Researchers in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station’s (TEES) Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT) have received a third year of funding to continue work on military helicopter rotor blade erosion technology.

Blade erosion in military helicopters continues to be an area of concern, particularly in severe environments of sand and rain. The current approach to assuring safe performance relies upon frequent inspection, repair and replacement of protection films without robust and reliable procedures. The consequence is high cost. New erosion-resistant coatings are being developed but there are no physics-based models available to guide their development.

A research program is under way at Texas A&M to systematically address the erosion problem. This program, now in its third year, is focused on polyurethane films that are mounted on the leading edge of blades to provide protection from erosion caused by sand particles.

Principle investigators for the program are TCAT’s Dr. John Ayala and Dr. Ramesh Talreja, Dr. Amine Benzerga, Dr. Zoubeida Ounaies and Dr. Tamas Kalmar-Nagy with Texas A&M’s aerospace engineering department.

For more information, contact Dr. John Ayala at john-ayala@tamu.edu or (210) 633-2427, x224.

TEES (Texas Engineering Experiment Station) is the engineering research agency of the State of Texas and a member of The Texas A&M University System.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Texas A&M University’s Real Time Distributed Systems Lab has deployed the Bivio Networks 7500 DPI networking platform to support leading-edge network defense research.

Established by Dr. Steven Liu in 1989, the Real Time Distributed Systems Lab in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering focuses on developing and deploying an advanced computing framework that enables next-generation network defense and protection solutions, such as an early alert system for large-scale network threats.

“We conduct high-risk, high-return research at the Real Time Distributed Systems Lab that will result in greatly improved security for large-scale networks,” Liu said. “We considered several network appliance vendors and opted for the solution that provided one of the most appropriate and flexible computing and networking architectures for us to implement our advanced algorithms for enterprise network security management.”

Prior to deploying a Bivio Networks DPI-enabled platform, Liu and his team struggled with the limitations of their legacy system, which impeded the use of ever more sophisticated algorithms used to identify and track unknown and new patterns in network traffic. The Bivio platform allows the lab to overcome this impediment and provides an architecture with multidimensional networking and computational scaling capabilities to analyze extremely large amounts of diverse network traffic at line rates.

Bivio Networks is the leader in networking systems for deep packet inspection (DPI)-enabled applications and services essential for network security, visibility, control and monetization.

“Bivio Networks is pleased to partner with Texas A&M and the Real Time Distributed Systems Lab as its research team identifies innovative, holistic approaches to today’s most pressing challenges in systems design and modeling as well as bio-medical measurement and characterization,” said Dr. Elan Amir, president and CEO of Bivio Networks. “The selection of the Bivio 7500 demonstrates that our DPI-enabled networking platforms are well-suited to operate in the most demanding research environments.”

Contact:
Tim Waters
Bivio Networks
925/924-8640
twaters@bivio.net

Popularity: unranked [?]

Dr. Prasad Enjeti, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, and two Texas A&M University at Qatar faculty members are part of a team of investigators leading a $4 million National Science Foundation project to design new materials with enhanced capabilities for efficient energy conversion.

Enjeti, who is also associate dean at Texas A&M at Qatar, along with mechanical engineering professors Richard Griffin and Annie Ruimi, will collaborate with researchers from Texas A&M, Georgia Tech and the University of Houston for the development of the International Institute for Multifunctional Materials for Energy Conversion (IIMEC). The mission of the IIMEC is to create an active network of materials researchers between the U.S. and countries of the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean.

Using state-of-the-art laboratories, computational facilities and cyber infrastructure, the IIMEC will research multifunctional materials that exhibit strong coupling among different fields. The three overarching themes of the IIMEC are thermal/magnetic and mechanical coupling (smart materials and shape memory alloys); electrical and mechanical coupling (electroactive polymers, ceramics, hybrids); and optical/thermal and electrical coupling (photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, fuel cells).

Enjeti, who holds the TI Professorship in Engineering, joined the Texas A&M electrical engineering faculty in 1988. He is the lead developer of the Fuel Cell Power Systems Laboratory and Power Electronics and Power Quality Laboratory at Texas A&M, and does consulting work in the area of power electronics, power quality and clean power utility interface issues. Enjeti’s research focuses on power electronics and power quality; advancing switching power supply designs and solutions to complex power management issues in the context of analog mixed-signal applications; exploring alternative designs to meet the demands of high slew rate load currents at low output voltages; power conditioning systems for fuel cells, wind and solar energy systems; and design of high temperature power conversion systems with wide bandgap semiconductor devices.

Enjeti holds four United States patents, has licensed two new technologies in the industry, and has written six book chapters and more than 100 journal and conference papers. Enjeti was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2000 and received a Ford Motor Co. Fellow award in 2001.

Enjeti also received a TEES (Texas Engineering Experiment Station) Select Young Fellow Award in 1992 for research contributions and a Texas A&M University Faculty Fellow Award in 2001. He received a university-level Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching from the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M University in 2004.

A registered professional engineer in Texas, Enjeti received his bachelor’s degree from Osmania University (India), his master’s from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Kanpur) and his doctorate from Concordia University (Canada), all in electrical engineering.

Written by Deana Totzke, deana@ece.tamu.edu

Popularity: unranked [?]

Dr. Raffaella Righetti

Dr. Raffaella Righetti, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, and her student Biren Parmar received a second-place poster award at the National Meeting for Human Performance 2009 in Houston.

Participants at the meeting come from many different universities, including Texas A&M, Rice University, the University of Houston and University of Miami, and the top four posters are awarded each year.

Righetti’s team poster, “New Ultrasound Imaging Techniques To Visualize Bone Fractures,” detailed their study aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of using novel ultrasound techniques as alternative imaging modalities to standard X-ray imaging methods for bone imaging applications.

Righetti joined the electrical engineering department at Texas A&M in 2007 as an assistant professor. She received her Doctor of Engineering from the Universitá degli Studi di Firenze (Italy) and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Houston.

Righetti’s formal training is in ultrasound imaging with special emphasis in cancer imaging applications. She has published articles in leading journals in the area of ultrasound and elasticity imaging, and serves as a reviewer of several major journals in the field of biomedical imaging.

Written by Deana Totzke, deana@ece.tamu.edu

Popularity: unranked [?]

Flying robot fairies are joining human actors in Texas A&M University’s production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which runs through Sunday (Nov. 15) in the Rudder Forum.

A pizza-sized AirRobot helicopter used for military operations in Iraq, and six toy radio controlled helicopters slightly bigger than a fist, are part of the high-tech production directed by Amy Hopper, from Texas A&M’s Department of Performance Studies.

Besides being a fun way to introduce science to the general public, researchers from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are using the experience to learn more about how the actors and the audience react to the flying devices.

“Imagine a disaster with people unsure of where to go or how to handle a riot,” says computer science and engineering professor Robin Murphy, who is an expert in rescue robotics. “It’s now possible for these unmanned aerial vehicles to be used for evacuation or for crowd control. But what’s missing is understanding what makes a person trust or fear the robot.”

Over the month of rehearsals and during the first four performances last weekend, Murphy and her colleagues, Dylan Shell and Takis Zourntos, have documented several surprises. One was that people thought the robots were smarter and tougher than they really were. Invariably, people would initially handle the robots roughly and launch them from a variety of positions, leading to damage and crashes. The actors also showed little fear of the robots, even the larger one.

“This means people might ignore a robot’s instructions or worse walk into rotor blades on a large robot and get hurt,” Murphy says. “The robots by themselves apparently aren’t scary, so we need additional research to make them move like friendly hummingbirds or angry bees to get the desired effect.”

The roboticists quickly coached the actors and made sure anyone interacting with a robot understood the limitations, leading to another surprise: If a small robot crashed into the audience that had not been instructed on how to handle the robot, the audience members would mimic how the actors treated the robots. They learned how to react to robots by watching others.

The performers are enthusiastic about the robots.

“The idea of flying robot fairies was one I had early on, as soon as I heard about the possibility of a collaboration with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering,” Hopper says. “What’s great is that they have been a part of the production from the beginning and the robots seem more and more like characters that have always been a part of the story. To see them flying, spinning and bouncing through the air just adds to the magic and mystery of the world Shakespeare created.”

This is first known production of any Shakespeare play with mobile robots. A 2008 production of Cymbeline by the Quantum Theater and Carnegie Mellon used robotic technology but not robots.

Performances on Friday and Saturday are scheduled for 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. performance on Sunday. A robot “petting zoo” is scheduled following the Sunday performance.

For more information contact Dr. Robin Murphy by phone 979-845-2015, or via e-mail at murphy@cse.tamu.edu.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Dr. Mahmoud El-Halwagi

Mahmoud El-Halwagi, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named recipient of the 2009 Research Excellence in Sustainable Engineering Award.

The prestigious award is presented by the Sustainable Engineering Forum (SEF) of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and recognizes basic or applied research results relative to the sustainability of products, processes or the environment. It is annually bestowed upon a researcher who has made significant technical contributions to the advancement of sustainable engineering in research, teaching and development activities.

Holder of the McFerrin Professorship, El-Halwagi is internationally known for his pioneering contributions in the fields of sustainable design and process integration, and he has written two widely used texts on the subject. At Texas A&M, he teaches senior-level undergraduate and graduate classes, covering the areas of sustainability, process design, simulation, economics, integration and optimization.

The SEF seeks collaborative work in programming and education objectives with other professional societies, both national and foreign. Specific focus areas of the forum include using appropriate metrics for sustainability; developing approaches for designing products and processes that can be optimized to desired metrics criteria and that incorporate environmental and societal benefit factors; and assessing impacts of resource use on environmental and social benefits of products, processes and services.

Other focus areas include designing new processes or products that are comparatively benign; responding to socioeconomic measures such as emission trading; and developing educational materials related to the field.

El-Halwagi will receive the award at an awards ceremony taking place during the 2009 AIChE Annual Meeting in Nashville.

Written by Ryan Garcia, ryan.garcia99@tamu.edu

Popularity: unranked [?]

Dr. Arul Jayaraman

Understanding how certain pathogenic bacteria strains such as E. coli cause infection in people begins with unraveling the complex “talk” between the trillions of cells living in the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract, says Arul Jayaraman, a Texas A&M University researcher who has developed an artificial system that mimics the unique bacteria-laden environment of the human GI tract.

The system is detailed this month in Lab on a Chip, a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences.

It represents a significant step in understanding bacterial interactions in the GI tract because it accurately simulates conditions within that area by enabling human epithelial cells to grow in balance with the naturally occurring bacteria (termed “commensal”) that reside in the GI tract.

Traditionally, growing both types of these cells simultaneously in a laboratory environment has been difficult because bacteria reproduce at a much faster rate than epithelial cells and tend to monopolize the nutrients needed by the epithelial cells, says Jayaraman, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University.

“If you try to achieve this in a cell-culture dish what happens is that you have a very nutrient-rich environment that bacteria basically thrive in, dividing rapidly,” Jayaraman says. “You can start with the same number of cells, relatively in proportion, but the bacteria will keep dividing, taking up all of the nutrients. Epithelial cells then do not get what they need. They are typically more finicky than bacterial cells. The numbers then kick in, and it is an exponential process where you will soon have millions of bacteria outnumbering epithelial cells, which will soon die.”

That doesn’t happen in Jayaraman’s model, which grows the epithelial and commensal cell colonies separately before allowing them to interact as they would in the gut. Once the two types of cells are interacting in the right balance, Jayaraman can recreate the sequence of events in a GI tract infection by introducing a foreign pathogen — in this case, enterohemorrhagic E. coli — to the cells within his model.

Previous studies have just added pathogenic bacteria into colonies of endothelial cells, but this approach does not replicate the cellular interactions and chemical signals present in the human GI tract, says Jayaraman, who holds the Ray Nesbitt Professorship at Texas A&M.

“If you really want to understand how the commensal bacteria that are in the GI tract either prevent or enhance infection, you need to have a way in which you can actually recreate the system with both components present – the commensal cells and the epithelial cells,” Jayaraman says. “To our knowledge, this is the first report describing co-culture of bacteria and epithelial cells and its application to investigate pathogen colonization and infection.”

Commensal bacteria, he explains, produce a wide range of bacterial signals, and the concentration of these signals in the GI tract is extremely high.

These signals, he adds, are given off during normal metabolic processes of the cells. While there is no evidence to suggest that they were created specifically for defensive purposes, some of these signals have evolved to act as a line of defense. Others may actually enhance a pathogen’s infectious potential, he says. For the invading pathogen, it’s a matter of “talking” to the right cells and avoiding the “wrong” ones.

It’s a game of “push and pull” that is further complicated by the fact that the strength of these signal levels varies, Jayaraman says. For example, a person may be under a lot of stress, which can cause stress hormones to be high and might in turn diminish the signals that aid in defense against a pathogen. Other times, a gastric disease might kill some of these cells that are emitting a protective signal, lowering the overall strength of the signal and making a person more susceptible to serious infection, Jayaraman notes.

So far, Jayaraman’s model has yielded some interesting findings, shedding light on the constant array of signals being emitted within the GI tract and their effects on invading pathogens. One of those findings reveals how indole, a chemical produced by commensal cells within the GI tract, acts a signal to foreign pathogens.

“Indole already has been shown as an important signal for communication between bacteria,” Jayaraman says. “We are looking at how pathogens might also be affected by indole, and we are seeing that they are indeed affected.”

Specifically, if a pathogen passes through bacteria that produce indole, the pathogen will become less infectious, Jayaraman explains. Conversely, if it passes through bacteria where there is no indole, the pathogen retains it same degree of virulence.

“In a sense, the pathogen is looking for weak points in a ‘wall’ of defense,” Jayaraman says. “We believe this can be applied to several other signals. There might be signals that increase a pathogen’s infectiousness. Does it choose a location in the wall where it can pass through without decreasing its infectious potential, or does it look for a place where its infectiousness is enhanced?”

Contact: Arul Jayaraman, (979) 845-3306, arulj@tamu.edu

Written by Ryan A. Garcia, (979) 845-9237, ryan.garcia99@tamu.edu

Popularity: unranked [?]

A probe developed by members of the Department of Aerospace Engineering’s Aero-Fluids Group, in collaboration with Aeroprobe Corp., was installed in the tip of NASA’s ARES I-X test rocket.

In photos available at http://friendfeed.com/spaceastro/1b5b5a02/ares-i-x-cord-is-loose-from-5-hole-probe-launch-now, the left top picture shows the probe at the tip of the rocket.

NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket lifted off Oct. 28, at 11:30 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute–powered flight. The flight test lasted about six minutes from its launch from the newly modified Launch Complex 39B until splashdown of the rocket’s booster stage nearly 150 miles downrange.

Courtesy of http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/ares/flighttests/aresIx/index.html

Popularity: unranked [?]

Dr. Shankar Bhattacharyya, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, will visit the City University of Hong Kong in December to deliver three lectures, “Advances in Three Term Control” in the City University’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

Dr. Shankar Bhattacharyya

The lectures cover results obtained by him and his coworkers in the field of control engineering. In October 2009 Bhattacharyya will also visit Stanford University, Santa Clara University and the University of California, Berkeley, to give lectures on the same topic. During this visit Bhattacharyya, who is also a concert artist, will give two concerts of Indian Classical Music on the Sarode in Berkeley and Stanford respectively.

Bhattacharyya, the Robert M. Kennedy Professor, joined the Texas A&M electrical and computer engineering faculty in 1980. Prior to this he was professor and head of the electrical engineering department at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His honors include being chosen as a NASA Research Fellow in 1974 and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1989. Bhattacharyya won a Fulbright Lecturing Award in 1989, was chosen as a TEES Fellow in 1989 and TEES Senior Fellow in 2000, a Halliburton Professor in 1991 and won a Boeing “A.D. Welliver” Faculty Fellowship from Boeing Corporation in 1998. He has given invited lectures and short courses in the United States, Italy, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Germany, India and Mexico.

Bhattacharyya’s research focus is control theory, a field in which he has solved several fundamental synthesis and design problems, published six books and more than 200 papers. His current research is directed at developing new approaches for Computer Aided Control System Design (CACSD) for multivariable systems that will enable advanced control theory to be applied to real world systems.

http://www.ece.tamu.edu/NewsAndEvents/Newsletter/Vol11No1/news_bhattacharyya.html

Written by Deana Totzke, deana@ece.tamu.edu

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the research agency of Texas A&M Engineering, and Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop a world-class partnership for research in wind energy.

Dr. Theresa Maldonado, associate dean for strategic initiatives and director of the Energy Engineering Institute, shakes hands with Wally Lafferty, vice president and managing director, Vestas Technology R&D Americas following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding.

The announcement of the MOU was made during a ceremony Friday (Oct. 9) when members of Vestas’ leadership visited Texas A&M and the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

The MOU is the latest step in expanding the engineering program’s capabilities in wind energy research and development, which will help propel Texas toward energy independence. For the past two years, Texas has been the top wind producer in the United States, with more than 3,953 wind-generated megawatts installed. Texas is also the first state to achieve the milestone of one gigawatt of wind installation in a single year (2007).

“Today we are sealing a world-class partnership for research in wind energy using the Vestas and TEES Partnership Collaboration Plan as our framework,” said Dr. Theresa Maldonado, associate dean for strategic initiatives and director of the Energy Engineering Institute. “As we all know, Texas will experience rapid growth in wind power over the next five years, and we are positioned to support that growth.”

TEES and Vestas previously entered into a multiyear master research agreement in June 2008 to collaborate to develop advanced wind energy technologies.

Vestas chose Texas A&M’s System Engineering Program as one of its major university partners for its new R&D center in the United States, while they selected Houston as their U.S.-based R&D headquarters.

Under the new agreement, TEES will provide academic excellence to Vestas research programs in the wind engineering field as well as make a commitment to provide academic programs that will develop Texas A&M University undergraduates and graduates into wind turbine specialists.

Vestas, meanwhile, will sponsor a director for the Wind Center of Excellence for a minimum of three years, execute internal research projects with Texas A&M staff and facilities and contribute associated funds as applicable, provide steering and technical expertise toward the development of the Wind Center of Excellence and associated curriculum and academic programs, and support TEES in bidding for external funding opportunities.

“We are committed to supporting Vestas through the objectives that are outlined in this agreement,” said Maldonado. “We are excited about the new Wind Center of Excellence. We will work aggressively to recruit an excellent director and we are also committed to working with Vestas’ technical staff to develop a new wind energy academic program.”

Written by Tim Schnettler

Popularity: unranked [?]