Students� Biofuel Idea Funded by MTV Contest

Story Note: Learn more about the UMBC Biodiesel Club on Maryland Public Television’s “Motorweek” show, starting on Friday, March 13. In Baltimore County, the episode featuring coverage of Maryland’s homebrewed biodiesel community will air Saturday (3/14) at 5pm and Sunday (3/15) at 2pm, Thursday (3/19) at 8pm on MPT. Check your local listings for other broadcast times.

Nothing says “reduce, reuse and recycle” like turning horse manure into fuel. Inspired by Indian innovators, four members of the UMBC Biodiesel Club recently won $1,000 in seed funding in an MTV-sponsored, international environmental contest for their idea to make biofuel at a Maryland farm.

Four  UMBC sophomore chemical engineering majors —  Nick Selock, Marsha Walker, Donterrius Ethridge and Angela Nealen – earned funding from  MTV Switch’s  “Dream It, Do It Challenge,” a global competition for the best environmental and sustainability ideas from young people around the world.

According to Selock, the Club’s proposal for the MTV contest was inspired by the Gober (Hindi for cow dung) gas innovators in India, who use specially designed equipment to digest dung from sacred cows and refine it into cooking gas used by many households. The biogas produced is clean, cheap and sustainable; perfect for developing nations and for anyone looking to reduce environmental impact.

“The MTV prize money will enable us to purchase and set up an anaerobic digester to collect methane, which is a more potent and harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, from horse manure and then convert it into methanol,” said Selock. “The current methanol we use is made from natural gas, which is much less environmentally friendly.”

Under the mentorship of Bradley Arnold, associate professor of chemistry, the Club has been working at a local horse farm in Burtonsville, Md., since September 2008 to apply classroom and lab concepts to their all-volunteer operation to improve the biodiesel brewing process.

Supporting Maryland�s Workforce

From the moment BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) plans were announced several years ago, Maryland knew it would see an influx of people and jobs around the military installments of Ft. Meade in Anne Arundel County, Ft. Detrick in Frederick and Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County. With the increase in activity among both the military and area defense contractors comes the need for workforce training to help current and future employees meet the demands of the jobs created. UMBC, with its convenient location (just a short drive from Ft. Meade) and strengths in science, engineering and IT, is well-positioned to offer training to the BRAC population.

On December 15, Lt. Governor Anthony Brown announced that UMBC received one of 12 BRAC Higher Education grants from the Maryland Higher Education Investment Fund. The grant, totaling $83,208, will help establish a Center for Cybersecurity Training. Fifteen courses will be developed by UMBC Training Centers and will be targeted to employees of state and federal government agencies and contractors, active military, veterans and any others seeking job training or skill enhancement.

With an estimated 60,000 jobs in communications, intelligence and other high-skilled fields coming to Maryland via BRAC, there will be a critical need for cybersecurity training. UMBC’s cybersecurity program will prepare those employees to obtain the required certification.

Courses planned include Network Security, Computer Forensic Investigation, Enterprise Linux Security Administration, and Java Development for Secure Systems. The goal is to begin delivering pilot courses to small groups of students this spring. While it is projected that 75-150 students will be served during the pilot phase, ultimately the goal is to serve about 720 students per year.

“People are recognizing that cybersecurity is the next strategic area of our national defense,” says Jon Lau, practice manager for engineering and IT programs at UMBC Training Centers. Lau, who will manage the Center for Cybersecurity Training, added, “Now, no matter what your job is [in the defense industry] you need comprehensive training in cybersecurity. We recognized there would be a big need among the staff at Ft. Meade and the need to train the new people.”

Lau says the courses will focus on hands-on training. They will primarily be delivered at UMBC Training Centers, but equipment can be set up at client sites. There is also the possibility of some courses being offered online.

Currently, about 25 percent of participants in UMBC Training Centers courses are from defense-related organizations, but with the establishment of the cybersecurity program, Lau expects that percentage to increase significantly.

(12/21/09)

Tackling the Shortage of STEM Teachers in Baltimore

Due to the growing shortage of highly-qualified science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teachers, the Sherman STEM Teacher Education Scholars Program was implemented in fall 2007 to support selected STEM majors. Students are assisted academically, professionally and financially through advising, fellowships, cohort building and a summer bridge program. Above all, the Sherman Scholars Program promotes working with youth and being in the classroom as much as possible.

Eleven students comprised the inaugural cohortin fall 2007, and there are currently 20 students in the program. They range anywhere from freshmen to graduate students and are at different life stages.

“In addition to those considered traditional students, we have a former marine, a mother whose children are in college and a former Ph.D. candidate who realized she’d rather teach at the high school level,” said  Rehana Shafi, assistant director of the Sherman Program.

Scholar Catrin Eike ’10, a former high school dropout and single mother of three, earned her GED and worked her way from community college into UMBC and the Sherman Program.

“The program has not only given me an opportunity to meet other people in STEM majors, it has given me the chance to look within myself,” said Eike. “I now realize that I am a person with gifts to share.”

Once admitted to the program, students receive support for the duration of their time at UMBC and into their careers as classroom teachers. They are required to complete at least one semester of service learning and one classroom-based fellowship.

“We want them to have many hands-on and tangible experiences working with youth before they’re student teachers,” Shafi said. 

Because the program expects scholars to teach in the Baltimore area, these experiences take place locally.

When in the planning stages in 2006, Shafi looked at national and local programs focusing on teacher education and student support. The Sherman Program is a combination of ideas from these and best practices of UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program.

The program is young, but there are a handful of alumni. Three are teaching in Baltimore city and county schools. Shafi said the first few years are the most challenging for teachers. 

“A big piece we’re working on is teacher induction,” Shafi said. “The first three to five years are the toughest. We’re working toward supporting our new teachers in terms of mentoring and continued professional development.” 

In addition to mentoring, the Sherman Scholars Program is fostering the environment and expectation needed to establish a connected and active alumni group.

A generous gift from George and Betsy Sherman, founders of the Sherman Family Foundation, supports the Sherman STEM Teacher Education Program. Awards for undergraduates range from $5,000-$10,000. Awards for MAT candidates range from $10,000-$30,000.

For more information, visit www.umbc.edu/shermanprogram.

(3/10/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

The Art of Educating

When Laura Pasquini ’98, visual arts, started her studies in art at UMBC, she thought she wanted to be a museum curator, creating exhibits that set great art in narrative contexts.

Pasquini did end up working at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., one of the most prestigious museums in the United States. But she did so in way that’s making a difference for thousands of young people and their families by opening up the Corcoran’s magnificent collection and the gallery’s other assets for learning.

As the director of the Corcoran’s Youth and Family Programs, Pasquini has revamped and revitalized the gallery’s approach to education with the aim of “empowering kids to confidence.” Most notable among her achievements is the growth in Corcoran ArtReach – an after school program that collaborates with community centers to reach 150-200 disadvantaged students a year.

In one evaluation of the program, a parent called Corcoran Artreach “the best youth arts program in the area.” And this success has also brought Pasquini recognition, most recently as the winner of the 2009 UMBC Outstanding Alumni of the Year award for a graduate in the visual and performing arts.

Pasquini points to a junior year internship at UMBC in the university’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture as a key moment in choosing a career in arts education, one which she says “changed my career and life outlook.”

Working in conjunction with Arbutus Elementary School, Pasquini designed a program to introduce and integrate students into the world of art that included talks, tours of the UMBC Fine Arts Gallery and the creation of original works of art by students. The important thing, Pasquini recalls, was to find and reinforce connections between art and the students’ experiences.

Her enthusiasm for the project steered Pasquini away from an intended career as a museum curator. “I realized I didn’t want the academic, the behind-the-scenes,” she recalls. “It awakened a world I didn’t know was out there – a world of possibilities.”

After taking a master’s degree in teaching at the Corcoran, Pasquini ended up working at the gallery full-time. She quickly worked her way up into her present position as director of Youth and Family Programs, where she drew upon her UMBC experiences to spark a renewal in the Gallery’s Corcoran ArtReach program – which brings the gallery’s art to disadvantaged children in the Washington, D.C. area.

ArtReach works in partnership with community centers in District neighborhoods. Pasquini and other members of the Corcoran Gallery develop curricula specifically geared towards each individual community, complete with lesson plans, slides of Corcoran art exhibits and a brief outline of each work.

ArtReach students also get a chance to explore the Corcoran itself, and the program augments individual coursework with monthly family workshops that incorporate parts of the gallery’s exhibits collection into broader contexts. Pasquini points to “Creatures of the Deep” workshops that the program offered last October in concert with the gallery’s “Sargent and the Sea” exhibit. These family workshops used John Singer Sargent’s paintings as a springboard for an examination of sea creatures, providing a fun, kid-friendly science lesson communicated through art.

Pasquini says that exciting student interest is the key element in ArtReach’s success. “Art has value and meaning,” Pasquini insists. “It isn’t supposed to be dead on the wall. It isn’t about a lecture – it’s about the experience, about making a learning connection [for the students] between what they saw on the wall to what they see in their own lives.”

The culmination of the ArtReach experience is a chance for students to create their own works of art using techniques and knowledge gleaned in their classes. The work is both displayed in community galleries and professionally framed and hung (with accompanying silkscreen text) in the Corcoran Gallery of Art itself.

Pasquini says that ArtReach has become “a place of learning through visual learning, creating an experience for people that brings [art] to life… It empowers kids to talk about art. It ignites curiosity and higher thinking skills. Seeing [the students] gain confidence in themselves and their art…it’s incredible.”

For more details about ArtReach, check out www.corcoran.org/artreach/index.php.

This story, written by UMBC student Holly Britton ‘11, originally appeared in UMBC Magazine.

(2/19/2010)

The Engineering Education Frontier

Julia Ross, professor and chair of chemical and biochemical engineering at UMBC, was selected to attend the National Academy of Engineer�s (NAE) first Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) symposium. Ross joined 49 of the nation�s brightest engineering researchers and educators who are developing and implementing innovative educational approaches in a variety of disciplines and are in the first half of their careers. Ross was the only participant chosen from a Maryland institution.

Throughout the 2-1/2-day event, educators and researchers shared ideas, learned from research and best practices in education and left with a charter to bring about improvement at their home institution. The participants were chosen from a competitive pool of applicants and were nominated by fellow engineers or deans.

Ross�s research focuses around the application of chemical engineering principles to examine how cells bind to one another. Her goal is to identify and understand the mechanisms involved in the process so cells can be manipulated to achieve advances in engineering. When it comes to education, Ross feels the need to recruit more students into engineering fields is urgent. Although employment opportunities for engineering graduates are stable, enrollments have declined. Ross�s goal is to attract more students to the engineering fields by preparing them at the high school level. She is currently working on high school curricula that will make this possible.

The FOEE program gave Ross and others a unique venue to share and explore innovations in teaching and learning. NAE President Charles M. Vest hopes that FOEE will become �a major force in identifying, recognizing and promulgating advances and innovations to build a strong intellectual infrastructure and commitment to 21st-century engineering education.�

Ross was nominated by Warren DeVries, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology and a professor of mechanical engineering.

The symposium was held November 15-18 in Herndon, Virginia.

(11/18/09)

The Future of Information Sharing

As the world embraces Web 2.0, the effects of social media are on the minds of several researchers at UMBC.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Zeynep Tufekci studies the impact that technology, gender and inequality have on new media. Two of her current research projects specifically examine online social networks. The first project studies how these networks are situated within social practices. The other project, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines interactions between gender, race, social class and technology in relation to career choice and inequality. A former computer programmer, Tufekci studies social media with a sociological eye.

“Connecting is a deep human need,” said Tufekci. “Social networking is scratching a strong itch by providing individuals with the ability to always stay connected.”

When looking to the future, Tufekci sees an “ultra-connected world.” She predicts the cell phone will be more interactive than networking sites like Facebook, providing users with an opportunity to geographically locate friends.

“It would have pluses and minuses,” she said. “There would be more interconnectivity, but it would certainly raise surveillance.”

Like Tufekci, Professor of Computer Science Tim Finin also studies the effects of social media but instead focuses on blogs. One of his team’s ongoing projects includes mining sentiments about different topics (movies, politics, etc.) to sense trends and patterns to evaluate the effectiveness of online advertising through blogs. The team is also learning how to use Wikipedia as a knowledge base to support computer tasks. When looking to the future, Finin sees great changes for the computer.

“In 50 years, I predict people and computers will share a common experience,” he said. “An event will happen in the world, and our computers will know about it.”

In the more immediate future, Finin sees extensive information sharing and a dramatic shift in libraries and record-keeping mechanisms.

Molly Heroux ’09 was one of the first students to enroll in the Media and Communication Studies (MCS) program. Combining her studies in MCS with psychology, Heroux accepted a summer 2008 internship at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Heroux worked toward identifying gaps in Wyeth’s current team communication and collaboration in order to propose alternatives to addressing communication issues using cyber tools. She conducted this research not only to enhance communication among current employees but also to attract a new generation of employees who grew up with these tools. Heroux administered surveys to gather her research, and Wyeth intends to update her survey and conduct it again on a larger scale through an Internet platform.

“There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of online media and a general lack of familiarity with the new modes of cyber communication,” she said. “Oftentimes, there is a one-way flow of communication from top to bottom.”

Heroux looks to social networking to solve some of these communication problems. Her list of recommendations includes instant messaging, internal social networking, one-to-one video conferencing, social news tools, online suggestion forums and fluid notions of workplace and scheduling.

“Encouraging part-time and full-time telecommuting not only cut office costs but also supports women and families.”

(2/6/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

The Perfect Pitch

When Mike Pesci ’12 was young, he had goals few kids his age had. Like his peers, he played sports – baseball since the age of four – and his studies were important. But it was helping people that mattered most to him. By the time he was 18 years old, he had not only started a non-profit, he had also raised $100,000.  

It started with a home run derby that Pesci helped organize to raise money for charity when he was 11 years old. The event captured the two passions Pesci held close: baseball and philanthropy, and soon turned into a non-profit organization called Perfect Pitch HRD, Inc. Pesci’s non-profit has now raised over $180,000 for mentally and physically handicapped children and young adults and for the sports programs of disadvantaged youth.

“When Perfect Pitch was starting up, I had a lot of support from family and friends,” Pesci said. “So many people were willing to spread the word, and they believed in the organization – they were willing to help us do anything to help others.”

And the good word has spread far. Pesci was recently recognized nationally for his accomplishments by being named an “All Star Among Us” by Major League Baseball and People Magazine. Pesci shares the honor with his sister, Christina Pesci, who is president of Bridging the Generation Gap, an outreach organization which promotes friendship between young people and senior citizens. Helping others is something that runs in the family.

“My father organizes a ‘Cruise for Kids’ motorcycle run to raise money for abused children,” said Pesci. “He leads by example and has always helped others.”

At UMBC, Pesci maintains the organization on top of playing baseball for the Retrievers and working toward his interdisciplinary studies degree with a focus in business and non-profit administration. Despite the distance between Maryland and his hometown, Parsippany, New Jersey, Pesci still helps organize raffles organization and maintains relationships with previous donors.

“It’s hard while I’m not at home,” he said. “It’s difficult, but I’ve realized the importance of doing this while I’m in school; it’s a passion I have.”

When the organization first started, Pesci organized and volunteered at a baseball game for mentally and physically handicapped children. It was Pesci’s job to help the impaired children get around the bases. He assisted a girl on crutches, and when she reached home plate her smile was “incredible.”

“Scoring a run has always been a good feeling for me – but for her, it was a really big deal.”

About five years later, Pesci helped a young woman with spina bifida who needed a new wheelchair but was financially unable. Perfect Pitch provided her with a titanium wheelchair.

“It turned out to the same girl I helped around the bases,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. We continue to sponsor her today.”

This story is just one of the reasons why Pesci knows he needs to work in the non-profit field when he graduates.

“I want Perfect Pitch to continue to grow and build a career out of it,” he said. “I want to make a living while helping others in the process.”

Pesci recently received the 2009 Joseph and Frieda Faiman Eisenberg/VPC Endowed Scholarship, given by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. The Joseph and Frieda Faiman Eisenberg/VPC Endowed Scholarship was established by Eli Eisenberg ’86 for an outstanding UMBC undergraduate interested in becoming an entrepreneur.

More information on Perfect Pitch HRD, Inc. is available online.  

(12/4/09)

The Stuff of Legend

As a former Associated Press reporter, Christopher Corbett knows how to spot a good story. So when he noticed that although thousands of Chinese had come to America during the gold rush, none of them were interred in boom town cemeteries, he followed the lead.

“I asked this old lady who had a store in the town, ‘Where is the Chinese cemetery?’ And she said, ‘The bone collectors came and took them back to China,’” he recalled. “I had never heard that the Chinese repatriated their dead, and my curiosity about that led me to this book.”

The book is The Poker Bride (Atlantic Monthly Press), in which Corbett tells the story of the Chinese in the West through the life of one such immigrant, Polly Bemis. Polly was sold by her famine-stricken parents, smuggled into San Francisco by her master, and won in a poker game by the man who would eventually become her husband. She lived an isolated life until 1923, when she came down from her home in the Idaho hills to tell her story.

At least, that’s how the legend goes. “You’re in what they call the borderland of fable once you cross the Missouri, so it’s one of those stories that’s rooted in fact and layered with a lot of embellishment,” said Corbett, a professor of the practice in English.

Whether or not the story is one hundred percent true, it’s been getting a lot of praise. The Baltimore Sun called it “a juicy combination of social history and deconstructed myth,” and the Wall Street Journal said the tale “reflects the essence of the American immigrant experience.”

“I think the response in part is indicative of the interest in the Chinese experience in the 19th century West. People are curious about it,” said Corbett.

For Corbett, the book’s biggest accomplishment is that it tells the story of these forgotten immigrants. Most Chinese returned to their homeland after the gold rush, taking their stories as well as their countrymen’s bones with them, and left behind few traces of their presence.

“The larger matter is that we know something about Polly,” explained Corbett. “She’s the human face on this immigrant experience that we know so little about.”

This book wasn’t the author’s first foray into the Wild West. His 2003 book Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Random House/Broadway Books) gained him notice as one of the premier scholars on the iconic service. That book was recently reissued as a paperback.

The Pony Express will celebrate its 150th Anniversary on April 3, and Corbett’s calendar is already filling up with invitations to discuss his work. Most notably, he will be the keynote speaker for the anniversary celebrations at St. Joseph, Missouri’s Patee House, which housed the Pony Express.

With two books demanding his attention in addition to his regular duties of teaching English and mentoring the Retriever Weekly staff, Corbett acknowledges that “things are slightly wild”—just like they were in the Old West.

Corbett will speak at the Poe Room at the Enoch Pratt Free Library on February 24 at 6 p.m., and at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery on March 9 at 4 p.m.

(2/19/10)

Turning Knowledge into Action

Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL) at UMBC, part of the Gender and Women’s Studies program, is one of eight groups nationwide participating in a week-long global health event funded by a grant from Americans for Informed Democracy (AID). “Global Women’s Health Action Week: Healthy Women, Healthy World” will run April 27 through May 1.

Jen Keeter ’09, one of the lead organizers of the event, received information about an available grant through AID and was immediately drawn to the idea of helping women. WILL members wrote the proposal together and submitted it in fall 2008. The team decided to highlight global women’s health in five distinct areas by focusing on one each day: environmental justice, reproductive justice, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), maternal and children’s health and holistic health. Events run 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for five days, and each day is filled with interactive games, exhibits, speakers and giveaways.  

Eva Jannotta ’12, was involved with planning the holistic health day and said there will be gift baskets, giveaways, alternative health products and a Wii Fit Yoga demonstration in The Commons. WILL kicks off the week with a guest speaker from MADRE, a renowned transnational feminist organization that WILL is raising money for during the week. Communications Director Yifat Susskind will speak on Monday, April 27, at 4:30, in the University Center, Room 312.

Other days will hold similar activities including tours of a constructed mock kitchen (environmental justice), advice from a doula (maternal and children’s health) and a sexual health Jeopardy game (STIs), hosted by the Peer Health Advocates from University Health Services (UHS). Free, anonymous and confidential HIV screenings through UHS will be available on Thursday morning. Participants will also have the opportunity to contribute their voices to help form a set of health-related concerns that will be sent to President Barack Obama and other national and local decision-makers.

The health action week will operate in a similar manner as WILL, through teamwork and strong effort. The leadership program is academically connected to UMBC’s Gender and Women’s Studies program, designed to be co-curricular and guided by students.

“Everyone in WILL collaborates and makes decisions as a community,” said Jodi Kelber-Kaye, gender and women’s studies faculty member and director of WILL. “The heath action week will highlight not only how each day’s themes are interrelated when examining issues of women’s health, but also show what amazing things can be done when WILL students apply their intellectual work in gender and women’s studies to grassroots activism.”

But WILL’s work will not be finished after the health action week. They will submit a short video detailing the preparation and execution of the event to AID, who will highlight the videos on its Web site. Viewers cast votes for the best video, and the group will receive an additional $500 if they win. If other campuses would like to replicate the same campaign, they will also be funded $750 (the same amount WILL received for the event).

The event not only affects the present but also the future of WILL and the students involved.

“WILL is about leadership development and taking those skills into your own work,” said Kelber-Kaye. “I think this event will allow us to showcase the dedication and commitment of the WILL students and enable us to continue to build important and meaningful partnerships across campus.”

After graduating in December 2009, Keeter hopes to utilize the skills gained through WILL by organizing and advocating for services on the community level in Baltimore.  

For Jannotta, her career at UMBC is just beginning. She hopes to continue working toward creating change and will remain a member of WILL in upcoming years.

For more information on the Global Women’s Health Action Week: Healthy Women, Healthy World, contact Jen Keeter at jen21@umbc.edu.

4/23/09

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Two UMBC Professors Win NSF CAREER Awards

Two UMBC scientists were recently recognized as among the nation’s top young faculty in their fields by the National Science Foundation (NSF), receiving the NSF’s CAREER award, an honor that comes with five years of research funding and support.

Theodosia Gougousi, assistant professor of physics, is helping to find the next-generation hearts of consumer electronics. Haijun Su, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, uses 3-D virtual reality to make design innovations faster and cheaper for manufacturers.

Nano-scale Paving Stones
Without the expertise of physicists like Gougousi, beloved consumer electronics like iPhones, Blackberries and iPods would drain their batteries in half an hour. “Silicon-based technology has reached its limit,” Gougousi said. “Gallium Arsenide is a possible next-generation material.” 

The Thessaloniki, Greece native studies the properties of nano-scale insulating materials suitable to integrate in Gallium-Arsenide-based transistors, a small but vital part of computer chips. The materials must be in the form of very thin films – 1,000 to 10,000 times thinner than human hair – and are made with a process she compares to building a patio at the atomic level.

“It’s somewhat like putting down paving stones to make a patio; we stack layers of atoms one on top of the other. Our stones and glue are organic molecules and water. Our goal is to understand the interactions of these materials at the atomic level and develop techniques to produce a dependable, good quality film.”

For Gougousi, the CAREER award is justification for years of effort, but more importantly, it provides an opportunity to focus more time in the lab, the classroom and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students.

“Show Me the Motion”
Su uses virtual reality to save companies real money. His particular passion is on the early design stages of small, precise machine parts that need almost human levels of flexibility and movement.

 “We use virtual reality, or VR, as a tool to design machine systems, especially those with flexible parts,” Su said. Su’s toolkit, known as the VR design environment, adds a crucial third dimension to early-stage design and prototyping.

“You need a lot of freedom to explore for the designer. Typical computer-aided design (CAD) software is bounded on a two dimensional screen and operated with a two dimensional mouse. So I say, okay, show me the motion.”

Su and his students use a virtual reality helmet, interactive glove and a pen-like gizmo known as a haptic device, which lets users feel a virtual prototype. Their goal is designing machine parts capable of precise – sometimes delicate – motions at the different scales.

His lab helps design complex and crucial parts for vehicles, robotics, precision or medical instruments, and even power tools.

“An example is the tip of a robot’s grasper arm in a factory assembly line,” said Su. “It has to be able to be flexible in order to accommodate errors. If it’s too rigid, it doesn’t work correctly.”

The key for Su’s lab is using VR to cut overall product development costs in the early, concept-design stage which itself costs little but is responsible for 75 percent of product development expenses. “The earlier you make changes, the more money you save,” Su said.

Su is honored by the CAREER award, and hopes it will enable him to spend time on another passion: educating the next generation of engineers. Hosting and teaching a two-week summer course for high school students was part of his award proposal.

Gougousi and Su are the latest in a growing number of UMBC faculty members to receive the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Half of the chemical and biochemical engineering faculty have received the honor, and since 2001, the university has had 12 honorees. 

 (3/31/2009)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �