Dartmouth Engineer

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 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.

Elsa Garmire, Sydney E. Junkins Professor of Engineering, recently delivered Dartmouth’s 19th annual Presidential Lecture. Selected for the honor by President James Wright, Garmire titled her speech, “Who Would Have Imagined? From an Idea to Reality — the Parallel Growth of Lasers and a Woman Scientist.” In other news, Garmire has joined the board of advisors at Stellaris Corp, a Lowell, Mass.-based company that is developing low-cost renewable energy and energy conservation technologies.

Visiting Professor Ron Lasky has been appointed director of the Cook Engineering Design Center (CEDC) for a three-year term. He will build Thayer School’s industrial design partnerships and expand CEDC activities.

Associate Professor Susan McGrath was appointed to the Personal Protective Equipment Committee at the Institute of Medicine. The committee will examine scientific and technical issues in the development and use of personal protective equipment and explore emerging research areas. She was also appointed to the Emergency Management Technical Committee, part of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, which will assist in the development of standards for emergency response data exchange and interoperability.

Thayer School career services director Chandlee Bryan represented Thayer School on Dartmouth’s Service and Education Trip for Hurricane Katrina Relief in Biloxi, Miss., in December. She worked with a team of Dartmouth students to establish a temporary employment resource center that assisted Gulf Coast residents with résumé writing. Institute for Security Technology Studies staff member Jenny Bodwell also represented Thayer School in Biloxi. She worked with students and volunteers at Hands On USA on construction-related recovery efforts.

Visiting Professor Quintus Jett helped organize a summit to develop new ways to bring help to people affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The event, hosted by the Louisiana chapter of the NAACP, was held in Baton Rouge in November. Jett and students in his fall-term course “Organizations, Technology and Management” also developed the MOSAIC Project, a resource for volunteers contributing to recovery efforts.

Assistant Professor Ted Cooley ’82, Th’88 has been appointed chief IT strategist at Thayer School. His duties include identifying, reviewing, and evaluating software relevant to Thayer courses.

Mark Franklin ’83, Th’85 has returned to Thayer School as director of computing services. A Thayer employee from 1987 to 1993, he worked for more than 10 years for Applied Microsystems, Cabletron Systems, and the Kiewit Center.

Ph.D. candidate John Hannon won the Golden Hammer-Best Presentation Award for his discussion of his research, “Applying Computational Fluid Dynamics to Model Industrial Fermenters” in Thayer School’s Research in Progress Workshop for doctoral candidates, held in March.

Dean Joseph Helble has appointed Professor Ian Baker as senior associate dean and Associate Professor Brian Pogue, who recently gained tenure, as director of the M.S. and Ph.D. programs.

George Cybenko, Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering, has been appointed as a representative of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society to the Computing Research Association (CRA) Board of Directors. The CRA includes more than 200 U.S. and Canadian academic departments in computer science, computer engineering and related fields, as well as member organizations from industry and government. Cybenko serves on the Board of Governors of the 90,000-member IEEE Computer Society and is currently editor-in-chief of the IEEE publication Security & Privacy.

Professor Lee Lynd was awarded the Charles D. Scott Award at the 27th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals on May 1 in Denver, Colo. The award recognizes those who have distinguished themselves through their sustained contributions to biotechnology for fuels and chemicals.

Professor Bill Lotko was named editor-in-chief of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar Terrestrial Physics.

Adjunct Professor Mary Albert was recognized at Dartmouth’s annual Karen E. Wetterhahn Science Poster Symposium for 10 years of mentoring young women.

B.E. students Tia Hansen, Liz Hunneman, Jaime Mazilu, Sally Smith, and Diana Szczepanski, all from the Dartmouth class of 2005, received Clare Boothe Luce scholarships for 2005-06. Luce scholarships are awarded to engineering-bound women whose academic achievements and other accomplishments are of the highest quality.

Johnathan Loudis ’05 won a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue his M.S. at Thayer School. Working with Professor Ian Baker, he is studying the magnetic properties of the iron-cobalt-manganese-aluminum metal alloy system.

Lauren Padilla ’05, Xiongjun Shao Th’03, and Thomas Zangle ’05 won first place in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ 2005 Northeastern Student Conference Team Competition for their paper, “Micro Air Vehicle Stability Investigation.” Professor Simon Shepherd advised the team.

Adjunct Professor Robert Dean and Joe Brown ’00 won the grand prize in the 2005 Start-Up New Hampshire Business Plan Competition. Their company, Nanocomp Technologies Inc., co-founded with former adjunct professor David Lashmore, develops long carbon nanotubes for structural composites and electro-energy products. Sound Innovations, a company founded by Professor Laura Ray, Adjunct Professor Robert Collier, and Christopher Pearson Tu’02, was one of 15 finalists out of more than 200 entrants.

Sean Furey ’04, Th’05 was named Men’s Scholar-Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association.

GlycoFi, founded in 2000 by Professors Tillman Gerngross and Charles Hutchinson, has been recognized by Scientific American as one of 50 technology businesses that have “exhibited outstanding technology leadership in the realms of research, business, and policy-making.” GlycoFi is pioneering a technology to produce human-like protein for therapeutic use.

Professor Emeritus Graham Wallis has been elected chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. Wallis, whose research focused on multiphase flow, has been a member of the committee since his retirement from Thayer School in 2001. At the NRC, he has been analyzing thermal-hydraulic computer codes and developing methods for evaluating uncertainties in the codes for predicting possible nuclear accidents.

Professor Bengt Sonnerup received a Group Achievement Award from NASA for his contribution to the success of Cluster, an international space exploration mission launched by the European Space Agency and NASA in 2000. Cluster’s four orbiting probes relay information about solar winds and their effects on Earth. Sonnerup is a co-investigator on Cluster’s plasma spectrometer experiments.

One of Professor Charles Sullivan’s research teams won top honors in its division in the Efficiency Challenge 2004 international competition sponsored by the Department of Energy. The competition sought “cutting edge power supply designs that are not ready for the market, but are able to achieve outstanding efficiencies.” Entering the category of 6-24 watt, 5-12 volt circuits typical of office phones, battery chargers, and computer peripherals, the team used advanced optimization techniques to construct a power supply that achieved an average of 88 percent efficiency over the range of test conditions. The team, led by Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Pollock, consisted of Ph.D. candidates Xi Nan, Satish Prabhakaran, and M.S. student Magdalena Dale.

M.S. candidate Lincoln Potwin took fourth-place honors in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ 2004 “Old Guard Young Engineers” international competition. Potwin presented his research on an ultrasound scanning system for breast surface detection.

Engineering Sciences major Tom Zangle ’05 received the College Student of the Year Award from the New England section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. AIAA member Alex Bruccoleri ’07 is a  mentor for the 2005 Team America Rocketry Challenge sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association. He has been mentoring high school students from  Wolfeboro, N.H.

M.E.M. candidate Rebecca Wang and Kay Kochan, an M.S. exchange student from Germany, participated in the ninth annual “March Madness for the Mind” competition held in San Diego by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. The students exhibited an active noise reduction module. Their project advisor is Associate Professor Laura Ray.