ASU News - Research + Research

Professor represents ASU at Royal Society meeting

rhowe — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:48:23 -0700

Arizona State University archaeologist C. Michael Barton has gained a reputation for learning about human-environment interaction by applying a long-term perspective, as well as the latest technology, to his research. His Mediterranean Landscape Dynamics project is creating multi-dimensional computer models of landscape change and agricultural land use practices for a 6,000-year period from the beginning of farming to the rise of urban civilization.

This work could be used as a predictive tool for present and future human-environment interaction. Integrating decades' worth of data from archaeologists, ecologists and geoscientists with recent advances in geospatial modeling and agent simulation allows Barton and his team to investigate the long-range social and ecological consequences of alternate land use practices.

This November, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom tapped Barton to speak about his research at a conference titled, "Water and Society: Past, Present and Future." The scientific discussion meeting not only examined the relationship between water and society throughout the ages but also addressed humanity’s role in the current water crisis and the climate change that is intensifying it.

Barton, a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, traveled to the Royal Society’s headquarters in London to lecture on water- and human-based changes to Mediterranean landscapes during the Holocene, as well as his experience with modeling long-term dynamics of complex socioecological systems.

Other topics at the November 8–9 conference included social responsibility, paleo-climate modeling and political discourses on water supply issues. The range of subjects represents what many researchers deem a need to address global environmental concerns and the area of sustainability through scholarship that cross-cuts established academic disciplines.

Barton calls the conference significant because it showed "a recognition that the most critical environmental issues we face can only be understood and mitigated when observations carried out today are combined with detailed knowledge of the past dynamics of human and natural systems provided by archaeology and other historical sciences."

The presentations emphasized the connectedness between the social and natural worlds, another integral point according to Barton. He explains, "Many phenomena of central importance to human life and well being must be treated as coupled human and natural systems; the artificial division of the world into the 'social' and 'natural' does not reflect reality and runs the risk of misunderstanding the dynamics of each."

The conference’s themes mirror those in Barton’s research and the work of other faculty in the school and across ASU. "The fact that these themes are being discussed at the highest levels of the scientific establishment serves to further validate the emphasis we have given to this holistic approach to the social and natural sciences," he states.

The Royal Society is making the lectures available as podcasts, and the papers will be published in an upcoming issue of Philosophical Transactions A, the society’s journal of mathematical, physical and engineering sciences. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 by a group of scientists that included Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle; it is the United Kingdom’s national academy of science.

Professor represents ASU at Royal Society meeting

rhowe — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:48:23 -0700

ASU, UAE partner for global decision-making platform

gpuente — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:01:00 -0700

Arizona State University is partnering with the United Arab Emirates on a decision platform designed to provide real-world, knowledge-driven decision support, planning and action-oriented outcomes to some of the most critical challenges confronting our nations and the world today.

A delegation of high-ranking officials from Abu Dhabi, UAE, came to ASU's Tempe campus in November as a follow-up to a series of recent of meetings in the UAE with ASU President Michael Crow, Vice President for Research and Economic Affairs R.F. “Rick” Shangraw and other ASU representatives. During that visit, the ASU delegation offered a series of proposals for collaborative projects, including creation of a Global Decision Network located in the UAE. The network would be based on the ASU Decision Theater, an innovative research facility designed to address shared challenges and explore a new decision-making landscape through the application of focused research within a flexible platform.

“The UAE is positioned among the most important countries in a critical region of the world,” said Crow. “A cutting-edge initiative like the Global Decision Network will create and advance a set of innovative processes and tools to help regional leaders and decision makers in both the UAE and Arizona address some of the most complex economic, social and environmental challenges we face today while building toward a more sustainable global future.”

The Global Decision Network will move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to link science, technology and principles of objectivity to the process of decision-making through the design and application of advanced analytic and systems-modeling tools and the integration of decision makers’ needs at all levels of the process. With founding centers and hubs in Abu Dhabi and Arizona, the network can expand to incorporate new partners, talents and creativity in regions across the globe.

“This is really about the application of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge to real-world problem-solving,” said Shangraw. “We live in a complex world. The Decision Network not only will be a means of finding the best solutions to manage current problems, but also will function as an international learning center to train the next generation of leaders and decision makers and build future decision-making capacity on a global scale.”

The UAE delegation had the opportunity to view ASU’s Decision Theater in action with presentations focused on university efforts in the areas of sustainability, urban planning, water resource management and public health crisis preparation.

The group also met with President Crow and Vice President Rick Shangraw to discuss next steps to move the initiative forward. ASU will work directly with the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council to develop a plan and time frame for advancing the Global Decision Network.

The ASU team will include the Office of Research and Economic Affairs, the Global Institute of Sustainability, Decision Theater and Decision Center for a Desert City.

Gitzel Puente, Gitzel.Puente@asu.edu
ASU Research and Economic Affairs

Making battlefield communications better

jkullman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:39:00 -0700

Junshan Zhang is working to improve wireless communications technology with support from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Zhang is an associate professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, a part of Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. He also works in the engineering schools’ Sensor, Signal and Information Processing Center (SenSIP).

The grant of more than $600,000 will fund Zhang’s efforts to improve the reliability of communications networks under battlefield conditions.

"Battlefield wireless networks often operate under hostile conditions that include adverse radio frequency environments, interference, bursts of traffic and changing network topology,” Zhang explains. “As a result, network management of information flows in such a hostile environment often faces a number of challenges, such as network failure and compromise, and intermittent connectivity.”

There is an “urgent need to develop fundamental network science for identifying, representing and controlling information dynamics” in Department of Defense networks, Zhang says.

Advances in this area of research also promise to provide more reliability for various types of airborne and ground-based communications networks.

Zhang’s work is ASU’s part of a larger project, titled “Information Dynamics as a Foundation for Network Management,” led by Princeton University, with other research partners at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California- Irvine, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Zhang’s grant is part of a $7 million MURI award for the overall project.

The MURI program is designed to accelerate research and technology development that supports specific science and engineering efforts considered vital to national defense.

Writer: Chelsea Brown

Making battlefield communications better

jkullman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:39:00 -0700

Junshan Zhang is working to improve wireless communications technology with support from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The grant of more than $600,000 will fund Zhang’s efforts to improve the reliability of communications networks under battlefield conditions.

There is an “urgent need to develop fundamental network science for identifying, representing and controlling information dynamics” in Department of Defense networks, Zhang says.

Advances in this area of research also promise to provide more reliability for various types of airborne and ground-based communications networks.

Zhang’s grant is part of a $7 million MURI award for the overall project.

The MURI program is designed to accelerate research and technology development that supports specific science and engineering efforts considered vital to national defense.

Writer: Chelsea Brown

Baby’s sleep position is major factor in ‘flat-headedness’

chughes3 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:49:00 -0700

A baby's sleep position is the best predictor of a misshapen skull condition known as deformational plagiocephaly – or the development of flat spots on an infant's head – according to findings reported by Arizona State University scientists in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Analyzing the largest database to date, more than 20,000 children, the ASU researchers found that the number of babies who have developed flat-headedness has dramatically increased since 1992. The increase coincides with the American Academy of Pediatrics launch of a "Back to Sleep" educational campaign that recommended parents place their infants on their backs to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

"We looked at a number of risk factors, but the largest factor was the sleep position of the baby," said Brian Verrelli, an assistant professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences and researcher in the Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics at the Biodesign Institute.

The condition is thought to occur when babies spend too much time in one position. The research team found that sleep position, and specifically, head position, are linked to flat-headedness. Babies who slept on their right-side or left-side tended to have right-side and left-side flat spots, respectively.

The study, "Risk Factors Associated With Deformational Plagiocephaly," also found that boys were twice as likely as girls to have the condition (a nearly perfect 2-to-1 ratio) and also more common in firstborn infants, babies with low birth weight, in breech and transverse positions in the womb, and in multiple births, specifically fraternal twins.

The study was designed to statistically evaluate the independent and interacting effects of biological and environmental risk factors that lead to deformational plagiocephaly, in an attempt to provide future guidance for clinical treatment.

"The unprecedented size of the sample in our study allowed us to identify potential factors, such as maternal prenatal conditions and low birth weight, that were previously unrecognized in smaller cohort studies. These other factors need to be explored further before we can begin to piece together the entire puzzle," said Jessica Joganic, who was an ASU undergraduate student at the time. She is the lead author on the study.

However, independent of the biological and environmental factors, the findings showed that sleep position was the best predictor of deformational plagiocephaly, and one that could be addressed by altering behavior, according to Verrelli.

The research was part of Joganic's undergraduate honors thesis as a student in ASU's Barrett, the Honors College. Joganic earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology in 2008 from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She currently is pursuing a doctorate in physical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Also collaborating in the study, which appeared online this week, were John Lynch, an ASU evolutionary biologist, and Timothy Littlefield with Cranial Technologies, Inc., in Phoenix, which supplied the database of more than 20,000 children who were treated for deformational plagiocephaly between 1990 and 2007.

SkySong showcase features research universities, global companies

jabrewe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:45:17 -0700

Several of the world’s premier research universities and hospitals – as well as many top venture capitalists and promising global company start-ups – will visit SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, for a one-day showcase of key opportunities and information exchange Dec. 9.

Co-hosted by ASU SkySong and Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), the University and Global Technology Showcase kicks off the 2009 Invest Southwest Capital Conference and features universities and global companies presenting their best investment opportunities to an audience of investors and industry experts. In addition, several of the nation’s top venture capitalists from firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Bay City Capital, RedPoint Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and Polaris Ventures will participate in intriguing town hall discussions covering a variety of topics.

“We are very pleased to be able to convene a representation of the best in university research and global opportunities,” said Augustine Cheng, managing director of AzTE, ASU’s technology transfer office. “And the support we have seen from the VC community, their willingness not only to attend but to participate in our panel discussions, has also been tremendous.”

University participants include Columbia, Boston, Caltech, Penn, Harvard, MIT, the MD Anderson Cancer Center at Texas, UCLA, USC, Minnesota, Utah, Arizona, Thunderbird and Arizona State, as well as Ireland’s Dublin City University. Top research hospitals participating in the event include City of Hope and Mayo Clinic. Several global companies from Mexico, Brazil, Ireland and the United Kingdom will also present their investment opportunities in a fast-paced forum of what is known in the venture capital community as ‘elevator pitches.’

“ASU SkySong works hard each day to bring business opportunities to Arizona and to connect start-up companies with university resources,” said Julia Rosen, ASU associate vice president for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “This Showcase is a tremendous extension of those efforts and we’re very excited to bring these opportunities and investors together.”

Attendees must pre-register to attend the Showcase and registrations are limited to investors and industry representatives. More information and registration is available at www.investsouthwest.org.

Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE) is a non-profit organization that operates as the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer organization for ASU and its research enterprise. Comprised of industry and university veterans, AzTE brings together ASU’s researchers and industry partners to transform discoveries into marketable products and services, taking innovation out of the lab and into the commercial marketplace.

SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, serves as a portal for companies to the resources and services of ASU, offering entrepreneurship training, workforce development, research integration and business development assistance. ASU SkySong supports new technology start-ups with office space, access to business services and continuing training geared toward local innovators and global firms seeking to start operations in the United States.

Invest Southwest is the premier capital conference for venture capital and angel investors in Arizona and the Southwest. Since 1992, this event has featured the region’s most promising ventures that have collectively raised more than a quarter billion in investment dollars from venture capital firms, angel investors and other private investors. The 2009 Invest Southwest Capital Conference will be held Dec. 9-11 at the Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale.

ASU professor creates joint invention with MIT

jabrewe — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:31:55 -0700

For Arizona State University (ASU) Professor Thomas Moore, an invitation to guest lecture became a demonstration in a lab which led to a seafood lunch – which led to a joint invention with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that contributed to a sustainable energy start-up company.

Moore had been asked to speak at a summer course taught by well-known MIT Professor Daniel Nocera and, after the lecture, Moore was invited to the MIT labs for a demonstration of a new catalyst that could split water into hydrogen and oxygen – a potential pathway to sustainable energy production. As the demonstration came to a close, the group got hungry and headed to a local seafood restaurant for lunch. Over lobster and crab, the ensuing discussion led Moore to suggest that a type of solar cell he was developing could serve as a power source to enhance the ability of the catalyst to create this reaction. And the idea for a co-invention was born.

MIT scientists had developed the catalyst and Moore, along with his co-inventors, came up with a dye-sensitized solar cell that could provide the power needed to make the system more cost-effective.

“This is what happens when scientists get together to dream,” said Moore, director of the Center for Bioenergy and Photosynthesis and a professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “A scientist’s job is to translate dreams into reality and that’s what we set in motion that day.”

Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), which manages intellectual property and technology transfer for ASU, entered into an agreement with MIT’s technology transfer office to protect and market Moore’s joint invention with MIT. MIT then licensed the joint invention – along with other inventions from MIT – to Sun Catalytix (www.suncatalytix.com), a Cambridge, Mass.-based early-stage renewable energy start up.

This progression of events is the perfect example of the value of scientific collaboration, according to AzTE Deputy Managing Director Ken Polasko.

“Rarely does one department or one institution ever hold all the solutions to the complex scientific and economic puzzles that face society today,” Polasko said. “The open nature of the University system facilitates the interaction of highly skilled researchers that, in this case, may lead to a pathway for sustainable energy production.”

In the news: ASU aerospace industry alliances

jkullman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:30:12 -0700

Assistant professor of mechanical engineering Henry Sodano and Gregory Ehlert, a graduate research associate in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, Chemical and Materials Engineering, are featured in an ASU State Press/Web Devil article about ways their research is benefitting the aerospace industry.

Sodano and Ehlert are working with new types of composite materials that have the potential to help aerospace companies such as Boeing increase their use of advanced technologies as well as expand business opportunities.

See “Research takes flight with Boeing alliance”

ASU plays key role in Arizona’s landing of Suntech

cderra — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:17:56 -0700

The sun shines bright in the Valley, but that is not the reason why China’s leading manufacturer of solar panels, Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd., decided to locate its first manufacturing plant here. It is its longstanding ties to Arizona State University that helped convince the manufacturer of the benefits of metropolitan Phoenix, said Jonathan Fink, a Foundation Professor professor in ASU’s School of Sustainability and the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

“These earlier steps, which date back more than a decade, represent the apolitical, technology based cultivation that universities are best suited to carry out, usually behind the scenes,” Fink said.

Suntech announced its choice of the Phoenix metropolitan area for its first U.S. plant on Nov. 15 and cited several reasons, including the research strengths of ASU, Arizona’s statewide renewable energy policies and the favorable local business climate fostered by groups like the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. While Suntech will provide a modest initial commitment of about 75 new jobs and a facility of about 100,000 sq feet of space, it is the fact that they chose the Valley that has many people excited.

“It is great news for the Valley,” said R.F. “Rick” Shangraw, ASU vice president for Research and Economic Affairs. “This is the place where the largest solar module manufacturer in the world chose to have its first U.S. manufacturing base. They chose it in large measure due to the value they see in industry university partnerships.”

But it took a personal touch to get them interested in the Valley.

"If it wasn’t for ASU and Jon Fink, I doubt Suntech, especially Dr. Zhengrong Shi its CEO, would have taken much interest in Arizona in the first place,” said Rob Melnick, executive dean of ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability.

Suntech first learned about ASU in the 1990s through the school’s Photovoltaic Testing Laboratory (PTL), where their solar modules were tested and certified. In 2006, PTL’s director, Mani Tamizhmani, provided a group of ASU administrators a letter of introduction to Suntech’s Shi. Fink, who at the time was ASU’s vice president for Research and Economic Affairs, traveled with a small group to Suntech’s headquarters in Wuxi, China, to meet with Shi.

At the time, Fink and Melnick (then the associate vice president for economic affairs) were talking to many solar companies in Germany and China about possibly setting up operations in the Valley. Their message was simple and powerful.

“We took all of our solar pieces, some of which dated back to the 1960s, packaged them into a coherent program and then described ASU as the one place that has an end-to-end approach to solar,” Fink explained. “Not only did we have scientists discovering new materials and making new types of devices, but also architects creating new kinds of building-integrated photovoltaics (PV), the only PV testing lab in the U.S. (PTL), and dialogues with real estate developers about how you can design new communities that best incorporate renewable energy, particularly solar.”

After several formal meetings and, more importantly, many informal email exchanges, Shi and Fink found that there was more than just a good technical match between Suntech and ASU.

“Dr. Shi has a deep philosophical commitment towards sustainability,” said Fink, who also is director of the Center for Sustainability Science Applications. “As one of China’s strongest proponents of environmentally sound economic policies, he was impressed by the leading role ASU was taking in sustainability research and education.”

In 2007, Shi invited Fink to give a presentation in China on the many ways that universities can support the solar industry. “I was the only American academic to talk at this gathering of several hundred Chinese industrialists, government officials and academics, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy and Suntech,” Fink said. “It was excellent exposure for Arizona.”

When ASU sought to expand the solar expertise on its faculty, Fink turned to Shi for advice. Two recent senior recruits, Christiana Honsberg and Stuart Bowden, had been colleagues of Shi when he got his Ph.D. in Australia.

One of the most crucial pieces in the Suntech recruitment was a meeting in China in June 2007 when Shi mentioned to Fink that he and his senior leadership were planning a trip to the U.S. the following month to meet with political leaders. Along with representatives from Arizona Public Service, Fink was able to persuade the Suntech team to make their first visit to Phoenix, where he arranged for them to meet with former Governor Napolitano, William Harris of Science Foundation Arizona, staff from the Arizona Department of Commerce and several local business leaders. In the months that followed, the Suntech leaders frequently referred back to the positive impression of that early visit.

“Suntech coming to Phoenix says a great deal about how research universities, if they choose to, can help with economic development,” Fink said. “If you want to advance these new technologies, you need places where new ideas will be generated and that usually occurs in research labs. We hope their local manufacturing presence will lead Suntech to build scientific and technical collaborations with ASU, so they can tell us which important questions need to be answered to improve their ability to bring solar to market.

ASU’s expanded role in driving the Valley’s economic development has been an important part of Michael Crow’s presidency. Other recent steps include the securing of funding for several key alternative energy projects, like its new Energy Frontier Research Center, two large and highly competitive ARPA-E grants and the start up of the LightWorks initiative. Fink sees all of these as reflections of how ASU can help the Valley diversify its economy.

“We weren’t just suggesting Suntech should come here because there is a lot of sunshine,” he added. “We were saying there is also the potential for a lot of new ideas and if we partner with you, you can incorporate those into your R&D strategy.”