From the Menominee Forest to Madison

Published December 12, 2011

Engineering a path for American Indian transfer students

If a UW-Madison faculty member is late to work, it’s likely due to traffic. When Diana Morris, dean of instruction at the College of Menominee Nation (CMN), was late one morning, it was because a bear was sitting on her car.

CMN is located at the southern end of Keshena, Wisconsin, a town of about 1,200 bordered by the expansive Menominee Forest. Founded in 1993 in the president’s basement with 43 students, CMN has grown into an established two-year college that includes campuses in Keshena and Green Bay and offers more than 20 majors and certificate programs to almost 700 students.

Around 80 percent of CMN students are American Indian and represent tribal communities across the country. Most are first-generation female students, and for many, the only people with college degrees they interact with regularly are doctors and teachers. Most, even those who are traditional-age college students, have at least one child. “Many of our students don’t even know what an engineer is,” Morris says. Yet Morris and her collaborators at UW-Madison and UW-Platteville want to do much more than tell CMN students the job exists—they want to help these students actually become engineers.

The three schools are working together as part of a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to increase the number of American Indian students who transfer from CMN to UW-Madison and UW-Platteville to study engineering. The collaboration team aims for 10 students transfer in the next five years.

While the goal may seem modest, that number would more than double the current number of students who transfer to UW-Madison from CMN to pursue any field.

2011 Engineering Annual Report

This is it–my last crop of stories for the College of Engineering. I wrote two features, as well as the content for the electrical, mechanical and industrial departments.

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2010-2011 ECE News

My final engineering departmental newsletter.

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Perspective Spring 2011

The spring 2011 issue of Perspective is now available. This issue is bittersweet for me; I’m proud of my substantial contributions in this edition, but it’s also the last Perspective I will be involved with during the production process. It’s been a good run.

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My articles include:

• Inside the Box: A new method for breast cancer imaging (cover feature), p. 12-15
  
• Piranhas and polymers: Students take materials science and ethics course in Colombia, p. 21
  
• From patient to scientist: Improving cancer communication, p. 32
  
• Matthew Kirk: From cutting class to cutting-edge entrepreneur, p. 24
  
• Beyond the classroom: Experimental space promotes undergrad learning, p. 26
  
• Friction stir welding fuses engineering research and Wisconsin industry, p. 28
  
• Early-career engineers honored, p. 6
• New simulator puts UW-Madison on the map for driving research, p. 5

I also co-wrote or contributed to:

• UW-Madison fusion experiments earn nearly $11 million in grants, p. 18
  
• UW-Madison economic impact statewide hits $12.4 billion, p. 16
  
• Air Force honors young researchers, p. 8
  
• Wisconsin Ideas: Engineers team up with Trek for cycling research and Monroe manufacturer partners with UW-Madison on electric truck, p. 27
  

Inside the Box: New method for breast cancer imaging

Published in spring 2011 issue of Perspective and June 21, 2011.

Every woman over the age of 40 receives the same initial screening for breast cancer: a mammogram. Yet no two women are identical and neither are their breast cancer risks, so a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is developing a system better tailored to women with a particularly high risk factor.

In 2000, a National Academy of Engineering publication identified breast cancer detection as a healthcare problem in need of an engineering solution. In the subsequent decade, Philip Dunham Reed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Susan Hagness has emerged as a leader in the search for that solution. The system will offer three-dimensional capabilities similar to a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system along with the affordability and accessibility of traditional mammography.

Hagness works closely with Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Barry Van Veen, and their collaborators span a variety of fields. Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Nader Behdad, Duane H. and Dorothy M. Bluemke Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering John Booske, and Radiology Associate Professors Fred Kelcz and Gale Sisney currently are contributing to the project.

The density risk

Breast tissue is made up of fatty tissues, connective tissues and epithelial tissues, which line many of the body’s surfaces and cavities. Collectively, the connective and epithelial tissues are called fibroglandular tissue, and this tissue determines breast density. If a woman has a high percentage of fibroglandular tissue, her breasts are considered “dense.”

According to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, high breast density can increase a woman’s risk for cancer to four to six times that of women with predominantly fatty tissue. It’s a stronger risk factor than early-onset menstruation or having no biological children. In fact, few other factors exceed dense breast tissue as a risk for cancer; a Radiology paper found those that do include a breast cancer gene mutation, age or prior breast cancer.

This strong risk is also fairly common. Around 50 percent of women in their 40s and 25 percent of women in their 70s have breast tissue that is at least 50 percent dense, according to the American Journal of Roentgenology. “All of these facts point to the importance of breast density evaluation in assessing a woman’s risk and having clinicians provide appropriate prevention protocols,” Hagness says.

Unfortunately, dense breast tissue makes it more difficult for doctors to accurately screen for cancer. Research in Annals of Internal Medicine found as many as two out of every five cancers in women who have high breast density go undetected. The problem is that mammography is a two-dimensional imaging technique. A mammogram machine takes a three-dimensional volume of tissue, passes X-rays through the tissue and creates a shadow gram. All of the tissue is projected onto that two-dimensional image.

Runner tracking app wins inaugural Qualcomm Wireless prize

Published April 29, 2011
Follow up coverage by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and radio station WTAQ 97.5

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A smartphone application that will allow running race observers to keep track of particular runners in real time has won $10,000 and top prize at the inaugural University of Wisconsin-Madison Qualcomm Wireless Innovation Prize.

The idea for the app, called Runner’s Fan, came when master’s degree in business administration (MBA) student Eric Baum got separated from his girlfriend while the two were participating in a half marathon. When Baum finished, he had no way of knowing where his girlfriend was or if she was still even on the course. On the hot, humid summer day, he was concerned about her condition.

Though his girlfriend was fine, the situation inspired Baum to team up with fellow MBA students Tyler Heslinga, Vinothkumar Narasimhan and Stephen Ranjan to find a way to prevent his sense of helplessness from happening again.

In addition to allowing users to monitor a runner’s progress along a race route, the app also provides statistics about the runner’s pace and health by syncing with existing apps that record heart rate or other data. The app also could be useful for training and other sports races, such as cycling or cross-country skiing.

The Qualcomm Wireless Innovation Prize, sponsored by the San Diego-based mobile technology company, rewards students who present creative wireless technology products and well-developed business plans to make those products profitable. The competition was held April 28 at Union South.

UW-Madison engineers help Resilient Technologies reinvent the wheel

Published April 4, 2011

In military combat, vehicle tires are crucial, as blown tires can mean troops are stranded in dangerous situations. Wausau, Wis.-based Resilient Technologies is working on a non-pneumatic tire with a honeycomb-like design, which can’t be shot out and could save lives.

UW-Madison engineers are partnering with Resilient to develop the tire and help the company grow in Wisconsin.

Resilient delved into advanced mobility technologies soon after founding in 2005, and a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense connected the company with a team from Engineering Professional Development (EPD), including faculty associates and program directors Frank Rath and Carl Vieth.

EPD in turn guided Resilient to the Polymer Engineering Center and mechanical engineering professor Tim Osswald, who worked with Resilient engineers for two years to refine and test the tire design.

Osswald remains in contact with Resilient as a consultant, but EPD also supports Resilient beyond the lab.

“Resilient views us more as a business partner,” Vieth says. “They’re using us as portal to resources on campus and beyond. ”

Doing more with less: Efficient experiments for bacterial engineering

Published: March 11, 2011

Shewanella oneidensis is a bacterium known for its ability to break down heavy metals and make them less soluble in groundwater. If scientists could engineer the organism in certain ways, it could be used in a variety of environmental and biofuel applications, such as microbial fuel cells.

However, like many bacteria that are fairly recent discoveries, Shewanella’s genome has been sequenced, but its actual metabolic behaviors are not well understood. This information is critical to engineer the organism for biotechnology applications, but doing so via traditional experimental approaches would take a very long time.

Chemical and biological engineering assistant professor Jennifer Reed has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) grant to design and conduct new experiments that will more quickly reveal answers about the metabolism of organisms like Shewanella.

Insect hearing inspires new approach to small antennas

Published February 28, 2011
Re-posted by WisBusiness.com, R&D Mag
Follow up piece by InventorSpot

Ormia ochracea is a small parasitic fly best known for its strong sense of directional hearing. A female fly tracks a male cricket by its chirps and then deposits her eggs on the unfortunate host. The larvae subsequently eat the cricket.

Though it doesn’t work out well for male crickets, such acute hearing in a tiny body has inspired a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher as he studies new designs for very small, powerful antennas.

Nader Behdad, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received a 2011 Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) award and grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue a novel approach to a challenge that has thwarted electromagnetic researchers for more than a half century.

For a structure like an antenna to effectively transmit or receive an electromagnetic wave at a given frequency, the size must be comparable to the wavelength at that frequency. Making the structure’s aperture size physically smaller than a wavelength becomes a critical performance issue. These small antennas aren’t as efficient and don’t work well beyond a narrow band of frequencies. Additionally, many applications, such as satellite TV and radar systems, require antennas that can distinguish signals from specific directions, and current small antennas don’t have these precise directional capabilities.

“Designing small, directional antennas is one of those things we tell students can’t happen,” Behdad says. “But the question is, what if it can be done?”

Engineering atomic interfaces for new electronics

Published February 17, 2011
Linked to by Science 360 February 22, 2011

Most people cross borders such as doorways or state lines without thinking much about it. Yet not all borders are places of limbo intended only for crossing. Some borders, like those between two materials that are brought together, are dynamic places where special things can happen.

For an electron moving from one material toward the other, this space is where it can join other electrons, which together can create current, magnetism or even light.

A multi-institutional team has made fundamental discoveries at the border regions, called interfaces, between oxide materials. Led by University of Wisconsin-Madison materials science and engineering professor Chang-Beom Eom, the team has discovered how to manipulate electrons oxide interfaces by inserting a single layer of atoms. The researchers also have discovered unusual electron behaviors at these engineered interfaces.

Their work, which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, will be published Friday, Feb. 18, in the journal Science and could allow researchers to further study and develop interfaces with a wide array of properties.