Engineering & Computer Science
Andrew LaTour – Creating a Circular Economy for Sustainable Metal Manufacturing
Facilities for recycling metal parts at the locations they are required would be a major milestone in the global struggle towards sustainable industry. Yet for all its advantages, the innovations required to realise such a goal are a daunting prospect. Now, Andrew LaTour and his colleagues at MolyWorks Materials are bringing the idea one step closer to reality, through the development of their ‘Mobile Foundry’. The company’s work could soon provide a new basis for developing a completely closed-loop economy in areas related to metal manufacturing, potentially slashing the industry’s negative environmental impacts.
Professor Yoshio Waseda – Understanding the Atomic Structure of New Materials
Materials science – the discovery and characterisation of new materials – drives forward the creation of new technology. In particular, the development of thin films of materials is vital to the electronics industry, as they are used in various device components such as displays and sensors. The properties of these materials are defined by their atomic structure, and until recently it was a major challenge for scientists to accurately characterise this. Towards this aim, Professor Yoshio Waseda and his team at the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials have developed a novel method for characterising the atomic structure of thin films.
Dr Guy J-P Schumann – Flood Prediction Using Remote Sensing Technology
Floods devastate communities across the globe. A single flood disaster can cause the loss of thousands of lives, and the displacement of millions of people. The devastating effect is exacerbated by the difficulty in monitoring floods and evaluating the information to make the best responsive decisions. To help communities and emergency response teams better predict and prepare for flooding events, Dr Guy J-P Schumann and his team at Remote Sensing Solutions in collaboration with the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) have harnessed remote sensing technology to develop an advanced user-friendly universal flood monitoring and prediction system.
Dr Cedric Ogden – Help from Above: Using Drones to Combat Pine Forest Pests
A key limitation of pest control in agriculture and forestry is the ability to detect pests and diseases early enough for effective treatment. This is exacerbated in the pine forestry industry, where plantations cover vast areas and many pests remain hidden inside the trees. Pine trees killed by beetles are often discarded, causing significant economic and environmental consequences. Dr Cedric Ogden at Fort Valley State University is developing a comprehensive loblolly pine pest-management plan, using drones to detect infestations early, and salvaging damaged timber for use as a fuel source.
Progeny: Developing Safeguards Against GPS Outages
Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as GPS are the backbone of many global communications, but they are not immune to failure. Progeny Systems Corporation is dedicated to mitigating such disasters if and when satellite-based communications fail, by developing Earth-based systems that work in comparable ways to synchronised satellite networks. As an alternative to GPS, the company’s technology could provide communicating parties with a crucial yet inexpensive safeguard against future failures.
Dr Paul Robertson – CART: Pointing the Way to Reliable Robotic Assistants
Robots that assist us with both everyday and highly specialised tasks are no new concept, but so far, their actual development has appeared to be far from becoming a reality. Yet through the research of Dr Paul Robertson, Chief Scientist at Dynamic Object Language Labs (DOLL) in Massachusetts, such sophisticated technology is now looking increasingly feasible. By considering how robots can be programmed to recognise tasks and comprehend human emotions, his research could be bringing engineers a step closer towards reliable robotic assistants.
Dr Robert Winglee – High Velocity Impacts: A New Way to Collect Samples from Space
For now, planetary scientists can only dream of getting their hands-on rock samples taken from the surfaces of distant worlds. Achieving these extractions presents a significant set of challenges, but Dr Robert Winglee and his colleagues at the University of Washington have made significant strides towards developing feasible techniques for retrieving samples. Through detailed computer design and field experiments, they have now clearly demonstrated that obtaining core samples created during high-velocity impacts with planetary surfaces could one day be a reality.
TEMPO: Monitoring North America’s Pollution from Space
Created by sources ranging from campfires to cargo ships, air pollution is incredibly difficult to track. This has meant that the full impacts of air pollution are almost impossible to assess, but a solution is on the horizon. The TEMPO instrument (tempo.si.edu), built by Ball Aerospace to Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory specifications and managed by the NASA Langley Research Center, will soon provide an all-encompassing view of pollution across North America. As part of a global constellation of satellite air quality missions, TEMPO will soon provide us with the most extensive view of pollution ever achieved, along with its impacts, allowing us to tackle it more effectively than ever before.
Jianguo Wang – Ion-Barrier Coatings: The Next Generation of Anticorrosion Technology
Corrosion, the gradual destruction of metals, is a significant physical and economic problem worldwide. Traditional heavy metal-based coatings used to protect metals are now viewed negatively due to their impact on the environment. Research led by Jianguo Wang of AnCatt Inc reveals why ion-barrier coatings are the next generation of anticorrosion coating technology.
Dr Nancy Chabot | Dr Carolyn Ernst | Ariel Deutsch – Icy Discoveries on Our Innermost Planet
The location of water in our solar system may hold the key to understanding how the planets evolved, and indicate other potential places to find life away from Earth. Dr Nancy Chabot and Dr Carolyn Ernst of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Ariel Deutsch at Brown University, use data from NASA’s MESSENGER mission to understand how much ice exists on Mercury and how it may have arrived there.
Professor Michael Behrenfeld – Advancing Satellite Technology to Monitor Ocean Phytoplankton
Tiny marine plants known as ‘phytoplankton’ play a disproportionately large role in maintaining the health of our planet, and they provide a rapid signal of changing climate conditions. Professor Michael Behrenfeld at Oregon State University and his many collaborators are developing new satellite approaches, including space-based lasers, to monitor ocean ecosystems. With these technologies, a 3D map of global phytoplankton communities is on the horizon, which will revolutionise our understanding of how these microscopic organisms make Earth a healthy place to live.
Dr Mark Miller – CIPRES: A Gateway to the Tree of Life
Modern genetics provides vast sets of information which can take weeks to assess. Developed by Dr Mark Miller and his colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the CIPRES Scientific Gateway solves this problem, by bringing supercomputer-powered analysis to researchers across the globe.
Professor Manfred Broy – Software & Systems Engineering: Integrating Technology into Our Everyday Lives
Software is becoming an increasingly important element of our everyday lives – permeating many of the technologies we use regularly. As our software systems become increasingly sophisticated and ingrained into our lives, it is critical to our livelihoods that they remain both functionally correct and easy to use, even as their complexity increases. Professor Manfred Broy and his colleagues at the Technical University of Munich aim to ensure a smooth transition to a more software-dependent world, through new advances in the field of Software and Systems Engineering.
Tomography: An Innovative Technique for Assessing Forest Carbon Storage
Researchers from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the University of Massachusetts have pioneered the use of tomography for assessing carbon storage in trees. While assessing this technique’s capabilities, they found that tree damage caused by wood-decaying fungi means that forests store less carbon than previously thought. As forests play a vital role in sequestering atmospheric carbon, the team’s work has important implications in the fight against climate change.
Dr Baowei Fei – A New Technique for Targeted Prostate Cancer Biopsies
Two-dimensional transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) guided biopsy is the standard method for prostate cancer diagnosis. However, the technique is limited in one respect – it can be prone to sampling error. Cancers can be missed, or their severity grossly underestimated. To address this, Dr Baowei Fei, from the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center, is pioneering a technique that merges positron emission tomography (PET) with TRUS to detect prostate cancer more accurately than before.
Dr Rolf Drechsler | Dr Christoph Lüth – SELFIE – Self-Verification of Electronic Systems
Electronic systems influence many aspects of daily life. It is imperative, therefore, that these systems are working as intended and expected. The process of ensuring the correctness of systems is called verification. Traditional verification methods, however, are...
Professor Mikhail Prokopenko – Mastering Complex Systems: Predicting the Unpredictable
Many of the greatest challenges currently facing humanity, such as climate change and effective urbanisation, are multifaceted and intricate, with multiple moving parts. Complex systems analysts pull data and insights from diverse components to generate dynamic…
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation promotes academic cooperation between excellent scientists and scholars from abroad and from Germany. To this end, it grants more than 700 research fellowships and research awards annually. These allow researchers from all over...
Dr Brian Glazer – Emerging Technologies to Enable Affordable Ocean Observing
Coastal environments have immense ecological, practical, recreational and cultural value, and are under threat from multiple natural and anthropogenic stressors. Dr Brian Glazer and his team at the University of Hawai’i use specialised equipment to conduct remote...
Dr Harald Baayen – Are You Listening? Teaching a Machine to Understand Speech
In the past few years, speech recognition has become a new standard for state-of-the-art technology. We now talk to our phones as much as we talk on them. How can helping machines learn to listen improve our understanding of how our own brains work? Dr Harald Baayen...
Dr Pankaj Sharma – Inspiring Students at The Duke Energy Academy at Purdue
A secure and sustainable energy supply for the future depends upon communities and industries working together. To facilitate this, a skilled STEM workforce is needed. To that end, Dr Pankaj Sharma a courtesy professor at Purdue University and his colleagues have...
Dr Pankaj Sharma – Teachers Inspired by the Duke Energy Academy (DEAP)
Much of the responsibility of improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education has fallen upon teachers. However, it is often just assumed that they have the tools and skills needed to fulfil that responsibility. Dr Pankaj Sharma a courtesy...
Professor Pankaj Sharma – A Short Interdisciplinary Summer Course in Sustainable Development
The survival of humanity relies upon the sustainable use of natural systems that provide food, energy, and water. However, the growth in the world’s population and human activities that generate pollution are posing serious sustainability challenges to these systems....
Dr Klaus Schulz | Dr Florian Fink – Novel Software for Cleansing Digitised Historical Texts
A fortune in historical information lies in archives and library basements around the world. Now, research by Dr Klaus Schulz, Dr Florian Fink and their colleagues at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich is helping to bring this important information to light....
Professor William Holderbaum | Dr Ioannis Dimitrios Zoulias | Dr Monica Armengol – Walking Against the Current
A research team at the University of Reading is helping people with paraplegia to stand, using electrical stimulation and high-tech exercise platforms to prevent long-term decline in bone and muscle. Spinal cord injuries are far more common than you might think....
Outcomes of Gender Summit 11, Co-hosted by NSERC
From November 6 to 8, 2017, more than 675 advocates of gender equity from across many different fields in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) took part in Gender Summit 11, in Montreal, Quebec. Co-hosted by the Natural Sciences and Engineering...
The National Research Council of Canada’s Advanced Electronics & Photonics Research Centre
Headquartered in Ottawa, the National Research Council (NRC) is the primary national research and technology organisation of the Government of Canada. As one of its many research centres, the Advanced Electronics and Photonics Research Centre serves the information...
Dr Partha P. Mukherjee – Improving Electrode Microstructural Dynamics & Battery Performance
Whether it be enabling renewable technologies, mobilising electric vehicles, or powering the electronic devices we carry, batteries are essential to modern life. As technology continues to advance, high-quality, long-lasting batteries are needed more than ever. Dr...
SFB 1083 – Collaborating to Study Interfaces in Miniaturised Materials
Creating technologies from multiple materials with different physical properties can be hugely beneficial, but the process doesn’t come without its challenges. As we fabricate new devices, an understanding of the physics occurring at the interfaces where different...
Crumbed Rubber Concrete: A Promising Material for Sustainable Construction
Crumbed rubber concrete (CRC) is a promising new material on the construction scene. Created by replacing sand with rubber particles when mixing concrete, the material promises to significantly reduce certain environmental impacts, yet its structural properties are...
Wolfspeed & International Femtoscience: Creating a New Generation of Capacitors
Capacitors are a vital component in virtually every electronic device we use, and yet, innovations that make them more efficient have been a long time coming. Mr John Fraley and his colleagues at Wolfspeed, A Cree Company, and International Femtoscience are now...
Dr Ali Mesbah – Learning-Based Performance Optimisation of Uncertain Systems
Many systems in nature change in random, unpredictable ways over time. From the motions of microscopic particles in fluids to the daily price of stocks, random processes play a large role in systems we interact with every day. Also, because of our incomplete...