College of Engineering Blog

Automotive Partners take over Campus Today

Published September 7, 2017

News

Thirteen automotive manufacturing and supply companies embark on campus today and invite students to engage with them.

Eighty-six percent of college students find it easier to engage with company reps in an informal and interactive environment, as opposed to a formal Career Fair.

For this reason, Career Services developed CareerFEST, an interactive event series on campus that encourages students to explore industries, discover careers, ask questions and meet employers before the Fall Career Fair.

Automotive Day kicks off the first of seven industry-related events in September. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today (Sept. 7, 2017), in the center of campus, company reps showcase their latest innovations and technologies through live demonstrations.

This year’s Automotive Day theme is Autonomous. Nexteer Automotive has a simulator that allows students to experience what it will be like in an autonomous world. The Michigan Tech Autonomous program and Jeremy Bos (ECE) have partnered with General Motors to display their latest autonomous vehicle build called “Buck.”

Oshkosh Corporation is on hand with a JLG Scissor Lift, LATV (Baja Truck), Pierce 100ft Aerial Fire Truck and a HEMTT Wrecker.

A Grand Cherokee with Parallel and Perpendicular Park Assist is on display from FCA. Other display vehicles include a Ford Mustang, Ford Taurus, Audi A8 and an QSK 10 L engine.

Automotive Days sponsors include: Ford, Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America, Cooper Standard, General Motors, Cummins, Continental, Oshkosh, FCA, HUSCO International, ArcelorMittal, Yanfeng Global Automotive Interiors, Nexteer Automotive and Faurecia.

Representatives from the Advanced Power System Lab at Michigan Tech and additional Enterprise programs will also be on hand during the event. Last year, 68 percent of our students participated in CareerFEST events and 460 companies attended.

By Career Services.

Enterprise Team shows off product

HOUGHTON, Mich. (WLUC) – Michigan Technological University students showed off their experience at Automotive Industry Day last week.

The Formula SAE Enterprise Team caught attention with their formula-style racecar.

MTU seniors choose between senior design class or one of five enterprise teams.

The formula team I knew I wanted to be a part of before I even got to Tech. Formula SAE Enterprise Team president Cora Taylor

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Labs Available to Harvey Displaced Researchers

Published September 6, 2017

By College of Engineering

News

Four Michigan Tech labs, so far, have responded to a request by scientific honor society Sigma Xi and the March for Science for researchers to open their labs to scientists displaced by Hurricane Harvey. Rudy Luck (Chem), David Shonnard (ChemEng), Paul Sanders (MSE) and the Great Lakes Research Center all have invited researchers and students impacted by Harvey to work in their labs.

In its call for lab space, Sigma Xi wrote, “some researchers in the storm’s path will be displaced from their laboratories for an extended period. These individuals may require extraordinary measures to continue their work. Sigma Xi is joining with March for Science to assemble a list of research laboratories nationwide that are willing to accommodate faculty, postdocs and students who need to temporarily relocate.”

Nationwide, 290 labs have signed up so far. To see the list of labs click here.

By Jenn Donovan.

Biofuels Conversion, Biochemical & Thermochemical

Shonnard Lab @ Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI
David Shonnard
drshonna@mtu.edu

Alloy Research

Sanders Alloy Research Lab @ Michigan Technical University
Houghton, MI
Paul Sanders
sanders@mtu.edu
Al, Fe, Ni, Cu, Mg alloy development; modeling, casting, thermo-mechanical processing, mechanical testing, SEM/TEM
may be able to provide basic housing (basement bed, bath)

Incoming Engineering Students Interviewed

Published August 31, 2017

By College of Engineering

News

Michigan Tech welcomed more than 1,400 freshmen Sunday at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena.

Students chose Michigan Tech for a number of reasons, some for academics.

I heard it’s a really good engineering school. I was in Gross Point Robotics for four years and it kind of instilled in me that engineer spirit. Freshman Chemical Engineering Major Benjamin Syznowski

Some for the opportunities Michigan Tech offers off campus.

I like the area, I don’t know, it’s a really nice place, just kind of suited me I guess. Just kind of getting out and exploring, learning new things, meeting new people. Freshman Computer Engineering Major Tyler Arthur

Michigan Tech welcomes newest huskies

Hundreds of new students met on Walker Lawn this evening to become acquainted with Michigan Tech traditions. Some of the activities were broomball and making boats and statues.

NASA Funding on Lake-Effect Snowstorm Models

Published August 29, 2017

By College of Engineering

News

Pengfei Xue (CEE) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $104,168 research and development grant from NASA. Mark Kulie (GMES/GLRC) is the Co-PI on the project, ” Evaluation and Advancing the Representation of Lake-Atmosphere Interactions and Resulting Heavy Lake-Effect Snowstorms across the Laurentian Great Lakes Basin Within the NASA-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting Model.”

This is the first year of a potential four-year project totaling $327,927.

DENSO Foundation Grant to Michigan Tech

Published August 24, 2017

By College of Engineering

News

DENSO Collaboration Communication — DENSO Collaboration and Communication Space in the Mineral and Materials Building.

Supporting the communities DENSO serves and providing resources for the next generation of technical workers to succeed are core to DENSO’s success. To fulfill these promises, DENSO’s philanthropic arm – the DENSO North America Foundation (DNAF) – funds programs across the continent each year, providing hands-on learning opportunities in areas from robotics and thermodynamics to design and materials development. Recently, the DNAF board confirmed its 2017 college and university grants, totalling nearly $1 million in overall funding for 22 institutions and educational programs across North America.

DENSO is a global automotive supplier of advanced technology, systems, and components in the areas of thermal, powertrain control, electronics, and information and safety.

Some of the DENSO educational grants for Michigan Tech supported:

Dust Collection System
Enterprise Future Truck
Enterprise & Youth Outreach
Challenge X Enterprise
Chassis Dynamometer
Automotive Enterprise / Plasma Cutter and ops
Student Design Center
Keweenaw Research Center and Enterprise Program

The healing power of seaweed—Shedding new light on alginate microgels

Published August 15, 2017

By Kim Geiger

Research Features

Bull Kelp, a brown seaweed used to produce alginates, can grow as much as 2 feet per day. Photo credit: Jackie Hindering, www.themarinedetective.com

Using seaweed to treat wounds dates back to Roman times. Alginate extracted from kelp and other brown seaweeds are still used in wound dressings today for skin grafts, burns and other difficult wounds. Biocompatible and biomimetic, alginate forms a gel when exposed to a wound, keeping tissue moist to speed healing, and reduce pain and trauma during dressing changes.

Microgels, a biodegradable biomaterial formed from microscopic polymer filaments, has broad and powerful applications in cell analysis, cell culture, drug delivery, and materials engineering.

Putting the two together to form alginate microgels could enable scientists to make important new inroads in the field of tissue engineering. But when it comes to forming microgels, the gelation process of alginate literally gets in the way.

Chang Kyoung Choi Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics — Chang Kyoung Choi
Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Michigan Tech researcher Chang Kyoung Choi has found a way around the problem. He creates alginate microgels by photocrosslinking the two in situ to form a bond. He uses ultraviolet (UV) light to easily cure microdroplets into microgels, a process known as photopolymerization. Curing the alginate microgels using UV light takes just tens of seconds. The result: alginate microgels that shrink or swell depending on their surrounding ion concentration, temperature, pH, and other external stimuli.

Perhaps more importantly, Choi is able to control the rate that alginate microgels break down. “A tissue scaffold should degrade at a rate proportional to the formation of new tissue, but until now, uncontrolled degradation of alginate has really limited its usefulness,” Choi says.

“Working in microfluidic devices, we can start applying UV light after the microfluids become steady, and turn off the light if necessary to stop the reaction,” he explains. “This solves the chief problem associated with previous ionic methods of making alginate microgels. Until now, the alginate phase of flow would cure before steady state was achieved, resulting in alginate microgels that clogged the microchannel.”

“Until now, uncontrolled degradation of alginate has really limited its usefulness.”

— CK Choi

Choi’s photocrosslinking technique also simplifies current methods of forming nonspherical alginate microgels that are better for observing objects, like cells, encapsulated inside. “Our preliminary results suggest that such high intensity UV does not reduce cell viability,” notes Choi.

Choi and graduate student Shuo Wang use oxidized methacrylated alginate (OMA) developed by their collaborator, Eben Alsberg at Case Western Reserve University. The team fabricated the microfluidic channels for this research at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

NSF Funding on Deep Learning in Geosystems

Published August 7, 2017

By College of Engineering

News

Zhen (Leo) Liu (CEE) is the principal investigator on a project that has received a $227,367 research and development grand from the National Science Foundation.

Shiyan Hu (ECE/MTTI) is Co-PI on the project “Image-Data-Driven Deep Learning in Geosystems.” This is a two-year project.

By Sponsored Programs.

Abstract

Breakthroughs in deep learning in 2006 triggered numerous cutting-edge innovations in text processing, speech recognition, driverless cars, disease diagnosis, and so on. This project will utilize the core concepts underlying the recent computer vision innovations to address a rarely-discussed, yet urgent issue in engineering: how to analyze the explosively increasing image data including images and videos, which are difficult to analyze with traditional methods.

The goal of this study is to understand the image-data-driven deep learning in geosystems with an exploratory investigation into the stability analysis of retaining walls. To achieve the goal, the recent breakthroughs in computer vision, which were later used as one of the core techniques in the development of Google’s AlphaGo, will be studied for its capacity in assessing the stability of a typical geosystem, i.e., retaining walls.

Verification and validation—Predicting uncertainties early on

Published August 2, 2017

By Kim Geiger

Shabakhti Research

Mahdi Shabakhti — Mahdi Shahbakhti
Mechanical Engineering–Engineering Mechanics

The verification and validation (V&V) process for a typical automotive vehicle and powertrain electronic control unit takes approximately two years, and costs several million dollars. V&V are essential stages in the design cycle of an industrial controller, there to remove any gap between the designed and implemented controller. Computer modeling has brought about improvements over the years, but the gap remains.

Michigan Tech researcher Mahdi Shahbakhti has made significant progress to remove that gap, using system models to easily verify controller design. His solution features an adaptive sliding mode controller (SMC) that helps the controller deal with imprecisions in the implementation of the system.

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation GOALI program, or Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry. Shahbakhti’s team and fellow researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Toyota USA in Ann Arbor, Michigan are nearing the end of their three-year collaborative GOALI project.

“Analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) is one of the main sources of controller implementation imprecisions, mostly due to sampling and quantization,” says Shahbakhti. “Our approach mitigates ADC imprecisions by first identifying them in the early stages of the controller design cycle. We first developed a mechanism for real-time prediction of uncertainties due to ADC and then determined how those uncertainties propagated through the controller. Finally we incorporated those predicted uncertainties into the discrete sliding mode controller (DSMC) design.”

“Analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) is one of the main sources of controller implementation imprecisions, mostly due to sampling and quantization.”

– Mahdi Shahbakhti

Shahbakhti and his team tested an actual electronic control unit at Michigan Tech in a real time processor-in-the-loop setup. Their approach significantly improved controller robustness to ADC imprecisions when compared to a baseline sliding controller. In a case study controlling the engine speed and air-fuel ratio of a spark ignition engine, the DSMC design with predicted uncertainty provided a 93 percent improvement compared to a baseline sliding controller.

Toyota works closely with the research team to integrate GOALI project results into the design cycle for its automotive controllers. The company provided team members with an initial week of training on its V&V method of industrial controllers, and also participates with Shabakhti’s team in online biweekly meetings. “The concept of this project is fundamental and generic—it can be applied to any control system, but complex systems, such as those in automotive applications, will benefit most,” notes Shahbakhti.

What’s in the air? Understanding long-range transport of atmospheric arsenic

Published August 2, 2017

By Kim Geiger

Coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation near Page, Arizona

Once emitted into the atmosphere, many air pollutants are transported long distances, going through a series of chemical reactions before falling back to the Earth’s surface. This makes air pollution not just a local problem, but a regional and a global one.

Shiliang Wu — Shilliang Wu, Geological & Mining Engineering & Sciences, Civil & Environmental Engineering

“If you’d been living in London in December 1952, you’d probably remember what air pollution can do—in just a couple of weeks, a smog event killed thousands of people,” says Michigan Tech researcher Shilliang Wu.

“Today, photos of air pollution in China and India flood the Internet,” he adds. “Air pollution remains a significant challenge for the sustainability of our society, with detrimental effects on humans, animals, crops, and the ecosystem as a whole.”

An assistant professor with a dual appointment in Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, and Civil and Environmental Engineering, Wu examines the impacts of human activities on air quality, along with the complicated interactions between air quality, climate, land use, and land cover. Using well-established global models, he investigates a wide variety of pollutants including ozone, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, aerosols, mercury, and arsenic.

Wu’s research team recently developed the first global model to simulate the sources, transport, and deposition of atmospheric arsenic including source-receptor relationships between various regions. They were motivated by a 2012 Consumer Reports magazine study, which tested more than 200 samples of rice products in the US and found that many of them, including some organic products and infant rice cereals, contained highly toxic arsenic at worrisome levels.

“Our results indicate that reducing anthropogenic arsenic emissions in Asia and South America can significantly reduce arsenic pollution not only locally, but globally.”

– Shilliang Wu

“Our model simulates arsenic concentrations in ambient air over many sites around the world,” says Wu. “We have shown that arsenic emissions from Asia and South America are the dominant sources of atmospheric arsenic in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively. Asian emissions are found to contribute nearly 40 percent of the total arsenic deposition over the Arctic and North America. Our results indicate that reducing anthropogenic arsenic emissions in Asia and South America can significantly reduce arsenic pollution not only locally, but globally.”

Wu’s model simulation is not confined to any region or time period. “We can go back to the past or forward to the future; we can look at any place on Earth. As a matter of fact, some of my colleagues have applied the same models to Mars,” he says, adding: “In any case, the atmosphere is our lab, and we are interested in everything in the air.”

Tayloria Adams—Taking Dielectrophoresis to the Next Level

Published July 13, 2017

By Kim Geiger

Last year the National Science Foundation awarded Michigan Tech alumna Tayloria Adams a prestigious Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology. Adams earned her Master’s and PhD in Chemical Engineering here at Michigan Tech, graduating with nine scholarships, fellowships and awards, three peer-reviewed journal publications, a book chapter, and a patent—No. WO2015051372-A1, to be exact. Her doctoral research examined the dielectric behavior of human mesenchymal stem cells, for the purpose of cell sorting in microfluidic devices.

How did you come to Michigan Tech?

While on the hunt for a graduate school I was drawn to Michigan for two reasons: my mother lived in Detroit for a while before I was born, and affirmative action was started in the state. I applied to Michigan Tech and scheduled a visit. The environment was very welcoming, which got me hooked! Meeting Dr. Adrienne Minerick during the last year of my master’s degree was icing on the cake. My first interactions with her were in the classroom as I took her Advanced Reactive Systems course. I enjoyed her teaching style. She put a lot of effort into giving meaningful lectures and keeping students engaged. I looked into her research and I was very interested in dielectrophoresis, especially its use in studying red blood cells. The rest is history!

“I am passionate about three things: healthcare-related research, minority student success in STEM, and social justice. These areas are my calling.”

– Tayloria Adams

What was the most challenging aspect of your studies?

Research. There is a huge learning curve when entering a new research field. Learning how to design experiments effectively and accepting that there is no such thing as a perfect experiment are both great challenges. Something will always go wrong, but working through it to still collect the necessary data is what builds character and improves research skills.

What have you done since graduation?

I worked in the Michigan Tech Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) for one year after graduation, as the outreach coordinator. That year gave me the opportunity to grow as a mentor and advocate for underrepresented minority students. I am now conducting postdoctoral research in the Department of Neurology at the University of California, Irvine, in Lisa Flanagan’s lab, studying neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs) and their therapeutic potential. NSPCs are desirable because they form the three cell types of the central nervous system, astrocytes, neurons, and oligodendrocytes. However, one challenge is that NSPCs are grown as heterogeneous mixtures and we have little information regarding, which cells are best for neural repair. I’m using dielectrophoresis, an electrokinetic separation technique, as a method to target and enrich specific cells NSPCs. My goal is to effectively sort and characterize them.

You worked hard to educate and engage diverse people about the challenges facing underrepresented students at Michigan Tech. How would you describe the difference you made?

Working at Michigan Tech’s CDI provided me an outlet to engage in important conversations and be a part of the work. CDI was also very supportive of my research. I was able to practice research presentations in the center, use the space as a writing sanctuary when I was completing my dissertation, and almost all of the staff was present at my dissertation defense, which was immensely important to me. One of the best parts of my graduate education is that my daughter Aiyanna experienced college life at the undergraduate and graduate level before reaching college age. She’s learned about important campus resources such as CDI, and I am confident that this exposure has played a part in preparing her for college. As a parent this is something I am very proud of and would consider a success. My greatest frustration was the decline I saw in the number of African American students enrolled at Michigan Tech during my time there. A second frustration is the representation in faculty members. Michigan Tech is a great institution but these are areas where growth would make a huge impact on the community. I would say the difference I’ve made so far is showing what’s possible; but there is much more work to be done.

To learn more about Dr. Adams’s research, visit tayloriaadams.com.