Engineering

With President Sands’ help, NSF award recognizes Virginia Tech’s strength in nanoscience

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Professors Mitsu Murayama and Bill Reynolds using one of the transmission electron microscopes at the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.
Professors Mitsu Murayama and Bill Reynolds using one of the transmission electron microscopes at the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory.

The National Science Foundation just announced the winners of a collective $81 million in funding for the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), and Virginia Tech is one of the universities involved.

The NNCI will be a network of 16 centers, each with a unique area of expertise in nanotechnology. Virginia Tech’s center will focus on earth and environmental nanoscience—an area in which Tech has achieved international recognition, thanks to the leadership of University Distinguished Professor Mike Hochella, a professor of geosciences.

The NNCI network will serve as a central resource for colleges, universities, and companies who are interested in pursuing nanoscience and nanotechnology, but don’t have access to specialized equipment, or the expertise to analyze materials at scales a hundred thousand times smaller than the thickness of a sheet of paper. NNCI centers can offer access to instrumentation and internationally renowned experts, speeding up the pace of discovery in the rapidly expanding “nano” sector.

So membership in the network dramatically raises a university’s profile in the world of nanotechnology, identifying it as a source of cutting-edge research and a hub for scholarship and technology transfer.

As the university moves forward, it’s not surprising that nanotechnology will be an area of growth. The Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, directed by Hochella, and the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory (both initiatives of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science) have helped make the university a destination for nanoscience, particularly environmental nanoscience. Virginia Tech president Timothy D. Sands’ own background is in nanoscience, both in academia and industry, and he directed the Birk Nanotechnology Center at Purdue before becoming that university’s provost.

In a letter of support for the NNCI proposal, Sands wrote that his long-term vision for Virginia Tech “includes a continued commitment to nanoscience and nanotechnology,” and praised Hochella’s leadership in preparing the university to become “the dominant force in this relatively new and now critical area of study and development.”

With this award, the Virginia Tech is well on its way.

Watch VT News for the official university announcement!

At the Hume Center, inspiring young leaders starts early

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Kira SMWV cropped

You’re never too young to be an engineer.

The primary mission of the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology is to educate the next generation of leaders in national security technologies. One way they do that through is through outreach across the K-12 spectrum—to students who may not know, yet, that they’re already engineers at heart.

The Science Museum of Western Virginia’s Science Girls! summer camp offers elementary-school girls hands-on experience with science. Dr. Kira Gantt, the Hume Center’s Associate Director of Outreach and Education, visited the camp to talk about careers in science and engineering.

To learn about the kinds of things they might do as an engineer, rising kindergarteners, first-, and second-graders experimented with basic coding, instructing the computer to display text and to perform arithmetic equations. They also learned about cybersecurity, including geo-tagging of cell phone photos.  A second visit, to rising third-through-fifth graders, focused on basic coding, cybersecurity and general online safety practices—including knowing what information is included in those posted selfies.

Summer camps organized by Virginia Tech’s Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) introduce middle- and high-school students to engineering; this summer, as in years past, Hume Center scientists lent their expertise to the program. Zach Leffke, a research associate at the Hume Center, taught middle-school students in CEED’s Imagination camps and high-school girls in the CTECH2 program about how versatile radio communications are—including how software-defined radio can be used to listen in on land-based radios as well as satellite communications.

Hume Center faculty Dr. Joey Ernst and Dr. Chris Headley, along with graduate students Deirdre Beggs, Kayla Straub, and Seth Hitefeld, led demonstrations on topics including satellite communications, software-defined radio, and wireless security. These outreach programs gave students a taste of the cutting-edge technology that’s used in national security—and Virginia Tech research that they could, one day, be involved in themselves.

The Hume Center is organized under Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

Impressive photography

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landscape gove

We at @VTResearch are continually impressed by the panoramic “slider” photos on the Virginia governor’s website.

This hit home when browsing through the site news and coming across a fantastic shot from the Let’s Fly Wisely event, where Virginia Tech oversaw some important unmanned aircraft research flights. Virginia Tech President Timothy D. Sands was in the midst of what amounts to a gigantic media flash mob at the normally sedate Lonesome Pine airport. Scroll through and you can see it.

This is the best image yet to capture the scene. We can’t really do it justice here with our screen grab.

Most of us who have to freshen Web pages know that art can be a big challenge. But the state site makes it look easy.

How @GovernorVA are you nailing these shots?

Why engineers need biology

By in Agriculture and LIfe Sciences, Animals, biological models, Engineering, Feature, Research 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

Bats can sip water while they're flying. Understanding that feat could help design flying machines that can draw up water on the go--for firefighting, for example. Image source: Wikimedia commons.
Bats can sip water while they’re flying. Understanding that feat could help design flying machines that can draw up water on the go — for firefighting, for example. Image source: Wikimedia commons.

More and more, engineers are looking to biological systems for inspiration. Can we make a more efficient flying machine by studying a bat wing? Can we make a quieter wind turbine by looking at owl feathers? Could schools of fish inspire “smart” traffic control?

Virginia Tech has a new center specifically dedicated to this type of research: the Center for Bioinspired Science and Technology (BIST). The center is directed by Rolf Mueller, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering whose research plumbs the complexities of bat biosonar. Other researchers find inspiration in the adaptations developed by birds, fish, and insects to live efficiently in their environments.

What makes biological systems so useful as models for engineered ones?

Evolution, Mueller said.

“Evolution is in a class by itself, but it has a lot of similarities to engineering optimization,” Mueller explained. Both processes have a goal — like to walk efficiently on uneven terrain, or move air from one place to another — that they approach gradually through trial and error. Prototypes are produced and tested. Unsuccessful models are discarded; successful ones are refined further.

“The amazing thing with biology is the enormous timescale. You have a lot of prototypes, and each prototype is evaluated in the real world,” Mueller said. Engineers, though, are more constrained: they typically have to choose between building a few prototypes to test in real conditions, or setting up a computer model to test a lot of prototypes in simulated conditions.

Evolution, though, has had billions of years to run its optimization, testing huge numbers of prototypes in real conditions.

The results of that tremendous optimization protocol have been meticulously recorded in the organisms themselves.

Those biological systems are a living record of the of the processes that yielded their finely-tuned adaptations; they can point engineers towards strategies that have already been field-tested. All that data, Mueller explains, “is a natural resource that we should mine more.”

The BIST center is partially supported by the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

Read more on the BIST center from VT News.

Combining two passions leads to great discoveries

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Nanoparticles

Lissett Bickford had been interested in cancer research ever since she was a teenager, when her brother’s best friend was diagnosed with leukemia. But when she got to college and decided to become an engineer, she assumed she’d have to abandon the idea of studying cancer.

Graduate school made her realize otherwise. Bickford, now an assistant professor in both the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, earned her doctorate at Rice University, where she worked with clinicians at M.D. Anderson to optimize gold nanoparticles for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.

When she arrived at the University of North Carolina for a postdoc, she started working on a project designed to treat pancreatic cancer by delivering chemotherapy directly to typically difficult-to-treat tumors. The technique used a small device that, by generating an electric field, propelled chemotherapy drugs into targeted areas. The device could be implanted adjacent to a tumor or placed over the skin, delivering the drug exactly, and only, where it was needed.

Bickford, recalling her graduate research experiences, had an idea.

“I thought a local delivery strategy would be compelling for inflammatory breast cancer,” Bickford explained. Inflammatory breast cancer has a dismal prognosis and is hard to treat surgically, because the cancer cells invade the surrounding tissue, including the skin. A device placed directly on the skin could target those malignant cells directly.

At Bickford’s suggestion, the team added inflammatory breast cancer to its research platform in two studies. The first used nanoparticle fabrication technology developed by her principal investigator, Joe DeSimone, to create dissolvable microneedle patches for transdermal drug delivery. Those promising results were published about a year ago in Advanced Materials.

Results from the second study, published this week in Science Translational Medicine, were also encouraging: in mice with human inflammatory breast cancer, adding local drug delivery to IV delivery shrank tumors and extended survival time. And it didn’t substantially increase chemotherapy concentration in the blood plasma – a critical point, since chemotherapy’s side effects can force patients to postpone treatment or keep doctors from prescribing especially potent drugs.

Read more from Virginia Tech News.

Bickford was involved in everything from painstakingly fabricating individual devices by hand to shadowing clinicians who were collaborating on the project—“a truly multidisciplinary effort,” she said.

Today, as the head of the Medical Devices and Drug Delivery Lab at the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, Bickford continues to use her engineering skills and passion for translational research to make sure that her work focuses on the most promising cancer treatments. “My brother’s friend who had leukemia ended up with significant heart damage as a result of his treatment,” Bickford said. “My goal is to do whatever I can to help cancer patients by reducing or eliminating the toxic effects of existing treatments.”

By Eleanor Nelsen, communications manager, Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science

Molly, Thor … Thor, Molly

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Molly Greenberg, education writer extraordinaire for InTheCapital, got “Cubed,” met Thor, and heard the story behind the DREAM vendor.

After taking in the Virginia Tech-Miami game Thursday night, @mollygreenberg relived on Friday the indescribable audio bombardment of Lane Stadium during the “Enter Sandman” bounce.

But this time, she experienced it in the Cube, the combination of a four-story black box theater and high tech laboratory shared by the Center for the Arts and the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology.

Media engineer Tanner Upthegrove said the sound was previously recorded with multiple mics from the sidelines, giving the listener an auditory taste of what it is like to actually be on the field when the Hokies make their entrance. Being in the stands or seeing it on TV is plenty intense — this is amazing.

Next stop was Goodwin Hall, the research center formerly known as the Signature Engineering Building.

It was opportune timing with hundreds of researchers and students explaining their work for the official building dedication.

There stood Thor, in full operational glory.

In many ways, Thor is an answer to emergency such as the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster that befell Japan following a massive earthquake in March 2011. It is designed to do the dirty and dangerous jobs that would be fatal to human emergency responders.

Virginia Tech is at the forefront of this work, in the same breath as Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, and MIT.

Later, as we moved through the building, Chris Williams, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, told us the origin story of the “DreamVendor,” a 3-D printing station pretty that operates pretty much like a snack machine. But instead of inserting money, dabblers or practitioners in the world of 3-D printing insert designs that they preloaded on an SD card.

Let the 3-D manufacturing begin.

The ID behind creating the machine was to bring 3-D printing to the masses. Williams said they wanted to find a way for the hundreds of students who enter mechanical engineering and related fields to jump right into the process, without having to get proof of principle or permission from a professor.

Mission accomplished. A DreamVendor stands at the entrance of Goodwin Hall as convenient as a soda machine.

But not nearly as loud as a Thursday night game at Lane Stadium.

A picture is worth a thousand words…

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The human mind can only hold so much information at a given time. 

Most of us have played the memory game where the host brings out a tray of assorted knick-knacks and gives us a few moments to stare at it before it is whisked away and we are asked to recall as many items as we can.

Generally speaking, this number falls within the “seven plus or minus two” range. One of the most highly cited papers in psychology, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information,” speaks to this phenomenon.

Recent advances in Big Data have great promise for solving some of society’s most challenging problems, but how does the human mind handle staring at over a thousand different data points?

Big Data Analytics methods typically require the expertise of a highly skilled analyst. The “human in the loop” method of analysis allows the user to change the outcome of an event or process by modeling different scenarios. Analysts sort through large, complex collections of data sets by employing different models and running simulations. However, most researchers do not possess this level of analytics expertise, and although companies are investing large sums of money to gain insight from the surplus of publically streaming information, they often do not have employees on staff who are able to make much sense of it.

A recent grant award from the National Science Foundation aims to change all of that. Chris North, a professor of computer science and associate director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science’s Discovery Analytics Center and his well-seasoned team of researchers have won a $1 million grant award to make Big Data Analytics more user-friendly.

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The team is using a spatial metaphor system, known as Andromeda, to bring large data clouds down to manageable working sets.

In this system, similar objects are placed in closer proximity. When the user changes the layout of the items, the system updates and learns which data features make those items similar. When people re-organize the data, the data responds and the user is able to learn what features are responsible for that change.

Think back to the aforementioned memory game. Imagine how many more items you could remember if you were able to manipulate the tray and group like objects together to create patterns of similarity. Andromeda allows users to visually interact with the data and glean more meaning from the data points. And using it doesn’t require a Ph.D.

North is excited about the fact that people can apply their own knowledge on the subject area and recognize interesting, new patterns when they arise. The visualization is then tailored to how a person thinks about the data, and the tasks of organization and discovery can occur simultaneously.

By making Big Data a “meaningful picture that users can manipulate,” North and his team are bringing Big Data Analytics to the masses.

 

Written by Emily Kathleen Alberts

Join us for the 2nd Annual ICTAS Program Review

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Today kicks off the 2nd Annual Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) Program Review.

Join us at the Holtzman Assembly Hall near the Inn with opening remarks by Director Roop Mahajan, followed by Presidential remarks by Timothy D. Sands.

Highly diverse research topics including nanoscale science and engineering, the nano-bio interface, sustainable energy, renewable materials, sustainable water, cognitive systems, and national security are being explored in this two-day event (October 2nd-3rd).

Come find out about our latest research endeavors and hear how we are addressing society’s most challenging needs by transcending traditional academic boundaries.

ICTAS is a premier institute with a mission to advance transformative, interdisciplinary research for a sustainable future.

We hope to see you there!

Feels good to finally say Nicole Abaid is one of Popular Science’s superstars

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PopScience

One of life’s great temptations is when you know something exciting has happened, but you can’t talk about it.

Sweet relief came this week when Popular Science named its 2014 Brilliant Ten, an elite group containing none other than Nicole Abaid, an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics in the College of Engineering.

Abaid looks at how bats communicate so they don’t crash into each other as they exit a cave, for example. Radar can jam in planes, but echolocation gives bats unequaled precision, and the bats may even be sharing signals. From that biological system, Abaid will figure out how to build sensors to improve communication among robots and unmanned aircraft, commonly called drones.

Popular Science’s executive editor Jennifer Bogo said today on Morning Joe that the magazine selected candidates who are making groundbreaking changes in their careers already, and who are poised to go on to change the world in substantial ways to make it a better, smarter, safer place. If you watch, Bogo drills down on Abaid’s work at about the 3:30 time stamp.

Careful readers of the Virginia Tech Research blog @VTresearch may have noticed a hint that something cool was about to happen nestled in a routine announcement (a hint vector, if you will) and people should pay attention to Virginia Tech News today.

This time, we’ll be more direct: Look for more about bats in the fall-winter edition of Virginia Tech Research, the university’s namesake research magazine. It’ll be batty.

One last thing. This is two year’s running for Virginia Tech in the Brilliant 10. Last year, David Schmale, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was in the list. And he works with drones, too. Do we see a pattern here?

A Horse of a Not So Different Color

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Latvia

Back from his Fulbright travels to Latvia, Daniel Youngstrom’s cells have been enriched.

ICTAS Doctoral Scholar Daniel Youngstrom, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical and veterinary sciences at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, attests that although the culture is very different in Latvia, “once you step foot in the lab, things are surprisingly the same.”  It was through this common language of science – paired with the fact that he has familial roots in Latvia and is familiar with the native tongue – that Youngstrom’s research on human stem cells was able to flourish at the Cell Transplantation Center in Riga.

001_horse_skeleSpeaking of flourish, that is exactly what the stem cells that Youngstrom studied happened to do. One focus of regenerative medicine is to transplant adult stem cells into the site of a degenerative injury to improve tissue healing.  Although he studies horse stem cells at the Virginia Tech Equine Medical Center, the human cells he characterized in Latvia can be manipulated in similar ways.  By taking tissue samples from human total hip replacement surgeries, he was able to study adult stem cell behavior and potentially improve cell therapies currently used to regenerate diseased cartilage in osteoarthritis. One facet of this research is the interaction between cells and their surrounding proteins.  “Cells produce a complex extracellular matrix, and use it to send and receive information about its environment,” said Youngstrom.  “This information is critical in maintaining proper cell behavior.” Using cell culture techniques incorporating a biomimetic three-dimensional environment, researchers can improve in vitro cell growth and preserve therapeutic properties versus traditional techniques.

The major theme of Youngstrom’s work is how stem cells sense their environment, and how to use this information to improve emerging regenerative therapies.  Obtaining a sufficient quantity of stem cells for cell therapy is difficult because of the relative rarity of stem cells in adults.  Cells are often grown in a laboratory to generate sufficient numbers, but traditional cell culture plates may alter cell phenotype and behavior. In order to reproduce a native-like 3D environment, Youngstrom used a special hydrogel system.  This work will help researchers deliver the next generation of therapies.

Youngstrom has integrated his experience in Latvia back to his research in Leesburg.  He notes that there are similarities in the Leesburg and Riga laboratories because they are both academic labs that offer clinical services.

Upon graduation, he hopes to continue his academic research career in musculoskeletal biology and regenerative medicine.

 

Did you know?

Forests account for 56% of the total land area in Latvia

Latvia has over 12,500 rivers, and is only half the size of Virginia!

An International Environmental Performance Index ranked Latvia 1st out of 132 countries

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