Graduate School Newsblog

Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

Graduate Student Government Sponsors Research Colloquium

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The Graduate Student Government recently sponsored their annual Graduate Research Colloquium, featuring presentations and posters.  The annual event was capped off by an awards banquet where students and faculty were honored.

Honorees included:

  • Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award presented to Dr. Chris Middlebrook
  • Exceptional Graduate Student Scholar presented to Hessam Ghassemi
  • Exceptional Graduate Student Leader presented to Kevin Cassell
  • Winners of the poster and presentation competition
  • Recent recipients of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholarship
  • Recent recipients of the Graduate Student Service Award
  • Recent recipients of the Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award

Photographs of the posters and awardees can be found online.

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Michigan Tech Graduate Student Wins a Spot in International Satellite Imaging Competition

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There is trouble in paradise. What used to be home to half a million people making a living farming, raising livestock or fishing, the land is becoming inhospitable to vegetation. The flocks of migratory birds that used to fill the skies are rarely seen.

The region used to be called the Garden of Eden. It’s located in a region of Iraq known as Mesopotamia, a formerly fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that is becoming increasingly arid due to rising salinity of the soil. Now a graduate student at Michigan Tech, originally from Iraq himself, has developed a plan to use high-resolution satellite imagery to analyze the salinity of the ground and–hopefully–find ways to make the Garden of Eden fertile again.

DigitalGlobe, a company that manufactures a high-resolution, 8-band sensor for satellite imaging, found the project so innovative and promising that they have invited Sinan Abood, a PhD student in environmental engineering, to participate in a worldwide competition called the 8-Band Challenge. More than 500 proposals were submitted; Abood’s is one of 10 that were accepted. The competition, open to graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows, is slated to be judged this spring.

See Tech Today for more about Sinan’s research.

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Graduate Dean Review Process Begins

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A committee has been appointed to conduct the required review of Graduate School Dean Jacqueline Huntoon. Members include Carl Anderson, Nancy Auer, Andrew Burton, Gerard Caneba, Rob Greenhoe, Jarod Maggio, Paul Nelson, Bruce Seely, Andrew Storer, Greg Waite and Yoke Kin Yap. As part of the review process, the committee has prepared a survey for the main constituencies with whom the graduate dean works and requests input from all constituencies on campus.

The surveys are being run through SurveyMonkey for graduate students, faculty and administrators, as well as academic and professional staff. The committee asks that members from each group log in using the appropriate link listed below.

Faculty and staff access will be automatically restricted to computers with an IP address for Michigan Tech. This means that each computer access the survey only once.

Because several graduate students may need to use the same computer, accesses to their survey requires a password log-in. That password is being distributed to all Michigan Tech graduate students via a message from the graduate student government listserv.

Anyone encountering access issues should contact Bruce Seely at bseely@mtu.edu .

The survey will be open until 5 p.m., Monday, March 21. Responses will be confidential and no information about users or computers is being tracked. The committee thanks everyone for their participation and assistance.

Following are the surveys.

Link to the graduate student survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey-grad_students .
Access is password protected

Link to the faculty and administration survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey_faculty-administration .

Link to the staff survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Graddean_survey-staff .

Published in Tech Today.

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Session on Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award

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Just a reminder that tomorrow, March 15th from 12:00 to 1:00 in Ballroom A-1 of the Memorial Union Building, is the session on the NIH Individual Graduate Fellowship Opportunity (Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award NRSA).

Dr. Tammy Donahue, who has served on the NIH study section for NRSA awards 5 times, and Dr. Jason Carter, who has active research support from NIH and a comprehensive understanding of the NRSA, will provide insight and explanation on the different NRSA funding mechanisms, an understanding of the role of institutes in funding decisions, and how to determine if NIH is a good fit for interested applicants or if NSF or others are better.  Specific proposal development tips will be given on the four main proposal components: candidate qualifications, training plan, mentor statement, and research plan.

Graduate students and faculty will gain an understanding of who should apply,  what is involved in preparing an application, specific tips for writing a successful NRSA, and an inside perspective on the criteria which reviewers use to evaluate applications.

Register for this event at:   http://www.admin.mtu.edu/research/vpr/registration/

Drinks and dessert will be provided.

Please contact Jodi Lehman (jglehman@mtu.edu) at 487-2875 with any questions.

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Alumni Association Recognizes Outstanding Alumni and Friends

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One of the most important activities of the Michigan Tech Alumni Association is the recognition of the achievements and contributions of our many outstanding alumni and friends.

The Distinguished Alumni Award is presented to alumni who have made outstanding contributions both in their careers and to Michigan Tech over a number of years. The 2011 recipient is Bhakta Rath, MS Metallurgical and Materials Engineering ’58.

See Tech Today for the complete article and list of award recipients.

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SAE Endorses Michigan Tech Hybrid Vehicles Certificate

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The Michigan Academy for Green Mobility Alliance (MAGMA)  has approved three graduate certificate programs in hybrid electric vehicles and advanced battery systems. Michigan Tech’s hybrid vehicle engineering certificate, which takes 15 graduate credits to earn has been approved for up to $1,800 in training grants.

The funding is for currently employed engineers in Michigan. Its goal is to ensure that the automotive industry has workers with the skills it requires to grow and prosper in the emerging green economy. Funding is also available for retraining for displaced engineers through Michigan Works! and the State Energy Sector Partnership program (SESP).

Tech’s hybrid vehicle engineering certificate was developed with a $3 million grant from the Department of Energy Transportation Electrification and includes a mobile lab. This is an interdisciplinary program involving faculty and staff from mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering and chemical engineering. It is headed by Associate Dean Carl Anderson (COE) and Associate Professor Jeff Naber (ME-EM).

Published in Tech Today.

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A Good Night’s Sleep: If Only . . .

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It’s more than a bit ironic that Jason Carter, chair and associate professor in exercise science, health and physical education, has a touch of insomnia, since he is studying sleep deprivation in his lab. Carter’s malady may partially stem from having a new child at home; some 90 million Americans have such reason (for the most part) for such suffering. As part of a $400,000 National Institutes of Health grant, Carter and his research team are looking at sleep deprivation’s links to hypertension, among other issues, and differences by gender.

“We are trying to figure out why women are more susceptible to developing hypertension as a result of reduced sleep, and it may relate to reproductive hormones,” Carter says.

“In the women, we are looking at levels of estrogen and progesterone and if they relate to the sympathetic nervous system [the fight vs. flight response],” Carter says. “We don’t know why women respond more dramatically to sleep deprivation from a cardiovascular perspective, but we aim to find out if an overly active nervous system is partially responsible.”

The research focuses on differences in the nervous system’s response to stress. Researchers can measure this response using a specialized technique called microneurography. This invasive procedure includes inserting a microelectrode into the peroneal nerve just below the skin surface in the lower leg. This provides them with direct measures of sympathetic traffic that can be quantified several ways.

This inquiry aims to compare male and female subjects with a normal night’s sleep and those who have been awake for twenty-four consecutive hours. For the keep-awake crowd, that means no coffee or food for the entire night, as the tired men and women camp out in the SDC under the watchful eye of students and researchers.

Master’s student Robert Larson of Chassell assists Carter in the lab and focuses on “how sleep deprivation affects blood pressure and anxiety, and how your body responds to changes in blood pressure.” Sometimes this work gets comical. “The subjects can get loopy,” Larson says. “We ask them to count backwards by fours, for example, and they can’t do it.” Larson ultimately aims to obtain a PhD and work with people in research labs in a hospital or academic setting.

The ramifications of sleep deprivation can go beyond the lab, Carter says. If his work can lead to treatment for the sleep-deprived women and men, that could in turn lead to lower health care costs, since many other health factors are impacted by a lack of sleep.

“Sleep medicine is really only a twenty- to thirty-year-old science,” says Carter. “We are just beginning to realize the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. There is a cumulative effect from not getting enough sleep.” And that seven to eight hours of sleep is becoming more elusive to Americans, he says, hence the urgency for his research and the NIH grant.

“We spend one-third of our lives asleep, and we still don’t know the real physiological purpose.”

Published in Tech Today.

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Khana Khazana Visits Thailand

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Dishes from Thailand are on the menu this week at Khana Khazana (food treasure), a special ethnic lunch cooked by international students and served in the Memorial Union Food Court every Friday.

Parawee Pumwongpitak, a materials science and engineering graduate student from Thailand, will cook Spaghetti Pad Kee Mao, spaghetti with spicy Thai stir fried chicken and herb (soya balls for veggie dish); Tom Seap Muu, tasty spicy and sour soup of northeastern Thailand served with pork or mushrooms; Khao Niew Sang, sweet sticky rice topped with a slice of creamy egg custard.

A complete meal costs $6 and includes coffee, hot tea or a fountain soda. Items are available a la carte for $2.

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

Published in Tech Today.

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Students Build CO2 Scrubber

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Komar Kawatra couldn’t be prouder of the students on his research team. “We have developed a CO2 scrubber,” he says. “It was designed at Michigan Tech and built at Michigan Tech by Michigan Tech students.”

Kawatra, who chairs the chemical engineering department, has reason to be gratified by his proteges’ efforts. An 11-foot bench-model smokestack packed with glass beads is percolating away in a lab. Near the top, a proprietary liquid dribbles down. From below, carbon dioxide bubbles up. By the time the gas reaches the top, fully half of the CO2 has been gobbled up by the liquid.

The process not only captures carbon, it binds it in a solid form, making an undisclosed product that can be used as a construction material. The liquid itself can be recovered and used again. The group has applied for a patent and hopes to build a pilot plant in cooperation with an industry partner, Carbontec Energy Corp.

Other scrubbers remove up to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from a smokestack, Kawatra notes, but the liquid must be processed to strip away the carbon dioxide, which is generally compressed and stored. “This is a very expensive technique, which is probably why we do not see it commonly employed in industry,” says PhD student Brett Spigarelli of Iron Mountain, a member of the research team.

The group is working to make the scrubber remove even more carbon dioxide. In the meantime, it offers a significant benefit to industry.  “Industry has a problem with CO2 capture and sequestration because it is an added cost with no direct benefit to them,” Kawatra says. “But, if it is possible for industry to both capture CO2 and produce a product from the CO2 that they can sell, then they will be much more interested. Our goal is therefore to not only capture the CO2 at the lowest possible cost, but also to manufacture useful, marketable products.”

Building the scrubber has been as much about education as research. In the beginning, Kawatra notes, the scrubber only removed 5 percent of the CO2, and the students were stymied. Then they had their first aha experience—and replaced their opaque pipe with clear plastic so they could see what was actually going on inside.

“You think research is going to be really complex and difficult,” says Spigarelli. “Sometimes, it’s just a matter of looking at things a little differently.”  That small step led to big breakthroughs and, ultimately, to professional recognition. Their poster received second-place honors among the student entries at the 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers National Meeting, held in Salt Lake City.

The team included five chemical engineering undergraduates, Janelle Paddock, Paul Hagadone, Alison Springer-Wilson, Aliabbas Sherally and Russ Jungnitsch. Involving undergraduates in research does much more than prepare them for careers in academia, says Spigarelli. Research brings classroom lessons to life. “The sooner students can get familiar with these processes, the better prepared they are for the workplace.”

Kawatra’s graduate team members are Justin and Josh Carlson of Escanaba, Joe Halt of Calumet and Urvashi Srivastava of India.

“I have four Yoopers working for me,” Kawatra says, smiling broadly. “We’re one family, and it’s a lot of fun to work with them.”

Published in Tech Today.

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