ASU News - Grants / Awards

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

Engineering new approaches to cancer research

jkullman — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:19:34 -0600

Deirdre Meldrum, dean of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, is a key member of a team leading a new Arizona State University research center that will embark on a novel approach to understanding and treating cancer.

Meldrum directs the Center for Ecogenomics at ASU’s Biodesign Institute. The center will play a role in work for the new Center for Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology at ASU.

It’s one of 12 Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers being supported by the National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health, to pursue development of new methods of arresting tumor growth and metastasis in the fight against cancer.

Research at the Center for Ecogenomic focuses in part on the study of the fundamental mechanisms governing the birth, growth and decline of human cells with the aim of better understanding and finding ways to combat the most widespread diseases and other threats to human health.

ASU’s new cancer research center will use technology developed in Meldrum’s ecogenomics lab, specifically a medical imaging technology called cell CT. Pioneered by researcher Roger Johnson and Alan Nelson, it enables true three-dimensional computed tomography imaging of individual cancer cells.

For more information visit: http://asunews.asu.edu/20091026_ASUcancer

Heydt earns top electrical engineering honor

jkullman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:26:23 -0600

Gerald Heydt, a professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, has been selected to receive the 2010 Richard H. Kaufmann Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for exceptional achievements in electric power quality, and transmission and distribution engineering.

IEEE is among the largest engineer organizations in world. Its Kaufmann Award is an IEEE Technical Field Award, considered among the most prestigious honors in the engineering field.

It recognizes significant contributions to electrical engineering in the industrial environment through the design or application of systems technology, as well as apparatus, devices or materials for plant power distribution, drive systems, process control or other utilization systems.

Heydt is to receive the award given during the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting on July 27, 2010 in Minneapolis.

Heydt’s work focuses on electric power quality, transmission and distribution engineering, power systems modeling and computer control, and the dynamic response of electric power systems. He is the author of two books in this area – one being the first book on electric power quality.

He has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1997 and is an ASU Regents’ Professor, the highest recognition bestowed on faculty members at Arizona’s state universities.

Heydt came to ASU in 1995 after 25 years at Purdue University. He is the site director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSerc), which is a nationwide power engineering center based at ASU. Researchers at 13 universities are part of PSerc, as well as close to 50 power industry-related companies. Heydt also is a part of the Future Renewable Electric Energy Distribution Management (FREEDM) National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. The center’s goal is to integrate renewable energy resources into power distribution systems.

Heydt’s work outside academia has included stints with Commonwealth Edison Company, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, EG&G and various positions around the world with the United Nations Development Program.

The Kaufmann Award was established by the IEEE in 1986 “for outstanding contributions in industrial systems engineering.” It may be presented annually to an individual, or team of up to three persons.

The Award honors Richard Harold Kaufmann in memory of his important contributions to industrial systems engineering and his service to the IEEE Industry Applications Society.

Spotlight on nanotechnology advances

jkullman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:46:33 -0600

TechConnect magazine, published by the Arizona Technology Council, features two articles about research at Arizona State University in its special “Nano” (nanotechnology) issue. The articles highlight cutting-edge work led by faculty of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

“Getting Down To The Roots” reports on the progress anticipated in ASU’s research capabilities in the field of microscopy as the university’s J.M. Cowley Center for High Resolution Microscopy prepares to deploy new state-of-the-art electron microscopes.

“Printing Press” details research led by materials engineering professor Ghassan Jabbour in his Printed and Flexible Electronics and Photonics Laboratory at the ASU Research Park.

ASU doctoral student leads research project on homeless children in Peru

vpmartin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:16:13 -0600

Through the lens of disposable cameras, Jamie Patrice Joanou had hoped to capture snapshots of the lives of children living on the streets of Lima, Peru. Instead, her study revealed the humanizing effects of photography through self-portraits of homeless boys who simply wanted to create memories of their lives.

Joanou, a doctoral candidate in educational leadership and policy studies within the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at Arizona State University, first became interested in the lives of children living on the street while traveling for a year in South America.

Joanou was intrigued by these children, mostly boys, who make their way on the streets for diverse reasons, including familial abuse, poverty and neglect. They employ various strategies to make a living in the densely populated city of nine million. Lima does not have as large a population of homeless children as Brazil or Mexico, she explained, but the street is a very transitional place for street children who are marginalized from mainstream society.

“They experience daily instability, moving from home to street to juvenile detention. Their relationship with the urban environment is very fluid, and their relationships are very fluid with each other, with organizations and with other inhabitants of the city,” she says. “I wanted to learn more about them, so I decided I wanted to get my doctorate in education.”

In 2007, Joanou finished her master’s degree in social and philosophical foundations of education and returned to Peru to pilot her project about Lima’s street children. Her dissertation proposal, “Street Children and Cityscapes: The Use of Photovoice as a Collaborative Method with Children Living and Working on the streets of Lima, Peru,” received an international award from MyNetResearch.com for outstanding and innovative research ideas that have the potential to lead to advancements in their respective fields of study. The award comes with $1,000 and a one-year premium membership to http://www.mynetresearch.com/, an online collaborative research community.

"Jamie's work contributes to the growing use of photovoice in work with young people, including those in challenging circumstances,” says Elizabeth Swadener, a professor of education policy, leadership and curriculum with the Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. “Such work honors the perspectives and experiences of children and youth and provides a powerful vehicle for not only creative self-expression but for sharing stories and creating spaces of possibility."

Joanou returned to Peru in 2008 and gained access to this population through a local nonprofit where street children can wash their clothes, shower, eat and participate in educational workshops.

After gaining rapport with the youth there, she gave them disposable cameras and asked them to shoot pictures of their environment, hoping to receive images of their 24-hour urban landscape. She offered them key words, such as “calle” (street) and “Terokal,” the shoemakers’ glue they inhale to get high.

“They’re living in extreme poverty; they have very limited contact with their family, and they don’t have access to technology, like cameras," she says. "It was a way for me to get to see what their lives were like while still being an outsider. I was never going to be able to do observations by being a full participant.”

“I wanted them to use those key words to explore what was important about street life. What I got back was pictures of themselves and pictures of their friends. I originally attributed that to the novelty of having a camera. Then I asked them to take pictures of places in the city that were important to them. Each time I got pictures of themselves and their friends. I started to realize the importance of that in identity development. They wanted to see themselves in the photograph and be seen as individuals.”

Joanou says it was especially important for the children to be viewed as more than street kids. “Their identities are really complex, and they want some authorship to their identities because they tend to be contrived by media, and even research, and that’s really problematic.”

Because poverty-level families don’t typically have cameras, the children didn’t think it was possible to capture their lives in pictures, Joanou says. Photography helped bring these children in from the societal margin by giving them photo albums of their youth.

Joanou theorizes that photographs don’t document history and aren’t objective images of life, experiences or moments in times. Rather, they are ways of creating history, creating identities and finding meaning.

“The humanizing effects are having an active part in the creation of their own histories,” she says. “It was the best experience of my life, and probably the hardest. There was a constant negotiation of my expectations, rules and guidelines, and a constant renegotiation of rapport. They taught me a lot about how to be a person and how to be a better researcher, too.”

After analyzing data and writing her dissertation, Joanou plans to publish a book on her research and pursue a tenure-track faculty position after graduating.

“I hope to go back to Lima and also to use the pictures with them for future research," she says. "I’m going to try to maintain contact with the boys in my study and go back in one, two, five years and see how they view their adolescence and how that view and perception changes over time.”

Magazine features Design Innovation team's concept

wcraft — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:01:23 -0600

A transgenerational toilet design by an ASU Herberger Institute School of Design Innovation team is featured in the News & Trends section of the June 2009 print edition of engine magazine; the English-learning magazine for German-speaking engineers. The Go With the Flo™ design team was led by John Takamura, assistant professor of industrial design; and includes Dosun Shin, fellow industrial design assistant professor, and Tamara Christensen and Dean Bacalzo, Master of Science in Design students.

The creative and innvoative Go With the Flo™ design also garnered a Breaking the Rules Silver Award bestowed by the Northwest Design Invitational (NDI) at its spring 2009 biennial competition. For more information about the Go With the Flo™, visit: http://asunews.asu.edu/20090427_FloDesign.

TVSG receives ASU-Kauffman Foundation grant

jbmagrud — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:04:00 -0600

Professor Eric Menkhus of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and the Technology Ventures Services Group (TVSG) at Arizona State University received a $50,000 Pathways to Entrepreneurship Grant to continue helping Arizona innovators cultivate and grow viable technology businesses.

The TVSG, a for-credit course for graduate students in law, business, engineering and other disciplines, will use the ASU grant to help pay for the services of local professionals who will mentor students for the 2009-2010 academic year. The TVSG is a partnership of the College of Law, the W.P. Carey School of Business, the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Barrett, The Honors College. It provides low-cost essential legal and business services to eligible technology start-up companies and entrepreneurs.

“Like many of our start-up clients, the TVSG needs funding to operate here in the early stages of our existence,” said Menkhus, the TVSG’s director. “The Pathways to Entrepreneurship Grant is important to us because it not only allows us to continue working with great professionals, but is also a symbol of ASU’s support of entrepreneurship education, in general, and the TVSG, in particular.

“Additionally, the affiliation of the grant with the Kauffman Foundation provides a link to one of, if not the, most prestigious organizations promoting entrepreneurship education,” he said. “We need money from outside groups like grantors and donors to continue to provide critical services to Arizona’s early-stage technology entrepreneurs, so the grant money will be put to good use.”

The TVSG is housed at SkySong, ASU’s center for innovation in Scottsdale, and is made up of two student groups. The Technology Ventures Legal Clinic is comprised of law students who work on business formation, employment issues, licensing and other agreements, limited patent work, and other intellectual property issues. Technology Ventures Consulting consists of mostly graduate students from outside the law school who offer market research and analysis, technology and supply chain assessments, financial model creation, implementation planning, leadership team analysis, and other business-planning services.

The more than two dozen students enrolled each year in the course are mentored by Phoenix attorneys Michael Hool, Jennifer Lefere and Jonathan Coury of the Hool Law Group, and by Tom Fulcher, founder of The Idea Gardener, a business development and marketing firm. Their expertise and passion for entrepreneurship and for working with students is a big plus for the group, said Menkhus, noting he hopes to use the new grant money to continue the effective utilization of the TVSG’s in-residence professionals.

“Another use of the grant funds will be to assist SkySong’s ongoing efforts to attract international technology firms to Arizona by providing services those firms need when establishing their first presence in the U.S.,” Menkhus said. “TVSG students can provide information about U.S. markets, competitors, business-entity formation, contracting, and many other important topics that companies new to the U.S. may encounter.”

The ASU Pathways to Entrepreneurship Grant is part of the university’s commitment to funding innovative approaches to entrepreneurship education. Across ASU, faculty and staff are teaching courses that provide students with opportunities to use knowledge of their disciplines to advance entrepreneurship and innovation. Through programs such as the TVSG, which also received a $40,000 entrepreneurship grant in 2008, students increase their influence on the community and confidence in their entrepreneurial and innovative skills.

ASU students work to develop motor for Grand Canyon rafting

dprewitt — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:53:50 -0600

Engineering students at ASU's Polytechnic campus will work to develop a raft motor that will run on alternative motorboat technology.

Student cashes in on disaster relief design

wcraft — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:50:21 -0600

Tanner Woodford’s artistic take on calamity has resulted in cash prizes. The ASU College of Design undergraduate student recently took two top awards and $11,000 home for his graphic and broadcast design entries about disaster relief.

Woodford entered the Center for International Disaster Information’s (CIDI) 2009 PSAid: Public Service Announcements for International Disasters competition. Contestants were asked to provide public service announcements that demonstrated the importance of giving monetary donations – as opposed to in-kind donations – in response to international disasters. Woodford’s graphic and broadcast designs entitled “Cans Can’t Cash Can” demonstrated the difference between the cost it takes to send one can of food to Zimbabwe, and how the same amount of money could benefit more than 800 community members there with healthcare for an entire year.

The winning entries were selected from a group of approximately 50 semifinalists from college and university students nationwide. The final winners were selected based on an online public vote and the scores by a panel of esteemed judges that included last year’s student winners in both the broadcast and print categories. The winners split $30,000 in cash, of which, Woodford received $5,000 for placing second in the broadcast division. His first-place print design netted him $6,000 and he may have his PSA distributed to national print media. Despite the monetary gains he received from the competition, Woodford feels that his graphic design work goes far beyond collecting cash.

“I believe graphic designers have the unique understanding and responsibility to motivate the public to participate in events that benefit local, domestic and international communities,” Woodford says. “I find the work at CIDI particularly interesting and found this contest to be a unique opportunity to use some of my newly realized design skills for a good cause.”

Scheduled to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communication Design from Arizona State University in 2009, Woodford also lives in Tempe, Ariz. with his wife. For more information about Woodford, visit: http://www.tannerwoodford.com.

Industrial product design wastes away the competition

wcraft — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:09:00 -0600

A team of ASU College of Design students and faculty were recognized this spring for their transgenerational toilet design concept, Go With the Flo™ by the Northwest Design Invitational (NDI). Five excellence criteria were exercised at the NDI biennial competition to recognize outstanding design: appropriate aesthetics, design innovation, ecological responsibility and market and user benefits.

Design team members honored with the NDI’s Breaking the Rules Silver Award include John Takamura and Dosun Shin, College of Design faculty members, and Tamara Christensen and Dean Bacalzo, Master of Science in Design students.

“We hope our design will alter the toilet archetype by the year 2030,” says John Takamura, design team leader and assistant professor of industrial design in the ASU College of Design.

The Flo™ toilet is an ergonomic, sustainable design concept for baby boomers that functions like a squat toilet. Designers maintain that using the Flo™ toilet is akin to yoga – by building and strengthening abdominal and back muscles. Only one-half to one gallon of water is used for flushing and The Flo™ reuses water from hand washing. To flush water from the tanks to the toilet, the Flo™ employs an electromagnetic ball valve that uses electromagnets. Go With the Flo™ also is free of mechanical parts. The toilet is fully self-sustaining and independent of electric power.

The genesis for the Go With the Flo™ design concept was a request by graduate student Tamara Christensen. She expressed her interest in toilet design based on some work she did as an industrial design undergraduate. Takamura agreed to work with her on an independent extracurricular study and quickly pulled in Dosun Shin, fellow College of Design professor.

“I wanted to have another graduate design student on the team and solicited the talents of Dean Bacalzo because of his undergraduate engineering degree,” Takamura says.

Bacalzo became the design engineer, Shin was the 3-D design consultant, Christensen served as the team’s researcher and Takamura stepped into the branding-specialist role.

“We decided to meet at least once a week over a 15-week semester to take on the task of completely redesigning the modern toilet,” Takamura says. “This was actually very difficult because the toilet really hasn’t changed in over 100 years of use, but we felt confident in our transdisciplinary team to get the job done!” he adds.

Takamura and his design team not only have changed the concept of a typical bathroom experience with their Go With the Flo™ design, but they also shut out the competition. According to NDI event organizers, this year they received more than 80 entries from 25 different design organizations and universities.