Graduate students Venkat R. Donuru, Giri K. Vegesna, Singaravelu Velayudham, postdoctoral associate Ge Meng and Associate Professor Haiying Liu, all of the Department of Chemistry, filed a provisional patent entitled “New Kinds of Fluorescent Conjugated Polymers with BODIPY Backbone”–serial no. 61/140,529.
Published in Tech Today
by Marcia Goodrich, senior writer
Nicholas Jensen likes hemlocks. “They’re my favorite tree,” he says, both for their graceful, arching tops and branches and for the shady, uncluttered forest floor they create.
But hemlocks are in trouble, down about 99 percent throughout their regional historic range. So Jensen, a master’s student in forest ecology and management, is studying how one particular animal species might impact the survival of the remaining 1 percent.
In winter, whitetail deer–lots of them–gather (or “yard up”) in groves of hemlock and cedar to escape the deep snow. They do eat hemlock, but they also deposit plenty of scat. Jensen wondered if their presence in high numbers was in effect fertilizing the local ecosystem and changing what types of plants were growing there.
Eastern hemlock thrives in poor soils that most other forest trees can’t abide. If those soils become fertile, Jensen thought, they might be colonized by other trees, like sugar maples, that could displace the hemlocks.
Three years ago, he began his study of 39 hemlock groves in the Lake Superior basin, conducting “pellet counts” and tracking the types of plants growing on the forest floor. Locally, he visited hemlock groves near Point Abbey and Big Eric’s Bridge, in Baraga County.
Hemlock groves let very little light through to ground. Only a few species of low-growing plants, including wild lily of the valley and wood ferns, grow under these conditions. However, Jensen discovered that different species of plants grow in hemlock groves that shelter lots of deer in the winter.
Just why this is happening isn’t clear. Maybe these new plants like the richer soils, maybe the deer are eating saplings and making way for additional low-growing plants.
What is clear is that something is going on, Jensen says. “It’s important to understand this. Hemlocks are an important resource, and they are really under pressure,” he says. “My hope is that we’ll be able to raise awareness of the effect deer may be having, and that our findings will someday be considered in forest management. It could be relevant to the persistence of this forest type.”
Jensen presented his work at the Graduate Student Council Research Colloquium, held April 2-3 at the Rozsa Center. His advisor is Associate Professor Chris Webster (SFRES).
Each year, the Graduate Student Council honors the Graduate School’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor, Outstanding Student Scholar and Outstanding Student Leader. The awards are presented to recipients at the Research Colloquium Banquet in April.
If you would like to nominate someone for one of these awards, see information about the awards, including the submission process, on the Graduate Student Council’s activities page at http://gsc.students.mtu.edu/activities.html . The nomination deadline is 5 p.m. on Friday, March 20.
If you have any questions, contact Randy Harrison, public relations chair of the council, at rsharris@mtu.edu .
Effective summer session 2009, binding fees for a thesis, report, or dissertation will increase due to increased charges from our bindery. Students completing their degree requirements in summer 2009 will need to discard any old bindery forms (TD-Bindery) they have downloaded and complete the new form that will be available beginning May 12, 2009.
Summary of fees beginning in summer:
- Binding and printing black and white letter sized pages: $22.50/copy
- Color pages (letter sized): $0.37/page
- Black and white pages (larger than letter sized, up to 11×17): $0.21/page
- Color pages (larger than letter sized, up to 11×17): $0.55/page
- Cotton paper: $0.14/page
- Media Pocket: $4.90/copy
Graduate student Jon Mellor is working on water quality in Rakai. The work was recently featured in an article in the Daily Monitor.
The Sixth Annual Byron Fellowship Program will take place May 17-22, 2009 at Turkey Run State Park. The Byron Fellowship is an interdisciplinary course in sustainable communities that uniquely engages participants through place-based learning. We are looking for 12 to 16 exceptional upper class undergraduates, graduate students, or recent graduates that have a passionate interest in building sustainable communities.
During the 5-day program, participants will learn from a collection of academic teachers and active practitioners. Participants and mentors represent a wide spectrum of disciplines including the arts, natural science, social science, engineering, and theology. The teaching methods include tutorial mentoring, collaborative discussion, and individual reflection.
More information regarding the event is available at: http://www.byronfellowship.org
An informational brochure in PDF format is available: http://byronfellowship.org/ByronBrochure2008.pdf
Applications can also be downloaded from our website: http://byronfellowship.org/byronapplication.doc
Rolling admissions have begun and will be open through April 15th . The student cost of the program is limited to a subsidized rate of $250, which includes food and lodging for the event. Need based scholarships are available.
Kari Brown is available to answer questions, email kari@mtu.edu and thank you for your support.
Timothy Colling, senior research engineer with the Michigan Tech Transportation Institute, has been selected to participate in the Eno Transportation Foundation’s Leadership Development Conference in Washington, DC, in May.
The conference brings together the top 20 graduate students in transportation engineering from across the country for the one-week program, in which participants meet top government officials, leaders of transportation organizations and members of Congress to get a firsthand look at how transportation policy is developed and implemented.
Colling is a doctoral student in civil engineering and assistant director of Michigan’s Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP).
His advisor, Professor Bill Sproule (CEE), says that this is “a tremendous opportunity” for Colling and “a recognition that he is one of the country’s future transportation leaders.”
The Ecosystem Science Center and the Biotechnology Research Center have announced award recipients of the Fifth Annual ESC/BRC Graduate Research Forum, held on Feb. 27.
Two Grand Awards, six Merit Awards and three Honorable Mention Awards were presented.
$500 Grand Prizes
Ecosystem Science Center
Elizabeth Boisvert (SFRES) for “Initiation and Development of Three Lake Superior Coastal Peatlands”; advisor: Assistant Professor Tom Pypker
Biotechnology Research Center
Eric Minner (Biomedical Engineering) for “Hydrogel System Delivers Glutathione and Interleukin-10 to Mitigate Secondary Injury following Spinal Cord Damage”; advisor: Assistant Professor Ryan Gilbert
$100 Merit Prizes
Ecosystem Science Center
Lucas Spaete (SFRES) for “Aspen Biomass Assessment for MI, WI and MN: A GIS and Regression Approach for Quantifying Biomass”; advisor: Associate Professor Ann Maclean
Sarah Stehn (SFRES) for “Altitudinal Gradients of Bryophyte Diversity and Community Assemblage in Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests”; advisor: Associate Professor Christopher Webster
Biotechnology Research Center
Jared Cregg (Biomedical Engineering) for “The Role of Aligned Fiber Density in Axon Motility”; advisor: Assistant Professor Ryan Gilbert
Jill Jensen (Chemical Engineering) for “Selection for Improved Hybrid Poplar Via Dilute Acid and Enzymatic Hydrolysis Using Mini-Reactors”; advisor: Professor David Shonnard
Dalila Trupiano (SFRES) for “Activation Tagging of A Poplar AP2/ERF Transcription Factor Involved in Lateral Root Formation”; advisor: Associate Professor Victor Busov
Han Bing Wang (Biomedical/Chemical Engineering) for “Axonal Guidance Conduits Containing Aligned, Electrospun Poly-L-Lactic Acid Fibers Direct In Vitro Neurite Outgrowth”; advisors: Assistant Professor Ryan Gilbert (Biomedical Engineering) and Professor Michael Mullins (Chemical Engineering)
Honorable Mentions, Ecosystem Science Center
Chris Miller (SFRES) for “The Economic Feasibility of Aspen as a Coal Co-Firing Component”; advisor: Assistant Professor Robert Froese
Matthew Metz (SFRES) for “Summer Predation Patterns of Yellowstone Gray Wolves”; advisor: Assistant Professor John Vucetich
Max Henschell (SFRES) for “Do the Birds Care? Avian Community Response to Floristic Quality”; advisor: Associate Professor David Flaspohler
by Dennis Walikainen, senior editor
Maybe he missed his calling.
Maybe he should have been a professor instead of a successful entrepreneur who was part of the first Indian-owned company to go public in the US and the visionary who has helped numerous start-ups succeed around the globe.
Kanwal Rekhi ’67 was comfortable and engaging as he spoke to a packed ATDC Wednesday as students, faculty and community members learned about entrepreneurship and more.
Rekhi speaks from what he knows. He was brave enough to quit a safe, corporate job (after being laid off three times) and start his own company, with support from his wife, Ann, first and foremost.
“She said, ‘What about the mortgage? And the children?'” After some convincing, she said, “Do what you have to do.”
What he had to do was to start his own company, Excelan, with two partners. In 1982, they began manufacturing Ethernet cards to connect PCs to something called the Internet. Excelan was also instrumental in the TCP/IP Internet protocol. Excelan would go on to merge with Novell, and Rekhi became executive vice president, leading product development and technology strategies.
Rekhi drew parallels between the high unemployment of the early 1980s and today, and said both were good times to become an entrepreneur.
“The best times are the hard times,” he said. “Jobs are not plentiful, so there are resources available: laid-off people, rent is low, competition is not as tough, and you have time to get your service or product up to speed.”
He also said it is time to try your own business when you are restless and not happy, and you can identify the next wave.
Entrepreneurs create new wealth, he said, and, of course, it is hard.
“Ninety percent of people don’t have the entrepreneur gene and won’t try it,” Rekhi said. “So the odds of the percent who do try are ten times better! The first step is the hardest, into the valley of death. The first couple of years, it is just you, not even your wife or husband. Nobody outside.”
The downside to doing your own thing is that it is very difficult, he said. The upside is that there is unlimited potential for success, “but you have to find out if you have that entrepreneur gene. You have to try it.”
Becoming an entrepreneur in tough economic times has an additional upside: “You learn discipline early. You learn the value of money early. In boom times, they don’t have discipline, so when the market takes a downturn, they don’t do well. I discovered a new me.”
Fielding questions from the audience, he said money for start-ups is always available.
“Do your paper designs, paint a picture of that dream.”
And being an entrepreneur is much easier today because of the Internet. It is also a “team sport: We had a software guy, a hardware guy, me, who did the boards, and a sales and marketing guy.”
You can’t do it all by yourself, he said. First, find your strengths and weaknesses.
And he identified some strengths as personality traits, within the entrepreneur gene, for start-ups: having intellectual honesty, working harder than the other guy, holding yourself accountable, having a fair sense of value, knowing your domain, possessing leadership skills to pull everyone up, and not needing accolades from the outside.
“You’ll get daily satisfaction from the inside.”
He also thought the local area was perfect for entrepreneurs.
“You have a high quality of life, it is clean, good fiber (network), cheap labor with students, and a hotbed of intelligence here with the University.”
He compared Houghton and Michigan Tech to Silicon Valley and Stanford, which opened up its labs after hours, for example, to aid in intellectual property development.
He returned to the start-ups.
“There is no magic here. It will take four or five orders to make money, as the first and second orders from a customer are essentially free since you had to invest so much initially.”
More wisdom.
“Stay focused. One sharp knife is great. Two sharp knives together become one dull knife.”
“Ideas are a dime a dozen. Creating and shipping your product gives it value.”
“You should grow as a leader faster than your business grows. Be very honest with yourself.”
“Spread your risk around: technological, marketplace, financial and execution as a leader.”
“As a leader, keep asking, ‘What am I missing?'”
Today, as a leader of TiE, a nonprofit that fosters entrepreneurship with 50 chapters in 11 countries, Rekhi focuses on the South Asian business community and has ties all over Silicon Valley.
Sometimes those beginners talk to him about how hard it is starting out.
“From India, I was dropped off a bus at Michigan Tech in 1967,” he says. “I could do it, why not you?”
Lesson learned. Class dismissed.
Michigan Tech currently has 34 students serving abroad through its Master’s International Peace Corps programs. This is the highest level of participation across the country – for the fourth year in a row. These graduate programs give students the opportunity to earn a graduate degree while also participating in the Peace Corps. Read more in the press release from the Peace Corps and learn about our programs.
Tech Today has also written an article with some great quotes from our faculty.