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ENGINEERINGprogressSUMMER 2016

New Approaches to Energy ConversionPAGE 8

http://engineering.ucdavis.edu/

2 UC DAV I S C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

COLLEGE DISTINGUISHED LECTURE

Wednesday, September 28, 2016 • 4 p.m. (Reception to Follow)

Multipurpose Room, Student Community Center, UC DavisInfo: [email protected] or 530-752-7642

Reginald DesRoches is the Karen and John Huff School Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. DesRoches was the key technical leader in the U.S. response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake where he directed a team of engineers and social scientists to analyze its aftermath. Through the use of improved computational methods and new “smart” materials and structural systems, DesRoches will outline how engineers can minimize the impact of earthquakes in California and abroad.

DesRoches is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the society’s Structural Engineering Institute. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2002. He also was a recipient of the 2007 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize and the 2015 ASCE Charles Martin Duke Lifeline

Earthquake Engineering Award.

Admission is free and open to the public. Following the event this lecture will be posted to www.engineering.ucdavis.edu.

Reginald DesRoches“From Haiti to California – Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Earthquake Risks”

mailto:engineeringevents%40ucdavis.edu?subject=

http://www.engineering.ucdavis.edu


UC Davis Engineering Progress • Summer 2016

Engineering Progress is published twice a year by the College of Engineering at UC Davis.

Jennifer CurtisDean, College of Engineering

Jessie CatacutanExecutive Assistant Dean for Administration and Finance

Jim SchaafAssociate Dean for Undergraduate Studies

C.P. van DamAssociate Dean for Facilities and Capital Planning

Jean VanderGheynstAssociate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies

Bruce White Executive Associate Dean

Felix WuAssociate Dean, Academic Personnel and Planning

DEPARTMENT CHAIRS

Bryan JenkinsBiological and Agricultural Engineering

Alyssa PanitchBiomedical Engineering

Roland FallerChemical Engineering

Amit KanvindeCivil and Environmental Engineering

Nina AmentaComputer Science

Kent WilkenElectrical and Computer Engineering

Subash Risbud Materials Science and Engineering

Stephen RobinsonMechanical and Aerospace Engineering

ENGINEERING PROGRESS

Oliver RamseyAssistant Dean, Development and External Relations

Paul DornDirector, Marketing & Communications

Kelley WeissWriter/Editor

Sean Michael Ayres, Scott Chernis, Karin Higgins, Katie Lin, Watson Lu, Brian Nguyen, Kevin Tong, Michelle Tran, Gregory Urquiaga, TJ UshingPhotographers

Academic Technology ServicesDesign

College of EngineeringUniversity of California, Davis1 Shields Ave, Kemper Hall 1042Davis, CA 95616

http://engineering.ucdavis.edu

7 Endowment Will Assist Engineering Undergrads

8 COVER: Turn the Heat Up

12 Manufacturing the Future of Biomedical Engineering

18 Free C-STEM Studio

19 Faculty & College News

26 Retired Faculty-Staff Couple Gives $1 Million to Create Professorship

29 Scientists Demonstrate DNA-based Electromechanical Switch

30 Biomedical Innovations Take Top Prizes in Big Bang! Competition

CONTENTS

7

26

818

12

http://engineering.ucdavis.edu


A M ICROCH I P CONTA I N I NG 1 ,0 0 0 I N D E PE N DE NT PROGRAMMABLE PROCESSORS has been designed by a team at the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The energy-efficient “KiloCore” chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors. The KiloCore was presented at the 2016 Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Honolulu on June 16.

“To the best of our knowledge, it is the world’s first 1,000-processor chip and it is the highest clock-rate processor ever designed in a university,” said Bevan Baas, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who led the team that designed the chip architecture. While other multiple-processor chips have been created, none exceed about 300 processors, according to an analysis by Baas’ team. Most were created for research purposes and few are sold commercially. The KiloCore chip was fabricated by IBM using their 32 nm CMOS technology.

Each processor core can run its own small program independently of the others, which is a fundamentally more flexible approach than so-called Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data approaches utilized by processors such as GPUs; the idea is to break an application up into many small pieces, each of which can run in parallel on different processors, enabling high throughput with lower energy use, Baas said.

Because each processor is independently clocked, it can shut itself down to further save energy when not needed, said graduate student

Researchers Create

1,000-Processor Chip

Brent Bohnenstiehl, who developed the principal architecture. Cores operate at an average maximum clock frequency of 1.78 GHz, and they transfer data directly to each other rather than using a pooled memory area that can become a bottleneck for data.

The chip is the most energy-efficient “many-core” processor ever reported, Baas said. For example, the 1,000 processors can execute 115 billion instructions per second while dissipating only 0.7 Watts, low enough to be powered by a single AA battery. The KiloCore chip executes instructions more than 100 times more efficiently than a modern laptop processor.

Applications already developed for the chip include wireless coding/decoding, video processing, encryption, and others involving large amounts of parallel data such as scientific data applications and datacenter record processing.

The team has completed a compiler and automatic program mapping tools for use in programming the chip.

Additional team members are Aaron Stillmaker, Jon Pimentel, Timothy Andreas, Bin Liu, Anh Tran and Emmanuel Adeagbo, all graduate students at UC Davis. The fabrication was sponsored by the Department of Defense and support from grants from the National Science Foundation.

– By Andy Fell

Photo: This microchip with 1,000 processor cores was designed by graduate students in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The chip is thought to be the fastest designed in a university lab.

WORLD’S FIRST

E N G I N E E R I N G P R O G R E S S / Summer 20 1 6 5

UC DAVIS RESEARCHERS are working to create a hand-held device that can detect a variety of pathogens — including foodborne illnesses like E. coli — at all stages in the food supply chain, from fields to restaurants.

The team is now trying to make the leap from a great idea to a viable product. In 2015, the researchers launched AstRoNA Biotechnologies, Inc., an interdisciplinary research program funded by a grant from the UC Davis Office of Research. AstRoNA was founded by UC Davis faculty Bryce Falk, Maria Marco, Paul Feldstein, Andre Knoesen, Josh Hihath, Erkin Seker, and PhD students Marc Pollack and Jeremy Warren.

This unique interdisciplinary research seed-funding program, Research Investments in Science and Engineering (RISE), helped AstRoNA develop its technology. In 2012, the university made a bold investment of $10.8 million to fund the RISE program, assembling teams of experts from different disciplines to address global challenges. AstRoNA was one of 13 teams that received funding. It brought together experts in the fields of plant pathology, food science, electrical engineering and computer engineering.

“The accomplishment of the AstRoNA team exemplifies the effectiveness of interdisciplinary research in finding practical solutions to complex problems,” said Paul Dodd, associate vice chancellor for research. “While the team’s initial work focused on illuminating some of the underpinning biological science, they were able to quickly leverage those insights to develop technology for a potential commercial solution.”

Funding from the RISE program allows undergraduate students, early-career faculty and more senior academics to work together on problems of common interest.

Maria Marco, an associate professor in Food Science & Technology, said the RISE program created a rare opportunity for her. “I would have never started working on my own with Erkin and Josh,” who are both assistant professors in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Marco, who studies the microbiome —specifically lactic acid bacteria found in our food and guts — said initially there were challenges simply communicating. “Food science, electrical and computer engineering — we speak a different language. So part of the challenge was learning to use the words in the right way.”

Marco says her expertise is in pathogen detection and the food environment. But she says this new technology, “has real potential to bridge my world with the electrical engineering world.” She laughs when she describes her initial thoughts about how long it would take. “Naively I thought back in 2012 that the engineers had everything worked out and it was just a matter of me telling them ‘Okay, I’m just going to do a little bit of work to get the nucleic acids out of these pathogens and then we can make a device.’”

Actually bridging those two points, though, has been far more arduous. She says at this point instead of a product the team has created a “process” that captures and amplifies nucleic acid signals for different organisms so the organisms can be detected. For the initial product, the team is focusing on organisms that cause foodborne illnesses, such as the nasty E. coli O157:H7.

UC DAVIS RESEARCHERS developing hand-held device to detect E. coli, other pathogens

Photo: AstRoNA Biotechnologies, Inc., developed out of an interdisciplinary grant from the UC Davis RISE program. From left to right: Bryce Falk, Jeremy Warren, Marc Pollack, Maria Marco, Erkin Seker, Josh Hihath, Andre Knoesen. Not pictured: Paul Feldstein.



FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, the general design of an optical telescope has remained pretty much the same. Even if you’re looking at the stars with the naked eye, the image-forming process works in a similar way. Both methods collect light from an object and refract that light to form an image.

Now researchers at the University of California, Davis, are working with Lockheed Martin to develop a radically lighter and smaller telescope.

“We can only scale the size and weight of telescopes so much before it becomes impractical to launch them into orbit and beyond,” said Danielle Wuchenich, senior research scientist at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California.

Lockheed Martin’s SPIDER (Segmented Planar Imaging Detector for Electro-optical Reconnaissance) concept trades bulky lenses and telescopes for a thin layer of hundreds or thousands of tiny lenses that feed photonic integrated circuits on silicon chips. Prof. Ben Yoo and his team at UC Davis’ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering developed these circuits that combine the light from pairs of lenses to construct a digital image from the interference fringes caused by overlapping waves.

SPIDER EYES: POWER IN NUMBERSInterference fringes appear when waves coming from the same source through slightly different routes overlap. Think about ripples spreading in a pond. Where peaks or troughs coincide, they reinforce each other; where a peak meets a trough, they cancel out. When the waves originally came from the same source, the resulting interference patterns can yield information about their original state.

Large-scale astronomical interferometer arrays are already used to form ultra-high-resolution images of objects in space from telescopes. The goal of SPIDER is to shrink that concept to a thin layer of thousands of lenses feeding silicon chips that can process photons.

UC DAVIS PHOTONIC TECHNOLOGYYoo was initially approached by Lockheed Martin about the SPIDER project at the recommendation of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has funded Yoo’s research projects before.

For the SPIDER project, “we’ve fabricated a chip that can collect the fringes and form images in three bands of wavelengths,” Yoo said. Behind each lens are multiple waveguides that gather light from a wider field of view. Each pair of waveguides at a given band of wavelengths will form fringes. The amplitude and phase of the fringes will be processed to construct a digital image for each color.

And Yoo said this technology does not require a large telescope structure such as Hubble telescope. SPIDER imaging technology could reduce the size, weight and power needs for telescopes by 10 to 100-fold.

THE FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT (AND LIGHT)Yoo’s team fabricated their prototype photonic chips with facilities at the College of Engineering’s Center for Nano-MicroManufacturing. The next generation of chips will be built using an apparatus developed in Yoo’s lab. This three-dimensional laser inscription uses an ultrafast laser to write waveguides of any shape within a solid piece of glass.

While the SPIDER prototype today is still in its early stages with less than 100 waveguides, Yoo expects that the three-dimensional laser inscription will create highly functional photonic integrated circuits with densely integrated systems.

UC Davis could leverage this technology through a newly launched initiative, the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics).

UC Davis is one of the Tier-1 members of AIM Photonics, a partnership between industry, universities and government agencies to create a national large-scale manufacturing infrastructure for photonic integrated circuits.

– By Andy Fell

UC Davis Photonics Technology

HELPS SHRINK TELESCOPES

BEN YOO


GENEROUS ENDOWMENT Will Assist Engineering UndergradsBRIAN AND LOUANNE HORSFIELD met at UC Davis in 1966. He’d just begun his post-graduate research in engineering, and was living in a house on Russell Boulevard. She resided in Malcolm Hall, and was working toward her bachelor of arts in Letters and Science. Their eyes locked across the crowded Segundo Dining Commons.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history.Just shy of half a century later, Brian and Louanne have announced

a bequest expectancy of $400,000, to create an endowed scholarship of roughly $14,000 per year for undergraduate students in the College of Engineering.

“I know there are engineering students who possess great capabilities, but are short on means,” Brian explains. “As a result, they’re compelled to enter the workforce immediately upon graduation, with every intention of eventually returning to earn a post-graduate degree. But 20 years later, they’re still making that promise to themselves, with no greater chance of seeing it through.

“We hope that our endowment gives some of those students the financial ability to remain in school, and obtain those master’s degrees and doctorates.”

“I’m tremendously impressed by the tools that young engineers have, and the great potential they have for using such tools,” Louanne adds. “We want to better enable that process.”

During long and happy lives that have been busy with family and careers, the Horsfields found time for several small business endeavors. Brian earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering at UC Davis in 1971, by which time he and Louanne had opened one of Davis’ first copy shops — Johnny Print — at Third and A streets, with a satellite kiosk on the other side of campus, in University Mall.

When Brian accepted his first faculty assignment at Purdue University, he and Louanne brought their copy shop business to Indiana. Their enterprise eventually expanded to 10 outlets in several more states, including Oregon and Kentucky. They returned to California in 1974, when Brian joined the UC Davis College of Engineering and taught agricultural engineering for two years.

Brian was later hired by Weyerhaeuser, which prompted a move to the Seattle/Tacoma region of Washington. He became a vital member of Weyerhaeuser’s R&D team, with his name attached to 11 company patents. One of his biggest projects involved the development of recyclable produce boxes for supermarket use, to replace the previous “waxy” boxes which couldn’t be recycled. He eventually rose to become a senior R&D project engineer, and finally retired from Weyerhaeuser in 2008.

The Horsfields returned to Davis — “For the third time,” she laughs — in order to be closer to family. Both Brian and Louanne have become dedicated volunteers at their local church; Brian served on the Davis Business and Economic Development Commission.

Brian and Louanne have attended UC Davis convocations each year, inspired by what they see. They’ve also been loyal and generous UC Davis supporters. Donations to the College of Letters and Science’s Annual Fund has made them members of the Herbert A. Young Society; they’ve also endowed the UC Davis Symphony’s Tracy McCarthy Cello Chair.

“As an alum, it’s heartwarming to know that your school makes a difference,” Louanne said, when interviewed a few years ago. “We have a sense that we are part of something much bigger. UC Davis is

a tremendous organization.”– By Derrick Bang

BRIAN AND LOUANNE HORSFIELD


Turn the Heat Up NEW APPROACHES TO ENERGY CONVERSION

Srabanti Chowdhury joins UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to help transform the semiconductor industry

MEETING GLOBAL ENERGY DEMANDS will require much more than simply expanding renewable sources; it’s also necessary to improve the efficiency of how energy is used. Taking a new look at the materials presently used in electronics, Srabanti Chowdhury is working to transform the way energy is converted to run power electronics, spanning from data servers and hybrid cars to laptops and smart phones.

Among the newest faculty members in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chowdhury previously held an assistant professor position at Arizona State University’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.

Chowdhury earned her master’s degree (2008) and doctorate (2010) in electrical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. As part of her PhD work, she developed gallium nitride (GaN)-based vertical devices for power conversion, and demonstrated the first vertical GaN high voltage power-switching device — a current aperture vertical electron transistor (CAVET) — with a record-high breakdown electric field.

After nearly three years in industry, furthering her work with gallium nitride at a California-based start-up, Chowdhury found herself missing the university environment. She is happy to be back in academia, and these days concentrates on her new lab at UC Davis.

“My primary goal is to make a vertically integrated lab, where we can address materials, devices and circuits for next generation electronics, all in one place,” she says. “I want to ensure

that as a team at UC Davis we excel within each of these fields.”“My branch of research focuses on solid-state devices, specifically the tiny

switches at the heart of a converter. Without such switches, you cannot ‘condition’ or convert your power from one form to another. Such

‘switches’ use semiconductors as the medium to convert power from one form to another: from one voltage or

current level to another; from one level of frequency to another; AC to DC and vice versa, and so forth,”

she says. “All of this occurs in a black box called the “converter,” where the conversion takes

place via a power-electronic ‘switch’ that is made of a semiconductor.”

Exploring different semiconductor m a t e r i a l s t o o p t i m i z e t h e

performance of such switches and maximize their efficiencies,

Continued on page 10

“MY PRIMARY GOAL IS

TO MAKE A VERTICALLY

INTEGRATED LAB, WHERE

WE CAN ADDRESS

MATERIALS, DEVICES

AND CIRCUITS FOR NEXT

GENERATION ELECTRONICS,

ALL IN ONE PLACE.”

– SRABANTI CHOWDHURY


E N G I N E E R I N G P R O G R E S S / Summer 20 1 6 9E N G I N E E R I N G P R O G R E S S / Summer 20 1 6 9

SRABANTI CHOWDHURY


Turn the Heat UpContinued from page 8

Chowdhury and her lab colleagues are looking into diamond and gallium oxide in addition to GaN — popularly known as “ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors.”

The recent challenge, however, involves the need to keep up with increased demand and expectations from end users. Chowdhury points out that almost all of the devices and gadgets used today have been made possible by silicon semiconductors. However, there are increased demands for more functionality, smaller footprint, higher efficiencies, faster speed and longer lifetime from these applications. “Silicon has hit its saturation due to its ‘materials limit,’” explains Chowdhury. “Any improvement with Si is now incremental. This calls for new semiconductors: hence my work with gallium nitride and diamond, which have the potential to improve power conversion efficiency by unprecedented values.”

Besides commercial power electronics applications, these semiconductors are well suited for high frequency applications. GaN is used in radar technology that relies on high power density and high frequency at the same time. Chowdhury is investigating means to

increase the power density of radio frequency amplifiers while managing the unwanted ‘heat’ that is

generated during operation at such high power.

That work already h a s g a r n e r e d

Chowdhury

considerable acclaim. In 2015 alone, she received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award, and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award. These programs are allowing her to explore the high-speed world with frequencies ranging from gigahertz to terahertz.

Another one of her projects involves collaboration with PowerAmerica, a U.S. Department of Energy organization based at North Carolina State University with the goal of enhanced energy efficiency by making wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor technologies cost competitive with the currently used silicon-based power electronics. UC Davis is now a member of PowerAmerica, which will allow collaboration with other universities and industries to address next generation power electronics. Chowdhury indicates that roughly 10 percent of electricity generated in the U.S. is lost via inefficient power conversion, manifested in the form of heat.

“A year’s worth of this wasted energy could supply the annual energy needs for a country such as Singapore, Malaysia or our entire West Coast,” she says. “This problem demands a revolution: Even if we fully convert from fossil fuels to renewables, we cannot fully implement sustainability without addressing electronics.”

Nor is it simply a matter of efficiency. As silicon components are heated repeatedly over time, they degrade and become less effective, until eventually they die. But, Chowdhury says, wide bandgap and ultra-wideband gap semiconductors can run at higher temperatures.

“This is the huge advantage that people are trying to harness: We could run devices hotter and efficiently without having to cool the system by various means,” she says. Such “systems” include the vehicles we drive. Hybrid cars require coolant technology to

maintain the electronics at a “safe” temperature, at a huge cost and enormous loss of space within the vehicle.

“Toyota, which funded my PhD project, wants to reduce or eliminate the cooling requirements to the point

where the system can rely wholly on air cooling. This innovation alone leads to significant savings in

terms of cost and ‘much-needed’ space, leading to widespread adoption of hybrid vehicles.

“The next generation of scientists and technologists will grow up with wide

bandgap and ult ra-wideband gap semiconductors,” says Chowdhury.

“These materials address more than one field creating opportunities for interdisciplinary research. The timing is perfect to explore and develop solutions with these semiconductors and I am happy to be in the right place at the right time.”

– Engineering Progress Staff



UC DAVIS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

APPAREL AND MORE!All UC Davis Stores profits go back to student programs and services.

Shop UC Davis Stores for all your College of Engineering gear, from T-shirts and sweaters to caps and messenger bags.

Visit our co-branded online store with Promoversity, where you can get specialized gear at competitive prices.

costore.com/UCDavisRetail


UC DAVIS RESEARCHERS were faced with a challenge in 2012 to help Whiskey, a dog from San Francisco with a significant jaw tumor. This case helped inspire a partnership between the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, which created new technology to regrow the dog’s diseased jaw.

Using 3D-printing to create a model of the dog’s entire skull, the team developed and perfected the surgical approach. This entailed removing about half of Whiskey’s lower jawbone and replacing it with a titanium scaffolding and a sponge-like biomaterial infused with a bioactive agent to stimulate new cells to regenerate the jawbone.

This collaboration laid the groundwork for the UC Davis Translating Engineering Advanced Manufacturing (TEAM) facility. Distinguished Professor Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, is the director of TEAM. He says the biomedical technology used to regenerate Whiskey’s jaw was a preview of what was to come.

“This approach allowed us to develop and try the surgical approach fully in the laboratory, and not in the operating room, to treat

veterinary patients. The success has then allowed us to translate this approach into human medical use,” Athanasiou says.

A PROTOTYPE FOR EDUCATIONSince its debut two years ago, the 2,300-square-foot facility has been an integral part of UC Davis biomedical engineering students’ education from their first day until graduation.

Students have access to the lab’s cutting-edge technology even during their first class as freshmen. Professor Jerry Hu, TEAM assistant director, says a great example of student participation is a design challenge event called the Make-a-thon. Students from around California are given 30 hours to design, fabricate and test a prototype that provides a solution to a design challenge.

“People learn in different ways and we kind of neglect touch as a way of learning,” Hu says. “But having a prototype in your hand creates a lot of excitement.”

The first Make-a-thon started in 2014, and the event brought together academic mentors as well as industry representatives and venture capitalists. The challenge was to create a device to help veterinarians analyze a devastating fungus infecting bats. The Make-a-thon premiere was a big success, Hu says, and was featured in Popular Science.

This year students designed adjustable eyeglass frames to better utilize lenses donated to people in developing countries. In coming years Hu hopes the Make-a-thon will grow into a national event.

the Future of Biomedical EngineeringMANUFACTURING

By Kelley Weiss

Photo: From left to right: Steven Lucero, Jerry Hu, Kyriacos Athanasiou, Marc Facciotti, Andrew Yao.



FROM LEARNING TO INNOVATION – “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO MAKE?”The TEAM facility enables students to use the skills they acquire in the College of Engineering to build new devices and technology.

Andrew Yao, manager of TEAM’s Molecular Prototyping and BioInnovation Lab, is helping students create a low-cost fluorometer. These devices, which measure light output signals from cells, are a staple of most science labs, but many teachers can’t afford them. So, UC Davis students are developing a way for cell phones to operate as fluorometers.

“These devices are typically $20,000 or more,” Yao says. “Our students are trying to make a device that a high school teacher can afford for 20 bucks.”

UC Davis students are also putting their ideas to the test in competitions. For example, UC Davis students developed a simple, cost-effective enzyme-based biosensor to detect rancid olive oil. Their “OliView” device won the grand prize in the 2014 International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition.

Professor Marc Facciotti, assistant director of TEAM, says the group created groundbreaking technology in the TEAM lab that integrated electronic and molecular engineering principles.

“They came up with the idea to use a protein that acts as the sensor of what is in the oil and that is then spotted onto a custom-made device that actually reads that signal out to an electrical signal that generates something the user can read,” he says.

Facciotti says the innovation happening in the TEAM lab is pushing the boundaries of biomedical engineering.

“This is a facility that allows us to work in a completely new arena that is emerging called synthetic biology,” he says. “We’re setting out to make the engineering of biology possible so that we are engineering biological systems just like you would make a phone.”

Professor Athanasiou points to the olive oil sensor as an example of “hybrid devices” made in the lab, or machines that combine electro-mechanical and engineered biological components in one device.

“It is unique. There isn’t such a combination anywhere - we pioneered this concept here as well as pioneered the concept of these hybrid devices,” he says.

BEYOND THE LAB – TRANSLATING TO BUSINESS AND ADVANCING RESEARCH

The TEAM facility is not exclusively for College of Engineering students and faculty. Researchers across the UC Davis campus also collaborate with the lab.

TEAM has worked with the UC Davis School of Medicine to test gamma knives for cranial radiosurgery and has created bioreactors for heart valves for the School of Veterinary Medicine. Within the College of Engineering the TEAM lab tested parts for the construction of the world’s first whole-body PET machine.

In addition, regional companies can pay a fee to work with the lab to create custom designs for new devices.

“People come to us and they have a lofty idea of what they want to achieve and we help them

actually make it into a physical object,” says Steven Lucero, manager of TEAM’s Design and Prototyping Space.

In the Design and Prototyping Space, TEAM works with industry and researchers to make 3D-printed prototypes. Clients can create printed circuit boards and use laser cutting and machining to make devices. The facility’s five 3D printers produce micron-scale resolutions and prototypes with interlocking moving parts, and blend materials of different stiffness and optical properties.

The staff at TEAM also supports UC Davis students’ entrepreneurial efforts and provides pro bono services to the community, ranging from


“THIS IS A FACILITY

THAT ALLOWS US TO

WORK IN A COMPLETELY

NEW ARENA THAT IS

EMERGING CALLED

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY.”

– Marc Facciotti



a California National Guard holiday tree ornament for the White House, to prototypes to help small businesses win federal grant money.

REDEFINING THE POSSIBILITIES Through the combination of education, research and exploration of new frontiers in advanced manufacturing, the TEAM facility is helping to shape the future of the field.

Professor Kaiming Ye, from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, says advanced manufacturing is on track to change biomedicine. Ye is the Council Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Society’s ABioM-SIG, a group that brings academics and industrial leaders together to promote advanced biomanufacturing.

“The use of 3D-printed tissue-machine hybrid devices can not only improve medical treatment but also empower human beings with enhanced capabilities,” Ye says. “For instance, sensor embedded muscle implants could one day help patients to regain control of their dysfunctional leg. A wired ear can improve the hearing of patients who lost hearing power.”

There are great opportunities for researchers and patients in developing advanced manufacturing. Dr. Boaz Arzi, a dental surgeon and UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine researcher, says he

has seen it first hand. He uses TEAM’s technology regularly for his most challenging cases.“This 3D printing has jump-started our program to reach different heights,” Arzi says. “We’re

receiving cases from all over the nation and one case internationally.” Arzi says he can use a 3D-printed model of the patient’s jaw to customize reconstruction before

surgery. That, Arzi says, is how TEAM started with cases such as the now-famous jaw reconstruction for the dog Whiskey. This technology is also used for trauma cases, like gunshot wounds, he says, and can be used for spinal surgeries or to correct limb deformities.

This technological advance, Arzi says, has reduced surgery failure and complication rates as well as anesthesia time for patients and length of surgeries.

“It’s extremely precise and incredible,” he says. “This technology is limitless and will go as far as the brain can create it.”


“[3D PRINTING IS]

EXTREMELY PRECISE

AND INCREDIBLE.

THIS TECHNOLOGY IS

LIMITLESS AND WILL

GO AS FAR AS THE

BRAIN CAN CREATE IT.”

– Dr. Boaz Arzi

ManufacturingContinued from page 13


UC DAVIS ALUMNUS REFAEL KLEIN, lieutenant junior grade in the Commissioned Officer Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will spend a year at the South Pole studying climate change.

“It’s been a big dream of mine to visit Antarctica,” said Klein in an interview before he left the U.S. “I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity.”

Klein graduated from UC Davis in 2010 with a degree in biological systems engineering and joined the NOAA Corps the following year. The Corps is the seventh uniformed service of the United States, tracing its history back to 1807 and the “Survey of the Coast” ordered by Thomas Jefferson. It operates research ships and aircraft and manages research projects around the world.

After Officer Candidate School, Klein served on research vessels in Hawaii and on the U.S. West Coast. He is currently assigned to NOAA’s global monitoring division, collecting information on the Earth’s atmosphere and changing climate from research stations around the world. Klein will run the climatological laboratory at the South Pole

base, running experiments and collecting data on behalf of other scientists. He will also act as lead scientist for the National Science Foundation, which operates the base, and liaison between all the various researchers there.

“I’m looking forward to getting involved in a science program that’s been running since the 1960s,” he said.

While the coastal regions of Antarctica are rugged with mountains and glaciers, the Pole itself is a high, icy desert, 10,000 feet up and flat in all directions. Over winter, the population of the base shrinks as complete darkness sets in. Klein had to complete extensive physical and mental health exams and intensive training on leadership in confined environments before being cleared to go.

“It’s very akin to working on a ship,” Klein said. “You form a miniature society.”

The polar base does have internet access year round though, and Klein is blogging about his experiences for Voice of America’s Science World web site: http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/author/rklein/

– By Andy Fell

SOUTH POLEAlum Refael Klein flies the Aggie flag at the

http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/author/rklein/

http://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/author/rklein/


DIANE BRYANT, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group for Intel Corporation, was the keynote speaker at the UC Davis College of Engineering’s Commencement address on Sunday, June 12, 2016 at the Pavilion on the university campus. More than 700 students received their bachelor of science in engineering at the event.

Bryant earned her degree in electrical engineering from UC Davis in 1985, the first in her family to go to college. She manages Intel’s $16 billion Data Center Group and holds four U.S. patents, all received while part of Intel’s mobile group.

Acclaimed as one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley, Bryant is known for her tireless efforts to advance diversity in the STEM fields. She created the UC Davis Diane Bryant Endowed Scholarship for Women in Engineering and has also served on the technical board of the Anita Borg Institute, a non-profit organization focused on the advancement of women in computing. And, she is the executive sponsor of the Network of Intel African American Employees. In 2012, Bryant received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal from the College of Engineering at UC Davis. Bryant also serves on the Dean’s Executive Committee for the College of Engineering.

View the video recording: http://commencementvideo.ucdavis.edu/

Silicon Valley Leader Speaks at

COMMENCEMENT

http://commencementvideo.ucdavis.edu/


SIMON CHERRY

SIMON CHERRY ELECTED TO NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERINGSIMON CHERRY, a Distinguished Professor in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), and co-leader of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Biomedical Program, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Cherry is being acknowledged for research that has put UC Davis on the leading edge of molecular imaging nationwide.

He is the 20th member of the UC Davis College of Engineering faculty to be elected to the prestigious academy. Cherry and the other members of this year’s newly elected class, including UC Davis engineering alum Adam Steltzner, will be inducted formally during a ceremony at the NAE’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9.

This honor follows October’s announcement that Cherry and BME colleague Ramsey Badawi, an associate professor of radiology and a PET physicist, received a five-year, $15.5 million National Cancer Institute Transformative Research Award grant to build a combination PET-CT whole-body scanner, which could drop a patient’s radiation dose by a factor of 40, or decrease scanning time from 20 minutes to

30 seconds. Such quick scans also could reduce the incidence of images blurred by patient movement.

Cherry earned a doctorate in medical physics in 1989, at the University of London. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1993, serving for eight years, and in July 2001 traveled north to become part of the UC Davis College of Engineering.

He directs the UC Davis Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging, where his research focuses on positron emission tomography; multi-modality imaging systems; gamma and x-ray detector technology; 3-D image reconstruction; the use of imaging techniques in phenotyping and drug development; and the design of novel contrast agents and imaging probes and their application in molecular diagnostics and therapeutics.

His textbook, Physics in Nuclear Medicine, co-authored with James A. Sorenson and Michael E. Phelps, was updated in 2012 with a fourth edition. Since January of that year, Cherry also has been editor-in-chief of the Institute of Physics’ journal, Physics in Medicine and Biology.


THE CENTER FOR INTEGRATED COMPUTING AND STEM EDUCATION (C-STEM) at University of California, Davis has released the C-STEM Studio 2.0. A user-friendly free platform for hands-on learning math and coding with robotics, C-STEM Studio also includes code, comprehensive documentation, teacher guides and textbooks and now supports Bluetooth communications and video tutorial lessons.

C-STEM Studio is an engaging way to learn math, coding and robotics and is a simple approach to program a robot and the easiest technology to control multiple robots. The software works with both Linkbots made by Barobo, Inc. and Lego Mindstorms NXT/EV3 robots and can be used to program both real and “virtual” robots.

C-STEM is a University of California (UC) Approved Educational Preparation Program for Undergraduate Admission to all UC campuses and with UC A-G Program Status. The C-STEM Math-ICT Pathway provides K-12 students with 12 years of hands-on integrated math and computer science education with coding in Blockly and C/C++. The C-STEM math, coding, robotics curriculum can be used ranging from four weeks as supplementary materials for STEM courses, one semester course, to a full-year course, multi-year Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) career pathway.

The C-STEM curriculum is particularly effective in engaging students who are under performing in math and closing the

“achievement gap” for students from underrepresented groups, said center director Harry Cheng, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis. The C-STEM math, coding, and robotics curriculum is already in use in about 200 elementary, middle and high schools, mostly in California, affecting some 10,000 students. The center focuses on Algebra, a gatekeeper for high-school graduation and careers in STEM fields. The C-STEM Algebra curriculum with computing and robotics is fully aligned with Common Core State Standards — Mathematics.

The center provides C-STEM professional development for K-14 teachers without any prior computing and robotics experience to use freely available C-STEM Studio and RoboBlockly, as well as C-STEM integrated curriculum effectively. The center can provide professional development opportunities to the school, district, county, and region through C-STEM 2-Day Academy, 1-Week Institute, On-Site Professional Development, and Train-the-Trainer Affiliate Program.

This summer, teachers can learn how to work with C-STEM classes at 1-Week professional development Institutes in Davis, Irvine, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Teachers taking the institutes will be ready to use C-STEM curriculum in their classrooms this fall. This work is partially supported with grants from the National Science Foundation and California Department of Education.

More info: http://c-stem.ucdavis.edu

UC Davis’ Free C-STEM Studio Teaches K-12 Robotics and Computing

HARRY CHENG


http://c-stem.ucdavis.edu


SUMMER 2016 FACULTY & COLLEGE NEWS

SEAN DAVIS RECEIVES TEACHING AWARD

The Academic Federation has named SEAN DAVIS, continuing lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, a recipient of its 2016 Excellence in Teaching award. Davis teaches high-enrollment classes that cover a variety of computer science topics. The selection committee noted that students report he has a unique ability to patiently answer questions in classes with several hundred students and that his lectures are clear and well prepared. Davis was also noted for being accessible to students for advice on graduate school or job searches. The Academic Federation gives its awards annually selecting winners from a pool of approximately 1,500 academics.


GRADUATE STUDENT WINS UC PRESIDENT’S LEADERSHIP AWARD

LAUREN JABUSCH, a graduate student in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, received a UC President’s Award for Outstanding Student Leadership at a University of California Regents Meeting on May 11, 2016. Two of the three students from the entire system recognized by UC President Janet Napolitano study at UC Davis. For eight years Jabusch has been involved with the California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC). This student organization helps groups from across campuses improve sustainability practices.

Jean VanderGheynst, associate dean for research and graduate study in the College of Engineering, says Jabusch’s work made CSSC into a large-scale organization that has hosted twice-yearly events for over 4,000 students and young professionals.“She has helped CSSC morph from a small, haphazard organization into one with multiple campaigns and programs spanning California.”

UC DAVIS RESEARCH TEAM MOST INFLUENTIAL PAPER AWARDWINSPROFESSOR PREM DEVANBU received a “10-Year Most Influential Paper Award” at this year’s 13th International Conference on Mining and Software Repositories. The paper honored, “Mining Email Social Networks,” was presented in 2006 at the Mining Software Repositories (MSR) international workshop.

The paper describes research done by DR. CHRISTIAN BIRD while earning his PhD at UC Davis under the supervision of Devanbu. Bird is now a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA. Additional collaborators included undergraduate student Alex Gourley from the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Prof. Michael Gertz then of the UC Davis Department of Computer Science, and now at Heidelberg University; as well as UC Davis Graduate School of Management Prof. Anand Swaminathan.

Lauren Jabusch

SEAN DAVIS


From left to right: Christian Bird and Prem Devanbu


CROES MEDAL AWARDED TO UC DAVIS RESEARCH TEAM AND COLLABORATORS

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has selected M. LEVENT KAVVAS and his co-authors to receive the 2016 J. James R. Croes Medal. The award was given for their paper published in the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, “Physically Based Estimation of Maximum Precipitation over Three Watersheds in Northern California: Atmospheric Boundary Condition Shifting.” Kavvas is the Gerald and Lillian Orlob Endowed Chair Professor of Water Resources Engineering at UC Davis. The lead author of the paper is Dr. Kei Ishida, manager of the UC Davis Civil and Environmental Engineering Hydrologic Research Laboratory. The co-authors of the paper include: Su-Hyung Jang, ZhiQiang Richard Chen, Noriaki Ohara and Michael L. Anderson.

JEAN VANDERGHEYNST, associate dean for research and graduate studies, has received the 2016 Distinguished Postdoctoral Scholar Mentoring Award from the UC Davis Graduate Council’s Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Scholar Welfare Committee. In addition to serving as associate dean, VanderGheynst is a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and has been a staff research scientist at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville since 2006. VanderGheynst also serves as the director of Renewable Energy Systems Opportunity for Unified Research Collaboration and Education, or RESOURCE, which pairs students with elementary school teachers to develop and deliver curriculum related to renewable energy and environmental sustainability. The 2016 Distinguished Postdoctoral Scholar Mentoring Award recognizes the vital role mentoring plays in the academic and professional development of postdoctoral scholars at UC Davis, and recognizes faculty who have shown an outstanding commitment to mentoring in the overall success of the university’s postdoctoral scholars.

STUDENTS PRESENT BIO-FERTILIZER RESEARCH AT

NATIONAL DESIGN EXPO


JEAN VANDERGHEYNST IS RECIPIENT OF POSTDOCTORAL SCHOLAR MENTORING AWARD

Photo above: UC Davis Biological and Agricultural Engineering Student Team at 2016 P3 National Sustainable Design Expo (from left to right: Abdolhossein Edalati, Ashwin Bala, Tanner Garrett and Tyler Barzee)

A UC DAVIS BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING STUDENT TEAM shared their research project at the 12th Annual People, Prosperity, and Planet (P3) National Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC in April, 2016. Their U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant-funded project aims to transform manure from the nation’s largest dairy producer, California, into renewable energy and profitable bio-fertilizer products. Working with faculty advisor Prof. Ruihong Zhang of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, students Abdolhossein Edalati (PhD Student), Tyler Barzee (PhD student), Ashwin Bala (MS Student), and Tanner Garrett (BS graduate) presented their research and design project, “Sustainable Bio-Fertilizer from Anaerobically Digested Animal Manure.”



UC DAVIS STARTUP WINS WORLD AGRI-TECH INVESTMENT SUMMIT COMPETITION

At the World Agri-Tech Investment Summit, held March 16-17, 2016 in San Francisco, CRISTINA DAVIS won the pitch fest competition’s “Best Newcomer” Award. Davis, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was invited to talk about the company she co-founded in 2016, XTB Laboratories, Inc. The company has developed a new way to test citrus trees for a disease called Huanglongbing (HLB) disease, or citrus greening. The disease infects citrus trees and causes the tree to die and the fruit to be very bitter and misshapen. If the disease is left untreated, it could have a devastating impact on the nation’s multi-billion dollar citrus-producing economy. According to the Citrus Research Board, California alone produces approximately 80 percent of the country’s fresh fruit citrus. Other major citrus producing states include Florida, Arizona and Texas.


ALEXANDRA NAVROTSKY RECEIVES AWARDS FROM GEOCHEMICAL SOCIETY, AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY

Two prominent professional associations recently recognized the achievements of UC Davis Professor ALEXANDRA NAVROTSKY, a leading researcher studying microscopic features of structure and bonding to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other complex materials.

The American Ceramic Society has selected Navrotsky to receive the W. David Kingery Award, which recognizes distinguished lifelong contributions to ceramic technology, science, education and art. The award will be presented during the American Ceramic Society’s Annual Meeting on October 24, 2016 in Salt Lake City.

In February 2016, the Geochemical Society awarded its 2016 Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Award to Navrotsky. The Goldschmidt Award is the Society’s highest honor, and is given annually for major achievements in geochemistry or cosmochemistry. The award was presented at the Goldschmidt Conference, June 26 – July 1 in Yokohama, Japan. Navrotsky has concurrent appointments in the UC Davis Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science; Department of Chemistry; Department of Land, Air and Water Resources; and Department of Geology.

AMIT KANVINDE RECEIVES 2016 HUBER RESEARCH PRIZE

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has awarded the 2016 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize to AMIT KANVINDE , professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The ASCE recognized Kanvinde for “significant contributions in modeling integrated with large-scale experiments to advance the analysis and design of steel connections and members.” Huber Prizes are awarded to members of the ASCE in any grade for notable achievements in research related to civil engineering. Preference is given to younger members (generally under 40 years of age) of early accomplishment who can be expected to continue fruitful careers in research. Each award includes a certificate and a cash prize.

Alexandra Navrotsky

Amit Kanvinde

CRISTINA DAVIS

AMIT KANVINDE


C.P. “CASE” VAN DAM has been named the first Associate Dean for Facilities and Capital Planning in the UC Davis College of Engineering. The college anticipates adding more faculty members to meet its growing student enrollment. This growth will require significant improvement and expansion of facilities to serve the school’s teaching, research and public service efforts. Dean Jennifer Sinclair Curtis prioritized creation of a leadership position to manage this growth and to help meet these needs.

Professor van Dam began his career at UC Davis as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1985, and served as the Warren and Leta Giedt Endowed Professor and chair of his department from 2010 to 2016, recruiting eight new faculty members during his tenure.


UC DAVIS ENGINEERING NAMES FIRST ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR FACILITIES


UC DAVIS STUDENT AWARDED NVIDIA

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPUC Davis Engineering graduate student, SAMAN ASHKIANI, has been named one of ten students worldwide to the 2016-2017 NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program. Ashkiani is a student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, working with Professor John Owens. Ashkiani’s research, as outlined on NVIDIA’s website, “currently focuses on design and implementation of dynamic data structures suitable for massively parallel machines including Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). The final objective, as a programmer, is to have the ability to efficiently update a data structure of choice on the GPU without any need for rebuilding the whole data structure.” The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program provides a $25,000 award to PhD students who are researching topics that will lead to major advances in the graphics and high-performance computing industries, and are investigating innovative ways of leveraging the power of the GPU.

C.P. “CASE” VAN DAM

THE FINAL OBJECTIVE

IS TO HAVE THE ABILITY

TO EFFICIENTLY UPDATE

A DATA STRUCTURE

OF CHOICE ON THE

GPU WITHOUT ANY

NEED FOR REBUILDING

THE WHOLE DATA

STRUCTURE.

SAMAN ASHKIANI


CRISTINA DAVIS ELECTED TO AIMBE COLLEGE OF FELLOWS

CRISTINA DAVIS, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, has been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s (AIMBE) College of Fellows. Davis was recognized for her “outstanding contributions to non-invasive chemical and biological sensing tools, algorithms and applications.” A formal induction ceremony occurred on April 4 during AIMBE’s 25th annual meeting, at the National Academy of Sciences Great Hall in Washington, D.C.

Davis graduated from Duke University with degrees in mathematics and biology, and obtained her doctorate in biomedical engineering in 1999, from the University of Virginia. She joined the UC Davis faculty in 2005. She heads the UC Davis Bioinstrumentation and BioMEMS Laboratory, and is an associate director of the School of Medicine’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC). Her research focuses on chemical and biological sensing applications, the use of technology to speed biomarker discovery, novel bioMEMs devices, and the bioinformatics interpretation of sensor output.

YAYOI TAKAMURA INVITED TO PRESTIGIOUS NAE SYMPOSIUM

YAYOI TAKAMURA , an associate professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, was invited to attend the 2016 Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, presented June 16-18 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, Calif.

As a symposium participant, Takamura shared her research work in a poster format displayed during all three days, providing an opportunity for discussions and collaborative opportunities with all other attendees. Participation was limited to 60 engineers from Japanese and U.S. industry, universities and government labs, to better facilitate such interactions.

Takamura earned her master’s degree and doctorate at Stanford, and then completed postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley. She joined the UC Davis faculty in 2006. Her research focuses on the creation of next-gen spintronic devices, sensors and low-temperature solid oxide fuel cells, all of which require the development of materials with new functional properties.

YAYOI TAKAMURA

CRISTINA DAVIS




PHD CANDIDATE WINS IEEE STUDENT PAPER AWARD

JINBO LI, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), won the Best Student Paper Award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) annual Asia Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC2015), held Dec. 6-9, 2015 in Nanjing, China. The paper, titled “Passive Interferometer for Wideband and Linear Transmitter Leakage Cancellation,” is co-authored with faculty advisor Q. Jane Gu, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and ECE postdoctoral research associate Ran Shu. Li earned his undergraduate (’10) and master’s degrees (’13) at Jiao Tong University’s School of Microelectronics in Shanghai, China. Li’s research focuses on radio frequency/monolithic microwave integrated circuits/terahertz (RF/MMIC/THz) and mixed-signal integrated circuits and systems. He is a member of Gu’s High Speed Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab, and the UC Davis Millimeter Wave Research Center.

UC DAVIS ALUM’S FIRST BOOK DETAILS HIS NASA CAREER

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) lead engineer ADAM STELTZNER gained significant attention during 2012’s Mars Curiosity Rover mission. Steltzner has detailed the richly improbable events that led to this successful mission in his first book: The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership and High-Stakes Innovation, published by Penguin/Random House. The recipient of a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from UC Davis in 1990, Steltzner led the innovative Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) team that guided Curiosity to its successful touchdown inside Mars’ massive Gale Crater at 10:32 p.m. (PDT) Aug. 5, 2012. Steltzner and his EDL crew — at one point, almost 2,000 people — devised the rocket-powered “sky crane” that hovered over the planet’s surface and lowered Curiosity on a cable. Steltzner’s book, co-written with William Patrick, is an inspiring, first-person account of the birth of one of the most innovative projects in NASA engineering.

NING PAN NAMED AN APS FELLOW

NING PAN, a professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, has been elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). He is being honored for his “significant contributions to the scientific research of mechanics and physics in the field of fibrous materials.” Pan was recognized officially March 15, 2016, during the APS monthly meeting in Baltimore, MD. Pan earned his master’s degree (’82) and PhD (’85) in textile engineering at Donghua University in Shanghai, China. He joined the UC Davis College of Engineering in 1990.

JINBO LI, LEFT


EMERITUS PROFESSOR ESTABLISHES FUND FOR GEOTECHNICAL EDUCATION

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Emeritus Professor Izzat M. Idriss and his wife have presented the College of Engineering with a $100,000 gift, to establish the MARIAM AND IZZAT M. IDRISS ENDOWMENT FUND for Geotechnical Engineering Education.

The endowment will enrich the post-graduate experience in geotechnical engineering, through the support of graduate student participation in professional conferences, the hosting of scholars to engage in extended interactions with graduate students, and an enhanced exposure to major geotechnical projects and special training opportunities.

Idriss earned his doctorate in geotechnical engineering — with minors in math and engineering mechanics — from UC Berkeley. After working in industry and as a consultant for roughly a quarter-century, he joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989, and became director of the campus’ Center for Geotechnical Modeling, a position he held until 1996. Idriss was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989.

Since opening in 1983, the UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling has provided users access to world-class facilities, including a massive 9-meter-radius centrifuge with shaking tables, in order to enable major advances in the ability to predict and improve the performance of soil and soil-structure systems affected by earthquake, wave, wind and storm surge loadings.

NICHOLASPEPPAS DELIVERS COLLEGE

DISTINGUISHED LECTURE

Pioneering biomedical and chemical engineer NICHOLAS A. PEPPAS visited the College of Engineering in April 2016 to give a lecture, “Intelligent Nanoscale Biopolymers for Recognitive and Responsive Delivery of Drugs, Peptides and Proteins.” Peppas is the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and has been recognized as the “father of modern drug delivery.” He has received international media attention for his continued development of an insulin capsule to replace painful injections for people with diabetes. The same technology has been used for treatment of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women and for cancer therapy. It is also under study for interferon-beta release to treat patients with multiple sclerosis. With the help of Emergent Technologies, Inc. of Austin, Peppas has founded three biotech companies to commercialize some of his new biomaterials and drug delivery systems. Peppas is a member of both the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and the National Academy of Engineers (NAE), as well as the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the Académie Nationale of France, the Academy of Athens, the Real Academia Nacional de Farmacia of Spain and the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Sciences of Texas (TAMEST). His work has been cited more than 83,000 times.


26 UC DAV I S C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G 26 UC DAV I S C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

Retired Faculty-Staff Couple

to Create ProfessorshipGIVES $1 MILLION

“WE WANT TO MAKE

THIS INVESTMENT

IN THE FUTURE TO

CONTINUE TO IMPROVE

THE QUALITY OF

ORTHOPEDIC HEALTH

CARE SO PEOPLE CAN

LIVE ACTIVE, ENJOYABLE

LIFESTYLES.”

– MAURY HULL


UC DAVIS HAS RECEIVED A $1 MILLION BEQUEST from Distinguished Professor Emeritus Maury Hull and Karen Slakey Hull to endow a professorship in biomedical engineering with a research emphasis in orthopedics. The Maury L. Hull and Karen S. Hull Endowed Professorship will continue the couple’s already substantial legacy at UC Davis.

UC Davis Engineering Dean Jennifer Sinclair Curtis expressed thanks to the Hulls, who at their retirement in 2014 had a combined career of nearly 65 years at UC Davis.

“On many accounts, the Hulls have shown that they are visionary individuals with an extraordinary commitment to the College of Engineering,” Curtis said. “By establishing an endowed professorship, they will continue to have a profound effect on our ability to attract and retain top faculty who will lead the world toward remarkable discoveries in orthopedic care, much as Maury has done in his career.”

AN INVESTMENT IN THE FUTUREThe endowed professorship will give special recognition to the individual selected and provide supplemental financial support, primarily for research. The professorship could be used to recruit an outstanding scholar from outside the university or may be awarded to a current faculty member to honor excellence. The selected individual can use the funds to support students; cover the cost of travel to professional meetings or conferences; and purchase research supplies, capital equipment and computer time.

“I’ve dedicated my career to improving the quality of orthopedic health care, and I also have a number of orthopedic ailments myself,” said Hull, who joined the faculty in 1976. “So we want to make this investment in the future to continue to improve the quality of orthopedic health care so people can live active, enjoyable lifestyles without being restricted by orthopedic problems, such as bad backs, knees and hips.”

A MULTILAYERED LEGACYHull played a leading role in establishing UC Davis’ biomedical engineering department, which now boasts research expenditures in excess of $20 million per year despite being only 15 years old.

As a faculty member with joint appointments in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hull was an adviser to more than 80 graduate students during the course of his career, leading him to deeply value the mentorship that a professor can provide to the next generation of engineers.

“A professorship offers the opportunity to train new people in the field,” he said. “That’s important because the more people working and devoted to these problems, the more progress we’ll have. So there will be a huge ripple effect, and the endowment is in perpetuity, so it’s long-term.”

Hull is also well-known nationally and internationally for his research in biomedical engineering. He received the American Society of Biomechanics’ Borelli Award — the society ’s highest honor — in 1989 for “preeminent contributions to biomechanics.” In 2005, he served as chair of the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and led the establishment of the highly successful annual Summer Bioengineering Conference. In 2007, he was named the H.R. Lissner Medalist by the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers — the division’s highest honor — for his career-level outstanding achievements in the field of bioengineering.

Hull’s current research challenges convention regarding total knee replacements, one of the most common orthopedic procedures performed on people older than 65, with more than 700,000 occurring each year in the United States.

With up to 20 percent of patients (or 140,000 people per year) dissatisfied with the outcome of their knee replacements,


After retirement, Karen Hull started a small flower farm in Lincoln, Calif., which has since grown into a successful business.


Maury L. Hull and Karen S. Hull Endowed Professorship Continued from page 27

Hull wanted an alternative to the conventional technique. The conventional replacement technique does not take into account whether someone is knock-kneed or bow-legged, but rather reconstructs a knee in a straight line. Because a straight line is unnatural for 98 percent of patients and requires additional surgery in the form of soft tissue releases to make the knee straight, outcomes are often less than ideal. Patients commonly report persistent pain, stiffness, loss of movement, and/or instability.

In search of a solution, Hull collaborated with Stephen Howell, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon and adjunct professor in UC Davis’ Department of Biomedical Engineering, to revolutionize total knee replacements. The two researchers developed a new technique that customizes the replacement knee to fit the patient’s natural gait, significantly reducing the number of dissatisfied patients.

“Distinguished Professor Hull has already made a lasting impact on both UC Davis and orthopedic health care,” Howell said. “Now, through philanthropy, he has taken his legacy to a whole new level, opening doors for new discoveries and an even greater biomedical engineering department at UC Davis.”

LEADING THE WAYKaren Hull served in key staff roles in a variety of departments

during her 25-year career at UC Davis, including serving as the first associate vice chancellor of Organizational Excellence, while she

simultaneously served as associate vice chancellor of Human Resources. She established the Organizational Excellence team, which implemented the administrative Shared Services Center.

“The staff of UC Davis are intelligent, hardworking and exceptionally committed to the university’s mission. I’m most proud of the fact that during my career I was able to work with these amazing professionals to lead important and long-standing change that helped the university become more efficient and service oriented, and a better place to work overall,” she said.

Upon retirement, Hull started a flower farm called Bodacious Blooms. She grows peonies, ranunculus and other spring blooming cut flowers, which she sells commercially to florists and wholesalers in the greater Sacramento area. She also donates flowers to an Auburn long-term care facility with the goal of brightening the lives of senior citizens. “Retirement” has been fun for Karen Hull as she enjoys the challenge of building her flower farm from the ground up.

The Hulls said they are glad to support UC Davis’ research mission from afar with an endowment that will make a difference for generations.

“UC Davis has given so much to me, including a lot of gratification in my career,” Karen Hull said. “At UC Davis, you’re part of a bigger whole in support of the university’s education, research and service mission. I have always felt that every employee helps make the world a better place. This really resonated with me as a manager and leader. A person can work anywhere doing anything and you can do it well, but working at UC Davis has the potential for impact that isn’t replicated just any place. So I’m grateful that, with this gift, we’re able to continue the legacy of UC Davis.”

– By Laura Pizzo

“DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR HULL

HAS ALREADY MADE A LASTING

IMPACT ON BOTH UC DAVIS

AND ORTHOPEDIC HEALTH

CARE. NOW, THROUGH

PHILANTHROPY, HE HAS

TAKEN HIS LEGACY TO

A WHOLE NEW LEVEL.”

– STEPHEN HOWELL, M.D.

Starting in the 1970s, Dr. Maury Hull spearheaded the establishment of the biomedical engineering department at UC Davis, well before the field was recognized by academia at large. Now, at his property in Lincoln, Calif., he continues to embrace technology and innovation, standing near the solar panels that power his irrigation system.



Electromechanical SwitchDNA-based

UC Davis Scientists Demonstrate

A TEAM OF RESEARCHERS from the University of California, Davis and the University of Washington has demonstrated that the conductance of DNA can be modulated by controlling its structure, thus opening up the possibility of DNA’s future use as an electromechanical switch for nanoscale computing. Although DNA is commonly known for its biological role as the molecule of life, it has recently garnered significant interest for use as a nanoscale material for a wide-variety of applications.

In their paper published in Nature Communications, the team demonstrated that changing the structure of the DNA double helix by modifying its environment allows the conductance (the ease with which an electric current passes) to be reversibly controlled. This ability to structurally modulate the charge transport properties may enable the design of unique nanodevices based on DNA. These devices would operate using a completely different paradigm than today’s conventional electronics.

“As electronics get smaller they are becoming more difficult and expensive to manufacture, but DNA-based devices could be designed from the bottom-up using directed self-assembly techniques such as ‘DNA origami’,” said Josh Hihath, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Davis and senior author on the paper. DNA origami is the folding of DNA to create two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale level.

“Considerable progress has been made in understanding DNA’s mechanical, structural, and self-assembly properties and the use of these properties to design structures at the nanoscale. The electrical properties, however, have generally been difficult to control,” said Hihath.

NEW TWIST ON DNA? POSSIBLE PARADIGMS FOR COMPUTING

In addition to potential advantages in fabrication at the nanoscale level, such DNA-based devices may also improve the energy efficiency of electronic circuits. The size of devices has been significantly reduced over the last 40 years, but as the size has decreased, the power density on-chip has increased. Scientists and engineers have been exploring novel solutions to improve the efficiency.

“There’s no reason that computation must be done with traditional transistors. Early computers were fully mechanical and later worked on relays and vacuum tubes,” said Hihath. “Moving to an electromechanical platform may eventually allow us to improve the energy efficiency of electronic devices at the nanoscale.”

This work demonstrates that DNA is capable of operating as an electromechanical switch and could lead to new paradigms for computing.

To develop DNA into a reversible switch, the scientists focused on switching between two stable conformations of DNA, known as the

A-form and the B-form. In DNA, the B-form is the conventional DNA duplex that is commonly associated with these molecules. The A-form is a more compact version with different spacing and tilting between the base pairs. Exposure to ethanol forces the DNA into the A-form conformation resulting in an increased conductance. Similarly, by removing the ethanol, the DNA can switch back to the B-form and return to its original reduced conductance value.

ONE STEP TOWARD MOLECULAR COMPUTING

In order to develop this finding into a technologically viable platform for electronics, the authors also noted that there is still a great deal of work to be done. Although this discovery provides a proof-of-principle demonstration of electromechanical switching in DNA, there are generally two major hurdles yet to be overcome in the field of molecular electronics. First, billions of active molecular devices must be integrated into the same circuit as is done currently in conventional electronics. Next, scientists must be able to gate specific devices individually in such a large system.

“Eventually, the environmental gating aspect of this work will have to be replaced with a mechanical or electrical signal in order to locally address a single device,” noted Hihath.

The UC Davis members of the team included Juan Manuel Artés and Yuanhui Li of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the University of Washington members included M.P. Anantram and Jianqing Qi from the Electrical Engineering Department.

This work is funded by the UC Davis Grant Research Investments in the Sciences and Engineering (RISE), which encourages interdisciplinary work to solve problems facing the world today, as well as the National Science Foundation.

– By AJ Cheline


PLAYPATCH, maker of a natural alternative to birth control pills, took the $20,000 first prize and won the $2,500 People’s Choice award in the 16th annual UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition on May 26. The first prize includes $10,000 cash and similar value of in-kind services from Davis Roots, a local startup incubator with ties to both the university and the city of Davis. Five finalists — out of 42 teams in this year’s competition — pitched their ventures to the award ceremony audience before prizes were announced.

PlayPatch has created a wearable fertility tracker that makes natural birth control easy. The inventors say the PlayPatch is as effective as the pill and offers a solution for the 6.6 million U.S. women who are dissatisfied with their contraceptive method. The team lead for PlayPatch is Justin Klein, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering and a Business Development Fellow at the Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UC Davis.

“We feel very strongly that PlayPatch is more than just an interesting idea or a 10-minute pitch,” Klein said. “The prize will help take our prototype to the next level and help us acquire some equipment and pay for things that we couldn’t otherwise afford. Ultimately, it will help reduce uncertainty and make PlayPatch attractive enough that investors will be willing to commit.”

Klein said the company intends to raise a round of seed funding with the goal of selling a product within 18 months.

– By Marianne Skoczek

PlayPatch collaborators UC Davis MBA student Chuck Temple (left) and team lead Justin Klein, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering, show their device.

BIG BANG! COMPETITIONBiomedical Innovations Take Top Prizes in

PLAYPATCH HAS

CREATED A WEARABLE

FERTILITY TRACKER

THAT MAKES NATURAL

BIRTH CONTROL EASY.


IN ITS ANNUAL “BEST OF UC DAVIS” ISSUE in May 2016, the student newspaper The California Aggie named an engineering class as the university’s Best General Education (GE) Course. The Design of Coffee (ECM1 ) is now the most popular GE course at UC Davis, providing a fun way for all students to explore engineering through hands-on coffee brewing.

“Because my class is in the morning, they usually let us brew a cup of coffee first and then we get into the actual lab,” student Nene Takahashi told the Aggie. “I’d definitely recommend for other people to take it, especially if they’re looking for a genuinely enjoyable class.”

Created by Tonya Kuhl and William Ristenpart of the Department of Chemical Engineering, the course was launched as a science and engineering GE in Winter Quarter 2014 to engage a broad group of students with chemical engineering.

The Design of Coffee course would not have been possible without generous donations from companies and individuals to renovate the lab spaces.

Make your impact on instruction at UC Davis. https://give.ucdavis.edu/2400

by philanthropy.byphilanthropy.ucdavis.edu

#byphilanthropy

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THE DESIGN OF COFFEE

COURSE WOULD

NOT HAVE BEEN

POSSIBLE WITHOUT

GENEROUS DONATIONS

FROM COMPANIES

AND INDIVIDUALS

TO RENOVATE THE

LAB SPACES.

Best GE Course!

Phot

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https://give.ucdavis.edu/2400

engineering.ucdavis.edu

facebook.com/UCDEngineering

twitter.com/UCDavisCoE

UC Davis College of EngineeringOne Shields AvenueDavis, CA 95616

Top College for Women in STEM

IN APRIL 2016, UC DAVIS TOPPED FORBES’ LIST of the best value colleges for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The distinction was determined by the rate of female attendance at institutions ranked among the magazine’s “2016 Best Value” universities that specialize in STEM. UC Davis’ enrollment is 56 percent female, and 29 percent of all students specialize in STEM. Cornell and Johns Hopkins universities came in second and third, respectively.

Professor Tina Jeoh (middle), Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

#1 FORBES NAMES UC DAVIS


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