School of
BROWN
Engineering
Magazine
Inside this issue:
SPIRA Engineering Camp for Girls Completes Second Summer
Brown to Lead $4.5 million Multi-University Research Initiative
Senior Wins Elevator Pitch Competition
WINTER 2013
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Message from the Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Spira Engineering Camp Completes Second Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
IMNI Turns Five! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
A SMART(er) Way to Track Influenza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Brown to Lead Multi-University Quantum Metamaterials Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
LEGO Robots Make Great Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Engineering Senior Wins Elevator Pitch Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Brown’s Engineers Without Borders Returns to the Dominican Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Faculty Awards and Grants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Meet the New Faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Studying Renewable Energy in Costa Rica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Advisory Council / Development Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
School of Engineering Magazine
Editorial
Gordon Morton ’93
Manager of Communications
School of Engineering
Design
Amy Simmons
Photography
Mike Cohea, Gordon Morton ’93,
Frank Mullin, Jacqueline Pierri ’12,
RI STAC, Amy Simmons
Along those lines, I am
happy to report that
Brown
Engineering
is now on Instagram!
Please use the hashtag
#brownenginering
when posting any Brown Engineering
photos. In addition, we will be launching a
revamped School of Engineering website
in the spring with improvements in several areas to make it even easier to stay in
touch with all the exciting happenings at
the School of Engineering.
youtube.com/user/brownengin
linkedin.com/groups?gid=2265302
Gordon Morton ’93
Editor
Connect with Brown Engineering
facebook.com/brownengineering
twitter.com/brownengin
instagram.com/brownengineering
Make a Gift
Brown School of Engineering
Tel: 401-863-2677
Fax: 401-863-1238
brownengin@gmail.com
Learn more about Brown Engineering at www.brown.edu/academics/engineering
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
One of the most rewarding parts of my job
is interacting with students and alumni.
One of the interesting aspects of communication today is that so much of it is
done online. I interact with so many people through Twitter and Facebook, not
to mention e-mail, YouTube, and several
other social media outlets. It’s so rewarding to be able to connect with alumni who
are away from College Hill.
However, nothing beats a personal visit.
When you come back to Providence for
a reunion or other business, stop by Barus and Holley, see what has changed (or
maybe what hasn’t), say hello to some of
your former professors, and reconnect offline for a few minutes. Take the opportunity to meet our dean, Larry Larson. Our
doors are open. We look forward to connecting with you in person or online!
Comments, suggestions and address changes may be mailed to:
Box D
182 Hope Street
Providence, RI 02912 USA
Letter from the Editor:
4
For all School of Engineering
gifts and contributions,
please call Rick Marshall
at 401-683-9877
or email him at
Richard_Marshall@Brown.edu
MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN
Online Education and the
School of Engineering
There has been a lot of media “buzz” recently about online education, and we have to
ask ourselves how this will affect Brown and
our School of Engineering in the coming
years. It’s ironic to contemplate the effect
of this new mode of education on engineering, since it is the very developments led by
engineers – in computer hardware, displays,
communications, networking technologies
and software – that have enabled this revolution in the first place.
Brown is not standing still in this arena. We
recently signed an agreement with Coursera to offer online courses in Computer
Science, Archaeology and Comparative
Literature. More are no doubt on the way.
Also, our recently announced IE-Brown MBA
program has a substantial on-line component. As Katherine Bergeron – Dean of the
College – put it: “In developing some inspiring Brown courses for the Coursera platform, we are not only bringing the best of
Brown to a world learning community, we
are also going to learn so much ourselves. I
am personally excited to see how this act of
opening our classrooms to a wider audience
will help us rethink how we are teaching at
home, and I am grateful to our excellent faculty and to the team at Coursera for partnering with us in this experiment. “
In a world where lectures from the best
teachers in the world are available for free
on the internet, what will be the role of a
place like Brown? Many people worry that
this will lead to a fundamental change in the
business model for the delivery of higher
education, and that higher education will
go through the same wrenching changes
that the music, newspaper and magazine
industries have gone through recently.
I’m not worried about these new opportunities.
education that we provide.
courses are “hands-on” in the early years,
and this experiential approach, combined
with deep faculty engagements and rich
interactions between students, resulting
from the residential experience, is not going
to be duplicated in the foreseeable future
by any online experience. In fact, the availability of online resources will enhance what
Brown does best, allowing faculty to spend
more time with students on individualized
problem-solving specifically targeted to the
student’s needs.
The reason I’m optimistic is that the undergraduate experience at Brown is about creating a lifelong community of students and
faculty in an intimate and highly personal
learning environment. Our engineering
My feeling is that universities that create
value through an experiential community
of learning and scholarship will be the ones
that thrive in the future. Fortunately, this is
the model that Brown has been following
for the last 250 years, and I think it is the best
model going forward, at least for the next
250 years!
I think online courses have the
potential to offer students an even
better experience here at Brown,
and add even more value to the
Brown University’s School of Engineering educates future leaders in the fundamentals of engineering
in an environment of world-class research. We stress an interdisciplinary approach and a broad
understanding of underlying global issues. Collaborations across the campus and beyond
strengthen our development of technological advances that address challenges of vital importance
to us all.
1
WINTER 2012
STEM OUTREACH
Spira Engineering Camp Completes Second Year
Four Brown University Engineering undergraduate women run a summer
camp for rising tenth grade girls.
Farzanah Ausaluth ’14, Becca Barron ’15,
Lizzie Costa ’14 and Jenn Thomas ’14 spent
last summer running a four-week engineering camp for rising tenth grade girls. The
camp was overseen by faculty advisor Karen
Haberstroh, Assistant Professor (Research).
Spira has inspired and motivated 38 young
women from schools in the Providence area
since its start in 2011. A donation from Michael Strem ’58 and a team Undergraduate
Teaching and Research Award funded this
year’s camp. With a curriculum structured
around group learning and hands on projects, these girls are immersed in the world
of engineering in an engaging and relevant
manner. From bungee jumping Barbie to
balsa wood bridges to Arduino, the scope
covered in the four weeks is immense.
For Ausaluth, a mechanical engineering
concentrator, and Costa, a biomedical engineering concentrator, this was their second
time around with Spira. As co-founders of
the program, they have seen the progress
Spira has made over the past two years.
Barron and Thomas, both concentrating
in civil engineering, joined the Spira team
in the spring of 2012. With their own fresh
perspectives, they have since shared equal
responsibility for planning and running the
camp.
of engineering companies, professionals
and Brown University professors, Spira was
able to expand its network, increase field
trips and have more guest speakers. Both
Spira’s website and its Facebook page allow Spira alumni to remain connected to
both the camp and the engineering world.
Additionally, the implementation of a mentoring program enabled past campers to
contribute to the classroom dynamic while
continuing their interest in STEM. These
changes allow for the coordinators to evaluate the progress of Spira and work toward
an educational model that best serves the
campers.
Students work on the code for their Arduino, a mini
computer.
Since last year, Spira has doubled the number of field trips and increased the intake of
girls from public schools. Spira is now working on increasing the number of female
guest speakers, allowing mentors to be
more involved in lessons, and getting better connected to the pedagogical resources
available at Brown University.
Dorothy Windham learns how to create a circuit
using Arduinos.
“Our recent focus has been on making Spira
sustainable. We addressed this from many
angles,” says Ausaluth.
The team has diligently worked on this common focus concentrating on their lessons,
network and alumni involvement. The coordinators sought mentors who could assist
them with effective lesson planning strategies and delivery to make the lessons more
varied. By reaching out to a greater number
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
The campers work in teams on an egg drop project, one of the first team exercises of camp.
2
IMNI ANNIVERSARY
IMNI Turns Five!
Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation celebrated its fifth anniversary in November.
Brown University President Christina Paxson
discussing research during the poster session.
Clyde Briant, V.P. of Research, Brown University
with IMNI staff members.
Over the past decade, there’s been an explosion of nanotechnology research worldwide.
Harnessing the peculiar properties of matter
at the tiniest scales promises to revolutionize
manufacturing, healthcare, and information
technology. The Institute for Molecular and
Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI) is helping to put
Brown—and Rhode Island—at the forefront
of this emerging science.
That research is generating exciting results.
The lab of Shouheng Sun in Brown’s chemistry department recently tested a cobalt-based
material that can catalyze a chemical reaction
crucial in fuel cell operation. Up to now that
reaction has required a platinum catalyst, and
the cost and scarcity of platinum is one of the
main reasons fuel cells haven’t yet come into
widespread use.
“People are asking what can our universities do to help Rhode Island’s economy. IMNI
is one of those things,” said Bob Hurt, IMNI’s
director and an engineering professor here
at Brown. “We can make nanotechnology an
area of excellence in Rhode Island and help to
put the state at the forefront of the knowledge
economy.”
Domenico Pacifici, assistant professor of engineering, has developed a sensing biochip that
can measure glucose levels in saliva instead of
blood. The sensors could be helpful to diabetics and may also hold promise for screening
patients for other important biomarkers.
In five years, IMNI has grown to include
60 Brown faculty members, a statewide
nanotech consortium with URI, and private partnerships with General Motors
and Medtronic, a global biotech firm. All
told, the group now brings in as much
as $8 million in research grants annually.
Engineering professor Huajian Gao recently
published an important paper showing why
carbon nanotubes are toxic to cells. A better
understanding of nanotoxicity could help
researchers design safer nanomaterials for
medical applications.
Hurt expects similar results and further
growth over the next five years. IMNI recently
received approval from the university to open
a new NanoTools facility on campus.
“The lab will have spectroscopic and imaging
tools to help us understand the basic properties of the new forms of matter we create,” Hurt
said. “It will be open to all Brown researchers as
well as local industry users.”
Over 100 posters were presented by IMNI professors, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
3
Hurt sees IMNI’s expansion as holding great
promise not only for advancing knowledge
but as a means for more collaboration with local businesses and industry. “My dream is to
be able to establish a fabrication facility in the
Knowledge District at some point,” he said, “to
help nanotechnology become part of the fabric of Providence and Rhode Island. ”
WINTER 2012
FROM THE LAB
Anubhav Tripathi
A SMART(er) Way to Track Influenza
Brown University researchers have created a reliable and fast flu detection test that can be carried in a first aid
kit. The novel prototype device isolates influenza RNA using a combination of magnetics and microfluidics, then
amplifies and detects probes bound to the RNA. The technology could lead to real-time tracking of influenza.
Results are published in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
In April 2009, the world took notice as reports surfaced of a virus in Mexico that had
mutated from pigs and was being passed
from human to human. The H1N1 “swine flu,”
as the virus was named, circulated worldwide, killing more than 18,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States said it was the first
global pandemic in more than four decades.
Swine flu will not be the last viral mutation
to cause a worldwide stir. One way to contain the next outbreak is by administering
tests at the infection’s source, pinpointing
and tracking the pathogen’s spread in real
time. But such efforts have been stymied by
devices that are costly, unwieldy and unreliable. Now, biomedical engineers at Brown
University and Memorial Hospital in Rhode
Island have developed a biochip that can
detect the presence of influenza by zeroing
in on the specific RNA sequence and then
using tiny magnets in a tube to separate the
flu-ridden sequence from the rest of the RNA
strand. The result: a reliable, fast prototype
of a flu detection test that potentially can be
carried in a first aid kit and used as easily as
an iPhone.
The Brown assay is called SMART, which
stands for “A Simple Method for Amplifying
RNA Targets.” Physically, it is essentially a series of tubes with bulbs on each end, etched
like channels into the biochip.
There are other pathogen-diagnostic detectors, notably the Polymerase Chain Reaction device (which targets DNA) and the
Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification
(which also targets RNA). The SMART detecBROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
tor is unique in that the engineers use a DNA
probe with base letters that match the code
in the targeted sequence. This ensures the
probe will latch on only to the specific RNA
strand being assayed. The team inundates
the sample with probes, to ensure that all
RNA molecules bind to a probe.
“We wanted to make something
simple,” said Anubhav Tripathi,
associate professor of engineering
at Brown and the corresponding
author on the paper, published
in the Journal of Molecular
Diagnostics. “It’s a low-cost device
for active, on-site detection,
whether it’s influenza, HIV, or TB.”
“The device allows us to design probes that
are both sensitive and specific," Tripathi said.
This approach creates excess: probes with
no RNA partners. The Brown-led team attached the probes to 2.8 micron magnetic
beads that carry the genetic sequence for
the influenza RNA sequence. The engineers
then used a magnet to slowly drag the RNAprobe pairs collected in the bulb through a
tube that narrows to 50 microns and then
deposit the probes at a bulb at the other end.
This convergence of magnetism (the magnetized probes and the dragging magnets)
4
and microfluidics (the probes’ movement
through the narrowing channel and the
bulbs) separated the RNA-probe pairs from
the surrounding biological debris, allowing clinicians to isolate the influenza strains
readily and rapidly for analysis. The team
tracked the RNA-probe beads flawlessly at
speeds up to 0.75 millimeters per second.
“When we amplify the probes, we have disease detection,” Tripathi said. “If there is no
influenza, there will be no probes (at the end
bulb). This separation part is crucial.”
Once separated, or amplified, the RNA can
be analyzed using conventional techniques,
such as nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA).
The chips created in Tripathi’s lab are less
than two inches across and can fit four tubeand-bulb channels. Tripathi said the chips
could be commercially manufactured and
made so more channels could be etched on
each.
The team is working on separate technologies for biohazard detection.
Stephanie McCalla, who earned her doctorate at Brown last year and is now at the
California Institute of Technology, is the first
author on the paper. Brown professors of
medicine Steven Opal and Andrew Artenstein, with Carmichael Ong and Aartik Sarma,
who earned their undergraduate degrees at
Brown, are contributing authors.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health and
the National Science Foundation funded
the research.
By David Orenstein
FROM THE LAB
Anubhav Tripathi
“We wanted to make something simple. It’s a low-cost device for active, on-site detection, whether it’s influenza, HIV, or TB.”
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University
Schematic of SMART Technology and Detection of 2011 Flu Patient Samples from the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island (below).
(Collaborators Drs. Steven Opal and Andrew Artenstein)
5
WINTER 2012
FROM THE LAB
Christian Franck
Understanding Traumatic Brain Injury
Assistant Professor of Engineering Christian Franck is studying TBI at the cellular level and designed significant
upgrades to a helmet that measures impacts.
Helmets haven’t changed much since the
late 1970s. Most are even tested in the same
fashion, a simple drop test which is designed to gauge their ability to prevent skull
fractures. The track record is impressive —
with skull fractures resulting in very few of
all helmet-protected head injuries.
However, as Brown University Assistant
Professor of Engineering Christian Franck
points out, helmet technology’s ability to
prevent skull fractures has introduced a new
set of issues: “Today’s helmets are keeping
people alive — but now brains are damaged.” Such damage is often missed, as the
worst of it may have occurred at the cellular
level. Cellular damage often takes months,
or years, to manifest related symptoms. The
delay or absence of a proper diagnosis can
have tragic results for traumatic brain injury
(TBI) victims.
Franck is part of a Rhode Island Science and
Technology Council (STAC) award-funded
collaborative research team that is producing substantive results in addressing
head trauma injury issues. He first became
interested in TBI while at Harvard. There,
as part of a biophysics group led by Kevin
“Kit” Parker, he looked at blast injury concussion results. TBI shares many of the same
symptoms caused by post-traumatic stress
disorder, such as insomnia, headaches, and
irritability. High rates of TBI resulting from
current combat operations have become a
matter of great concern to the U.S. military.
Military leaders acknowledge TBI’s tremendous impact, both on service members’
health and safety, as well as troop readiness
and retention.
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
As he worked with brain cells that had been
subjected to TBI, Franck became interested
in the forces these cells ‘see.’ Franck explains:
“The thing about TBI is that
everything starts with the cells.
When they die, or change networks
— all that affects how we perceive
memory, what we think, and
potentially impacts different
functions.”
When Franck arrived at Brown University a
comprehensive medical school project related to TBI was already underway. The project, led by Henry F. Lippitt Professor of Orthopaedics Dr. Trey Crisco, in collaboration
with Dartmouth and Virginia Tech, involved
instrumenting NCAA players’ helmets with
accelerometers in order to measure the acceleration of their heads during impact,
then comparing results with subsequent
diagnoses of concussions by medics on the
field.
Hearing of the research, Franck recognized
an opportunity to continue his inquiry into
6
TBI, and soon was in contact with Dr. Crisco.
TBI, regardless of whether incurred in combat or on the football field, is diagnosed and
treated in subjective fashion. Franck, working with Dr. Crisco and supported by STAC,
has been helping to move science towards
an objective assessment of TBI cases. Other
collaborators include experts from Brown
Med, Rhode Island Hospital, Simulia, and the
Veterans Administration Hospital.
The project team was granted the STAC
award in 2009. One part of their work, the
science investigation, involved looking at
cells and how they ‘see’ and respond to forces. This work uses equipment that enables
the construction of elegant 3-D computer
models of damaged brain cells.
The other part of the STAC-funded work
involved a translational engineering application, using Dr. Crisco’s original design for
an apparatus that gets fitted into helmets
in order to measure impacts. With support
from STAC, Franck and other Brown engineers devised significant upgrades to the
original design. The resulting prototype
was successful enough to inspire an Ohiobased helmet technology company, Team
Wendy, to invest in a collaboration. The current system is well on its way to being able
to measure a hit and instantaneously signal
the level of injury to medical personnel up
to a mile away. This technology has incredible potential for military applications. “In a
blink, the medic would see on the screen,
‘This person’s going to have a concussion.’,”
explains Franck.
STUDENTS IN THE NEWS
The device (above) is used to damage brain cells before they are viewed in a 3-D microscope. An inside view of a helmet equipped with responsive padding (below).
Photos: RI STAC
All of the system’s electronics are manufactured in Rhode Island. Team Wendy now has
a proposal before Congress for additional
funding. Were it to be funded, the state
would reap immediate benefits.
Of his team’s efforts, Franck says, “We’ve
done really well.” He attributes a lot of the
work’s success to STAC’s support. “People
say, ‘What can you do with such a small
amount of money?’ In academia... it allows
you to... get people together, develop fertile
ground, establish an infrastructure — then,
if the community is supportive, you can really make something. Every big building
starts small.”
By Hallie Steele/RI STAC
7
WINTER 2012
FROM THE LAB
Rashid Zia ‘01
Brown to Lead Multi-University Quantum
Metamaterials Research
Through a new $4.5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awarded by the Air Force Office
of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Brown will lead an effort to study new optical materials and their interactions with
light at the quantum scale.
Through a new Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awarded by
the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR), Brown will lead an effort to study
new optical materials and their interactions
with light at the quantum scale. The initiative, which includes six other top universities, will receive $4.5 million over three
years, with a possible two year extension.
Harnessing the power of light at the quantum scale could clear the way for superfast
optical microprocessors, high-capacity optical memory, securely encrypted communication, and untold other technologies. But
before any of these potential applications
sees the light of day, substantial obstacles
must be overcome — not the least of which
is the fact that the wavelength of light is
larger than quantum-scale objects, limiting
the range of possible light-matter interactions.
Rashid Zia, the Manning Assistant Professor of Engineering, will lead the team in addressing these challenges. He spoke recently with science writer Kevin Stacey.
What are you hoping to accomplish with
this MURI?
We’re trying to help define an emerging
field. The title of the MURI is “Quantum
Metaphotonics and Quantum Metamaterials.” Ultimately what we’re trying to do
is expand the range of materials and lightmatter interactions available for quantum
optics.
The field of metamaterials has already exBROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
panded the range of optical materials and
phenomena available at larger, classical
scales. People are doing things with metamaterials that we couldn’t have imagined
before. For example, researchers are making metamaterials with negative refractive indices, which can literally bend light
backward around objects. Others have
used metamaterials to make lenses that can
image things smaller than the diffraction
limit of traditional lenses. What we’re doing
now is asking what happens when we bring
these metamaterials down to the scale of
quantum emitters — the level of things that
can emit a single photon at a time.
Can you talk a bit about the challenges involved in doing this?
When you talk about the way light interacts
with matter at the quantum level, the types
of interactions and the strength of those
interactions are limited by a size mismatch.
The optical wavelength is something like
100 times larger than a quantum emitter.
For example, a quantum dot — a small bit
of semiconductor we can use as a light emitter — is 5 to 10 nanometers. The wavelength
of light is on the order of 500 to 1,000 nanometers. The problem is that the quantum
dot doesn’t know there’s a wave. It can’t see
the spatial variation of the light wave, just its
local variation in time. So we need to shrink
the wavelength of light to increase our interactions. Or we might increase the wavelength to collectively interact with many
quantum emitters. And hopefully we can
learn something fundamental about the nature of light that opens up new ways of ma8
nipulating these interactions. Those are the
types of things we’ll be addressing.
In quantum optics we’re limited in part by
the kinds of materials we can use. One of
the common materials for quantum optics
today is the nitrogen vacancy defect in diamonds, so-called diamond NV centers. As
you can imagine, diamond is not the cheapest or most scalable technology. The challenge posed for us is how to use the semiconductor materials we use for electronics
and extend their optical properties with
metamaterial designs, so we can perform
quantum optics at wavelengths and with
materials commonly used in telecommunications today.
How does the research you’re doing in your
lab at Brown fit in?
It’s usually assumed that all light-matter interactions at visible frequencies result from
the push-pull forces exerted by electric
fields. These are called electric dipole transitions. One of the things we do in my lab
is study things that aren’t electric dipoles
— for example, magnetic dipoles. Because
of the size mismatch we just discussed, it’s
often assumed that magnetic dipole transitions are around 100,000 times less likely to
happen than electric dipole transitions. In
other words, it’s assumed that light emission from magnetic dipoles simply doesn’t
happen. But the fact is we see magnetic
dipole emission every day from the lanthanide ions that are commonly found in fluorescent lights. What we’ve been able to do is
quantify the magnetic nature of light.
FROM THE LAB
We just published a paper on this in Nature
Communications. Basically, we demonstrated a way to tell how light was emitted, and
rather than simply counting the number of
photons a system generates, we can tell you
which fraction of them came from electric
dipoles and which fraction came from magnetic dipoles. This helps us understand fundamental properties about quantum emitters, the source of this light. It might also
help us access higher-order light-matter interactions, enabling new ways to modulate
light or to trap energy in optical excitations
and get it out when you want, which could
be useful for things like optical memory.
Who else is involved in this work?
The team includes people who are worldclass experts in different areas. Nader Engheta at Penn, Nicholas Fang at MIT, and
Xiang Zhang at UC–Berkeley are experts in
metamaterials. Harry Atwater at CalTech
and Mark Brongersma at Stanford are experts in plasmonics, which is the science
of using metal structures to enhance lightmatter interactions. Shanhui Fan and Jelena
Vuckovic at Stanford are experts in quantum
optics. Seth Bank at UT–Austin and Arto Nurmikko and me here at Brown, work on quantum emitters.
It’s really an exciting project. Over the next
five years, this program will bring together
10 groups and 40-plus researchers with
complementary expertise to help answer
questions that we couldn’t have imagined a
short time ago. We are very optimistic about
where this will lead.
“This program will bring together 10 groups and 40-plus researchers ... to help answer questions that we
couldn’t have imagined a short time ago. We are very optimistic about where this will lead.”
“At the quantum level, the
strength and nature of lightmatter interactions are limited by
the size mismatch between the
electronic wavefunction of single
emitters and the wavelength of
the visible light. This limitation
can be overcome using: Quantum
Metamaterials where extended
modes in epsilon-near-zero waveguides and antenna arrays can
couple large emitter ensembles;
Quantum Metaphotonics where
subwavelength cavities and optical antennas can confine light and
enhance light-matter interactions
with single emitters.”
Epsilon-Near-Zero
Quantum Metamaterials
QD
Field
λ/
30
λ
Quantum Metaphotonics
Optical Antenna
9
Antenna Array
Sub-λ Cavities
& Waveguides
WINTER 2012
STEM OUTREACH
LEGO® Robots Make Great Teachers
A partnership between Brown’s Science Center and the Paul Cuffee Middle School gave 10 young student hands-on
instruction in the finer points of computer programming and engineering using LEGO® robots as the teaching tool.
Brown engineering students Raymon Baek ‘14 and Michael Lazos ‘15 were the instructors for the program.
Like sumo wrestlers, two LEGO® robots
made their way around an oval ring, grabbing, swatting at each other, and trying with
great gusto to push the other robot out of
the ring to win the match. Ten young boys
— third, fourth, and fifth graders — at the
Paul Cuffee Middle School in Providence
cheered on their creations, watching in delight as their aggressor responded to preprogrammed commands and light sensors
to make their way around the ring in pursuit
of the opponent. At each turn, parents and
volunteer instructors joined in the cheering
at the school’s cafeteria on Friday, July 20th.
It was the culmination of a three-week pilot
program designed to pique children’s interest in engineering and computer science.
The LEGO® robotic program was a partnership between Brown’s Science Center and
the Paul Cuffee Middle School. Ten student
participants were divided into two teams —
the Panthers and the Demons of Nothingness — and instructed in the finer points of
computer programming and engineering
using LEGO® robots as the teaching tool.
Students used a kit that not only contained
LEGO® pieces but robots’ “brains,” which
were connected to laptops so students
could program the brains to respond to
light, touch, ultrasonic, sound, color, temperature, accelerometer, compass, and radio-frequency identification sensors.
Brown engineering students Mike Lazos ’14
and Raymon Baek ’15 helped the students
design, build and program robots for four
hours every day during the three-week sum-
mer program. According to instructor Baek
the program was a tremendous success.
“The kids were very bright and went beyond
our expectations,” Baek said. “We always finished the planned curriculum a lot quicker
than expected, which kept Mike and me improvising to stay ahead of the students.”
Instructors Raymon Baek ’14
and Michael Lazos ’15 were
impressed that students mastered
the material so quickly.
In the final battle,
the instructors’ own robot was
thrown for a loss.
The students used visual programming
software with easily readable icons and
distinct colors for each type of tile. For example, movement tiles would tell the robot to move and sensor tiles would tell the
program to rely on a specific sensor. The
program used wait statements, (e.g., wait
for a certain sound level or touch sensor to
be activated), switch statements, (e.g., if the
light sensor detects a dark area, move right;
move left for a bright area), and loops. These
commands made it possible for the robots
to compete in the sumo wrestling challenge
and an obstacle course.
The students had to be creative about using
sensors to follow a zigzag path through the
obstacle course, navigating through various
boxes, capturing colored balls from a central
area, and bringing them back to their starting points. The Panthers easily won the obstacle course because they built a robot that
had a robotic arm that pulled nearly all the
balls back to its starting point in one trial.
As for the battle arena, the Demons of Nothingness won because their robot was very
bulky and stable. “Mike and I decided to
surprise them by introducing our own robot
that we assumed was invincible,” said Baek.
“We had the three robots fight it out in the
ring. To our surprise, our robot was pushed
out of the ring and the Demons of Nothingness reigned victorious.”
During the three-week program, the instructors gained some insight about the
challenges of teaching. “The boys loved
to build, but the programming, which required them to sit still and concentrate, was
a challenge. They need to get up and run
around every so often to burn off some energy,” said Baek.
In this pilot effort, all participants, including
the students, teachers, learning concept,
and execution proved to be a perfect match.
By Darlene Trew Crist
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
10
LA
I M N I FARNONMI VTEHRES A
RB
Y
Building a sumo warrior block by block: LEGO® programmers, from left, Aidan Marinelli, Jose Pagan, and Luke Taylor watch as their team’s robot is attackedby a competitor (above).
To the victor, the spoils. The robot designed by the Demons of Nothingness outlasted all competitors (below).
Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University
11
WINTER 2012
STUDENTS IN THE NEWS
Engineering Senior Wins Elevator Pitch Competition
Brown Mechanical Engineering Concentrator David Emanuel ’13 and team members Amanda Lee ’13,
Matthew Klimerman ’13, Joseph Stall ’13, and Mehves Tangun ’13 developed an idea for a Backpack Lock.
Brown alumni and students had another
strong showing at the seventh annual
Rhode Island Elevator Pitch contest, as David Emanuel ’13, a senior mechanical engineering concentrator, took home the top
prize. It was the fifth consecutive year a
Brown student or alumnus has won.
Emanuel pitched Lock’d, which enables
travelers to attach their backpacks to stationary objects such as hostel beds and train
seats.
“With even just a little bit of funding we will
fully develop a working prototype, enabling
Lock’d to give travelers what they deserve: a
worry-free and relaxing adventure,” he said.
Emanuel is currently in Danny Warshay’s
ENGN1010 class, “The Entreprenuerial Process: Innovation in Practice,” and he and
his team developed Lock’d as their semester business plan project. Emanuel has also
been active in the Entrepreneurship Program’s Idea Labs. The other members of
Emanuel’s team are Amanda Lee ’13, Matthew Klimerman ’13, Joseph Stall ’13, and
Mehves Tangun ’13. Stall is a business, entrepreneurship and organizations (BEO) concentrator and Tangun is an engineering and
economics double concentrator.
The event, sponsored by the Rhode Island
Business Plan Competition, was held at the
Johnson & Wales University Harborside
Campus and included 46 presenters. A total
of $1,000 in cash prizes was awarded to the
top 10 presenters. Out of the 46 to pitch, 14
had Brown connections, including 12 current students. Of the 10 finalists, an impressive six were from Brown.
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Three of the top ten finalists were from
Steve Petteruti’s Entrepreneurship I class,
Engineering 1930G. Cory Abbe ’13, a BEO
concentrator, pitched Sonacatch 3D, an allinclusive trawl sonar system that keeps underwater fishing nets safe from harm. Other
members of the team included David Killian,
a computer science concentrator, Vanessa
Munoz, a BEO concentrator, and Moss Amer,
a BEO concentrator.
Isha Gulati ’13, pitched PowerHouse, a power output meter that delivers key readings of
the power output of oarsmen. Other members of her team include mechanical engineering concentrators Elizabeth Gianuzzi
’13 and Francisco Oliveira ’13, as well as Alice
Leung ’13, who is concentrating in electrical
engineering.
Tim Kwak ’13, a BEO concentrator, pitched
SEVA, software that will allow mariners to indicate their preferred content to be broadcast on a satellite network. Other members
of his team included Ilana Foni ’13, a materials engineering concentrator, Ian Hovander
’13, a computer engineering concentrator,
and William Gasner, a BEO concentrator.
The other two finalists
are also active participants in the Entrepreneurship Program’s Idea
Labs. Cliff Weitzman ’16,
pitched
BoardBrake,
an attachable brake for
longboards to make
skateboarding
safer.
Sidney Kushner ’13 presented CCChampions,
a nonprofit corporation
12
David Emanuel ’13
he established to build a national network
that links children with cancer to professional athletes.
Established in 2000, the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition was recently named
one of the top 40 business plan competitions in the country, and has awarded more
than $1.2 million in prizes to competitors
developing companies across many industries. The contest required the competitors
to pitch their business idea to a panel of
eight expert judges from the Rhode Island
business community in 90 seconds. The elevator pitch contest is a prelude to the annual
Rhode Island Business Plan Competition,
which features more than $200,000 in cash
and prizes. Applications for the business
plan competition close on April 1. Winners
will be announced on May 2.
Previous Brown winners of the elevator
pitch competition include: Julie Sygiel ’09
in 2008, Adam Leonard ’10 in 2009, Theresa
Raimondo ’11 in 2010 and Kipp Bradford ’95
Sc.M.’96 in 2011.
STUDENTS IN THE NEWS
Brown Engineers Without Borders Returns to the DR
Brown EWB lays the groundwork for a long-term partnership in the Dominican Republic to help improve
sanitation at a local school.
The community of Los Sanchez lies in the
center of the Dominican Republic. It is on
the outskirts of Tireo, an agriculturallybased municipality, isolated from the rest
of the country by a ring of high mountains.
Home to about 300 people, the community
is very self-contained. Most children do not
travel far from their homes as they become
adults. The pride of the community is El
Centro Educativo de los Sanchez, a government-constructed one-room schoolhouse
with one teacher and 35 students. The
school is one of ten primary schools in Tireo,
but the municipality is home to only one
high school, which is located in a different
community.
The Brown University Chapter of Engineers
Without Borders (EWB) established the
groundwork for a long-term partnership
with Los Sanchez in late August. Members
travelled to the community and met with
administrative, health, and school officials
as well as the teacher from El Centro Educativo de los Sanchez, Angela Jimenez. A
key area of research within the chapter has
been sanitation hygiene and the design
of a sanitation facility that is sustainable
from both environmental and economic
perspectives. Sanitation is a major point of
concern at the school, where a set of pit latrines provide the only bathroom facilities
available to students. There is no running
water and no access to toilet paper. Health
Administrator Dr. Saif Haider explains that
latrines such as the ones in Los Sanchez create pockets of illness that inhibit students’
abilities to learn in a healthy environment.
The people of Los Sanchez desire to install
flush toilets, but the funds for such a project
have yet to be found. In other parts of Tireo
where flush toilets are in use, waste is typically flushed into a pit and then pumped out
periodically into a gutter that runs behind a
row of houses.
Brown EWB hopes to work closely with
school officials and the people of Los Sanchez to make the sanitation facilities at El
Centro Educativo de los Sanchez healthy
and environmentally sustainable. The modifications, which may include a new toilet
system and handwashing system, will be
presented alongside an education plan and
pictorial instructional materials about basic hygiene to be presented to the children
in the school system. The final aim of this
program is to turn the school into a healthy
learning space and build a bond between a
group of Brown students and a foreign community.
by Dana Dourdeville ‘15
A student from El Centro Educativo de los Sanchez
where Brown University Engineers Without
Borders is working with local officials to upgrade
sanitation facilities.
A typical sewage gutter: Waste is periodically pumped from toilets into open gutters located behind
homes and schools.
13
WINTER 2012
FA C U LT Y A W A R D S / G R A N T S
Professor Tayhas Palmore Receives Grant for
Chemical Innovation Center
Researchers at Brown have been awarded $1.75 million to explore the potential of using carbon dioxide instead of fossil fuels in the production of common industrial chemicals. Advances could reduce the chemical industry’s carbon footprint and help stabilize production
costs in the face of ever increasing fuel prices.
“The goal is to find new ways to produce some of the world’s largest-volume chemicals from
a sustainable carbon source that the earth not only has in excess but urgently needs to reduce,” said Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering and principal investigator on the grant.
The funding comes from the National Science Foundation’s Centers for Chemical Innovation
Program. The research team includes Wesley Bernskoetter, Christoph Rose-Petruck, Dwight
Sweigart, and Shouheng Sun from the Department of Chemistry, as well as Robert Hurt and
Andrew Peterson from the School of Engineering and Nilay Hazari from the Department
of Chemistry at Yale. The team is administered by Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation (IMNI).
ARPA-E Funds Hydrokinetic Work
A team of Brown University researchers has
received a $750,000 grant to design an oscillating underwater wing that can capture
energy from flowing water in rivers and tidal
basins. The funding comes from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E), which funds
breakthrough technologies that show fundamental technical promise but are too
early for private-sector investment.
can be used to generate electricity,” Mandre
said.
The award supports developing proof-ofconcept for this potential technology, and
complements current efforts to investigate
the fundamental hydrodynamic mechanisms of energy conversion funded by the
Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
“Marine and hydrokinetic energy is a vast
renewable energy source,” said Shreyas
Mandre, assistant professor of engineering
who will lead Brown’s effort with colleagues
Kenneth Breuer in engineering and Heather
Leslie in ecology and evolutionary biology.
“The main advantage of hydrokinetic energy, unlike solar or wind power, is that the
availability is predictable.”
The wing would capture forces exerted on
it by flowing water in much the same way
airplane wings capture lift force from wind.
“This lift force causes the hydrofoil to heave
up and down periodically, and this motion
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Professor David
Cooper Honored
David Cooper, professor emeritus of engineering and professor of engineering
(research), was honored at the 25th International IEEE (Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers) Conference on
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
(CVPR) which was held in Providence from
June 18-20. This is the major annual meeting on CVPR. Professor Cooper was honored
“In appreciation of his outstanding and
pioneering contributions to Unsupervised
Learning and Bayesian Inference in Computer Vision.” The international conference
was held this year at the Convention Center
with over 1800 attendees. Brown University
Professor Benjamin Kimia served as one of
three general co-chairs of the conference.
Professor Cooper’s current research focuses
on the development and application of
new geometric, algebraic, and probabilistic approaches, models, and algorithms for
recognizing and estimating 2D and 3D geometric information and functioning in 3D
scenes from images, video, and range data.
Shreyas Mandre
14
FA C U LT Y H O N O R S / N E W S
Professor Nitin Padture Named Editor of Scripta
Materialia
Brown University School of Engineering Professor Nitin Padture has been named editor of
Scripta Materialia, one of the leading journals in the field of materials science and engineering.
In this role, Padture will serve a four-year term and will handle approximately 300 manuscripts
per year.
“It is a great opportunity to contribute toward the shaping of a fast-moving field, and I am
humbled by the honor,” said Padture.
Padture, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research
(CAMR) at Brown, joined the Brown faculty in January of 2012. Previously, he was College of
Engineering Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, and the founding director
of the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at OSU.
Padture received a B.Tech. in metallurgical engineering from The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1985), an M.S. in ceramic engineering from Alfred University (1987), and a Ph.D.
in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University (1991).
He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for three years before joining the University of Connecticut faculty in January 1995 as an assistant professor. Padture became an associate professor in 1998 and was promoted to professor in
2003. He served as interim department head at UConn before moving to Ohio State in January 2005.
Padture’s teaching and research interests are in the broad areas of synthesis/processing and properties of advanced materials used in applications ranging from jet engines to computer chips, impacting transportation, energy, and information technology sectors. Specifically, he has
active research in tailoring of structural ceramic composites and coatings, and functional nanomaterials including graphene and perovskites.
Padture has published over 125 journal papers, which have been cited over 5,000 times. Padture is a co-inventor of four patents, and he has delivered some 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks in the U.S. and abroad. A fellow of the American Ceramic Society, he has received that society’s
Roland B. Snow, Robert L. Coble, and Richard M. Fulrath awards. Padture is also a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator
Award, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Previously, Padture served as a principal editor of Journal
of Materials Research and an associate editor of Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
Professor Joe Calo Named Fellow of ACS
Joseph Calo, professor emeritus at the Brown School of Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Calo
is one of 96 fellows in the 2012 class and was honored at the society’s national meeting in Philadelphia in August.
A founder of the chemical engineering program at Brown, Calo was honored for his research contributions in chemical kinetics and transport
phenomena as applied to carbon materials, environmental characterization/remediation, and energy conversion.
He served as treasurer, councilor, technical program secretary and representative of the Fuel Chemistry (now Energy and Fuels, ENFL) Division to the Multidisciplinary Program Planning Group (MPPG), and Divisional Activities Committee (DAC) member of ACS.
“I’d like to congratulate Professor Calo on this spectacular achievement,” said Dean Larry Larson. “Becoming a Fellow of the ACS is a recognition of a lifetime of technical contributions and service to the American Chemical Society.
Professor Calo’s contributions to Brown and to Chemical Engineering have been and continue to be extraordinary.”
The Fellows program began in 2009 as a way to recognize and honor ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and ACS.
15
WINTER 2012
M E E T T H E N E W FA C U LT Y
Jennifer Franck
Passenger jet or flapping bat, Jennifer Franck writes code that simulates
the flow of air around things with wings. The computational approach
has advantages and efficiencies, especially for someone to whom coding
comes naturally.
Jennifer Franck’s first foray into computing was on the venerable, if rudimentary,
Commodore 64. As a child, she tapped out
simple looping programs that sent a series
of numbers to her printer. Since those early
days, Franck’s programs have gotten considerably more complex.
One of the questions Franck looked at is why
bats flap their wings, as opposed to using
them for soaring flight. “There’s a theory
that bats evolved from passive gliders to
actively flapping their wings,” she said. “The
question was, what’s the benefit of flapping.”
The new lecturer in engineering is an expert in computational fluid dynamics. She
writes programs that simulate how fluids
and gases flow around objects. Specifically,
she codes what are called large-eddy simulations, a class of code designed to study
turbulence. She mostly uses her model to
investigate the dynamics of flight — how
wind interacts with wings.
Franck’s models helped to show that flapping creates vortices — tiny pockets of low
air pressure — above a bat’s wings. Those
vortices create extra lift and may be part of
the reason flapping is worth the effort.
After earning her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Caltech in 2009, she came to
Brown as a postdoc to work with Kenneth
Breuer in engineering and Sharon Swartz
in ecology and evolutionary biology, who
are widely known for their research on the
mechanics of bat flight. “What I was interested in was to see if I could explain some of
the characteristics of animal flight using my
models on the computer,” Franck said.
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Franck has also used her models to explore
applications that might improve aircraft
flight. “Say you want an airplane to have
more lift,” she said. “Could you apply some
sort of device on the wing that would pump
some extra energy into the flow and give
you better performance? I’m interested in
applying code to those types of flow control
questions.”
There are significant advantages to the
computational approach, Franck says. It’s
much easier, for example, to modify the parameters of an experiment on a computer
than it is to design new physical models
16
for wind tunnel tests. Another advantage
is that computer models help to isolate the
specific aspects of a problem that researchers are trying to address.
“We generally model a very simple airfoil
that’s often just two dimensional because
it simplifies the problem,” Franck said. “If
we’re looking at the basic physics behind a
problem, we don’t want to make things too
complicated.”
Though the models may be simple, the code
that generates them is not. Most of Franck’s
programs require computer clusters that
string together multiple processors. For
some of her research, Franck has used a
cluster at Brown’s Center for Computation
and Visualization. For other projects she’s
used the Department of Defense’s Army Research Lab cluster in Maryland.
It’s a long way from the Commodore 64, but
Franck is right at home. “Coding has always
just come naturally to me,” she says.
She and her husband Christian, professor
of engineering at Brown, live in Providence
with their two kids.
M E E T T H E N E W FA C U LT Y
Haneesh Kesari
Understanding a small sea sponge and its ability to anchor itself to the
ocean floor will point the way to stronger, lighter, better man-made
materials, Haneesh Kesari hopes.
As an engineer, Haneesh Kesari takes his inspiration from nature.
The new assistant professor of engineering
marvels at how nature takes a few proteins
and a bit of calcium or silica and creates
structures with amazing material properties
— emergent properties that might seem
impossible given limited raw ingredients.
“Nature is doing it,” he says, “hence it is possible. How to do it is what my research will
be focused on.”
Kesari is currently studying Euplectella, a
genus of sea sponges. Sea creatures might
seem strange territory for a materials scientist, but Euplectella have peculiarities that
make them something of an engineering
marvel. Whereas most animal species form
their skeletons with calcium, Euplectella are
made mostly of silica—glass. But don’t think
of these creatures as the fragile Ming vases
of the sea. On the contrary, their skeletons
are strikingly robust.
Kesari is interested specifically in the rootlike appendages that fix the animals to the
ocean floor. The glassy structures, called
basalia spicules, have properties similar
to man-made fiber optic cable, only the
sponge-made versions are substantially
stronger and more flexible. Imaging these
appendages at the nanoscale reveals an intricate construction. Each spicule is made
of concentric layers, some made of glass,
others made of a polymer. It’s the pattern in
which these layers are arranged that caught
Kesari’s attention.
“You see it and think, ‘Is this really an animal
skeleton or is it a figure from a math book?’”
he said. “It had an algorithmic beauty to it.
We didn’t know what the algorithm was, but
felt that there had to be one, because it had
such regularity to it.”
Kesari thought this pattern might contribute to the spicules’ renowned strength, so
he set to work calculating what pattern of
layers would be the strongest given the materials in the spicule. “We calculated it and it
so happens the resulting algorithm matches
very well with what we see in the spicule,”
he said.
Amazing what nature can accomplish given
enough time.
Understanding these sorts of mathematical regularities in nature could lead to the
man-made materials of the future. It’s a slow
and difficult process, Kesari says, but Brown
is the perfect place for that sort of research.
There’s a culture in the School of Engineering that “encourages the pursuit of rigor and
thoroughness, and rewards originality and
creativity,” he says. “It’s nice to see the traditional quality of science — the main reason
why many of us chose to do science in the
17
first place — is retained here.”
Not to mention, he adds, that Brown is
known for employing many of the “rock
stars” in the field of solid mechanics over the
years.
Aside from his work on Euplectella, Kesari
has worked extensively on understanding
adhesive properties and surface roughness,
including a theoretical basis for why things
like sticky notes and packing tape stick better when you push them down harder. He
also studies failure patterns in polymerbased materials.
Kesari earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in
2011. He grew up in southern India, where
his fascination with engineering started.
“My father worked in irrigation,” he said.
“One of the early experiences I had was going to these small irrigation canals to play.
The entire community revolved around water for crops and everything else, and I could
see how just having a simple stone structure
changed people’s lives so dramatically.”
He came to view engineering as humanity’s
way of putting our collective foot down, no
longer helpless against the blind whims of
droughts and floods.
“Engineering, it seems to me, is a very special enterprise,” he said. Through it “we control our own destiny.”
WINTER 2012
M E E T T H E N E W FA C U LT Y
Indrek Külaots
Graphene — sheets of carbon that are one atom thick — could help take
mercury and other nasty pollutants out of circulation if only there were a
way to keep the sheets from sticking together. Indrek Külaots is working on
a system of nanoscale pillars.
Indrek Külaots is using garbage to make the
world a cleaner place.
Untold tons of plant matter are discarded in
the United States every day. Much of this biomass — farm waste, sawdust, wood scraps,
household yard waste — is trucked off to
landfills. As it rots, it produces carbon dioxide
and methane, greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
“My research focuses on trying to make better
use of this bio-waste material,” said Külaots,
lecturer in engineering. He has found a way to
turn this trash into sorbent material that can
sop up industrial pollutants.
Using a simple technique called pyrolysis —
the same process used to make charcoal —
plant waste can be broken down into what’s
called bio-char. “This char product has a relatively high surface area and is also highly porous,” Külaots said. “We can use those pores as
workers for pollutant capture.”
He has patented a method of using modified
bio-char to absorb elemental mercury. Biochar could one day be used as a cost-effective
way to scrub mercury from power plant vapor
emissions, replacing expensive activated carbon filters. Bio-char sorbents also show promise for cleaning up other pollutants like arsenic, cadmium, and lead, Külaots says.
Külaots’ interest in environmental engineering began in his native Estonia. After earning
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Tallinn Technical University, he
worked on a project to recycle fly ash, a byproduct produced by the burning of oil shale.
His work on that subject caught the eye of Eric
Suuberg, an engineering professor at Brown.
Suuberg thought Külaots’ work could be applied to fly ash created by the burning of coal,
which is a major concern in the United States
“He saw my work and said, ‘Why don’t you apply?’” Külaots said. “So I came to Brown as a
Ph.D. student and I never left.”
After earning a master’s degree in applied
mathematics in 2000 and a Ph.D. in chemical
engineering in 2001, Külaots stayed at Brown
as a senior research engineer. In 2009, he was
awarded a joint position as lecturer and research engineer. This year he joins the faculty
as a lecturer.
In addition to teaching classes in chemical,
mechanical, and environmental engineering, he’s expanding his research program to
include a hot topic in the material sciences
world: graphene.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, with vast surface area. It began getting
notoriety a few years ago and quickly gained
a reputation as a miracle material. Its electrical
properties make it a likely successor of silicon
in microprocessors. It also holds promise as a
way to store gases like hydrogen for use in fuel
cells, and it can catalyze chemical reactions.
18
But for all its miraculousness, graphene has a
problem. The sheets have a tendency to get
stuck together in stacks when processed,
which decreases this vast surface area on each
sheet. Think of two sheets of paper stapled at
all four corners. It’s not possible to write on the
back of the first page or the front of the second
because those surfaces are stuck together.
“My research is how to interrupt this stacking,”
Külaots said. “How can we get something in
the middle so we can actually use the inner
layer space as well?”
He’s developing tiny carbon columns to do
the job.
“It’s just a pillar, like in ancient Rome,” he said.
“But when you’re working at the nanoscale it’s
not that easy.” Despite the difficulty, Külaots
has had success using his pillars to recover
some of this lost space, and recently presented his work at one of the world’s top conferences on carbon materials.
“These pillared graphene and graphene oxide
systems have a great potential in the fields of
gas storage, separation, and catalysis, if properly converted into bulk materials,” he said.
Such is the fast-paced world of engineering:
Even before graphene makes it out of the lab
and into production, Külaots is thinking of
ways to make it better.
M E E T T H E N E W FA C U LT Y
Jacob Rosenstein
Biological sensors that detect currents at the nanoscale would have
important clinical applications, but how to separate signal from noise
when the current lasts for 10 microseconds? Jacob Rosenstein has theories
and devices that enable measurement at small timescales.
Jacob Rosenstein enjoyed his undergraduate
years at Brown and certainly made the most
of them. He graduated magna cum laude and
co-founded a company with Anubhav Tripathi, associate professor of engineering. Still,
when Rosenstein graduated in 2005, continuing in academia was far from his mind.
But seven years later, following a stint in the
semiconductor industry and now all but finished with a Ph.D. from Columbia University,
he’s set to return to Brown for a job as an assistant professor of engineering. Much as he did
while a Brown student, he plans to continue
innovating at the nexus of electronics and biology.
“Integrated circuits are all around us, but historically most of the industry focus has been
toward computing and communications,”
says Rosenstein. “I’m excited to see what we
can do to leverage all of that advanced technology for biological and chemical sensors.”
Rosenstein was a busy senior at Brown. At the
same time he was developing a new microphone array platform with Harvey Silverman,
professor of engineering, he was also working
with Tripathi to develop instruments for microfluidic chips, which are integrated circuits
that control the flow of fluids rather than electrical current. They founded Gauge Microfluidics in Providence to commercialize the work.
With a resumé of academic excellence and entrepreneurship, it didn’t take long for Rosenstein to find an industry job. Shortly after
graduation, he moved to Boston to join Analog Devices, a major player in the semiconductor business. He worked in the company’s
wireless division, helping to develop and test
application-specific integrated circuits and
working on prototype cell phone designs.
Rosenstein worked at Analog for more than
two years before his whole business unit was
sold to the Taiwanese company MediaTek. He
was still happy there, but he had begun to do
some professional soul searching. The desire
to gain more experience in chip design led
him back to the notion of graduate school. He
enrolled at Columbia in 2008.
In the Bioelectronic Systems Lab of Kenneth
Shepard at Columbia, Rosenstein returned to
the practice of bringing silicon technology to
bear on biophysical systems. At Columbia, his
main project has been the design of an integrated circuit amplifier to improve measurements of weak ionic currents. Cell membranes
contain a variety of proteins which regulate
the movement of dissolved ions in and out of
the cell, and the movement of these ions can
be measured as an electrical current. However, in many cases this current is very small,
making it difficult to measure the signal above
the noise. Rosenstein’s amplifier reduces the
noise level at high frequencies, considerably
improving the quality of fast ion channel recordings.
“As you get down to the range of 10 microseconds or less it gets very difficult to measure
that weak current,” he said. “Where I’ve come
19
in is to make new electronics and experimental setups to reduce the noise level and therefore enable measurements at timescales that
people have not been able to measure.”
Researchers have been also able to make biosensors inspired by ion channels using very
tiny holes called “nanopores.” If its diameter
is not much larger than a single molecule, a
nanopore can yield a change in its ionic current when a molecule such as DNA passes
through the pore. However, these weak signals are usually very brief, making them difficult to measure. In a paper earlier this year in
Nature Methods, Rosenstein demonstrated
that signals as fast as one microsecond can
be recorded from individual DNA molecules
when a nanopore is integrated with his custom amplifier.
Now back at Brown, Rosenstein is looking forward to exploring other opportunities in bioelectronics. He said the University’s success
in harnessing signals directly from neurons in
the brain with the BrainGate sensor is a particularly inspiring example.
“There are a lot of other interesting diagnostics, sensors, and hybrid systems that are
mostly unexplored,” he said. “I’m very excited
to test the waters and get to know the pure sciences and life sciences groups at Brown, and
hopefully I can be a hub of instrumentation,
sensing, and high-performance electronics.”
Rosenstein returns with an established track
record of exactly that.
WINTER 2012
FROM THE LAB
Studying Renewable Energy in Costa Rica Through
the Green Program
I cannot speak highly enough of the Green Program. I first
learned about it from an email sent to the School of Engineering’s mailing list. It came at a moment when the clutter of my
email inbox was representative of my plans for life after graduation. I needed a direction and purpose for the skills that I
have acquired and developed as a Brown Engineering student. I wanted to continue working with renewable energies; I
wanted to travel; and I wanted to help the world.
It described a two week engineering course in Costa Rica that
studied renewable energies and included several visits to the
state’s various renewable energy plants. Though appealing
and exactly what I was searching for, I held my reservations
about the program’s educational curriculum – which also advertised visits to Costa Rican microbreweries. It seemed like a
fun tropical vacation hidden under the guise of hands-on experience and learning.
Having completed the two weeks abroad, I can truthfully
admit that I was completely blown away by the program. My
concerns over the educational quality of the program were
put to rest on the first day when we met our instructor. His lectures were among the most engaging I have ever experienced
– rivaling those at Brown. We learned about his professional
experience in energy, which provided me insight on what my
career might look like five years from now. The program exposed me to incredible opportunities I otherwise would not
have experienced.
On one trip, we visited a wind farm to learn about its operation, entered into the turbine base and climbed down its rotors for maintenance. We also visited two hydro plants and
witnessed the extreme disparity in scale between different
renewable technologies. Thanks to this course I was also able
to finally visualize, in its entirety, the trapezoid representation
of a turbine from ENGN72 class (Thermodynamics).
It was a perfect balance of education, fun, and adventure.
Some days, I would find myself going straight from a biomass
plant tour to a zip-line of the jungle canopy or a conservation
zoo where injured animals are nursed. My favorite extracurricular was installing a rainwater harvesting system for a family
in need. However, what truly enhanced my experience of the
program was the group of people it brought together. It was
a concentration of twenty like-minded and passionate individuals – each with their own unique knowledge, experience,
and perspective. Within two weeks, I was able to learn just as
much from my peers as I did from my wonderful instructors.
As expected, Costa Rica is a tropical paradise. Its natural and
cultural beauty is like no other place. I will surely return one
day to its amazing people, delectable foods, and of course, excellent microbrews.
BROWN SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
20
by Jacqueline Pierri ‘12
FROM
T HMIT
E LA
A DVI SORY CO U N C I L/D E VELOPMENT
COM
T EBE
Advisory Council Members
Sangeeta N. Bhatia ’90
Professor, Investigator, Director: Laboratory
for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies
MIT
Cambridge, MA
John Bravman
President
Bucknell University
Lewisburg, PA
Seth Coe-Sullivan ’99
Chief Technology Officer
QD Vision
Lexington, MA
Dr. Rick Fleeter ’76 Ph.D.’81
Author/Adjunct Professor
Brown University
Providence, RI
La Sapienza /University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Thomas F. Gilbane, Jr. ’69 P’97 P’98 P’00
Chairman & CEO
Gilbane Building Company
Providence, RI
D. Oscar Groomes ’82 P’15
Metallurgical Engineer,
Physicist and Materials Scientist
Groomes Business Solutions
Charlotte, NC
Deirdre Hanford ’83 - Chair
Senior Vice President, Global Technical Services
Synopsys, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
David Hibbitt Ph.D.’72 PMAT’96
Co-Founder
ABAQUS, Inc.
Providence, RI
Development Committee
Deb Mills-Scofield ’82
Partner
Glengary LLC
Beachwood, Ohio
Charlie Giancarlo ’79 P’08 P’11
Managing Director
Silver Lake Partners
Menlo Park, CA
James R. Moody ’58 Sc.M.’65 P’97
President
Co-Planar, Inc.
Denville, NJ
Theresia Gouw ’90
Partner
Accel Partners
Palo Alto, CA
Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti
Director
Science Technology /Public Policy Program
Harvard Kennedy School
Cambridge, MA
Steven Price ’84
Chairman and CEO
Townsquare Media
Greenwich, CT
James B. Roberto
Associate Laboratory Director
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Paul Sorensen ’71 Sc.M.’75 Ph.D.’77 P’06 P’06
Co-Founder
ABAQUS, Inc.
Providence, RI
Donald L. Stanford ’72 Sc.M.’77
Chief Innovation Officer
GTECH
Adjunct Professor
Brown University
Providence, RI
Ted Tracy ’81 P’14
Vice President of Engineering
Blue Jeans Network
Mountain View, CA
James E. Warne, III ’78
President
WTI, Inc.
Phoenix, AZ
Joan Wernig Sorensen ’72 P’06 P’06
Providence, RI
Paul Sorensen ’71 Sc.M.’75 Ph.D.’77 P’06 P’06
Co-Founder
ABAQUS, Inc.
Providence, RI
Engineering Advisory Council Mission
Provide support and advice in the development, execution, and attainment of the
School of Engineering’s strategic goals.
Ensure the School of Engineering is providing the highest quality educational
experience for its students, and is embarking on the highest impact, highest
quality, research program.
Coordinate with the Engineering Development Committee to ensure that our
strategic and financial initiatives are
achieved.
Work with campus leadership to ensure
their continued support of the School of
Engineering, and recognition of the key
role Engineering plays in the vitality of
the entire Brown community.
Mary Lou Jepson ’87 Ph.D.’97
CEO and Founder
Pixel Qi Corporation
San Bruno, CA
Alejandro Knoepffler ’82
Principal
Cipher Investment Management Co.
Coral Gables, FL
Peter Lauro ’78 P’11
Partner
Edwards Wildman Palmer, LLP
Boston, MA
JoAnn Lighty
Chair, Professor of Chemical Engineering
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah
Andrew Marcuvitz ’71 P’06
Founder, Chairman
Alpond Capital, LLC
Lincoln, MA
Executive Advisory Council members with Brown University President Christina Paxson (seated, center).
21
WINTER 2012
School of Engineering
Box D
182 Hope Street
Providence, RI 02912
Hayley McClintock,
Tomoya
Mori, Sam
Haro
Moore
E N G I N 0 030 D E S I G N PR OJ E C T S 2 0 12