Volume 4, Number 2, November, 2007

Welcome to Ahoya! Engineers–Welcome to Ahoya! Engineers. - Marquette University's College of Engineering
e-Newsletter for alumae, alumni, students and their families, faculty, staff, and MU friends.We want you to know what’s happening in your College of Engineering. This newsletter will be published periodically to share our accomplishments, milestones and activities.

Be sure to visit the College Web site at http://www.marquette.edu/engineering for complete information on your College.

Generosity Brings Us Closer to Dream. Robert Kern, founder of Generac Power Systems, Inc., and his wife Patricia have announced a personal gift of $15 million to your College of Engineering to help transform engineering education. The money will go toward the construction of a new engineering building called the Discovery Learning Complex.

The Discovery Learning Complex, when completed, will integrate classrooms, teaching labs, research facilities and office space to encourage hands-on, multidisciplinary learning and collaboration aimed at developing the 21st century workforce and meeting the demands of industry. The projected cost estimate for the facility, which will be built between 16th and 17th streets on the south side of Wisconsin Avenue, is $100 million.

“The Kerns have long recognized the important role science, technology, engineering and mathematics education play in the future of our community – and our country,” said Dr. Stan Jaskolski, your Opus Dean of Engineering. “Their generosity brings us closer to the dream of a new building that will blend theory and the real-world practice of research and development. This will help us achieve our ultimate goal of attracting more women and men to engineering at a time when the need is so prevalent.”

Click here to read the full press release

Lead Picture: Robert and Patricia Kern at the dedication of the Discovery Learning Center in 2002.

Your College Gets MORE Press!. Over the course of the last month, your College has received extensive positive media coverage.   Dr. Mike Johnson’s Dr. Dolittle project was featured in a front page story in the Sunday, Oct. 21 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a “Groundbreaking Thinker in Wisconsin.”  The story was picked up by a number of different outlets around the country and even appeared in a newspaper in Brisbane, Australia.  There has also been interest from the CBS Early Show.

The next week, your college was featured in the Journal Sentinel again for a $15 million gift from Robert and Patricia Kern to go toward the construction of a new building, the Discovery Learning Complex (see preceding article).  Other publications including the Milwaukee Business Journal, Small Business Times and the Daily Reporter all ran stories on their Web sites.  Additionally, all four TV stations in Milwaukee included stories on the Kerns’ gift.  The Business Journal is planning a follow up story on the gift focusing on Dean Stan Jaskolski’s vision of developing the 21st century workforce.

Dr. Jon Jensen, Associate Dean for Enrollment Management, was a guest on Milwaukee Public Radio on Nov. 1 to discuss the sySTEM Now! conference that Marquette hosted, bringing together educators, students, business and industrial representatives, and other community members to emphasize the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) education.  On Friday, Nov. 2, the Journal Sentinel included a story on the sySTEM Now! conference.

All of this coverage was capped off by an editorial in the Journal Sentinel praising the important work being done by Dean Jaskolski and all of your faculty and staff. 

(Click on the title of each story to read the full article.

Dr. Dolittle Story
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007

$15 million Kern gift
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007

Generac founder donates $15 million to Marquette
Story appeared on the Web site of the Small Business Times, Oct. 30, 2007

Marquette University gets $15 million donation
Associated Press story appeared on the Web site of WKBT-TV and in 10 other outlets, Oct. 29, 2007

Generac founder Kern gives Marquette $15 million
Donation to help build engineering building
Story appeared in the Waukesha Freeman, Oct. 30, 2007

sySTEM Now! conference
Lake Effect on Milwaukee Public Radio, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007

sySTEM Now! conference   Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Friday, Nov. 2, 2007

Editorial: A boost for the region
An expanded College of Engineering at Marquette would be good for all of southeastern Wisconsin
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Friday, Nov. 2, 2007

Senior Design: Meeting the Challenge. In the spring of 2005, your Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering was approached by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and asked if Marquette University would be interested in participating in the Collegiate Rain Garden Challenge.  Using funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Milwaukee River Revitalization Council, the WDNR was challenging universities and colleges in the Milwaukee area (Marquette, Alverno College, Mount Mary College, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Wisconsin Lutheran College) to build rain gardens on their campuses to educate students and the public on the usefulness of rain gardens (see the sign in the picture below).  As part of the challenge the WDNR would provide funding to build “showcase” rain gardens on each campus.

To meet this challenge a senior design team of Patrick Brannon (on the right in picture below), Chris Gunn (left), and Ryan Schmidt (not shown) was selected to design the rain garden as part of developing a storm water management plan for the Marquette campus for their senior design course (CEEN 189).  Their mentors for this project were Josh Kasun (M.S., 2001) and Mike Payant (B.S., 1985) of Tetra Tech in Milwaukee.  The Helfaer Theatre had been identified by a previous study for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District as a location on campus where downspouts could be disconnected from directly flowing into the sewer system.  Thus, the students designed the rain garden to catch the runoff from the roof of the south side of the theatre and related pervious areas.  They also worked closely with Jerry Kohn of Marquette’s Facilities Services Department to develop a rain garden that could be implemented at Marquette.  The rain garden was built in August 2007 on the basis of the students’ design.

Making The Ranks. Although the percentage of engineering Bachelor’s degrees awarded in this country to women declined for the fourth consecutive year in 2005-6 (to 19.3%), this trend is not uniform for all engineering disciplines.  According to the October 2007 edition of the ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) PRISM magazine, there are ten fields that continually draw a higher percentage of women to engineering than some of the other fields, with Biomedical Engineering being the fastest-growing engineering field, having increased by 187% since 1999.

PRISM listed Marquette’s Department of Biomedical Engineering as being tied for 9th place with seven other universities for awarding the highest percentage of Biomedical Engineering Bachelor’s degrees to women (50%).  Marquette’s College of Engineering was ranked sixteenth out of 20 schools that awarded the highest percentage of engineering Bachelor’s degrees to women (29.1%).

Researching Shock Physics. Imagine the shift of the earth’s tectonic plates or an automobile crash or an explosion or a meteorite striking the ground.  Imagine the possible results of these events; an earthquake or tsunami is generated, a vehicle is damaged or destroyed, a building collapses, and a crater is formed.  Each of these events creates shock waves and these shock waves cause a result, as described above.  The study of shock wave events, events of very high stress and deformation where all materials are stressed beyond their yield strength – the stress at which a material begins to plastically deform - and their results is called shock physics. 

Now imagine, if you can, studying what happens in the first 30 millionth of a second of a shock wave event.  Dr. John Borg, Assistant Professor in your Department of Mechanical Engineering, does just exactly that.  In a research world populated by physicists, astrophysicists, and geophysicists Dr. Borg’s research puts engineering to work on the problems of shock physics.

For the last two years Dr. Borg and his team have been applying shock physics to granular materials, specifically sand and powdered metals.  His work with sand has military applications.  The war in Iraq is fought on sand and it is important to know how sand reacts and compacts under high deformation events, in other words a shock wave event.  Powdered metal, especially aluminum, is used in many industrial applications; specifically in manufacturing parts with a complicated shape.  An alternator casing, brackets, and cosmetic parts of an automobile are examples of parts with a complicated shape that may be made from powdered aluminum.  The current manufacturing process involves sintering, which means making the part from a powdered material by heating that material, to just below its melting point, until the particles of material adhere to each other.  Sintering is an effective process but the extreme heating of the material alters its granular structure and makes it brittle and prone to fracture.  Applying the principles of shock physics, i.e. shock waves, to manufacturing with powdered aluminum could allow parts to be manufactured that are impossible to fabricate in any other way.  Using shock waves to create a fully consolidated part eliminates the need for the extreme heat required by traditional sintering.  This type of manufacturing process controls the formation of hot spots in the powdered aluminum, allowing the grains to internally sinter to each other.  The finished part is a very strong structure. The part is more resistant to cracking.  The bulk strength, bulk weight, and the material composition are much more easily controlled.  It will be easier to predict and control the function of the material in the end product.  For example, the behavior of an exploding bolt in an airplane ejector seat will be more predictable and easier to control.  In the most basic terms, it will explode only when and where it’s supposed to explode.

Now, back to the study of the first 30 millionth of a second of a shock wave event; Dr. Borg’s research focuses exclusively on this time period and what happens during this time.  He uses numeric tools to do simulations.  More specifically; he uses Pario – a 41 node computer cluster to simulate and learn about shock wave events.  Pario is the equivalent of 82 pc’s all communicating with each other simultaneously.  In 12 hours Pario completes a simulation/calculations to determine what happens in the first 30 microseconds of a shock wave event.  It would take the standard, desktop pc 16 days to complete the same simulation. 

Borg’s research is a collaborative effort with far-reaching implications.  Data for the simulations are provided by the University of Cambridge in England and by Sandia National Laboratories here in the U.S.  The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided a grant to purchase Pario.  Drs. Jon Koch and Scott Goldsborough, Assistant Professors from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Drs. Chris Foley and Baolin Wan, Associate and Assistant Professors respectively from the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering and Dr. Borg work together on various aspects of shock physics research.   Drs. Koch and Goldsborough are studying various aspects of “hot spots” in shock wave events.  Drs. Foley and Wan are studying blast mitigation in an effort to make buildings earthquake and bomb proof.  Engineering graduate and undergraduate students also work as part of Dr. Borg’s research team.

Imagine how the study of a microscopic portion of a shock wave event can change our lives.

Taking The Classroom On The Road. At the invitation of V3 Companies in Woodridge, Illinois, 37 students from your Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering jumped on a bus and visited the company and its job sites on October 5th.  Accompanied by Dr. Alex Drakopoulos, Associate Professor and Dave Kuemmel, Adjunct Professor, they joined students from other universities for a presentation about career opportunities from V3’s CEO and then toured on-site construction and wetland mitigation projects.  Before and after the tours, participants were treated to lunch and a barbeque dinner at which time they had an opportunity to meet V3 employees, many of which are Marquette engineering graduates.

Experiencing Campus In A Wheelchair. In the Senior Design classes, Dr. Jay Goldberg, Associate Professor and Director of Health Care Technologies Management, threw out a challenge to the students.  As part of Disability Awareness Month, a program coordinated by the Milwaukee County Office for Persons with Disabilities, were there any students interested in navigating around campus and attending classes in a wheelchair for a couple of days? 

Val Eisele, a senior in Biomedical Engineering, and a friend accepted that challenge and by day two, twelve others joined the endeavor.  Out of their experiences, the students found that getting to and from campus destinations in a wheelchair is very exhausting and the university’s older buildings had numerous obstacles to get around.  But foremost, they came away from the experience with an acute awareness of the talents and struggles of people who use wheelchairs and their desire to be independent.

Keeping In Touch. As part of your College’s continuing efforts to engage and reach out to its stakeholders, Opus Dean Stan Jaskolski and his wife Cindy invited your retired professors and their wives to a luncheon last month.  At this get-together, the guests were updated on current happenings in COE and its plans for the future, with much socializing and sharing of memories included.  Those in attendance included Drs. Keith Faherty and Al Zanoni and Dave Kuemmel (Civil & Environmental Engineering); Drs. Jim Heinen, Tom Iishi, Ron Jodat, Art Moeller and Al Szews (Electrical & Computer Engineering); and Drs. Bob Brebrick, Bill Brower, Rich Gaggioli, Joe Matar and Nick Nigro (Mechanical Engineering).

Back row, left to right:  Dean Jaskolski, Drs. Brower, Jodat, Heinen, Szews, Nigro, Zanoni, Gaggioli, Brebrick and Faherty
Seated left to right:  Drs. Ishii, Moeller, Matar and Dave Kuemmel

Prestigious Research Grant Received. Jason Hallman, doctoral student in your Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been selected to receive one of four national $10,000 AAAM (Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine) research grants.  His proposal, “CIREN Investigation of Adverse Effects from Seat-Mounted Thoracic Side Airbags” is based on his work with Dr. Frank Pintar, Adjunct Professor in the department and Professor in the Department of Neural Surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

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