materials science and engineering materials anything …

MagazineSummer 2016

MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

20

2News

8OpenLoopCreating the Future of Transportation

30The Maker MovementCornell’s maker culture is providing space & tools to turn imagination into reality

14What’s in a NameNew faculty title draws industry experts to academia

MATERIALS TODO ANYTHING UNDERTHE SUN

ESTABLISHINGaPLANNEDgiftSHOWS YOUR DEEPEST COMMITMENTTO THE CORNELL YOU KNOW AND LOVE.

CONTACT:JENNIFER SAVILLE

[email protected] ALUMNI.CORNELL.GIFTPLANS.ORG

Susan (’01 and M.Eng. ’02) and Michael Hanson(’01 and MPA ’02), active and engaged Cornell ORIE alumni, felt compelled to support the major renovations on the Cornell Engineering Quad with a gift of appreciated securities. Their gift will help us continue the modernization of Upson Hall so that the labs and classrooms will support Engineering educationas it is today and into the future so kids like theHanson’s children can learn here!

What will your gift support?

To find out if a gift of appreciated securities

is right for you, too, contact the Office of Trusts, Estates, and

Gift Planning.

Photography by: RodneyBailey.com

CORNELL ENGINEERING | 1

PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE WHAT’S IN A NAME?

NEW FACULTY TITLE DRAWS INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO ACADEMIA

By Chris Dawson14

OPENLOOPCREATING THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION

By Geoffrey Giller8

MATERIALS TO DO ANYTHING UNDER THE SUNMATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERINGBy Syl Kacapyr20

THE MAKER MOVEMENTCORNELL’S MAKER CULTURE IS PROVIDING THE SPACE AND

TOOLS TO TURN IMAGINATION INTO REALITYBy Chris Dawson

30

37

PEOPLE

RENEE KING

40

HOMETOWNHERO

2

NEWS

CONTENTSSummer 2016

CornellEngineering Magazine

FEATURES

COVER

DEPARTMENTS

2 | SUMMER 2016

NIH provides $2.3M grant for FeverPhone development

Cornell, ADC tackling rescue ropes issue for U.S. Navy

ENGINEERINGNEWS

he National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Biomedical

Imaging and Bioengineering has awarded to Cornell a four-year, $2.3 million grant to develop FeverPhone, which will diagnose six febrile diseases in the field: dengue, malaria, chikungunya, typhoid fever, leptospirosis and Chagas’ disease. The research is led by David Erickson, Sibley College Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Saurabh Mehta, associate professor of global health, epidemiology and nutrition.

They will develop an app for a smartphone or tablet to work in conjunction with a small blood tester—called Tidbit—that looks similar to a countertop coffee maker and transmits its data wirelessly to the smartphone for analysis. The team will then perform a field validation at an existing infectious diseases monitoring site in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and

An early prototype of the FeverPhone, developed by David Erickson, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Engineers from ADC meet with Cornell graduate students, led by Stuart Leigh Phoenix (pointing), professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, to discuss their joint project to develop improved rescue ropes for the U.S. Navy.

the system will be validated and ready for FDA approval when the research is complete.

The technology will be one of the first to emerge from the Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Global Health and Technology (INSiGHT)—a newly launched project supported by Cornell Engineering and the Division of Nutritional Sciences. INSiGHT aims to develop advanced diagnostic tools to allow health workers, researchers and policymakers with minimal resources to address public health problems. “We’re at a really important convergence of mobile and health care technologies, and it is these types of collaborations that can really move things forward,” Erickson said. “Our goal with INSiGHT is to provide a clearinghouse to make more of these interdisciplinary efforts a reality.”

—Blaine Friedlander

hen you’re dangling above the ocean or the side of a mountain,

suspended from a rescue helicopter, having to worry about anything except the mission at hand is the last thing you need. But Navy Aviation Rescue Swimmers, whose life-saving jobs are done at the end of a cable less than a quarter-inch thick, are dealing with exactly that kind of problem—namely, a jolt of static electricity due to the conductivity of the steel cables on which they descend.

The U.S. Navy has commissioned a team of Cornell Engineering faculty and students—led by Stuart Leigh Phoenix, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering—and Advanced Design Consulting of Lansing, N.Y., to come up

with a replacement for the current steel cables used in helicopter rescue systems. The researchers have developed several prototypes using a liquid crystal polymer material, Vectran, and are in the process of designing a test rig that can simulate the stress put on these cables in rescue situations.

One of the challenges with the new material involves the winch system used to wind the cable onto a reel. In testing, the new rope is very strong, but has been found to burrow into the layers of rope underneath as it’s being reeled in. Thus, coming up with the proper “jacket,” or coating, along with a slight re-engineering of the winch drive will be necessary. The collaboration will continue in the fall semester.

—Tom Fleischman

T

W


6 Ph.D. students learning to commercialize their research

Cornell and Iceland team to model geothermal energy

This prototype device, developed by Commercialization Fellow Bryan Peele, features a stretchable, rubber-like material that illuminates, provides tactile feedback and can be pressurized to form buttons.

Ríkharður Ibsen, left, Jefferson Tester and Albert L. Albertsson sign a MOA between Cornell and GRP, while Ambassador Robert Cushman Barber, back left, and Minister Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir witness it.

ISSN 1081-3977Volume 20, Number 4

Summer 2016

Cornell Engineering Magazine is published

by the Cornell University College of Engineering

Dean Lance Collins

Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering

Associate Dean for Administration

Erin Mulrooney

Executive Editor Dawn S. McWilliams

DirectorMarketing and Communications

Editor Syl Kacapyr

Marketing and Communications

Graphic DesignRobert Kurcoba

Graphic DesignerMarketing and Communications

PrinterCayuga Press

PhotographyAll photos by University

Photography unless otherwise indicated

Editorial and Business Offices

252 Carpenter HallIthaca, NY 14853-2201

phone 607 255-6095fax 607 255-9606

e-mail [email protected]

Visit Cornell Engineering Magazine online at

www.engineering.cornell.edu/magazine

© 2016Cornell Engineering Magazine

Printed on recycled paper.

CORNELLENGINEERING

MAGAZINE

any engineering students spend their graduate years deeply

immersed in a particular technology. Now six doctoral students are spending the summer and the fall semester exploring the potential to turn that research into a business.

They are the first Commercialization Fellows, part of a new entrepreneurship initiative offered by Cornell Engineering in which students work one-on-one with mentors and coaches to identify potential market opportunities for their technology by developing comprehensive, strategic business plans.

The technologies include an x-ray technique for analyzing chemical composition, a

multiphoton microscope that uses 48 channels of color information, a proprietary line of insect cell cultures, an energy storage system designed for a power grid, a stretchable light-emitting material that provides tactile feedback and can form buttons, and a signal-processing method to produce better MRI and CT scans.

The fellows are learning the methods and skills to bring a technology to market, connect with expertise in supply chains, intellectual property, product development, capital raising and startup company formation. In addition to the fellowship’s coaches and mentors, students have access to alumni, entrepreneurs and

business experts, and will be matched with teams of MBA students who will assist in finalizing business plans and pitch materials.

—Syl Kacapyr

M

Cornell is partnering with the world’s premier facilitator of geothermal

energy, based in Iceland, with the goal of establishing faculty and student exchanges, internships and field trips for students, joint research projects and promotional efforts to encourage more geothermal energy projects in the U.S.

Cornell’s Energy Institute signed a memorandum of agreement on April 28 with the Geothermal Resource Park, a key player in the Iceland Geothermal Cluster that aims to promote clean energy internationally.

A key aim of the agreement

is to conduct a feasibility study for formalizing a joint research center for sustainability, as well as to design a renewable energy park for possible deployment on the Cornell

campus in Ithaca, with an eye toward transforming the campus into a zero-carbon model for other campuses and communities.

—Syl Kacapyr

4 | SUMMER 2016

Bioactive macrocycle shows promising antibacterial activity

Cornellians to advise Starshot exploring Alpha Centauri

Mason Peck, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Stephen Hawking after the announcement of the Breakthrough Starshot project.

Assistant Professor Christopher Alabi, second from left, and graduate students Mintu Porel, Ngoc Phan and Dana Thornlow. Their paper on sequence-defined bioactive macrocycles was published on May 9 in Nature Chemistry.

ENGINEERINGNEWS

group of Cornell researchers has published a study

detailing a simple, efficient method for the assembly of biologically compatible polymers, with complete control over their composition and arrangement. Their findings could lead to new antibacterial drugs and drug-

delivery systems.Christopher Alabi, assistant

professor in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, led the study and his group’s paper, “Sequence-defined bioactive macrocycles via an acid-catalysed cascade reaction,” was published May 9 in Nature Chemistry. Collaborators, all from his lab, included postdoctoral researcher Mintu Porel, and Dana Thornlow and Ngoc Phan, graduate students in the field of chemical engineering.

“I think we’ve made significant progress,” Alabi said. “I think the overall goal is not to recreate biological molecules—the goal is to maybe capture some of the functions of what we want, in the smallest sequence that we can make.”

“We’re just scratching the surface,” he said. “Biological molecules fold into myriad structures, so we’re taking baby steps and trying to understand the role of composition and structure on molecular function.”

—Tom Fleischman

ornell faculty and alumni are helping to advise Breakthrough Starshot—a

$100 million research and engineering project aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled nanocraft that could capture and send back images and scientific data from our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

The project was announced April 12 during a press conference in New York City by philanthropist Yuri Milner and renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who say the goal is to fly nanocraft at 20 percent the speed of light and reach Alpha Centauri within 20 years of their launch.

Among those advising the project will be Mason Peck, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and his former student Zac Manchester, Ph.D. ’15, now a researcher at Harvard University. Peck and Manchester have engineered tiny, cracker-sized satellites called “Sprites,” which are serving as models for how the Breakthrough Starshot nanocraft could be designed.

The Breakthrough Starshot

nanocraft will likely be similar to the Cornell Sprites in that they will have to pack a lot of technology, yet be inexpensive to produce so that large numbers could be deployed. Each craft will be attached to a thin “lightsail” just a few atoms thick and be pushed by a laser light beam shot from Earth, creating an effect much like wind pushing a sail boat.

Other Cornellians serving on the project’s management and advisory committee are former astronaut Mae Jemison, M.D. ’81; Princeton professor Bruce Draine, Ph.D. ’78; Planetary Society founder Louis Friedman, M.S. ’63; theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, who taught at Cornell from 1951-53; and Ann Druyan, author and producer of the PBS documentary series Cosmos, and board member of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute: Pale Blue Dot and Beyond.

A group of students from Ithaca High School will also be working with Cornell students to model a lightsail spacecraft after winning an international competition to have their design engineered into reality.

—Syl Kacapyr

A C

On the WebCornell Engineering Magazine has a Website, with videos, Web extras, and the latest news. Come see what’s

happening, leave a class note to let your college friends

know what you’re up to, or sign up for digital delivery.

www.engineering. cornell.edu/magazine

@CornellEng

facebook.com/ CornellEngineering

www.youtube.com/CornellEng

http://bit.ly/1LukNq1

www.instagram.com/CornellEng/


Cancer cells’ ability to self-repair may spawn new treatments

Metal-foam hybrid has potential in soft robotics, aeronautics

Research by Jan Lammerding, associate professor of biomedical engineering, shows the stages a cancer cell goes through after squeezing through a constricted space.

The metal-foam compound developed in the lab of Rob Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, can be heated in order to change its shape, then cooled to regain stiffness.

ecause they have narrow bodies and no collarbones, mice are

able to squeeze through holes as small as a quarter-inch in diameter. Cancer cells similarly are able to migrate through extremely tight quarters but with a major difference: The journey often comes at a price—the deformation and, in some cases, rupture of the outer lining of a cell’s nucleus.

A research group headed by Jan Lammerding, associate professor of biomedical engineering, has been studying this phenomenon in hope of using it to develop both treatment and diagnostic solutions for the millions of people who deal with cancer every day.

Lammerding’s group reports on this research in a paper published online March 24 in

First Release, from the journal Science.

The group looked at two factors in the cell’s migration process: the rupturing of the nuclear envelope, which they tracked using green and red fluorescent proteins normally localized to the cell nuclei, but that spill into the cell body when the nucleus ruptures; and damage to the cell’s DNA.

“We’re still trying to find out if there are differences between cells, and a lot of what we see is very similar between normal cells and cancer cells,” Lammerding said, adding that by trying to identify potentially unique deformation-and-repair properties of cancer cells, treatments that are minimally deleterious to healthy cells may be developed.

—Tom Fleischman

magine an aircraft that could alter its wing shape in midflight and, like a

pelican, dive into the water before morphing into a submarine.

Impossible, you say? A little too “Transformers,” perhaps? Well, the U.S. Air Force doesn’t think so, and believes Cornell engineering professor Rob Shepherd and his group might help make that futuristic-sounding vehicle a reality.

The key is a hybrid material featuring stiff metal and soft, porous rubber foam that combines the best properties of both—stiffness when it’s called for, and elasticity when a change of shape is required. The material also has the ability to self-heal following damage.

This hybrid material combines a soft alloy called

Field’s metal with a porous silicone foam. In addition to its low melting point of 144 degrees Fahrenheit, Field’s metal was chosen because, unlike similar alloys, it contains no lead.

The elastomer foam is dipped into the molten metal, then placed in a vacuum so that the air in the foam’s pores is removed and replaced by the alloy. The foam had pore sizes of about 2 millimeters; that can be tuned to create a stiffer or a more flexible material.

In testing of its strength and elasticity, the material showed an ability to deform when heated above 144 degrees, regain rigidity when cooled, then return to its original shape and strength when reheated.

—Tom Fleischman

B I

6 | SUMMER 2016

ENGINEERINGNEWS

An optical floating zone furnace, center, is used to synthesize new materials together, including Pr2Zr2O7, left in blue, and Yb2Ti2O7, right in green. The resulting single crystals are several millimeters in diameter and several centimeters long.

A schematic of the single-particle tracking binding assay used in the research into parvovirus, conducted by Susan Daniel, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Provided

Provided

Cornell looks to make PARADIM shift with $25M NSF grant

Surface mutation lets canine parvovirus jump to other species

ornell University is leading an effort that will empower scientists,

engineers and entrepreneurs throughout the nation to design and create new interface materials—materials that do not exist in nature and possess unprecedented properties—thanks to a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM) will invite users to take advantage of various facilities, data and expertise at Cornell and its partner institutions to create new materials from the bottom up, eliciting novel ways for electrons to carry information in solid-state devices and efficiently interact with magnetic, electrical and optical stimuli.

These interface materials produce properties that will impact electronics relevant to national security (quantum computation, universal memories and secure communication), clean energy (improved catalysts), national infrastructure (smart

systems enabling low-power signal processing and data storage), and human welfare (miniaturized sensors for medical imaging).

To balance the desire for a rich nationwide user group and the practicality of managing physical resources across different locations, PARADIM locates its Web-based theory facility at Clark Atlanta University, its bulk-crystal growth facility at Johns Hopkins University, and its thin-film growth and characterization facilities at Cornell. PARADIM also leverages expertise from Princeton University as well as existing user facilities such as the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility, the Cornell Center for Materials Research, and the Johns Hopkins Materials Characterization and Processing Facility.

“PARADIM is a mecca for materials discovery. We look forward to helping users realize their materials-by-design dreams,” said Darrell Schlom, professor of materials science and engineering and PARADIM director.

—Syl Kacapyr

C

C anine parvovirus, or CPV, emerged as a deadly threat to dogs

in the late 1970s, most likely the result of the direct transfer of feline panleukopenia or a similar virus from domesticated cats. CPV has since spread to wild forest-dwelling animals, including raccoons, and the transfer of the virus from domesticated to wild carnivores has been something of a mystery.

With a major assist from the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF), a multidisciplinary team of researchers has identified a mutation in CPV that can profoundly alter transferrin receptor (TfR) binding and infectivity of the virus. The methodology used in this research could blaze a trail for future research into other viruses, including influenza.

A research paper co-authored by Susan Daniel, associate professor in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, which contends that a key mutation in the protein shell of CPV—a single amino acid substitution—plays a major role in the virus’ ability to infect hosts of different species.

One of Daniel’s specialties is the investigation of chemically patterned surfaces that interact with soft matter, including biological materials such as cells, viruses, proteins and lipids. Her lab has pioneered a method called single-particle tracking—placing artificial cell membranes into microfluidics devices, fabricated at the CNF, to study the effect of single virus particles on a variety of membrane host receptors, in this case from both dogs and raccoons.

—Tom Fleischman


Jack Neafsey and his wife, Rilla, funded the John P. and Rilla Neafsey Engineering/Johnson Program Endowment to support eHub.

Cornell student project teams place in national competitions

Neafsey gift helps launch eHub

xamine the DNA of the strong relationship between the Johnson

School and Cornell Engineering, and you’ll find one alumnus intertwined with just about every strand. For decades, John P. Neafsey, M.Eng. ’62, M.B.A. ’63, has been energetically contributing to the two Cornell colleges that gave him his start in business. Neafsey, who served for decades on the Advisory Councils of the College of Engineering and Johnson and is a former Cornell Trustee and past overseer of the medical school, chaired Johnson’s $46.6 million capital campaign in the 1980s, playing a key role in renaming and transforming the school.

Most recently, Neafsey and his wife, Rilla, have reengineered their ongoing commitment to Engineering and Johnson, converting their longstanding professorship into a program-endowment fund to benefit both colleges.

One program supported by the gift is eHub, Cornell’s 15,000 square feet of collaboration and incubator space in two locations: Kennedy Hall on campus and 409 College Ave. in Collegetown. Created as a collaboration between Student Agencies, Inc., and the Johnson School, Engineering, Entrepreneurship at Cornell, and other Cornell units, eHub fills an important niche in Ithaca. “eHub is

E

everal engineering student project teams placed high in their respective national competitions this year.S

a transformative way for students, faculty, and staff to ‘do’ entrepreneurship at Cornell,” said Zach Shulman ’87, JD ’90, director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell.

Neafsey’s funding is essential to the initiative’s success. “Funds to support founders are critical to enable them to take advantage of their time while they are students—it’s a

great time to start a business!” said Shulman. “Under Zach Shulman’s leadership, eHub and other entrepreneurial programs can distinguish Cornell from other institutions and serve as a complement to what’s happening on the Cornell Tech campus,” said Neafsey.

—Irene Kim

• Cornell ChemE Car won its fourth title after competing in the 2016 Northeast Regional Competition hosted by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

• Cornell Rocketry is the Centennial Challenge and NASA Student Launch 2016 champions.

• CUAIR came in second place in the 14th annual Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Air Systems Competition held in Patuxent River, Md.

• Baja received second place overall and first place in suspension at the Baja SAE Collegiate Design Series at Tennessee Tech.

• Cornell Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Seismic Design took third place at the 13th Annual Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition in San Francisco.

• Concrete Canoe paddled their way to third place overall at the Concrete Canoe Race hosted by SUNY Buffalo.

• Steel Bridge won first place in the poster/bridge display and in the oral presentation categories at the Steel Bridge Competition hosted by SUNY Buffalo.

• Design, Build, Fly completed all three missions, taking eighth place overall at the AIAA Design/Build/Fly Competition in Wichita, Kan.

8 | SUMMER 2016

CREA

TIN

G T

HE F

UTUR

E O

F TR

ANSP

OR

TATI

ON

OPE

NLO

OP:

HYPE

RLO

OP

By G

eoffr

ey G

iller

8 | SUMMER 2016


short video was trending on Facebook in May, showing what looks a bit like a robot’s rib cage shooting down a metal track. The contraption accelerates to over 100 miles per hour in about one second before slowing down in a spray of sand,

while upbeat music plays in the background. The video itself isn’t that visually remarkable; it’s what it represents that has people excited.

The sled is a prototype for the future of transportation, as dreamed up by entrepreneur Elon Musk (of SpaceX, Tesla and PayPal fame). In 2013, Musk decided that transportation in the U.S. was in desperate need of innovation after seeing the approval of a “high-speed” train project in California that would be one of the slowest such trains in the world. Musk’s vision: a continuous tube connecting cities (like San Francisco and Los Angeles) that would use a combination of vacuums, air compression and levitation to launch pods full of people at nearly the speed of sound. Musk gave this system the futuristic-sounding name of “Hyperloop.”

Musk and his various companies didn’t have time to actually design and create this system, however. Instead, other private companies have been working on developing the Hyperloop; the video was a demonstration by one of those companies, Hyperloop One. But in order to drum up interest and to generate new innovations, Musk and SpaceX also announced last summer a competition, geared mostly towards university student teams, for designing a Hyperloop pod. That’s where Nick Parker, a rising computer science junior at Cornell, comes in. “Four hours after they announced this, I posted on the Cornell Engineering group: ‘So, do we have a team yet?’” Parker recalls. The response: “No, because it’s only been four hours.” Parker quickly organized a call with a few other students, and they decided to compete.

They ran into obstacles almost immediately. Project teams at Cornell Engineering, which can get support from the college in the form of funding, space and access to equipment,

normally must follow a set timeline: put together a proposal to form a team in the spring, and, if approved, start work in the fall. But with preliminary design schematics due for the Hyperloop competition in November, that timeline wasn’t going to work.

While they couldn’t register immediately as a team, says Rebecca Macdonald, the Swanson Director of Engineering Student Project Teams, they were welcome to find an advisor and form a club. “I wanted to let them know that I think it’s a fantastic initiative,” she says, even though she couldn’t offer them official support that the other registered student teams receive. There are currently over 1,000 students on two dozen teams at Cornell Engineering, working on projects from clean water initiatives to bridge-building in Bolivia. So Parker found an advisor—Michel Louge, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering—who agreed to sign on and formed a club instead.

Parker and his burgeoning club also recognized that they were going to need help from outside Cornell. They reached out to over a dozen other engineering schools, and eventually nascent teams at Princeton University, Harvey Mudd College, the University of Michigan, Northeastern University and the Memorial University of Newfoundland agreed to team up. For those keeping count, that’s six universities, three time zones, and two countries. They dubbed themselves “OpenLoop.”

Parker insists on the fact that OpenLoop is not “Cornell’s team.” Rather, it’s an alliance of the six schools. Membership varies, but Parker estimates that there are about 60 to 80

A prototype transport pod developed by Hyperloop One was tested in the Nevada desert last May, successfully accelerating to 105 miles-per-hour in about one second.

A conceptual design sketch of a Hyperloop transport capsule created by SpaceX.

A


10 | SUMMER 2016

members of OpenLoop across the campuses. The whole thing is very democratic: In the beginning, “we had six campus leaders, and we were voting on everything by majority,” he says. However, Parker is the “build lead,” an elected position that OpenLoop decided to create that can unilaterally make quick decisions when there’s no time to debate across the various campuses and time zones.

Patrick McKeen, a rising senior and OpenLoop’s campus lead at Harvey Mudd, was not initially in favor of joining up with the alliance. But Parker convinced him, he says. And joining OpenLoop would allow them to potentially create an actual prototype. “Mudd doesn’t have the space to build a pod,” McKeen says, meaning that they would have been a design-only team. While some issues did arise—including the difficulties of working synchronously across so many time zones, or the fact that there were at first six leaders across the colleges with equal standing—McKeen says that they managed to work through them.

Parker made sure to seek out non-engineering students for OpenLoop as well. Julian Moraes, a rising junior at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, is OpenLoop’s business lead. He has helped raise some of the funds that will let OpenLoop actually build their prototype.

Parker also sought out freshmen to join OpenLoop. There can be an advantage, he says, to having people on the

team who bring fresh viewpoints. “It allows you to have that extra perspective,” says Annie Taylor, a rising sophomore who plans to major in applied and engineering physics. She joined OpenLoop as a freshman and says sometimes not understanding the basic concepts of an issue—and asking about those concepts—can help others see where they’re going wrong or how to get around a problem that they’re stuck on. Taylor values the experience of working with OpenLoop, which she thinks will help her be a better team member and leader in the future.

ENGINEERING IN UNCHARTED TERRITORYWith the membership of OpenLoop set, the team turned

towards the task of actually designing a pod. The challenges were daunting. For starters, objects moving at near-supersonic speeds at ground level, where the air is relatively thick, face incredibly high amounts of air resistance. Parker’s first instinct: buy a decommissioned jet engine to suck air in at the front of the pod, reducing air drag. “Saner minds prevailed,” he admits. The team decided to focus on a different fundamental challenge: keeping a large metal pod levitating on a track.

There are two main ways to achieve levitation, explains Parker: magnets (maglev) or compressed air (airlev). They decided to go with airlev, in part because they felt that there was more to explore and invent with airlev. “Maglev’s a pretty well explored space,” says Parker. “Whether we succeed or not, we’ll have proven something very valuable about [airlev] technology.” OpenLoop’s pod relies on eight SCUBA tanks that force compressed air downward, letting the pod speed on a cushion of air a few millimeters above the track. If you get specific enough, says Parker, the “air skates” that they’ve created are actually the first of their kind in the world. “I’m pretty sure we’re building the largest and lowest-pressure air-bearings ever, and there’s a decent chance they’re also the fastest,” he says. “We’re definitely in pretty uncharted territory.” The eventual pod will be about 18-feet-long, encased in a sleek carbon-fiber shell. For the competition, a SpaceX-provided pusher will propel the pod down the track. Real

A conceptual image showing the inner workings of OpenLoop’s pod, including its frame, suspension, breaks and compressed-air tanks used for levitation.

“ I’M PRETTY SURE WE’RE BUILDING THE LARGEST AND LOWEST-PRESSURE AIR-BEARINGS EVER. WE’RE DEFINITELY IN PRETTY UNCHARTED TERRITORY.”

— Nick Parker

10 | SUMMER 2016


Hyperloop pods will probably use linear induction motors, says Parker.

Parker isn’t worried about patents or intellectual property claims on any of these things they’re creating. Everything will be made public domain, hence the name “OpenLoop.” And should the team win any prize money, each campus will donate their share of the money either to their endowments or a charity.

LET THE COMPETITION BEGINThe Hyperloop competition unfolds in stages, with the

number of teams progressively winnowed. OpenLoop was one of about 120 teams invited to attend Design Weekend this past January, where their designs would be judged after submitting their designs to SpaceX’s Hyperloop committee. Parker and over 50 other OpenLoopers arrived on the Texas A&M campus, where they and the other teams set up booths, swapped tips and stories, and admired each other’s designs.

Then came the moment of truth: the judging. Parker and the other campus leaders presented their designs to the judges—a panel that included both SpaceX employees and academics—and, Parker says, they all thought it went pretty well. In fact, afterwards, they started getting more attention from representatives of various companies that were looking to sponsor some of the teams.

About an hour before the announcement of which teams would make it through to the next round, a SpaceX engineer walked up to OpenLoop’s booth to ask two or three very pointed questions about specific flaws in the design, Parker recalls. The answers they gave didn’t seem to satisfy him, and he left brusquely. When the 23 teams who had been selected to move on to the next stage were announced, OpenLoop was not among them.

Deflated, Parker and his teammates returned to their scattered campuses and debated what to do next. Parker wanted to take some time to regroup, rework their designs to respond to the critiques, and then reach out again to SpaceX.

But others said that they should follow up immediately. “They ended up winning that argument, and I’m very glad they did,” Parker says. He sent off an email to SpaceX’s Hyperloop team the day after the competition, thanking them for their feedback and briefly addressing two main shortcomings that were raised by the judges during the Design Weekend competition. He asked for ten days to address the problems.

The response came almost immediately. “Your team received a lot of attention today,” the email read. “We want to send you through,” they continued, but “10 days is too long... we would need answers by tomorrow morning.”

Parker immediately forwarded the email to the other campus leaders and started calling his Cornell teammates, telling them to meet him at the computer lab. “We didn’t sleep that night,” he says with a laugh. Taylor remembers the night well. “It was exciting, because we all knew that we could do it,” she says. “They had told us explicitly—they said, ‘You have to do X, Y and Z in order to get into the competition,’ and that made it pretty clear.”

Teams react as the Hyperloop Competition finalists are announced at Hyperloop Design Weekend on the Texas A&M campus in January. About 120 teams were invited to attend, but only 31 made the cut, including OpenLoop.

Tess Despres, a rising junior at Harvey Mudd College and member of OpenLoop’s Controls Team, is interviewed at Hyperloop Design Weekend on the Texas A&M campus in January.


12 | SUMMER 2016

The OpenLoop pod with the final machining and assembly of the frame, wheels, brakes and the air-supply system.

12 | SUMMER 2016


The next morning, they submitted a 19-page document to SpaceX addressing the issues raised. And within 24 hours, they got another email: “Congrats, you are going through to Competition Weekend!” OpenLoop was now one of just 31 teams that will be competing at the end of this summer in California, showing off their prototypes. But among the details for moving forward, the Hyperloop team cautioned: “This will be an enormous amount of work.”

Since then, the OpenLoop crew has indeed been hard at work. And they’ve had some outside help, in the form of funding, sponsorships and donations from various companies. Each of the six schools has kicked in $10,000 towards the creation of their prototype. Hyperloop One—the company behind the viral test video—has signed on as a sponsor, offering them another $10,000, advice from their engineers and a visit to the company before Competition Weekend. KVH Industries, a telecommunications company, donated a sensor worth $20,000 that senses the pod’s orientation and acceleration. And a huge get was sponsorship from a precision manufacturing company, Rhinestal AMG, who agreed to build their pod’s frame.

Some of these companies, like KVH, are just interested in seeing how their technology performs in a novel scenario like this one. “It’s a really interesting use case for them,” Parker says. Plus, it could put them on SpaceX’s or Hyperloop One’s radar down the line, if and when the Hyperloop starts to become a reality. Others, Parker suspects, want to use this competition to find and recruit engineers to come work for them.

For his part, Parker isn’t ultimately interested in working on transportation systems after he graduates. “This, for me, was mostly a really great way to get leadership experience before actually getting out of school,” he says. He also liked that it could actually have an impact on the world. But Parker’s main interest is 3-D printing. He built his first 3-D printer when he was 14, and had created several more by the time he graduated from high school. This summer, he’s working for a company developing 3-D printing in space.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!Parker is eager to see how their pod performs on the mile-

long test track that SpaceX is building in Hawthorne, Calif., for the competition. He’s not concerned with how fast it’s able to go, which some other teams are focused on; rather, he wants it to shoot down the track smoothly, “like it’s on a cloud.” He wants to look at the data and think, “I would ride that from San Francisco to L.A.,” he says.

It’s not clear what will happen to OpenLoop after Competition Weekend, partly because SpaceX hasn’t officially

declared whether the competition will continue on after that. But Parker thinks he’ll probably switch back to focusing on 3-D printing. Whatever happens with OpenLoop, though, it has already been successful as far as Parker is concerned. Working on and leading a team like this, he says, is a great educational tool, teaching things that coursework simply cannot.

Hyperloop Competition Weekend is scheduled for Jan. 27-29, 2017. There will undoubtedly be some buzz about it—so if you see “Hyperloop” trending on Facebook early next year, make sure to click on the link and see whether OpenLoop won.

“ THIS, FOR ME, WAS MOSTLY A REALLY GREAT WAY TO GET LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE BEFORE ACTUALLY GETTING OUT OF SCHOOL.”

— Nick Parker

A rendering of the OpenLoop pod’s fuselage, including logos from many of the team’s sponsors.

Stephen LeDrew (left) and Luke Tilley (right), students at Memorial University of Newfoundland and members of OpenLoop’s Air Supply Team, keep inventory.


14 | SUMMER 2016

PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE WHAT’S IN A NAME?

t is no longer good enough to simply train engineers to be technically proficient at what they do. To stay relevant to students and to industry, colleges of engineering have to do so much more than transfer academic knowledge. Students today need to learn about sustainability,

entrepreneurialism, communication, teamwork and leadership.In order to better provide today’s students with what they

need, Cornell Engineering has recently approved the creation of the faculty position called “professor of practice.” “We are excited to have this title available,” says Lance Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell. “It provides a way to bring a very different set of complementary skills to campus to add to our already stellar faculty. Now, people with deep experience in industry will have a chance to be part of the teaching corps of the university.”

To understand the value of the professor of practice title, it is helpful to know some of the history.

Fourteen years ago, back in 2002, Cornell Trustees and Faculty approved the title “clinical professor.” A person hired for a clinical professor position would be a non-tenure-track teacher. The title was approved because at the time Cornell lacked any professional titles for people with academic appointments focused solely, or mostly, on teaching with

little or no expectation of engagement in research. This put Cornell at a great disadvantage when it came to recruiting and hiring people with years of professional experience in their fields and a wish to teach.

Imagine, for example, a person who had worked in the petroleum industry for more than thirty years, with many of those years spent as a manager of engineering and construction. Further imagine that person wished to join

I

Al Center, professor of practice in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

14 | SUMMER 2016


By Chris Dawson

NEW FACULTY TITLE DRAWS INDUSTRY

EXPERTS TO ACADEMIA

the faculty of a college of engineering to share the wealth of knowledge he

had gained about plant design, process control strategies and managing new business

development. In 2001 Cornell Engineering would have had no way to match other universities

whose range of faculty titles could give suitable acknowledgement of this person’s status, qualifications and

opportunity for career advancement.

In 2002, with the adoption of the clinical professor title, the university thought it had addressed the problem and given each of the colleges a new tool to attract these highly qualified and deeply knowledgeable people. But it turns out the specific words in the title matter more than people thought. While the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Cornell Law School got on board right away and hired experienced people with the title of clinical professor, many other units around the university found the title limiting and unattractive to people they wanted to hire.

In 2014 the Faculty Senate wrote, “Although the 2002 enabling legislation represented an important step in modernizing Cornell’s academic titles, the choice of clinical professor title as the sole authorized designation for non-tenure-track faculty engaged heavily or exclusively in a primary teaching function has proven too limited for a number of units on campus.” The words “clinical professor” simply didn’t have what it took to attract experienced industrial practitioners to Cornell over the competition.

The Faculty Senate revisited the issue and hit upon a practical solution. Rather than crafting new legislation to create a new title, they voted to amend the 2002 enabling legislation to allow each unit of Cornell to use either the clinical professor

“ IT PROVIDES A WAY TO BRING A VERY DIFFERENT SET OF COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS TO CAMPUS TO ADD TO OUR ALREADY STELLAR FACULTY.”

— Lance Collins


16 | SUMMER 2016

or the professor of practice title, at their discretion. Within a few months of the amendment’s approval, the faculty of Cornell Engineering voted overwhelmingly to implement the use of the professor of practice academic title. Among tenured and tenure-track faculty, the vote to approve was 139 to 6; among non-tenure-track faculty, it was 17 to 0.

Dean Collins makes it clear that the motivations driving the adoption of the professor of practice title are the same as those behind the initial addition of the clinical professor title back in 2002. “First, most of our peer institutions have a similar title, and so not having the title places us at a competitive disadvantage,” explains Collins. “Second, there are increasing chances to bring faculty with this type of professional experience to Ithaca, as well as to the Cornell Tech campus, and we know their presence will enrich the experience of our students.”

CORNELL ENGINEERING’S FIRST PROFESSORS OF PRACTICE

Remember that hypothetical petroleum industry veteran? He is not so hypothetical.

His name is Alfred Center and he is the first Cornell Engineering faculty member to have the title professor of practice. Center teaches in the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), where he is also the associate director of the school’s masters (M.Eng.) program. “Sometimes in a high-powered research school like Cornell,” says Center, “you run the risk of the work getting so deeply specialized that you lose touch with the practical side of an engineering education. The professor of practice title helps Cornell keep itself firmly planted in the practical, applicable world.”

Center’s point is supported by an NSF-sponsored report created by a joint academic-industrial group of experts led by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. According to the report, “…there is decreased faculty experience with industry and, in the case of faculty members who come from non-chemical-engineering backgrounds, limited experience with core topics. At the heart of this concern is the question of how it affects student preparation. Many industrial participants thought this change was a critical problem.” Center believes the professor of practice title gives Cornell Engineering a valuable tool to address this problem head-on.

While teaching at Cornell, Center has created several very well-received electives based on his many years of experience in the petroleum industry. He has also been the lead teacher in the senior capstone course on plant design for CBE students.

Professor of Practice Newton de Faria (blue hood) celebrates with six graduating biomedical M.Eng. students at a May, 2016 ceremony.

“ BECAUSE WE HAVE REAL WORLD INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE IN A VARIETY OF DOMAINS, WE ARE ABLE TO REALLY HELP THESE STUDENTS THINK THROUGH SOME OF THE CHALLENGES AND ISSUES THEY MIGHT FACE IN THEIR JOBS JUST NEXT YEAR.”

— Al Center

New

ton de

Faria, p

rofess

or of p

ractic

e and

16 | SUMMER 2016


Together with industry veterans Alan Feitelberg, Muqtadar Quraishi and Simon Coulson, Center shares his insights with senior CBE students as they work their way through design projects that require them to consolidate and apply three-years-worth of learning from their core ChemE classes. “Because we have real world industrial experience in a variety of domains,

we are able to really help these students think through some of the challenges and issues they might face in their jobs

just next year,” says Center.One of the many students who have benefitted

greatly by Al Center’s presence on the faculty is Stephanie Glass ’06 CBE. When Glass was

a student at Cornell, Center was retired from the petroleum company Caltex and

had just recently joined the Cornell Engineering teaching faculty. “He

became a mentor to me,” says Glass. “During my senior year he helped me see that

the energy industry isn’t just about putting gasoline in your

tank. Really, it is part of how we solve the global energy problem.”

Because Center had a career’s worth of experience in the energy industry, he was able

to give Glass insights more traditional professors could not. She listened to what he had to say and

today Glass is a fractionation technology group head for ExxonMobil.

Marjolein van der Meulen, the James M. and Marsha McCormick Director of Biomedical Engineering in the Nancy E. and Peter C. Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell (BME), also sees the value of the professor of practice title. “It gives us an opportunity to bring seasoned industry practitioners to Cornell,” says van der Meulen, “and that is quite exciting. These faculty have expertise and experiences that the majority of our faculty do not and that are extremely relevant to our students who intend to continue to industrial careers.”

Van der Muelen and the Meinig School jumped at the chance to hire a professor of practice and scooped up Newton de Faria in 2015. De Faria brings 20 years of industrial experience at National Instruments to his positions as professor of practice and M.Eng. program director for BME. “Newton brings a wealth of industry achievements, contacts and knowledge to the Meinig School,” says van der Meulen. “His background is an outstanding fit with our vision for the professor of practice title in the College of Engineering. In addition to his professional qualifications, Newton is a high energy, engaging and creative individual. We are pleased to have him here.”

And he is pleased to be here. “I was very happy in my job at National Instruments,” says de Faria. “I wasn’t really looking to go anywhere. But then some friends told me about the posting and the more I looked at the description, the more attractive the position became.” De Faria visited campus and met van der Meulen and others in the Meinig School. “For me, the human factor was huge. There are so many good people here. I saw the chance for a twenty-year career here doing the things I love to do and I took it.”

t a gala dinner celebrating the Department of Operations Research and Information Engineering’s (ORIE) 50th anniversary, Director David Shmoys

announced that an ORIE professor of practice position had been endowed by Arthur Geoffrion ’59 MIE ‘61 and his wife Helen. With their gift, the Geoffrions have created the first endowed professor of practice position at Cornell Engineering.

Geoffrion believes that academic-industry interaction is valuable to students and faculty “because of the cornucopia of research problems they will discover, the knowledgeable real-world colleagues and laboratories they will have for learning and testing their ideas, and the real-world experiences that will enliven the classroom.” He also believes that the interaction is valuable to companies and agencies that will “benefit from improved decision technology.”

The professor of practice endowment enables ORIE to “set in motion the notion of an advising and consulting laboratory in ORIE,” Shmoys told attendees at the anniversary gala. The laboratory provides an umbrella structure that will make it possible for students to pursue data-driven modeling and analytical projects that solve real-world problems, extending the project experiences characterizing ORIE’s Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) program in a systematic way to the undergraduate and Ph.D. program.

In particular, the Geoffrion-sponsored professor of practice will bring opportunities to Ph.D. students for real-world engagement—already existing in an ad hoc way that has been complicated to arrange—more to the mainstream within ORIE, increasing the guidance available for their execution. As Geoffrion points out, “Ph.D. students provide the next generation of professors. The more that professors recognize the crucial synergy between academia and practice, the better will be their shared destiny.”

Geoffrion, who received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell in 1959, went on to receive a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Cornell in 1961 and the first Ph.D. in operations research from Stanford. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1965 and retired in 2005 as James A. Collins Chair in Management Emeritus. A highly regarded practitioner and theoretician (he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of INFORMS—the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences), he has worked throughout his career to close the gap between academia and management, for example by establishing in 1982 what became the INFORMS Roundtable.

GEOFFRION GIFT SETS IN MOTION THE ENRICHMENT OF

REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCEBy Mark Eisner

A

New

ton de

Faria, p

rofess

or of p

ractic

e and

dir

ector

of the

Masters

of Engin

eering P

rogram

at the

Mein

ig Scho

ol of B

iomedi

cal Engin

eering.


18 | SUMMER 2016

De Faria sees many ways his experience in industry can be put to use at Cornell. For one, he is teaching BME 5500—Innovation and Design of Biomedical Technologies. The course is for M.Eng. students and it allows de Faria to apply his 20 years of industry experience immediately and directly. “Through my work at National Instruments I have good insights into the process of product development,” says de Faria. “I know the science, but I also know about markets and technical needs and corporate priorities. As I have designed this course, I have been able to bring in so much of what I learned while working in industry.”

One sign that de Faria’s experiences translate directly into value for BME students is the success of a company called Aurora Fluidics. Aurora Fluidics is comprised of BME M.Eng. students Ilya Getsin, Rose Auguste, An Nguyen, and Gaurang Dimri, who entered the 2016 New York Business Plan Competition. De Faria acted as their advisor as they pitched their idea for a device that would streamline the bacterial culturing process from 48 hours to under ten minutes. The team won the People’s Choice Award as the most popular idea in the biotech segment of the competition.

In his position as director of BME’s M.Eng. program, de Faria is responsible for industry outreach. He contacts firms who make and market biomedical devices and he explores the possibilities for BME M.Eng. students to work on real-world projects. Because of his career at National Instruments, de Faria has many valuable contacts in the industry. These connections have paid off and there are currently several industry-sponsored M.Eng. projects underway. De Faria is also quick to point out that in his new position he has had the benefit of the relationships already in place before he got here, as well as the successful and collaborative alumni network.

A third, less obvious but very important benefit to having Newton de Faria in the professor of practice position is his availability to fellow faculty members as they develop new technologies and have questions about product development and commercialization. “Good research institutions create IP,” says de Faria, referring to intellectual property. “This IP is valuable to the university and to society. Because of my industrial experience, I can help professors think through the process of developing their ideas into useful biomedical

devices.” De Faria is excited to be at Cornell and to be one of the first few professors of practice. “Like it or not,” says de Faria, “in academia titles matter. The words matter. People treat you differently when you say you are a professor. I have a chance to help define what professors of practice can be at Cornell Engineering and this is something I take seriously.”

The unit of Cornell Engineering with the most ambitious plans for the professor of practice designation so far is the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (ORIE). Under the leadership of David Shmoys, director of ORIE and the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership, the school has committed to increasing student opportunities for hands-on, data-intensive experiences driven by real-world problems and applications. “Our digital society generates an abundance of data, tracking our every step,” writes Shmoys in a statement outlining his vision for the OR curriculum at Cornell. “As a result, OR, which has its roots in large-scale organization-level, strategic and tactical decision-making, will be used in individual-level, minute-by-minute decision-making that constantly impacts our everyday lives and the everyday operations of enterprises.”

To meet the new and growing demands on OR professionals, the way undergraduates, M.Eng. students and Ph.D. students are taught has got to change with the times. Shmoys understands that OR students must have more exposure to projects where they are asked to integrate real-world applications with their textbook-and-classroom, lecture-based learning. One way to ensure these projects are actually valuable is to have professors of practice deeply involved in the selection and design of the projects students will tackle.

Shmoys’s visionary plan calls for three professors of practice to join the school in the coming years. One will be focused primarily on working with undergraduates, one with M.Eng. students and one with Ph.D. students. Each will possess many years of OR experience out in the world, where the timelines are often short and the data is just about always messy.

The first of these three endowed professor of practice positions has already been funded. At a dinner held earlier this spring to celebrate ORIE’s 50th anniversary at Cornell, Director David Shmoys announced that Art Geoffrion ’59 MIE ’61 and his wife, Helen, have endowed a professor of practice position in ORIE. The person who fills the position will have the explicit charge of increasing the number of opportunities ORIE Ph.D. students have for real-world engagement. “Ph.D. students provide the next generation of professors,” says Geoffrion. “The more that professors recognize the crucial synergy between academia and practice, the better will be their shared destiny.”

Across Cornell Engineering, all of the schools and departments are busy strategizing the best way for each of them to take advantage of the professor of practice title. “It is hard to duplicate in the traditional tenure track faculty the amount of industry experience a professor of practice brings to our college,” says Dean Collins. “We need to be doing all we can to ensure our students are getting the analytic and technical skills they will need, but also the professional knowledge they will need to be able to put into practice what they have learned.”

Now that Cornell has gotten the words right, the professor of practice position is poised to make a huge contribution to the education of the next generation of professional engineers.

From left to right: Aurora Fluidics founders and biomedical M.Eng. students Ilya Getsin, Rose Auguste, An Nguyen and Gaurang Dimri. The team, advised by Newton de Faria won the People’s Choice Award in the biotech segment of the 2016 New York Business Plan competition.

18 | SUMMER 2016


WWW.ENGINEERING.CORNELL.EDU/GEAR

BASEBALL HATS

SWEATSHIRTS

PRICES AVAILABLE ONLINE

POLO SHIRTS

COFFEE MUGS

CAR DECALS

UMBRELLAS

AND MORE!

GIFTS AND

APPARELAVAILABLE ATWWW.ENGINEERING.CORNELL.EDU/GEAR


MANY ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM!

20 | SUMMER 201620 | SUMMER 2016


“ THEY WANTED A BROAD-BASED SET OF TOOLS TO WORK WITH ANY MATERIALS TO DO ANYTHING UNDER THE SUN.”

— Lance Collins

eek inside any materials laboratory at Cornell Engineering and you’ll see how researchers are breaking the very rules of nature to create new materials that would not exist otherwise. These materials include metals, semiconductors, ceramics,

polymers and nanomaterials, and are designed to give manufacturers, scientists and medical professionals new tools and new possibilities.

Cornell has long been a pioneer within materials science and engineering, and has done so by taking an unconventional approach to the field.

“We got into the business of creating centers just as the notion of the center was born,” said Lance Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, referring to the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR) established in 1960.

At that time, one of the most important revolutions in materials history was taking the electronics industry by storm. Scientists and engineers had discovered that ‘doping’ the cheap

P

and abundant element silicon, that is, mixing it with atoms from other elements such as arsenic or gallium, altered its electrical properties so that it could be used to engineer more reliable transistors. Scientists had also perfected methods of purifying silicon by removing trace amounts of oxygen from its raw oxide form. By 1960, the first integrated circuit had been invented, giving way to processors and, eventually, the modern computer.

Companies and universities quickly jumped on the opportunity to have a hand in the growing field, but Cornell challenged the conventional thought at the time, which was to focus exclusively on silicon.

“If it were just the electrical engineers, it would look like the other materials operations. We were saying ‘no,’” said Collins. “We had the applied physicists, we had the chemists, and they didn’t want just a silicon-oriented shop, which is what all our competitors did. They wanted a broad-based set of tools to work with any materials to do anything under the sun.”

Cornell Engineering’s interdisciplinary vision garnered international exposure within the scientific community. The college became the first institution to grow a single layer of graphene and determine its structure, the first to achieve laboratory pressures exceeding those at the center of the Earth, and its research into polymer-clay nanocomposites laid the foundation for an entirely new industry.

Cornell’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering is now over a half-century-old, and by collaborating with other departments, colleges and institutions around the world, its M

ATER

IALS

TO D

O A

NYT

HIN

G U

ND

ER TH

E SU

NBy

Syl

Kac

apyr

MAT

ERIA

LS S

CIEN

CE A

ND

EN

GIN

EER

ING


22 | SUMMER 2016

latest achievements include materials that work inside the body to detect cancer, capture carbon from the atmosphere to battle climate change, and shrink electronics to once-unimaginable scales.

And with a recent focus by the U.S. government to accelerate the field, Cornell is taking the lead by operating a new platform where the next generation of advanced materials will be developed “to do anything under the sun.”

NEW MATERIALS, NEW PARADIGMost engineers will concede that silicon-based circuits, as they exist today, are reaching their limitations. With billions of transistors—each nearing atomic dimensions—crammed onto computer chips the size

of a fingernail, improving the functionality and performance of today’s circuits depends partly on new materials and the researchers who are discovering them.

Darrell Schlom, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is leading one such effort through the Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM). The $25 million initiative, funded this year by the National Science Foundation, invites materials researchers from around the nation to take advantage of the world-class expertise and facilities at Cornell and its partner institutions to create entirely new materials, from the bottom up.

The particular focus of PARADIM is the interface between oxide or chalcogenide-based, two-dimensional materials and the active substrates they’re deposited upon. It’s there, according to Schlom, that previously unrealized properties can exist. He analogizes the interface to the thin layer of water that exists between an ice-skating blade and the ice. “The same sort of excitement happens at our interfaces. We put material A on top of material B and for the right combination, a wacky

property emerges at the interface between these materials that neither material had by itself,” said Schlom. Sometimes those “wacky” properties can turn out to be quite beneficial for electronics or other applications.

Schlom has dedicated much of his career to creating new materials and exploring, or characterizing, their properties. He and a team of researchers published a study in 2013 that demonstrated how a new material—strontium titanium oxide—could be used to engineer better tunable capacitors to improve cellphone reception and open up higher frequency channels for wireless service providers.

The new material was first theorized with the help of Craig Fennie, associate professor of applied and engineering physics, who used computational methods to design the strontium titanium oxide using first-principles calculations. Rather than create a material and then see what its properties are, Fennie begins with a set of desired properties and then works backwards to theorize a material that could possess those properties.

Computational theory is a relatively new tool in materials science and engineering, but it’s already changing the way new

“ IT IS CLEAR THAT WE HAVE DISCOVERED A KILLER MATERIAL, BUT IT IS LIKELY THAT EVEN BETTER TUNABLE DIELECTRICS CAN BE FOUND USING OUR APPROACH.”

— Darrell Schlom

An optical floating zone furnace, center, is used to synthesize new materials together, including single crystals of Pr2Zr2O7, left in blue, and Yb2Ti2O7, right in green. The resulting single crystals are several millimeters in diameter and several centimeters long.

M


materials are sought. Fennie’s work has had such an impact that he was prestigiously bestowed the so-called “genius award” from the MacArthur Foundation. The foundation cited his research that correctly predicted ferroelectric and ferromagnetic characteristics of several previously unexplored metal oxides, including that of europium titanate—a ferroelectric-ferromagnetic material synthesized by Schlom to display electrical properties 1,000 times better than the previously best-known material of its kind.

Coincidentally, it was the same year Fennie was given the MacArthur Award that he theorized the strontium titanium oxide for Schlom. It was at that point Schlom used a method known as molecular-beam epitaxy to stack atomic layers of the material according to Fennie’s blueprint. The new material was synthesized with layers of strontium titanate separated by a mono-layer of strontium oxide. The interface of these layers is what gives the material its ability to record high frequencies, enabling cellphones to have greater bandwidth, less interference and fewer dropped calls.

“It is clear that we have discovered a killer material,” Schlom told the Cornell Chronicle after the study was first published, “but it is likely that even better tunable dielectrics can be found using our approach.”

Not every university can take that approach, however, because not every university has access to molecular-beam epitaxy or facilities for characterization. PARADIM’s aim is to change that, empowering engineers with a platform to theorize, synthesis and characterize a material. That theory-to-characterization cycle is what Schlom and colleagues have been doing with great success, and now they’re changing the paradigm for others.

David Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics, points to an image from an electron microscope.

GOT GALLIUM?hile some Cornell engineers are focused on new materials, others are thinking about established materials in new ways.

Gallium nitride—a semiconductor with a wide energy bandgap—has been a recent focus of the electronics community, and for a good reason. When considering options for a material that could improve electronics beyond what silicon can offer, gallium nitride fits the bill. Its properties allow it to operate quickly within a circuit, accommodating relatively large amounts of electricity and operating at high temperatures.

“The challenge with silicon-based electronics is that if you want to support a reasonably large voltage, the entire circuit has to be slow, which means you have to use large, passive capacitors and inductors,” said Huili Grace Xing, the Richard Lunquist Sesquicentennial Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and of materials science and engineering.

And it’s not just consumer electronics such as cellphones and computers that could benefit from gallium nitride’s unique properties. Dwindling fossil fuels along with climate change have intensified efforts to improve alternative energy devices such as electric motors, smart grids and solar cells—all devices where the inefficiency of silicon has left room for improvement.

But gallium nitride has a tendency for defects that, for some applications, make it unreliable. Xing has been working to improve the semiconductor’s properties, and in 2015, she and Debdeep Jena, also a professor within the same two departments, published a study demonstrating a gallium nitride power diode—a circuit component used to regulate the flow of electricity.

W

24 | SUMMER 2016

The semiconductor community quickly took notice of Xing and Jena’s diode because it could support over 1,400 volts of electricity despite only being about one-tenth the width of a human hair. It was the first time anybody had demonstrated a diode at such a ‘figure of merit,’—a scale used to measure the quality of a material. “We demonstrated a figure of merit that had never even been predicted, let alone electrically demonstrated. It surpassed expectations of semiconductors,” said Xing, who added that every step of the research, from the material’s atomic arrangement of layers to fabrication testing,

contributed to the successful end result.Such materials are important for green technologies that

depend on efficiency. Electric cars are currently limited by their weight as well as the amount of power they can handle. Xing says wide bandgap semiconductors like gallium nitride could also be applied toward smart grids that more efficiently manage electricity. “We can think about a power distribution station for an entire city that can be potentially smaller. Instead of building size, now maybe it can be room size,” she said.

“ WE DEMONSTRATED A FIGURE OF MERIT THAT HAD NEVER EVEN BEEN PREDICTED, LET ALONE ELECTRICALLY DEMONSTRATED. IT SURPASSED EXPECTATIONS OF SEMICONDUCTORS.”

— Huili Grace Xing — Huili Grace Xing

A cutaway diagram of the gallium nitride power diode developed by a research team led by Grace Xing, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of materials science and engineering.

From left, researchers Kazuki Nomoto, Bo Song, Zongyang Hu, Vladimir Protasenko, Grace Xing and Debdeep Jena are pictured in Xing’s Phillips Hall lab. On the left is the High Power Device Probe Station, where results of the team’s gallium nitride experimentation were analyzed.


SOLAR CELLS AND SYNCHROTRON SOURCE

he space industry now favors gallium alloys over silicon for use in the solar cells that power satellites because a smaller, lighter system can save money when launched into space. However, gallium nitride hasn’t been one

of those preferred alloys. Materials engineers at Cornell have instead investigated other ways to make solar cells more efficient, using help from one of Cornell’s most powerful research tools: the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, also known as CHESS.

In 2008, a group of researchers engineered a solar cell as a nano-manufactured polymer film just 400 nanometers thick. The rate at which it could convert sunlight to electricity was low compared to silicon-based photocells, but it demonstrated a novel method for developing low-cost, thin solar cells.

Leading that research group was Uli Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, who published a related study in 2015 demonstrating how to optimize the fabrication conditions of a thin-film solar cell.

Wiesner focused on using metal halide perovskites, which have recently garnered attention from the materials community for their unique crystal structure, giving them properties prime for solar applications. But in order for them to be as defect-free as possible, Wiesner used the Cornell synchrotron to characterize how different lead-salt solutions helped optimize the perovskite films.

Buried 40 feet below Cornell’s surface, the high-energy x-ray facility spans a half-mile circumference that loops under the south campus athletics fields. And while CHESS is one of many facilities used by Cornell’s materials scientists and engineers, it’s the only one that can send electrons traveling at 99.9999995 percent the speed of light in order to emit powerful

x-rays that can be directed toward materials.Teams of researchers use the synchrotron facility around

the clock to characterize new materials, and like Wiesner, they’re trying to get a closer look at crystal structures in order to better understand how they relate to the material properties they hope to optimize.

“We have researchers studying materials and systems across any spectrum you choose to define—from soft matter, like protein molecules floating in solution, all the way to super-hard, super-strong materials used to build airplane engines,” said Ernie Fontes, associate director of CHESS.

CHESS is one of only five facilities in the country that conducts synchrotron x-ray research, so securing time inside remains coveted. Fontes says the facility’s database has nearly 500 active projects, and out of the more than 1,000 researchers

Atomic force microscopy images of perovskite films engineered using substrates derives from three different lead sources (a,b,c) and a vapour-deposited film base (d). The circled dark spots show gaps in samples a and b, while sample c shows no flaws.

The underground footprint of the High Energy Synchrotron Source is highlighted in white, showing the facility’s half-mile circumference buried 40 feet below Cornell’s south campus.

T

26 | SUMMER 2016

NANOMATERIALS TO DIAGNOSE CANCER

iesner is somewhat of a jack of all trades when it comes to materials. Aside from his work on thin-film perovskites, he has developed a new class of hybrid materials described as “flexible

ceramics,” created a polymer mold that can produce perfect silicon nanostructures, and his research group produced the first-ever self-assembled superconductor structure. Wiesner even engineered an iridescent material film that was used exclusively for a sculpture by renowned Korean artist Kimsooja.

But Wiesner’s most advanced research project isn’t a material meant to be placed inside an electronic device, solar cell or artistic sculpture. It’s a silica-organic hybrid nanoparticle meant to be placed inside the human body.

The nanoparticles—called Cornell dots, or C dots for short—are smaller than 10 nanometers in size and consist of a core containing several dye molecules, which are surrounded by a protective silicon dioxide shell. Once inside the body, the C dots attach to cancer cells and fluorescently highlight them using the dye.

It’s a complex science that Wiesner and colleagues have continually improved over the last decade. “This has lead to a number of breakthroughs in the area of cancer nano-medicine, including the first-ever human clinical trials with such hybrid optical silica particles,” said Wiesner.

Those human trials were considered to be a great success and in 2015, Wiesner announced with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) the MSKCC-Cornell Center

Uli Wiesner, professor of materials science and engineering, examines a material film he engineered for the sculpture “A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir,” which was installed on Cornell’s Arts Quad in 2014.

that visit CHESS annually, ten percent come from other countries. “That shows the need for capabilities that users can’t find elsewhere,” said Fontes. “In addition, we’re pleased that almost half that number are post-doctoral associates or graduate students, which says that there’s a healthy generation of young scientists who are learning the trade and value of x-ray measurements. The need for high-energy, high-powered x-ray light sources is growing daily.”

Wiesner says the Cornell facility has been essential for breakthroughs in a number of his research areas, including the analysis of his thin films, which were as small as mere hundredths of a nanometer. “The value of close proximity to a synchrotron with exquisite and highly dedicated staff can not be overstated,” he said. “Our work on the perovskites is a particularly important example where this had tremendous impact. Work at CHESS allowed us to get unprecedented insights into the structural evolution of perovskite thin films that otherwise would have been impossible to obtain.”

“ THE VALUE OF CLOSE PROXIMITY TO A SYNCHROTRON WITH EXQUISITE AND HIGHLY DEDICATED STAFF CAN NOT BE OVERSTATED.”

— Uli Wiesner

W


for Translation of Cancer Nanomedicines—a $10 million pre-clinical research center with the goal of bringing together scientists, engineers, biologists and physicians to develop and translate new cancer care applications based on the C dot nanotechnology. This includes altering the nanoparticles to deliver treatment to melanoma and brain cancers, potentially through the use of radioactive isotopes.

“What excites me most is the fact that our work on silica nanoparticles is able to bridge the gap between fundamental science and applications in cancer nano-medicine,” said Wiesner. “There are not many cases in the career of a university professor where the work has the potential to directly touch the quality of life of a lot of people. This clearly is one of those cases.”

SORBENT SPONGES FOR CARBON CAPTURE

nother materials project with the potential to change the quality of life for a lot of people is one that also has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Carbon capture is a technique that can be used to collect the harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide either at its source of production, such as an industrial power plant, or directly from the atmosphere.

Emmanuel Giannelis has developed a strategy for capturing carbon dioxide by using a chemically-engineered sorbent—a material substance that can absorb the gas like a sponge. Giannelis is the associate dean for research and graduate studies, but still finds time to conduct research in his materials science and engineering laboratory.

He and Fernando Escobedo, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, are investigating new classes of solid sorbents. They start with a silica scaffold and then fill its pores with a liquid amine—an ammonia compound that replaces one or more hydrogen atoms with a substitute.

The finished material is a dry, white powder that can absorb carbon dioxide and, according to Giannelis, can be recycled for repeated use. He and Escobedo are also exploring ways to convert the carbon dioxide waste into useful byproducts, such as biodegradable plastics or solid carbonates that could be used as substitutes for cement.

Scanning electron microscopy image of a pristine silica support before (left) and after (right) an amine is added. The result is a material with the ability to capture carbon dioxide.

Schematic of a Cornell dot, showing the dye-containing core and surface-attached polyethylene glycol chains. It binds to a human integrin receptor to identify a tumor.

A

28 | SUMMER 2016

MOLLUSKS AND MICROSCOPYhile Cornell engineers often create materials not found in the natural world, it is sometimes nature that provides inspiration for a new or improved material.

Bio-inspired materials are synthesized to mimic properties or functions found in plants and animals, which have adapted to their respective environments partly through the evolution of the materials from which they’re made. Leaves are optimized for harvesting light for photosynthesis, providing inspiration for solar cells. Mechanical engineers can learn from bone, which provides structure while remaining light enough to enable mobility.

Lara Estroff, associate professor of materials science and engineering, leads a research group that focuses on bio-inspired materials synthesis, particularly bio-mineralization—how biological organisms control crystal growth in natural objects like bones, teeth and shells.

“We think of crystals as being brittle and fragile and not necessarily what you would want your bones and teeth to be made out of,” said Estroff. “And yet in biology, these crystals are combined with organic materials to make them good structural materials.”

One such example is the unique crystal growth within mollusks. Estroff studied the marine organism hoping to uncover the mystery of how it can produce nacre—the material more commonly known as “mother of pearl” that is found on its inner shell.

While both nacre and mollusk shells had been previously characterized, Estroff used electron microscopy—a technique that uses accelerated electrons to produce high magnification—to examine the interface where the two materials meet. It was there she and a group of researchers discovered that mollusks

produce nacre one layer at a time, depositing calcium-carbonate nanoparticles that fuse into crystals between layers of organic material.

“That was pretty exciting because a lot of people had suggested that this might be a route to form nacre, but by combining sample preparation with the amazing electron microscope facility, we were able to actually see how these initial layers were formed,” said Estroff.

That “amazing” facility is the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR), and the microscope was operated by a student working with David Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics. The facility contains some of the most powerful electron microscopes in the world, and by using them, Muller helps scientists and engineers understand the behaviors of materials at the atomic scale by giving them a view of the unpredictable microcosm that exists at the interface of two materials.

Such was the case when examining the mollusk shells. Muller says he and Estroff had originally intended to use electron microscopy to create the first 3-D imaging of how the

Electron microscope image of a cross-section of a mollusk shell. As the particle density increases over time they fuse into large flat crystals embedded in layers of organic material to form nacre.

“ THE FIRST IMAGES WERE SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING AND DIFFERENT, IT WAS A DROP-EVERYTHING-ELSE-AND-FOCUS-ON-THIS MOMENT.”

— David Muller

W


shells might grow. “We never actually got around to doing this because in preparing the screening samples we saw something much more interesting elsewhere in the sample,” explained Muller. “We had essentially, and unexpectedly, caught the transition zone where shell builds itself up from the inside-out, and it was showing fibrous structures decorated by tiny nanocrystals that no one had ever seen or described before. The first images were so incredibly striking and different, it was a drop-everything-else-and-focus-on- this moment.”

Estroff says having access to such facilities is why she first decided to come to Ithaca. “I came to Cornell for the collaborations and the facilities, and both of those have paid off in spades,” she said.

A 2016 study by Estroff followed up on her characterization of nacre when her collaborators at the University of Leeds in England were able to synthesize the crystal structure mollusks use in their calcite shells. What they found was that the synthetic shells they had created possessed the same mechanical strength as the biological shells they had hoped to mimic.

“Now that we understand the mechanism by which calcite is strengthened, can we apply it to more technologically relevant materials,” asked Estroff, who added that the research can be used as a stepping stone for future projects.

HELP DISCOVER NEW MATERIALSn many ways, Cornell University is a playground for materials researchers. The Cornell NanoScale Facility, Center for Materials Research, High Energy Synchrotron Source and various other facilities are filled with

chemists, physicists, computer scientists and other engineers all exploring new ideas together, theorizing materials and arranging atoms with absolute precision.

And for the first time in Cornell’s prestigious materials history, a very unique group of researchers has joined the ranks of those making discoveries: the general public. Citizen science is a growing concept in which people with little to no scientific experience contribute to research by providing crowd-sourced information under the guidance of a professional scientist.

Hundreds of citizen scientists without any formal materials engineering background are advancing the field through Materials Discovery—an initiative led by Carla Gomes, professor of computer and information science, and Bruce van Dover, chair of materials science and engineering.

Searching through a seemingly infinite amount of x-ray diffraction data from the synchrotron and other sources involves tremendous amounts of computational power and human insight. But by combining computational techniques with a citizen science community that can identify simple patterns within images, Gomes’ lab can analyze over one-

million different combinations of materials in a single day. Using the UDiscoverIt platform on their home computers, citizen scientists can volunteer—and sometimes earn cash—by combing through images, searching for patterns representing crystal structures that are optimized for sustainable technologies like hydrogen fuel cells and solar cells.

“They don’t have to know anything about materials. Even a kid can identify the little patterns,” said Gomes, who added that a 14-hour computational data-analysis project can turn into a five-minute task thanks to visual insights provided by the public.

“Even the quality of the solutions tends to be better because sometimes humans can identify solutions that a machine gets confused,” said Gomes. The problem is that even the best computer algorithms will have trouble searching for crystal patterns because of the “noise” created by x-ray diffraction. It’s like a television signal that doesn’t come in perfectly clear. The noise sometimes produces additional data points that don’t actually belong to the materials being analyzed, creating muddy results.

Humans can be better than computers at ignoring the noise and deciphering what is a crystal pattern versus what isn’t. And although citizen scientists are only contributing to one stage of Gomes’ material analysis project, it’s an important one that proves the future of materials science and engineering could rely, in part, on the keen eye of the general public.

It’s also another example of how Cornell Engineering is taking a unique scientific approach, breaking the rules to advance engineering science and creating “materials to do anything under the sun.”

“ THEY DON’T HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MATERIALS. EVEN A KID CAN IDENTIFY THE LITTLE PATTERNS.”

— Carla Gomes

Sample materials image that citizen scientists would analyze on UDiscoverIt. Users are asked to click on patterns, such as pairs of blobs that are equal in length, curvature and color distribution.

I

To participate in the MaterialsDiscovery initiative, visit:

http://www.udiscover.it/applications/materials/

30 | SUMMER 2016

Fab@Home had an instant impact and was honored with a 2007 Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics.

In the same way that the personalization of computers gave individuals tools previously available only to large corporations or government entities, the proliferation of cheap 3-D printers and laser cutters is leading to a revolution in what people can make and where they can make it. Add to this the development of relatively cheap Arduino motherboards, Raspberry Pi mini-computers and inexpensive vinyl cutters, and people can now design and build things unthinkable even ten years ago.

In some ways, the Maker Movement was already in full swing at Cornell Engineering long before the movement had a name. There is a deep tradition of student project teams at Cornell doing whatever it takes to make their planes, subs, race cars and other bits

theMAKERMOVEMENTCORNELL’S MAKER CULTURE IS PROVIDING THE SPACE AND TOOLS TO TURN IMAGINATION INTO REALITY

ne way to know that something has grown beyond being a niche community and has entered fully into the cultural mainstream of American life is it will have its own reality television show. Using this metric, it is safe to say the Maker Movement

has gone mainstream. You can now watch not just one, but two reality television shows featuring makers. Season one of America’s Greatest Makers ended recently and season two is already casting. The Science Channel is currently casting its second season of All-American Makers.

There is no set definition of the Maker Movement, but it is generally agreed that makers are people who like to tinker with existing devices and create new ones, often using electronics, robotics and 3-D printing. From 3-D printed prosthetics for injured dogs to internet-enabled home appliances controlled through laptops or smartphones, the Maker Movement is providing an outlet for all sorts of creativity.

Need more evidence that the Maker Movement has hit the big time? The White House hosted a Maker Faire in 2014, declared a National Week of Making in 2015, and there is now a Senior Advisor for Making in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Closer to home, once you start looking for evidence of a maker culture here at Cornell and in the broader Ithaca community, you see it everywhere. From the Ithaca Generator Makerspace downtown to the Cornell Maker Club in Phillips Hall, people are exploring technology and learning how to take their ideas and turn them into actual physical creations.

In the maker world there is a strong focus on learning and using practical foundational skills in the fields of electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, coding, and even metalworking and woodworking. There is also an ethos of sharing skills and innovations freely. It should come as no surprise that one of the key early steps in getting the maker movement some momentum was the introduction in 2006 of the Fab@Home project at Cornell Engineering. Hod Lipson, who was then a professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with one of his students, Evan Malone Ph.D. ‘08 MAE, developed a low-cost, open-source 3-D printer that let users print with many materials. All of the plans and software for the printer were available for free. Universities and other technology enthusiasts around the world quickly climbed on board.

OBy Chris Dawson


“ WE PROVIDE A SPACE WHERE PEOPLE CAN FIND OTHERS WITH SIMILAR GOALS AND INTERESTS AND THEY CAN TEACH AND LEARN FROM EACH OTHER. WE DON’T HOLD ANYONE TO A PARTICULAR EXPECTATION.”

— Alex Jaus ’16

By Syl

of technology work. If there is no commercially available part, the members of a team will figure out how to make it using duct tape, braided steel wire and the machine shop. This do-it-yourself (DIY) spirit has always been a big part of the project team process at Cornell—and it is a defining characteristic of the Maker Movement as well.

A showcase for the Maker spirit at Cornell is the annual exposition called BOOM (Bits On Our Minds). BOOM began in the late 1990s as a place to exhibit student-made projects from the fields of robotics, games, autonomous vehicles and smartphone apps. Prizes are awarded to the most creative and innovative projects and audience interaction with the projects is highly encouraged. The fact that BOOM has been around since the late ’90s testifies to how far back the roots of the current Maker Movement at Cornell go.


32 | SUMMER 2016

For those Cornell students who are more interested in making than in competing, there is the Cornell Maker Club. It was started in 2014 by student Hanna Lin BS ‘13, M.Eng. ‘14 because Lin saw there was no university-recognized club whose goal was to give students a place to explore technology, learn new skills and build things. The club has recently been given a well-equipped room of its own in Phillips Hall. Former Club President Alex Jaus ’16 puts it this way: “Many of the project teams on campus are looking for people who are very experienced at a particular skill. We are different in that you can join without any experience and you can learn. Collaboration is a big component. We provide a space where people can find others with similar goals and interests and they can teach and learn from each other. We don’t hold anyone to a particular expectation—it’s up to the people working on a project to make it happen.”

As interest in making has increased, the number of places a Cornell community member can go to find a makerspace has increased dramatically. There are now 16 spaces around campus that are at least partially open to students, faculty and staff. The Risley Shops on north campus provides students with a photography dark room and a letterpress, along with equipment for art and jewelry making, pottery, sewing, stained glass, wood, audio and video production, and theater construction. The eXploration Station, located behind the Wilson Synchrotron Lab, includes an electronics bench (oscilloscopes, function generators, soldering station), Arduino and Raspberry Pi resources including dedicated laptops, a 3-D printer, basic hand tools and battery-powered power tools, and recycled materials for rapid-prototyping. In addition, Cornell University Library has been experimenting with mobile pop-up

makerspaces on “Tinker Thursdays” and “Fabrication Fridays” that rotate through various library locations on campus.

The DIY approach is also making its way more frequently into classes at Cornell Engineering. New maker technologies, combined with ideas of the Design Thinking approach popularized by the design firm IDEO, have made some classes home to rapid prototyping and truly innovative product design. A few of the classes incorporating ideas from the Maker Movement are MAE 4341 (Innovative Product Design via Digital Manufacturing), ECE 5760 (Advanced Microcontrollers), and INFO 4320 (Introduction to Rapid Prototyping and Physical Computing). Students in these classes take an idea from their brains to the real world in the course of a semester. All four teams in this year’s Innovative Product Design class have earned provisional patents for their work. In many cases, the students have been inspired to continue to develop their projects long after the course has ended.

Some ideas to come out of the Innovative Product Design class are a counter-top personal beverage-chilling device called the Polar Chiller, a fabric-covered hinged play mat for kids called the QuiltBuilt and an electronic kitchen tool designed to help parents teach their children how to cook.

In keeping with the Maker Movement’s emphasis on the free flow of ideas and information, the boundaries between

the Cornell campus and the rest of the maker world are quite porous. In Ithaca, Cornell students take an advisory role with the Ithaca High School Code Red robotics team. Ithaca has a makerspace of its own in Press Bay Alley. It is called the Ithaca Generator and it is a vibrant space with many active members. As it grows, the opportunities for interaction with the Cornell maker community are increasing.

In the broader world, the Cornell Cup, previously sponsored by Intel, is one of the largest making efforts of Cornell Engineering. The Cornell Cup is a national embedded systems competition that attracts teams from colleges all over the country. These small teams identify a need and then use embedded computer and electronic systems to create a technological solution to the problem they have identified. These solutions just about always involve a lot of improvisation and DIY workarounds. Past participants in the cup have gone on to start companies to further develop their technologies. One team, Titan Arm from the University of Pennsylvania, won the first James Dyson Award for Engineering and Design for their battery-powered robotic arm exoskeleton.

David Schneider, director of M.Eng. studies in the Systems Engineering Department, has had his hand in many of the maker efforts at Cornell. He helped create the Cornell Cup challenge and his cavernous basement workshop space in

A remote control car demonstration from the Bits On Our Minds (BOOM) exhibition in Duffield hall.

Organizers and participants of the first annual Make-a-thon hosted at Cornell by the student-led nonprofit group Life Changing Labs gathered in the atrium of the Physical Sciences Building.

“ MAKING GIVES PEOPLE THE FREEDOM TO CREATE. WE AIM TO EMPOWER PEOPLE FURTHER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE WITH THEIR CREATIONS.”

— David Schneider


Carpenter Hall looks a bit like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Schneider is also one of only four leaders in the Higher Education Maker Alliance working with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Making gives people the freedom to create,” says Schneider. “We aim to empower people further to make a difference with their creations.”

In just the past year, Schneider has helped develop the national Make: Pitch Your Prototype entrepreneurial competition, participated in the NYC WorldMaker Con, the NYC World Maker Faire, the National Maker Faire, has been a speaker at the Higher Education Maker’s Alliance Innovation Summit, and has been invited to the White House three times for maker-related events. Schneider has also created educational modules to help train new makers in skills that are valuable when working on a project. Many of these modules have been posted on the Cornell Cup website.

This year also saw the first Make-a-thon at Cornell. The event was hosted by a student-run nonprofit group called Life Changing Labs. Sixteen teams participated, each with the given task of proposing “life-changing solutions using rapid prototyping techniques around the topic of smartliving.” Each team was given a supply of Arduino boards, sensors and materials to use in rapid prototyping—things like foam, chipboard and tape. After a set period of time for hacking and building, seven teams gave a six-minute pitch for their product. In the end, two high school teams took top honors, beating out collegiate teams. First place went to P!LLPAL, who created a bracelet that stores medication and vibrates to alert the wearer when it is time to take a pill.

Justin Selig ‘17 was actively involved in the planning of the student-run Make-a-thon. Selig, who is majoring in electrical and computer engineering, saw the success of the event as “evidence of the increasing interest from students in exercising their creativity to make.” Selig went on to explain, “I think my generation is beginning to shift out of the software bubble since coding has become a baseline skill for engineers today. Working with hardware, making tangible products and using your hands to build ‘smarter’ devices is becoming the new trend. I see the ability to apply a full-stack of skills—from software to hardware development—in making Internet-of-things devices as groundbreaking. That’s my favorite part about the Maker Movement. Knowing that I have access to a whole community of people who share my passion for technology and creativity is empowering.”

Schneider is currently working with representatives of Intel and Major League Hacking to develop the Maker Pro Awards. One underlying goal of the effort is to improve the educational and project quality of Make-a-thons nationwide. “Once the Maker Pro Awards are in place,” says Schneider, “we hope to reach 40,000 college students across the United States and Canada as they participate in Make-a-thons.”

Recognizing that makers start young, Cornell Engineering has recently undertaken an effort to build an online makerspace for high school and middle school students from around the world. It is called CollabSpace (www.engineering.cornell.edu/collabspace) and it is currently in beta testing. There are roughly 200 members who have a place to post projects, ask for technical help and even request the mentorship of a Cornell professor or alumni. The space can best be thought of as an online social networking tool where students interested in

A solderless breadboard for use with an Arduino microcontroller, engineered by a member of the Cornell Maker Club.

coding, robotics, autonomous vehicles, rocketry, 3-D printing, sustainability, circuit boards and other technological topics can meet and learn. The next version of CollabSpace is due to debut late this fall, in response to the feedback of current users.

Cornell Engineering is testing another effort to reach high school students this spring and summer. It is called the Annual Build Day. Current Cornell Engineering students volunteer to go back to their high schools and lead a class through a maker-themed lesson developed by Schneider in coordination with littleBits and in alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards. The inaugural visit happened at the beginning of June, with Alice Meng ’16, a computer science major, returning to her high school in Lewisburg, Pa., to lead a very successful lesson. “The students seemed really eager to make,” said Meng after the event. “It was inspiring to see how enthusiastic the students were about building things. They not only had a chance to try to improve the remote control cars they made, but also had the chance to build some other objects. My favorite was definitely the art spinner because it combines technology and art to create something really beautiful.”

The Maker Movement holds great promise. The democratization of technology and the increasing ability of individuals to create solutions to problems both big and small will fuel the movement for years to come. Cornell Engineering is a natural home for makers due to its depth and breadth of knowledge in a wide array of technological fields, its commitment to both diversity and collaboration, and its founder’s belief in the importance of applying knowledge to make life better. University founder Ezra Cornell might not have used the word, but he was an old school maker himself and it is easy to think that if he came back to Cornell, he would be at next year’s Make-a-thon with an entry of his own.

The Cornell Mars Rover Team demonstrate their rover at the 2015 Bits On Our Minds (BOOM) exhibition in Duffield Hall.

34 | SUMMER 2016

Annual BuildAs part of the White House’s declaration of

June 17-23 as the 2016 National Week of Making, Cornell Engineering hosted its inaugural Annual Build, encouraging faculty and students to visit high schools to teach a maker-themed lesson plan.

David Schneider, director of M.Eng studies in Systems Engineering, worked with physics students at Lansing High School to turn boxes of electronic components into two-wheeled remote-control cars. After racing the cars on a test track, students discussed with Schneider the challenges they faced while making the cars along with different metrics for measuring success. The lesson ended with enough time for students to play around and create their own inventions.

34 | SUMMER 2016


CORNELL NAMES SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL AND BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING IN RECOGNITION OF THE LEADERSHIP OF PHILANTHROPIST ROBERT F. SMITH ’85SUPPORT FOR UNDERREPRESENTED AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND WOMEN STUDENTS AT NEW YORK CITY AND ITHACA CAMPUSES

combined $50 million commitment from Robert F. Smith ’85, founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, and the foundation of which he is a founding director will support chemical and biomolecular engineering and African-American and

female students at Cornell University’s College of Engineering. The gift will also create a unique fellowship program at Cornell Tech that further strengthens the New York City campus’s ties to engineering in Ithaca.

In recognition of Smith’s support, the university will name the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell, as well as the Robert Frederick Smith Tech Scholars Program spanning Cornell Engineering and Cornell Tech.

The Robert Frederick Smith School will receive an endowment from Smith’s commitment, an investment Director Lynden Archer says will transform the school’s programs at all levels – expanding opportunities for faculty and student discovery and training the next generation of critical thinkers who will solve global problems. A significant portion of the endowment will be dedicated to scholarship and fellowship support for populations traditionally underrepresented in engineering and technology, particularly African-American and female students.

“We are thrilled to receive this gift. It comes at a time of unprecedented growth in student interest in chemical and biomolecular engineering and during a period when research in the school is defining the next frontiers of the field. It also speaks volumes about the impacts the school continues to have in educating students like Robert who go on to become leaders in diverse fields,” said Archer.

The gift will also create a program fund for diversity initiatives in engineering and provide the resources to create the Robert Frederick Smith Tech Scholars Program. Through the latter, select high school seniors with financial need – again focusing on African-American and female students – will be invited to earn an undergraduate degree at Cornell Engineering, followed by a one-year technical master’s degree at Cornell Tech. It creates a special opportunity for students who might otherwise consider Cornell and graduate education outside their reach.

“Robert’s generosity will not only elevate our School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, but it will ensure it becomes more accessible than ever,” said Lance Collins, the Joseph Silbert Dean of Cornell Engineering. “I believe an affordable educational path from engineering in Ithaca to Cornell Tech in New York City, for those who wouldn’t otherwise be offered such an opportunity, will produce some of the sharpest minds in engineering and technology. I’m thankful

Robert shares this vision and is making it a reality.”Smith’s gift, including the contribution from the foundation

for which he is the founding director, is one of the largest ever from an African-American philanthropist to a higher education institution.

“I have had the privilege of being a Cornell graduate with a degree in engineering,” said Smith. “I credit much of my career success to being an engineer by training. Engineers solve problems and fix things. Along my career I have become increasingly concerned by the lack of diversity across the engineering and tech disciplines. My direct intention here is to work directly with Cornell Tech and Cornell Engineering, in New York City and in Ithaca, to create direct on-ramps for African-Americans and young women to enter tech so that they can help lead us into the fourth industrial revolution.”

Under Smith’s leadership, Vista Equity Partners has become one of the most successful investment firms in the world. Smith’s accomplishments have landed him at No. 268 on the most recent Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans.

He is the founding director of the Fund II Foundation, a nonprofit organization working to advance social change and preserve African-American culture, human rights, music education, the environment and American values such as entrepreneurship and innovation.

ABy Syl Kacapyr

36 | SUMMER 2016

KIMBALL HALL’S GREEN FLOORS PAVED IN LEED GOLD

ith a flexible interior design that promotes engineering and scientific partnerships, golden days lie ahead for the renovated Kimball Hall. That’s appropriate because the U.S. Green Building Council has certified Kimball Hall’s

floors 2 through 5 as LEED Gold.This marks Cornell’s 18th LEED certified project, but the

first on the changing face of the Engineering Quad. Kimball Hall was the first of several engineering buildings to undergo a major renovation as part of the college’s master plan. Engineering was in desperate need of wet laboratory space to accommodate the growth in biological, chemical and materials research across the college.

Kimball Hall began the project with a complete renovation of the top two floors of the building. Its roof now sports a solar energy wall whose dark metal panels contain ventilation ductwork. On cold days, ventilated air is pre-heated by the sun and distributed through the building, reducing energy use.

A schematic diagram showing how Kimball Hall’s solar wall works.Kimball Hall’s solar wall.

W Kimball Hall’s exterior facade was insulated, and curtain walls with integrated sun shading were installed on every floor. Taking advantage of natural lighting, 90 percent of the workspace has window views, reducing the need for electricity by one-fifth. The state-of-the-art heating and cooling systems reduce the building’s energy use by nearly one-third.

Architectural design firm Payette incorporated locally-sourced and recycled materials into the project. About 55 percent of the building’s materials and furnishings are regionally manufactured. Of the wood products in Kimball Hall, most have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being sustainably managed and harvested.

Aside from the LEED Gold certification, Kimball Hall received the Renovated Laboratory of the Year award from R&D Magazine and Laboratory Design. The project team was honored during the Laboratory Design Conference, April 25-27, in Houston. The magazine also detailed the renovation project in its June issue.

By Blaine Friedlander

Singh Lab

CORNELL ENGINEERING | 37 CORNELL ENGINEERING | 37

PEOPLE

Brachman to lead Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute

Cornell Tech has announced that Ron Brachman, a computer scientist and internationally recognized authority on artificial intelligence, will join the campus as the new director of the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. As director, Brachman will lead the Jacobs Institute’s strategic vision as it continues to grow its nontraditional, multidisciplinary, cutting-edge faculty, degree programs and the Runway startup postdoctoral program. Brachman will become a member of Cornell Tech’s computer science faculty and will succeed Adam Shwartz, who returns to the Technion as senior executive vice president.

Campbell reappointed director of MAE

Mark Campbell has been reappointed as the S.C. Thomas Sze Director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering for a two-year term. “Mark has provided outstanding leadership in terms of hiring,

program development and in managing the complex facilities planning for the Upson Hall renovation project,” said Dean Lance Collins.

Desjardins receives Multiphase Flow Junior Award

Olivier Desjardins, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been selected to receive the International Conference on Multiphase Flow Junior Award. The award was presented at the conference in Florence, Italy, on May 26.

Estrin earns IEEE Internet Award

Deborah Estrin, professor of computer science and associate dean at Cornell Tech and professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been named the 2017 IEEE Internet Award recipient. Estrin was selected for “formative contributions and thought leadership in Internet routing and in mobile sensing techniques and applications, from environmental monitoring to personal and community health.” She is the founder of the Health Tech Hub and directs the Small Data Lab at Cornell Tech, which develops new personal data application program interfaces and applications for individuals to harvest the small data traces they generate daily.

Griffin named DiscoverE New Faces Honoree

Darvin Griffin, a recent Ph.D. graduate in biomedical engineering, has been named a 2016 DiscoverE New Faces of Engineering Honoree. The award honors engineers under 30-years-old who are making a mark on their

industry. Griffin was part of the Bonassar Research Group, assessing treatments for cartilage repair in the knee. He is now a clinical project manager at Medtronic.

Halpern receives Kampe de Feriet Award

Joe Halpern, professor of computer science, has received the 2016 Kampe de Feriet Award. The award was created for the recognition of significant works that reflect the spirit of late Professor Joseph Kampé de Fériet, a famous scientist in

Campell

Desjardins Halpern

Estrin GriffinBrachman

38 | SUMMER 2016

PEOPLEPEOPLE

France who did substantial work in pure mathematics, fluid mechanics, the theory of turbulence, statistical mechanics, and information theory.

Kay inducted into Argentina National Academy of Sciences

For her more than three decades of scientific research devoted to understanding the tectonic and magmatic evolution of the South America continental crust and the Andes Mountains, Suzanne Kay, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, now shares a prestigious honor with Charles Darwin: induction into the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. Kay was inducted for her significant contributions to the understanding of the magmatic and tectonic evolution of the Andes. She has studied the composition and evolution of the Earth’s continental crust through the processes associated with the Andean subduction margin, which is the oceanic crust moving underneath the western part of the continent. In the process, she has worked

with many students from both Cornell and Argentina in projects throughout the Andes.

Parrucci wins Student Business of the Year

Equine Design, a company that keeps horses healthy by tracking their water intake, is the winner of the 2016 Student Business of the Year. Founder Caitlin Parrucci, ’15, M.Eng. ’16, accepted the $5,000 prize from Entrepreneurship at Cornell at an award ceremony on April 15. A horse-rider for 15 years, the mechanical engineer has created a device that weighs how much water a horse drinks per day. Low water intake can lead to colic and can indicate anything from kidney failure to stress to low appetite.

Reed awarded iEMSs Biennial Medal

Patrick Reed, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been chosen by the International Environmental Modeling and Software Society (iEMSs) to receive a 2016 Biennial Medal for Exceptional Research Contributions to

Environmental Modeling and Software. This prestigious award is given only every two years and honors researchers who are contributing new modelling and software tools that improve our ability to better manage major resource and environmental challenges. Reed’s research relates to sustainable water management given conflicting demands from renewable energy systems, ecosystem services, expanding populations, and climate change. His group’s decision support software is being used broadly in governmental and industrial application areas and has thousands of users across the world.

Shmoys reappointed as director of ORIE

David Shmoys has been reappointed as the director of the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering for a one-year term. “I am delighted that David is willing to extend his term as director of ORIE at this critical time,” said Dean Lance Collins. “I know ORIE will benefit greatly from his continued leadership.”

Stroock appointed director of CBE

Professor Abe Stroock will serve as the next Director of the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “I am delighted that Abe is willing to serve in this vitally important role. With his vision and focus on excellence in both research and teaching, CBE’s future is very bright,” said Dean Lance Collins. Stroock will serve a three-year term and succeeds Lynden Archer.

Kay

Parrucci

Reed

Shmoys

Stroock


Weatherspoon elected VP of USENIX

Hakim Weatherspoon, associate professor of computer science, has been elected Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Advanced Computing Systems Association (USENIX). The board oversees all conferences and business

dealings of USENIX.Williamson named SIAM Fellow

David Williamson, professor of operations research and

information engineering, has been named a 2016 Fellow for the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). SIAM Fellows are designated each year to recognize members of the scientific community for their distinguished contributions to the disciplines of applied mathematics, computational science and related fields.

Zia named associate editor for Journal of Rheology

Roseanna Zia, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been named the Associate Editor for the Journal of Rheology. The publication is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original research on all aspects of rheology, the study of those properties of materials which determine their response to mechanical force.

Pieter Cornelis Tobias de Boer, a professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering for more than 40 years, died May 2 at Kendal of Ithaca. He was 85.

De Boer’s academic interests included the thermodynamic analysis and optimal design of pulse-tube cryocoolers, which emerged in the 1980s and are used in semiconductor fabrication and other industrial and military applications.

Another area of recent interest was the rupture energy of pendular rings, with application to the attachment strength of thin films in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices.

After serving as assistant professor at Maryland from 1962 to 1964, de Boer and his family moved to Ithaca when he was hired by Cornell as assistant professor in the Graduate School of Aeronautical Engineering. He was promoted to associate professor in 1968, and to full professor in 1974, two years after the formation of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. De Boer retired in 2000 and was an emeritus professor in the Sibley School following his retirement.

In addition to his role as professor, de Boer served as associate director of the Sibley School from 1982 to 1991. He was the school’s “official or unofficial parliamentarian,” said colleague and emeritus professor John F. Booker.

Away from academia, De Boer was an avid cyclist, distance runner, Nordic skier and triathlete, and participated in orienteering. He was president of the Finger Lakes Cycling Club, of which Stuart Leigh Phoenix, professor in the Sibley School, is also a member.

Perhaps de Boer’s most notable athletic achievement: He set a national age-group record by cycling 448 miles in 24 hours at age 48.

He was also founding president of the Cayuga Nordic Ski Club and treasurer of the Cascadilla Rowing Club.

De Boer is survived by his wife, children and five grandchildren.

Weatherspoon

Williamson

Zia

TOBIAS DE BOER EMERITUS PROFESSOR DIES AT 85

IN MEMORIAM

40 | FALL 201540 FALL 2013

RENEE KINGSHARING A LOVE FOR ANIMALS

Some people have a natural talent for connecting with animals, but when you grow up on a farm with 120 horses, that skill comes by necessity.

Renee King, a long-time administrative assistant in the Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, learned to interact with animals as a child growing up on her family’s Dryden, N.Y., farm. She remembers one particular instance training a former race horse named Swizzlestick. “He was a dynamite. You couldn’t walk into the stall. There were so many things you just couldn’t do with him. Well, after six months of working with him, it just clicked,” said King.

Today, King shares her love and knowledge of animals with the community through various programs run by 4-H and the SPCA. And it’s the kind of patience she learned by working with Swizzlestick that she now exhibits when working with children and rescue dogs.

King is an active member of the 4-H Youth Fair Board and the Consumer and Family Science Program Development Committee. She also works with low-income children ages 9 to 15 through

4-H programs like Kids in Charge of the Kitchen and Sew Fun.

“These students present many challenges, and it takes a very special volunteer to work with this audience,” said Brenda Carpenter, extension community educator with 4-H Youth Development. “Renee is one of those special volunteers. She seems to have an endless supply of patience and understanding when working with the students.”

King also works with youth through the 4-H Animals and Medicine program, which invites teenagers to learn about different animals at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Students have the opportunity to get hands-on with horses, cows, reptiles, dogs and cats. They learn to check pulses, temperature and other vital signs, and use a stethoscope to listen to animal hearts and digestive systems.

King says it’s rewarding to watch some of the teens come out of their shells when they see an animal they find interesting. “We had one young man who put his hood up and listened to his iPod when we went through the horses. But when we

got to the birds, that hood came down, he was talking to us and asking questions. It was just so exciting to see him interact with other people and have a focus that he really enjoyed,” said King.

King’s ability to bring people and animals together has also been valuable to the SPCA of Tompkins County—a no-kill shelter for unwanted and rescued animals. Among her volunteer activities, King trains new volunteers and helped revise the organization’s training guidelines. “For instance, if you’re a ‘green’ dog walker, you can’t walk a ‘purple’ dog because a ‘green’ person can only visit and talk to the dogs,” said King, who added that the purple classification means a dog has special needs, such as it’s unusually timid or aggressive. Volunteers can attain new classification levels by taking advantage of training sessions offered by the SPCA.

King says pairing the right person with the right dog is also important when it comes to adoptions. She says dogs can sometimes live at the shelter for more than a year before that special person comes along. “We had a German shepherd and we could not get that dog to stop barking. And very few people could go in there with her, she wasn’t being responsive,” recalled King. “Eventually there was a German shepherd person who came in and said ‘I want her.’ They just clicked. They walked out with her and now that dog is viewing the country.”

King felt the same bond with Nala, a rescued Rottweiler she adopted after meeting her during an event hosted by the SPCA of Cortland County.

“I wish we had an army of Renees,” exclaimed Lynne Conway, volunteer and philanthropic programs manager at the SPCA of Tompkins County. “Her calm, pleasant demeanor is very helpful when working with our dogs—many of whom come from less than ideal circumstances. She’s a treasure.”

When asked what drives her to share her passion for animals, King answered “I don’t know. I just feel the most comfortable there. It’s unfortunate that some people don’t realize how much animals have to offer.”

HOMETOWN

HERO

40 | SUMMER 2016

Renee King and an SPCA rescue dog skijoring, a sport in which a person on skis is pulled by a dog or horse.

Renee King with her rescue dog Teddy, who has since passed away.


Cornell Engineering’s Sesquicentennial Celebration

Cornell Engineering marked 150 years of innovation and success with a number of events as part of its Sesquicentennial Celebration on Oct. 23-25. Some of the events included:

Top: Coline Jenkins-Sahlin holds a plaque honoring her great grandmother and Cornell graduate, Nora Stanton Blatch Barney 1905, who was one of the first women civil engineers. Barney was posthumously named an American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fellow after being denied membership in the early 1900s. Also pictured, from left to right: Dean Lance Collins, Eric Jenkins-Sahlin (Barney’s great-great grandson), and Emeritus Professor John Abel, who brought Barney’s story to the ASCE’s attention.

Bottom left: Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering Emeritus Frank Moon presents a history of Cornell Engineering to alumni.

Bottom middle: Alumni observe one of the many exhibits on display, which included historical relics from the college as well as new technology from student project teams.

Bottom right: Dean Lance Collins about to address alumni in the Duffield Hall Atrium.


Cornell Engineering Magazine252 Carpenter HallIthaca, NY 14853-2201

30

theMAKERMOVEMENT

materials science and engineering materials anything …

Documents