Dartmouth Engineer

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.

George Cybenko, Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering Sciences, recently received a new award honoring outstanding mentoring of graduate students by faculty advisors. Nominations for the award, presented by Dartmouth’s Graduate Student Council and Office of Graduate Studies, came from two of the highest authorities on mentoring — Cybenko’s students.

“He motivates via high expectations instead of pedantic correction or humiliation. He brings out the best in us and knows how to make us push ourselves as far as possible,” says doctoral candidate Glenn Nofsinger.

“He is much more than an advisor,” says doctoral candidate Annarita Giani. “He leads his students with a sincere interest in their success, not only professionally but in all of life.”

“This is a great honor,” says Cybenko, an expert on information systems, “because it comes from my students.”

— Annelise Hansen

The National Academy of Engineers (N.A.E.) “Frontiers of Engineering Symposium” annually exposes 100 of the country’s brightest young engineers to ideas outside their specialties. Professor Laura Ray presented one of those ideas — solar-powered robots for scientific exploration in Antarctica — at this year’s symposium, held in Irvine, California, in September. She illustrated the discussion with a prototype designed and built by a team of her ENGS 190: “Engineering Design and Methodology” students.

The Acoustical Society of America presented its Best Student Paper Award to M.S. candidate Alexander Streeter Th’04 at its annual meeting in New York City in May. The paper described a portable headset for the hearing impaired that uses an active-noise-reduction (ANR) algorithm to provide real-time attenuation over a broad spectrum of noise sources. Streeter modified an ANR headset by replacing the simple analog feeder control with a digital system combining feedforward and feedback elements. Streeter designed the feedback circuitry; David Cartes Th’01 designed the feedforward element. The project was part of ENGG 291 [now ENGS 290]: “Eng­ineering Design and Methodology.”

G. Ayorkor Mills-Tetty ’01, Th’03 is one of 35 young engineers selected for a Tau Beta Pi graduate fellowship for 2004-2005. A doctoral student at Carnegie Melon University, she is studying sustainability and robotics technology. The Ghana native says her ultimate goal is to help developing countries “join the ranks of the producers and developers, not just consumers, of technology.”

ENGS 190/ENGG 290 students Jonathan den Hartog ’03, Spencer Boice, and Scott Wisniewski ’03 won the 2004 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Safety Design Contest with their paper, “Helicopter Blade Emergency Detachment System.” The system uses an explosive to detach the helicopter blades. The team will travel to this year’s ASME International Congress and Exposition in Anaheim, California to accept the award.

The Chronicle of Higher Education quoted Professor Edmond S. Cooley in a recent article about colleges switching to Internet-based telephones: “You don’t get a bunch of middle-aged IT directors to use it. You get a bunch of 17- to 18-year-olds.”

See In the News for other examples of Thayer School in the news.