Faculty Research & Outreach: October 2009
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Emmanuel Enemuoh, associate professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, received a $212,730.00 Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with co-PIs Xun Yu, assistant professor, Richard Lindeke, professor, and Seraphin Abou, assistant professor, all of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Andrea Schokker, professor and head, Department of Civil Engineering. Acquisition of the new instrumentation will provide a wide range of material and structural testing capabilities including tension, compression, shear, flexural, and cyclic testing at both room and elevated temperatures. Routine test and analysis of engineering materials (metals, ceramics, composites, concrete, plastics, woods, and other materials), ideally performed at controlled experimental conditions, can now be performed with the 55 Kips system at UMD. The equipment will be installed in November 2009 in VKH 144.
Enemuoh is also a co-PI on the project, “Integrated Lateral Photovoltaic Systems,” which received $800,000 from the University of Minnesota Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE), along with P. I. Cohen (PI), Professor, J. J. Talghader (Co-PI), Professor, J. R. Leger (Co-PI), Professor, P. R. Ruden (Co-PI), Professor, all of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering , UMTC. The project is an integrated package focusing on the concentrator design, photovoltaic junction design and fabrication, inexpensive system assembly, and life cycle assessment. A new, simple, large-area dispersive concentrator that will enable a dramatic reduction in the complexity of the photovoltaic device will be developed and implemented. Dr. Enemuoh will lead the team focusing on comprehensive life cycle studies and assessment of the system.
Joe Gallian, professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave the Bernard Society of Mathematics Annual Lecture at Davidson College on September 6.
Richard Green, professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, gave a talk, "How much does it cost a parasitoid to be unmated?" at the First International Conference on Entomophagous Insects held in Minneapolis during the last week of July.
Randall Hicks, professor, Department of Biology, with colleagues from Old Dominion University, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Georgia, received a four-year, $2.3 million collaborative research grant from NSF to investigate the role of organic-rich aggregate particles in the persistence of pathogenic microbes in aquatic ecosystems. They will evaluate whether fundamental concepts of island biogeography apply to these “microscopic islands” and bacterial pathogens that enter aqueous environments and are subsequently incorporated into these organic rich aggregate particles.
Richard Melvin, post-doctoral associate, Department of Biology, has been awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH F32). This three-year postdoctoral fellowship is the first ever NIH F32 awarded at UMD and will support Dr. Melvin’s research in the laboratory of Dr. Matt Andrews. Dr. Melvin’s project title is “Naturally occurring thyroxine derivatives and hibernation.”
Debao Zhou, Matt Dillion and Eil Kwon, Tracking-Based Deer Vehicle Collision
Detection Using Thermal Imaging, accepted by The "2009 IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2009)", Guilin, Guangxi, China, December 18-22, 2009.