Fulton Schools In the News, page 3
Valley Metro CEO: Federal cuts threaten light rail, trolley projects, Phoenix Business Journal, April 27
Fulton Schools Professor Ram Pendyala, whose expertise is in transportation systems engineering and planning, comments on the potential benefits of public transportation systems and on the costs-versus-benefits aspect of the debate over government funding of mass transit projects.
Robots taught to work alongside humans by giving high fives, New Scientist, April 27
Heni Ben Amor, an assistance professor who specializes in advanced robotics and artificial intelligence at ASU, says that having robots learn from watching humans interact won’t just make them better collaborators, it will help humans feel more at ease around robots too. “There’s a high demand for robots that are socially aware,” he says.
If robots can learn the basics of social interaction, like knowing how fast to move their arms or how close to stand to a person without making them feel uncomfortable, then humans are much more likely to accept robots in their home or workplace, he says.
DARPA to Use Electrical Stimulation to Enhance Military Training, IEEE Spectrum, April 26
Fulton Schools Associate Professor Stephen Helms Tillery is leading a research group that has a key role in a Department of Defense agency’s project to expand human learning capability. His team will develop techniques to stimulate specific nerve complexes in the brain with the goal of enhancing its neuroplasticity to improve mental abilities. Read more about the overall project on the Gizmodo technology and science news site.
Also See:
- DARPA and ASU Electrical brain stimulation could boost learning memory by 30 percent, NextBigFuture, April 28
- DARPA Wants to Hack Your Brain to Make You Learn Faster, Gizmodo, April 26
Silicon Valley hires the most alumni of these 10 universities, and none of them are in the Ivy League, Quartz, April 25
The most coveted jobs are in Silicon Valley, and most selective US universities are members of the Ivy League. So it stands to reason that tech giants like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook would scoop up best and brightest from those bastions of power and privilege.
Arizona State University ranks among the top 10 schools with the most undergraduate and graduate alumni hired by the 25 biggest Silicon Valley employers in the last year, ranking ahead of Cornell, Purdue and MIT.
ASU Industrial Assessment Center, Arizona Horizon (PBS), April 25
The Industrial Assessment Center deploys teams of Fulton Schools engineering students to help small and medium-size manufacturing companies improve productivity. They conduct studies to determine how operating facilities can be made more energy efficient and prevent waste of other resources as well. Professor Patrick Phelan explains how the assessment process works.
Robotic suit speeds up walking speed, KGUN-9, Tucson, April 21
ASU Engineering Professor Tom Sugar has developed a robotic suit meant to help people walk faster and avoid workplace injuries. The suit propels users forward 10 to 15 percent faster than normal, supporting legs to move faster and more smoothly.
The exoskeleton was one of the many devices demonstrate during WeRACon 17 in Phoenix last month.
Making the right pick: How Arizona colleges are stepping in to teach grads the skills companies need in new hires, Phoenix Business Journal April 21
Starbucks’ relationship with Arizona State University, where Starbucks’ employees can earn their bachelor’s degree through ASU’s online program, is an example of bringing students to the curriculum rather than the campus.
Last year, Ford Motor Co. designated ASU as a premier school and a top-tier Ford recruiting and hiring institution, which means Ford considers ASU a go-to place to recruit graduates.
“Ford is a perfect example of a greater relationship that we have with a lot of organizations,” said Cindy Parnell, executive director at ASU’s Career and Professional Development Services.
Another program is the Startup Center in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, which offers classes, workshops, mentoring, investment and extracurricular activities that expose students to the concepts of entrepreneurship and technology innovation.
Professor, Company Working On Tech For Retina To Help Blind, KJZZ, April 19
According to the World Health Organization, 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired. Thirty-nine million are blind, while 246 million have low vision.
Bradley Greger, an associate professor at ASU, is partnering with a California-based company called Second Sight on technology that can be placed on the retina to provide a limited amount of vision to blind people. He’s also working on a brain implant that will provide some vision for the blind. He’s with me to talk about it.
Researchers Treat Amputees By Stimulating Nerves In FDA Trial, KJZZ (NPR) News, April 3
Fulton Schools Associate Professor James Abbas is collaborating with researchers at Florida International University to make advances in bioelectronics medicine and prosthetics technologies that could restore a sense of touch for amputees.
ASU lab home to largest waste repository in U.S., 3TV News, Phoenix, April 2
Many valuable questions about public health can be answered by analyzing samples from sewage sludge, says Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Security. His lab stores a large collection of the revealing material.
ASU student may know how to create life on the moon, Channel 12 News, Phoenix, March 30
Fulton Schools computer systems engineering student Autumn Conner has an idea for sending a small capsule containing a kind of bacteria to the moon, where it could create photosynthesis. A startup venture based in India has selected her idea for funding.
ASU engineering leaders talk innovation, industry partnerships and entrepreneurship, Phoenix Business Journal, March 21
Fulton Schools of Engineering Dean Kyle Squires and a group of faculty members talked to industry leaders about the wide range of research and technology development the schools’ are pursuing, and how ASU engineers are prepared to partner with businesses to foster economic development.
Stripping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, The Science Show, March 18
Researchers in the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions led by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner are developing technologies that promise to enable removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In an interview on Australian national radio, Lackner said carbon-capture systems may be the most effective option for keeping the buildup of this greenhouse gas from rising to levels at which it would pose a critical threat to the health of Earth’s environment.
3D Printing Prosthetics Part 1: Ways to Get Involved, RapidReadyTech.com, Mar 14
A group of ASU materials science engineers, Jason Enriquez, Tayler Fulton, Nicholas Lauer and Brian Zucker, dedicated its Capstone project to improving existing 3D printing open source designs. By connecting through their professors with local companies in the additive manufacturing field, the students are identifying better materials and how to 3D print with them for this purpose. The end goal is to improve on current open-source transhumeral (upper arm) prostheses; additional guidance is being offered by Justin Ryan, the lead research scientist at the Cardiac 3D Print Lab, Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
Arizona students’ team to compete in SpaceX Hyperloop Competition, Phoenix Business Journal, March 8
Arizona’s Hyperloop team, led by ASU engineering master’s student Lynne Nethken and senior Josh Kosar, say the Space X competition is just a first step to bringing high speed, mass transportation to Arizona and beyond.
If chosen to continue in the competition, the team will get to launch its prototype pod in the one-mile test track this summer in Hawthorne, California.
The Hyperloop is a proposed form of high-speed mass transportation that can achieve speeds of up to 750 miles per hour.
It’s time for us geeks to stand up and be heard, Christian Science Monitor, March 8
Computer scientists are often left out of public debate on issues that involve computer science, and that’s a potentially serious mistake when the goal is to improve cybersecurity, says Fulton Schools Professor of Practice Nayda Bliss, director of Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative. For the sake of making cyberspace safer for all of us, computer geeks must no longer let themselves be ignored, she says.
How worried should we be about artificial intelligence? Vox, Mar. 8
AI is both terrifying and exciting. There is no doubt that as AI continues to improve it will radically change the way we live. That can provide improvements, like self-driving cars, and doing many jobs that could in principle release humans to pursue more fulfilling activities. Or it could produce massive unemployment, and provide new vulnerabilities to hacking. Sophisticated cyber-hacking could undermine the reliability of information we receive everyday on the internet, and weaken national and international infrastructures.
Nevertheless, fortune favors the prepared mind, so it is important to explore all the possibilities, both good and bad, now, to help us be better prepared for a future that will arrive whether we like it or not. — Lawrence Krauss, director, Origins Project and Fulton Engineering professor, ASU
ASU Researchers are fighting robocalls, CBS 5 Answers, March 8
ASU CIDSE doctoral student and cybersecurity researcher Huahong (Raymond) Tu uncovers the nature of telemarketing robocalls and notes ASU’s efforts to thwart them with smarter caller ID.
Computer Scientists’ paper from 2006 Stands the Test of Time, UT Dallas News Center, Mar. 8
Ajay Bansal now an ASU CIDSE assistant professor, was part of a team at UT Texas led by Gopal Gupta that wrote a 2006 paper demonstrating a practical way of addressing circular, infinite patterned objects in a computational setting. The paper and participants have received a 10-year Test of Time Award from the Association for Logic Programming (ALP).
Bansal said the work on coinductive logic programming led to the successful development of goal-directed execution of answer set programs. “This was at one time considered impossible to accomplish. Working on these projects laid a strong foundation for my current research in my academic career.”
Public-private ’marriage’ to drive STEM growth, Vietnam.net, March 3
“University and industry are like darlings, always praising each other, but we need to ‘get married’ already, and be fully committed to helping each other, compensating for each other’s weaknesses,” said Nguyen Thanh Nam, former CEO of FPT and founder of online university FUNIX, at a conference on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and in the workforce.
The conference, held this year in Hanoi, was organized by the ASU’s Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program (HEEAP).
Spectacular engineering film inspires kids to dream big, QCOnline, Mar. 2
Angelica Hernandez, 2011 ASU Distinguished Grad in Mechanical Engineering, is featured in “Dream Big: Our Engineering World,” a documentary created to promote education in STEM. Hernandez, who went on to earn her master’s at Stanford, was a member of the Phoenix high school team that beat 2004 MIT in 2004.
The documentary is airing at the Arizona Science Center’s Irene P. Flinn Theater as follows:
March 3-12
- 9:30 a.m.
- 10:30 a.m. (except Saturday, March 11)
- 12:30 p.m.
- 2:30 p.m.
- 4:30pm (except March 3-9)
March 13-31:
- 9:30 a.m.
- 4:30 p.m.
ASU’s Innovation Open hosts Final Four on April 2, Money Radio, March 1
Brent Sebold, executive director of Venture Development and Entrepreneurship for ASU’s Fulton Schools of Engineering, met with the team at Money Radio to talk about the finalists who will be competing for $100,000 at the ASU Innovation Open on April 2. Learn more about the Innovation Open and make a reservation!
Exoskeletons Helping Assist People Perform Daily Activities, KJZZ 91.5, March 1
Progress is being made on something that, until recently, may have only seemed possible in science fiction or superhero stories.
It’s an exoskeleton that could assist people in performing daily activities when their own bodies, because of health problems or aging, are no longer able to.
To learn more, KJZZ spoke with Bradley Greger, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who specializes in neural engineering and neural systems research.
ASU Grad, Miao He, honored for wind turbine research, Plainview Daily Herald, Feb. 28
Miao He’s work with enhancing the efficiency of wind turbine farms in the face of disruptive weather has earned him a prestigious grant from the National Science Foundation that recognizes the work of up-and-coming faculty.
He, an assistant professor in the Texas Tech University Whitacre College of Engineering, has been selected to receive an award from the Faculty Early Career Development Program. He received his MS in Physics in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering in 2013, both from ASU.
