Presentations inspire students to follow STEM careers

3D Virtual Reality
3D Virtual Reality

On April 12th, the ISU Magnetics Research Group (MRG) collaborated with the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) to give a series of presentations designed to inspire grade school students to follow a path into the STEM fields. The outreach program was funded by a grant from the American Physical Society (APS). The event hosted 52 students from Boone Middle School at Howe Hall Auditorium.

Human-Human Interface
Human-Human Interface

 

The presentations included 3D visualization methods using virtual reality with a virtual 3D tour of the VRAC, magnetic fields and how they are used for treating neurological diseases through Transcranial magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and a live demonstration of the Human-Human Interface that shows how electrical signals from one person’s arm can be used to trigger muscle movement in another person’s arm. The MRG plans on continuing the outreach program next year.

Joe Boldrey, a research graduate assistant, thought the presentations were not only valuable to the students, but to the field as a whole.

“The program gave me an opportunity to show that the academic rigors of engineering are not an end unto themselves,” Boldrey said. “There is a human connection between the math, physics and computers with real-world applications that help people live better, longer and happier lives. I believe it is important to show younger students that connection in the hopes that it will give purpose and motivation at difficult times during undergraduate engineering coursework.”

Overall, there was a positive response from the young students who participated in the presentations. One student said, “It was an interesting trip and I would love to learn more about virtual reality.” Another said, “I think it would be a cool job [engineer] to have, especially because I know more about it.”


PI: Dr. Ravi L. Hadimani, Adj. Asst. Prof., ECpE

Co-PI: Dr. David C. Jiles, Chair, ECpE

Co-PI: Dr. Vijay Kalivarapu, Staff Scientist, VRAC

Co-PI: Dr. Eliot H. Winer, Associate Director, VRAC

Ph.D. student receives IBM Fellowship award

ECpE PhD student, Neelam Prabhu Gaunkar recently received the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship award in the fundamental science and technology category.

The IBM Fellowship award is an internationally competitive award given to excellent Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in various areas of study. Candidates can vary from computer science, physical sciences, mathematics, public sector and business services, service science and more.

Prabhu Gaunkar’s research investigates the applicability of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) by improving and building novel sensor systems that will acquire reliable datasets non-invasively. What makes her work different is perhaps the fact that unlike conventional NMR systems, she wants to use a single-sided NMR system for imaging purposes. The single-sided system has a limited field of vision but is very portable. Thus, the main challenge lies in improving acquired image resolution and for this Prabhu Gaunkar plans to combine signals from an array of transmit/receive coils and control the magnetic field gradients.

In order to receive the IBM Fellowship award, candidates must be nominated by both the department chair and their advisor. In Prabhu Gaunkar’s case, that person was Dr. Jiles.

“I am delighted to hear that Neelam has been awarded an IBM Fellowship,” said Jiles. “The IBM Fellowships are prestigious and highly sought-after. Winning this fellowship is testimony to the achievements that she has already made in both research and education.”

Prabhu Gaunkar’s work will still be a proof on concept, but she hopes to continue her research in order to adapt a single-sided NMR circuit to acquire rapid, noise free images from organic tissues.  This would greatly contribute to diagnostic capabilities in medical application in the future.

“It’s very prestigious, I’m very surprised,” Prabhu Gaunkar said. “I’m excited and encouraged that people value my work and know it’s important.”

VEISHEA project could be first answering machine

Mitchell currently holds 40 patents with another 12 pending.
Mitchell currently holds 40 patents with another 12 pending.

ECpE alum, James Mitchell (EE ‘82), may have created the world’s first digital outgoing telephone message machine during his time at Iowa State University.

Mitchell displayed a working prototype of the digital outgoing message with a taped incoming system at the Iowa State University VEISHEA Engineering Open House in April 1982. Using 35 integrated circuits (16 memory chips) and the digital and analog experience from his courses, Mitchell created his project in just three weeks.

“I saw the open house as an opportunity,” Mitchell said. “I wanted to do something as profound as I could possibly do.”  He added that he had to develop his own a Analog to Digital converter and encoding process, as these were not readily available commodities during that time.

Mitchell displayed a working prototype of the digital outgoing message with a taped incoming system at the Iowa State University VEISHA Engineering Open House in April 1982.
Mitchell displayed a working prototype of the digital outgoing message with a taped incoming system at the Iowa State University VEISHA Engineering Open House in April 1982.

The project won a Gold award, the highest of the three levels, from David T. Stephenson faculty advisor and J.O. Kopplin the department chair of the time.

In Mitchell’s award letter, Stephenson and Kopplin state that his phone-answering system was “a particularly interesting exhibit for the many visitors who have some knowledge of digital techniques and who have ever found themselves ‘talking to a machine.’”

Mitchell credits the VEISHEA Open House with helping him receive his position at Rockwell Collins after graduation. He was offered the job after his VEISHEA demonstration and continued to stay with Rockwell Collins for the next 33 years until retiring last December.

Although Kazou Hashimoto holds the patent for a digital answering machine, he did not invent the machine until 1983, a year after Mitchell’s presentation of his digital answering machine.

Mitchell may also hold the title for the first created LED television display in 1977. His monochromatic model was displayed at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) expo in Anaheim Ca. 1978 and won awards from NASA, General Motors Corporation and Westinghouse.

Currently, Mitchell holds 40 patents with another 12 pending, the majority related to aircraft and satellite communication. He lives in Cedar Rapids with his wife.    

Former department chair wins award

S.S. (Mani) Venkata, a former ECpE Department Chair at Iowa State University, was awarded the prestigious Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award at the 2016 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA)  Annual Conference and ECExpo in La Jolla, California this past March.
S.S. (Mani) Venkata, a former ECpE Department Chair at Iowa State University, was awarded the prestigious Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award at the 2016 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Annual Conference and ECExpo in La Jolla, California this past March.

S.S. (Mani) Venkata, a former ECpE Department Chair at Iowa State University, was awarded the prestigious Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award at the 2016 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA)  Annual Conference and ECExpo in La Jolla, California this past March.

The Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award is given to an individual with a continued record of leadership and service to ECEDHA, and to the field of electrical and computer engineering.

“I am pleased to hear that Mani Venkata, our former department chair, has won the Robert M. Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award,” said Dr. David Jiles, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor and Palmer Endowed Departmental Chair, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “He is an exceptional technical leader who keeps very active in the field of electrical and computer engineering and is well deserving of this prestigious award.”

Mani Venkata has an immense and distinguished past with various institution within the electrical and computer engineering community.  In the past 45 years, he has conducted research, education, design, and development work that have had impacts in scholarly research and industrial practice.

Venkata is an IEEE Fellow and recipient of IEEE’s Third Millennium Medal (2000). He has published and/or presented more than 375 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He also co-authored the book, Introduction to Electric Energy Systems. In 2015, Venkata won the IEEE PES Douglas M. Staszesky Distribution Automation Award for contributions to the design and implementation of smart distribution automation systems.

Dr. Manimaran Govindarasu, ECpE’s Associate Department Chair and Mehl Professor, said he was thrilled to learn of Venkata’s award.

“He was a great mentor for many junior faculty, like me, at Iowa State University and to so many young professionals at the IEEE Power &  Energy Society,” Govindarasu said. “This prestigious ECEDHA award is a well deserving recognition for his decades-long contributions  to the R&D and  workforce needs in the energy sector, and for his contributions, as an academic leader, to the broad electrical and computer engineering community.”

Currently, Venkata is the Principal Scientist and Director of DER R&D at Alstom Grid, Inc. He also was a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, Washington and dean of Clarkson University’s Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering. He remains an Emeritus professor of Iowa State after his time served as ECpE Department Chair from 1996-2003.

Research discovery helps cancer prevention

This type of chip offers 50-100 fold more sensitivity compared with the traditional ELISA for detecting biomarkers for prostate cancer.
This type of chip offers 50-100 fold more sensitivity compared with the traditional ELISA for detecting biomarkers for prostate cancer.

Prostate Cancer (PC) is the second most common cancer and the sixth leading cause of cancer death among men worldwide. The worldwide PC burden is expected to grow to 1.7 million new cases and 499 000 new deaths by 2030. ECpE’s Dr. Long Que and his laboratory have created a chip that may help combat against this prominent illness.

Que’s laboratory recently developed an optofluidic chip-based diagnostic system. This type of chip offers 50-100 fold more sensitivity compared with the traditional ELISA for detecting biomarkers such as prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and neuroendocrine marker (NEM) for prostate cancer (PC).

By testing clinic samples using this type of chip along with the assistance of Que’s collaborator Dr. Girsh Shah, it appears that combined NEM+PSA test can significantly improve reliability of PC detection and significantly reduce the number of diagnostic biopsies.  

This type of chip not only can be made disposable thereby avoiding any possible cross-contamination during the test, but also can offer many advantages such as elimination of the labeled antigen, the need of the sophisticated equipment and the highly trained individuals. These advantages make the technology suitable for point-of-care application to screen elderly male populations for PC and to monitor the progress of patients undergoing PC treatment. As early detection is essential for good PC prognosis and treatment options, this chip will assist in proactive PC prevention.

Que’s biomedical technology has been featured in publications such as World Biomedical Frontiers and Uro Today. For more information, visit the feature on Uro Today.

Best Student Paper Award at Photonics West 2016

SEM image of the PDMS patterns. The nano-cones are formed from the negative of replication of nano-pits on the PC master pattern.
SEM image of the PDMS patterns. The nano-cones are formed from the negative of replication of nano-pits on the PC master pattern.

This year’s Best Student Paper Award in the Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems section of  SPIE Photonics West (BIOS) was presented to Iowa State graduate students and faculty for their presentation, “Transfer molding processes for nanoscale patterning of poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) films.”

This is a collaborative project being performed in ECpE and the Microelectronics Research Center (MRC) by Rabin Dhakal, Akshit Peer, Rana Biswas and Jaeyoun Kim. The team’s presentation was selected out of 48 total oral and poster presentations in the conference held Feb. 13-18 in San Francisco.

The goal of the team’s project is to find novel bio-medical applications of periodically patterned polymeric nano-structures. The group investigated how the surfaces of cardiac stents made of bio-degradable poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) can be engineered to control and slow down the release of certain drugs, such as anti-coagulant, coated on them.  They developed a soft lithographic method for imprinting intricate periodic nano-patterns onto these stents and demonstrated that large area arrays of nano-cones or nano-cups with pitch of ~700 nm could be effectively nano-imprinted onto the bio-degradable polymer films. The team is currently studying the release dynamics of drugs coated on these patterned surfaces of PLLA- an area that has much promise for applications to treatment of cardiac disease.

Faculty members, Biswas and Kim said they were grateful for the opportunity and glad to have been recognized for their work. 
For more information about the SPIE conference and awards, click here.

Optical transmission technique published

ECpE professor, Rana Biswas, and his PhD student were featured in Optics and Photonics News and in Nanoscale last week.
ECpE professor, Rana Biswas, and his PhD student were featured in Optics and Photonics News and in Nanoscale last week.

Research by Rana Biswas, ECpE professor, and Akshit Peer, ECpE PhD student, was featured in Optics and Photonics News and in Nanoscale last week.

Bisa and Peer’s work demonstrates a technique for achieving an optical transmission, with modeled electric-field enhancements as high as a hundredfold, using a continuous film of gold on a corrugated, “nanocupped” substrate. The technique only requires soft-lithography fabrication and can create large-area films.

According to Peer, the ability both to inexpensively create these large-area films and to straightforwardly measure their optical properties makes them a great platform for experiments and applications in plasmonics, sensing, photovoltaics, etc.

To read the full Optics and Photonics News article or for more information, visit this link.

Faculty to be featured in Discover Magazine

Dobson's research on power grids and large blackouts will be featured in the March issue of Discover Magazine.
Dobson’s research on power grids and large blackouts will be featured in the March issue of Discover Magazine.

Sandbulte professor, Ian Dobson, will be featured in Discover Magazine’s lead article for the March 2016 issue. Dobson’s research with physicists, Ben Carreras and David Newman, on the risk of large blackouts is described in detail in Discover’s article, “Averting the Blackout of the Century,” by journalist, Peter Fairley.  

Dobson and his team’s work with large grid power systems is primarily focused on the patterns of widespread blackouts and how these patterns arise. By working with a simulator that can imitate large blackouts, the trio concluded that big blackouts, although rare,  are occasionally going to happen  because of the way that the power grid evolves over the years to balance cost and reliability.  The simulator predicts the same pattern of blackout reliability as is seen in historical records of blackouts. Dobson said working with Carreras and Newman for the past 20 years has been the highlight of his career.

“It has been a close collaboration between the three of us,” Dobson said. “You can hardly tell whose work is whose. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot.”

Going forward, the trio plans to refine tools to advise grid operators on when and how to act to reduce blackout risk.

“We think we have a high-level approach and a model of the system that can give insight on how [power grids] regulate themselves over the time,” Dobson said.“We’d like to increase the detail of the simulator and deepen the validation of its results so we can anticipate problems in a particular area.”

The article is currently available online for those who subscribe to Discover Magazine. It will also appear in the March 2016 Discover print issue.

For more details, visit http://discovermagazine.com/2016/march/15-blackout-of-the-century.

ECpE mourns the loss of Jim Nilsson

James Nilsson 1977
James Nilsson, 1977

James W. Nilsson, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor Emeritus for the Iowa State Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, passed away December 26, 2015 at Green Hills Health Care Center. He was 91.

Nilsson, one of the most prominent and celebrated teachers in ECpE annals, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Iowa (1948), and his master’s (1952) and Ph.D. (1958) at Iowa State. He joined the ISU faculty as an Instructor in 1948 and was promoted to associate professor (1952), professor (1962), and Anson Marston Distinguished Professor (1984).

“His contributions to the department through the years were enormous,” said David C. Jiles, Palmer Endowed Department Chair of ECpE and Anson Marston Distinguished Professor. “The department’s legacy as an educator of successful engineers was built by faculty like Jim Nilsson.”

Nilsson was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1990 and earned the IEEE undergraduate teaching award for inspirational teaching in 1992. Nilsson won the student vote for ECpE’s annual professor of the year award five times. No other faculty member won more than twice.

“He was everyone’s favorite teacher,” said Thomas Scott, associate professor emeritus of ECpE. “He contracted exams which were so clearly fair that, when he gave a student a low grade, the student just accepted it.”

Scott also recalls Nilsson’s uncanny accuracy in front of a classroom.

“In that era we wrote on chalkboards. He covered the board time after time without ever needing to make a correction. That was amazing.”

Nilsson wrote several electrical and computer engineering textbooks, including Electric Circuits (1983), which gained world-wide acceptance and use. The fourth edition of Electric Circuits earned Nilsson an award for outstanding contributions to publisher, Addison-Wesley, one of the world’s leading technical publishing houses. While the book has evolved to meet diverse learning styles, the underlying pedagogical approaches remain constant and relevant. The book is currently in its 10th edition.

“[He] was a superb teacher and a person of great integrity,” said Arthur Pohm, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor Emeritus of ECpE. “His text book on circuits probably brought more recognition to the department than any other activity in the department during his tenure. If I may borrow from a movie title, he was a man for all seasons; he was a stellar faculty member who brought acclaim to Iowa State.”

James Nilsson 1969. Photographer: Perry
James Nilsson 1969. Photographer: Perry

Nilsson will be remembered as one of the important and beloved pioneers of the ECpE Department. His students, including Richard Horton, who became a fellow faculty member upon graduation, remember him as a master teacher, a mentor, and a role model who listened to his students.

Kenneth Kruempel, associate professor emeritus and ECpE alum, has fond memories of Nilsson’s receptiveness.

“He was always very open to ideas for changes, corrections, and additions to the current edition of his books,” Kruempel said. “I would routinely ask students in the class for their suggestions and concerns, and then give them to Jim. He would always consider them and often use them for revisions in the textbook.”

Although Nilsson retired from teaching in 1987, he continued to impact those around him. To date, Electric Circuits has influenced the engineering education of tens of thousands of electrical engineers worldwide and is the most widely used introductory circuits textbook of the past 25 years. Through his teaching and contributions to the field, Nilsson’s legacy at Iowa State and in the field of electrical engineering will continue to be recognized for years to come.

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