Graduate School Newsblog

Author: Debra Charlesworth

BRC Announces Fall Travel Grants

Published
By

The Biotechnology Research Center has announced the recipients of its 2010 Fall Travel Grants:

Graduate students

  • Surendar Dhadi (Biological Sciences) will receive $500 toward a podium presentation at the Plant and Animal Genome XIX Conference to be held in San Diego, Calif., in January, 2011.
  • Aytug Gencoglu (Chemical Engineering) will receive $500 toward a podium presentation at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November, 2010.
  • Seyyed Hessam Mir Shah Ghassemi (ME-EM) will receive $500 toward a podium presentation at the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting to be held in Boston, Mass., in December, 2010.
  • Kaela Leonard (Chemical Engineering) will receive $500 toward a podium presentation at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November, 2010.
  • Kefeng Li (Biological Sciences) will receive $500 toward a poster presentation at the Plant and Animal Genome XIX Conference to be held in San Diego, Calif., in January, 2011.
  • Sapna Kumari (Mathematical Sciences) received $500 toward a podium presentation at the Genetic Analysis Workshop that was held in Boston, Mass., in October, 2010.
  • Chungja Yang (Chemical Engineering) will receive $500 toward a podium presentation at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November, 2010.

Undergraduate student

  • Jessica Forrest (BME) received $500 toward a poster presentation at the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting that was held in Austin, Texas, in October, 2010.
Continue Reading →

New Theses and Dissertations Available

Published
By

The Graduate School is pleased to announce new theses and dissertations are now available in the J.R. van Pelt and Opie Library from the following programs:

  • Applied Ecology
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Civil Engineering
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Engineering Physics
  • Forest Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology
  • Geophysics
  • Industrial Archaeology
  • Materials Science and Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
Continue Reading →

Indian and Turkish Food Featured at Khana Khazana

Published
By

The international lunch called Khana Khazana (food treasure) will feature the cuisines of Turkey and India Friday in the Memorial Union Food Court.

International students Nassim Sabahfar and Komal Tayal will cook. Sabahfar, a graduate student in civil engineering from Iran, will make Turkish lamb kebobs, barley mushroom soup and jellied ice cream with fruit, a dish that is her specialty. Tayal, a graduate student in mechanical engineering from India, will make vegetable pulao, a traditional northern Indian vegetarian rice dish.

Lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. A full meal costs $6, and a la carte dishes costs $2.

Khana Khazana is a collaborative effort of international students and Dining Services.

Continue Reading →

A (Graduate) Family Affair

Published
By

The rigors of graduate education are daunting enough, and adding a new child into the mix can raise the stress level into the stratosphere.

Now the Graduate School has helped ease the burden for Lihui Hu, a PhD student in computer science who has just given birth to her first baby, a boy named Alex. The Graduate School recently adopted policies to help graduate students transition to parenthood by offering excused absences and paid leave for new mothers or fathers of biological or adopted children, providing they are already supported full-time by the University.

Hu is the first beneficiary of the new policy. “I’m very grateful to my department and all the people who helped,” she says. “I was able to come home one week before my delivery. It has really helped. At the end of the leave, I’ll be ready to return to campus to work and do my research.”

The timing was perfect, too. Hu’s husband, Linjia Hu, had a job offer that just fell through, and the couple would have been without any income.

“We are among only 13 percent of universities nationally who offer six weeks guaranteed, paid leave,” says Kristi Isaacson, assistant director of marketing for the Graduate School.

The support system within academic departments and administrative offices also includes extension time for the degree programs, subsidies for campus child care and local resources to help new parents, Isaacson adds.

Central to the new benefit is the Graduate Student Parental Accommodation Policy, which applies to the mother or father. Under the policy, the graduate student-parent is excused from courses, research, teaching assignments or other responsibilities at Tech for up to six weeks.

“For many women and men, the best time to begin to raise a family is when you are in graduate school,” says Jackie Huntoon, Graduate School dean. “This policy makes it easier for our students and faculty to manage a birth or adoption in a positive way.”

“The excused absence can actually begin three weeks prior to the birth or placement,” Isaacson adds.

The policy also provides a one-semester extension to the time-to-degree limit, as well as extensions to deadlines for completing the qualifying exam or proposal defense.

The academic departments receive funding from the Graduate School to hire temporary replacements for the students on parental leave.

“It’s great that we are able to support her and still cover her duties,” says Steve Carr, chair and professor of computer science, who sits on Hu’s dissertation committee. “With tight budgets, we can still afford a TA. We don’t want to discourage graduate students from starting families, but this type of support is necessary,” Carr adds.

Isaacson agrees. “We don’t want the program to be a burden on the academic department, and we want the grad students to know that we are family supportive,” she says.

Programs like Michigan Tech’s could help stop the “female brain drain in science,” where women are more likely to abandon their academic careers in favor of raising their families, according to research by the Council of Graduate Schools.

“I am proud that our policy is among the best in the nation,” Huntoon says. “This certainly will help us attract and retain more female students, which is one of the University’s strategic goals.”

Isaacson says that help for graduate student-parents, new and old, extends beyond campus resources, such as Little Huskies Child Development Center and the Michigan Tech Preschool.

“The Keweenaw Family Resource Center has the new tree house indoor play area, maternity closet of “gently used clothing” and other programs, and Community Coordinated Child Care (4Cs) also has many ways to help parents.”

“Everyone benefits, and students are not burdened with any additional stress from their academic lives,” Huntoon adds. “They truly can take the time to enjoy the new addition to their family.”

by Jennifer Donovan, director of public relations
Published in Tech Today and Michigan Tech News (by Dennis Walikainen)

Continue Reading →

Fall 2010 Finishing Fellowships Awarded

Published
By

The Graduate School is proud to announce the following students are recipients of a one-time Fall 2010 Finishing Fellowship:

  • Alexandru Herescu, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
  • Megan L Killian, Biomedical Engineering
  • Chee Huei Lee, Physics
  • Cho Hui Lim, Chemical Engineering
  • Yu Liu, Civil Engineering
  • Jiang Lu, Physics
  • Cory P. McDonald, Environmental Engineering
  • Louis R. Pignotti, Chemistry

The fellowships are made possible by the Charles L. Lawton Endowed Fellowship, Neil V. Hakala Endowed Fellowship, Doctoral Finishing Fellowship, and the Graduate School.

Pictures of our recent awardees are available online.

Continue Reading →

Science and Engineering Expo on National Mall

Published
By

Michigan Tech will have a dual presence at the first annual USA Science and Engineering Festival, Oct. 23-24, on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The Science and Engineering Expo is the grand finale of a two-week event promoting public interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. More than 1,500 interactive activities for all ages, hosted by more than 350 of the nation’s leading science and engineering organizations, will expose attendees to a broad spectrum of science. All events are free and open to the public, and hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to attend.

NSF Program Answers Burning Questions About Volcanoes

How can you tell if a volcano is about to blow? What tools do you use to monitor a volcano? What’s so important about volcanoes, anyway? The world–including thousands of school-age youngsters–will get hands-on answers from Michigan Tech.

Tech’s volcano exhibit is in Freedom Plaza (Section PA-13, Booth #1317). Graduate students Luke Bowman, Kyle Brill and Anieri Morales Rivera will demonstrate equipment and techniques used by field researchers to monitor volcanic activity. By doing this monitoring, volcanologists can learn more about volcanic processes and identify potential precursors to eruptions.

The team hopes its exhibit will get people interested in geology. “Geology is a science full of wonders, excitement and lots of things to discover,” says Morales Rivera, “from understanding natural processes that may become a hazard to humans, such as volcanoes, to improving our knowledge of Earth and planetary sciences.” People are “exposed to geology in a daily basis,” she points out, “from the use of mineral resources to the location of petroleum and water supplies.”

To help illustrate what they look for when monitoring volcanoes, the Tech team is bringing an accelerometer and a Forward-Looking Infrared, or FLIR, camera. To demonstrate the accelerometer, which measures seismic activity, guests will be invited to jump on the ground, creating earthquake-like vibrations that the accelerometer will pick up and display as a seismogram.

The graduate students will also show visitors pictures of themselves taken with the FLIR camera, which measures an object’s radiant energy, translates it into temperature, and displays an image using light intensity or color brightness to show levels of heat.

“Scientists can’t predict eruptions,” says Morales Rivera, “but we can talk about the probability of one based on changes in the volcano’s behavior, such as increased seismicity, changes in gas concentrations coming out of the volcano, and deformation of the volcano itself.”

The exhibit will also explain the kinds of hazards posed by a volcanic eruption, from ash clouds that can block sunlight and interfere with airline flights, to lava flows that can burn everything in their path.

The Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences is one of only 15 National Science Foundation-funded projects invited to participate nationwide. Tech’s project is part of the NSF’s Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) program. Tech operates PIRE programs in Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru.

“The NSF Office for International Science and Education, which manages the PIRE program, was very excited about our selection,” says Chair John Gierke (GMES). “We were the only PIRE project that was selected.”

Does the Tech team feel intimidated? Of course not, says Bowman. “We hike active volcanoes. We can handle the Mall.”

Tech’s MindTrekkers are also traveling to the National Mall. The group, which is a traveling science road show produced by Youth Programs, will share some of the stranger mysteries of science.  Read the complete article in Tech Today

by Jennifer Donovan, director of public relations

Continue Reading →

Two Tech Authors Win Historical Society Awards

Published
By

Two Michigan Tech book authors won 2010 State History Awards from the Historical Society of Michigan. Larry Lankton, professor of social sciences, received an award in the University and Commercial Press category for “Hollowed Ground,” a history of the copper mining industry in the Upper Peninsula. Gary Kaunonen’s “Challenge Accepted: A Finnish Immigrant Response to Industrial America in Michigan’s Copper Country” won an award in the same category. Kaunonen is a PhD student in industrial archeology.

The society presented 15 awards at its 136th Annual Meeting and State History Conference Oct. 15-17 in Frankenmuth, including a Lifetime Achievement award, which honors men and women who have dedicated themselves to preserving Michigan’s history over a significant amount of time.

The Historical Society of Michigan, which administers the State History Awards, is the state’s oldest cultural organization. Founded in 1828 by Lewis Cass and Henry Schoolcraft, it is an independent nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and presentation of Michigan’s historical story. The State History Awards are the highest recognition presented by the state’s official historical society.

Published in Tech Today

Continue Reading →

Nominations for Spring 2011 Finishing Fellowships Now Open

Published
By

Nominations for spring Finishing Fellowships are now open.  Applications must be submitted to the Graduate School no later than 4pm on October 20th.

Students are eligible if all of the following criteria are met:

  1. Must be a PhD student.
  2. Must expect to finish in spring 2011.
  3. Must have submitted a Petition to Enter Full-Time Research Only Mode. No Finishing Fellowships will be awarded to students who fail to receive approval of their petition.

Previous recipients of a Finishing Fellowship are not eligible.

Please see our application page for details on the application procedure.  Please direct any questions to Dr. Debra Charlesworth.

Continue Reading →

Arthritis, Soil, Cabaret, and DNA: Students Share their Research

Published
By

The Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library was packed recently, but it wasn’t full of students cramming. This day, more than fifty students were presenting their research via posters in the bright sunlight streaming in from a wall of windows.

It was a poster session held as part of the University’s kickoff of its Generations of Discovery Capital Campaign, coinciding with Homecoming.

Megan Killian, a PhD student in biomedical engineering, discussed her work with arthritis in knees, especially after traumatic injuries. She was looking at what can be done to stop or delay the onset of arthritis after a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a common problem in contact sports.

“I’m looking at the changes in the meniscus,” Killian said. “Specifically, how the cells behave, how the meniscus degenerates over a short period of time. I am focusing on the molecular biology and histology, and other students in my lab, Adam Abraham and John Moyer, are looking at the mechanics.”

Her advisor, Tammy Haut Donahue (associate professor of mechanical engineering), is developing a better understanding of how the meniscus behaves mechanically and biochemically, and how it responds to injury and degenerative changes.

Together, the inquiry has Killian close to completing her PhD this semester, before she “goes on to a career in research-focused academia.”

Nearby, Carley Kratz presented her research in soils. The PhD student in forestry is comparing soil in special plots of the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts and the Ford Forestry Center in Alberta, with an eye toward the effects of warming.

“I’m studying how increased heat and moisture affect the soil microorganisms,” she said. “I’m mimicking future temperature and moisture increases to look at global warming, among other areas.”

She is focusing on the fungi and bacterial concentrations, she said, especially metabolic changes over time, including increased amounts of carbon cycling (how carbon moves through the global environment). “If more carbon in the soil cycles more rapidly, then that could lead to more carbon in the atmosphere, which could increase global warming,” she says.

Her research is sponsored by a US Department of Energy Office of Science graduate fellowship. Adjunct Professor Erik Lilleskov and Associate Professor Andrew Burton (SFRES), also worked on the research.

Kratz’s hopes include a postdoc in microbial ecology and an eventual professorship in the Midwest “or wherever life takes me.”

A senior in sound design, Nicole Kirch researched potential sound effects for the play, “I Am My Own Wife.” Set in Nazi and Soviet East Berlin, the play won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor in 2004.

“I looked at the setting of the play and tried to figure out the best sounds,” she said.

That meant using items, some old and some new, from Marlene Dietrich audio to a music box to bombs and air raid sounds to John Kennedy’s Berlin Wall speech.

“I also worked with an old phonograph, with a wax cylinder,” she said. “I didn’t want to improve the sound,” aiming instead for realistic pops and scratches from the old machine.

The setting is the bar/museum Mulack Ritze in the basement of the protagonist, and Kirch had to account for a wall of shelved memorabilia that is used in the back of the stage in the play.

“I send the sounds through speakers behind it,” she said. And she had to create pre- and post-show audio, as well as the sounds that help carry the action, all for a play that was not actually being performed here.

She did “a lot of research while bored last summer.” She wants to be a sound effects editor when she graduates.

Finally, Bryan Franklin, a PhD student in computer science, was working with common subsequences of nucleotide sequences.

“This is important because, if one is a close match with another, it can be used to study viruses and illnesses in labs and then apply the findings to humans,” he said

He had one major surprise.

“The original, published algorithm I was working with was flawed,” Franklin said. “That made it really confusing at first. It was hard to debug.”

Franklin made progress, eventually, using multiple parallel processes, to get results faster.

“I was able to get results in 1/6th the time it would have taken on a single processor,” he said. “My results are also better than the previous work I based my research on, as it always produces the longest matching subsequence.”

After leaving Tech, Franklin wants to continue working as a researcher, either in academia or industry.

by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor

Published in Tech Today

Continue Reading →

Michigan Tech Kicks Off $200 Million Capital Campaign

Published
By

by Jennifer Donovan, director of public relations

Michigan Tech is kicking off the public phase of a $200 million multi-year fund-raising campaign, President Glenn Mroz has announced. And appropriately enough on its 125th anniversary, Michigan Tech has already raised more than $125 million, he said, taking the University more than halfway to its goal.

Called “Generations of Discovery,” the campaign will enable Michigan Tech to acquire the resources to raise its recognition as a premier research university. It will focus primarily on the University’s strategic plan goal of attracting and supporting the very best faculty, students and staff by increasing the number of endowed faculty positions and increasing endowed student financial aid.

Endowments are permanently invested gifts that generate spendable income annually while continuing to grow. Endowed faculty chairs and professorships, as well as scholarships and graduate fellowships, are of particular importance to Michigan Tech’s future.

“This campaign funding will help us attract bright students and world-class professors,” said Mroz. “It will give us the resources we need to drive innovation and be counted among the nation’s finest technological universities.”

Already the “quiet phase” of the campaign, which began in 2006, has helped Michigan Tech increase its endowed faculty positions more than fourfold–from 4 to 17–and has raised nearly $11 million in new scholarships and fellowships for students.

New Gifts

At a campaign kickoff dinner, Mroz also announced two new $1 million gifts, one from Tom Shaffner and the other from John and Ruanne Opie. He also reported that the General Motors Foundation has given Michigan Tech another $160,000, bringing its support for the University this year to $244,000 and the total support from the GM Foundation and GM over the past 35 years to more than $8.3 million. The gifts bring the campaign total to $127.4 million to date.

Shaffner, a 1957 Tech alumnus with bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and business engineering administration, is chairman of the board of Dearborn Precision Tubular Products. A highly specialized machine shop specializing in high alloy tubing, aircraft parts and oil field equipment, Shaffner’s company uses a technology he developed to produce exceptionally long, straight tubes. His company is credited with developing deep-hole drilled components for the first US Navy nuclear submarine.

Shaffner is also helping fund a new building to house the Seaman Mineral Museum. It will be built adjacent to the Advanced Technology Development Complex on Sharon Avenue.

John Opie graduated from Michigan Tech in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical and materials engineering. He spent most of his career with General Electric, retiring in 2000 as vice chair/executive director. He delivered Tech’s commencement address in 1987 and again in 2001, receiving Honorary Doctorates in Engineering and Business.

Opie and his wife, Ruanne, recently donated $1 million for the construction of ten new skybox suites in the Student Ice Arena. The new suites, all on the west end of the rink, can each accommodate eight to fourteen people, with three skyboxes for larger groups. The Opies previously funded a 54,000-square-foot addition to the library and established an endowment to support the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Other gifts have enabled the University to pursue excellence in many different areas. Thanks to various campaign donors, Michigan Tech has been able to establish the Pavlis Institute for Global Technological Leadership, positioning students to create the future for a prosperous and sustainable world. The University is expanding and improving facilities for its electrical and computer engineering and computer science and engineering programs, as well as humanities and the mineral museum. Other donors enabled Tech to install lights and artificial turf at Sherman Field and to bring varsity women’s soccer to Tech.

Alumni Role

Alumni play a key role in any capital campaign. Electrical engineering alumnus Dave House ’65, chairman of Brocade Communication Systems of San Jose, Calif., and a longtime executive at Intel, is chairing the national campaign committee.

“The nation’s best universities have grown their endowments, brought internationally recognized scholars to their labs and classrooms, and built topflight facilities where great ideas are fostered,” said House. “Michigan Tech is focused on being one of these great universities, and it needs your support to achieve this goal.”

House himself is a staunch supporter of Michigan Tech. The House Family Foundation has endowed several professorships, including one held by Tim Schulz, dean of the College of Engineering. A gift from the House Family Foundation enabled the University to purchase the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor in 2006. The House Family Foundation also is currently funding improvements in electrical and computer engineering labs and classrooms.

But a successful campaign depends on more than alumni. All of Michigan Tech’s partners–corporations and foundations, as well as friends on campus and throughout the community, state and nation–play a key role in helping the University reach its goal by 2013. Corporations and foundations are responsible for over $35 million of contributions in the campaign to date. Longtime corporate partner General Motors just gave the University $160,000 to support student enterprises, senior design projects, diversity programs and student groups, another in a string of multiple campaign contributions.

“While a robust endowment is essential if we are to continue moving forward, we also need ongoing support for non-endowed programs and student life initiatives,” said George Butvilas, chair of the Michigan Tech Fund Board of Trustees. “We want our alumni and friends to know that gifts of all sizes can make an enormous difference, for a single student or an entire program.”

Published in Tech Today

Continue Reading →