New Initiatives:

In an effort to draw a more diverse student population to engineering schools and foster a more diverse engineering workforce, Dean Ilene Busch-Vishniac is leading a team that will develop plans to revamp undergraduate engineering education. Through a planning grant from the GE Fund, Dr. Busch-Vishniac is bringing together colleagues from academe, industry, and the non-profit sector to redesign the engineering curriculum to help achieve this goal. One key objective is to develop a curriculum that allows students to enter engineering programs at various academic levels, rather than just at the freshman level. Achieving this project goal will require finding ways to partner academic institutions with industry and professional societies. The plan, to be developed by the end of 2003, will also look at ways to put emphasis on the diverse career fields and opportunities available to today's engineering school graduates.

Computer Science assistant professor Subodh Kumar is leading a team of colleagues from the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to develop a virtual cuneiform library. The team, which also includes Computer Science assistant professor Jonathan Cohen, will develop a 3-D online library that allows researchers access to highly detailed images of an international collection of cuneiform tablets. Cuneiform is the world's first written language; the clay tablets they are inscribed on first appeared in Mesopotamia around 3200 B.C. "The challenge is that once you go to a higher resolution of images, you have to make sure the computers can handle that much data," says Dr. Kumar, "we're talking terabytes." The imaging library is being designed to process data, generate an image, and manipulate that image in 3-D, a process that will take just one-fifteenth of a second. "The goal of this project is to eliminate the need to physically travel to a museum or to sites," to study cuneiform tablets. Funding for this project comes from a National Science Foundation grant of $1.55 million.

Associate professor Timothy Weihs in Materials Science and professor Omar Knio in Mechanical Engineering have formed a new company, Reactive NanoTechnologies, to market and sell a bonding method they developed with nano-structured foil. This layered foil allows metal and ceramic to be joined without using large outside heat sources-a feat not previously possible. Their new bonding method will be useful in the manufacturing of nanotechnology-based products in such industries as aerospace and microelectronics. For more information click here.

Assistant professor Benjamin Schafer in Civil Engineering has developed a software program to test the stability and safety of thin-walled structures, including buildings and bridges, before construction begins. This modeling software will help designers determine how and under what conditions structural components will buckle. The software, CUFSM, is available to the public on Dr. Schafer's Web site. Click here.

Researchers in Biomedical Engineering, led by assistant professor Jennifer Elisseeff, are making progress in creating a minimally invasive procedure to repair injured bone or cartilage. This multidisciplinary tissue engineering team is conducting experiments that have turned stem cells from adults into cartilage-like tissue. Because the stem cells used in Dr. Elisseeff's research are from adults, in theory, patients preparing for cartilage or bone repairs will be able to donate their own stem cells prior to the procedure. Though the research is years away from being tested on humans, the idea involves injecting a fluid filled with stem cells and nutrients into damaged tissue and then using light to harden the liquid into a stable gel, which will allow the cells to multiply and form new cartilage or bone. For the full story click here.

The Civil Engineering Department bid a fond farewell this summer to chairman Nick Jones, who made the move to the University of Illinois-Champaign. Professor Robert Dalrymple, who joined the Whiting School this summer, is serving as the new chair of Civil Engineering. "Tony has an energetic and innovative vision of civil engineering research and education," says assistant professor Ben Schafer of Civil Engineering. Most of Dr. Dalrymple's career has been with the University of Delaware, where he founded and headed the Center for Applied Coastal Research beginning in 1989. He also served as both assistant dean of the College of Engineering and acting chair of the Department of Civil Engineering during his tenure there. No stranger to Hopkins, Dr. Dalrymple spent a year as a visiting professor here at the Whiting School in 1999. His research interests include coastal engineering, water wave mechanics, fluid mechanics, littoral processes, and tidal inlets. Many on campus may already know his wife, Dr. Candice Dalrymple, who is JHU's Associate Dean and Director of the Center for Educational Resources at the MSE Library.

In the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering (DoGEE) chairman Marc Parlange is taking sabbatical leave through August 2003 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. In his absence, professor Benjamin Hobbs will take the helm as department chair. With Hopkins since 1995, Dr. Hobbs' research includes the development and application of systems analysis and economic methods to analyze energy, water, and environmental problems. "I know Ben will do much to continue the strong momentum DoGEE has gained over many years as a leading program addressing multidisciplinary environment issues," says Dr. Parlange. Dr. Hobbs takes on this role having just returned from sabbatical leave at Energieonderzoek Centrum Nederland in The Netherlands.

In Mechanical Engineering, Dr. K.T. Ramesh is stepping down as chair and is taking a one-year sabbatical at Cambridge University, furthering his research on phenomena at the nano-scale. Professor Shiyi Chen, who joined Hopkins in 1999 as an expert in computational fluid dynamics (CDF) methodologies, is serving as the new department chair. "Shiyi is an outstanding scholar with administrative experience in his prior position as the Deputy Director for the Center for Nonlinear Science at Los Alamos National Laboratory," says Dean Ilene Busch-Vishniac. Dr. Chen's research interests are broad, and include turbulence, computational fluid dynamics, lattice Boltzmann applications, molecular dynamics, and flow in porous media. Practical applications of his research include solving problems ranging from the flow of oil and water through sandstone (oil extraction), to flow over and around tires and automobiles for industry partners, and the complex flow patterns of granular materials, such as sand or snow.

Research Funding Available through UTDF Program

Research grants for the development of promising technologies at Maryland universities are being offered through the University Technology Development Fund (UTDF), managed by the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO). Established in January 2001, nineteen projects have been funded for nearly $1 million to-date. Under this program, another $1 million is currently available for new proposals. For more information visit: www.MarylandTEDCO.org or contact Lani Hummel in the WSE Office of Research at: lhummel@jhu.edu (410-516-5262).

PTE is very pleased to announce the opening of our Student Services Center at the Dorsey education center in Elkridge, Maryland. In addition to classrooms and computer labs, the Dorsey Center will now house admissions and registration staff previously located at two other PTE sites (Homewood and APL), and will also serve as a central point of access for academic advising and financial services. The Dorsey Center is located at 6810 Deerpath Road, Elkridge, MD 21075 and our staff can be reached at 410-540-2960. For further information, please visit the PTE website.

Congratulations to graduate student Aaron Lazarus, in Civil Engineering, for winning a National Defense Science and Engineering Fellowship (NDSEG). This fellowship covers the academic year and comes with a $23,000 award that will enable Aaron to conduct an experimental study of the added-mass and radiation damping of dihedral hull sections in waters of finite depth.

Also in Civil Engineering, congratulations to graduate student Cheng Yu, who received a $5,000 fellowship from the Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA). The fellowship will enable Cheng to continue his experimental and computational studies on the local and distortional buckling behavior of C and Z shaped cold-formed steel bending members.

Finally, congratulations are also in order for Civil Engineering junior Sam Phillips who received a JHU Provost's Undergraduate Research Award to conduct research on the application of genetic and evolutionary algorithms to the optimization of thin-walled structural members.

Whiting School faculty and researchers are encouraged and greatly needed to participate in this year's What is Engineering? Fair, which showcases the many aspects of engineering taught here at Johns Hopkins. The fair, sponsored by HeadsUP-the Whiting School's summer program that offers introductory engineering courses to high school students in Montgomery County-will be held on Friday, December 6, from 3 to 7 p.m. WSE departments and research centers along with a number of corporate organizations will display their exhibits, manned by engineers and researchers. Last year 400 visitors, over 200 of them students, learned more about engineering as a career choice by talking with "real live engineers" as well as from the many exhibits on engineering. Please call or e-mail Richard Scott, Director of HeadsUP, at: headsup@jhu.edu (301-294-7070), or visit the HeadsUP Web site.

The Society of Engineering Alumni (SEA) council and committees will be meeting on Saturday, October 12, 2002, during the Johns Hopkins Alumni Leadership weekend. If you'd like to learn more about the Society of Engineering and how you can get involved please contact Megan Howie at megan@jhu.edu

The SEA Career Night will be held on Wednesday, October 30, 2002. This event offers the opportunity for students and alumni to network and gives students a chance to hear first-hand about the job market from engineering alumni. If you would like to participate or would like additional information please contact Megan Howie at megan@jhu.edu