Dartmouth Engineer

Professor Lee Lynd received the 2011 Mines Medal, awarded annually by the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology “to honor engineers, scientists, and researchers who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and innovation.” In June Lynd and Jeremy Woods published an article in the journal Nature. “Perspective: A New Hope for Africa” argues that bioenergy could help bring food security to the world’s poorest continent.

Professor Ian Baker has been named a fellow of the Materials Research Society. He was recognized for his scientific leadership in exploring the structure-property relationships of materials.

Professor Mary Albert accepted an invitation from the National Academy of Sciences to serve on its Committee on the Legacies and Lessons of the International Polar Year.

Dean Joseph Helble discussed the importance of technological literacy in the 21st century during a TEDx lecture, “The World’s ‘Sputnik Moment’?”:

Arsanis Inc. of Lebanon, N.H., co-founded by Professor Tillman Gerngross, Errik Anderson ’00 Tu’07, and Eszter Nagy, has raised $10 million in funding. The startup is developing fully human monoclonal antibodies to treat a variety of infectious diseases.

Avedro, a startup based on technology developed by Professor B. Stuart Trembly, has completed $25-million series C financing. The Waltham, Mass.-based company offers thermal techniques for reshaping corneas.

Engineering majors Eric Packer ’12 and Stephanie Crocker ’12 have been named to the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association’s All Academic Intercollegiate Ski Team. Packer was also awarded the Francis L. Town Scientific Prize for the class of 2012 for meritorious work in engineering sciences.

Saryah Azmat ’11, an engineering major, was one of five students chosen to represent Dartmouth at a global health case competition at Emory University in March. The team won an honorable mention and $1,000 for a hypothetical plan to efficiently allocate resources for 800,000 refugees in East Africa.

Engineering physics major Jeremy Brouillet ’13 received an honorable mention from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. Brouillet, who has worked in the laser lab at Thayer, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in materials science.

Lucas Ellis Th’12 attended the annual National Biodiesel Board Conference in February as co-chair of Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel. See an interview with him:

Anne Kwei Th’11, Ilya Bendich DMS’14, and Joe Gigliotti DMS’14 joined together to win the first Dartmouth Medical Technology Business Plan Competition in May. Their plan was for Rytek Medical, a company commercializing a cancer-sensing biopsy needle invented by Professor Ryan Halter Th’06. The competition was the brainchild of Jay Miller ’82.

Professor Reza Olfati-Saber, an expert on self-organizing complex systems, has been awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the government’s highest such honor. The award will support his research on the next generation of smart cars.

Professor Olfati-Saber, second from left in second to last row, with President Obama and fellow award winners. Official White House photograph by Chuck Kennedy.

Professor Solomon Diamond ’97 Th’98 was one of 53 early-career engineering educators chosen to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium in December in Irvine, Calif. The program focused on ways to ensure that students learn skills necessary to be effective engineers or researchers.

ICECODE LLC founded by Professor Victor Petrenko, is one of five innovation award-winners in the 2010 GE Ecomagination Challenge. ICECODE was cited for a technology — using high-power pulses to apply heat from the inside — “that instantly de-ices wind turbine blades so they never slow or shut down.”

The GE Ecomagination Challenge named SustainX Inc., founded in 2007 by Dax Kepshire Th’07 ’09, Ben Bollinger ’04 Th’04 ’08, and Troy McBride Th’01 with the help of former Thayer Dean Charles Hutchinson, as one of 12 new partners selected for investment by GE “to develop and commercialize technologies vital to helping build the next-generation power grid.”

Biomedical product development firm Simbex, led by founder and adjunct professor Rick Greenwald Th’88, will partner with Thayer School and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice to create the Center for Translation of Rehabilitation Engineering Advances and Technology (TREAT). With a $3.4-million, five-year award from the National Institutes of Health, TREAT will offer technology assessment, intellectual property evaluation, concept prototyping and testing, market evaluation, and clinical trials development for rehabilitation technologies.

Recent B.E. students Devon Anderson Th’10, Jonathan Guerrette Th’10, and Nathan Niparko ’09 Th’10 earned the second-place, $5,000 prize in the undergraduate category of the 2010 Collegiate Inventors Competition for the bioresorbable surgical sponge they created as a project for Thayer’s design methodology course ENGS 190/290 (now known as ENGS 89/90). The team used a novel combination of materials, including cellulose and alginate, and a novel fabrication method involving electrospinning to create a sponge that, if accidentally left in a patient’s body during surgery, breaks down into harmless substances that can be absorbed by the body. Anderson, now a visiting research assistant at Thayer, and Guerrette, a master’s candidate, are continuing research on the sponge.

Master’s candidate Lucas Ellis co-chairs the Next Generation Scientists for Biodiesel initiative, formed to increase support for biodiesel among tomorrow’s scientific leaders. Chosen for the position by the National Biodiesel Board, Ellis will help create a forum where students can collaborate and share ideas, including through virtual conferences and Facebook exchanges.

A team of Dartmouth students was recently selected to participate in NASA’s 2011 Microgravity University, a program that allows university students to perform research in a zero-g environment similar to that experienced by astronauts.

The team will fly aboard an aircraft that performs a series of parabolic arcs to simulate spaceflight. Four team members, B.E. candidates Sean Currey ’11, Broghan Cully ’11, Maxwell Fagin, and Michael Kellar, will test their ENGS 89/90 (formerly 190/290) project, which is sponsored by NASA’s Glenn Research Center. The project is a condensing heat exchanger that uses porous graphite to extract moisture from spacecraft cabins. Julianna Scheiman ’11 and William Voigt, a dual-degree student, will also be aboard. NASA has also featured Currey’s summer internship work on alternative fuels.

Sean Currey ’11 during his summer internship at NASA. Photograph courtesy of Sean Currey.

A Dartmouth Outing Club crew led by Greg Sokol ’10 Th’11 spent last summer rebuilding Titcomb Cabin, located on the Connecticut River’s Gilman Island about a mile downriver from campus. The original cabin, which was built in 1952, burned down in a May 2009 fire. The crew floated nearly all the construction materials — including almost 100 logs harvested from a College-owned lot — to the island via canoes and boats.

CABIN CREW: Left to right, Lucas Schulz ’08 Th’09, engineering major Jordan Nesmith ’11, Greg Sokol ’10 Th’11, Max Friedman ’10, Claire Frazer ’10, Charlie Grant ’11, and engineering major Kodiak Burke ’11. Photograph by Steve Smith.

This spring the crew plans to finish the loft and install windows, a door, and a woodstove. “Working with fellow engineers was great — the project is what it is only because of their abilities and their willingness to learn and pick up new skills,” Sokol says. “The trickiest part of the cabin was probably putting the last log on. The roof is supported by five logs called purlins which run the length of the roof. The one that supports the peak of the roof, the ridge pole, is the largest log we had, with a 21-inch diameter at the butt. It needed to be raised up carefully with a chain hoist and positioned perfectly onto four supporting posts. I think we had 15 to 20 volunteers that day helping steady the log as it was lowered into place.” Read the crew’s blog at  rebuildingtitcomb.blogspot.com.

A Formula Hybrid exhibition competition will be held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway May 7 as part of the 100th Anniversary Indy 500 Emerging Tech Day. The exhibition follows the fourth annual Thayer-organized Formula Hybrid International Competition, which takes place May 1–4 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, N.H. Meanwhile, you can follow the progress of this year’s Formula Hybrid teams in a new blog written by veteran racing writer Gordon Kirby.

Three groups from Thayer participated in the USA Science and Engineering Festival, held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on October 23 and 24. Professor Mary Albert, Ice Drilling Program Office educational outreach coordinator Linda Morris, Thayer Ph.D. candidate Kaitlin Keegan, B.E. candidate Casey Stelmach ’10, and three Dartmouth earth sciences grad students presented Polar Detectives, an interactive exhibit about ice core research and climate change.

Ph.D. candidate Kaitlin Keegan shows an ice core to visitors to Thayer’s Polar Detectives booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Photograph courtesy of Nancy Serrell.

Professor Solomon Diamond ’97 Th’98 and Ph.D. candidates Broc Burke, Mohammed Talukdar, and Katherine Perdue presented Biosignals! Synchronizing Rhythms in the Human Body, about what scientists are discovering about the brain’s function in synchronizing our biological rhythms.

Professor Solomon Diamond ’97 Th’98, and Ph.D. candidates Broc Burke, Mohammed Talukdar, and Katherine Perdue in their booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Photograph courtesy of Nancy Serrell.

B.E. candidate Elizabeth Dain-Owens ’10 was among the crew of the Big Green Bus discussing energy efficiency and alternative fuels.

Dartmouth earned the top spot in The Daily Beast’s listing of “Tech’s 29 Most Powerful Colleges.” The website praised the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center, a nonprofit tech incubator supported by Thayer School faculty and alumni through the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network.

Professor Elsa Garmire was honored as a “Laser Pioneer” at the Smithsonian Museum in February as part of LaserFest, a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the first working laser. As a graduate student at MIT, Garmire first demonstrated important nonlinear effects produced by laser beams acting on atoms and molecules.

Professor Tillman Gerngross, co-founder and CEO of biotech firm Adimab Inc., and his colleagues, co-founder Dane Wittrup and COO Errik Anderson ’00 Tu’07, earned a 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the New Hampshire High Technology Council. Last October, Google took an ownership stake in Adimab, which identifies therapeutic proteins, for an estimated $10 to $13 million.

Douglas Fraser, research engineer and director of Formula Hybrid, was awarded the 2010 Carroll Smith Mentor’s Cup by Formula SAE and the Sports Car Club of America. The award recognizes extraordinary levels of personal time and expertise given to engineering education. The citation praises Fraser’s mentoring of Formula Hybrid students.

Brent Bilger ’80 Th’81 and Chris McConnell ’75 have been appointed to Thayer School’s Board of Overseers. Bilger is an executive in residence with U.S. Venture Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. McConnell is the founder and president of Adondo Corp., a Wayne, Pa.-based company that develops custom enterprise and web-based solutions for mobile content delivery and advertising.

Professor Alex Hartov Th’88 has been appointed director of Thayer School’s M.S. and Ph.D. programs.

Professors Charles Sullivan and Christopher Levey and researchers from MIT, Georgia Tech, and the University of Pennsylvania have received a $92-million grant from the Department of Energy for improving integrated power electronics to increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Dartmouth has been designated a Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence with a $12.8-million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Thayer Professors Ian Baker, Keith Paulsen Th’84, Tillman Gerngross, Karl Griswold, John Weaver, Jack Hoopes, and Brian Pogue will work with medical colleagues on using magnetic nanoparticles to destroy tumors.

Professor Sue McGrath is a project team member on a patient surveillance system being implemented by anesthesiologists at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The system, which earned the 2009 Health Devices Achievement Award from the healthcare nonprofit ECRI Institute, helps doctors identify and treat post-surgical problems before they develop into medical crises.

U.S. Patent 7,701,317, “Low AC resistant foil winding for magnetic coils on gapped cores,” has been issued to Professor Charles Sullivan and Jennifer D. Pollock Th’06.

U.S. Patent 7,713,268 B2, “Thermokeratoplasty Systems,” has been issued to Professor Stuart Trembly Th’83, Adjunct Professor Jack Hoopes, and Dr. Paul Manganiello of Dartmouth Medical School.

The Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice named a paper co-authored by Professor Daniel Lynch its “Best Paper for 2009.” In “Experiential Learning in Engineering Practice” Lynch argues that the current system of pre-licensure experience is inadequate to meet contemporary expectations for professional engineering leadership.

Ph.D. candidates Broc Burke DMS’09 and Claire McKenna ’10 have received 2010-11 Albert Schweitzer Fellowships to carry out service projects in Vermont and New Hampshire that address the health needs of underserved individuals and communities. Burke plans to connect mentors from Thayer and Dartmouth athletic teams with children who suffer from chronic illness. McKenna plans to combat obesity and diabetes by creating cooking classes and spreading nutritional information.

Emily Koepsell ’09 Th’10 has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study abroad for one year. She plans to take classes in sustainable energy and energy savings at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy in Copenhagen.

Ashley Morishige ’11 has earned a 2010-11 Bengt Sonnerup Fellowship to support further research and implementation of her honors thesis project, “A quantification of global pasture yield and the potential to increase biofuel production through pasture intensification.” The award encourages applied research that addresses global climate change.

Sam Tanyos ’11 was awarded a Mazilu Engineering Research Fellowship for 2010-11 in support of his project, “Improving the activity of alginate lyase, a potential enzyme therapy for cystic fibrosis patients.” The award will enable him to continue enzyme engineering research in the lab of Professor Karl Griswold. The fellowship was created by Jaime Mazilu ’05 Th’06.

Hannah Payne ’11, a neuroscience and engineering sciences double major, was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, which supports outstanding students who intend to pursue careers in science, math, and engineering.

Sproxil Inc., co-founded by Ph.D. candidate Ashifi Gogo Th’09, was selected as a winner in the 7th Annual MITX Technology Awards in the Mobile Infrastructure category in June. Sproxil’s mobile-phone based anti-counterfeiting service enables consumers to confirm a brand’s genuineness via text messaging.

Thayer School won the grand prize in a video contest sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation and the American Society of Civil Engineers that addressed the question: How do you make your mark on the world? The video, made by Bonnie Hennessee ’08, Betsy Dain-Owens ’10, Calvin Krishen Th’08, Ph.D. candidate Tao Mao, dual-degree student Evan Lipinski, and Grayson Zulauf ’12, highlights ways Dartmouth students get kids excited about engineering: running a Lego League robotics tournament; mentoring high-school students during Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth; helping middle-schoolers make model solar racecars; and running an after-school science program for elementary students.

A manufacturer of software that can help engineers determine a product’s carbon footprint has agreed to donate funds from its sales to support Formula Hybrid, the annual international student competition based at Thayer. Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. will donate $1 for every download of its SolidWorks SustainabilityXpress software, up to $10,000, to Formula Hybrid, which encourages students to design high-performance fuel-electric hybrid vehicles. “SustainabilityXpress will aid in students’ decision-making processes regarding sustainability and the life cycle of components or materials they use in building their plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles for the Formula Hybrid competition,” says Formula Hybrid deputy director Wynne Washburn.

Scientific American recently featured Professor Victor Petrenko’s technology for de-icing car windshields, power lines, airplane wings, and bridge cables. Petrenko’s IceController delivers a swift jolt of high-power electricity that immediately melts ice where it meets surfaces, letting the ice slide away. “The objective is to heat an interface in between the ice and the surface from ambient temperature to ice[’s] melting point quickly and with a lot of power,” Petrenko told Scientific American. His company, Ice Engineering LLC, has installed the technology on the Uddevalla cable bridge in Sweden and a 107,639-square-foot glass dome in a mall in Moscow.

Scientists from around the world are joining forces to help resolve issues related to the sustainable production of energy from biomass. The Global Sustainable Bioenergy (GSB) project, led by Professor Lee Lynd, kicked off in November with a meeting in Malaysia. “A key focus of our project is to look at future scenarios that are not continuous with current trends,” says Lynd. “By showing that bioenergy-intensive futures that honor other important priorities are physically possible on a global scale, it is my hope that the GSB project will motivate and inform action toward this end.” Lynd, the Paul H. and Joan A. Queneau Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering Design, describes the project — and his longtime passion for biofuels — in a Jones Seminar that is available on YouTube.

The Eastern Snow Conference awarded Si Chen Th’10 the Wiesnet Medal for best student paper at its conference last June. Chen presented the paper “In-situ Observations of Snow Sublimation Using Scanning Electron Microscopy.”

A $2-million award from the National Science Foundation will enable Professor Simon Shepherd to help expand the international Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, or SuperDARN, used to study the space plasma environment that surrounds the Earth. Shepherd is part of a collaborative project with colleagues from three other schools to construct an array of ground-based remote sensing instruments. “This data will help us better understand the near-Earth space environment and ultimately better predict geomagnetic storms and their effects on terrestrial and space systems,” says Shepherd, who will oversee the construction and operation of at least one of four new radar sites. He will be joined in that effort by co-principal investigator Raymond Greenwald Adv’70.

Professor Tillman Gerngross, following on the heels of his successful GlycoFi yeast manufacturing system (which he and co-founder Professor Charles Hutchinson sold to Merck in 2006 for $400 million), is driving progress at his latest biotech start-up, Adimab, which re-engineers yeast cells to create antibody factories. “We’ve created a synthetic human immune system in yeast, and the yeast will do what a normal B cell does, which is create an antibody,” says Gerngross. Adimab recently announced major new research collaborations with Merck and Roche.

Assistant professor Petia Vlahovska has earned a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. Her research aims to mimic the design of biological cells.

Professor Ian Baker has been named the Sherman Fairchild Professor in Engineering in recognition of his research, scholarship, teaching, and mentoring. His most recent research is developing iron nanoparticles for cancer treatment.

Thayer School has been awarded a grant to support two women as Clare Boothe Luce Graduate Fellows in its new Ph.D. Innovation Program, the nation’s first such program addressing the need for engineers with both technical and entrepreneurial expertise.

Ashifi Gogo Th’09 and Shivam Rajdev Tu’09 placed first in the United States and second globally in the 2009 Global Social Venture Competition, earning $10,000 for their business plan for mPedigree Logistics. Citing the “huge problem” of counterfeit drugs in developing countries, the World Economic Forum also recognized mPedigree as a Technology Pioneer for 2009, and Forum Nokia awarded mPedigree first place in the emerging markets category of its Calling All Innovators competition. With mPedigree, all drugs distributed in participating countries are labeled with a scratch panel that reveals a unique code, or “pedigree.” When a drug is purchased, the patient can text the code to a designated number and receive a response confirming whether the drug is genuine or fake. Piloted successfully in Ghana in January 2008, mPedigree is now working to expand its platform to all 48 sub-Saharan African countries, starting with a trial in Nigeria this summer. Gogo is in Thayer’s Ph.D. Innovation Program.

Alison Stace-Naughton ’11, an engineering major, has been awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in recognition of her drug delivery research. Receiving the scholarship “has really confirmed my desire to become a great bioengineer,” she says. The foundation awards scholarships to outstanding students who intend to pursue careers in science, mathematics, and engineering.

Engineering majors Sarah Rocio ’10, Mike Wood ’10, and Lucas Schulz ’08 are the technical experts for the fifth annual Big Green Bus summer cross-country tour. The 15 crew members of the veggie-oil-powered bus want to raise public awareness of energy conservation and environmental responsibility. Follow the tour at thebiggreenbus.org.

For photos of more breakthrough work, visit our Research and Innovations set on Flickr.

Professor Brian Pogue, internationally known for his research on biomedical optics and imaging of cancer, has been named the new dean of graduate studies at Dartmouth. In the lab, Pogue and his research team develop and refine new medical technologies that use near-infrared light and spectroscopy to characterize cancer pathophysiology and guide cancer therapy. He also serves as deputy editor of the journal Optics Letters, is on the editorial boards of Medical Physics and the Journal of Biomedical Optics, and holds adjunct appointments in the surgery department at Dartmouth Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

In the August-September 2008 issue of PE: The Magazine for Professional Engineers, Thayer Dean Joseph J. Helble makes the case for the ability of colleges to prepare engineering students who are technically proficient and creative leaders who understand broader societal issues. “This call to a holistic approach is, in fact, a call to regain the true mission of the engineering profession,” Helble and three co-authors write in “Dispelling the Myths of Holistic Engineering.” “Engineers are eloquent in distinguishing themselves from other scientists as the science-based professionals who apply their creative and technical knowledge in service to humanity, specifically by designing and building to improve the quality of life for society in both the built and natural environments.”

The International Metallographic Society has awarded professor Ian Baker and three of his students honors in its International Metallographic Contest (PDF) and Exhibit, held in conjunction with the society’s annual convention in August. The contest, which offers microstructural analysts the opportunity to display their work and communicate significant scientific information, covers all fields of optical and electron microscopy. Baker and Yifeng Liao Th’09 earned an honorable mention in the “Electron Microscopy — Transmission and Analytical” division for their work on “Microstructural Refinement of a Eutectoid Fe-Ni-Mn-Al Alloy.” Baker and Si Chen Th’10 received third-place honors in the “Electron Microscopy Scanning” division for their work on “Mechanisms of Sintering Ice Spheres.” And the professor and Rachel Lomonaco Th’09 received an honorable mention for the Dubose-Crouse Award for Unique, Unusual, and New Techniques in Microscopy for their research on “Classification of Firn Using Micro CT and SEM.” Baker is Thayer’s Sherman Fairchild Professor of Engineering Sciences and senior associate dean of academic affairs.

Dartmouth has been awarded nearly $3 million to develop an interdisciplinary doctoral program in the polar sciences and engineering, with a focus on rapid environmental change. The five-year grant from the National Science Foundation “will allow us to train a desperately needed cohort of climate change scientists,” says environmental studies professor Ross Virginia, director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth. His co-investigators in the project include Thayer professors Ian Baker and Mary Albert Th’84.

Professor Ursula Gibson ’76 spent the fall term at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland in Espoo, Finland, under a Fulbright Scholarship. A nanomaterials specialist, she is investigating the use of zinc oxide nanostructures as a way of imparting UV protection capabilities. “My collaborators in Finland are interested in improved protection for wood products,” said Gibson, who hopes to connect this research to the timber industry in Vermont and New Hampshire. “Zinc oxide is a particularly attractive material to use as a UV blocker because it absorbs a wide range of UV light, and doesn’t degrade as it does its job.” Gibson returned in January to become the new director of Thayer’s M.S./Ph.D. programs.

Adjunct professor Mary Albert Th’84 has been named director of the new Ice Drilling Program Office, part of National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs. The IDPO is responsible for drilling and obtaining ice core samples, which contain data about past climate conditions, levels of pollution, and even levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases over the last 800,000 years. Albert is a research engineer with the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, part of the Army Corps of Engineers, and will head-up research at IDPO, which will be headquartered at Thayer School.

A group of Dartmouth researchers, including Thayer research associate and scientist Robert Savell Adv’05, has developed a mathematical tool that can be used to unscramble the underlying structure of time-dependent, interrelated, complex data — such as the career-long votes of legislators, second-by-second activity of the stock market, or levels of oxygenated blood flow in the brain. Their study was published in a December online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “We think this tool can be useful when applied in the financial realm, to portfolio and risk management,” says study co-author and mathematics professor Dan Rockmore. “We expect similar results as it is applied to different complex systems like the brain, or even the collections of brains that are societies.”

For more photos, visit our Faculty and Instructors and Research and Innovations Flickr pages.

Professor Reza Olfati-Saber has earned a CAREER Award, the National Science Foundation‘s top award for young faculty, for his work on mobile sensor networks.

Two professors have been named to endowed chairs. Ian Baker, an expert in metallurgy, ice physics, and nanomaterials science, has become the Fairchild Professor of Engineering. Keith Paulsen Th’84, co-director of the Dartmouth Advanced Imaging Center in Radiology, is the inaugural holder of the Robert A. Pritzker Chair in Biomedical Engineering.

Ursula Gibson ’76 and Brian Pogue have been promoted from associate to full professor.

Professor Anatoly Streltsov Th’95 has been elected secretary of the Commission H (Waves in Plasma) of the U.S. National Committee for the International Radio Science Union.

Professors Laura Ray and Eugene Santos Jr. are two of three New Hampshire scientists who have been awarded research grant funding from the U.S. Department of Defense totaling nearly $1.6 million. Ray will employ wireless sensor networks to develop and test a theory that could improve the interpretation of sound by humans in remote or battlefield environments. Santos will develop an advanced cognitive-based communication protocol for medical teams to improve decision making and problem solving in trauma environments.

Tom Scanlon, research associate, has been named the third annual Carol Basbaum Memorial Research Fellow by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Scanlon has been working with professor Karl Griswold on enzyme therapeutics for treating complications associated with cystic fibrosis. The two-year fellowship provides $86,100 for new therapeutics for cystic fibrosis.

Professor Mark Borsuk has received an Early Career Research Excellence Prize from the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society.

Thayer School has been awarded a place in the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a multi-institutional, network developing advanced treatment options, such as tissue engineering, for severely wounded U.S. servicemen and women. “This new program will provide state-of-the-art technologies to help the wounded in the present wars,” says Dr. Joseph Rosen, the Thayer principal investigator and an adjunct professor of engineering and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center plastic surgeon. “It will also have long term dual use for civilian-related problems.”

Schweitzer Fellows Philip Wagner ’09 and Caitlin Johnson ’10 organized two events at Thayer in April to introduce kids to robotics. Through Dartmouth’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League, Thayer students showed elementary and middle school students how to build and program robots made of Legos.

Jessica Ogden ’08 Th’08 won first prize in Dartmouth’s Christopher G. Reed Science Competition for her research poster on “Toxicity and Efficacy of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy.” Her advisor was Thayer adjunct and Dartmouth Medical School radiobiology professor Jack Hoopes.

Thayer School made Business Week‘s list of the 60 best design schools around the world. Business Week‘s panel of 22 innovation consultants, academics, and executives cited Thayer School’s project-centered curriculum, interdisciplinary approach, and Cook Engineering Design Center, which brokers industry-sponsored design projects for advanced engineering students. See the full list of top design schools.

New Hampshire Magazine named Professor Lee Lynd to its 2007 “It” List of “the most interesting, happening, talked about people in the state.” Lauding his work to coax ethanol out of cellulosic biomass, the magazine raved, “In a world that’s warming up, how cool is that?” For more, see nhmagazine.com.

The Big Green Bus completed its third cross-country trek fueled by used vegetable oil. In addition to outfitting the bus with two fuel tanks with a combined capacity of 220 gallons, engineering sciences major Lucas Schulz ’08 installed telescoping wind turbines and photovoltaic panels that funnel energy into golf cart batteries to power laptops, phones, fans, a stereo, and a TV. The 11 students on The Big Green Bus spurred public discussions of alternative energy everywhere they went.

Two projects developed by adjunct professor Richard Greenwald and his Simbex company made Time Magazine’s list of “Best Inventions of 2007.” The HIT System™ (Head Impact Telemetry System), installed in Riddell athletic helmets, was cited for its ability to measure the location and severity of blows to the head (see Lab Reports). The PowerFoot One™ was hailed as the world’s first powered ankle prosthesis for lower limb amputees. Simbex has partnered with PowerFoot inventor and MIT professor Hugh Herr to commercialize the product.

Thayer students Albert Kang ’06, Terrence Irving ’06, and Ryan Wheeler ’06 joined with volunteers of the Lake Sunapee (N.H.) Protective Association to launch the first buoy in the United States to measure in-lake and surface temperatures every 10 minutes throughout the year. As part of the Global Lakes Environmental Observatory Network, the buoy will gather data along with buoys in lakes in Wisconsin, Taiwan, and New Zealand. The Lake Sunapee data will become part of a database enabling scientists to study trends in freshwater bodies. The students undertook the work as their ENGS 190/290 design project.

Dartmouth Formula Racing’s ethanol-85 car won 2nd place in the 2007 Autodesk Inventor Design Communication Award competition sponsored by Formula SAE West. In the overall competition, DFR finished 21st in a field of 61 entrants.

Engineering Sciences major Alexander Latham ’09 was awarded Dartmouth’s Francis L. Town Prize for Excellence in Engineering. The annual prize recognizes meritorious and deserving students in science at the end of their sophomore year.

Professor Daniel Lynch was awarded a Senior Faculty Fellowship at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs for the 2007-2008 academic year.  Working at the intersection of human rights and natural resources, he will analyze issues surrounding the human right to water and the potential for agricultural conflicts between fuel and food production.

Professor Elsa Garmire has been named a Jefferson Science Fellow for the 2007-2008 academic year. The State Department program engages the academic science, technology, and engineering communities in U.S. foreign policy in Washington, D.C., and abroad.

Lecturer and research scientist David Murr has been awarded an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellowship to work for the State Department in Washington, D.C., during the next academic year. Murr says that “learning about the policy process is something I want to bring back to the classroom.”

U.S. News & World Reports rated Thayer School as one of the top 50 engineering schools in its annual list of America’s best graduate schools.

Professors Tillman Gerngross and Charles Hutchinson, co-founders of the therapeutic protein-producing company GlycoFi, have been selected to receive the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the New Hampshire High Technology Council.

Professor Paul Meaney has been appointed associate editor of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

Professor Stephen Taylor has earned a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Portfolio Award for his work in the agency’s Strategic Technology Office. “Dr. Taylor has created a robust portfolio of programs that represent important new capabilities for the Joint Forces,” according to the award. “Under his outstanding leadership as program manager, the programs’ successes have convinced several operational partners to commit financial resources and to sign memoranda of agreement to accelerate technology transition.”

Sound Innovations — a start-up founded by Thayer Professors Robert Collier and Laura Ray and Chris Pearson Tu’03 — recently signed a $1.5 million contract from the Air Force to produce noise-reduction headphones for pilots.

Thayer School hosted the first-ever conference on treatments for polytrauma — multiple injuries such as those sustained by many soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center plastic surgeon and Thayer adjunct professor Dr. Joseph Rosen organized the December meeting, which brought together leaders in industry, medicine, government, and academia to discuss short-term clinical efforts and long-term research.

The Gyrobike appeared in USA Weekend magazine’s list of The Next Big Things, published in January. Inventors Hannah Murnen ’06 Th’07, Augusta Niles ’07, Nathan Sigworth ’07, and Deborah Sperling ’06 Th’07, who created the stable two-wheeler for ENGS 21 in 2004, hope to have the Gyrobike and a Gyro device for existing bikes in stores by Christmas 2007.

Professor Erland Schulson, the George Austin Colligan Distinguished Professor of Engineering and director and founder of Thayer School’s Ice Research Laboratory, has been named a fellow of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, a leading materials science professional society.

Professor Edmond Cooley, Thayer School’s chief IT strategist, and Dr. Joseph Rosen, an adjunct associate professor of engineering and a plastic surgeon, were invited to participate in the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2006, “Computing at the Center of Transformation.” Rosen spoke about creating a network-centric telemedicine system that will aid health care in Vietnam. Cooley researched emerging technologies.

Professor Brian Pogue, director of Thayer School’s M.S. and Ph.D. programs, won the 2006 Graduate Faculty Mentoring Award, based on student nominations. In other news, Pogue and Professor Keith Paulsen Th’84, part of a research team testing new imaging techniques to find breast abnormalities, including cancer, recently published their latest findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The College Board Inc. has appointed Professor Elsa Garmire to its commission on Advanced Placement physics.

Thayer School earned Dartmouth 19th place on Princeton Review’s inaugural list of the nation’s “Top 20 Graduate Engineering Programs.” Some highlights: Enrollment: 1,514; average undergrad GPA: 3.50; and student-faculty ratio: 4:1.

In honor of the upcoming International Polar Year (2007-08), the Geographical Society of Philadelphia awarded a $1,000 grant to Rachel Obbard Th’06. Obbard, who earned her Ph.D. in June, specializes in the microstructural properties of ice. She uses scanning electron microcopy and confocal Raman spectroscopy to investigate the location of different chemical compounds in ice. Two of her ice photographs won first- and second-place prizes in the 2006 International Metallographic Contest.

During the 2006 International Business Plan Competition at the University of San Francisco, doctoral candidate Ashifi Gogo won the $500 Social Venture Award, which recognized the proposal with the greatest potential to effect positive social change. His presentation was about WOSPRO (that’s “wiki-farming and open-source processing”), an effort to use virtual reality, social networks, and the internet to link organic farmers in Ghana and elsewhere to global markets. Gogo is chief technical officer of WOSPRO, a joint effort of Thayer School, the London School of Economics, and the Institute of Marketing in Kumasi, Ghana.

Christina E. Behrend ’07 won a $7,500 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for academic merit. She plans to earn an M.D./Ph.D. in neuroscience engineering and conduct research on robotic limb prostheses.

Doctoral candidate Colleen Fox received a Graduate Student Community Award for outstanding service to Dartmouth.