive a semester. SU showed me that I could do this.”

He graduated summa cum laude and was the Engineering Student of the Year in 1982. His success and the strength of ���ϲ�����’s program set him up for acceptance to graduate programs at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and MIT. For San Martin, the choice was clear. The Guidance and Control engineers from the Apollo program were at MIT. That’s where he needed to be. After earning his master’s there, he achieved his childhood dream of working for NASA’s JPL. And in his very first job, he worked on the navigation systems for the Magellan orbiter mission to Venus. He has been there ever since. Today, he serves as JPL’s chief engineer of guidance and control. He was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering, an extraordinary honor for an engineer.

Recently, San Martin was one of the many NASA scientists and engineers saddened by, but ultimately very proud of, the conclusion of the Opportunity Mission, which he landed on Mars. After nearly 14 years of operating on the Martian surface, the rover ceased all contact. For many, it felt like a death in the family.

“When a rover’s mission ends, it’s always very sad, especially for the people who are working on it every day,” says San Martin. “I had a similar experience working on Mars Pathfinder. I was very involved with surface operations, and the rover lived for three months. One day, we came in and sent commands and did not hear back. You develop an emotional attachment.”

San Martin is actively contributing to the technology that will be used in NASA’s future missions, including sending landers to asteroids and Jupiter’s moon, Europa, whose frozen seas may have conditions for evolved life. As one of the most accomplished JPL engineers, he also serves on many review boards for other developing NASA projects. He is currently consulting on the Mars 2020 lander project, which will bring back samples of Mars’ surface.

It is clear that San Martin has many more “minutes of terror” and successful space missions in his future. For that young, curious boy he once was, it is a dream come true. Throughout his continuing journey, through ���ϲ����� and beyond, Miguel San Martin has learned that the sky was never a limit.

Huan Gu and Dacheng Ren

Urinary catheters are commonly used during surgery and in patients who cannot otherwise control urination. Unfortunately, patients who need long-term catheterization tend to experience blockages and urinary tract infections caused by bacteria that cling to the catheter. Even patients that require short-term catheterization can be at risk. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections are one of the most common health care infections in the United States, according to the National Health and Safety Network. New research in the , led by Stevenson Endowed Professor ��aims to prevent these infections by building a better catheter.

The research team—which includes Assistant Research Professor Huan Gu and SUNY Upstate Medical University Associate Professor and Reconstructive Urologist Dmitriy Nikolavsky—is designing a catheter that prevents biofilms from sticking to its surfaces. A biofilm is a slimy, complex layer of bacteria that holds together and adheres to surfaces inside or outside of the body.

Thanks to an Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the team will engineer unique, non-fouling, catheter-based polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and then evaluate its biocompatibility and effectiveness in thwarting infections.

In the team’s design, the polymer surface will be engineered with moving micron-size pillars on the wall of the catheter that discourage bacterial biofilms from gaining a foothold on the surface.

Their prototype is made of PDMS, which is an FDA-approved polymer that is already widely used in catheters. In addition to incorporating the minuscule pillars into the design, they will employ methods to alter the topography of the catheter’s surfaces in ways that are proven to repel biofilms, such as changing the geometry of patterns using shape memory polymers as well as its stiffness.

The team has obtained promising results that such dynamic change in surface topography can remove more than 99.9 percent of biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are a common cause of infections acquired in hospitals.

Ren leads a well-established research program in biofilms. He studies the mechanisms of biofilm-associated resistance to antimicrobials, engineers smart surfaces and biomaterials to control microbial biofilm formation, and develops new strategies and inhibitors to kill biofilm and dormant bacterial cells more effectively. Given the strength of his ongoing body of work, this new application is a natural next step. And the science that is established with catheters today could be applied to a variety of materials and medical devices tomorrow.

“My team and I are incredibly grateful to the NIH to receive the funding to carry out this work,” Ren says. “This project will allow us to make more contributions to biofilm research that hopefully can benefit patients in the future.”

Professor James H. Henderson and Ph.D. candidate Shelby L. Buffington

Researchers in the College of Engineering and Computer Science have developed a material—a new kind of shape memory polymer (SMP)—that could have major implications for health care.

SMPs are soft, rubbery, “smart” materials that can change shape in response to external stimuli like temperature changes or exposure to light. They can hold each shape indefinitely and turn back when triggered to do so.

SMPs have many potential biomedical applications. For example, they are ideal as cardiovascular stents because they can be one shape for surgical insertion and another once positioned in a blood vessel. The warmth of the patient’s body is all that is required to trigger the shape change.

Along with collaborators at Bucknell University, ���ϲ����� researchers have designed an SMP that can change its shape in response to exposure to enzymes and is compatible with living cells. It requires no additional trigger, such as a change in temperature. Given these properties, it can respond to cellular activity like healing.

“The enzymatic sensitivity of the material allows it to respond directly to cell behavior,” explains biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate Shelby L. Buffington. “For instance, you could place it over a wound, and as the tissue remodeled and degraded it, the SMP would slowly pull the wound closed. It could be adapted to play a role in treating infections and cancer by adjusting the material’s chemistry.”

The research team includes Buffington, Justine E. Paul ’18, bioengineering junior Mark M. Macios, and Bucknell’s Patrick T. Mather and Matthew M. Ali Ph.D. ’18. Their research, “,” was published in Acta Biomaterialia in January.

The team created the material using a process called dual electrospinning, in which a high-voltage current is applied to two needle tips pumping two separate polymer solutions. The voltage draws out the polymer fibers, and they are blended into a fiber polymer mat. The proper combination of fibers gives the material its shape memory qualities.

Detailed in their paper, the teams analyzed the material’s properties, shape memory performance and cytocompatibility. Their experiments successfully demonstrated that the SMP’s original shape could be recovered through a degree of reversal, or degradation, of the shape-fixing phase.

Today, the research team is examining their SMP in cancer and macrophage cell cultures. They hope that with additional research, they will uncover practical uses for their material using lower concentrations of enzymes, produced by less extreme cellular activity.

“We anticipate that the materials we’re developing could have broad application in health care. For example, our SMPs could be used in drugs that only activate when the target cells or organ are in the desired physiological state, in scaffolds that guide tissue regeneration in response to the behavior of the regenerating tissue itself, and in decision-making biosensors that guide patient treatment more effectively,” Henderson says. “We’re very excited to have achieved these first enzymatically responsive SMPs.”

Door prizes will be awarded at many of the events, with a grand prize drawing at the conclusion of the Eweek where students can win an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Echo Dot or a Bluetooth portable speaker.

��Sunday, Feb. 17

• • noon-5 p.m., Link Hall
  • Challenge your peers in a variety of academic, design and fun challenges. A ��event.
  • AEW facilitators, peer deaders, SHPE and Tau Beta Pi

• • 8:30-10 p.m., Shaw Dining Hall
  • Are you the King of the Hill? Are you the Queen that reigns? Put your brain to the test! Paper airplanes, Jenga, Math-a-thon, snacks and more!

��Monday, Feb. 18, through Friday, Feb. 22

• • Serve the campus community by stocking the Hendricks Chapel Food Pantry with food and personal care items. Drop off non-perishable food and toiletry items in the collection boxes throughout Link Hall and the Center for Science and Technology.

• ECS Career Clinics
  • Are you due for a career checkup? Stop by one of the Career Clinics during Eweek to speak to a career advisor to make sure you are on track with all things career-related. To attend, search “ECS E-Week Career Clinic” under events in Handshake or stop by the lounge outside the Link Hall elevators during the clinic. Dates and times are listed in the schedule of events below.

Monday, Feb. 18

• • 11 a.m.-noon., Link Hall, first-floor lounge

• • 1:30-3:30 p.m., Link Hall lobby
  • featuring Citrus Racing, Robotics Club and Baja Racing

• • 7:15-9:15 p.m., 331 Link Hall
  • Build heart rate and ECG monitors for developing countries.

Tuesday, Feb. 19

• • 10:30-11:30 a.m., Link Hall, first-floor lounge

• • 6:30-8:30 p.m., 105 Link Hall
  • Hear ECS faculty and undergraduate students present and discuss their innovative research.

��Wednesday, Feb. 20

• • 11 a.m.-noon, Link Hall, first-floor lounge

• • noon-4 p.m., Link Hall
  • Learn more about how to get involved in an extracurricular activity and meet other students that share similar interests.

��Thursday, Feb. 21

• • 9:30-10:30 a.m., Link Hall, first-floor lounge

• • 6-8:30 p.m., 331 Link Hall
  • Come together as women studying STEM to create self-portraits. At the end of the event, the floor will open for people to share what they painted and why, and share a dialogue of experiences as women in STEM.

Friday, Feb. 22

• • 11 a.m.-noon, Link Hall, first-floor lounge

• • 3-5:30 p.m., 001 Life Sciences Complex

• • 3-5:30 p.m., 001 Life Sciences Complex
  • An Engineering Meets Business presentation about creating your own venture and job right out of college. A ��event.

• • 3-5:30 p.m., 001 Life Sciences Complex
  • The Order is a symbolic organization that seeks to promote professionalism among engineers. It is a prestigious fellowship of engineers dedicated to the practice, teaching and administration of their profession.
  • Senior engineering students graduating May 2019 to December 2019 are eligible to participate. Register in person in 121 Link Hall through Feb. 15. There is a $12 induction fee.

• • 3-5:30 p.m., 001 Life Sciences Complex
  • The Pledge is a symbolic organization that seeks to promote professionalism and integrity among those with a computer science background.
  • Senior computer science and systems and information science students graduating May 2019 to December 2019 are eligible to participate. Register in person in 121 Link Hall through Feb. 15. There is a $10 induction fee.

Saturday, Feb. 23

• • 4:30-6 p.m. or 6:30-8 p.m. TBD, Dineen Hall
  • Before you head to the Dome to cheer on ���ϲ����� vs. Duke, get ready for game day with some delicious tailgate fare, drinks, school spirit giveaways and a chance to snap a photo with your favorite mascot, Otto. Students from the Invent@SU invention accelerators will be on hand to demonstrate their incredible original inventions.

Sunday, Feb. 24

• • 5-8 p.m., Goldstein Auditorium, Schine Student Center
  • The STEM charity ball is an annual philanthropy gala in which all proceeds are donated to nonprofit organizations that promotes STEM. This year’s event will benefit the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology and Girls Inc.
  • Open to all ���ϲ����� students. $5 tickets are available through the Schine Box Office starting Feb. 11 up until the day of the event or until tickets are sold out.

About Eweek

Founded by National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951,��Eweek is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers.

Today, Eweek is a formal coalition of more than 70 engineering, education and cultural societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. Dedicated to raising public awareness of engineers’ positive contributions to quality of life, Eweek promotes recognition among parents, teachers and students of the importance of a technical education and a high level of math, science and technology literacy, and motivates youth to pursue engineering careers in order to provide a diverse and vigorous engineering workforce. Each year, Eweek reaches thousands of schools, businesses and community groups across the United States.

The increase is due to a phenomenon called “emissions rebound,” raising questions about the rule’s standing under the Clean Air Act. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions are also projected to increase in as many as 20 states plus D.C. under ACE.

“The EPA’s proposed ACE rule does little to control carbon dioxide emissions from electric utilities nationally and could lead to increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in some states,” says Driscoll.�� “At a time when many scientists are pointing to the need to accelerate greenhouse gas reductions, ACE would do little to mitigate climate change or the adverse health effects of fossil fuel emissions.”

ACE is the proposed replacement for the Clean Power Plan (CPP). ACE represents a narrow, source-based approach to carbon standards that focuses on efficiency improvements at individual power plants. The CPP represents a flexible, systems-based approach that provides more avenues for plants to achieve necessary emissions reductions including energy efficiency, renewable energy, fuel switching and emissions trading.

A fact sheet available outlines the study, key findings, state impacts, the full list of authors and the authors’��public comments on ACE��to the Environmental Protection Agency.

This fall, the��Cybersecurity Semester (CSS)��returns to ���ϲ����� to teach computer science and computer engineering students from institutions across the country to become leaders in cybersecurity.

Designed by the and the , the CSS is an 18-credit semester in which students gain technical expertise from cybersecurity leaders and practitioners through hands-on experiences. Participants learn to identify and analyze system vulnerabilities, assess risks, develop countermeasures and secure systems, and deliver software that has verifiable assurance properties.

The CSS is open to qualified ���ϲ����� students, as well as ROTC scholarship cadets from��other colleges and universities. This year, SU is offering the CSS on a cost-neutral basis for up to 10 ROTC candidates from academic institutions outside of ���ϲ�����. SU’s cybersecurity programs have been .

Participants will attend a leadership development seminar, gain priority access to an internship with the U.S. Air Force, attend retreats and visit the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

“Students in the CSS learn the theory, tools and practices to verify the security and integrity of operations formally. This capability is the basis for assuring missions in cyber physical space no matter the application.��There is no other program like this in the nation,” says Professor Shiu-Kai Chin.

The CSS consists of a core course load, electives and professional development. Core ABET-accredited courses include CIS 400: Certified Security by Design, CSE 484: Introduction to Computer and Network Security, and CIS 487: Access Control, Security, and Trust. Electives are tailored to individual student needs and interests. Professional preparation includes an internship and leadership development.

Students must be seniors or juniors in a computer science or computer engineering undergraduate program with an appropriate level of prior coursework and a preferred GPA of 3.3 or higher. They must also have experience with Discrete mathematics, programming experience in a high-level language and familiarity with Linux at the command-line level. It may also require a U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status to be eligible for internship opportunities, an optional part of the program.

Applications will be accepted until 11:59 pm EST on March 17, 2019. To apply, please send the following in a single PDF file to��cyberengineering@syr.edu:

• Resume
• Unofficial college transcripts (including transfer credits)
• A 100-word biography (include hobbies, interest and goals) with a recent headshot photograph

A letter of recommendation from an academic advisor or faculty member must also be sent to ��cyberengineering@syr.edu��directly from the reference by��the deadline. For ROTC cadets, a letter of reference from ROTC detachment leadership is also acceptable. Admission notifications will be sent in April.

Narayan and Kawa met when they were assigned to a shared office space while working together in a geotechnical research lab. They became fast friends as they tackled the challenges of master’s courses and research.

“Mambu was easygoing and had a great sense of humor,” recalls Smita. “No matter how grim things felt, he could always make me laugh. He was very bright, a great collaborator, and particularly sharp with tech despite having minimal experience with it before coming to the U.S. That inspired me to take on an additional degree in computer engineering.”

Kawa’s friendship also encouraged Narayan to break out of her shell and become more active on campus. While at SU she was a teaching and research assistant. She also helped revive the ���ϲ����� Chapter of Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth and became a member of Phi Beta Delta, the honor society for international scholars.

Following graduation, Kawa and Narayan kept in touch from time to time by phone. However, as the years went by, they lost touch as their attention turned toward developing their promising young careers. He went on to become a civil engineer and obtained the Professional Engineer designation, eventually working for Dewberry. She went on to work for Autodesk where she helped shape key features of a civil engineering design software from inception through product launch and beyond. She is currently a lead software engineer at Cimpress after establishing her career at Autodesk and Vistaprint.

After a few years apart, Narayan attempted to find Kawa again. An internet search turned up shocking news. Sadly, Kawa had passed away in the time since they last spoke. He had died at the age of 34 in 2006.

“I couldn’t believe he was gone. Part of me still can’t,” says Narayan.

In the weeks following the tragic revelation, Narayan began to think of ways she could honor Kawa and their friendship. She recalled that she and Kawa had both received scholarships that enabled their studies at SU.

“We both experienced first-hand how it can remove barriers,” she says.

Narayan reached out to faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and officially established a $15,000 scholarship in Mambu’s name. It is set to be distributed in the amount of $1,000 per year to a student studying civil or environmental engineering and will be awarded for the first time this spring to Christopher Harvey of Delmar, New York—an environmental engineering freshman and member of the .

Narayan hopes that her gift will alleviate the cost of education for many in the coming years. She also hopes that its recipients will look to Kawa and his legacy of kindness and humor for inspiration when things become difficult just as she did many years ago.

She says, “Mambu taught me that life can be beautifully simple and it should not be carried forth with pain and strain. It is a lesson that has been very valuable to me, and I believe it can help others.”

Assistant Professor Mary Beth Browning Monroe and her class in the ���ϲ����� Biomaterials Institute in Bowne Hall

Despite advances in medical technology, millions of people around the world still bleed to death after being shot or experiencing other traumatic injuries. Many of those deaths occur before the victims ever reach a hospital.

To address this, Assistant Professor ��in the ��is developing a first-aid, biocompatible foam that promotes rapid blood clotting in large wounds. She recently obtained $427,000 in funding for the project through the Air Force Defense Research Sciences Program.

“Professor Duncan Maitland first developed this technology at Texas A&M 20 years ago as an aneurysm treatment. While working in his lab, my job was to think of new applications for the foam. I was shocked by the number of people who still die from bleeding, so my focus became customizing the foam to treat large wounds, such as gunshots,” says Monroe.

Monroe’s foam is a shape memory polymer, meaning it can take different shapes when heated, cooled or manipulated. Similar in appearance to the sponge in your kitchen sink, Monroe’s foam can be compressed and inserted into deep, tunneling wounds. Once implanted, it heats up to body temperature and expands to fill the injury. Its combination of chemistry and porous structure promotes rapid clotting and stops the bleeding.

“I dream that this will become a part of the average first-aid kit—inexpensive, easy-to-use and widely available,” says Monroe. “I could be made available to everyone, no matter where you are or who you are, and prevent a lot of deaths.”

There are similar alternatives to Monroe’s solution; however, they tend to rely on applying pressure in the wound. Her foam not only patches the injury but promotes healing as soon as it is inserted. She is also working on incorporating functionalities such as a honey-based antimicrobial component to ward off infections and making the foam biodegradable so that it never needs to be removed.

Monroe says, “My goal now is the to get the basic formulation out there as quickly as possible. I’m gathering the data I need to show that it is safe and effective, including FDA approval. From there, I’ll continue to work on additional capabilities in future generations of the technology.”

Once approved for use, the technology would have clear military and commercial applications. One day, Monroe’s work could lead to a new, standard form of first-aid that significantly decreases the number of bleeding deaths around the world.

Jian Tang

, a professor in the ��(ECS), has been named a Fellow by the . Attaining the level of Fellow is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and a remarkable career achievement. Less than 0.1 percent of voting IEEE members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. Tang joins professors , and ��as one of four active ECS faculty members to have earned the title.

Tang is an accomplished researcher in mobile computing, wireless networking, big data and cloud computing. In his work, he designs advanced algorithms to enable and improve high-performance, green computing and communications systems such as smartphone sensing networks, cloud computing systems, and big data processing platforms. He joined the college’s ��in 2010.

“Dr. Tang’s contributions to the optimization of wireless networks and mobile crowdsourcing systems are prime examples of our faculty’s ability to apply sharp skills and deep knowledge to relevant, modern applications,” says ECS Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “The college is fortunate to count him among our faculty.”

The IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its 400,000 plus members in 160 countries, the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power, and consumer electronics.

Dedicated to the advancement of technology, the IEEE publishes 30 percent of the world’s literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields and has developed more than 1300 active industry standards. The association also sponsors or co-sponsors nearly 1700 international technical conferences each year.

Professor Vir V. Phoha

Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers for scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Phoha and his fellow honorees will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering) in February at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Phoha’s research focuses on offensive and defensive cybersecurity, machine learning, smartphone and tablet security, and biometrics. He pioneered the field of spoof-resistant active authentication—a non-intrusive, extra layer of defense for accessing mobile devices. This includes the use of biometrics—authenticating access based on a smartphone user’s keystrokes, gait, swiping and even patterns in their brain activity.

His algorithms and prototypes protect many financial, military and classified information systems. Before his work, the field of behavioral biometrics was mostly theoretical. His inventions have resulted in the widespread commercial use of active authentication.

Phoha is also an Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Scientist and a Fellow of the Society for Design and Process Science. His work is funded by the likes of the National Science Foundation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 2017, he received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Region 1 Technological Innovation in Academics Award for his contributions to authentication using behavioral biometrics.

“Dr. Phoha is a leading mind in computing and cybersecurity,” says ECS Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “His work is vital in our society where mobile devices are ubiquitous and valuable information must be protected from ever-evolving attacks. Our students are fortunate to learn from such a first-rate educator. His recognition as an AAAS Fellow is well-deserved.”

AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of six respected peer-reviewed journals: , the premier global science weekly; , the leading journal of cell signaling and regulatory biology; , integrating medicine, engineering and science to promote human health; , an innovative and high-quality open access journal for all the sciences; , research articles that report critical advances in all areas of immunological research, including important new tools and techniques; and , original, peer-reviewed, science- or engineering-based research articles that advance the field of robotics.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the association’s 24 sections or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members or by the AAAS chief executive officer. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected. AAAS Fellows’ lifetime honor comes with an expectation that recipients maintain the highest standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

Plansky Hoang

Plansky Hoang ’15, a graduate research assistant in the , has been awarded a highly competitive and prestigious predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association. Hoang is a researcher in the —working in the under ,��assistant professor and Samuel and Carol Nappi research scholar, and in the Henderson Lab under , associate��professor.

The purpose of the Heart Association’s fellowship is to “enhance the integrated research and clinical training of promising students matriculated in predoctoral or clinical health professional degree training programs and who intend careers as scientists, physician-scientists or other clinician-scientists, or related careers aimed at improving global cardiovascular health.”

Hoang was selected based on her research with Ma in the STEM Lab in which she is developing an in vitro model that tests various medications on developing heart cells to contribute to the prevention of congenital heart defects. About 40,000 children are born with a heart defect in the United States every year. Hoang’s work will help determine which drugs—when taken by pregnant women—may be harmful to the heart health of developing embryos. She evaluates the effect of drugs that treat everything from acne medication to cancer treatments.

“In the past��two��years, Plansky has proven to be a mature and capable biomedical researcher with strong scientific curiosity and acumen.��Without Plansky’s great effort, I would never have foreseen that my research program at ���ϲ����� could be as functional and productive in such a short period,” Ma says. “I believe this award will help her navigate the transition from a mentored graduate student to an independent biomedical engineer and build a successful academic career in the future.”

Before her work in Ma’s and Henderson’s labs, Hoang earned her bachelor’s degree in bioengineering at ECS in 2015. During her time at SU, she has also served as a teaching assistant for engineering mathematics, an undergraduate researcher in Professor Dacheng Ren’s Biofilm Engineering Laboratory lab and an academic excellence workshop facilitator for ECS’ Student Success Office.

Says Henderson: “Having had the opportunity to teach Plansky as an undergraduate at SU and to now co-advise her during her Ph.D. studies, it has been a pleasure to watch her develop from an inquisitive student to an independent researcher now competing successfully for funding to support cutting-edge research that promises to advance human health.”

“We have many nuclear power plants. They have to treat spent nuclear fuel,” Tavlarides says. “These gases are emitted in proposed treatment processes. We want to capture the gases, so they don’t get into the environment and harm people.”

Professor Lawrence Tavlarides (center) with students in his lab.

This fall, the Department of Energy (DOE) awarded a grant of $799,548 to Tavlarides. The DOE grant co-funds a collaborative effort with Sotira Yiacoumi of the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) and Costas Tsouris of Oak Ridge National Laboratory to continue their work in this area for the next three years. The new grant is focused on organic iodides and overlaps with another current DOE grant focused on adsorbent behavior with various gases. Both are funded by the Nuclear Energy University Program.

Tavlarides’ laboratory features a specially designed exhaust system and the necessary equipment to test the gas adsorption capacity of pellets to be used in process units that capture radioactive gases released during the treatment of nuclear fuel waste. The researchers—Tavlarides’ Ph.D. students Seungrag Choi and Siqi Tang—flow gases containing iodine through columns containing tiny pellets made of silver mordenite, silver aerogel or silver alumina. The researchers then measure the efficiency of the various pellets in adsorbing the gas.

“The intent is to develop an adsorption process to adsorb the iodine gas in these pellets and then contain it so that it could be placed in long-term repositories,” says Tavlarides, who is in his 36^thyear at ECS. In a real-world scenario, the pellets that adsorb the iodine would be placed in concrete mesh and then stored in an underground repository.

The GIT contingent of the collaborative team is developing computer codes to model the adsorption processes in fixed-bed adsorbers and incorporates the pellet adsorption models developed at SU. These models will then be used to predict the capacity of adsorption columns to capture the radioactive iodine and other released gases when treating nuclear waste.

The GIT team includes postdoctoral researcher Austin Ladshaw and graduate student Alex Wiechert. The research collaboration also includes interactions with colleagues from Oak Ridge—David DePaoli, Kristian Myhre and Carter Abney—and the�� Idaho National Laboratory: Amy Welty, Keven Lyon, Terry Todd and Jack Law.

Tavlarides says he is optimistic about the project. “We’ve been at it for some time with our collaborators. We will make a contribution towards it that will be valuable to our colleagues and nuclear waste processing throughout the U.S.,” he says. “It’s important work. It’s a huge endeavor.”

In their evaluation, ABET’s representatives stated that the college has a “strong assessment culture and comprehensive assessment processes, ensuring that graduating students attain the educational outcomes and are prepared for careers or graduate education.”

ABET accreditation is an important global standard in engineering and computing education. Graduating from an ABET-accredited program is often a requirement for working in technical disciplines. Graduation from an ABET-accredited program is necessary to obtain a license in most engineering professions in the United States. It increases and enhances employment opportunities and also establishes students’ eligibility for many federal loans, grants and scholarships.

All of ECS’ engineering programs have been ABET-accredited without interruption for many years, beginning in 1936 with the civil engineering program. This most recent reaccreditation extends to Sept. 30, 2024.

The accreditation was awarded this past summer following a standard, six-year evaluation conducted during the 2017-18 academic year, which included a self-study report and a comprehensive general review. The assessment effort was completed by ECS program directors and department chairs, and coordinated by Professor Can Isik.

“Securing ABET accreditation for our engineering programs demonstrates the strength of our academics and faculty,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “This achievement once again confirms that our students are receiving a premier technical education at ���ϲ�����.”

For additional information on ABET accreditation in ECS, visit .

Peter Zaehringer

Zaehringer is an economic and business development professional with over 20 years of national and international experience. Most recently, he served as vice president of economic development with the in Green Bay, Wisconsin. There, Peter brought together more than 300 regional stakeholders to develop the region’s first comprehensive economic development strategy focused on innovation, retention and attraction of businesses and talent. His efforts were instrumental in attracting —a globally competitive innovation destination and partnership between the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft. Zaehringer also directed the Advance Business Development Center, a business and manufacturing incubator.

“I am delighted that we have been able to attract Peter to ���ϲ����� from Green Bay, where his accomplishments in the area of economic development were truly impressive,” says Pramod K. Varshney, director of CASE and distinguished professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “I believe that his skill set is ideal for this position, and I expect that he will be instrumental in taking CASE to a new level.”

CASE is an Empire State Development Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) Center for Advanced Technology. The center helps companies identify faculty collaborators and establish joint university-industry research projects; cultivate ongoing relationships with industry partners, co-op companies and corporate prospects; network with other high-tech businesses; and engage with local and state government and economic development entities.

CASE has operated on the ���ϲ����� campus since 1984, bringing together traditional academic strengths in research and education to promote strong university-industry interaction and generate positive economic impact across New York State and beyond. It currently works with over 60 companies, leveraging nearly one million dollars in annual state investment with well over the required $1.25 million matching funds from industry. The center’s total economic impact, as measured by the state over the last 20 years has been over $500 million, growing businesses and bringing new revenues, jobs and investment to New York State.

“Peter rose to the top of a rich pool of candidates in a national search because of his significant experience in economic development, his passion for facilitating university-industry partnerships, and his leadership skills in making good things happen,” says John Liu,the University’s vice president for research. “Given historical successes of CASE, it is exciting to expect that Peter will contribute to an even brighter future for CASE.”

Zaehringer says, “I am truly excited to join Dr. Varshney, the team at CASE and, of course, the ���ϲ����� family. CASE has a longstanding tradition of recognized innovation, and I look forward to propelling our research, programs and partnerships to bring greater opportunities to faculty, students and industry partners.”

Associate Professor Jeongmin Ahn’s Combustion and Energy Research Laboratory at the ���ϲ����� Center of Excellence advances combustion, fuel cells, new material applications and power generation.

In recent years, renewable energy has been on the rise in the United States. Still, the overwhelming majority of our energy comes from fossil fuels. And, renewable energy needs to overcome significant limitations and obstacles to contribute a greater share of our overall energy solution. Hydrogen fuel cells may be the key to our sustainable energy future.

The term “cell” as it relates to energy is associated with batteries, but a fuel cell is more like an internal combustion engine. That’s because while a battery stores energy, highly-efficient hydrogen fuel cells generate power using a reverse-electrolysis chemical reaction. And, they are environmentally friendly—producing only electricity, water and heat.

So how come they aren’t currently used everywhere? After all, fuel cells have been used in NASA space missions since the 1960s. Indeed, the technology has improved by leaps and bounds since then. Unfortunately, like with renewables, the world still isn’t completely ready. However, Associate Professor in the says that the landscape is changing rapidly and fuel cells may soon emerge as a viable alternative in many applications.

“Given the genuine obstacles that the implementation of fuel cells used to face, past policy decisions in the U.S. heavily favored renewable energy and battery-powered electric vehicles,” says Ahn. “But today, things have changed in a way that makes widespread adoption of fuel cells much more feasible.”

Those who prioritize other energy solutions over fuel cells have traditionally pointed to a few key problems: hydrogen production is expensive, hydrogen is difficult to store—especially on a vehicle, and there is little existing infrastructure. According to Ahn, these common objections don’t hold up the way they once did.
_______________

Challenge #1: Fuel cells and hydrogen are too expensive.

It has been historically costly to produce hydrogen, but an increase in U.S. natural gas production (a significant source of hydrogen) has made it less expensive than ever before. Additionally, hydrogen can be produced by breaking down water through electrolysis. Most importantly, it has reached a point at which it costs less than gasoline production. Researchers also have uncovered ways to use less expensive materials in manufacturing fuel cells. At least when it comes to cost, hydrogen fuel cells can finally compete.

Challenge #2: It is difficult to store hydrogen.

The storage of hydrogen is challenging because it is a gas. Containing it could take up a lot of space and require thick, heavy tanks. This is especially a concern for hydrogen-powered vehicles. Fortunately, this particular challenge seems to have been almost entirely overcome. Many car companies have successfully created a system for commercial vehicles that transport hydrogen as ammonia—converting it back to hydrogen gas to power the chemical reaction. Toyota has employed this technology in their fuel-cell-powered Mirai, which is currently on the road in the U.S., Japan and Europe, numbering more than 6,000.

Challenge #3: The world is built for fossil fuels, not hydrogen.

If you drive a gasoline-powered car like most people, you likely never give much thought to running out of fuel. When your gauge shows your tank is low, there’s a gas station on every corner. If you drive a hydrogen-powered car, you need to be intently aware of the nearest hydrogen station.

It is true that we don’t have a robust hydrogen infrastructure, but in most developed countries we do have natural gas and water infrastructure. Both could be tapped as a source to generate hydrogen for a cost that is comparable or less than the generation of gasoline. You wouldn’t need tractor-trailers to deliver it, it could be generated onsite.
_______________

The implementation of fuel cells is much more realistic than ever. Not only that, in many places they have become a reality. In addition to Toyota’s success with the Mirai, Honda and Hyundai are poised to compete in the hydrogen fuel cell automotive industry. Companies like Google, Verizon and AT&T use stationary Bloom Energy fuel cell technology to power their facilities. And, the world’s first fuel cell train is operating in Germany as of this past September. Innovators are also finding ways to combine fuel cell technology with renewable energy sources to move both solutions forward. These are just some of the many places practical fuel cell technology is emerging.

The industry isn’t the only area in which people have become turned on to the idea. This past August, the U.S. Department of Energy broke from tradition and funded $38 million in new projects that support hydrogen and fuel cell technologies—a far cry from their stance just a few years ago. They estimate that as many as 40,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be on American roadways by the year 2023.

“It takes time, but more and more, people are open to using alternative, more environmentally friendly energy solutions,” says Ahn. “No single sustainable option can be dominant anytime soon, so we need to use everything at our disposal to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Taking action like replacing combustion engines with fuel cell technology would go a long way to reduce emissions and solve a range of energy problems. The future of hydrogen fuel cells is bright.”

Karen Davis

Under her leadership, the Office of Inclusive Excellence will augment and integrate diversity, equity,��and excellence within the college through education, research, dialogue, policy, and assessment. The office will house programs for student success and high-impact experiential programs; it will coordinate training and education for faculty, staff, and students; and its strategies will be informed by research and reporting—including regular assessment. Davis will also chair the college’s newly seated Inclusive Excellence (IE) Council. In its first year, the council is charged with completing a diversity audit and with partnering with to draft and launch a dialogue.

“I am excited and honored to dedicate myself to enhancing our College’s culture of diversity, inclusion, and equity,” says Davis. “I ardently believe in the vision of the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and I am pleased to be in a position to move the needle in these critical areas.”

Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg announced plans to establish the Office of Inclusive Excellence this summer. Its structure and programming are being informed in-part by the teachings of the ��(NIXLA). Davis, Dahlberg and other key college leaders participated in NIXLA this past summer in an intensive, five-week session.

In its first major initiative, the Office of Inclusive Excellence is developing a��Strategic Inclusive Excellence Leadership Program��in partnership with InterFaith Works that uses dialogue to develop inclusive excellence leadership skills—crucial for enhancing campus climate and skills cited by employers as essential for leadership in today’s global, diverse and multicultural workforce. With guidance from the IE Council, the dialogue will be developed, piloted and rolled out over two years and will engage more than 500 faculty, staff and student leaders in dialogue—including administrators, teaching assistants and student leaders.

“In establishing the Office of Inclusive Excellence, it was imperative to appoint a strong and compassionate leader. Karen is a pillar of our college community and a longtime advocate of diversity in engineering and computing education and employment,” says Dahlberg. “I am thrilled that she has accepted this vital new role and look forward to all that we will accomplish through her leadership.”

Since its founding on the ���ϲ����� campus in 2011, the company has won business plan competitions, gained funding, garnered the attention of the Obama White House, and secured a partnership with Northwell Health—the twelfth largest health care system in the United States. It bloomed from a startup he launched with fellow alum and current University of Pittsburgh professor, ��Tagbo Niepa ’09, G’14, after taking an entrepreneurial course as an undergrad.

As students in the , Romo and Niepa devised a product that bombarded doorknobs with ultraviolet light—killing 99 percent of the bacteria on their surface. Today, PurpleSun produces a portable paneling system that can effectively and rapidly disinfect entire hospital rooms. Through hard work and determination, Romo and Niepa extended their success as students into success in industry with the help of angel investors, knowledgeable advisors, and the filing of patents.

In addition to begin an inventor, Romo was a founding member of the Student Philanthropy Council, participated in community outreach with the ��and the East ���ϲ����� Church Mission, and served as program director and interim director of the .

He also shadowed a cardiac surgeon at nearby —an experience he sought out independently to learn what it was like on the front lines of health care. “I just dropped by his office one day and asked for the opportunity,” says Romo. “No one set it up for me. I just made a choice to explore.”

Romo’s success can be attributed to his aptitude for recognizing and seizing opportunities such as this. He took his interest in health care and his passion for bringing new ideas and technologies to life, built on them with the resources at hand, and applied them to a goal. He also credits his communications skills and his bioengineering degrees.

“As a student, I was involved in many things—inside and outside of engineering,” says Romo. “Each thing was a puzzle piece that plays a critical role in what I can do now. I encourage current and prospective students to take advantage of everything ���ϲ����� has to offer. It’s all there. You just have to be willing to take it.”

The College of Engineering and Computer Science has launched a new advising model to enhance the undergraduate student experience. This has included several new hires. Back row: Anand Samuel, LeAnne Shaler, Christopher Maldonado, Derek Pooley. Front row: Malea Perkins, Mary Kay Montville, Anna Kramer, Sarah Mack.

This fall, the ��has launched a new advising model to enhance the undergraduate student experience. In this model, every undergraduate student in the college is provided a team of advisors to support and mentor them throughout their undergraduate career. Returning students are assigned a faculty advisor and a career advisor, and first-year students are assigned a student success advisor, a career advisor and a faculty advisor.

To support this new endeavor, the college has hired ��and .

“Providing this level of support will help ensure that our students can thrive in their respective programs and disciplines, can graduate on time, and are prepared to begin a high-paying career upon graduation,” says Senior Associate Dean . “We’re providing a higher level of student support for a more rewarding student experience.”

Each advisor will coach students on a different building block of success:

• Faculty advisors��will ensure that students understand their discipline and curriculum, assist with course selection, support degree progress, and provide professional development and career advice.
• Student success advisors��will focus on the students’ academic success through ongoing outreach, supporting their transition to college, connecting them with resources, and monitoring their progress through mid-semester reports and feedback from faculty.
• Career advisors��will counsel and train students to develop and assess their career skills, ensure job readiness, help them secure internships and jobs, and serve as a liaison to faculty and employers on students’ behalf.

Engineering and computer science students will engage with the new model through Route 44—a roadmap for students to follow from day one to graduation. Through Route 44, students will meet with their advisors at least once per semester and earn points for themselves and for their team as they unlock achievements and meet milestones that include attending ECS community events, participating in career fairs, and making the Dean’s list. Periodically, prize drawings will be held for top point earners. The College’s Student Success Center will also host a year-end celebration for the winning team.

Dean ��says, “This model and the Route 44 programming will encourage a new level of student participation in the advising process. It will enhance each student’s experience at SU, magnify the value of their education, and prepare them to seize incredible opportunities throughout their careers. Our investments in this model and in our new staff are truly investments in our students’ future.”

Associate Professor ’s research on the blood-brain barrier is prominently featured on the ��of the Aug. 2 Journal of Physical Chemistry B. The paper, “,” is authored by Nangia and a team of students and alumni, including current graduate student Flaviyan Jerome Irudayanathan G’19,��Xiaoyi Wang G’16,��Nan Wang G’16,��Sarah R. Willsey ’18 and��Ian A. Seddon, who participated in an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) at the ���ϲ����� Biomaterials Institute in the summer of 2015.

Nangia’s research seeks to identify ways to temporarily open the tight junction barriers to allow disease-fighting medicines to reach tissues in noninvasive ways. Additionally, Nangia’s research group focuses on designing efficient nanosized drug delivery carriers to target cancerous tumor cells in the brain. Nangia was awarded $580,000 from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program, which funds her blood-brain barrier research.

Nangia has been a biomedical and chemical engineering professor in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering since 2012. She teaches chemical and statistical thermodynamics and has been awarded the ECS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education, a Meredith Teaching Recognition Award, the College Technology Educator of the Year, a Faculty Excellence Award and the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award by the American Chemical Society. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Delhi, a master’s in chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Pramod Varshney

Varshney and his fellow researchers, Thakshila Wimalajeewa and Muralidhar Rangaswamy, were also the first runners up for the Jean-Pierre Le Cadre Best Paper Award for their work, “On Integrating Human Decisions with Physical Sensors for Binary Decision Making.” FUSION 2018 highlighted high-level and low-level data and information fusion research, including theory and representation; algorithms; modelling, simulation, and evaluation; and applications of information fusion.

Varshney is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of ���ϲ�����’s , and an adjunct professor of radiology at Upstate Medical University. He was recently —a collaboration between ���ϲ����� and Xidian University.

His research interests include distributed sensor networks and data fusion, detection and estimation theory, wireless communications, physical layer security, image processing, and radar. He is widely known for his seminal contributions in the area of information fusion.

Varshney is an IEEE Fellow, founding member of the International Society for Information Fusion, and the author of the definitive text��Distributed Detection and Data Fusion, published by Springer-Verlag in 1997. His prior honors include the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000) the ���ϲ�����’s Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement (2000), the IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award (2012), an international honor given to one scientist each year for outstanding contributions to space engineering, ��the honorary Doctor of Engineering (2014) from Drexel University, and the ECE Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois (2015).

In his research, Hosein uses safe, visible light to photocure a specialized resin to create a strong, lightweight material. Photocuring is the same process that is used at the dentist’s office to harden fillings. Hosein and his fellow researchers carefully arrange tiny beams of light and shoot them through a photosensitive resin. The resin hardens wherever the light touches. They use this technique to form intersecting microscopic “struts” that mimic the structure of a lattice bridge, giving the lightweight material significantly increased strength.

This simple, rapid method was developed in Hosein’s lab and was notably published in the Results in Physics Journal with . Nanthakumar took advantage of a research experience opportunity offered by the lab, and it led to a presentation at the 2017 International Science Fair and recognition from NASA. This fall, he will major in engineering at Columbia University.

Earlier this year, Hosein was awarded a ��to advance this work. He was one of two ��faculty members to receive the honor in 2018. Assistant Professor Makan Fardad earned a CAREER award for his work .

Hosein completed his graduate studies at Cornell University in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He was awarded a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada fellowship in support of his graduate studies. After his doctoral work, Hosein completed postdoctoral positions at the University of Waterloo and McMaster University.

His��research��aims to provide materials-based solutions that address critical challenges in clean energy production and storage, environmental remediation and cleanup, and sustainability. The present focus is on creating new materials from both organic and inorganic systems, with an emphasis on directed self-organization, bio-inspired structures, and enhancing material properties.

Shikha Nangia

Nangia has been a chemical engineering professor in the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering since 2012. Her research seeks to identify ways to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier to allow disease-fighting medicines to reach the brain in noninvasive ways.

Additionally, Nangia’s research group focuses on designing efficient nanosized drug delivery carriers to target cancerous tumor cells. She teaches chemical and statistical thermodynamics and has been awarded the ECS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education, a Meredith Teaching Recognition Award, the College Technology Educator of the Year, a Faculty Excellence Award, and the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award by the American Chemical Society. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Delhi, a master’s in chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Makan Fardad

Fardad has been a professor of electrical engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 2008. Fardad is developing a mathematical framework that will expose the critical fragilities that exist within infrastructure networks, like the power grid, so they can be amended before causing large-scale failures. His research focuses on the analysis and optimization of dynamical networks��and he teaches courses on control systems and convex optimization.

Fardad is also the recipient of the��ECS Dean’s award for Excellence in Education��and multiple NSF awards. Fardad is also the recipient of the ECS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Education and multiple NSF awards. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, a master’s degree in control engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California.

“Shikha’s and Makan’s innovative research and excellent instruction are a tremendous benefit to our students and our reputation as a world-class research institution,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “The college is so fortunate to count them among our faculty.”

The Shaw Endowed Professor of Practice in Entrepreneurial Leadership was generously established by ���ϲ����� Life Trustee William “Bill” F. Allyn G’59 and his wife, Janet “Penny” Jones Allyn ’60, in recognition of Chancellor Emeritus��Kenneth A. “Buzz” Shaw��and his wife, Mary Ann.

Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy

As the Shaw Endowed Professor, Yesilevskiy will be responsible for magnifying the college’s innovation mission—a key component of the college’s . His work will catalyze a campuswide community for design and prototyping through Engineering & Computer Science programs and partnerships within the entrepreneurship ecosystem at ���ϲ����� and across Central New York.

This includes leading the , teaching interdisciplinary project-based courses, facilitating student participation in regional and national innovation opportunities, leveraging innovation initiatives to build the K-12 pipeline, and aligning the college with a national innovation network.

Yesilevskiy joins SU from the University of Michigan, where he conducted research in the simultaneous optimization of gaits, motion and morphology on realistic simulations of monoped, biped and quadruped robots.

“We are exceptionally grateful for this generous endowment and excited to welcome Yev to our team,” says Engineering & Computer Science Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “His work will augment our campuswide culture of innovation and honor the Shaw legacy at ���ϲ�����.”

Buzz Shaw served as Chancellor from 1991-2004. As a University Professor, he taught leadership at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is an expert in board/president relationships, institutional change and CEO leadership.��Shaw has written, and contributed to, many books and articles on leadership and higher education. In 2010, the ���ϲ����� Quad was dedicated in his honor, a reflection of his transformative role in making the University the thriving, high-impact institution it is today.

Mary Ann Shaw served ���ϲ����� by convening a cross-section of more than 100 campus and community members to establish what would become the Center for Public and Community Service. In 2004, the Board of Trustees honored her by renaming the center the Mary Ann Shaw Center for Public and Community Service. To this day, the Shaw Center coordinates impactful volunteer engagement activities that connect the ���ϲ����� community to our broader community through diverse literacy and service learning initiatives.

���ϲ�����’s winning team in the 2018 National Cyberanalyst Challenge comprised, from left: Anil Kumar Agrawal, Dheeraj Vijayaraghavan Menon, Michael DiFalco, Priyank Thavai and Sirisha Prakash.

The team was comprised of cybersecurity graduate students Priyank Thavai and Sirisha Prakash from the����(ECS) and information management graduate students Anil Agrawal, Michael DiFalco and Dheeraj Menon from the����(iSchool). The students are also members of the iSchool’s Information Security Club or ECS’s Orange Hackers Association. They cite the cross-disciplinary nature of their team as a key advantage in their victory.

“Our academic programs prepared us well for this challenge,” says Prakash. “Many of the attacks we uncovered in the competition were ones that we were familiar with from our coursework.”

At NCAC, students are given six hours and a large set of network traffic data to identify the origins of a cyberattack and its potential damage, and then make a seven-minute presentation of their findings and recommendations to a panel of C-suite-level judges from industry. This was the final phase of the challenge. The team had previously advanced through an initial phase in which they won $10,000.

“You have to think like an attacker,” explains Thavai. “If you know what you are looking for the data can reveal suspicious activity. It’s our job to link it and weed out red herrings.”

The NCAC win is another notch in the University’s belt for cybersecurity. ���ϲ����� was named the����in the country by Military Times in 2017 and 2018. Faculty from institutions all over the world rely on����designed by ���ϲ����� professor and team co-advisor����to expand their cybersecurity knowledge and teach their students. ECS offers a masters in cybersecurity, online and on campus, and a cybersecurity semester for undergraduates. The iSchool offers a certificate of advanced study in information security management.

“I am proud of our group for this tremendous accomplishment,” says the team’s co-advisor,��. “The team leveraged their individual strengths with different cybersecurity toolsets, applied that knowledge to the large data set they were given and came together to present their work in front of the judges, earning the top slot at the competition.”

This is the second time this academic year that a ���ϲ����� student team has succeeded at a national competition in cybersecurity. In October, the��Orange Hackers Association����in Connecticut. The student organization promotes affinity for cybersecurity, continuous learning and participation in skill-based competitions.

Ultimately, the students’ education and participation in competitions like NCAC prepare them for success in the cybersecurity industry—an industry that is consistently seeking skilled employees.

“Participating in a national or regional cybersecurity competition like this is a great benefit to the students and a great way to measure the strength of a cybersecurity program,” says Du. “Many companies prefer to hire students with experience in these competitions, and our students are highly sought after in the industry because of their skills.”

About ���ϲ�����

���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an��undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic , with a global footprint, and��, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .

Makan Fardad

On an average day in India not so long ago, the circuit breakers on a single powerline got tripped. That caused the breakers on another line to go down. Then another. Then another. It happened again and again throughout the power grid, leaving more than 300 million people in the dark for 15 hours.

A few years later on a highway in China, construction and a spike in traffic created some congestion heading to Beijing. Fender benders followed. A few cars broke down. The situation descended into a major traffic jam that stretched for 100 kilometers and lasted for 10 days.

These scenarios were unrelated, but they had one key thing in common—small failures snowballed into full-blown catastrophes.

In his National Science Foundation CAREER Award-winning proposal, “A Scalable Optimization-Based Framework for Modeling and Analysis of Cascading Failures,”����is tackling these cascading failures by developing a mathematical framework to��expose the fragilities that exist within infrastructure networks so that they can be amended before causing large-scale failures.

Ian Hosein

In the never-ending process of optimizing a solution to a problem, everything matters, particularly the materials one uses to fix the problem. And the more complex the solution, the more advanced the materials. One has to choose materials that are perfectly suited to the address the problem at hand.

Often, it is useful to employ composite materials, those that combine two or more separate materials to form another, with new and improved properties. Materials like these are used in things like batteries, solar cells, building materials, anti-stick frying pans and vehicles. The trouble is, they can be difficult and expensive to produce, so companies are always looking for a better way.

In his National Science Foundation CAREER Award-winning proposal, “Fabrication of Composite Material Structures Using Light-Induced Self Writing,”������lays out his plans to use light to “write” composites at the microscale. This approach, also known as photocuring, provides faster production and greater control over the arrangement of materials in fabrication of composite material microstructures. Hosein’s method could unleash an incredible new range of beneficial chemical, mechanical and electrical properties in composites.

Fred Brown

The has made two key personnel enhancements to bolster the “,��the college’s strategic advancement plan. Fred Brown, from Gettysburg College, has been hired as assistant dean of advancement and external affairs (AEA), and Debra Perkins has been promoted, broadening her role as director of advancement.

“Fred and Deb are the right people to help us reach our ambitious transformation goals,” says Dean Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg. “With their leadership, our college will continue to augment our engagement efforts and ultimately enhance our impact on students, alumni, and the community.”

Brown joins Engineering & Computer Science from Gettysburg, where he served as a senior major gifts officer. He has more than 20 years of higher education experience involving alumni relations, annual giving, major gifts and planned giving. Prior to his career in higher education, Brown spent eight years as a civil engineer. He has a��bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Lafayette��College.

While at Gettysburg, Brown successfully delivered a number of major gifts supporting initiatives that included creating an internship program and construction of a new admissions welcome center. He identified and recruited eight members of Gettysburg’s board of trustees. He was also instrumental in developing the vision, strategy and fundraising initiatives for the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg, a center for leadership and public policy.

As a member of the Engineering & Computer Science leadership team,��Brown will be responsible for the development and execution of the college’s fundraising strategic plan, and he will direct fundraising and engagement efforts. He will report jointly to Dahlberg and to the University vice president for development, Peter Cronin. Within the college, he will oversee the advancement, external relations and communications and marketing staff. He will officially join the team on Monday, May 14.

Debra Perkins

Effective immediately, Perkins will expand her role as director of advancement to augment the college’s engagement efforts, catalyze the growth of the college major gifts portfolio and streamline internal processes to connect advancement and the college strategic plan.

Since 2011, Perkins has secured and stewarded��leadership and��major gifts in support of the college, and she has contributed significantly to external advancement of the college. Perkins is responsible for securing the��lead gifts for three state-of-the-art collaborative classrooms in Link Hall, a new computer classroom in the Center for Science and Technology, recent upgrades to the Link 105 auditorium and the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles lab at the ���ϲ����� Center of Excellence. Perkins holds an M.B.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and also has a background in engineering, having earned a master’s in electrical engineering from SU and a bachelors in biomedical engineering from RPI. She started her career at General Electric as a systems engineer and systems engineering manager.

With the “, the college aims to become a leading model for��contemporary engineering and computer science education. To date, college fundraising is supporting��, which include the Bill and Penny Allyn Innovation Center, student success, the��Invent@SU��invention accelerators, scholars programs and endowed faculty support.

Alumni, companies and friends who commit $50,000 or more by June 2018 will become members of the college’s�����ǰ�����and will be prominently recognized in the Bill and Penny Allyn Innovation Center.

For compete information on the “, and to support the plan, please visit��.

About ���ϲ�����

���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an��undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic , with a global footprint, and��, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .

A student attends to a custom drone in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Lab at the ���ϲ����� Center of Excellence.

A team of faculty from across the����are collaborating to give UAVs the ability to operate on their own—without a pilot or external source of computing.

“The moment a UAV travels beyond visual line of sight, it has to have the autonomy to navigate safely and reach its destination,” explains��.

Sponsored by a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant, their project, “Enabling Multimodal Sensing, Real-Time Onboard Detection and Adaptive Control for Fully Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems,” combines the expertise of five Engineering & Computer Science professors.

Computer engineers����and����handle deep reinforcement learning and integration; aerospace engineer Sanyal builds the UAVs and oversees their controls; electrical engineer����contributes image recognition and detection algorithms; and computer engineer����constructs the necessary computing hardware.

Current UAVs are mostly remote controlled. Some have the ability to capture video for object recognition, but very few have the ability to process that information onboard for the purposes of sensing and avoiding obstacles in their paths. Instead, this info needs to be sent back to a headquarters to be processed, then back to the UAV. The few current models that can process info onboard are very limited in their capabilities.

The team in Engineering & Computer Science is aiming to make UAVs completely “onboard autonomous”—with computing power far greater than anything that currently exists.

“Basically, our goal is to bring artificial intelligence to UAVs,” says Qiu. “It requires a loop of sensing and processing and control. Current technology isn’t able to close that loop quickly enough during flight. Our goal is to close the loop as quickly as possible.”

Every component of their system must be customized to serve this purpose, and their work spans many technical disciplines.

“The trick is to amplify UAVs’ processing speed. Significant computation and storage are needed to accomplish this because UAVs need to perform a great deal of image processing and set and follow trajectories. This also requires a lot of power and that depletes the battery power quickly,” explains Wang. “We are building our own hardware to address these obstacles.”

It isn’t just the computing software and hardware that need to be perfected to accomplish this. The UAV itself must be suitably designed to accommodate these capabilities. That work is taking place in Sanyal’s UAV lab at the ���ϲ����� Center of Excellence. In this facility, researchers are able to fly and test different UAV capabilities.

“This work has many layers, and each layer needs to be optimized, including how the UAVs actually flies,” says Qiu.

When all of these different pieces are combined, UAV technology will take a significant step forward toward making things like package delivery by UAV a commonplace reality.

���ϲ����� is an ideal place for this work to bloom. While the College of Engineering and Computer Science studies and develops the technical capabilities of UAV, other SU schools and colleges can explore the implementation and application of this new technology in policy, business, law, public communications and more. Plus, the Central New York region is positioned to lead the development of the unmanned aircraft industry through the��— a coalition of more than 200 private and public entities and academic institutions working together to operate and oversee Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) testing, headquartered in ���ϲ�����.

Collaborations within the College of Engineering and Computer Science, ���ϲ�����, and the broader community will contribute to the integration of UAS into our world. It will be the innovative spirit and technical skills of engineers and computer scientists that make it all possible.

About ���ϲ�����

���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an��undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic , with a global footprint, and��, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .

Serena Omo-Lamai and Charles Keppler invented FibreFree in the 2017 Invent@SU program. FibreFree traps synthetic microfibers in the laundry to prevent pollution.

The application deadline for the Summer 2018 invention accelerators has been extended to March 23. Applicants will be accepted on a rolling basis, so students that are interested should apply online as soon as possible at .

In addition to a chance to��win up to $5,000, participants��receive:

• a��$1,000 stipend;
• a��$1,000 team budget for materials;
• Guidance from expert consultants and evaluators;
• access to laser cutters, 3D printers, a machine shop and pro machinists;
• assistance with a provisional patent application; and
• daily lunch, coffee and snacks.

, supported by Bill and Penny Allyn, follows a proven method of developing students’ abilities to innovate and communicate. Students learn about design, ideation and intellectual property, then build��and refine their own��invention with weekly feedback from alumni and industry leaders.

The program��will take place May 14-June 22 at the����and July 2-Aug. 10 on the SU��campus.

For complete information, and to apply,��.

About ���ϲ�����

���ϲ����� is a private, international research university with distinctive academics, diversely unique offerings and an��undeniable spirit. Located in the geographic , with a global footprint, and��, ���ϲ����� offers a quintessential college experience. The scope of ���ϲ����� is a testament to its strengths: a pioneering history dating back to 1870; a choice of more than 200 majors and 100 minors offered through 13 schools and colleges; nearly 15,000 undergraduates and 5,000 graduate students; more than a quarter of a million alumni in 160 countries; and a student population from all 50 U.S. states and 123 countries. For more information, please visit .

This fall, the����returns to the University to teach computer science and computer engineering students from institutions across the country to become leaders in cybersecurity.

Attend the CSS General Interest Meeting on Feb. 28 at 6 p.m.in room 4-201 in the Center for Science and Technology to learn about this unique, single-semester experience. To register, email��eecsstaff@syr.edu��before Feb. 24. Pizza will be served. To join the meeting remotely, connect via��.

Designed by the����and the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs, the CSS is an 18-credit semester in which students learn to identify and analyze system vulnerabilities, assess risks, develop countermeasures, build and verify secure systems and deliver software that has verifiable assurance properties.

The CSS is open to qualified SU seniors and juniors, as well as seniors and juniors from other colleges and universities. This year, SU is offering the CSS on a cost-neutral basis for up to 10 ROTC candidates from academic institutions outside of the University. SU’s cybersecurity programs have been��.

Participants will attend a leadership development seminar, gain priority access to an internship with the US Air Force, attend retreats and visit the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

“Students in the CSS learn the theory, tools and practices to formally verify the security and integrity of operations. This capability is the basis for assuring missions in cyberphysical space no matter the application.��There is no other program like this in the nation,” says Professor Shiu-Kai Chin.

The CSS consists of a core course load, electives and professional development. Core ABET-accredited courses include CIS 400: Certified Security by Design, CSE 484: Introduction to Computer and Network Security and CIS 487: Access Control, Security and Trust. Electives are tailored to individual student needs and interests. Professional preparation includes an internship and leadership development.

Students must be seniors or juniors in a computer science or computer engineering undergraduate program with an appropriate level of prior coursework and a preferred GPA of 3.3 or higher. They must also have experience with discrete mathematics, programming experience in a high-level language and familiarity with Linux at the command-line level. It may also require a U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status to be eligible for internship opportunities, an optional part of the program.

Applications will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on March 18. To apply, please send the following in a single PDF file to��cyberengineering@syr.edu:

• resume;
• unofficial college transcripts (including transfer credits); and
• a 100-word biography (include hobbies, interest and goals) with a recent headshot.

A letter of recommendation from an academic advisor or faculty member must also be sent to ��cyberengineering@syr.edu��directly from the reference by��the deadline. For ROTC cadets, a letter of reference from ROTC detachment leadership is also acceptable. Admission notifications will be sent in April.

Register for the general interest meeting on Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. in room 4-201 in the Center for Science and Technology at ���ϲ�����. To register, email��eecsstaff@syr.edu��before Feb. 24. To join the meeting remotely, connect via��.

About ���ϲ�����

Founded��in 1870, ���ϲ����� is a private international research university��dedicated to advancing knowledge and fostering student success through teaching��excellence,��rigorous scholarship and interdisciplinary research. Comprising 11��academic schools and colleges, the University has a long legacy of excellence��in the liberal arts, sciences and��professional disciplines that prepares��students for the complex challenges and emerging opportunities of a rapidly��changing world. Students enjoy the resources of a 270-acre main��campus and��extended campus venues in major national metropolitan hubs and across three��continents. ���ϲ�����’s student body is among the most diverse for an��institution of its��kind across multiple dimensions, and students typically represent��all 50 states and more than 100 countries. ���ϲ����� also has a long legacy of��supporting veterans and is home to��the nationally recognized Institute for��Veterans and Military Families, the first university-based institute in the��U.S. focused on addressing the unique needs of veterans and their��families.

For the second year in a row, ���ϲ����� tops the list of best cybersecurity programs for veterans and military-connected students.

��are based on academic rigor and efforts to recruit and support veterans at colleges and universities.

The��University’s cybersecurity programs challenge students to develop solutions for today’s issues and future threats. They address an acute need in the military, government and industry sectors for specialists in cybersecurity. In a��, the Center for Cyber Safety and Education revealed that the world is “on pace to reach a cybersecurity workforce gap of 1.8 million by 2022.”

“There are few disciplines as relevant as cybersecurity is today,” says Teresa Abi-Nader Dahlberg, dean of the . “And yet, we see a significant shortfall in the number of skilled cybersecurity professionals. Those that pursue cybersecurity can capitalize on an abundance of career opportunities while serving a crucial role in 21^st��century society. Veterans and others familiar with the rigor of the military are uniquely qualified to do so.”

���ϲ����� is routinely recognized for its work to welcome veterans to its campus and programs. Currently, the����ranks ���ϲ����� as the No. 2 private school in the country for service members, military veterans and their families. In 2016,��the College of Engineering and Computer Science earned the����from the American Society of Engineering Education.

“���ϲ����� has a 100-year history of service to our nation’s veterans,” says Mike Haynie, vice chancellor of strategic initiatives and innovation and executive director of the��. “The cybersecurity program within our College of Engineering and Computer Science is exceptional, and based on a hands-on, experiential model well-suited to learning styles of those who have served in the military. For many reasons, veterans are positioned for a career in cybersecurity, and it’s exciting to see how our student-veterans are leveraging their educational experiences at ���ϲ����� and the College of Engineering and Computer Science to realize their career goals and aspirations.”

���ϲ�����’s cybersecurity programs include an����and an����in cybersecurity, a����and a����that immerses undergraduate students in cybersecurity training.

A collaboration between the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs, the����is an 18-credit semester open to qualified juniors and seniors from any college or university. This year, SU is offering the Cybersecurity Semester on a cost-neutral basis for up to 10 ROTC candidates from academic institutions outside of ���ϲ�����. Applications are currently being accepted. Complete information is available��.

In creating their list of top programs, Military Times used academic performance as one of the top factors. The remaining factors included the number of the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET-accredited computer science programs, the number of Centers of Academic Excellence designations and the proportion of degrees awarded at a school that fall under computer science and computer security, respectively.

Data was provided by schools in the survey, as well as federal data and public information specific to computer science and cybersecurity. Federal data came from the U.S. Departments of Defense, Education and Veterans Affairs.

See the full .

About ���ϲ�����

Founded��in 1870, ���ϲ����� is a private international research university��dedicated to advancing knowledge and fostering student success through teaching��excellence,��rigorous scholarship and interdisciplinary research. Comprising 11��academic schools and colleges, the University has a long legacy of excellence��in the liberal arts, sciences and��professional disciplines that prepares��students for the complex challenges and emerging opportunities of a rapidly��changing world. Students enjoy the resources of a 270-acre main��campus and��extended campus venues in major national metropolitan hubs and across three��continents. ���ϲ�����’s student body is among the most diverse for an��institution of its��kind across multiple dimensions, and students typically represent��all 50 states and more than 100 countries. ���ϲ����� also has a long legacy of��supporting veterans and is home to��the nationally recognized Institute for��Veterans and Military Families, the first university-based institute in the��U.S. focused on addressing the unique needs of veterans and their��families.

Anna Holdosh, left, and Priya Ganesh

Their pairing was no coincidence. ���ϲ����� provides��students with the option to live in formal learning communities where students who share a major or college have special access to academic and social resources that are specific to their programs of study.

“I was pretty nervous,” says Holdosh, an environmental engineering major. “This has been the longest that I’ve been away from my family. I was worried about adjusting to that and balancing my work with being social and staying active.”

On top of worries about being away from home for the first time, Holdosh and Ganesh shared concerns about their programs. After all, engineering and computer science disciplines are notoriously challenging. The rigorous curricula can feel overwhelming, especially when students are also undergoing a major life transition.

Living in the Engineering & Computer Science Learning Community in Shaw Hall quickly put these concerns to rest. Holdosh and Ganesh found that by living alongside students who are feeling the same pressures, a special bond is quickly forged.

“It’s so helpful to live with people who are in the same mode as you,” says Ganesh, a chemical engineering major. “The guys across the hall are in a lot of the same classes as me. If there’s an exam, half the hall has the same exam. If you’re having trouble with your homework, you can yell out your door, ‘Who knows how to do question two?’ and someone is going to be able to help you. It makes you feel at home because lots of people are going through the same things that you are.”

The camaraderie among students (or “instant friends” as Holdosh puts it) is just one of many great perks of living there. In addition to the wide range of attractive features offered in SU residence halls, the learning community provides students with many direct links to the staff and faculty in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

“We bring the resources from their classrooms to their living space,” says Kirby Gibson, residence director of Shaw and Lyons halls. Presentations by professors, peer-facilitated academic excellence workshops and engineering and computer science themed programming all take place in-house. Students have access to “team rooms” with white boards and flat panel televisions they can display their work on. And computer lounges that feature all of the computer programs engineering and computer science students require are accessible 24/7. Shaw’s staff even coordinates trips that are free of charge to residents, like a recent trip to Niagara Falls, to see the Niagara Power Vista and ride the Maid of the Mist.

Gibson says, “It’s our job to help get them connected to their passion. We make sure they have the resources to establish peer connections and to help them be successful throughout their academic journey.” With so many benefits available to them, students in the learning community find that no matter where their fellow engineering and computer scientists live, they tend to gravitate toward Shaw. For Holdosh and Ganesh, that only reinforces their belief that they made the right choice by living in the learning community. Ganesh says, “Leaving behind high school friends and family for a new set of people from all over the world in a place that’s far from home sounds scary, but a community like this makes it easy. Strangers become family.”

Yuzhe “Richard” Tang, left, and Wenliang “Kevin” Du

Their classic cryptography modules focus on the fundamentals of using ciphers to scramble and descramble messages to maintain security. To better understand how they work, students require knowledge of “computational hardness”—the level of difficulty in decrypting information. The hands-on modules expose students to abstract theories through direct observation.

Modules that explore Intel SGX train students to understand what is happening in the SGX architecture—which prevents third-party cloud providers from being able to monitor customers’ activities in cloud-based programs by encrypting the programs’ memory. The team has developed an����to provide students with the ability to work with the platform even if they don’t have access to Intel hardware.

Finally, a series of labs will address the increasingly relevant topics of blockchain and cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. Traditional currencies are protected by a range of anti-counterfeiting measures. Similar, but more high-tech, measures need to be taken to secure cryptocurrencies. The team is developing labs to help student understand blockchain using actual bitcoin software, as well as labs to teach them to develop new applications such as protecting cryptocurrency mining in the cloud.

Tang says that the open-source nature of their curricula is key to creating a trained cybersecurity workforce to address a widespread shortage. In a��, the Center for Cyber Safety and Education revealed that the world is “on pace to reach a cybersecurity workforce gap of 1.8 million by 2022.”

“Our goal is to create impact. We need to spread this knowledge. ���ϲ�����’s College of Engineering and Computer is exceptionally strong in cybersecurity education, so we are in a position to provide resources to educators everywhere to enhance cybersecurity practices and prepare qualified professionals,” says Tang.

Many of Tang’s and Du’s labs are currently . They will continue to be rolled out over the course of the year-long project. Eventually they will be made available through��,��which hosts a wide variety of open-source, hands-on cybersecurity exercises. Du also annually hosts cybersecurity educators from around the world to train them to incorporate his labs into their own teaching.

It is their hope that this NSA-funded curriculum will prepare countless educators and students as they continue to contribute to the bleeding-edge field of cybersecurity.

Door prizes will be awarded at many of the events, with a grand prize drawing at the conclusion of the Eweek where students can win a Google Home Mini, Amazon Fire TV Stick or a Google Chromecast.

Sunday, Feb. 18��

• • 5 p.m., Schine Underground
  • $5 tickets on sale Monday, Feb. 5, at the Schine Box Office

Monday, Feb. 19

• • 6-7:30 p.m., Assemble monitors, 369��Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

• • 8-10 p.m., 369��Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

Tuesday, Feb. 20

• • 6 p.m., 331 Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

• • 6 p.m, 331 Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

• • 7:30��p.m,��Hendricks Chapel

Wednesday, Feb. 21

• • Noon– 2 p.m., Lobby of Link Hall
  • Door prize

• • 5:30-7 p.m., Goldstein Alumni & Faculty Center
  • Featuring��Invent@SU��student demos
  • Register at��

Thursday, Feb. 22

• • 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Schine Student Center Atrium
    • 10 a.m.-noon��Invent@SU��Information Table
    • noon-2 p.m. Ruby Batbaatar (Invent@SU)

• • 4 -6 p.m., 024 Link Hall
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

• • 6:30 p.m., 107 Hall of Languages
  • Door prize
  • No RSVP Required

Friday, Feb. 23

• • 9 a.m.-2 p.m., SRC Corporate Headquarters
  • For more information, including how to sign up, please contact the SRC-Engineering Ambassadors at��litinits@syr.edu

• • 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Schine Student Center Atrium
    • 10a.m.-noon, ASME
    • Noon-2 p.m., Invent@SU��2018 Information Table
    • 2-4 p.m., Geri Madanguit and Francis Marinez (2017��Invent@SU��Team)

• • 4:30 p.m., 105 Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

• • 7 p.m., 105 Link Hall
  • Door prize
  • RSVP on OrangeLink

Saturday, Feb. 24

• • Noon-4 p.m.
  • Free with paid admission to the MOST

About Eweek

Founded by National Society of Professional Engineers in 1951,��EWeek is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of, and interest in, engineering and technology careers.

Today, EWeek is a formal coalition of more than 70 engineering, education and cultural societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. Dedicated to raising public awareness of engineers’ positive contributions to quality of life, EWeek promotes recognition among parents, teachers and students of the importance of a technical education and a high level of math, science and technology literacy, and motivates youth to pursue engineering careers in order to provide a diverse and vigorous engineering workforce. Each year, EWeek reaches thousands of schools, businesses and community groups across the United States.

Invent@SU helps students take an idea through stages all the way to prototype and multiples pitches.

Applications are now open at��.

, supported by Bill and Penny Allyn, follows a proven method of developing students’ abilities to innovate and communicate. Students will learn about design, ideation and intellectual property, then conceive an original invention, prototype the invention and refine it in response to weekly feedback from diverse audiences of guest evaluators.

In addition to a chance to win cash prizes of $5,000 for best invention��and $3,000 for second best invention, students will receive:

• a $1,000 stipend;
• a $1,000 budget per team for project materials;
• guidance from expert consultants and evaluators;
• access to laser cutters, 3D printers, a machine shop and professional machinists;
• assistance with a provisional patent application; and
• daily lunch, coffee and snacks.

��will take place May 14-June 22, 2018, at the Fisher Center in NYC and July 2-Aug. 10, 2018, on the SU campus. To apply for the 2018 accelerators, visit��.

Jonathan Greenburg

Bioengineering alumnus Jonathan Greenburg ’78 has invented an effective solution for snoring that overcomes the obstacles that keep people from addressing the problem. His device, the��, is a comfortable, relatively inexpensive mouthpiece, that doesn’t require a doctor’s prescription.

Greenburg, a member of��the University’s first graduating class of bioengineers from the , invented the ZYPPAH after many years as a successful “dentist to the stars” in Los Angeles. His bioengineering degree gave him a leg up in applying to dental school in the late 1970s, and he credits his SU��education with the entrepreneurial success he is experiencing.

“My goal was to get into dental school. Rather than just taking the traditional route of biology, chemistry or physics, I chose bioengineering. It gave me an advantage and opened up a whole other world to me. It’s why I am where I am today,” says Greenburg.

Snoring and sleep apnea are closely related. Snoring is caused by a partial blockage of a person’s airway when their tongue falls back during sleep. Sleep apnea is a complete blockage of the airway. Both conditions worsen with age because the tongue is a muscle and we��lose muscle tone as we��age. Naturally, when the tongue blocks a person’s airway it causes a lack of oxygen to the brain, a lack of rest and forces the heart to work overtime.

In the early aughts, Greenburg was working as a dentist when sleep apnea treatments became prevalent. It was the next big thing in dentistry. “At the time, the treatment methods were only uncomfortable CPAP machines, mouthpieces to bring the jaw forward and even tonsil and jaw surgery. There’s been limited success with these,” says Greenburg. “People were looking for a better way.”

Greenburg recalls one patient in particular��who could not find relief for her sleep apnea, “She’d tried everything, and never had success. We tried something new.” He provided her with a rudimentary bar to place over her tongue while she slept. It worked. Greenburg says, “She went from being a negative, depressed person to a very positive one. Her lack of sleep was affecting her entire outlook on life. That was when we realized that it wasn’t the throat that was causing her apnea, it was the tongue.”

That realization set him on a path to focusing on snoring and sleep apnea full time. Soon after, the ZYPPAH (Happy Z backwards) was born. The ZYPPAH features a special “seatbelt for the tongue” that prevents the tongue from falling back and blocking the snorer’s airway. It also moves the jaw forward to further open the throat. The device costs about $100. Also, people who snore don’t need to undergo extensive sleep testing to get a prescription for one. The ZYPPAH is available for purchase online at��. Greenburg cites high costs and poor accessibility, as well as an aversion to CPAP devices, as the main obstacles that prevent most people from seeking treatment.

The ZYPPAH��is currently the No. 1-selling mouthpiece on the market. The product was even featured on the “Nightly News with Lester Holt,” where a��consumer reporter demonstrated its effectiveness—providing relief to a snorer and his wife alike.

Greenburg believes that developing solutions to problems like this is what the engineering discipline is at its very core. He says, “The key to engineering is it teaches you to problem-solve and you get very good at it. I’ve made it my mission to turn lemons into lemonade every day.��I aim to make a difference on this planet.”

Andria Costello Staniec

Costello Staniec’s teaching and research are focused on applied environmental microbiology��and engineering education. She holds a bachelor’s in applied biology from Georgia Tech and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in environmental engineering science from Caltech.

Costello Staniec joined the college’s��faculty in 1999 and was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2001 for her work with methane oxidizing bacteria in the Adirondacks. She is a key contributor to a current $4 million, NSF-funded project at SU to augment the number of underrepresented minority students pursuing STEM programs and careers.

Costello Staniec previously served as the college’s first associate dean for student affairs��and was responsible for the implementation of a new collegewide advising program. Following that, she served as the University’s associate provost for academic programs, where she created a new student-athlete academic support unit and the Office of Assessment and Accreditation. She also initiated a campuswide annual assessment program; instituted Orange SUccess (the campuswide advising program) and a degree audit system; and oversaw revisions to the University’s academic integrity policy.

Professor Ossama “Sam” Salem, who was previously serving as department chair, was named chair of the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University this fall.

Anything that moves through water or air leaves behind an invisible wake of swirls and waves. Flow visualization makes these “flow field” patterns visible to allow researchers to study them.

This can be done physically using dyes or smoke, and it can be done with computer software.

Green uses experimental flow field models to better understand how to optimize propulsion of nautical vehicles and looks to how fish swim for inspiration. Traditionally, 3D flow fields are visualized on a 2D screen. This restricts the movement and rotation of the 3D flow field models. By viewing the same models in a 3D virtual space, things like depth and size distortion are alleviated and researchers can interact with the visualized data more naturally.

“When a flow field is on a screen, the interaction can be limiting. When you plot it in virtual reality, then you can just walk inside it and look around,” says Green.

The VR interface also allows the user to toggle��among time, orientation and position with ease. Using handheld controllers, they can enlarge or reduce the size of a flow field, control the orientation of the model and toggle through different parameters.

The project, funded by a grant from the��, began in the spring of 2016 after Green’s partner Ben Adamson, a senior interactive designer in SU’s Online Platforms team, suggested she find a way to use VR to visualize her group’s research data in 3D space. She looked to Assistant Professors Amber Bartosh and Bess Krietemeyer of the and������for their guidance. Bartosh and Krietemeyer employ VR in designing energy data visualizations for architectural design.

Aerospace engineering alum Ranbir Dhillon ’17 laid the groundwork for the work being done today by Green and Noah Pietraszewski ’18. The team uses Matlab to export structural models of their data to build flow fields in Unity VR. The process is the same as designing video games levels in the software.

While still in the early stages, the application of virtual reality in flow visualization shows real promise for fluid dynamics research and teaching. In addition to augmenting her research, Green has plans to eventually use their work as a teaching tool.

“Once we’ve figured out the best method to do this, then we’ll be able to produce VR learning modules. We could ask questions about the relationship between pressure and force, for example, and then let students explore it in VR,” she explains. “It’s a fascinating new way to immerse ourselves in the data and explore the physics of fluid flows.”

Shikha Nangia

The highly selective access will give the Nangia group the computing power to characterize the role of a specific chemical modification to protein, called palmitoylation, on the blood-brain barrier’s tight junctions. Tight junctions are physical barriers that form between the cells lining the blood vessels in the brain. They prevent potentially harmful chemicals in the blood stream from entering the brain, but they also block drug molecules from treating diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Nangia’s team’s hypothesis is that the palmitoylation of tight junction-forming proteins will influence the structure and function of the blood-brain barrier. Their work on the Anton2 will provide additional understanding of palmitoylation, and could potentially open new avenues for therapeutic research for treatment of Alzheimer’s.

Nangia says, “I am so grateful to have receive this award; it’s going to help us provide an unprecedented molecular-level understanding of the influence of palmitoylation on the blood-brain barrier. Without it, this work would simply not be possible.”

Sucheta Soundarajan

The SIAM Science Policy Fellowship Program helps early career researchers become advocates for federal investments in applied mathematics and computational science. Fellows gain in-depth knowledge of the policy processes that determine science funding and policy decisions while pursuing their research and teaching. No more than five fellowship recipients are selected each year. In her two-year term, Soundarajan will attend SIAM science policy meetings in Washington, D.C., interface with federal officials, and participate in an advocacy day on Capitol Hill.

Soundarajan hopes to develop an outreach program to send faculty members to local youth clubs, such as 4-H or the Future Farmers of America, to present on computer science topics, including big data in farm management and the use of drones for agriculture. In addition to promoting potential computer science job opportunities in rural areas, it would help build ties between the University and a population that has not traditionally attended college.

Soundarajan says, “Currently, a huge portion of the population, along with their potential insights and contributions, are being excluded from the field. The computational sciences have developed incredibly powerful tools that have and will continue to reshape the world, and it is critically important that these tools are used in a way that benefits all members of society. I want to work at the interface between science and society, and this fellowship will be the first step.”

Charles Driscoll

This year, 396 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue (representing science and engineering, respectively) rosette pin on Saturday, Feb. 17, at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

This year’s AAAS Fellows��were formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal��Science��on Nov. 24.

As part of the Geology & Geography section, Driscoll was elected as an AAAS Fellow for his seminal contributions on the effect of acid rain and mercury deposition on aquatic and terrestrial communities, and for service to the international scientific community.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the Association’s 24 sections, or by any three fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with the nominee’s institution), or by the AAAS chief executive officer. Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected. Each steering group reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.

The council is the policymaking body of the Association, chaired by the AAAS president, and consisting of the members of the board of directors, the retiring section chairs, delegates from each electorate and each regional division, and two delegates from the National Association of Academies of Science.

Passages from Professor Shiu-Kai Chin’s testimony to New York State Senate Public Hearing on Cybersecurity:��

Shiu-Kai Chin

“If you treat each item of information as if it were a $100 bill, then you will know what to do.��Security and integrity must be built in from the initial concept of a system, into its design and throughout its deployment and operation. This is no different than building and operating any business with the financial controls, constraints and policies to assure that every transfer of funds is authenticated and authorized. The same holds true for information. The gold standard is every transaction must be authenticated and authorized with assurances that if something was done, then whatever was done must have been authenticated and authorized because of the controls and constraints that were built into the system from the start.

There is no integrity or security without audit.��What we are talking about is accountability. Information and information operations must be treated with the same care and diligence as we treat money and financial operations. We need to mimic the routine business practice of annual financial audits to assure the public that public statements of a business’ information operations are accurate and reflect reality.

Math is essential.��Financial audits rigorously answer the question whether a business’ balance sheet and policies are accurate statements of its financial state and operations. Evidence is gathered, and numbers are crunched. Compelling proof of integrity requires that everything adds up and is balanced. The same is true for information operations. Math is essential for compelling assurance of security and integrity.

What I am saying is not new. The following passage is part of a paper written by Lieutenant Colonel Roger Schell describing remarks by a KGB officer:

“Comrades, today I will brief you on the most significant breakthrough in intelligence collection since the ‘breaking” of the “unbreakable’ Japanese and German cyphers in World War II—the penetration of the security of American computers. There is virtually (if not literally) no major American national defense secret which is not stored on a computer somewhere. At the same time, there are few (if any) computers in their national defense system which are not accessible, in theory if not yet in fact, to our prying. Better still, we don’t even have to wait for them to send the particular information we want so we can intercept it; we can request and get specific material of interest to us, with virtually no risk to our agents. …

“They are aware of the potential for a computer security problem, but with their usual carelessness they have decided not to correct the problem until they have verified examples of our active exploitation. We, of course, must not let them find these examples.”

The above comments are in Roger Schell’s paper “Computer Security: the Achilles’ heel of the electronic Air Force.” The paper was published in Air University Review, in 1979! The paper was reprinted in the 2013 issue of��Air & Space Power Journal��because of its historical significance.

One takeaway is this: cybersecurity is a known problem, and we have known about it for over��40 years.

Schell wrote his paper in response to the cancellation of his computer security research program by the Air Force in 1979. Our answers to the question “What did we know and when did we know it?” reveal we have no plausible deniability when it comes to cybersecurity. We knew early on this would be a strategic vulnerability and we chose to ignore it. I deliberately say “we” not “they” because even though “we” were not in command in 1979, “we” collectively set the market and the national expectations of what is reasonable, now.

We can no longer ignore the problem. Business as usual will lead to disaster.

The overarching guidance from Schell’s 1979 paper still applies today:
“Do not trust security to technology unless that technology is demonstrably trustworthy, and the absence of demonstrated compromise is absolutely not a demonstration of security.”

The implication is this: penetration testing, while very useful, is insufficient alone for assuring trustworthiness. We need to do the math much like auditors do the math to provide compelling evidence of trustworthiness. We need to verify that the controls and constraints are appropriate for the intended mission. We must verify the controls and constraints are correctly implemented and used properly.

The good news is we have made a lot of progress since 1979. Mathematical verification of computer systems was once thought to be too hard. Semiconductor companies such as Intel routinely integrate formal mathematical verification, simulation and testing to verify their microprocessor chips are correct. Companies, such as Rockwell/Collins, that manufacture onboard flight control computers for commercial airliners do formal mathematical proofs to assure flight control computers are secure.

���ϲ�����, in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, New York, since 2003 has offered the ACE (Advanced Course in Engineering) Cybersecurity Boot Camp. ACE has graduated over 500 ROTC cadets, civilians and active duty personnel from over 50 universities in the U.S. and United��Kingdom. ACE provides compelling evidence that rigorous approaches to mission assurance and cybersecurity are feasible and practical at the undergraduate level in engineering and computer science.

As the B.S. degree sets the baseline capabilities for the engineering and computer science profession, it is essential that secure system design and engineering be routine at the B.S. level. I am proud to say that this is the case at ���ϲ�����.

I end my testimony by pointing out a looming problem we need to address now. We must address the need for trustworthy online and electronic identities. Social security numbers are fatally compromised. They must be replaced.

The thing about online identity is this: our identity is not who we say we are; it is who others say we are. Who are we going to trust with that authority? How will we know that the foundation for establishing identity is trustworthy? How will authorities trusted with certifying identity be audited to verify their trustworthiness? Authentication technology alone is insufficient. It is just one component in a system that requires policies, practices, norms, rules and regulations.

It is worth pointing out what happened to Roger Schell after 1979. Schell would go on to be regarded as the “father” of the National Security Agency’s Trusted Computer Security Criteria. It is the foundation of the current National Institute of Standards and Technology security standards. In 2012, Schell was inducted into the inaugural class of the National Cybersecurity Hall of Fame.

Schell is an example of what individuals can do. Our democracy, with all its well-publicized frustrations, is a workable system that enables engaged citizens to keep debate alive; shape the terrain of expectations, standards, policies and practices; and thereby move all of us to a better place.

Start the discussion and debate now on what minimum standards and expectations are required when it comes to establishing, maintaining and verifying the trustworthiness of systems, corporations and government entities entrusted with our safety, information and our identities in cyberspace.”

Passages from Associate Professor Steve J. Chapin’s testimony to New York State Senate Public Hearing on Cybersecurity:��

Steve Chapin

“My invitation to testify requested threat assessment, information on best practices in the face of cyberattacks, and concrete solutions to cybersecurity. I will address each of these points, but let me say in advance: the future is bleak. The path we are on will only see an increase in attacks and losses unless we make significant changes in how we do business (and by do business, I mean both how we conduct commerce and design, build, and operate cyber-systems).

Risk Assessment
In many ways, the Equifax breach is just the most recent and spectacular in a long string of security failures that put our citizens’ privacy and fortunes at risk. A list of data breaches just in 2017 includes more than 35 major data breaches in industries ranging from finance, internet services, retailers and telecommunications to health care and higher education. Last year’s Dyn DDOS attack using the Mirai botnet gave us a glimpse into what we can expect in the future if we continue to deploy insecure and in-securable devices in the Internet of Things. Mirai’s descendant, IoT Troop/Reaper, is estimated to have already infected devices on a million networks. In short, there is no natural upper bound to the damage that cyberattacks can do—all of our information, personal and financial, that is on commercial, off-the-shelf computers��connected to the Internet, is at risk.

This threat is not confined to e-commerce, but has already put our elections at risk. In 2003, a panel of experts at the IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium described the state of the art in electronic voting machines. They pointed out multiple flaws with the machines being installed in multiple states. In 2017, experts at DefCon broke into state-of-the-art voting machines in < 90 minutes. Some of their attacks were over WiFi and were able to change vote tallies without any trace. Other (white-hat) hackers have demonstrated how they can, with only the aid of a USB memory stick, change vote tallies while in the voting booth. In the words of Calvin and Hobbes, “Live and don’t learn. That’s us.”

When Best Practices Aren’t Good Enough
Twenty��years ago, Gene Spafford, one of the luminaries of cybersecurity, wrote: “Secure web servers are the equivalent of heavy armored cars. The problem is, they are being used to transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges. Further, the roads are subject to random detours, anyone with a screwdriver can control the traffic lights and there are no police.”

Sadly, that is still a largely accurate description of the state of security on the Internet. It doesn’t matter how well-protected the transport is if the computers at the ends of the transaction are not secure. Having a secure connection to a web server doesn’t help if the database that the server stores customer information in is vulnerable. It doesn’t matter how good the security controls on a system are if they’re not turned on and properly configured.

There is a fundamental lack of accountability for cybersecurity. As a private citizen, I would like to share my personal information with the smallest number of entities—but in modern society, I must share with my bank, my credit card company, my utility, my health care professionals and my employer, to name but a few. I have little insight and no control over with whom they share my information. My only choice is to withdraw completely from society, which is a Hobson’s choice. One factor that sets the Equifax breach apart is that most of the people whose data was stolen never directly consented to have Equifax hold it—that was done by the industries that use Equifax’s services to make credit decisions. When breaches happen, there is significant finger-pointing, but in the end, it’s the public that bears the true cost, through identity and financial theft. One of the breaches I referred to earlier involved a contractor leaving 9,000 documents containing personal information on holders of top secret security clearances on an unsecured Amazon server for six months.

We must move away from systems that conflate identification and authentication. There is nothing wrong with using a Social Security Number as an identifier; there is nothing right about using it for authentication. If I chose to have my SSN tattooed on my forehead it should make no difference—it is not a secret, and never truly has been. Treating it as such has given the illusion of security. Similarly, my birthday is a matter of public record. My mother’s maiden name has been in newspapers—newspapers that are now searchable on the Internet.

Recommendations
I have four recommendations to improve cybersecurity in New York State. Some of these are actions business and industry can take unilaterally; others may require regulatory or governmental support.

1. Adopt technologies that enable secure auditing and logging of data. Blockchain (the technology behind Bitcoin) provides the potential for secure, distributed logging of actions. This will enable full auditing of information handling and improve accountability.
2. Develop a true citizen-focused form of secure identification. Such a form of ID would allow secure authentication without relying on security through obscurity. This is not to be conflated with REAL ID, which does not provide real, nonforgeable, digital authentication and attestation.
3. Require security as a first-class element of system design. This security must be end-to-end, holistic and part of the system from day one. No more cardboard boxes and park benches!
4. Trust … but verify. We must stop trusting that systems are designed and implemented properly. Rather, system designers and builders should use formal modeling tools (i.e., math and logic) to prove that their systems perform as advertised and correctly implement authentication and authorization.

Conclusion
I know that it is difficult to define the proper role of government in modern life, particularly in complex technical areas with broad reach. I leave you with another quote from Gene Spafford, which reflects the fact that in 1956, GM advertised styling and performance while Ford emphasized the availability of seat belts. ‘People in general are not interested in paying extra for increased safety. At the beginning, seat belts cost $200 and nobody bought them.’ GM outsold Ford by 190,000 cars in 1956, almost three times the gap from 1955. Sometimes we need a nudge.”

The cover of Wenliang (Kevin) Du’s new textbook on computer security

This fall,����published a new cybersecurity textbook, “.” The book is written for students, computer scientists, computer engineers, programmers, software developers, network and system administrators and others who want to learn the principles of computer security and understand how various security attacks and countermeasures work. It uses a series of hands-on activities to help explain cybersecurity principles. Those activities are available online at��.

Du’s book is based on��, which are used by instructors all over the world. The SEED Labs are the result of 15 years of research, development and testing efforts conducted by Du and his students in a project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Every year, Du hosts training workshops on the ���ϲ����� campus where educators from other colleges and universities learn to use the labs. The attendees take the knowledge that they gain back to their own institutions where they incorporate the labs into their own teaching. Additional information about future workshops as well the full catalog of lab exercises, is available on the�����ǰ� by contacting Du at��wedu@syr.edu.

“” is currently available for purchase on��.

Disease cells as they might appear under a microscope

Chronic infections can be treated, but never completely defeated because they form something called persister cells in the human body. These types of cells are difficult to combat because of their ability to enter dormancy. They essentially go to sleep, and while they are in that state, antibiotics are useless against them. When persister cells reactivate, or wake up, the infection rages in the body once again. When active, they become vulnerable to antibiotics. However, no matter how many active cells are killed, if dormant cells remain, so does the disease.

The scientific community is making progress to uncover the physiology of these bacteria and to develop new strategies to fight them. Unfortunately, studying persistence in bacterial biofilms is a big challenge because of the random factors that cause persister formation and variations in the level of persistence between experiments.

A collaborative team led by Professor����and Assistant Professor����is developing an experimental system that can control the formation of persister cells and “wake up” dormant cells in biofilms using synthetic biology. Their experimental system will manipulate persistence by tuning the level of toxin and antitoxin genes within the cells, and they will monitor the results for persister formation and “wake up” in real-time. They will also use computational simulation to quantitatively understand the persistence and antibiotic penetration into complex structures and cells. Recently, the team was awarded $330,000 by the National Science Foundation to continue their collaborative work on this topic.

Ren says, “We understand what’s happening, but we’re missing the technology to target these cells. This is fundamental work that will ultimately help us develop drugs to control and hopefully defeat the cells that cause chronic infections.”

For additional details on this work, check out��.

Mary Spio

“The impact that television had was profound. It was a window that opened my aperture of thought and made me think, ‘Wow, maybe there is something beyond what I am seeing now,’” says Spio.

Born in ���ϲ����� but raised in Ghana, Spio was compelled to return to the United States to escape the turmoil and pursue opportunities that would prepare her to accomplish something as seismic as putting a man on the moon.

After serving the U.S. Air Force, Spio earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the��, then a master’s degree from Georgia Institute of Technology. She became a deep space engineer for Boeing, designing the digital technology now widely used for distributing major motion pictures, the first of which was “Star Wars Episode II.” She also became an author, a screenwriter and a Department of State ambassador of innovation and entrepreneurship.

One day, Spio’s success led her to a fateful experience at the offices of Facebook. It was there that she first experienced what it was like to step into another world through virtual reality. Only it wasn’t a world—it was a moon. The virtual reality module put her in the moonboots of Neil Armstrong, bounding across the lunar surface.

“I put the headset on and I was a kid again in front of the TV. This time I didn’t need to wonder what it felt like because I could actually feel it. I could look down and all around. It had a profound impact because I knew that the media had taken a turn again,” explains Spio. “We’d gone from watching a video to being able to live inside of the experience.”

She could see the overwhelming potential for virtual reality technology, but much to her dismay, the overwhelming majority of the content available for virtual reality was gaming—primarily violent first-person shooting games.

“I wanted to do everything with VR. I wanted to watch movies. I wanted to watch concerts. I wanted to learn,”��says Spio. “It became my mission to create content for virtual reality beyond what existed.��And I knew that if we could literally change the world that surrounds us, we could bring anything to the entire world. Now I don’t need to travel elsewhere to experience something different. This could be a vehicle for compassion and empathy. I knew I was looking at something rather phenomenal and transformative.”

Fast forward to today and Spio is the founder, CEO and president of��, a developer of innovative virtual and augmented reality content solutions and experiences for entertainment and education.��It has created content and technologies for the likes of Universal Music Group, Miami Children’s Hospital and Berkshire Hathaway’s Richline.��It’s even partnered with Apple to provide an iTunes gift code with exclusive access to music and concert footage with the purchase of CEEK’s virtual reality bundle of equipment and content. This is the very first virtual reality promotional partnership for iTunes.

“Our focus is on everyday content—movies, music, shopping, studying. We create content for the everyday user, not just hardcore gamers. I want to be able to contribute in positive ways.”

For all its advancements, the virtual reality industry remains a fragmented place. It is currently spread across many applications, including desktop, mobile, console and web, each requiring various equipment and software. This can be intimidating for people who just want to consume content.

CEEK’s technology enables content creators to develop and distribute content across all mobile devices and operating systems. The company also focuses on advancing the mobile virtual reality experience on��its headset—creating great graphics, programs and applications you can’t get anywhere else.

High-quality virtual reality experiences are still so new, it can be difficult for the average person to understand how they will be useful in their own lives. In addition to watching movies and concerts, there are many unexpected ways virtual reality can be used. CEEK developed a virtual shopping experience for Berkshire Hathaway. If you are looking for a new place to live, you may one day tour a house or apartment virtually. One day you’ll even be able to try on clothes and purchase them virtually.

Spio believes that that virtual reality’s biggest impact will be in education and healthcare.

“You can teach people who are worlds away. There are many cameras that allow for real-time streaming to mobile. You could have a college professor here at ���ϲ����� in front of a streaming camera, and someone in Tokyo or Ghana can put on their virtual reality headset and feel as if they are in that same classroom,” explains Spio. “In a sense, you can walk into someone’s classroom, feel the presence and be able to have the benefit of a real-time interaction with that professor no matter where you are in the world. One professor can now be teaching 100,000 people all at the same time.”

And studies have revealed that virtual reality modules will work very well for learning. As humans, our minds have not developed the capacity to fully distinguish what happens in the virtual world from what happens in the real world.

“If I put on a headset and it puts me in Paris, my brain actually files away the memory that I visited the Eiffel Tower. So, a year later, when you recall what you saw in the virtual world, the accuracy of that recall is much, much higher than people recalling the same thing they had read about even a week later. For the first time, we are manufacturing memories using technology.”

CEEK is also helping clients develop healthcare training modules to teach CPR and other techniques. They are able to train people to provide healthcare, and there is even technology being developed for doctors to actually provide healthcare such as force feedback gloves that would allow doctors to “touch” patients on the other side of the world to conduct examinations, like feeling a lump under the skin, and deliver make a real diagnosis. Virtual reality is also being used in therapy to help people dealing with phobias and post-traumatic stress disorders.

With all these applications, Spio believes we are only beginning to comprehend the possibilities for virtual reality and its impact on our world, but none more so than the impact it may have on the children of the world like the child she once was in Ghana.

“No matter where you are, no matter what’s happening outside your home, when you put on that headset the world around you changes. If a black and white TV could so profoundly impact me and transform my life, imagine what this can do. What they are going to be able to do, what they are going to be able to create, it is going to completely transform our world.”

This is the expression that motivates Spider Man to fight the battle of good and evil in comic books and on the silver screen. Ethics expert����says it is also a fitting principle to guide engineers and computer scientists. Except Radcliffe argues that responsibility comes with any level of power, no matter how great or small.

Dana Radcliffe

Radcliffe teaches ethics across several disciplines, including management and law at Cornell, and public administration, international affairs in the and computer science and engineering in the .��He is also a frequent contributor to the����on the subject.

Engineering and computer science disciplines are often misidentified as fields of purely technical study. Radcliffe argues that those who pursue these disciplines have an explicit responsibility to remain aware of their work’s impact upon society—whether it is building a bridge, designing medical implants or perfecting the wings of a plane.

And it is more important today than ever before. Technology’s ubiquity in our lives and the pace at which it is evolving leave very little time for society and policymakers to get out in front of it. This puts the engineers and computer scientists��who are developing new technology in a powerful ethical position. Not only do they need to design new solutions with societal consequences in mind, they also have a responsibility to identify the risks that corporate and policy leaders may miss when it comes to technology.

“It is my goal to teach our students how technology affects people’s health, finances, safety, and physical and emotional welfare,” says Radcliffe. It is crucial that students have an awareness of the societal impact of their work as engineers and computer scientists. I want them to recognize the harm that results when the power of technology is not managed responsibly.”

Radcliffe points to the recent Equifax hack that exposed 143 million personal records as a prime example of that. Equifax was aware of the vulnerability that was exploited in their system a full two months before the breach took place. On top of that,��it was provided with a patch that could have prevented the attack, had it been implemented. Assuming the company’s computer scientists and cybersecurity experts had access to this info, they could have prevented this massive attack by applying the patch or effectively conveying the risk involved in not taking action quickly to higher ups. They would have been in a uniquely powerful position to stop this far-reaching breach from happening.

Radcliffe says, “There is no question that technology advances our society, but we must be aware of the ethical implications of that advancement. Engineers and computer scientists have the best knowledge of technology and what it can accomplish. They know the risks better than anyone.”

As students gain vast technical knowledge to benefit society, they must also develop their sense of ethics and professional skills to protect society from the dangers of increasingly powerful technologies—to apply their great power to their great responsibilities. While it is unlikely that they will be called upon to don Spider Man’s red and blue spandex to battle the forces of evil, their duty is no less urgent and no less heroic.

Minhao Chen

Chen persevered and continued his education, his sights set on becoming a professional bridge��engineer. He traveled to ���ϲ����� and enrolled in the civil engineering master’s program in the , but he��wasn’t there long before the disease that had haunted him came calling once again—this time,��closer to home than ever before.

“I received word that my mother had been diagnosed and I was devastated. I decided I needed to��know why this was happening,” says Chen.

Chen began to research the cause of the sinister illness that seemed insistent on upending his life.��In conversations with doctors, Chen learned that there is a high correlation between cancer and��the food people eat. As he continued to research the disease, his mind kept returning to the��disturbing statistic that 30-35 percent of cancer-related deaths can be linked to a person’s diet.

Focused like a laser, he began to commit every waking hour outside of his coursework to��learning everything he could about food and its production. He learned about the overuse of��fertilizer, herbicides, antibiotics and hormones and how they affect human health. He took a��course in nutrition from and became an expert in poor eating��habits like overeating, as well as consuming too much salt, fat and sugar, and not enough��vegetables. He also learned an unfortunate fact about most meals—the lower the cost, the lower��the quality.

It was during this time that he found inspiration in an unlikely source—the fast-casual Chinese��restaurant chain Panda Express.

“I enjoyed their food and noticed that they served healthy options. I was amazed that their meals��cost just seven or eight dollars. A comparable meal would cost $25 in China, simply because of��inefficient food production.” recalls Chen. “I found out that Panda Express mass produces their��food to meet a certain standard, freezes it and then ships it to stores around the country where it��is reheated and served. By doing this, they can control the quality across all of their locations and��keep the cost down.”

Chen decided to make it his personal mission to find a way to leverage his engineering��knowledge and bring improved food production systems to China to widely distribute safe,��healthy, affordable food.

This decision inspired a coast-to-coast pilgrimage across the United States to learn about the food��production system from farm to fork. He visited every food-related location that was open to him��from New York to Seattle and back. He took what he learned, and after eight years in bridge��engineering, made a decision to enter the food industry.

“In bridge engineering, we push all of the materials, physics and technology to the limit. I��challenged myself to apply this same way of thinking to food.”

The result of Chen’s obsession with food production and years of research is Shi Quan She Mei��Co. Ltd.—a state-of- the-art central kitchen factory in China that produces traditional Chinese food.

“There are more than one billion people in China that need low-cost, high-quality food. The way��to achieve that is to maximize the food production in our centralized kitchen. We ensure healthy,��safe and tasty food and have greatly lowered the meal cost that people are accustomed to.”

Shi Quan She Mei is a state-of-the-art central kitchen factory in China designed to widely distribute safe, healthy, and affordable traditional Chinese food.

Currently, Shi Quan She Mei’s main consumers are schoolchildren. The dishes are mostly the��same, but high-quality raw materials such as Iberico pork, fish and rice are used in place of��lower-quality foods. Shi Quan She Mei also employs a research and development team of chefs��to create their recipes to make sure the food tastes good.

“You have to make the food delicious. That’s another big challenge for us.”

When operating at maximum capacity, Chen’s food production factory can feed 200,000 people��a day and is 400 percent more efficient than central kitchens of similar size.

Chen also seized an opportunity to use Shi Quan She Mei as a way to educate people about��healthy eating. In addition to being an engineering marvel, the factory is also a tourist attraction��for schoolchildren. There is an entire floor devoted to teaching kids about healthy eating in an��interactive and entertaining way. In the process, parents learn how the factory works and Chen is��able to promote affinity for his brand.

Chen hopes to one day see correlations between his work and decreased instances of cancer in��Shanghai and he is confident that his efforts will improve the health of his fellow citizens. He��credits his engineering education with allowing him to have such an impact on a cause that he��holds so near to his heart and is confident that he has found his calling.

“I have a strong passion for engineering. That’s why I chose to be a bridge engineer.��But I also��have a great passion to make changes in the world. I used to think that bridge engineering was��the best way I could improve people’s lives, but eventually I decided that if we do not have��clean, healthy food, what’s the use of a bridge or a building?”

Volunteers deployed by AarogyaSeva help provide healthcare solutions for underserved populations in India.

Through research and philanthropy, and his students are developing ways to use software to provide improved��healthcare to underserved populations. “I believe that the availability of adequate healthcare is a fundamental right of every individual, and the proper application of technology can improve healthcare access for all,” says Mohan.

One of the key problems he aims to address is the lack of medical records. With no consistent health provider, patients often have incomplete or nonexistent documentation of their past health and treatments. What records do exist are paper documents and are left to the patient to keep on file. There is no medical scenario in which this lack of information is ideal, but in cases where patients require emergency care, the consequences can be dire. For example, if an unconscious patient without medical records needs emergency care, they cannot provide information pertinent for determining the best treatment. Without this knowledge, a��doctor’s actions can sometimes harm the patient instead of helping.

To address this, Mohan and his team are designing a robust electronic healthcare record system that puts the records in the hands of the patients and their chosen proxies. Their goal is to give patients and their doctors the ability to use inexpensive and widely available computer hardware and storage devices with simple software interfaces—such as smartphones and tablets—to access these valuable records.

Mohan says, “Our students can help develop such software. Students need to know what it takes to build a large software system, and working on a real-life project can significantly enhance their abilities.”

In India, he envisions the possibility of connecting this information to an emerging identification system, similar to the United States’ social security identification system. By providing each citizen with secure private storage associated with their ID number, every individual’s medical records could be stored and made available when needed. Patients would only need to provide healthcare professionals and volunteers with an access code to review and update their records through personal devices.

In a recent publication, “,” Mohan and Dayaprasad Kulkarni, a physician with many years of experience in healthcare volunteering, address the requirements for such a system. They address the challenges of��sharing information with multiple healthcare providers, patient privacy, interfacing with multiple platforms, robustness, ease of use by people with limited technical skills and extensibility.

Dayaprasad Kulkarni, left, and Professor Chilukuri Mohan

With this work and other active initiatives, Mohan and Kulkarni help deploy healthcare solutions for underserved populations through an organization called��. AarogyaSeva is an international humanitarian group dedicated to providing healthcare services that provides volunteer services in seven countries. Mohan serves as the academic mentor and advisor of engineering affairs on their executive team and Kulkarni is the founder and director. The organization provides a platform for the development and deployment of medical technology that allows engineers and computer scientists to contribute directly to providing affordable medical technology.

In addition to deploying medical volunteers and addressing medical records, the organization produces 3D printed prosthetic hands for children, developing tools to facilitate remote healthcare��using smartphones (such as an��e-stethoscope), and provides logistical assistance for disaster relief efforts. In another instance of applying new technology to healthcare, Mohan and Kulkarni are exploring the development of low-cost virtual reality tools to help treat patients without convenient access to a doctor’s office.

“Let’s say a person has something on his skin. It could be poison ivy or acne. It may also be melanoma. For triage, a volunteer can take pictures of the blemish from different angles and send it to doctors. At the doctor’s office, which could be anywhere in the world, software can take the multiple images and make them into a 3D image of the arm and skin to facilitate accurate diagnosis. If it is something of concern, then the doctor can tell the patient if they need to get to the nearest hospital.”

In every initiative, AarogyaSeva and its volunteers prove that the technical skills learned in classrooms at ���ϲ����� can have a significant impact in unexpected disciplines—even bolstering humanitarian efforts a world away.

Mohan says, “Computer science isn’t just about writing code. Exposing our students to projects like these shows them that their computer science knowledge can be put to use helping people around them and making the world a better place, in very direct ways.”