Fulton Schools researchers are at the forefront of research to reveal the secrets surrounding the nature of autism and hot to treat the condition. Professors James Adams and Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown have teamed up on investigations that have led to increasing evidence showing bacteria in the human gut may have a strong connection to behavioral symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Their continuing collaborative studies are bearing out initial suppositions that treatments to correct dysfunction in the collection of bacteria, fungi, viruses and the like in the gut (called the microbiome) could alleviate some debilitating effects of autism.

NASA’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI) is breaking the mold in the way academic and industry partners shape their collaborative research projects. The program lets students propose the focus of research they want to conduct for the national space agency. Yongming Liu, a Fulton Schools professor who has students involved in ULI research, says the new approach gives students valuable experience in how research to solve real-world technological problems is formulated, solved and implemented. The photograph shows students in an aviation program at The Polytechnic School, one of the Fulton Schools, working with a flight simulator used in research related to an ASU/NASA ULI project.

Klaus Lackner began thinking about technology to make air safer to breathe almost three decades ago. Now startup businesses and other commercial enterprises are pursuing ventures based on carbon-capture systems similar to those Lackner has been developing in the ASU Center for Negative Carbon Emissions. The Fulton Schools professor’s atmosphere-cleansing techniques are about to be deployed through a new partnership between ASU and an Ireland-based company. Using a passive energy- and cost-saving approach, the technology relies on wind to pull air into a carbon-storage system. Lackner’s systems and others have been shown to work, but the challenge now is scaling up operations enough to make a significant difference on a global scale.

See Also: University researchers behind new push for “mechanical trees” to help capture CO2, ABC Channel 7 News (Denver), July 11

Direct action: Carbon capture gears up for climate battle, The Engineer, June 12

A consortium of engineers has proposed an extensive array of water and renewable energy infrastructure developments along the United States-Mexico border to put the region on a path to prosperity. They see the plan helping to improve border security by bringing economic stability to depressed areas. Ron Adrian, an ASU Regents’ Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in the Fulton Schools, is among the engineers who authored the proposal. Read more about the proposal in an earlier post on this page dated March 6.

The executive director of ASU Gammage, Colleen Jennings-Roggensack, will walk down the red carpet at the annual Tony Awards on June 9 attired in a custom-made gown created by Loren Aragon, a 2004 Fulton Schools mechanical engineering graduate. The gown is an example of the “culturally fueled” aesthetic Aragon brings to his job as a designer and artist for a Native American owned and operated couture fashion brand based in Phoenix. Aragon, whose previous designs have been featured at Disney World, is helping Native American fashion and culture make its mark in the larger fashion industry.

See Also: Native American designer dresses head of Gammage for Tony Awards, KTAR News (Phoenix), June 10

Climate change, autonomous technologies and major shifts in economic and societal landscapes are among factors accelerating a fundamental reshaping of the world — a world in which the rigid blueprint for civil infrastructure design that has been in place for many decades won’t serve us well in the future, says Fulton Schools Associate Profess Mikhail Chester. With his team at ASU’s Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering, Chester is working on approaches to infrastructure development that have the agility and flexibility to respond to the changing needs of society into the next century. 

Medical researchers believe they are making valuable discoveries toward a deeper understanding of autism and how to treat it — particularly through recent studies of how microbes in the human gut play a significant role in development of the condition. The Economist article begins with a report on recent research by Fulton Schools Professors Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown James Adams and their collaborators showing that a process called microbiota transfer therapy helped to reduce the symptoms of autism in children. Their findings are detailed in a report on the website of the research journal Scientific Reports-Nature.

The Economist article also cites work by researchers at Caltech in collaboration with Krajmalnik-Brown to further explore the gut-brain connection as it relates to autism. The team’s findings are published online in the journal Cell: “Human Gut Microbiota from Autism Spectrum Disorder Promote Behavioral Symptoms in Mice.” More on the latest research is also reported in The Guardian article “Autism symptoms replicated in mice after faecal transplants” and in “Gut Bacteria Influence Autism-like Behaviors in Mice” (ASU Biodesign Institute)

The self-driving vehicle venture Waymo is set to test its trucks in Arizona, starting with trips on freeways in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Fulton Schools Professor Lina Karam, who has participated on a public outreach panel on automated mobility with Waymo’s chief external officer and helped to establish the Institute for Automated Mobility, says Arizona offers a good testing ground for self-driving vehicles. Those vehicles can potentially be driven much more safely by automated systems than those driven by humans, Karam says, but it will require Waymo and other companies to set high quality standards for their industry and share knowledge on how to improve self-driving technology. (Phoenix Business Journal subscriber access required.)

New internet of things technologies being invented and developed by ASU researchers are providing new devices to improve human health, increase our safety and security, and generally enhance our quality of life. Fulton Schools Professor Hanqing Jiang, Professor N.J. Tao, Associate Professor Erica Forzani and Professor Junshan Zhang are among the innovators in these smart technologies — from edible electronics that monitor gastric acid levels and a mobile diagnostic device to measure metabolic data to a computing startup offering better network connectivity and artificial intelligence for internet of things devices.

Engineering is about much more than mastering the skills necessary to do successful research and technology development. It’s also about learning the customer-centric design process, effective communication and translating tech talk into the language of business. Fulton Schools sophomores are getting immersed in lessons on these additional skills through experiences in the Engineering Futures Technology and Entrepreneurial Mindset Skills Boot Camp. Presented with the help of corporate partners, the boot camp is geared toward getting students prepared to succeed in student internships during their undergraduate years.

Fulton Schools students participated in a collaboration of researchers from ASU and Tecnológico de Monterrey university in Mexico in a water solutions workshop focused on ideas for improving the management of natural resources in the neighboring deserts regions of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Enrique Vivoni (at left in photo), a professor in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, said the meeting could result in future joint research, education and public engagement efforts involving the two universities.

Four of the six ASU faculty members spending the summer working with Mayo Clinic researchers through the ASU Alliance for Health Care are on the Fulton Schools faculty. They will help take on some of the biggest medical and health challenges. Assistant Research Professor Ayan Banerjee will focus on diabetes research. Associate Professor Erica Forzani will help to explore ways to prevent brain damage in people with urea cycle and liver disorder. Assistant Professor Julianne Holloway will aid work to regenerate the tendon-to-bone interface on the rotator cuff. Assistant Professor Feng Ju will pursue innovations in MRI technology.

Forests of carbon-capturing mechanical trees could play a big role in helping reverse much of the unhealthy impacts of the massive amounts of carbon dioxide that power plants, industrial processes and automobiles have emitted into the atmosphere since the first industrial age. The tree technology being developed by ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, led by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, faces challenges to successful deployment. But progress is being made toward optimizing the carbon capturing effectiveness of the system and building prototypes to do advanced testing.

See Also: Changing the atmosphere, The Business Post (Ireland) May 26

A research paper co-authored by Fulton Schools Professor Stephanie Forrest will be recognized with an award for the Ten-Year Most Influential Paper at the upcoming International Conference on Software Engineering. Forrest, who teaches in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decisions Systems Engineering in the Fulton Schools, directs ASU’s Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society. With her co-authors, she explored biological processes like evolution to generate ideas for how to automate locating and fixing computer software bugs.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the cancers that remain the most lethal. But new research is producing an innovative technique for early detection of the first signs of pancreatic cancer. With an early diagnosis, medical interventions could be made to arrest the disease. The research is described in the Nano Research journal by Tony Hu, an associate professor of biomedical engineering in the Fulton Schools and his collaborators in a new field of research called peptidomics that is revealing important clues about effective cancer prognosis. The article was also posted on AZ BIO, the Arizona Bio Industry Association news site.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere by industry, automobiles and other technologies and human activities is a major culprit in climate change that is warming the planet, acidifying the oceans and intensifying dangerous weather events. Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner has been involved over the past 25 years in seeking ways to remove much of that threatening buildup of CO2. In an interview, he talks about the synthetic mechanical “trees” that have been developed in his lab — and are being moved toward commercialization — and what they could do to help clear the air of CO2 and impede the acceleration of climate change.  

A research team for a project to devise long-range strategies for management of the water in Colorado River Basin will be led by Enrique Vivoni, an associate professor in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. The team has received a grant of $1 million from NASA’s Earth Science Division for the project, which will include helping government officials developing a drought contingency plan. The Colorado River Basin holds most the Arizona’s current renewable water supply. Vivoni and his team will obtain data for their research from Earth-observing satellites and data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Activated sludge microbiomes are likely to aid the world’s growing population in efforts to keep up with the demand for clean water. The Global Water Microbiome Consortium has released results of a study that yields new insights into how microbiome engineering can be applied to development of next-generation wastewater treatment and water reuse systems. ASU’s Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, directed by Fulton Schools Professor Bruce Rittmann, participated in the project. Researchers completed an “unprecedented global sampling” that provides significant new knowledge about the microbiology of activated sludge, Rittmann says.

See Also: Bacterial communities for wastewater treatment system, Science Daily, May 13, and a report on ASU NOW

Fulton Schools students were members of ASU teams that recently launched small space vehicles carrying payloads with equipment for conducting research beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The teams’ successes in that Blue Origin New Shepard project sponsored by Amazon has helped to open the door for ASU students and faculty researchers to put payloads on Amazon’s Blue Moon space craft for a future trip to do research on the Moon.

See Also: ASU And Blue Origin Team Up To Conquer The Moon, Patch, May 10

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin Plans To Carry ASU Payloads To The Moon, KJZZ (NPR), May 10

Jeff Bezos has unveiled Blue Origin’s lunar lander, MIT Technology Review, May 9

Winners of the Goldwater Scholarships are selected from among the highest-achieving undergraduates in the nation who are making notable contributions to research in science and engineering. Two of the three new Goldwater Scholars at ASU are Fulton Schools students Madeleine Howell and Maeve Kennedy. Both began their research endeavors in the labs of Fulton Schools faculty members in the School of Biomedical and Health Systems Engineering. Howell, a chemistry major who is minoring in materials science and engineering and mathematics, worked in the lab of Assistant Professor Barbara Smith. Kennedy, a chemical engineering major and Fulton Schools Grand Challenge Scholar got her introduction to research in the Bioinspired Complex Adaptive Systems Laboratory directed by Associate Professor Vincent Pizziconi.

ASU researchers have turned a 40-foot-long shipping container into a rapidly deployable mobile medical clinic equipped with solar power and water treatment systems. The clinic will be taken later this summer to Uganda to aid communities in need of additional health and medical care. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson led the project team. Engineering doctoral student Cody Van Cleve coordinated work to equip the clinic with a 10-kilowatt power systems and technology capable of cleaning more than 1,000 galleon of water per hour. Reports about the project have been broadcast on almost 100 network-affiliated local TV news programs throughout the United States. See an April 6 post below on this page for previous news media coverage of the project.

A number of commercial tech enterprises are emerging to help meet challenges posed by climate change. Fulton School Professor Klaus Lackner says it will probably be necessary for governments to help support these ventures at first. But he foresees “a brand-new industry at a huge scale” eventually taking shape because of the increasingly critical need to deal with the environmental impacts of a changing climate. As director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, Lackner has been leading work to develop carbon-capture technology to help halt the progression of global warming. Read more about Lackner’s project in the April 29 post below: “Lackner’s carbon-capture technology moves to commercialization”

One of the next big challenges in artificial intelligence technology is finding ways to miniaturize it. Such an advance would enable AI systems to become significantly more energy efficient. Fulton Schools professor Yu Cao and assistant professor Ted Pavlic are teaming with professors in ASU’s School of Life Sciences and at the University of California San Diego to look at the brain powers of some of the smallest species of bees. They hope to gain insights that might provide ideas for effective methods of scaling down AI devices. Part of the research will involve Cao and Pavlic working on engineering a robotic bee brain.

The 15 Fulton Schools students one the Desert Women in Autonomous Vehicle Engineering team — aka Desert WAVE — are gearing up for this summer’s Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International RoboSub competition in San Diego. They’re at work on the electrical engineering, computer programming and 3D printing tasks involved in preparing their robot, named Phoenix, to maneuver through an obstacle course. Equipped with two cameras and using passive and active acoustics to ping its location off of its surroundings,  the robot can “see, hear and think on its own” as it navigates the course, said team member and software engineering major Andrea Schoonover, a junior majoring in software engineering.

Fulton Schools computer science students Muhammed Kilig and Raida Khan were among undergraduates selected to attend one of the most prominent gatherings of cybersecurity experts. Kilig and Khan were eligible for invitations to the RSA Conference because they had also won spots in the RSAC Scholars program.  because they were also selected to join the RSA Scholars Program, which is administered through ASU’s Cybersecurity Education Consortium. The conference gave Kiling and Khan opportunities to network with representatives of more than 600 companies.

Three astronautical rocketry teams — composed of students in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration — recently launched their payloads into space as part of the Blue Origin space exploration program. The payloads are the first designed and built by ASU students to be launched into outer space. Teams were challenged to develop payloads that would provide an answer to a science question (such as how planets form), test technologies under development (such as remote acoustic sensors) or collect data on the how the five human senses — smell, taste, sight, hearing and touch — work in space.

See Also: Blue Origin reaches space again on latest New Shepard test flight, Space News, May 2

Could sensing technology used in driverless cars help protect wildlife habitat along U.S.-Mexico borderlands — while also aiding border security efforts? Georgios Trichopoulos (pictured), a Fulton Schools assistant professor of electrical engineering, says that the light-detection and ranging technology called LIDAR could be an effective tool in creating a “virtual wall” that protects both the environment and the borderline.

The accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere — a leading factor in the acceleration of detrimental climate change — is something we must address now and not later, says Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner. Fortunately, ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, which Lackner directs, is ready to deploy its carbon-capture technology to help reduce the buildup of the gas. A “mechanical tree” produced by some innovative geometry is being commercialized. It will help capture the carbon so it can be sold or sequestered for uses such as producing synthetic fuels, oil recovery, or uses in the food, beverage and agriculture industries.

See Also: New ‘Mechanical Trees’ Offer Cure for Climate Change, EDGY, May 8

‘Mechanical trees’ to help capture CO2′ ABC17News-KMIZ/Fox 22 KQFX (Columbia, Missouri), May 5

Arizona State University behind new push for ‘mechanical trees’ to help capture CO2, CNN, May 4, Fox43 News/KNXV (Phoenix), ABCNews15 (Phoenix)

Startups looking to suck CO₂ from the air are suddenly luring big bucks, MIT Technology Review, May 2

ASU Partners To Launch World’s First Commercially Viable Carbon Capture Technology, KJZZ (NPR) News, May 1

Do ‘Mechanical Trees’ Offer the Cure for Climate Change? Reuters, April 29 & Voice of America, April 30

Will these ‘mechanical trees’ really suck CO2 from air? The Hindu BusinessLine, April 30

Unique carbon capture technology to be trialled, Gasworld, April 29

Combining clothing styles of the past and technology of the future, Konrad Rykaczewski, a Fulton Schools professor of mechanical engineering, is developing designs for attire to help us live relatively comfortably in hot desert regions. He envisions clothes with embedded cooling devices that would effectively create “heat shields.” Using his expertise in thermal engineering, Rykaczewski is designing materials for clothing that would be made of temperature-regulating fabric containing tubes filled with circulating liquid. One possibility: Materials containing liquid metal that can conduct heat but feel as soft as skin.

See Also: Cool future fashion: Personal cooling as part of social adaptation to hotter climates, by Konrad Rykaczewski, in the journal Temperature

ASU is enlisting several of its researchers in efforts to meet the growing challenges of caring for an aging population through the launch of the Center for Innovation in Healthy and Resilient Aging. At least three Fulton Schools faculty members will have leading roles in the center’s first research endeavors. Assistant Professors Wenlong Zhang (at right in photo) and Erin Chiou will be involved in the project “Understanding fall risks and mobility independence in older adults with smart shoes.” Associate Professor Pavan Turaga will collaborate on the project “Towards real-time fall risk assessment in Parkinson’s disease by continuous monitoring of free-living activities.”

Fulton Schools alumnus and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Reid Buckley, who graduated from ASU in spring 2018 with a degree in chemical engineering, is working with leading science and engineering researchers at the prominent Los Alamos National Laboratory. Buckley is considered by his chief mentor in the lab’s High Explosives and Technology group to be one of the next generation of leaders in the field that is important to national defense missions, particularly efforts to combat terrorists. Buckley says he is getting the equivalent of a masterclass in explosives of the past, present and future, and the chemistry involved in advancing the technology.

Hundreds of high school students in the Phoenix metropolitan area are getting an introduction to the world of engineering through a new program designed to encourage more young women to explore the field. Weekly workshops at three of Arizona State University campuses are providing lessons in various branches of engineering. Other program events are connecting the young women with college student mentors and giving them opportunities to meet and network with professional engineers.

A road intersection at which traffic accidents are occurring more frequently has local government leaders of the town of Fountain Hills considering converting the intersection into a roundabout traffic circle to reduce the numbers of automobile collisions. For research on the impacts of roundabouts, the officials are turning to extensive studies by Michael Mamlouk, a Fulton Schools civil engineering professor. Mamlouk has studied numerous roundabouts in Arizona to assess their effectiveness in preventing or reducing automobile accidents. Read more about the research.

Rapid pursuit of technological innovations can be dangerous when not done responsibly. That’s been shown by serious problems with automated aircraft flight systems and autonomous automobiles, say Thaddeus Miller and Adam Gabriele. Miller, an assistant professor in The Polytechnic School in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and Gabriele, a doctoral student in that school, make the case that without more corporate transparency about new technologies, more rigorous testing and more thorough oversight, public trust and public safety will be at risk.

Artificial Intelligence technology is able to outperform humans in an array of specialized tasks, but AI systems would have to advance significantly to fully match human intellectual capabilities, Subbarao Kambhampati told a large audience at Singapore Management University. Kambhampati, former president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, delivered an address titled “Rise of AI and The Challenges of Human-Aware AI Systems.” He said the next big step toward enabling humans to work effectively with AI systems is to find ways of giving the technology more sophisticated social and emotional intelligence.

See Also: Artificial Intelligence: The Rise of AI and Its Challenges, Channel NewsAsia/AsiaNow (Video)

National Academy of Sciences member Alexandra Navrotsky is joining the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy in the Fulton Schools in her return to ASU to lead the university’s new Center for Materials of the Universe. The Center will expand ASU’s research linking solid state science, Earth science and planetary sciences to answer more questions about the constitution of the universe. Professor Navrotsky will also hold a position in the School of Molecular Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Bio-plastics being developed at the  Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation hold promise for someday replacing many of the synthetic plastics that are a large part of the world’s growing waste and pollution problems. Taylor Weiss, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of environmental and resource management, is among the center’s researchers making the new biodegradable plastics. Synthetic plastics break down into microplastics waste that is finding its way further into the food chain. Weiss explains how the use of more bio-plastics would help alleviate that threat.

Researchers and scholars at ASU and universities in the northern Mexico state of Sonora are collaborating on projects aimed at improving the quality of life in regions along the U.S.-Mexico border. Among them is Enrique Vivoni, a professor in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. Vivoni is partnering with colleagues at the Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora and El Colegio de Sonora to explore solutions to urban sustainability challenges, using Phoenix and Hermosillo, Mexico, as test cases. Both cities are facing harsh climatic conditions, particularly rising urban heat, Vivoni says.

Social media is becoming an effective tool in alerting the public to natural disasters and tracking what’s happening in communities and regions impacted by hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and similarly threatening events. That is due in part to work being done in research facilities such as ASU’s Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab. Lab member Tahora Nazer, a Fulton Schools computer science doctoral student, explains how social media outlets are being used to provide communications from the sites of natural disasters and aiding the work of emergency response and rescue operations. Manuel Aviles-Santiago, an ASU professor of communications and culture, tells how social media connected family members in the aftermath of one major hurricane.   

Much about the “robocall ecosystem” remains a mystery, says Adam Doupe, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Many scammers doing the robocalling are now able to circumvent efforts to stop them — often by using the latest artificial intelligence techniques. A few new technologies promise to add authentication to caller ID to help thwart robocalls, but a victory over the scams will require support from public agencies and research funding sources such as Federal Communications Commission and the National Science Foundation, Doupe says.

A new technique called Microbiota Transfer Therapy appears to be effective in alleviating one of the frequent symptoms of autism spectrum disorder — called ASD. A recent study by Fulton Schools Professors Rosa-Krajmalnick-Brown and James Adams, along with Dae-Wook Kang, a research collaborator with ASU’s Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, shows the fecal transplant method can produce long-term beneficial effects for children diagnosed with ASD. Many children with autism have gastrointestinal problems. The three researchers have demonstrated that by transplanting healthy fecal microbiota into individuals lacking certain kinds of gut bacteria it’s possible to improve their gut health, which significantly relieves the chronic gastrointestinal discomfort that afflicts many people with autism. The article was also published by Science Daily.

See Also: Fecal transplants could hold clues to curing autism, ABC15 News (Phoenix), April 29

Microbiota transfer therapy offers hope for those with autism, (video), Yahoo News/KGUN News (Tuscon)

Researchers: Fecal transplant helps improve behavior in kids with autism, Newsday, April 16

Fecal Transplant Reduces Nearly 50 Percent Of Autism Symptoms In Children, Tech Times, April 13

Fecal Transplants Reduce Symptoms of Autism Long Term, Futurism, April 13

Fecal transplant drastically reduced autism symptoms in children, SlashGear, April 12,

Could Treating Gut Bacteria Help Ease Autism Symptoms? US. News & World Report, April 12

Fecal transplants result in massive long-term reduction in autism symptoms, New Atlas, April 12

Researchers look at the link between gut bacteria and autism, Medical News Today, April 11

ASU researchers see hope for autism symptoms with fecal transplants, Arizona Republic, April 11

Pilot Study: Autism Improvements From Fecal Transplant Persist For 2 Years, KJZZ (NPR) News, April 10

Autism Treatment: Fecal Transplant Cuts Symptoms By Nearly 50% Medical Daily, April 10

Radical Fecal Transplant Therapy in Kids Has Reduced Their Autism Severity by 47% Science Alert, April 10

ASU gut treatment lessens autism symptoms, study says, 3TV/CBS 5 News (Phoenix), April 10

Children’s Autism Symptoms Down 45% Two Years After Experimental Fecal Transplant, IFLScience, April 10

‘Faecal transplant may help children with autism,’ study suggests, National Health Service (UK), April 10

Autism symptoms can be reduced 50% in children who received fecal transplants, study finds, Daily Mail (UK), April 9

A 40-foot-long mobile medical clinic equipped to be self-sufficient in remote, off-the-grid areas should be serving people in the African country of Uganda later this year — thanks to ASU engineering researchers.The clinic in a shipping container comes with solar power and water purification systems, battery storage and a backup electrical power generator. The Office of Naval Research is funding the project that can be a model for future mobile health care units for disaster relief and humanitarian missions, says Fulton Schools engineering graduate research assistant Cody Van Cleve.

See also: 9 and 10 News (Michigan), WCAX News (Vermont), CBS17 News (North Carolina)

The internationally prominent Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix is joining ASU to pursue innovations in technology and therapies to improve brain and spinal cord function for people with neurological disorders. The Fulton Schools will be a key participant in the endeavor. Professor Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools, says the partnership offers an opportunity to achieve a unique convergence of engineering and neuroscience that could have dramatic impacts on medical advances. Squires says the goals include “reverse-engineering” of the brain, which could reveal information to guide development of improved rehabilitation strategies.

During more than three decades at ASU, Charles Backus taught electrical engineering, helped boost the university’s stature as a research institution and shaped the foundations of ASU’s Polytechnic campus. At the same time, he was building and running a cattle ranch on the rough terrain of the high desert on the far outskirts of the Phoenix metro area. Today, Backus’ success as a rancher is drawing attention for his application of science and engineering to the care and management of his growing cattle herd. Using genetic selection, artificial insemination, non-hormone, non-antibiotic feeding programs and humane treatment of his animals, the ranch is producing beef of exceptional quality. Backus is paving the way for an advanced approach to ranching that is especially suited to the Southwest’s desert environment.

See Also: Arizona rancher uses science to raise healthy beef, Tucson.com, March 24

For decades researchers have looked at photocatalysis as a promising method for purifying water, though the excitement it once sparked has waned over the years. But a recent workshop to reassess potential real-world applications of the process was organized by the National Science Foundation Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment. ASU is member of the center and Fulton Schools Professor Paul Westerhoff is its deputy director. Researchers focused on areas in which photocatalytic technology might still be valuable, such as in remote communities with small populations that lack energy infrastructures. The article about the workshop was also published on the technology news website Nanowerk.

See Also: The Technology Horizon for Photocatalytic Water Treatment: Sunrise or Sunset? Environmental Science & Technology

Lithium batteries show big promise as a versatile, dependable and resilient source of power. But one impediment to their performance are dendrites, spiky crystalline formations that can set batteries on fire. Fulton Schools Professor Hanqing Jiang is leading research on the use of silicone to prevent those dendrite formations. Jiang is finding that a process that causes the silicone to take on a pattern of wrinkles — giving it a three-dimensional, sponge-like form — is inhibiting dendrite growth. His lab team’s findings have been published in a recent issue of research journal Nature Energy.

Upon retirement from General Motors’ after 35 years with the major automaker, Jim Contes was asked in 2008 to teach automotive engineering classes part-time at The Polytechnic School, one of the Fulton Schools. Soon he was offered a full-time job. Now, more than a decade later, he is a senior lecturer who has seen at least 150 of his students go on to jobs in the auto industry. Today he says his focus as a teacher is preparing students for an automotive world that has changed dramatically from the past and will continue to change from the present.

With modeling tools developed by his research team, Timothy Takahashi makes a case against pilot error being the cause of the recent deadly crash of a Boeing 737 passenger jet in Ethiopia. The Fulton Schools professor of practice in aerospace engineering created a hypothetical flight profile of the aircraft’s actions to determine that its autopilot system had put functions of most key components of the of plane under computer control. From that point on, the plane began to lose altitude and gain speed — while also preventing pilots from taking control. Figuring out how to prevent reoccurrence of such situations presents a big challenge for airlines. The article has also been published in MarketWatch, the San Francisco Chronicle, AlterNet and Citizen Truth.

ASU and the Fulton Schools helped to organize the recent international Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Conference in Vietnam. The event focused on strategies to boost STEM education in Vietnam as part of efforts to develop a future contingent of skilled workers for the growing digital economy in the Southeast Asian country. Through the work of the Fulton Schools’ Global Outreach and Extended Education program — known as GOEE — ASU became one of the founding members of the High Engineering Education Alliance Program, which seeks to boost the quality of education in engineering and other STEM subjects in Vietnam and, more broadly, to aid the U.S. Agency for International Development in fostering productive relationships between industries and educational institutions in Vietnam and the United States.

Computational science and artificial intelligence experts are being recruited to help stop the global spread of human trafficking. ASU’s Global Security Initiative recently organized a conference at the United Nations on how to use those technological resources in this effort. Nadya Bliss, the initiative’s director and a professor of practice in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of the Fulton Schools, identified the challenges facing this endeavor and described how computer science, advanced security systems and AI-based recognition and detection technology can best be aligned against the forces involved in human trafficking.

An “energy park” that spans over almost 2,000 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, with big installations of solar and wind power technologies, natural gas pipelines and desalination plants. Is the idea just too big and bold to take seriously? Not at all, says Fulton Schools Professor Ronald Adrian. He is part of a national consortium of 28 prominent engineers and scientists proposing such a vast industrial region on the border. Adrian says it could put large tracts of unused land to valuable use as sites for new energy and water facilities along with agriculture and industrial centers — a much more productive enterprise than building a big wall separating the two countries. Read more.

See Also: Bold Plan? Replace the Border Wall with an Energy–Water Corridor, Scientific American, February 14

Scientists Propose Energy Park Instead of Border Wall, Civil & Structural Engineer, March 6

Green wall! Plan calls for chain of alternative energy zones along border, World Tribune, March 10

Instead of a wall, what if we built an energy corridor? Enjoy Travelling and BIC Magazine, March 15

Scientists suggest it’s time to build a US-Mexico border wall, Smart Energy International, March 18

Could an Energy Park Secure the U.S. Mexico Border? Government Technology, March 22

U.S.-Mexico Energy Park Would Offer a Different Kind of Security, Inside Sources, April 15

The Engineers’ Plan for Creating Border Security With Clean Energy, The Atlantic, May 7

Paul Gambill, who graduated from ASU  in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree earned in the Fulton Schools computer systems engineering program, is the co-founder and CEO of what is described as “the world’s only carbon dioxide removal marketplace.” In a wide-ranging interview, Gambill talks about other entrepreneurial, environmental and community endeavors he has founded, co-founded or supported, his business philosophy, the motivations guiding his career path, and his “Big Idea That Might Change The World.”

A new computing technique could lead to transistors that fit on single molecules — an advance that might open up new possibilities in data storage. Research in ASU’s Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors directed by Fulton Schools Professor Nongjian “NJ” Tao is focusing on the combination of physical and chemical properties at the molecular scale. The work shows promise as a platform for progress in ultra-miniaturization of electronic devices. That could mean storage equipment and the general processing of information operating through tiny high-speed, high-power molecular switches.

For a third year in a row, ASU faculty members have won more awards that any other academic institution from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. Four of the six recent awards to fund solar energy research went to Fulton Schools faculty members, including Assistant Professors Mariana Bertoni and Zachary Holman, and Associate Research Professors Andre Augusto and Govindasamy Tamizhmani. Their research includes work to advance solar photovoltaics, solar-thermal power technologies and preparing the solar energy workforce for the future of the industry.

Zero Mass Water, a venture founded by Fulton Schools Associate Professor Cody Friesen, continues to bring a new source of clean water to more places. The company’s tech system — called Source — can produce water from moisture it draws from the atmosphere. Recently, a hospital in Jamaica installed an array of Zero Mass Water’s solar-powered hydro panels on its roof to power a system capable of providing almost 800 gallons of water a month. The company’s next major objective is to make its system as affordable as any source of potable water in the world.

ASU’s online Master of Science engineering degree programs in the Fulton Schools are highlighted in an overview of universities offering a range of online education options. The programs are especially attractive to students who want concentrate their studies on specific areas such a software engineering, and want the same quality of learning online as students who get the on-campus experience.

Engineers, scientists and artists are joining forces through ASU’s new Science Hub collaborative to find ways to expand human perceptual capacities. Co-directed by Fulton Schools Professor Nathan Newman, SciHub is examining how the brain and the human eye shape our understanding of physical reality and how we could learn to overcome some of the limits on how we see and hear the world around us. That idea will be explored in an upcoming workshop titled Science, the Arts and Possibilities in Perception that will include an art exhibit and music performances.

Is there such a thing as too much parking for automobiles? Yes, say the ASU authors of a study of the parking infrastructure in the Phoenix metropolitan area. When putting the amount of land used for parking into the mix of calculating an urban region’s livability, parking infrastructure has a significant impact or an area’s walkability, air pollution, the urban heat island effect and transport equity among the population. For details, see the research paper “Valley of the Sun-Drenched Parking Space,” by Fulton Schools doctoral student Christopher Hoehne, Associate Professor Mikhail Chester and Assistant Research Professor Andrew Fraser, along with Assistant Professor David King in the School of Geological Sciences and Urban Planning.

A system that envisions artificial “trees” designed to remove as much as a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a day is seen as one of the most innovative engineering endeavors to help combat the threatening impacts of the global warming resulting from climate change. The system is being developed in ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions directed by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner.

See Also: One man’s two-decade quest to suck greenhouse gas out of the sky, MIT Technology Review, February 27

A team of ASU leaders has been assembled to drive a project supported by the National Science Foundation to boost diversity among university faculty in science, technology, engineering and math fields. Professor Lenore Dai (second from right in photo), director of the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of the six Fulton Schools, will lead administrative accountability operations for the project. In that role she will help to change faculty promotion and recruitment policies to align with the aims of the diversity project.

A team of Fulton Schools students preparing to compete in a major collegiate underwater robotics competition are hoping their efforts also contribute to breaking down stereotypes of women in engineering, science and technology. At ASU’s Polytechnic campus, the team named Desert WAVE — for Women in Autonomous Vehicle Engineering — is designing and building a “robosub” to bring to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International competition this summer.

See Also: All-girls robotics team from ASU readies for competition, Chamber Business News (Arizona), February 15

The 2019 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science brought together educators, policymakers, engineers, scientists and journalists from around the world to explore new ideas and potential solutions to the society’s challenges. Fulton Schools faculty members and students helped to energize the event. Sustainable engineering doctoral student Evvan Morton (pictured) talked about shifting the focus of policy making on environment issues. Professor Subbarao Kambhampati gave an overview of the rise of artificial intelligence and its impact. Assistant Professor Samira Kiani discussed gene-editing technology and how it could shape the future of human health, food, climate and more.

Chile has been experiencing extreme flooding, causing at least one declared catastrophe. The impacts of climate change are considered a key factor ramping up the force of the floods. Mikhail Chester, a Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, talks about the challenges of planning and designing infrastructure to prepare for such potentially calamitous events. Chester says there is growing concern that current infrastructure such as roads, bridges and dams — designed and built for the environmental conditions of the past — won’t stand up to today’s exceedingly extreme weather events driven by changes in the climate. See a video related to the story:  Chile: Rainfall causes deadly flooding in north, catastrophe declared.

Saving time, money and the environment, the Arizona Department of Transportation is recycling asphalt from an old road to pave a new section of the Interstate-10 highway between Tucson and Phoenix. Kamil Kaloush, a Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, says such recycling — if performed correctly — can also help save energy and limit carbon dioxide emissions that add to the troublesome greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. The article was also published in the Tucson Sentinel.

Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is looking like a critical necessity for reducing the amount a greenhouse gasses that are a cause of Earth’s growing climate problems. One of the technologies designed to help clean carbon dioxide out of the air is being developed at ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, directed by scientist Allen Wright and Klaus Lackner, a Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering. With carbon dioxide levels continuing to climb, Wright says it’s important to get carbon-capture technology ready for large-scale use. The article was also published in The Arizona Daily Star, The Arizona Daily Sun, The Daily Miner and Casa Grande Dispatch.

A team of seven experts in resilient and sustainable systems were recruited to help U.S. Marines at a base in Hawaii come up with plans for how to maintain water, communications and energy services — along with mobility capability — during major natural disasters and other emergency situations. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson lent his expertise on how to innovate energy systems — including smart networks and off-grid solutions. Expertise in infrastructure sustainability, including maintaining critical operations under dangerous situations such as physical attacks by hostile forces or cyberattacks, was provided by Fulton Schools Associate Professor Mikhail Chester.

The new highly hyped tech advance known as 5G will boost the capabilities of computer-to-computer communications. Which for consumers means . . . not that much, actually. Martin Reisslein, Fulton Schools professor of electrical engineering and an expert in communications networks, says 5G is an enhancement for machines that interact with machines and with humans using machines. The 5G improvement involves reducing “latencies” — the time it takes between communication initiation and response. It will make a difference only to those for whom “milliseconds matter,” Reisslein says. So that may be an advantage for players of fast-paced computer games, but not for most other users.

Robotics engineering is playing a major role in driving advances in physical rehabilitation systems. In the laboratory of Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Wenlong Zhang — whose work focuses on the design, modeling and control of cyber-physical systems — students are assisting in the development of robotic devices capable of comprehending human movement patterns. The robotic devices with soft and flexible components can improve the rehab process for people who need to regain movement after serious injuries or strokes, or who have conditions that limit their movement.

David Allee and Nongjian “NJ” Tao, Fulton Schools professors of electrical engineering. are among four ASU faculty members who have been elected by peers to the prestigious National Academy of Inventors. Allee was recognized for his work on advances in flexible technologies, particularly sensing systems for radiation detection and electric and magnetic field imaging. Tao, director of ASU’s Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors, was cited for work on molecular electronics, nano electronics, and chemical and biological sensors and wireless devices for human and environmental health.

The 10 recently named American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019-2020 Leshner Public Engagement Fellows will strive to reach diverse audience to explore societal issues related to science and engineering advances in human augmentation. Samira Kiani (bottom row, second from left in photo), a Fulton Schools assistant professor of biological and health systems engineering, is among the new Fellows. Her efforts will focus on public engagement on genetic engineering and the genomic revolution in biomedical engineering.

The ultra-miniaturization of in semiconductor technology is opening doors to what can be achieved in the realm of molecular electronics. Working at an infinitesimal scale, Fulton Schools Professor Nongjian “NJ” Tao (at far left in photo) and his research colleagues are manipulating quantum phenomena to enable development of new kinds of nanoelectronic devices with unusual properties and expanded capabilities. Such advances have the potential to make possible a broad range of technological innovations. The article is also posted on the research news website Science Daily. 

In yet another case of biomimicry providing a platform for engineering innovation, researchers are testing a “smart pill” the could inflate inside the stomach — similar to the way a puffer fish puffs up. The pill might one day be used to transport tiny sensors in the body to areas where they could help detect ulcers, cancers and other signs of disease. Fulton Schools Professor Hanqing Jiang, whose research includes ingestible electronics (but who is not involved in the smart pill puffer fish-mimicry project) says the work may produce an important advance in the development of biomarkers to monitor human health.

Research into cutting-edge, high-impact energy technologies aimed at helping the Arizona Public Service power utility company upgrade the electrical power it delivers to its many customers will be led by Anamitra Pal and Mojdeh Hedman, assistant professors in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, of the six Fulton Schools. The project is being made possible by support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Fulton Schools students will participate in the work focusing on advancing technologies for providing energy from clean and renewable sources.

Creation of a new kind of sanitation industry could be a big part of the solution to at least one of world’s climate change challenges. Researchers at ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, directed by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, are refining technology that can remove carbon dioxide from of the air. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is a major cause of global warming. Lackner views the system as a garbage removal tool to clean the air. He says the captured carbon dioxide could be stored and sold for productive uses — giving rise to profitable business ventures.

Nondegradable chemical compounds used in foam materials, clothes and food wraps are among the most valuable products of polyfluorinated chemistry. But now scientists and engineers see cause for concern that the compounds are having damaging effects on the environment — especially on water quality —and on humans. Environmental engineer and Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden is among those lending his expertise on the subjects of assessing the levels of risk posed by the chemicals and how to better remove the compounds if more evidence is discovered of threats arising from their use.  

Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering, explains the ways research is revealing how plastics pollution can have toxic effects and other negative impacts on the environment, and on humans and other creatures. That’s the reason for the importance of what an all-female expedition team is doing while traversing a part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They’re collecting sand, water and air samples for studies to help gauge the magnitude and dangers of plastics waste in the planet’s oceans.

Arizona has authorized the use of digital license plates for motor vehicles. Proponents say plates could revolutionize the driving experience and makes things like vehicle registration renewal more convenient. But others, including Aviral Shrivastava, a Fulton Schools associate professor of computer science, say such plates, which work off of cell phone networks, pose potential problems with data security and privacy for drivers. Hacking of the embedded systems technology used by the plates could lead to theft of information about automobiles and drivers, Shrivastava says.

Advances in machine learning methodology are broadening the potential for making technologies that are more teachable — especially robotics technology. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Heni Ben Amor leads a research team working on developing robots that can learn on their own. The team is giving robots various goals to achieve, but leaves it to the robots to figure out how to meet those goals. These smarter, self-teaching robots expand the possibilities for how they could aid human endeavors. (This report has aired on news programs of almost 200 CBS News broadcast media affiliates.)

See Also: Arizona researchers developing robots that can learn, KPAX TV-Montana, February 5

Despite advances in prosthetics, most still lack a high degree of flexibility, says Jennie Si, a Fulton Schools professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering. Si and Helen Huang, who earned a doctoral degree at ASU, are collaborating on development of lower-limb “active” prosthetics that adapt to individual users to provide a full range of motion. Si and Huang hope to improve on prototypes until users can feel as if they have natural limbs and fully functional knees.

A business venture based on a device to save apples from spoilage was awarded the top prize of $100,000 at the ASU Innovation Open. Ideas for a new kind of multidirectional microphone, a water-capture technology that could boost water conservation and a shoe insole to help people rehabilitate after orthopedic surgery, were among winners at the event sponsored in part by the Fulton Schools. Kyles Squires, the Fulton Schools dean, welcomed attendees and participants to the Innovation Open Final Demo Day, to celebrate what he called a growing “wave of innovation and creativity.”

See Also: Strella Biotechnology is $100,000 winner of ASU Innovation Open, AZ Big Media, February 5

Food spoilage idea takes $100k prize at ASU Innovation Open, Arizona Chamber Business News, February 6

Courtney Ngai is bridging the worlds of computing, engineering and artistic expression in her pursuits at ASU. She finds endeavors in those fields share elements of discipline, improvisation and creativity, and she sees connections between the objectives of science and art. A solo dance project she is working on draws its theme from similarities she finds between the use of improvisational dance and the structures used in writing code. She has plans to employ talents in both areas after graduation by working as a software engineer and continuing to study and perform dance.

A study led by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden is providing Tempe data on the extent of opioid use in the city. Samples taken from local sewage and wastewater treatment systems can in many cases reveal both the level of opioid use and pinpoint the levels of use in various locations in the area. The results of the study will be used to help city officials develop approaches to developing programs to educate the public about opioids and prevent medically unauthorized use of the addictive drug.

See Also: Groundbreaking study finds opioid drugs in Tempe wastewater system, 3TV/CBS 5 News – Phoenix, February 1

Tempe, Ariz., Wastewater Testing Yields Opioid Crisis Data, Government Technology, February 22

A number of factors come into play when deciding whether to adopt a strict diet of organic foods. Research is confirming some significant benefits to eating organics. That can be especially true for pregnant women, young children, the elderly and allergy sufferers, says Rolf Halden, a Fulton Schools professor and director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering. But others point to claims that favor nonorganic foods over organics or contend that nonorganics pose no more risk overall than organics.

New technologies that can capture moisture from the air and turn it into water are being viewed as one potential solution for a growing scarcity of drinkable water around the world. Zero Mass Water, a startup company founded by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools professor of materials science and engineering, has developed one of the more promising air-to-water systems. Using solar-powered rooftops panels, it can produce clean water even in desert climates. The system is currently being sold in more than 18 countries.

See Also: Zero Mass Water’s Hydropanels Pull Water From Thin Air At #CES2019, Clean Technica, January 11

This Machine Turns Sunshine and Air Into Clean Water, Sun-Connect, November 30, 2016

As artificial intelligence advances in more sophisticated ways, the technology will gain new capabilities — including the ability to evade telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in certain situations. At the Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Society conference, Subbarao Kambhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science, and his former graduate student Tathagata Chakraborti (second from right in photo) explored scenarios in which it might be permissible for AI to be a bit deceptive in its interactions with humans.

Fulton Schools electrical, mechanical and computer engineering students are on ASU teams involved in the U.S. space program’s mission to explore an intriguing asteroid called Psyche located between Jupiter and Mars. Through capstone projects, the teams are working on technologies for systems and devices that will be used in studies of the asteroid that has experienced the same kinds of violent collisions that formed Earth and other planets.  

A business co-founded by Fulton Schools alumnus David Richardson has won one of the Global Health and Pharma Technology Awards for its achievements over the past year. Richardson, who earned a degree in mechanical engineering, is also the CEO of the company, bioSyntagma, which was honored as the “Best Oncology-Focused Precision Medicine Company 2018” by the publication that recognizes global companies for improving public health, enhancing patient care and lowering healthcare costs. bioSyntagma, whose devices help in the discovery of biomarkers, got its start through ASU’s Venture Devils enterprise.

The Southwest Robotics Symposium gave several Fulton Schools students an opportunity to showcase their work to develop the next generations of technologies to advance human-robot interaction. It was the fifth year for the annual exhibition. The general chair for the event, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Wenlong Zhang, says the symposium is leading to collaborations between researchers that promise to foster new innovations in robotics and autonomous systems. The gathering featured presentations of research projects by students and faculty from 20 universities in six countries, as well as industry research.

See Also: ASU’s Southwest Robotics Symposium previews the new technology guiding the next wave of human-robot interaction, Robotics Tomorrow, January 28

A startup called Breezing is among the winners of the Arizona Innovation Challenge. The company’s product is a wearable device — also called Breezing —that provides precise assessments of a person’s resting metabolic rates. The winning companies in the Innovation Challenge will receive grant funding from the Arizona Commerce Authority to invest in their businesses. The Breezing device provides metabolic data to help users develop nutrition, lifestyle and exercise plans to benefit their health. Toa says the next generations of Breezing products are in development.

A team of Fulton Schools students are building an autonomous robotic submarine to compete in the National Underwater Robotics Challenge in June at ASU’s Polytechnic campus. The team, named Desert WAVE (Women in Autonomous Vehicle Engineering), is believed to be only the second all-female underwater robotics team in the world. Next, Desert WAVE will head to San Diego to participate in the international RoboSub competition.

See Also: Dorks Estate: Desert WAVE, ASU’s first all-female underwater robotics team, The State Press (Podcast)

With a sensor that attaches to the rim of basketball basket and an app that keeps track of how many shots at the basket are made or missed, two Fulton Schools students are hoping to give players a system to improve their performance on the basketball court. Computer science student Connor Harris and electrical engineering student Benjamin Willis are planning to explore product development for their system.

Scientists say some of the environmental impacts of climate change threaten to be catastrophic. That’s why it’s critical to begin reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is triggering manifestations of a fast-changing climate, such as extreme heat waves, rising sea levels and the loss of the oceans’ coral reefs. The Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, directed by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, is developing carbon capture technology designed to remove carbon from the air and dispose of it or store it for productive uses.

Meeting the challenge of supplying the world more energy from clean and renewable sources will require significant advances in solar power technology. Research led by Zachary Holman, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of electrical engineering, is resulting in progress toward increasing the amount of sunlight that can be converted into electrical energy. The key is integrating other materials with conventional silicon-based solar cells used in photovoltaic systems.

A new intelligent system for “tuning” powered prosthetics promises to enable people using a robotic prosthetic knee to walk comfortably within minutes of using the technology — rather than taking several hours. Jennie Si, a Fulton Schools professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering, developed the system with colleagues at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina. The prosthetic device was devised for scenarios in which a patient is walking on a level surface, but it could be developed further to enable users to go up and down stairs, Si says.

See Also: AI Helps Amputee Walk With a Robotic Knee, IEEE Spectrum, January 25

Machine Learning Customizes Powered Knee Prosthetics for New Users in Minutes, R&D Magazine, January 23

Reinforcement Learning Expedites ‘Tuning’ of Robotic Prosthetics,  I-Connect007, January 18

Fulton Schools researchers are helping to advance technologies that are making solar energy systems more effective and at the same time less expensive. A research team led by Zachary Holman (pictured), an assistant professor of electrical and energy engineering, and Jason Yu, an assistant research professor, have mixed an additional material with the silicon in current solar cells that boosts the percentage of sunlight those cells can convert into electrical power. They foresee the new cells making their way onto commercial solar panels in the coming years.  

A more detailed framework for assessing and managing the risks of bacterial disease transmission through water spray from sinks, showers and toilets has been developed by researchers, including Kerry Hamilton, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering. Hamilton and a colleague at Drexel University show reasons for communities to maintain thorough monitoring and testing operations to reveal signs of water-quality degradation and prevent the spread of serious infections and diseases.

The Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, known as KEEN, is working with colleges and universities to embed the entrepreneurial mindset into their undergraduate engineering programs. ASU starts by integrating entrepreneurship-minded education into freshmen learning experiences. Professor Ann McKenna (pictured), director of the Polytechnic School, one of the six Fulton Schools, says many teachers and higher education institutions need to take similar paths to have a significant impact on the engineers of the future.  

An advance in night-vision systems could aid military operations in a variety of areas — including battlefield encounters, medical treatment in the field and identification of potential threats. The technology is part of the trend toward the use of “techno-human” systems to provide an advantage in modern military conflicts, says Brad Allenby, a Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, and a professor of ethics and engineering.

Identifying floodplain boundaries is critical to the success of many environmental protection and urban development endeavors.  Now there’s a new tool to provide high-resolution datasets of Earth’s surface properties to ensure the accuracy of floodplain mapping. It’s the work of a team of scientists that includes Enrique Vivoni, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment — one of the Fulton Schools — and ASU’ School of Earth and Space Exploration. The datasets could help in development of sustainable water management plans and enable better assessment of the environmental strain on regions seeing growing human populations.

Norma Hubele’s mission is nothing less than to “change the way people choose their cars.” The Full Schools professor emeritus of industrial engineering is trying to do that with a mathematical and statistics-based system she developed to determine the safety ratings for different models of automobiles. That system, she says, improves vastly on the safety rating tests conducted by the federal government. Hubele hopes to educate the public about the flaws in those government ratings tests so that consumers will pressure the auto industry to adopt her ratings methodology. The article was also published in the East Valley Tribune.

A big roadblock to successful cancer treatment is the resistance of some tumor cells to therapeutic drugs — especially in the case of pancreatic cancer. Jia Fan and Bo Ning, assistant professors at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, have revealed the cause of this resistance to chemotherapy drugs. They have been mentored in their research by Tony Hu, a Fulton Schools associate professor of biomedical engineering. He has also helped Fan and Ning in their collaborations with the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Hu says the discovery of a biomarker to predict the body’s responses to chemotherapy is a big step for clinical prognosis of pancreatic cancer.

Through recycling and repurposing of its plastic waste materials, the Fulton Schools 3DPrint and Laser Cutter Lab is advancing ASU’s educational and sustainability missions. Almost 100 percent of the waste material is being put to cost-effective use — in new 3D printing projects, as donations to K-12 programs for hands-on lessons that teach science, technology and engineering fundamentals to young students, and for providing ASU students opportunities to gain skills in prototyping processes that are critical to multiple engineering and manufacturing fields.

David Richardson earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in the Fulton Schools in 2012 before getting a master’s degree in nanoscience. His expertise in those fields helped him co-found the precision medicine company bioSyntagma. Today, as the company’s CEO, he is leading work that promises to make personalized medicine a reality and help medical science get closer to potential cures for cancer.

See also: Fred Bueler III, who earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Fulton Schools, is featured in 22 Millennials to watch in CRE. Bueler has had a leading role in many major construction projects during his 13 years in the building industry. AZ Big Media, January 9.

As development of solar power systems for residential use ramps up, consumers need facts about both the benefits and challenges of these renewable clean-energy installations. Fulton Schools Emeritus Professor Ronald Roedel says a basic understanding of how the new energy technologies work under various weather, climate and environmental conditions can help homeowners make informed decisions about investing in these photovoltaic systems. Roedel, a longtime solar energy researcher, is the director of the Professional Science Master’s program in Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization.

The recent Arizona Biosecurity Workshop at ASU explored timely questions about potential impacts of the rapidly expanding capabilities of biotechnologies — particularly advances in genetic engineering. Concerns have been heightened about the capacity of these technologies to alter both humans and their environments. One way to foster productive dialog on the issue is a multimedia program led by Samira Kiani, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Kiani’s project aims to bring scientists and the public together to examine the social, ethical and medical risks and benefits of new biotechnologies.

The Fulton Schools co-hosted the third annual ASU Innovation Open pitch competition at which 15 teams of students from leading universities involved in early-stage entrepreneurial ventures presented their business concepts to judges. Five teams were chosen to move on to the Innovation Open finals in February to vie for funding. Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools, gave the welcome address at the event. Each of the five top teams received a cash prize from Zero Mass Water, an ASU spinoff company led by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science and engineering.

Dozens of entrepreneurial ventures and hundreds of jobs are expected to result from a U.S. Department of Commerce grant awarded to the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. The goal is to accelerate the transition of new medical and wearable technologies from the research lab to commercial applications and startup businesses. Arizona State University, Maricopa County Community College District’s Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation, the Partnership for Economic Innovation and the StartupAZ Foundation are partners in the project anchored at the 30-acre Phoenix Biomedical Campus (pictured). The endeavor will help to boost the scope and impact of ASU’s MedTech Ventures Program, says its director, Fulton Schools Professor Gregory Raupp.

Competing against upperclassmen from eight other universities, five Fulton Schools first-year engineering students became the first team from ASU to win the first-place prize at the ASM Geodesic Dome student competition. The event at the Materials Science and Technology Conference tests skills in applying fundamentals of materials science and engineering. The winning Dome of the Devils geodesic structure withstood 1,000 pounds of pressure, earning the team a $1,000 award.

Richard Filley was a featured presenter at a recent major entrepreneurship workshop in Oman. Filley is the lead entrepreneurship faculty member in the Fulton Schools Technology Entrepreneurship and Management program. His talk at the event focused on launching social entrepreneurship ventures —businesses with the goal of improving the quality of life. He also addressed ways to foster innovation and creativity, and to develop entrepreneurship mentoring and education. Over his career, Filley has shared his expertise in these areas in more than 20 countries.

Biomedical engineers at ASU and Florida International University have developed a hand prosthesis that can connect with users’ nervous systems and enable them to experience the sensation of touch. Fulton Schools Associate Professor James Abbas (pictured), director of the ASU Center for Adaptive Neural Systems, helped to lead the 12-year-long project to design and build the Neural-Enabled Prosthetic Hand System. Abbas explains that the first-of-its-kind hand prosthesis uses components similar to those in electrode ear implants to give people “feeling” in their thumbs and forefingers.

Hannah Hallikainen, a Fulton Schools chemical engineering major, aspires to a career that combines her interests in technology and public policy. She has delved into the latter area recently through the Student Research Fellows program in ASU’s Center for the Future of War. Hallikainen has been a test reader for the recently published book “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media,” conducted historical research on the Boxer Rebellion and U.S. immigration policy, and contributed to an article published in Politico about a historic Supreme Court immigration case.

Huan Liu (at left in photo), a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and engineering, is one of three ASU faculty members recently elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . The special status in the organization recognizes the value of their career contributions. Liu’s research focuses on advanced data mining, machine learning, cybersecurity and designing algorithms for effective problem-solving and real-world applications involving intelligent systems.

For a second straight year a contingent of ASU professors will travel to Israel as part of the Jewish National Fund’s Faculty Fellowship Program. The excursion gives the faculty members opportunities to meet and share information with peers and colleagues in similar academic disciplines and research pursuits in Israel. This year’s group includes Bradley Greger, a Fulton Schools associate professor of biomedical engineering and Thomas Dempster, an associated research professor or engineering in the Center for Algae Technology and Innovation. Adam Carberry, a Fulton Schools associate professor, talks about the valuable experience he had in Israel as part of last year’s Faculty Fellowship group.

Previous articles:  Educational excursion: Faculty members seeking insights in Israel

Fulton Schools faculty members took educational sojourn to Israel

How far have artificial intelligence technologies actually advanced? Where will they go from here? And what rewards, challenges and issues will arise as AI becomes more ingrained in society? Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, Associate Professor Spring Berman and Assistant Professor Heni Ben Amor say the key is to understand the different ways humans and AI technology experience and learn about the world— and to figure out how people and machines with their disparate perspectives can exist compatibly and productively.

Fulton Schools students are among the ASU students who have earned support for their business start-up ideas, social program and tech-based ventures in the university’s Demo Day entrepreneurship competition. Recent mechanical engineering graduate Luis Castillo is part of team that is refining an invention called the Murphy Mobility Device to enable people to do physical therapy exercises to recover from injuries. Biomedical engineering graduate student Nicholas Hool is advancing Hoolest Performance Technologies with an earbud device that helps alleviate emotional anxiety.

“Smart cities” are the future. New and powerful smart technologies are being incorporated into the core infrastructure of many urban regions. And the change is going to reshape life within many metropolitan environments. How to ensure these smart tech systems best serve the public? One way is to train the future engineers, technologists, urban planners and policy makers who will be designing those systems. That’s the aim of a project that will involve Fulton Schools Professors Ann McKenna, Gail-Joon Ahn and Ram Pendyala, along with Assistant Research Professor Troy McDaniel. They’ll team with others to help ensure smart cities are human-centric places. (The story is on page 17 of the recent Smart Cities issue of the online TechConnect magazine.)

The Phoenix area is one of the hottest urban environments and getting hotter. Maricopa County officials are teaming with Fulton Schools engineers to devise strategies for slowing the trend toward higher temperatures. Matthew Fraser, a professor of environmental and sustainable engineering, says one focus of the effort will be on using building and pavement materials that would lessen the impacts of heat. Extreme heat also causes unhealthy air quality. Fraser and his colleagues will also work on developing new technologies to address that problem.

See Also: Funding the future: Maricopa County, ASU combat urban heat

If we want robots to perform at their best for us, then engineers who are designing, building and programming them need to also better understand the people who will be using robotic technologies. Nancy Cooke, Fulton Schools professor of human systems engineering, writes that a deep understanding of the essential ingredients of good communication, interaction, collaboration and teamwork is critical to making a world where robots and humans can rely on, trust and support each other. Read more about Cooke’s research.

See Also: Your next colleague could be a robot. Here’s how to get along, Fast Company, November 29

With his solar-powered electrical grid-in-a-box, engineer Nathan Johnson and his research team are aiming to provide more energy security for communities and other users around the world. The project led by the Fulton Schools assistant professor will include developing training for technicians to provide engineering and design services to help people and organizations operate and maintain these microgrids for a variety of uses — including national defense, humanitarian aid, health care and disaster response.

Health-threatening bacteria are developing resistance to the antibiotics we use to treat the diseases the bacteria cause. Nongjian Tao, a Fulton Schools professor of electrical engineering, is part of team that will develop new and more effective antibiotics or other drugs, along with diagnostics technologies to better identify resistant microbes. Tao, director of ASU’s Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors, will focus on designing and building the new technology.

Objections have been raised over some potentially offensive preconceptions being blamed on predictive algorithms built into artificial intelligence systems intended to aid users of services such as Google Gmail. Specifically, an algorithm that showed a bit of gender bias. The problem prompted Google to disable an AI tool from using any gendered pronouns. Subbarao Kambhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and past president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, explained how these algorithms can get into such trouble. Kambhampati has been involved in other efforts to help AI steer clear of inappropriate tendencies. Read more.

ASU’s Team BUTTER (Ballistic Universal Times Trajectory Egg Recovery) placed fifth among more than 30 teams from around the world that participated in the most recent American Astronautical Society CanSat competition. The group of Fulton Schools students had to build, launch and land a can satellite carrying a variety of technological components — plus an egg that had to remain unbroken throughout the flight. Read more about Team BUTTER’s exploits

Konrad Rykaczewski has been closely examining the characteristics of various flora and fauna for ideas on how to translate their natural capabilities into models and designs for useful technologies. Most recently the Fulton Schools assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering — working with a team of students and support from an ASU Biomimicry Center grant — discovered how the waxy, water-repellent surfaces of Sonoran cactus skins might be imitated to develop smart material for the protective suits worn by hazardous materials handlers.

See Also: Prickly pear cactus “smart” skin can improve hazmat suits, Earth.com News, November 19

Future hazmat suits could be inspired by cactus skin, Engineering.com/Designer Edge, November 19

Among the latest advances in prosthetics is a system that uses a neural implant to enable the brain and an advanced prosthetic hand to provide users with sensations of touch. The achievement is the result of a multi-institutional research project that included contributions from a team at ASU led by James Abbas, a Fulton Schools associate professor of biomedical engineering and the director of the Center for Adaptive Neural Systems. Abbas hopes the technology will eventually be adapted for people with lower limb amputations and double amputations. 

See Also: New prosthetic hand provides the actual sensation of touch, Machine Design, November 27

To the varied selection of services designed to keep students on paths to graduation, ASU has begun new efforts collectively called the Student Success Suite Initiative. It includes a set of tools that help students explore careers that align with their skills and aspirations, says Tami Coronella, associate director of student academic services for the Fulton Schools. She points, for instance, to Me3, a visual image-oriented website providing online interactive quizzes to guide students in more clearly defining academic and career goals.

An Arizona ballot proposition that would have mandated a significant jump in the use of renewable energy sources in the state by 2030 was rejected by voters by more than a 2-to-1 margin. While it’s a setback for clean energy efforts, Fulton Schools Professor Emeritus Ronald Roedel and other ASU faculty members doing energy-related work see the tide eventually turning. The growing need for renewable energy sources will inevitably become more apparent to state leaders, while and the solar energy industry or other clean energy industries will continue to make progress, says Roedel, who is director of the Fulton Schools Professional Science Master’s program in Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization.

Manufacturers of contact lenses and researchers are joining forces to spread the word about the need to reduce the plastics pollution caused by the many millions of contact lenses being flushed down drains and toilets. Bausch & Lomb, one of the largest makers of contact lenses, cites research findings at the ASU Center for Environmental Health Engineering, directed by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, for evidence of the negative environmental impact of the problem and of positive results that contacts-recycling efforts could produce.

Artistic talents are only part the mix in what constitutes marketable creative skills. So, aspiring professional photographers, designers and others in Penny Dolin’s classes in the Fulton Schools graphic information technology program, get lessons in writing, communication, critical inquiry, technology, problem-solving methods and more. The professor of practice is at the forefront of her field in development of immersive and contextual learning environments in higher education.

ASU engineers are teaming up with the Bashas’ grocery store chain, the Salt River Project utility and the thermal energy systems company Viking Cold Solutions to develop a more energy-efficient and cost-saving way to store and protect the quality of large quantities of frozen food. Fulton Schools Associate Professors Kristen Parrish and Robert Wang are overseeing testing of a new low-tech chemical and mechanical refrigeration technique at the project test site — a 10,0000-square-foot industrial freezer filled with tons of ice cream. See the Cronkite News report ASU, Bashas’ and SRP work to lower the peak. Read more: Sub-Zero Sustainability.

Keith Hjelmstad, a professor in the Fulton Schools civil, environmental and sustainable engineering program, has been recognized for his outstanding contributions to undergraduate education with the title of ASU President’s Professor. Those who nominated Hjelmstad for the honor emphasized the impacts his development of innovative curricula and courses are having not only at ASU but on a national level. His approach creates “a social environment for learners” in which students learn how to interact and teach each other while at the same time learning course materials.

A new prosthetic hand system with a fully implanted, wirelessly controlled neurostimulator has restored “feeling” to a person with a hand amputation. The news announced at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience involves a multi-institutional research team that includes James Abbas, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of biomedical engineering. The team’s achievement has led to the first time a person has been fitted with a neural-enabled prosthetic hand system that can be used outside the laboratory in an everyday environment.

ASU researchers are exploring the use of the latest information technologies to develop a widespread real-time warning system to alert communities to the potential dangers of oncoming floods. Mikhail Chester, a Fulton Schools associate professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, is leading a multi-university team for the project. Arizona will be used a test bed to determine if the warning system can be adapted for other states and regions — and if it can also be effective for hurricane and drought warning networks.

New and more effective technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are needed to curb the detrimental impacts of climate change. That’s a conclusion from a panel that produced a report for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. One of the experts commenting on the report is Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions. Lackner says there are ways to make CO2 capture and removal technology economically feasible.

Liquid silk and gold nanoparticles are looking like the best combination of materials to produce a more effective way of closing up an injury or an incision to human body tissue. They could reduce the risk of damage or infection to tissues sometimes caused by use of conventional staples and stitches. Kaushal Rege, a Fulton Schools professor of chemical engineering, is leading research to fully develop two types of the laser-activated silk and gold nanosealants.

See Also, Doctors could soon ditch stitches and seal skin wounds with lasers, Digital Trends, November 19

The Institute of Automated Mobility was recently launched with the promise of making Arizona a leader in innovation of autonomous vehicle technologies and systems. Fulton Schools Professor Sethuraman Panchanathan has been chosen as one the top advisers to the institute.  Panchanathan, who is also ASU’s chief research and innovations officer and the executive vice president of Knowledge Enterprise Development for the university, is the founder of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing. The center focuses on research that could be useful to the new automated mobility endeavor.

It’s estimated there are more than 140,000 tons of plastics spread out over an area that covers a million square miles of the Pacific Ocean that’s now being called the Great Pacific Garbage patch. Scientists and engineers working with various organizations are involved in cleanup projects that are making a dent in the problem. But more needs to done to stop more plastic from being dumped in the ocean in the first place, says Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering.

Artificial intelligence and athletic performance are becoming inextricably intertwined in the world of sports. Researchers such as Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Yezhou Yang are adapting emerging AI technologies to provide data analysis, computer vision and robotic visual learning that shows athletes how to enhance their abilities while reducing the risk of physical injuries. Yang, an affiliate faculty member in ASU’s Global Sport Institute, is also exploring how to make some AI athletics analytics tools accessible through a cell phone app.

There’s an abundance of territory to explore at the intersection of engineering and the arts. So say Professor Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools, and Professor Steven Tepper, dean of ASU’s Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts. “Collisions” between engineers and artists often produce a fertile breeding ground for creativity and innovation, Squires and Tepper agree. They suggest that might be demonstrated in an entertaining fashion if engineering, arts and design students competed in a zombie costume contest. But, seriously, they conclude, the mixing of the artistic spirit and the drive to engineer solutions to big challenges is a recipe for making a better world.

More than nine billion tons of plastics have been produced since the mid-20^th century and plastic waste has found its way not only into our much of natural environment but also into humans. Researchers say many tiny bits of the waste — called microplastics — are being ingested by a large percentage of the human population. Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering, says there seems to be no immediate cause for alarm, but the news should cause close examination of the potential for negative health impacts from the microplastics we are ingesting and even inhaling.

New super-strong copper-tantalum alloys have been developed by Army researchers in collaboration with a mechanical engineering and materials science research team led by Fulton Schools Professor Pedro Peralta and Associate Professor Kiran Solanki. With the alloy’s ability to withstand extreme temperatures and powerful impacts, it’s being compared to vibranium, a fictional material used in Captain America’s shield and the Black Panther’s super-hero outfit.  

Despite a slow start in the use of self-driving cars, experts say it is all but inevitable that autonomous vehicles will become a larger part of our transportation environment — especially in busy cities. Lina Karam, a Fulton Schools Professor of electrical and computer engineering who studies autonomous vehicles, says local governments and city planners need to start preparing for the ways a proliferation of self-driving vehicles will impact urban infrastructure needs.

Fulton Schools mechanical engineering graduate student Sudhanshu Biyani was part of the ASU student team that won the top prize at the recent PLuS Alliance Circular Economy ResourCE Hack. The competition was designed to inspire ideas for zero-waste alternatives to waste management challenges. Biyani and his teammates developed Farmer’s Friend, an app to connect farmers and end users of food waste.

ASU students are getting more opportunities to learn about one of the fastest-emerging and highest-paying software fields: blockchain engineering. Blockchain technology is a key driver of cryptocurrencies and the digital economy. ASU is becoming a leader in the field as home to the Blockchain Research Laboratory, directed by Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic, and the Blockchain Innovation Society, an international student-led group. Now the Fulton Schools Master of Computer Science degree program offers six courses focusing on various aspects of blockchain engineering and development.  

More than 500 students from 30 high schools came to the recent FIRST Robotics competition hosted by the Fulton Schools, ASU and the Sanghi Foundation. The event is designed to give young students opportunities to learn and apply basic engineering skills, to learn problem-solving methodology and spark interest in careers in engineering, science and technology.

Researchers in ASU’s College of Health Solutions are analyzing the “walkability” of neighborhoods as part of a study to assess the effect of specific neighborhoods’ characteristics in helping people stick to physical activity regimens — or discouraging them from continuing their aerobic exercise routines. To get accurate data for the study, the researchers turned to three Fulton Schools computer scientists, Associate Professor Ross Maciejewski, Assistant Professor Ariane Middel and graduate student Akshar Patel. They are developing a unique tool to reveal the correlation between certain neighborhood features and residents’ level of physical activity.

Floods, heat waves, storms, hurricanes, wildfires and other damaging natural events are becoming more intense with the growing effects of climate change. Associate Professor Mikhail Chester and Professor Brad Allenby, faculty members in the Fulton Schools’ civil, environmental and sustainable engineering program, warn that current infrastructure doesn’t have the resilience to withstand the onslaught of the extreme weather events likely to occur more frequently. They look at ways our infrastructure systems can be adapted to hold up against burgeoning climatic threats.

Fulton Schools faculty members will have leading roles in a new interdisciplinary graduate-level program for those aspiring to be future leaders of endeavors to design and develop “smart cities.” The Citizen-Centered Smart Cities and Smart Living program will train students to become the engineers, scientist, entrepreneurs and policymakers capable of shaping cities in human-center ways. Troy McDaniel, Fulton Schools assistant research professor and associate director of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing, says industry partners, nonprofits and community groups will be involved in the training program and smart cities research projects.

See Also: $3M grant supports education and training on smart cities, ASU NOW, September 21

ASU and Dignity Health, one of the largest health care facility corporations, are collaborating on an initiative to seek solutions for major medical challenges. A series of initial grants are funding research intended to achieve the goal. The funded projects include two that will be led by Vikram Kodibagkar and Brent Vernon, Fulton Schools associate professors of biomedical engineering. Kodibagkar will work on developing advances in magnetic resonance imaging of brain tumors. Vernon will lead a multi-institutional program to translate liquid embolics  to clinics.

Combining expertise in robotics, haptic technologies, biomedical engineering, 3D printing and polymer molding, Fulton Schools researchers are developing devices and techniques to improve neuromuscular rehabilitation. Assistant Professor Panagiotis Polygerinos and Assistant Research Professor Qiushi Fu are leading work that promises to provide customized therapies to help people to regain lost motor skills in their hands and legs caused by injuries or strokes.

Today’s imaging and voice technologies make it increasingly possible to manipulate photos and videos to give viewers false impressions of what they’re seeing and hearing. But there are experts who can use other technologies to verify the veracity of the content of pictures and video productions. Some of those experts work for Truepic, a tech company focused on image authenticity, which is teaming with ASU’s Weaponized Narrative Initiative to combat the purveyors of misleading manufactured news reports and images. Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby, the initiative’s co-founding director, hopes to see the effort counter some of the disinformation schemes attempting to influence the national midterm elections.

Despite regular news about malicious hackers successfully breaching the defenses meant to protect websites and other electronic repositories of personal or confidential data and other information, researchers are making strides in thwarting cybercriminals. In an ASU KEDtalk, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Paulo Shakarian explained what he and others are doing to fend off impending cyberattacks. Shakarian is director of the Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Laboratory at ASU.

A venture to put Arizona at the forefront of research and development of self-driving automobiles was announced by the state’s governor, Doug Ducey. Much of the research for new Institute for Automated Mobility, formed in partnership with Intel Corp., will be conducted at Arizona’s state universities. Fulton Schools Professor Sethuraman Panchanathan was named the institute’s senior science adviser. Panchanathan, ASU’s executive vice president of Knowledge Enterprise Development and chief research and innovation officer, said the institute will become the central repository of knowledge to help industry provide reliable autonomous vehicles.

Read more news coverage:  East Valley Tribune, KTAR News, ABC15, Venture Beat, CNET, Arizona Daily Star, Automotive News, Arizona Capitol Times, Az Big Media, Havasu News, Yuma Sun, Pinal Central, Rose Law Group Reporter

Climate change and globalization are two factors leading to disease-carrying viruses finding their way to more places around the world. Scientists say more intensive environmental surveillance could help halt the spread of viruses. One way Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden wants to do that is through a global wastewater-monitoring initiative he has launched. He hopes to see more work related to the research he is leading in ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering. Halden and his team are developing new and improved methods of monitoring and analyzing wastewater to reveal information about public health conditions. Such efforts could help pinpoint where viruses are moving.

The National Science Foundation is funding a project to develop a forecast, risk assessment and communications network to help Arizona communities protect themselves from the dangers of extreme flooding. The project involving infrastructure and sustainability researchers at each of Arizona’s three public universities will be led by Fulton Schools Associate Professor Mikhail Chester. The network he envisions will employ smart phones, webcams, data streams, crowdsourcing and social media to track the buildup of floods in real time.

See Also: What data teaches about flood forecasting: NAU researcher co-leading crowdsourced app to gauge flood water, NAU News, October 3

Crowdsourced app gauges flood waters, Michigan Tech News, October 3

Scientists aim to use crowdsourced data to improve flood predictions, University at Buffalo News Center, October 8

Mikhail Chester, Fulton Schools assistant professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, wants to help the Phoenix metro area avoid some of the infrastructure problems being faced by major urban regions such as the Los Angeles area. Narayanan Neithalath, also an assistant professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, is trying to find cost-effective ways of providing new materials to enable reduced use of conventional cement and its problematic environmental consequences. Jeffrey La Belle, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is leading research to produce wearable monitors that provide people vital — and possibly life-saving — real-time information about their physical conditions.

A commercial entitled “Ocean” featuring ASU graduate student Charles Rolsky and Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden has won a Rocky Mountain Emmy Award. The awards are bestowed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence in television. The commercial focuses on Rolsky’s efforts to help find ways to protect oceans from environmental degradation. He conducts research in ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering, which Halden directs. Rolsky likes that the commercial makes science “look really cool.”

The “afterlife” of plastics is much longer than this ubiquitous material’s useful lifespan, says Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden. And the longevity of plastics that don’t degrade poses growing problems for the health of the planet’s environment, wildlife and humans. Those problems can potentially have negative consequences for decades, centuries and millennia, says Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering. He and other researchers — along with some businesses, citizens’ groups and recycling programs — are searching for solutions.

The Fulton Schools’ new student residential complex on ASU’s Tempe campus is described as a shining example of eco-friendly architecture. Its features include a wind-capture system for natural ventilation and permeable surfaces the allow storm water filtration, along with perforated aluminum louvers that are part of a larger shading systems — all of which helps to reduce heat gain the desert environment. And then there are the exposed “guts” of the building that give the resident engineering students a close look at the complex’s interior infrastructure and operating systems.

Working with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, ASU researchers are trying to improve the survival rates of people with pancreatic cancer. A team led by Tony Wu, a Fulton Schools professor of biomedical engineering, is contributing to those efforts by developing new methods of detecting hypoxia in pancreatic cancer patients. Hypoxia is a condition that deprives tumor tissue of adequate oxygen. The higher the level of hypoxia, the more difficult it is to treat cancerous tumors.

A bit over a year ago, 1,500 ASU engineering students living in the Fulton Schools’ new Tooker House campus residential complex got Amazon Echo Dots, making them members of one of the first voice-technology-enabled learning-enhanced communities. Now the University Technology Office is helping other members of the ASU community learn about the benefits of the voice-controlled computing and information device. Engineering student Carter Kwon recently joined UTO leaders to provide some Echo Dot education and training to students, faculty and staff at ASU at Lake Havasu.

There is strong debate swirling around proposals to ease federal air-quality standards and other environmental regulations — including fuel efficiency requirements for automobiles. Arizona is among places where officials are raising concerns about the potential impacts of such changes. Fulton Schools Professor Ram Pendyala says such regulations have actually sparked innovation by encouraging manufacturers to develop more fuel-efficient cars and less polluting technologies.

See also, Proposed Trump Administration fuel efficiency standards causing concerns for public health, KJZZ news, September 26

A big step toward solutions to metals corrosion has been made by a research team led by Karl Sieradzki, a Fulton Schools professor of materials and science engineering. Catastrophic failures of metal structures such as large bridges have resulted from a phenomenon called stress corrosion cracking. It happens when corrosive environmental factors and tensile stress combine to damage metals. The work of Sieradzki’s team has pointed the way to formulating new designs for metal alloys that could help prevent stress corrosion-induced structural failures.

One of growing municipalities bordering Phoenix is embarking on a substantial environmental restoration project — removing a large amount of old landfill debris buried beneath ground surface running along and under a roadway. The cleanup effort is part of a larger street improvement project along a stretch of one of the city’s major thoroughfares. Fulton Schools Professor Edward Kavazanjian, director of a National Science Foundation geotechnical engineering research center at ASU, explains how the debris problem likely developed and persisted, and how such land can be restored and made viable for urban redevelopment.  

Six scientists and engineers envision what coming waves of technological advancement might mean for the future of the human body. Among the speculations are bodies enhanced by mechanical exoskeletons, body shops that provide people regular physical and physiological upgrades and the possibility of transforming into cyborgs. Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby, co-author of the book The Techno-Human Condition, sees an evolving fusion of humans and technology on the horizon that could alter basic human cognition and meld the natural world and the engineered world.

Researchers at ASU and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine are joining forces to ramp up the battle against tuberculosis. They’ll focus on development of new and more accurate and effective methods to diagnose the disease, which is a bacterial infection. It’s a challenging task, explains Jeffrey La Belle, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of biomedical engineering. The problem is that tuberculosis patients can often contract co-infections that results in some symptoms of a disease masking the symptoms of other infectious diseases, making it difficult to correctly diagnose patients’ conditions and prescribe the best treatment, La Belle says.

Fulton Schools chemical engineering students Roberta Candela and Amanda Smith are among the leaders of the new ASU Ocean Conservation Club. The group is raising awareness about the importance of protecting fragile marine life ecosystems. The club’s work will include trips to participate in beach cleanup projects to reduce the amount of trash that could harm fish and other sea creatures. They’ll undertake other efforts to advocate for related environmental conservation education and practices.

An onsite classroom and a large maker space for studying and working on class projects and research experiments. Architectural, design, construction and infrastructure features that can serve as a teaching tool for engineering students. Amazon Echo voice-controlled smart speakers for residents. Gold certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design from the U.S. Green Building Council. Pedestrian-friendly surrounding environment. All these factors led the national MultiFamily Executive group to make the new Fulton Schools campus residential complex the winner of its 2018 MFE Award for student housing.

A business pitch competition for aspiring student entrepreneurs is among the ways ASU and the Fulton Schools supports the aspirations of students to put their education to use by developing market solutions for society’s technological challenges. ASU partners with the global electronics company Avnet to organize the Innovation Open. Fulton Schools Dean Kyle Squires is looking forward to seeing the event attract more student startup teams each year.

Business forecasters are saying tech industries — including aviation companies like Boeing — are poised to continue expanding throughout the greater Phoenix metropolitan area and other locales in central and southern Arizona. One reason: the region’s supply chain of well-educated prospective employees — particularly the 21,000 thousand students enrolled in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

The Smithsonian, Waymo self-driving cars, the town of Gilbert and the Fulton Schools teamed up to bring middle school and high school students to ASU’s Polytechnic campus for a two-day competition called the SPARK App League. The event was designed not only to teach young students some coding but to give them a taste of what high education can offer through science, technology and engineering studies.

Using tiny pieces of gold intertwined with silk and activating a bonding process by heat from a laser, Kaushal Rege and his research team have developed a way to heal wounds with a new kind of bandage, thus eliminating the need for stitches to repair body tissue. Rege, a Fulton Schools professor of chemical engineering, says such laser-activated nanosealants are more effective in healing wounds and minimizing infection.

See also: Bandages laser-bonded to your skin may fix wounds better than stitches, New Scientist, September 13 (subscription required)

What transforms houses into family homes, and homes into communities? Key factors are domiciles and residential developments designed with climate and cultural traditions in mind. The ideas of “culturally relevant” housing and “design sovereignty” are guiding efforts by Wanda Dalla Costa and her students to help members of Arizona’s Native American Indian communities ensure their new housing projects will reflect those concepts and the traditional values of indigenous people. Dalla Costa is an Institute Professor of architecture in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

It took Charlie Rolsky a while to get his academic pursuits on track toward a career, but the ASU doctoral student found motivation through his work in the university’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering directed by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden. Halden says he foresees Rolsky making significant contributions to society through his studies — both in the research lab and in the field — of the growing threat of environmental contamination from the tons of plastic waste accumulating in the world’s oceans.

Designed to aid visually impaired humans, a dog-mimicking robot constructed by several Fulton Schools students for their capstone engineering design project uses artificial intelligence and a Go Pro camera to understand verbal commands, communicate directions and evaluate potential hazards for their users. The team’s mechanized canine earned a top prize at the Intel Cup Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest in Shanghai.

See also: Robot dog leads the pack, Science Node, September 12

Dorks Estate: ASU engineering team wins first place with robotic guide dog (podcast), The State Press, September 16

Robotic guide dog leads Arizona State University team to 1st prize at Intel Cup, Association for Computing Machinery Tech News, August 21 

Research led by Karl Sieradzki, Fulton Schools professor of materials science and engineering, has shown how new metal alloys can be designed to avoid stress corrosion-induced failure that leads to damage to bridges, power plants, aircraft and other engineered structures. Fellow researchers from ASU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory participated in the project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

See also: Decoupling stress and corrosion to predict metal failure, Science Daily, September 10

Students coming to ASU from around the world to earn degrees in science, engineering and technology are also getting opportunities to learn business and entrepreneurship skills. ASU’s Global Launch program hosts educational sessions led by experts such Steve Cho, a lecturer in the Fulton Schools technological and entrepreneurship management program. Cho brings almost three decades of experience in industry to his efforts to prepare students for the technology-related business world.

Zero Mass Water, a startup company founded by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science, has developed a system that use solar energy technology to produce drinking water from sunlight and air. It’s one of several similar systems being refined and applied to ventures to provide more water to the world’s growing population, as well as for agriculture and industrial operations.

See also: How to drink from enormous lakes in the air, BBC, September 7

Every year, an estimated 8 million to 12 million metric tons of plastics enter the ocean on top of the estimated 150 million metric tons already in our marine environments, according to the Ocean Conservancy. Incredibly, trash has reached the stomachs of some of the deepest fish in the ocean, with researchers estimating 73 percent of deepwater fish in the North Atlantic Ocean had eaten particles of plastic, known as microplastics. And it’s not just fish or marine life that’s affected says Rolf Halden, a professor of environmental health engineering at Arizona State University. Every human being in the developed world has traces of plastic constituents in his or her blood.

See also: Ocean Cleanup steams out to sea in test run to clean Great Pacific Garbage Patch, WHAS ABC News – San Francisco, September 7

The Arizona Bioindustry Association announced that NeoLight has won a 2018 AZBio Fast Lane Award in recognition of its success in moving from its initial development stage into commercialization. NeoLight is an Arizona-based medical device company that develops empathy-driven, best-in-class technologies for the newborn care market. The company began as an ASU spin-out with $7,000 in funding from the university after winning the Edson student entrepreneurship competition in 2014. The NeoLight team will be honored by Arizona’s bioscience and business communities at the 2018 AZBio Awards on October 3 at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Yale University researchers contend national government leaders are doing too little to reduce threat of climate change. While there are local and regional efforts to deal with the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists say international and nationwide actions are also needed. Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, comments that it’s time to confront the challenge of finding sources of energy that won’t contribute to the problem and to reduce existing carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

The global reach of modern communications networks and technologies and the effectiveness of well-honed psychologically sophisticated methods of influencing public perceptions are being combined in a new and growing political and cultural propaganda tool described as “weaponized narrative.” Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby and ASU Research Professor Joel Garreau, co-directors of the Weaponized Narrative Initiative, gave a primer on the subject to New York City radio talk show host Leonard Lopate.

Bruce Rittmann and Mark van Loosdrecht were awarded the 2018 Stockholm Water Prize in honor of their research that has contributed to the understanding of how microorganisms can transform organic pollutants to something of value to humans and the environment. This remarkable scientific achievement has led to the implementation across the globe of technologies which make it possible to remove harmful contaminants from water, cut wastewater treatment costs, reduce energy consumption, and even recover chemicals and nutrients for recycling.

Researchers at ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering have been exploring the impacts of many common materials, chemicals and substances on humans and their environments. Among the more recent noteworthy revelations resulting from those endeavors led by the center’s director, Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, with help from doctoral student Charles Rolsky, is the damage being done by the disposal of contact lenses into sink drains and toilets. Those lenses — more than billion of them by Rolsky’s estimate — are adding significantly to pollution from the plastics in treated wastewater finding their way into rivers, streams and oceans. See the August 19 post below for a look at more of the many news media reports of these research findings.

See also: Tonnes of contact lenses flushed down the toilet, Insight magazine (Australia), September 11

ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab directed by Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic continues to produce studies and data that are influencing the outlook for cryptocurrencies and the development of the digital economy. His research team’s latest study looks at the challenges facing the Dash blockchain, as well as the opportunities that are arising.

See also: Battle of the privacy coins: Why Dash is not really that private, Bitcoin Magazine, September 6

Bitcoin should be an indispensable part of an investor’s portfolio, Decentral Post, August 30

Blood-based biomarkers could offer more effective medical aid for many of the nearly five million people worldwide living with Parkinson’s disease. Michael Sierks (at right in photo), a Fulton Schools professor of chemical engineering, is working with Mayo Clinic neurologist to identify the biomarkers to enable more accurate and earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s, plus the ability to track its progression and target specific treatments. Sierks has already identified biomarkers that have enabled earlier diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease.

Fulton Schools ASU Foundation Professor Werner Dahm received the U.S. Air Force Distinguished Public Service Award, the most prestigious Air Force award given to civilians. Dahm, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, served on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board for more than a decade. He was chair of the board from 2014 to 2017. Among its duties, the board conducts reviews of the $4.3 billion Air Force science and technology portfolio and recommends innovative applications of technology to improve Air Force capabilities.

Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan is the new vice president of the National Academy of Inventors. In his new role the Fulton Schools professor and executive vice president of Knowledge Enterprise Development and chief research and innovation officer at ASU will help shape the future of the NAI, a coalition of more than 250 national and international universities and government and nonprofit research institutes. A prolific inventor, Panchanathan has been granted several patents and copyrights and published almost 450 papers in prominent research journals and research conference publications.

Today’s contact lenses are made of tough plastics — tough enough that they don’t fully break down even after going through wastewater treatment plants. That’s causing a growing problem for the environment. Research led by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering, has found that tons of plastic disposable contacts are going down the drain and eventually ending up in rivers, lake and oceans, where fish, birds and other animals consume them — to the detriment of their health. Plus, all those contact lenses are adding to the mounting problem of microplastic pollution.

See Also: Flushing your contact lenses down the drain is adding plastic waste to oceans, USA Today, August 19

Here’s how your contact lenses may be polluting the ocean, Time magazine, August 20

Contact lenses are a surprising source of pollution, Scientific American, August 20

Contact lenses don’t belong in your toilet, Popular Science, August 20

Why are so many Americans flushing their contacts down the toilet, The Atlantic, August 19

Why you should not flush your contact lens down the toilet or sink, Forbes, August 19

Flushed contact lenses add to burden of plastic waste, The Times (UK), August 20

Flushed contact lenses are big source of microplastic pollution,  Daily Mail (UK), August 20

Plastic pollution: ‘Stop flushing contact lenses down the loo,’ BBC News, August 19

Old contact lenses add to microplastic pollution, Radio Canada International, August 20

How flushed contact lenses add to microplastic pollution in waterways, CBC News (Canada)

Researchers warn that flushed contact lenses are big source of microplastic pollution, The Hindu (India), August 22

Don’t throw those contact lenses down the drain, ASU NOW, August 19

Stop and read this before you wash your contact lenses down the drain, Science Alert, August 20

Flushing disposable contact lenses is adding to plastics pollution, Yahoo News, August 20

Do you flush your contact lenses? Here’s why you should stop, CNN/3TV & CBS 5 News – Phoenix

Why you probably shouldn’t flush away your contacts, Refinery 29, August 19

Contact lenses end up in the ocean endangering sealife, Euronews, August 19

Contact lenses down the drain may cause pollution, New China, August 20

Don’t flush contact lenses after use – bad for environment, News-Medical.Net., August 20

Contact lenses flushed down the drain adds plastic waste to oceans, Chicago Sun-Times, August 20

Flushing your contacts does terrible things to our land and oceans, Mother Jones, August 20

Stop washing your gross contact lenses down the drain, Gizmodo, August 21

Study: Stop flushing your contact lenses down the drain, Channel 12 News (Phoenix)

New study finds contact lenses contributing to pollution in oceans, KMOV4 News (St. Louis)

ASU study: Don’t throw your contact lenses down the drain, KYMA-NBC News (Yuma, Arizona), August 20

Study: Stop flushing your contact lenses down the drain, WLTX9 News (Columbia, South Carolina) August 21

Are you getting rid of your contact lenses the right way? 6ABC News – Philadelphia, August 20

Here’s why you shouldn’t flush your contact lenses down the drain, Insider, August 22

Flushed contact lenses are big source of microplastic pollution, Click Lancashire, August 23

Contact lenses are causing environmental pollution, The San Diego Union-Tribune/New York Daily News, August 23

Why you shouldn’t flush your contacts down the drain, Science Friday, National Public Radio, August 24

Flushing your contact lenses is killing the environment, The University Network, August 24

Contact lenses: A hidden plastic waste problem, Care2, August 24

ASU study: Flushing contact lenses can harm environment, KTAR News – Phoenix, August 26

Study finds contact lenses break into microplastics at wastewater plants, Water & Wastes Digest, August 29

The nervousness that hampered his performance on the golf course in high school competitions has led Fulton Schools bioengineering graduate student Nicholas Hool to explore ways for people to calm their nerves without the aid of medication. The “Hoolest” earbuds he is developing send painless electrical impulses to stimulate the nerves that control the body’s relaxation process. He thinks it can not only help people relax and sleep better but perhaps eventually be used to help people overcome symptoms of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

The disastrous collapse of a large bridge in Italy should prompt transportation officials everywhere to more closely inspect and monitor the structural conditions of roadways, bridges and other public infrastructure, says Barzin Mobasher, a Fulton Schools professor of civil and environmental engineering. Climate change, growing urban traffic volume and new kinds of vehicles will likely pose challenges to ensuring transportation structures can handle the added stress.  

ASU will be able to ramp up innovation in 3D printing technology and manufacturing with new support from NASA, says Ann McKenna, professor and director of The Polytechnic School, one of the Fulton Schools. The national space agency’s funding for research and technology transfer awarded to ASU and the Phoenix Analysis and Design Technologies company will help accelerate the development of 3D-printed structures for spacecraft. The work will expand capabilities for mimicking biological structures to advance 3D-based additive manufacturing, says Fulton Schools Associate Professor Dhruv Bhate.

See also: Arizona State University and PADT receive grant to research biomimicry and 3D printing, 3DPrint.com, August 16

A robotic dog designed to assist blind people earned a team of Fulton Schools students a top prize at the international Intel Cup student technology competition. The team developed computer software and hardware that enabled their robot to interact with a small wheelchair. With a GoPro camera for “eyes,” the robotic dog can help the wheelchair navigate around obstacles. ASU teams have now won a first-place prize in at least one of the Intel Cup event categories for the third time in a row.

Through the U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Energy, known as USPCASE, researchers at ASU have been collaborating for the past four years with colleagues at two leading Pakistan universities to develop solutions to Pakistan’s energy challenges. A new USPCASE project is teaming ASU researchers with those at Pakistan’s University of Engineering and Technology in Peshawar to work on laying the foundation for the country to establish empirically based public policy to guide its management of energy projects. Fulton Schools Professor Sayfe Kiaei is the director of USPCASE.

The recent catastrophic collapse of a major urban bridge in Italy should provide a cautionary lesson for all overseers of roadway safety, says Barzin Mobasher, a Fulton Schools professor whose expertise is in structural engineering and building materials. Extending the use of aging bridges beyond their estimated lifespan may be economical, Mobasher says, but the downside is the potentially increased risk of structural instability. The report also aired on Tucson News Now.

ASU’s Tooker House residence for Fulton Schools students is being touted as one of the premier examples of a new generation of campus living complexes. With its distinctive sustainability-oriented architectural design and construction, multi-purpose interior spaces and high-tech amenities, Tooker House is defining the evolution of the traditional bare-bones college dormitory into an interactive learning community.

See also: US university puts electronic assistants in all student housing, Voice of America News, August 14

Kyle Williams isn’t letting the demands of being a standout player on the ASU Sun Devils football team curtail his ambition for a medical career. The Fulton Schools biomedical engineering student’s athletic talent might lead him to a job with a National Football League team after college. But Williams says that opportunity not detract from his determination to become a surgeon. Williams has already been gaining real-world medical experience as a research intern at the Mayo Clinic not far from ASU’s Tempe campus.

Personalized gesture passcodes are being explored as an alternative to typing passwords on keyboards for identity authentication to permit entry into computer networks and other electronic systems. Fulton Schools Associate Professor Dijiang Huang and graduate student Duo Lu are experimenting with use of finger and hand gestures as passcodes. They are employing machine learning to attempt to overcome challenges to making such biometric access controls reliable and secure.

Fulton Schools researchers are contributing to the evolution of solar energy technology. Assistant Professor Zachary Holman, Assistant Research Professor Zhengshan Yu and graduate student Joe V. Carpenter collaborated to develop a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell that boosts electrical power production efficiency over other solar cells. Equally as important, the new cells can be economically competitive in the energy marketplace. The technology is explained in a report authored by Holman, Yu and Carpenter in the research journal Nature Energy.

See also: Tandem photovoltaic modules, silicon-based can compete in the solar market, Spaceflight News, August 10

Tooker House, the new residential complex on ASU’s Tempe campus for engineering students, is spotlighted as one of the leading examples of innovative college housing in the United States. The project is lauded not only for its architectural and environmental design, construction and amenities, but for its role in fostering a collaborative educational culture among Fulton Schools students — “a culture that students can build on for their entire lives as engineers,” says Fulton Schools Dean Kyle Squires.

With the accelerating pace of technological advancement and the possibilities it presents for altering our world and ourselves, it seems all but inevitable that the definition of what it means to be human will fundamentally change. Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby and a biomedical engineer speculate what transformations are in store for our species. In addition to expertise in engineering, Allenby is an ethicist and the author of books on ethics and technology such as The Techno-Human Condition.

ASU’s newest student campus residential complex, Tooker House —  home to more than 1,500 Fulton Schools students — is highlighted as an important proving ground for how virtual-assistant devices can enhance college students’ educational and campus life experiences. Tooker House makes Amazon’s Echo Dot available to residents. Echo Dot connects to the Alexa Voice Service that provides information, entertainment, news, messaging and personalized updates to users. ASU and other universities are paying attention to the impacts the technology is having on students.

Physicians with the American Academy of Pediatrics are warning of the risk to children when eating food that has been microwaved in plastic containers. In 2016, Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering, had already been cautioning that even plastic containers labeled microwave-safe can pose health problems when chemicals used to make the containers migrate into food.

A multi-year ecological research project has revealed the importance of the annual summer monsoon rains to the supply of water in arid regions of the Southwest. Enrique Vivoni, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment in the Fulton Schools and ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, had a leading role in the endeavor. The National Science Foundation deemed the project’s findings critical to effective future water resource management as the Southwest faces a forecast of rapid environmental change.

Artificial intelligence technology has advanced to the point that smart robotic technologies able to perform conventional household tasks are conceivable — but still far from actually achievable. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Siddharth Srivastava explains the many challenging computational, robotics and AI advances that would be necessary to develop an efficient, fully functional and reliably capable home assistant.

The goal of making renewable solar energy economically competitive with conventional electric power sources is looking closer on the horizon with results being achieved by Fulton Schools researchers. Work by Assistant Research Professor Zengshan Yu, Assistant Professor Zachary Holman and Joe V. Carpenter, a graduate student research assistant, has led to technology combining silicon with another photovoltaic material — perovskite. That kind of tandem solar cell promises to exceed the efficiency of current cells in converting sunlight into energy while still being cost-competitive in the energy marketplace.

Fulton Schools researchers continue to explore the potential of emerging digital currency and e-commerce networks. Using the resources of the Blockchain Research Lab directed by Research Professor Dragan Boscovic and the Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering (CASCADE), researchers are mapping out the feasibility of operating those networks at larger scales. The work has produced a new research paper reporting on what simulations of various scaling scenarios are revealing about the outlook for significant expansion of the digital economy. Dash, a digital currency and e-commerce enterprise, is supporting the research. Dash Core will soon have “a credible path to scaling further in the future,” says CEO Ryan Taylor.

See also: Arizona State University Blockchain Research Lab and DASH partner for scalability analysis effort, Bitcoin Exchange Guide, August 1

Dash & ASU Blockchain Research Lab discuss new research on scaling solutions, Crowd Insider, July 31

Arizona State University, Dash explore blockchain scalability issues in new research, EconoTimes, July 31

ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab explains Dash to general public, Dash Force News. July 27

Samira Kiani, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of biomedical engineering, leads an eye-opening discussion on the groundbreaking medical advances that could be on the horizon with gene editing. Kiani has extensive experience working with CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology and in employing it to develop synthetic gene circuits used to reprogram the behavior and functions of mammalian cells. The technology could allow researchers to repair or disable genes and more closely approximate nature, making it possible to potentially provide the correct template to a cell to repair mutations that are causing a particular genetic disease.

The Arizona Department of Transportation and ASU are among those leading efforts to bring more women into the construction industry. Forty percent of the participants in the ADOT-sponsored Construction Academy classes are women. At ASU, about 40 construction management and construction engineering students are active in the Advancing Women in Construction organization, which offers a mentorship program aimed at helping women pursue careers in construction professions.

Fulton Schools Associate Professor Daniel Bliss has a leading role in one of numerous new projects supported by the U.S. Department of Defense’s research agency to ignite progress toward the next generation of computer chips. The aim is to make computing more powerful and more energy efficient. New chips to speed up computer processing could spark a big wave of innovation in a wide range of technologies. Bliss will focus on advancing computer chip architecture, with an eye on improving the performance of communications technologies. Read more about his new research project, Designing the computational architecture of the future.

See also:  DARPA chooses teams for $1.5 billion electronics initiative, National Defense magazine, July 24

DARPA picks its first set of winners in Electronics Resurgence Initiative, IEEE Spectrum, July 24

DARPA selects teams for $1.5 billion eletronics effort, Signal magazine, July 25

DARPA selects teams to unleash power of specialized, reconfigurable computing hardware, Electronic Component News, July 25

ASU, UA awarded grants to expand computing technology, KJZZ (NPR), July 25

Chipmakers look past Moore’s law, and silicon, Science, July 27

News of the opening of a 2,000-year-old sarcophagus in Egypt sparked quick reactions on the internet, particularly a suggestion of a reason to imbibe the reddish liquid inside the container along with the human skeletal remains. Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering, had his own strong recommendation in response: Don’t do it. But he did offer to have his lab analyze a sample to help clear up any mystery about the nature of the liquid.   

Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic, director of the ASU Blockchain Research Lab, offers some clarity about the legal and financial implications for a new business venture based on a pay-or-tip app that is launching its own cryptocurrency as part of a global expansion effort.

A group of Arizona State University students have come up with an innovative way to make trash collection and disposal more efficient and economical. With their Hygiea sensing system, the amount of waste materials in a trash receptacle can be intensively monitored, providing information that enables users to practice effective small-scale waste management — saving time, money and resources. Surya Iyer, a graduate student in the Fulton Schools management of technology program, and Saiman Shetty, who earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering in the Fulton Schools, are involved in the Hygiea venture.

Through the Fulton Schools eProjects program that partners students with industry to work on real-world technology solutions, students at the Polytechnic School and a misting systems company found a way to keep boating enthusiasts comfortable during hot summers days. They developed a a solar energy-powered mechanism that draws water from lakes or other waterways, then purifies the water before spraying it in tiny droplets into the boat, keeping the occupants cool.

The hopes of more than 60 ASU and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students are riding on a 10-foot-long, self-propelled, high-speed transport pod they have designed and built for an international competition sponsored by tech guru Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. Graduate and undergraduate students majoring in engineering, business, graphic design and other disciplines combined their skills for the AZLoop project.

See also: ASU to showcase Hyperloop pod at international SpaceX competition, 3TV/CBS 5 News, July 13

Composites One helps Arizona State Hyperloop team prepare for SpaceX competition, Composites Manufacturing, July 9

Four recent Fulton Schools graduates impressed engineers at Raytheon, the major defense industry company, with their solution for repairing a massive robotic arm used in the company’s manufacturing operations. Recent graduates Rebecca Bell (robotics), Jesse Wittkowski (robotics and manufacturing), Aaron Dolgin (electrical engineering) and Riley Chicci (robotics) teamed up to fix the 13,000-pound robotic arm at the Innovation Hub on ASU’s Polytechnic campus.

The many children who are victims of drowning or near-drowning in home swimming pools each year motivated Fulton Schools software engineering student Kevin Hale and a business partner to develop the Halen Smart Lock. Their device designed to be placed on a pool gate contains a sensor that will send an alert to a phone when the gate has been opened or closed. The device enables users to deadbolt the gate so it cannot be opened. The venture has been supported by the Ashton Family Venture Challenge, which is part of ASU’s Startup Funding Network.

One way to improve the health of children with autism might be to alter the makeup of the mix of bacteria and other microbes that live in human intestines. Research by Fulton Schools Associate Professor Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown and colleagues at the ASU Biodesign Institute’s Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology indicates that introducing a more diverse mix into what’s called the gut microbiome helps alleviate digestive issues and behavioral symptoms associated with autism. Krajmalnik-Brown reported on a two-year study on the treatment at a recent Beneficial Microbes Conference.

Computer system hacking has grown increasingly complex, making cybersecurity an ever-evolving challenge, says Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Adam Doupé, who is associate director of ASU’s Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics. With more and more valuable information online, Doupé warns that the financial incentives for cyber attacks are getting bigger and massive hacking can do more damage than ever.

See also: Arizona professor explains how hacking evolved to data theft, Claims Journal, July 13

Work that is contributing to the evolutionary advance toward reliable and affordable solar energy systems and technologies is being led at ASU by Fulton Schools Professor Christiana Honsberg in the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies research center and by Fulton Schools Professor Vijay Vittal at the Power Systems Engineering Research Center and Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson at the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions.  

Fulton Schools mechanical and electrical engineering students are among leaders of the AZLoop team competing in the international Hyperloop challenge to design and build a prototype high-speed transportation system. Started by prominent SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the competition is bringing 18 teams of college students to California this month to vie for a place in the Hyperloop’s final round.

See also: Students from ASU, Embry-Riddle enter SpaceX competition, AZCentral.com, July 10

ASU students unveil pod in second try at SpaceX Hyperloop challenge, Phoenix Business Journal, July 10

Technologies that enhance human physical capabilities are the focus of many new endeavors by engineers. Among the more notable of these ventures are the exoskeleton devices being designed, built and tested by Fulton Schools Professor Tom Sugar and some of his students. A podcast that explores several examples of technologies that can bestow “superpowers” on their users featured a wearable jetpack produced by Sugar and Jason Kerestes, who earned a master’s degree from the Fulton Schools, that enables users to easily and significantly increase their running speed.

Ashley Bruner, a recent graduate of Xavier College Preparatory high school in Phoenix, is the first recipient of vCore Technology Partners’ “Women in Technology” scholarship. She will use the scholarship to support studies in the Fulton Schools’ computer systems engineering program in the fall. Within that field, Bruner plans to focus on information assurance. See related information at vCORE Women in Technology Scholarship.

See also: Ashley Bruner wins inaugural vCore scholarship for women in technology, Scottsdale Independent, July 11

Erik Von Burg, a teacher who for a decade has worked with the Arizona FIRST LEGO League — a robotics and STEM education program for young students managed by the Fulton Schools — was recently awarded the national Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. The award is bestowed by the White House Office of Science and Technology and the National Science Foundation. Von Burg is a specialist for the Mesa Public Schools’ program for gifted students.

The Fulton Schools are being recognized as an innovator in developing productive partnerships between industry and academia to more comprehensively educate the next generation of engineers. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reports on the efforts being led by Fulton Schools Dean Kyle Squires to give students opportunities to engage with real-world engineering pursuits early in their college years. Career Center Director Robin Hammond says industry is in turn engaging with students in educational and research endeavors. Some of the most prominent high-tech companies now have collaborative arrangements with the Fulton Schools.

A new California law enables people to see how companies are using individuals’ personal data online. In addition, people can ask for such information to be deleted from online content. The regulatory action could start a trend that brings such privacy protection to Arizona, says Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Adam Doupé, who directs ASU’s Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics. Still, he thinks it will be difficult to completely deter the misuse of personal information that has been online at any time in the past.

About 100 Arizona high school students are getting a first-hand look at how engineering impacts everyday life through ASU’s Transportation Engineering Experience summer sessions. There are important lessons to be learned simply by examining all the transportation planning, technology and traffic management it takes to move people from one place to another in a busy urban area, says Professor Tirupalavanam Ganesh, the assistant dean of engineering education for the Fulton Schools, who helps to lead the program. More information at TEE@ASU.

Heat can lead to air travel hazards, says Fulton Schools faculty associate Michael Hampshire. The aviation instructor explains what pilots can do to reduce the risks of problems that extreme temperatures can create for aircraft. Using a flight simulator, he demonstrates some of the measures that can be taken to avoid emergency situations.

Engineers have been looking at structures created by nature for ideas to improve the design and manufacture of new products and technologies. Fulton Schools Associate Professor Dhruv Bhate explores potential nature-inspired technical solutions at ASU’s Biomimicry Center. Now he is using his skills to help a local tech company see if 3D printing can mimic natural structures. If it works, the process could help improve NASA’s fleet by enabling the manufacture of devices and components for spacecraft that are stronger and lighter.

Energy industry representatives and military and government leaders who gathered at conference on the Hawaiian island of Oahu got sobering news about continuing challenges hindering efforts to establish more resilient sources of energy on the island. Better news came from Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson, director of ASU’s Laboratory for Energy And Power Solutions. Johnson described the Microgrid Boot Camp he helps to lead. The program is educating engineers, entrepreneurs and students — many of them military veterans — about working with new microgrid technologies and systems to provide communities with more reliable power.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if one day a computer writes a symphony that we enjoy,” says Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati in an extensive discussion about artificial intelligence and how it could shape the future. Kambhampati, whose expertise includes machine learning, says AI will definitely have bigger roles in more aspects of society, and human-machine interaction will become a more common part of our lives with advances in AI technology.

A report revealing the earning power of graduates from Arizona’s public universities, ranked by students’ major fields of study, finds that those in engineering and computer science are at the top. The study also found that all college graduates, regardless of their majors, are earning more money than people without college degrees, even when deducting payments for student loans. On average, engineering and computer science graduates are making almost twice as much as graduates in several nontechnical fields.

See also: Which degrees will get you the most money in Arizona? Arizona Daily Star, June 19

High-tech experts, business analysts and government leaders see the potential for India to become a major force in expanding the use of artificial intelligence. Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, computer scientist and president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, says that although other countries are leading in AI advances and applications, India has all the pieces in place to make significant progress in big data, machine learning, automation and other AI-related technologies.

See also:

Infra to collect data is the tough part (Professor Kambhampati talks about India’s AI infrastructure challenges), The Economic Times, June 16

Imagine a massive network of machines scrubbing the Earth’s atmosphere to remove carbon dioxide from the sky. Such a scenario is seen as a possible solution for taking the environmentally threatening greenhouse gas out of the air we breathe. But the idea has been dismissed by some because of the enormous cost of the technique. But Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, a leader in the new carbon-capture technologies, says the costs are coming down to a point where large-scale carbon dioxide removal can become a viable option.

Seven of 11 ASU researchers spending the summer in a Mayo Clinic and ASU Alliance for Health Care residency program are Fulton Schools faculty members. Through their expertise in computer science, electronics, artificial intelligence, medical diagnostic devices, bioengineering and biomarker technology, they’ll work to make progress on solving some of the biggest medical and health care challenges.

Fulbright Fellow David Azcona spent the past year working with Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Sharon Hsiao on research focused on educational data mining — delving into multimodal learning analytics in computer science education and the use of artificial intelligence in education. He also used his skills on a project with two ASU master’s degree students to develop computer software that analyzes data from a surveillance drone to detect wildfires. The project took fourth place at the recent U.S. Microsoft Imagine Cup, one of the leading student technology competitions, and will vie for an international grand prize in July.

A new online stock trading platform is under development that allows investors to buy and hold bitcoin. Along with the commodity exchanges that now offer investment in bitcoin futures, this signals that once highly mistrusted cryptocurrencies are edging closer to the mainstream in the financial industry. Dragan Boscovic, Fulton Schools research professor and Blockchain Research Lab director, talks about what this means for consumers, for Wall Street and for the economy’s evolution.

See also:

Cryptocurrencies to trade alongside precious metals in future, says director or Arizona’s blockchain lab, BTC Manager, June 16

Bitcoin is a valued investment opportunity according to an Arizona State University professor, Crypto Coin News Journal, June 15

ASU Blockchain Research Lab professor talks DLT & crypto to Wall Street, Bitcoin Exchange Guide, June 15

Bitcoin a ‘valued investment opportunity’ says Arizona State University professor, Inside Bitcoins, June 14

A tactic called digital spoofing is making people more vulnerable to devious phone scams. It’s estimated that the overall costs of losses to victims of such scams is in the billions of dollars. Flaws in current telephone systems are enabling digital spoofing to proliferate, says Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Adam Doupe, the associate director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, whose expertise includes telephony security.

There are sound reasons to use tap water over bottled water, explains Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Water and Health. The reasons include not only economics but also sustainability, resource conservation and ecosystem protection.

In a commentary exploring directions in which artificial intelligence technology might be taken in the future, Subbarao Kambhampati contends speculation that AI presents a threat to human society is overinflated. The Fulton Schools professor of computer science and engineering, and president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, points out that it is humans who will control the behavioral responses AI will exhibit. So, the real issue is what decisions people will make in shaping AI.

The perforated aluminum louvered façade of the Fulton Schools’ new Tooker House student residential complex is lauded equally for its design, aesthetics and functionality. Combined with a sandstone panel façade, insulated metal panels and perforated aluminum screens, the structure achieves a significant reduction in solar heat gain while still providing residents natural daylighting indoors and expansive views of the outdoors. Plus, the design emulates the natural patterns and textures of the Southwest’s desert environment.

Even with the many tech innovations achieved in computer science in the past few decades, the field still needs to make some significant progress to fulfill growing needs. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Mohamed Sarwat points to the necessity for advances in computer hardware, new applications and the computing systems to handle them, personal data protection systems and data system support for the internet of things as big challenges computer scientists need to overcome.

The Canadian company Carbon Engineering is developing a liquid fuel that would be carbon-free — providing gasoline that could help reduce the detrimental impacts of climate change by not adding additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner has pioneered the concept of capturing carbon dioxide from the air, a process that would be employed by the company to make the new kind of fuel. Lackner says Carbon Engineering is proving the process can work and could also become cost-effective.

See also:

Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought, Nature, June 7

Carbon dioxide extraction moves toward commercialisation, Greener Ideal, June 10

The potential pitfalls of sucking carbon from the atmosphere, Wired, June 13

Fulton Schools computer science doctoral student Vivin Paliath, an Arizona Army National Guard veteran, is one of two ASU graduate students to be named Tillman Scholars for the Class of 2018. He joins U.S. Air Force veteran Lindsay Lorson, a master’s student in ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, among only 60 recipients across the nation of this year’s Tillman scholarship awards. Pat Tillman was an ASU football star who later left the Arizona Cardinals NFL team to join the U.S. Army. He was killed while on duty in Afghanistan in 2004.

ASU Researchers will be looking at using composted “green waste” materials to replace traditional fertilizer for maintaining grass in public parks in Phoenix. An initial study indicates the compost could boost the water-retaining capacity of soils. If it works, the change could help conserve water, reduce parks maintenance costs and become an operational model program for other cities. Enrique Vivoni, a professor in the Fulton Schools and the School of Earth and Space Exploration, is leading the research team. Vivoni is a hydrologist whose work focuses on interactions between climate, ecosystems and landscapes.

From more than 300 nominations, Phoenix Magazine selected 40 greater Phoenix area residents 40 years old or younger for demonstrating “brilliant or precocious accomplishment in their field.” Among them is Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Erin Walker. She is developing educational technology to customize instruction for students with different needs. Walker is also using robots to improve teaching of middle school math and boost students’ confidence in their math skills and she has helped to create an app to enhance students’ reading comprehension.

Tempe is one of the first cities to employ advanced wastewater analysis to help combat drug abuse — particularly opioid abuse. The project uses resources in the Environmental Health Engineering Lab directed by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden. The lab can test wastewater samples to estimate the number people using drugs in a specific area, the quantities of drugs consumed and the potential number of overdose incidents. Halden’s lab team includes Postdoctoral Research Associate Adam Gushgari, a recent graduate of the Fulton Schools Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering doctoral program, and two current doctoral students in the program, Ana Barrios and Erin Driver. Gushgari explained the research to Channel 12 News. Barrios, Driver and Halden did the same for the other news reports listed below.

See also:

Buscan en drenajes solución al problema de opioides (They are looking in drains for a solution to the problem of opioids), TeleMundo Arizona, May 30

ASU scientists turn to wastewater to determine drug presence in the city, The State Press, May 31

Can sewage provide clues on how to combat opioid crisis? The Fix, June 5

ASU, Tempe study wastewater for opioid content, Easy Valley Tribune, June 7

Because it kills bacteria, the chemical compound triclosan has been a popular additive for use in a large number of consumer products, including hand sanitizers, toothpastes, cookware, clothes and furniture. But studies found it can have adverse impacts on human health, particularly causing gut problems. Fulton Schools Professor and director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering Rolf Halden, whose research helped to raise awareness of the risks related to triclosan, says further studies are strengthening the case for caution in the use of the potentially harmful antimicrobial.

In a podcast produced by the international Water Environment Federation, Fulton Schools Professor Bruce Rittmann talks about how he and his team at the Swette Center Environmental Biotechnology are using communities of microbes in processes that can convert water pollutants into valuable resources. Rittmann also describes work that is advancing an array of water treatment technologies and improving the engineering and management of water systems.

The Center for Environmental Health Engineering directed by Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden will work the city of Tempe to monitor the local wastewater system for the presence of health-threatening substances. Halden’s lab will analyze sewage samples to provide real-time data on the presence of opioids and other addictive substances. The partnership is aimed at providing the city information that can guide its efforts to mount resources to stem the tide of addictions. Tempe is now one of hundreds of cities using Halden’s wastewater monitoring system.

See also: Sewage is helping cities flush out the opioid crisis, Scientific American, May 25

Tempe partners with ASU to study city wastewater to monitor public health, ABC 15 News – Phoenix, May 25

Tempe. ASU to study wastewater for clues about opiod abuse, Cronkite News, May 24, and the Arizona Republic, May 31

Tempe partners with ASU to detect drugs in wastewater, KJZZ (NPR), May 23

ASU, Tempe testing for opioids in city’s sewage system, KTAR News, May 29

The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report on the self-driving Uber vehicle that struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe. Lina Karam, a Fulton Schools professor of computer engineering, commented on what measures could be taken to help prevent such tragic mishaps. She recommended requiring stringent qualifications for operators to ensure their ability to safely control self-driving vehicles and incorporating into the vehicles a process that quickly alerts drivers to problems with autonomous systems.

Lithium-ion batteries commonly used in cell phones, laptop computers, cameras, power tools and electric cars are being linked to numerous fires breaking out in landfills where these electronic tools and devices are being dumped, as well as fires in garbage trucks. In a news report on the dangers of disposing of these electronics, Hanqing Jiang, a Fulton Schools professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, describes his research on using a layer of silicone inside lithium-ion and lithium-air batteries to reduce the threat of such fires.

Chi-En Lin’s research and development of multi-biomarker technology to diagnose diseases earned him the highly sought-after Metrohm USA’s Young Chemist Award earlier this year. In an interview with a major international health and medical news outlet, the Fulton Schools biomedical engineering doctoral student talks in detail about advances in biosensors and biomarkers and their growing role in detecting and managing complex diseases and in the development of personalized medicine. Lin is conducting his research under the guidance of Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Jeffrey La Belle.

A far-ranging exploration of the challenges posed by a world that artificial intelligence technology is increasingly reshaping taps into the perspective of Subbarao Kambhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and engineering, and president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. AI will definitely lead to “a reformulation of societies,” Kambhampati says, but much of what AI alters in our lives will amount to positive changes.

Six teams of Arizona State University students brought drones they had equipped with cameras and sensors to a campus gymnasium recently, where officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Administration watched as teams launched their aerial vehicles into a simulated disaster response scenario. Plans are to make the competition an annual event to showcase aerial vehicle innovation at ASU and to motivate students to help develop the next generation of life-saving search and rescue technology.

Arizona State University’s newly established fashion program is already breaking into the innovation mode through creative partnerships pairing students in various disciplines. One in particular involves a collaborative fashion technology class project that tapped the talents of Fulton Schools students. Class member Jenna Forrey, a human systems engineering student, and computer science student Abhik Chowdhury are among those who joined fashion program students in delving into designs for clothing featuring wearable technology inspired by science and engineering. Forrey’s and Chowdhury’s contributions are noted in an earlier article, Moving the needle on fashion education, ASU NOW, March 28.

Authorship of numerous books on mathematics. Decades of research and teaching in the field. Directing Arizona State University’s PRIME Center to increase interest in STEM subjects among students from preschool to college. Editing the Arizona Association of Teachers of Mathematics semiannual journal OnCore and the monthly “MATHgazine Senior” and “MATHgazine Junior” online publications. Those are among accomplishments that have earned the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Lifetime Achievement Award for Carole Greenes, a Fulton Schools professor of math education.

Arizona State University’s EcoCar3 team is one of the groups of students from 16 universities embarking on the first leg the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Vehicle Technology competition. Their challenge: Develop a car into an electric-gas fuel hybrid and put it to demanding road tests and a series of technical demonstrations and design reviews. Fulton Schools students make up most of ASU’s team. Abdel Ra’ouf Mayyas, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of automotive engineering is the team’s faculty adviser.

Ivana Ninkovic followed the achievement of becoming an Olympic athlete for her native Bosnia and Herzegovina by becoming the Fulton Schools Spring 2018 Outstanding Engineering Management Program Graduate. Ninkovic competed on the Arizona State University swim team throughout her undergraduate years. She says ASU and the Fulton Schools turned out to be the perfect choice to pursue both her academic and athletic goals.

Arizona — especially the Phoenix metro area — is expected to benefit significantly from a global upswing in the microelectronics industry. Companies already in the state are expanding operations while others are relocating to the region. Local business leaders say that is certain to send companies to Arizona State University and other Arizona colleges and universities looking for new engineering talent. Details are in a report by the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.

Teaming with former ASU graduate student Rachel Yoho, Fulton Schools Professor Bruce Rittmann discovered that many introductory science textbooks give scant attention to some of today’s major environmental topics, particularly climate change and renewable energy technologies. Their findings are detailed in a paper recently published in the research journal Environmental Communication.

See also: Very few pages devoted to climate change in introductory science textbooks, Science Daily, April 30

What Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science and engineering Candace Chan describes as a “very beautiful” metal oxide nanowire material may help produce the next generation of advanced battery technologies. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers reports that Chan’s research group has developed a new technique for making the material that improves the safety of lithium-ion batteries. A paper published in the research journal Applied Energy Materials reveals the science and engineering involved in the novel process.

The Salt River Project utility will be monitoring the environmental health of its 180 miles of canals in the Phoenix metro area with special drones developed by Fulton Schools faculty members and students, including Assistant Professors Wenlong Zhang and Panagiotis Polygerinos and graduate student Shatadal Mishra. Hexacopter drones will collect water samples from the canals that will be examined for contaminants.

See also: SRP teams with ASU to develop high-tech drones Fox 10 News Phoenix, May 1

A tumor seriously impaired Fulton School student Stefano Chang’s vision and threatened to end his quest for a master’s degree in software engineering. He found a way to keep from getting too far behind in his schoolwork while enduring long hours of medical treatment. During the same time, he did the groundwork for his own software consulting business. Chang will receive his degree at the end of the spring semester.

Motivated by a desire to find solutions to the drug-abuse crises afflicting countries throughout the world, Fulton Schools civil environmental and sustainable engineering doctoral student Adam Gushgari plans to work on establishing an environmental monitoring startup company soon after receiving his degree this semester. The idea for the venture is rooted in the research he conducted under Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden in the area of wastewater epidemiology.

Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden is among researchers expanding knowledge about human health through the emerging field of wastewater-based epidemiology. With their Human Health Observatory, a repository of samples from more than 300 water treatment plants around the world, Halden and his team at the Center for Environmental Health Engineering are compiling a large volume of valuable data that sheds light on the “metabolism” of large urban populations.

Several Fulton Schools students were among those to emerge from the ASU Venture Devils program’s competitive Demo Day event with funding for entrepreneurial efforts. Biomedical engineering doctoral student Nicholas Hool got support for earbud devices that help alleviate stress. Ann Grimes and Christian Coleman, who are receiving mechanical engineering degrees this spring, earned support for their flood irrigation control device. Chemical engineering student Alyssa Carlson and her Engineering Projects in Community Service team mates received funds to develop recreational and business opportunities in the small Shonto community in Navajo County, Arizona

With his degree from the Fulton Schools in information management technology — with a focus on entrepreneurship, Jay Patel plans to return to India and apply what he has learned in college to improving the quality of life in his homeland. Ventures to provide communities quality food at lower prices and a smart shopping app are on his agenda.

The winning team in the recent 2018 ASU Academic Bowl was captained by Fulton Schools aerospace engineering student Allan Garry. He helped lead his team to victory over another team of Fulton Schools students in the academic trivia competition’s championship round. Team members split more than $20,000 in scholarship money.

Zero Mass Water, an energy tech startup founded by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science and engineering, has developed technology that produces water by capturing moisture out of the air. Using a special system of hydropanels similar to panels used in solar energy systems, the technology can produce about 20 16-ounce bottled of water per day. The systems have already been used to help provide water in some of the places around the world suffering the most severe shortages.

Under the direction of Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Spring Berman, engineering students in ASU’s Autonomous Collective Systems Laboratory are looking at how “swarm intelligence” found in nature (think of how individual ants coordinate their labors within their colonies) can be mimicked to design and program robots in ways that could be applied to making advances in self-driving vehicle technologies.

Efforts by ASU and the Fulton Schools to support endeavors to bring clean, renewable and sustainable sources of energy to countries around the world is exemplified by USPCAS-E, the U.S-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies in Energy.  A recent exhibition at ASU showcased more than 40 research projects by USPCAS-E partners focusing on renewable energy, thermal energy, electrical energy, and energy policy. Fulton Schools Professor Sayfe Kiaei is the director of the USPCAS-E project.

With the deep pool of talent offered by its 20,000 students, ASU’s Fulton Schools are a major factor that is making the Phoenix metro area a more attractive environment for entrepreneurs, investors and existing businesses that want to establish new tech companies. Since 2010, more than 68 percent of ASU graduates have been staying in the area to find employment.

Robots are certain to have a growing impact on employment in the U.S. in the near future. Robotics technologies still have a long way to go to effectively perform many human skills, but more and more robots have the ability to work compatibly with humans in a variety of work environments, says Heni Ben Amor, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of computer science and robotics.

ASU’s service learning program Engineering Projects in Community Service, for middle schools and high schools — supported by the Fulton Schools — is giving young students experience in technical problem-solving, research, design and community involvement. Recent award-winning EPICS projects include a system that helps teachers locate students in an emergency, a redesign of an Audubon Society gift shop, a portable workplace that attaches to a wheelchair, and a monument and sign for a facility serving families in transition.

Fulton Schools faculty members Thomas Sugar, Panagiotis Polygerinos and Panagiotis Artemiadis are among researchers contributing to technological advances in wearable robotic devices. Among their projects are robotic exoskeletons designed to aid military and industrial operations, robotic systems to help stroke victims regain mobility, a “jetpack” to help people run faster and a robotic prosthetic ankle for amputees.

Ryan Nolan and Mitch McCoy, seniors in the Fulton Schools Aeronautical Management Technology program, were featured in a simulation of how pilots are trained to respond to emergencies during flight. The report also features Fulton Schools flight instructor and airline pilot Mike Edmonds, a graduate of the program. The simulation was based on a recent incident in which a major airline’s passenger jet had to make a dramatic emergency landing.

A team of Fulton Schools civil and environmental engineering students took on a challenge to purify wastewater to make it safe for human consumption. The project — conducted at a water treatment plant in the town of Fountain Hills, near Scottsdale — was part of the American Society of Civil Engineers Pacific Southwest Conference annual student competitions, which were held this year at Arizona State University. The water treatment competition required students to sufficiently remove contaminants so that the water met drinking standards.

The city of Tempe is being aided in its quest to convert to renewable energy sources by students in the Fulton Schools Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization master’s degree program directed by Professor Ron Roedel. Those students worked with others from ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business to develop strategies for transitioning to renewables that Roedel presented to city leaders.

Close to 100 students are the first to receive Master of Science degrees in energy engineering through U.S.-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies in Energy, known as USPCAS-E. The USPCAS-E program is a partnership between Arizona State University, Oregon State University, the National University of Science and Technology in Pakistan and the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar. Fulton Schools Professor Sayfe Kiaei is the director of the USPCAS-E project. Each semester a cohort of students and faculty from the two universities in Pakistan come to ASU to work with several Fulton Schools faculty in their labs.

Read also: Energy technology grads national asset, says minister, The Express Tribune (Pakistan), April 19

The annual American Society of Civil Engineers Pacific Southwest Conference student competitions recently came to Arizona State University for the first time in almost two decades. ASU and Northern Arizona University co-hosted about 1,500 students from 18 universities in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Arizona for the event. Teams of Fulton Schools students and their peers at the other schools squared off in about a dozen different contests, including the popular concrete canoe competition held at Tempe Town Lake.

Fulton Schools students are among members of an Arizona State University team preparing for a national competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors to convert a standard gasoline-fueled car into a gas-electric hybrid vehicle. The final phases of the competition begin May 10 and involve seeing how the automobile performs on a drive from Yuma, Arizona to Fontana California.

Water quality in the greater Phoenix area depends heavily on the Salt River Project utility’s ability to maintain its 131 miles of canals. SRP is getting help with that chore from Fulton Schools researchers. Assistant Professors Wenlong Zhang, Panagiotis Polygerinos and Dan Aukes, along with doctoral student Mohammad Sharifzedah, are employing various robotic technologies they’ve developed in their labs — including quadcopters and nature-mimicking robotic fish — to aid in keeping water in the canals clean.

Fulton Schools students in an aerospace engineering club are taking the reins in preparing an Arizona State University team for a major annual national competition sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. They’ve spent many months designing, building and testing the small remote-control airplanes the team will take to the event.

The newest Fulton Schools campus student residential complex, the Tooker House, won multiple awards at a recent national student housing industry conference. The awards included Best Architecture and Design, Best Use of Green & Sustainable Construction or Development and Best Public-Private Partnership Development. The Tooker House also features high-tech amenities and work spaces where student can collaborate on projects and use tools such as 3D printers and laser cutters.

Fulton Schools Associate Professor Aviral Shrivastava’s expertise is in embedded computers, one of the technologies that make self-driving cars possible. He agrees that it’s prudent for the autonomous vehicle industry to cut back its testing of the cars on public streets until flaws that are raising concerns are remedied.

The Humble Homes project developed by Arizona State University engineering students may help the city of Tempe remedy its shortage of affordable housing. The students have mapped out the landscape for an urban “micro home” community. Some of them may get a chance to be involved in actually building the cluster of 600-square-foot domiciles.

Read also: Tiny homes aim to help tackle Tempe’s not-so-tiny housing problem, The State Press, April 10

Air Force veteran Christopher Ames considers the classic Ford Thunderbird “an icon of American automotive engineering.” But he discovered the one he acquired at an auto auction was plagued by a common problem of old Thunderbirds: rapid engine overheating. He went on a mission to solve the problem that led him to a Fulton Schools thermal and fluids engineering course taught by mechanical engineering instructor Mark Miner. The result: There is now a new redesigned auto part that corrects coolant flow problems in Thunderbirds being reviewed by the U.S. Patent Office.   

It may be time for an extensive re-engineering of U.S. national defense, writes Brad Allenby, an Arizona State University President’s Professor in the Fulton Schools. He proposes as the cornerstone of the project a universal national service requirement that would involve adults of all ages in protecting the country. Offering his views through the Future Tense partnership, Allenby says this approach could help the military and the country benefit from a broad range of skills — and may even foster a more cohesive American democracy.

Fulton Schools Professor Bruce Rittman is interviewed about the advances in environmental biotechnology that recently earned him the Stockholm Water Prize from the Stockholm International Water Institute. His lab uses the natural functions performed by microorganisms to remove pollutants from water. He is also exploring ways to put those contaminants to work for positive purposes.

Arizona State University’s new Center for Smart Cities and Regions is focusing on helping communities employ the internet of things and other new technologies to enhance their economic, social and cultural health. Among the center’s projects is building a “smart campus” that “makes the ASU community experience better.” That may involve using more of the voice-activated Amazon Echo devices that the Fulton Schools has already supplied to students in the new Tooker House campus residence complex.

Combining his expertise in chemical engineering and structural biology, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Brent Nannenga is expanding what we know about the structures of proteins. With that knowledge he will use proteins to make inorganic nanomaterials that could be used to develop new pharmaceutical drugs to treat a variety of ailments from hypertension and asthma to acid reflux and allergies. The work will involve a novel electron crystallography technique that Nannega developed.

Virtual money systems known as cryptocurrency function through a vast network of databases called blockchain. As the technology evolves, cryptocurrencies will be used by growing numbers of businesses, industries and governments, say experts such as Fulton Schools Associate Research Professor Dragan Boscovic. He is the technical director for Arizona State University’s Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering, known as CASCADE, where researchers are working with the cryptocurrency company Dash to make blockchain more secure and more energy efficient in its use of the computing power it requires. Such progress will help make use of blockchain more mainstream, Boscovic says.

Development of advanced microbiology processes that could enable the conversion of pollutants and contaminants in wastewater into valuable resources helped win the prestigious international Stockholm Water Prize for Fulton Schools Professor Bruce Rittmann and Professor Mark van Loosdrecht at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. In an interview about their work, they explain how a new generation of water treatments could capture useful chemical and nutrients from wastewater. See page 18 of the digital magazine.

Advances appear to be on the horizon for what is being called urban aerial mobility technology — what some might also call flying cars and taxis. Fulton Schools Associate Professor Daniel Bliss is working on designs for navigation and positioning systems for these self-driving automobiles/aircraft. Bliss says the success of such vehicles will require a fusion of multiple technologies, including sensors, scanning lasers, and sophisticated ground-positioning systems and antennae systems.

See also: ASU professor develops technology for self-flying quadcopter, 3TV/CBS 5 News (Phoenix)

Robots that can be controlled by signals from the human brain have the potential to become an effective physical therapy tool, says Panagiotis Artemiadis, a Fulton Schools associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. His research includes using mind-controlled robotic systems to aid people in recovering mobility after suffering a stroke.

Professors are integrating aspects of arts studies into their teaching of science, technology, engineering and math. Associate Research Professor Tirupalavanam Ganesh, the assistant dean of engineering education for Fulton Schools, says engineering is a creative profession. So he focuses on teaching his students habits and methods for unlocking their imaginations and bringing an artful perspective to their engineering endeavors.

New tariffs that increase the costs for some countries of importing steel and metals into the United States could have ramifications for the U.S. military and defense industries. Some national leaders say the tariffs will help strengthen national security. Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby is among experts who say that is a disputable claim and that the tariffs might have negative impacts on the overall economy.

Many faculty members and their students in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering in the Fulton Schools are involved in research aimed at helping to protect the personal information stored on the electronic technologies we use every day. They’re applying expertise in computer science, cybersecurity, data mining, digital forensics and biosecurity to help prevent our “digital footprints” from making us vulnerable. The article also appears in the spring 2018 issue of ASU Thrive magazine.

Self-driving cars are mimicking the unsafe driving habits of humans, says Aviral Shrivastava, a Fulton Schools associate professor of computer science. He teaches embedded computing courses that challenge students to engineer self-navigating toy cars with sensing tools to enable the vehicles to avoid driving into obstacles around them. The priority for autonomous cars should be safety, he says, not designing them to provide a human-like driving experience. His research is looking at how to build a self-driving car that can apply its brakes within a millisecond of detecting obstacles.

Read also: Should autonomous car makers slow down testing, KJZZ (NPR), April 10

Tech industries in particular benefit from university researchers who have the freedom and the skills to explore big ideas and big questions and experiment with potential applications and solutions. Progress in five major areas of technological innovation contributing to economic growth in Greater Phoenix is a reflection of the wide range of engineering research strengths found among the Fulton Schools faculty.

“Traditionally, we have just thought of pollutants as something to get rid of, but now we’re beginning to see them as potential resources that are just in the wrong place.” That statement by Arizona State University Regents’ Professor Bruce Rittmann reflects the kinds of creative problem-solving approaches that have earned the Fulton Schools environmental engineer one of the most prestigious international awards in his field. Rittmann and a fellow environmental biotechnology researcher have been awarded the Stockholm Water Prize for the global impacts of their innovations in water treatment processes that are energy-efficient, cost-saving and exceedingly effective in removing contaminants and recycling valuable chemicals and nutrients.

Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden and his research team at Arizona State University’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering are at the forefront of advancing techniques for analyzing the contents of wastewater to assess public health risks. A new project focuses on detecting the presence of opioids in sewage. The real-time data such analyses can provide could help communities respond more effectively to rising use of the dangerous drug.

The first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car raises concerns that the industry is deploying the technology too fast, without first building all possible safety features into autonomous vehicles. Artificial intelligence expert Subbarao Kambhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science, says the accident also raises questions about the capability of safety drivers to effectively monitor self-driving care systems.

Kambhampati is also quoted in “Uber Self-Driving Car Fatality Reveals the Technology’s Blind Spots” Scientific American March 21

Fulton Schools students applied their problem-solving talents in joining a local business owner to meld technological know-how and fashion sense in producing a stylish yet practical and comfortable new shoe. The student team used mechanical, electrical and manufacturing engineering skills in the project done in a capstone engineering design class taught by Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Micah Lande.

Fatalities and serious injuries resulting from the recent collapse of a newly constructed pedestrian bridge in Florida has sparked concerns about the safety of bridges in many other states. Pingbo Tang, an assistant professor in the Fulton Schools’ Del E. Web School of Construction, says Arizona’s more than 8,000 bridges are generally safe, but the state’s heavy summer monsoon rains can erode soil around the foundations of bridges. That raises safety concerns, Tang says. He adds that the Arizona Department of Transportation also monitors bridges for potential damage from earthquakes, geological conditions and related factors, and that highway load limits are posted on structurally deficient bridges as a safety warning. See related coverage KTAR News (Phoenix)

Courses on blockchain technology, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are seeing a surge of students eager to learn about the digital currency wave sweeping across the financial landscape. At Arizona State University, the Fulton Schools’ Blockchain Research Lab gives students access to blockchain technology and opportunities to be part of the cryptocurrency design process, says Fulton Schools’ Dean Kyle Squires.

Systems engineering doctoral student Samantha Janko and senior electrical systems engineering student Alexander Mobley are helping to develop microgrid technologies as part of a larger endeavor to provide underserved communities access to reliable sources of energy and other vital resources, such as water. They’re part of the research team at the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions directed by Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson.

The head of the Arizona Technology Council says it’s looking like the state could become a leader in the emerging high-tech field of additive manufacturing. That optimism is driven in part to advances being achieved by researchers at Arizona’s state universities. Dhruv Bhate, a Fulton Schools associate professor, is doing research to improve 3D metal printing. Some of his work is aimed at making an array of metal components that are lighter but still strong enough to be used in aerospace and defense industry applications.

The carbon-capture technology being built and tested by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner and his team at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions could help reduce the impacts of climate change by pulling threatening concentrations of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But even if the machinery is capable of making a big impact, there are economic and political hurdles to clear to put to the technology to work on a global scale.

A desert road trip provides a test site for a hydropanel designed to capture moisture from the atmosphere to produce water. The hydropanel is the technology developed by the Zero Mass Water company founded by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools Associate Professor of materials science and engineering. The nocturnal product testing out in the open Arizona desert was successful.

Electric-powered vehicles and many digital electronic devices could benefit from development of new mechanical engineering techniques that boost the energy storage capacity, life span and safety of lithium batteries. Fulton Schools Professor Hanqing Jiang and his research team have discovered methods for preventing uncontrolled lithium dendrite growth, which inhibits battery performance. Read more in Electronics 360, DesignNews, Mining.com, ChemEurope.com, V3. OilPrice.com

Arizona State University has joined four other leading universities in offering courses and degree programs through the online education platform Coursera. Studies in the Fulton Schools’ Master of Computer Science program will soon be available to online students — the first time ASU has hosted a degree program on a fully open scale platform. The online program aligns with ASU’s and Coursera’s efforts to make higher education more globally accessible. Read the Fulton Schools announcement.

Both threatening and hopeful depictions of advances in artificial intelligence technology continue to proliferate. AI is either a potential threat to society or a groundbreaking tool that will significantly improve our lives — depending on who’s making the predictions. Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati joins a fellow Arizona State University AI expert to provide perspectives on the debate.  

Wanda Dalla Costa will bring her perspectives on the construction of built environments that nurture our cultural connections to Arizona State University students as she teaches indigenous architecture as a newly named ASU Institute Professor. She has a cross-appointment in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the School of Sustainable and the Built Environment in the Fulton Schools. Her expertise spans culturally responsive design, sustainable-affordable housing, climatic resiliency in architecture and using built environments as a teaching tool. 

Will a $2 million grant from the Maricopa County Industrial Development Authority, the Fulton Schools will lead a new workforce development project designed to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. The effort will focus on preparing people to work in electronic technology in the medical field and in additive

Some states are considering allowing use of digital currency for payment of income taxes. Some critics contend it would bring risks and burdens to states’ tax-collection operations. But Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic, director of ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab, which focuses on the digital ledger system behind bitcoin, says the move could put states at the forefront of financial technology.

Hanging Jiang drew inspiration from the centuries-old art of paper folding — origami — to design a new mechanical structure that can unfold and lock to support large, heavy loads. The Fulton Schools professor says the new structure could be used to achieve more mechanical versatility in robotics, spacecraft and implantable medical devices, among many other potential applications. Jiang previously used the origami technique to develop stretchable batteries.

Three Fulton Schools alumni are among five women with the engineering consulting firm Terracon who are profiled in a feature story published in conjunction with National Engineers Week. Brittany Dalton, Kendra Clouse and Marissa Raleigh play key roles in providing the company’s environmental, geotechnical, facilities and materials services, and also contribute to the workforce diversity that employers say maximizes innovation, creativity and competitiveness.

Remote-controlled drones, robotics and artificial intelligence are some of the advanced technologies being deployed on the battlefield and in other military operations. The trend is creating “techno-human” squads of soldiers working side-by-side with networked machines to carry out their missions, says Fulton School Professor Brad Allenby.

Fulton Schools computer scientists Tathagata Chakraborti and Subbarao Kambhampati discuss effective collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence technologies in a recent paper, Algorithms for the Greater Good!. They point out that it’s not enough to make AI smart. AI developers must make sure the AI bot works well with human intelligence, in all its wild variety, including different cultural norms, if we are to avoid serious problems.

China is on the cusp of pursuing big advances in artificial intelligence technologies and capabilities. Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, is among AI experts who say that raises expectations for breakthroughs in the field but also stokes worries about how the country may use AI systems to increase public surveillance and censorship,  and boost its military power.

Proposed budget cuts to the Department of Energy and a trade tariff on the photovoltaic panels that produce solar energy could burden the solar power industry and reduce energy research funding. A funding rollback could impact graduate students involved in research projects to earn their degrees, says Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Zachary Holman. The tariff may mean some tough times for solar technology installers but the movement toward renewable energy sources will continue growing, says Ron Roedel, director of the Fulton Schools’ Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization master’s degree program.

A partnership with the cryptocurrency enterprise Dash will enable ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab, directed by Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic, to expand research into digital currency, establish a graduate course on blockchain technology and fund scholarships for students.

It’s a cyberspace form of bank robbery. Called “jackpotting,” it’s perpetrated by computer system hackers who find ways to get bank ATM machines to dispense large sums of money. Paulo Shakarian, a Fulton Schools Entrepreneurial Professor and director of Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Laboratory, says combating the crime will require close surveillance of the “dark web” to uncover the schemes of potential jackpotting hackers.

Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner, director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, says merely reducing emissions of carbon dioxide won’t be nearly enough to reduce the rising environmental threat from the buildup of greenhouses gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s critical to also further develop and employ new carbon-capture technologies to remove significant amounts of the CO2 that’s already there.

Three Fulton Schools students won the grand prize of a $100,000 investment in their business venture idea at the ASU Innovation Open entrepreneurship competition. Nicholas Hool, Sami Mian and John Patterson make up the team behind Hoolest Performance Technologies. Their stress-relief product consists of earbuds that emit an electrical stimulation that activates the body’s relaxation response.

Read also:

Phoenix Business Journal: Meet the student startup that won$100,000in ASU/Avnet competition

AZBIO:  Hoolest wins top prize at ASU Open

KTAR Radio News: ASU student-led business wins $100K at Innovation Open

Fulton Schools materials science and engineering students Joshua Burchard, Bryan Ugaz and Sayquon Washington went up against 10 teams of more experienced undergraduate and graduate students in a national geodesic dome design competition. Their medal dome project, featuring an intricate 3-D printed design that incorporated 31 polygons, earned the three freshmen the top prize.

Fulton Schools electrical engineering graduate student Anik Jha, a native of India, is among international students at ASU who say that while they face challenges going to school in the United States, but that the university works to help them acclimate to the social environment and to succeed in their academic endeavors.

Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Ted Pavlic talks about the need for engineers and scientists developing artificial intelligence technologies to be more aware of the potential for unintended consequences in employing AI systems in ways that might have harmful impacts.  Computer science major Matthew Acosta says students should get more training on the ethical issues revolving around the uses of AI.

Robots are our best option for less risky and more effective space exploration, says Fulton Schools Associate Professor Panagiotis Artemiades, director of the Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab. Making robots our astronauts could free up time and funding for humans to focus on solving other technological challenges, as well as answering some big cosmological and philosophical questions about our world and the universe, says Forbes magazine’s technology, aerospace and astronomy writer.

A recent outbreak of cyberattacks targeting ATM machines has led to the theft of more than $1 million from banks in the United States. Fulton Schools Entrepreneurial Professor Paulo Shakarian, the CEO of a cybersecurity intelligence startup, said the company was able to track an uptick of communications on the dark web about new hacking hardware that’s been used in the ATM thefts, as well as the sale of a guidebook on such “jackpotting” schemes

The U.S. Department of Defense has developed a comprehensive new National Defense Strategy in response to the varied and complex technological challenges to ensuring the country’s security. Fulton Schools Professor of Practice Nadya Bliss, director of Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative, talks about what university researchers are capable of doing to support the defense department’s goals.

Photovoltaic solar energy panels are among imports on which the United States recently placed significantly high trade tariffs. The action could have negative impacts on U.S. solar energy system installers, says Ron Roedel, a Fulton Schools professor emeritus who directs the Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization graduate program.

The Southwest Robotics Symposium hosted by Arizona State University looked at how Artificial Intelligence technology applied to robotics systems can make the world a better place. Fulton Schools faculty members Panagiotis Artemiades, Thomas Sugar, Hamid Marvi and Heni Ben Amor describe AI as the mechanism that will enable robots to help humans in homes, work places, hospitals and almost everywhere else.

Fulton Schools student Surya Iyer’s idea to boost the efficiency of waste management won a spot in the finals of the ASU Innovation Open competition for a $100,000 grand prize. His prototype for a “smart” garbage container uses a sensor to detect how much trash is in a trash can and makes the information accessible remotely through internet-connected devices.

Ten Fulton Schools students make up two of the teams that earned a place in a technology competition involving the New Shepherd spacecraft and the rocket company Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. One team’s project will focus on measuring and collecting data on how space affects human sight, smell, taste tough and hearing. The other project will study how pollinating bees might react in space and what that would mean for efforts to establish agriculture away from Earth.

See also: Parabolic Arc

Arizona State University is expanding its role in sustainability education and research with the establishment of the New Global Futures Initiative. Its directive is to “take a broad look at the trajectory of our planet” and to help figure out ways that we can manage the world “in ways that achieve sustainable habitability.” At the helm of the new initiative is Peter Schlosser, who now has a joint appointment in the Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Fulton Schools Professor Morteza Abbaszedegan, director of the National Science Foundation Water and Environmental Technology Foundation, points out the health risks that the “raw water” movement would pose for its adherents.

Work led by Fulton Schools Research Professor Dragan Boscovic, director of ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab, has spurred formation of a partnership between the university and Dash, a leading blockchain-powered digital currency. In addition to research funding, the partnership will enable development of an online graduate Blockchain technology and application course and scholarships for undergraduate and graduate student research fellowships.

See more news coverage: CoinJournal, ASU Now, Bitcoinist, AZ Big Media, BlockTribune, Dash Force News, Phoenix Business Journal

Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Kristen Parrish and sustainable engineering doctoral student Neda Askari are helping the Basha’s grocery chain improve the energy efficiency and cost savings of its industrial-scale food freezer storage. Working with the Salt River Project power utility and the Viking Cold Solutions company, they will be assessing whether the thermal energy storage system model they’ve developed can be adapted for other industrial facilities.

Kyle Williams, wide receiver for the Arizona State University Sun Devils football team and Fulton Schools biomedical engineering student, has his sights sets on becoming an orthopedic surgeon. Professor Marco Santello, director of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, explains how Williams and other students in the same degree program are preparing for medical school by learning about the latest in neuroscience, tissue engineering, synthetic biology, neurorehabilitation and related biomedical areas.

Billions of metric tons of discarded plastics are posing an environmental hazard around the world. Research by Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Taylor Weiss could help to diminish that threat. He’s designing a “symbiotic partnership” between two forms of bacteria to make bioplastics that would harmlessly biodegrade at a relatively rapid pace.

Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati is featured in the debut episode of the science and technology podcast miniseries “Questioning Artificial Intelligence.” He joins another leading AI research in exploring issues arising from the proliferation of AI technologies and their widely varying applications. Kambhampati is the president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Zero Mass Water, a startup company that grew out of research led by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science, is among purveyors of what is being called “live water,” “raw water” or “real water.” They’re part of the “water consciousness movement” that is sparking debates about the pros and cons of water treatment infrastructure and water purification processes, and the resulting health benefits or drawbacks of both treated and untreated water.

Gallium nitride is a promising new semiconductor material with properties that enable it to operate at higher voltages, frequencies and temperatures at higher efficiencies than silicon. With support from NASA, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Yuji Zhao and his research team are working on ways to use the material to develop a high-temperature microprocessor for space mission applications. The article was also published by  Tech News n’ Gadgets,  Phys.org, and ECN (Electronics Component News) magazine.  Read more about Zhao’s gallium nitride research.

As much as alternative energy sources such and solar and wind power might help reduce the detrimental impacts of climate change, what would really help is technology that removes greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Fulton Schools professor Klaus Lackner, a pioneer of carbon-capture technology, thinks that cost-efficient systems to remove carbon dioxide are a surmountable challenge.

Ongoing global outreach efforts led by the Fulton Schools to help modernize higher education in Vietnam are bringing benefits to both research and education at Arizona State University. The signing of a new collaboration agreement between ASU and one of Vietnam’s leading universities will enable more long-term joint ventures, including student and faculty exchange programs and new research projects, as well as economic development and entrepreneurship opportunities. Read more.

Artificial intelligence technology that thinks, understands humans and acts accordingly? For now, you will see it only in fiction like the “Star Wars” movies, says computer scientist, robotics and AI expert Subbarao Kambhampati. Progress is being made in developing AI that can assist people, says the Fulton Schools professor, but we are still far, far away from seeing something with the intellectual capabilities and emotional intuition of the “Star Wars” droids R2-D2 and BB-8.

A soft robotic exosuit developed in a project led by Fulton Schools Assistant Professors Panagiotis Polygerinos and Wenlong Zhang is being tested by the Barrow Neurological Institute therapists for use in helping stroke victims regain mobility. Systems engineering doctoral students Saivimal Sridar and Zhi (George) Qiao are also involved in the research on the exosuit being conducted in Zhang’s Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab and the Bio-inspired Mechatronics Lab directed by Polygerinos.

The popular international architecture and design website gave a big photo spread to the Fulton Schools’ new student residence complex, the Tooker House. The architects are lauded for a design theme that mimics the colors and textures of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert environment.

A team of engineering doctoral students led by Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Daniel Aukes is developing robotic fish as a potential tool for the Salt River Project power and water utility. The robo-fish could help reduce the overgrowth of pondweed and other underwater vegetation that is hindering water flow in SRP’s canal system in the Phoenix metro area.

The next big thing in technology designed to defend against hackers could come from Jae-sun Seo, a Fulton Schools professor of electrical engineering, and his research collaborators. They are developing security authentication based on the electrical activity of an individuals’ heartbeats. It may offer advantages over even the fingerprint, retinal-scan and facial-recognition technologies being used to protect systems and devices from getting hacked.

We should look at carbon dioxide in our atmosphere like we look at garbage and sewage: as a waste product to be disposed of to protect our human and environmental health, says Fulton Schools professor Klaus Lackner. Research directed by Lackner at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions focuses on developing carbon-capture technology to help reduce the potentially dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide around the world.

Fulton Schools computer science doctoral student Mohammed Almukaynizi is one of the ASU researchers who have developed a machine-learning model to predict what software vulnerabilities are the most likely to lead to the next big headline news about a computer system hacking attack.

Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati responds to a call for a ban on autonomous robotic weapons with a warning about what negative unintended consequences might arise from such a drastic restriction. Kambhampati is president of the international Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science and engineering Cody Freisen used nanomaterials, physics and solar energy to create his startup venture, Zero Mass Water. The technology, which produces drinkable water by capturing moisture from the air, could help water-deprived regions throughout the world.

We could more quickly and effectively come to the rescue of the victims of natural disasters if some fundamental technological changes are made to way we build our wireless communications infrastructure, says Fulton Schools Associate Professor Daniel Bliss.

David Frakes, a Fulton Schools associate professor of biomedical engineering, is one of the founders of the Endovantage venture. The company has gotten approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a new tool for preoperative planning. Called Surgical Preview, it is designed to enable physicians to use 3D modeling and visualization of surgical placement of endovascular devices in patients. The goal is to reduce the risks to patients and improve outcomes.

Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby is bringing his background in law, ethics studies and military issues to the Moral Injury Initiative project being undertaken by Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War.

In the IDEAlab and the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory on ASU Polytechnic campus, students work under the guidance of Fulton Schools assistant professors Daniel Aukes and Wenlong Zhang on applying robotics engineering to solve real challenges. Like using autonomous robotic fish to help a utility company control growth of vegetation in canals so that it doesn’t hinder water transport.  

Fulton Schools assistant professors Dan Aukes, Wenlong Zhang and Panagiotis Polygerinos talk about how their students are helping to overcome technological challenges “one robot at a time.” Working in the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory and the IDEAlab, students are using robotics to pursue solutions in a wide range of fields, including transportation, national defense, energy systems, environmental health, communications and earth and space exploration.

Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo Dot voice technology available to Arizona State University engineering students living in the spacious new Tooker House campus residential complex reflects the Fulton Schools mission to “merge the living environment with the learning environment,” says Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools. The idea is to help students to experience the emerging revolution in information technology science and engineering.

The collective behavior of birds and fish are among things that have guided Fulton Schools Associate Professor Panagiotis Artemiadis in developing “swarm paradigms” for drones that can be directed through brain-technology interface systems. He sees these systems being used to aid search-and-rescue missions, exploration, security, fighting of wildfires and even farming.

See Also:

MIND-CONTROLLED DRONE FLEETS ARE COMING, RESEARCHER SAYS, THE DRIVE, OCTOBER 20

Fulton Schools mechanical engineering student Mark Macluskie’s path to college was opened at an early age when home-schooling and behavioral therapies implemented by his mother helped him overcome the challenges of a diagnosis of autism as an infant. Years later his academic performance has helped him win a coveted Flinn Scholarship to support his undergraduate studies in engineering and mathematics at Arizona State University.

Research into the use of food as an electrical component is bringing Professor Hanqing Jiang and his lab team closer to developing food-based electronic materials as ingestible biomedical devices. For now, the work is focusing on their use as a non-invasive diagnostic and treatment tool for gastro-intestinal disorders.

Fulton Schools Professor Kamil Kaloush’s work on “smart” materials helped lead to development of the rubberized pavements and coatings that continue to be among the most effective materials for lessening the unwanted impacts of our expanding urban heat islands.

The technologies and climate conditions of the 20^th century aren’t reliable guides on which to base designs for new infrastructure, which will need to be more resilient to handle the impacts of climate change we’ll see in coming decades, say Fulton Schools Associate Professor Mikhail Chester and School for the Future of Innovation in Society Assistant Professor Thaddeus Miller.

Researchers are using a natural phenomenon called radiative sky cooling to develop roof panels that could reduce the energy needed to cool homes and other buildings. The technique might influence how buildings are constructed or retrofitted to be more energy efficient. It may also significantly help to advance a growing “zero-energy design” movement, says Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Nathan Johnson, who directs the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions.

The Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering is cited as one of the main sources of a “deep pool” of talent that is moving the Phoenix area toward becoming one of the next big growth centers for technology industries. Tech startups, small businesses and corporations are finding prospective employees and partners among graduates of the Fulton Schools and other schools in the region.

The Tooker House, the Fulton Schools’ new student residential complex, made especially for engineering students, continues to draw interest from those who follow trends and innovations in campus living. Equipped with features such as Bluetooth-enabled laundry rooms, work spaces with 3D printers, laser cutters and other tools, and Amazon’s Echo Dot voice-recognition technology, the project is seen as a leading example of how to design buildings to function as “learning communities.”   

Read More

NEW ASU DORM FEATURES TECH TO CREATE ‘ENGINEERING MINDSET,’ CRONKITE NEWS

Artificial trees developed by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner can capture and remove carbon dioxide from the air, in part by harnessing the power of evaporation. That same principle is the basis for a method being proposed by other engineers and scientists for generating a renewable source of energy from the natural evaporation from lakes and reservoirs.

Read More

Energy Harvested from Evaporation Could Power Much of U.S., Laboratory Equipment

Evaporation Technology Could Effectively Harness Energy from Renewable Sources, AZO Clean Tech

Recent research by Fulton Schools Professor Michael Mamlouk is cited in an article looking at the evidence on the impact of roadway roundabouts (also called traffic circles) on traffic flow and safety. The report — like Mamlouk’s research results — points out that despite some resistance to roundabouts, in most cases they have a positive effect not only on safety but on traffic efficiency, the environment and wear and tear on vehicles.

A solar-powered digital device developed by Assistant Professor Laura Hosman is the core technology driving a project that has won support through an international education innovation award. Hosman’s team is partnering with the U.S. Peace Corps to bring access to a digital library through the device called SolarSPELL to remote communities where educational resources are scarce. Hosman has a joint appointment in the Fulton Schools of Engineering and ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

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

One of major sources of news in the unmanned aerial vehicle field talked to Fulton Schools Associate Professor Panagiotis Artemiadis about the potential for advances in UAV technology to transform entire industries. Brain-machine interface and human systems integration are two of the areas that will be big game changers.

Fulton Schools Assistant Professor talks about how developing robots and artificial intelligence systems that can collaborate with humans on a variety of tasks may eliminate some jobs but also create new ones. Jobs involving application of knowledge in science, technology, engineering and math should be among those that will benefit from the human-technology interaction trend.

Recent restrictions imposed on the use of two chemicals that have been used for decades in antibacterial soaps and cosmetics still fail to stop their use in other products. Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, who led research that led to the restrictions, reveals where consumers will still face exposure to the troublesome chemicals.

Technology-related ventures are at the core of Arizona’s robust economic development and job-growth trends. Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton  Schools, tells the regional business news source that the engineering schools are serving as a major source of the new talent needed to fill the jobs in the state’s tech industries.  

The AZLoop team — led by Fulton Schools students — finished among the top eight teams at the international SpaceX Hyperloop competition, which challenged students to prototype technology for a futuristic high-speed terrestrial transportation system.

Also See:

Phoenix Business Journal  Cronkite News

The latest in voice-interface technology is the norm for Fulton Schools of Engineering students living in the new Tooker House residence complex. Free Amazon Echo Dots are programmed specifically for students.

Also See

Ed Surge  Nibletz  High-Tech Facts  KTAR News  ELearning News  College and University

Assistant professor of computer science and engineering Adam Doupé is working to find ways to protect people from so-called “phone call invasions,” phone scams and “robocalls.” He’s exploring potential solutions such as spoof-proof caller ID verification systems, among other ideas.

Visar Berisha, Fulton Schools assistant professor of electrical engineering, and speech and hearing scientist, helped to lead research that revealed a direct connection between boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s fights and the deterioration of his speaking ability at the end of his boxing career. The study found strong correlation between head trauma and impaired speaking, and will help in early detection of the condition.

Also See:

 Huffington Post  ESPN   ABC15 News  Seeker

The Fulton Schools’ Center for Assured and Scalable Data Engineering (CASCADE) will be working with one of the world’s most intriguing technologies used for creating digital currencies. Through a partnership with the Dash enterprise, CASCADE researchers will establish a “Block Chain Research Lab” to explore expanded applications for Dash technology in other industries beyond powering digital currency.

Also See:

Dash Force News Live Bitcoin News  BitNewsBot Coin Telegraph

The team being led by Fulton Schools students that has been designing and building a transport pod to take to the international SpaceX Hyperloop competition August 25-27 is in the final stages of testing the vehicle team members hope will someday be part of a system that will revolutionize transportation.

An app that Assistant Professor Adam Doupé and other computer science and engineering researchers in the Fulton Schools are working on could help us avoid bothersome telemarketing robocalls and block scam calls.

The latest in high-tech campus dormitories for engineering students —the Fulton Schools’ Tooker House — opens its doors. With capacity for 1,600 students, it’s designed and equipped to function as a learning space that “reflects the depth and breadth of the student experience at the largest engineering school in the nation,” says Kyle Squires, dean of the Fulton Schools.

Also See:

Arizona State University and American Campus Communities Unveil New ‘Residence Hall Built for Engineers’ Business Wire

ASU unveils $120M dorm built for engineers — complete with 3D printers, laser cutters and design tools, Phoenix Business Journal

A look inside ASU’s new innovative dorm house, Fox 10 News, Phoenix

ASU’s Largest Residence Hall Opens, Good Morning Arizona, Channel 3, Phoenix

Check out this new high-tech dorm at ASU, Channel 12 News, Phoenix

Dana Trompke, who earned her master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering at the Fulton Schools of Engineering in 2006, is the new manager of wastewater treatment operations for the growing town of Fountain Hills east of Phoenix. She will be in charge of a system that, on average, treats about two million gallons of water each day.

Our wastewater plants don’t filter out chemical compounds in many of the drugs and personal care products we use. Discoveries about the effects of these chemicals on aquatic wildlife raises concerns about other potentially harmful impacts. A study by Fulton Schools Professor Paul Westerhoff and Duke University Research Associate Jacelyn Rice calls attention to the troubling deficiencies of the country’s water treatment infrastructure.

There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines across the country, and many of them could pose risks to people, wildlife and water resources. Bruce Rittmann, Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, and director of ASU’s Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, explains how toxic materials can be leached from rocks in the mines by groundwater or rainfall and end up in nearby waterways. Click on the audio track posted with the report to hear Rittmann’s comments.

Traces of a contaminant high enough to violate federal drinking-water standards were found in a local municipal water system. But Paul Westerhoff, a Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, helped to allay concerns about the chemical posing a health risk.

Advances in neuroengineering are creating possibilities for enhancing human learning abilities and cognitive performance. Fulton Schools Associate Professors Stephen Helms Tillery and Chris Buneo explain the “targeted” neuroplasticity research they are conducting with other ASU faculty members to help the U.S. Department of Defense provide more effective training for the nation’s soldiers.

With the organic food market booming, consumers should be equipped with the facts about what organic actually means and doesn’t mean, and what benefits or risks may be involved in producing and consuming organic products. Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, director of the Center for Environmental Security, says even people adhering to strict organic food diets need broader knowledge about nutrition and health to make wiser food choices.

Growing cities must become more aware of the factors that create “urban heat islands” and causes them to intensify. Kamil Kaloush, Fulton Schools associate professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, and director of the National Center of Excellence for SMART Innovations, says making smarter choices about what materials to use in the construction of buildings, roads, parking lots and other civic infrastructure is critical in preventing a rise in ambient heat that makes urban environments not only less comfortable but also less sustainable.

The School of Sustainable Engineering the Built Environment, one of the six Fulton Schools, teamed up with a major Southwest construction contracting company to give young students from the Gila River Indian Community hands-on lessons in construction and engineering skills, and critical thinking.

The massive wall that President Donald Trump proposes to build along the United State-Mexico border would entail more than a significant cost, but also big energy use, environmental safety and construction logistics challenges. Barzin Mobasher, Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, points to some of the difficulties that could be encountered in developing the infrastructure and obtaining the resources to support the project.

Also See:

Mobasher is quoted in a July 21 Cronkite News report ‘Structurally deficient’ bridge over I-17 repaired using new technology

One of the more promising systems to stem the negative impacts of climate change by capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is being developed by the research team of physicist Klaus Lackner, Fulton Schools professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering and director of ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions. Lacker tells Ensia, a magazine focusing on solutions to environmental challenges, that such a system theoretically could remove CO2 from the air many times more efficiently than plants.

Fulton Schools faculty members Mariana Bertoni, Stuart Bowden, Owen Hildreth, Govindasamy Tamizhmani  and Meng Tao are among researchers whose projects to develop innovative and affordable solar power technologies won support from the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative program — giving ASU more of these research awards than any other university.

Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, joined other experts in the field who say prominent inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk is spreading an overly alarmist message about supposed threats that could someday be posed by advanced AI technology.

Also See:

AI Researchers Disagree With Elon Musk’s Warnings About Artificial Intelligence, Futurism, July 19

Artificial Intelligence Experts Rebut Elon Musk’s Warning and Call for Regulation, The Christian Post, July 20

Elon Musk SLAMMED by top researchers for scaremongering over dangers of AI, Express (United Kingdom), July 20

Michael Mamlouk’s research has revealed that Arizona’s more than 80 roundabouts mostly increase traffic safety, but the two-lane versions of the circular installations are proving problematic. The Fulton Schools professor of civil engineering recommends how drivers can reduce roundabout risks.

Also See:

Roundabouts on Arizona roads: Helpful or horrible?, Arizona Republic, July 12

What’s flowing into wastewater treatments plants can reveal a treasure trove of information about our health and the health of our environment, says Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden. Those findings could help us prevent diseases, pinpoint environmental hazards and track our exposure to chemicals that might be harmful.

Also See:

Studying Wastewater Could Be Messy, But it May Improve Public Health, KJZZ (NPR), July 19

The start-up Zero Mass Water, led by Cody Friesen, a Fulton Schools associate professor of materials science and engineering, is selling a solar-based system that doesn’t need to be hooked up to an electric grid or an existing water system to produce water from the atmosphere. The system looks promising for bringing clean water to places that lack it.

Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden is a co-author of a statement signed by more than 200 scientists, researchers and medical experts warning about the potential environmental dangers posed by two antibacterial chemicals now used in consumer products around the world. Halden directs the ASU Biodesign Institute’s Center for Environmental Security.

Also See:

Warning: Your Favorite Antibiotic Soap Could Be Dangerous to Use, Readers Digest, July 7

Scientists Urge Tighter Scrutiny of Germ-Fighting Chemicals, Fair Warning, June 20

Scientists trash antibacterial products, saying they do more harm than good, Consumer Affairs, June 20

Fulton Schools computer and science engineering student Scott Fitsimones and ASU physics and economics major Jonathon Barkl have developed a startup venture that connects homeowners who have extra spaces for parking available on their properties with people who will pay to park there. AirGarage is getting off the ground in the Phoenix area, but the students have aspirations of going national.

Fulton Schools Professor Samuel Ariaratnam was interviewed on a popular weekly podcast that probes into the intertwined subjects of emerging technologies, the Internet of Things and other facets of “the digital life.” Ariaratnam, chair of the construction engineering program, talked about what today’s “smart” cities must do to get even smarter about the use of advanced technologies for rehabilitating their urban infrastructures.

One of the latest and most inventive efforts springing for Heni Ben Amor’s expertise in robot-learning algorithms are small machines whose design is based on sea turtle anatomy and mobility style. The Fulton Schools assistant professor’s “turtle bots,” made from motors, computer chips and cardboard folded in origami style, are being tested on Arizona’s desert terrain to see how they would perform as battlefield landmine detectors.

Also See:

ASU Robotics turns to nature for inspiration, CBS 5 News Phoenix, June 5

An Army of these odd-looking robotics ‘turtles’ might help rid the world of landmines, Digital Trends, May 27

These flat-pack turtlebots will crawl across minefields for safety’s sake, TechCrunch, May 25

These robotic turtles could save your life, New York Post, May 25

A senior-year engineering capstone design project led four recent Fulton Schools graduates to a collaboration with the Arizona Department of Transportation Research Center. The result is a prototype for a new kind of cattle guard using ultrasonic sensors and decoy predator sounds to prevent the grazing animals from stepping into the path of vehicles. Project team members Kevin Davidson and Marissa Rubio recently received degrees in mechanical engineering systems. Hanqing Chen graduated with an electrical systems engineering degree. Zhemin Ne earned a degree in auto systems engineering.

Also See:
ADOT enlists ASU engineering majors to help create new cattle guard concept, ADOT Blog, May 11

A multi-university team led by Fulton Schools students is preparing to move from the design stage to prototype testing this summer as it develops a high-speed terrestrial transport pod for the international SpaceX Hyperloop challenge. The team is one of 24 that has made it to the final round of the competition. Mechanical engineering grad student Lynne Nethken (pictured) was interviewed about the AZLoop project.

Engineering Smiles, a student endeavor that began several years ago in a Fulton Schools Engineering Projects in Community Service course, is realizing its goal of providing a mobile dental clinic to underserved communities. Among the project’s leaders (pictured at right) are Sara Mantlik , who just received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, and Nick Kemme, who is pursuing a similar degree.

Fulton Schools Professor Brad Allenby comments about the hacking attack on one of the candidates in the French presidential election, speculating on the identity of the perpetrators of the hacking and their political motives. Allenby co-directs ASU’s Weaponized Narrative Initiative, which focuses on examining the uses of technology in misinformation campaigns calculated to influence public perception. Public Radio International’s “The World” is broadcast on more than 300 stations across North America. Read more about the study of weaponized narrative.

When people exercise, their bodies sweat and their clothes get wet. And that means their clothes, like their bodies, can smell.

Paul Westerhoff is a professor of Environmental Engineering at Arizona State University. He researched the effectiveness of silver in clothes to kill bacteria and how it impacts the environment. The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology last year.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

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’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.

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.

“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).

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. 

The future may be a world in which we live with artificial intelligence “agents” that speak to us in human voices and understand our thoughts and feelings on a deep level. Futurists foresee people partnering with lifelong “digital assistants” or “virtual companions” that guide us through life, and which might eventually take the form of brain implants. Experts such as Fulton Schools Professor Subbarao Kambhampati, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, comment on some of the benefits and possible risks of such potential developments.

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.

The wave of artificial intelligence technology coming at us carries with it the upside of enhancing our lives with things like self-driving cars, as well as the potential downside of threats posed by malicious hacking of the computerized devices and systems we rely on. The situation is discussed by three AI experts, including Subbarao Kamhampati, a Fulton Schools professor of computer science and engineering and president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Each of them participated in a three-day Challenges of Artificial Intelligence Workshop at Arizona State University. Illustration: Shutterstock

DNA, the stuff of life, may very well also pack quite the jolt for engineers trying to advance the development of tiny, low-cost electronic devices.

Much like flipping a light switch at home—only on a scale 1,000 times smaller than a human hair—a team of researchers has now developed the first controllable DNA switch to regulate the flow of electricity within a single, atomic-sized molecule. The new study, led by  Fulton Schools ECEE professor and director of the Biodesign Institute’s Bioelectronics and Biosensors Nongjian Tao, is published in the online journal Nature Communications.

Fulton School of Biological Health Systems Engineering Assistant Professor Tony Hu and rand his team at the Biodesign Institute are working on a new test to catch pancreatic cancer in its earliest stages.

If caught early enough, pancreatic cancer can be controlled, but the sneaky disease develops aggressively and doesn’t usually show any obvious signs in the early stages.

Because pancreatic cancer is usually caught in the late stages, an estimated 80 percent die within a year of diagnosis, according to the American Cancer Society.

But Hu’s team has discovered a new method to identify pancreatic cancer in its early development.

Engineers and scientists have long been mimicking nature to find solutions, but some are now making technological advances by improving on nature. Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Ted Pavlic, whose work combines engineering with knowledge of insect behavior, comments on news of the recent achievement of scientists who made a robot that improves on an insect mobility method.

President Trump has said he wants to “unlock the mysteries of space” and “focus on stretching the envelope of space exploration.”

Dr. Scott Parazynski, a retired astronaut and a professor of practice at both ASU’s Schools of Biological Health and Systems Engineering and Earth and Space Exploration called the crewed mission idea an “audacious challenge.”

“If you have a crew on board, the complexity of the mission increases substantially,” he told NBC News. “You are committing to making it a perfect round trip. You need to have the life support systems, the launch abort system and the recovery systems built into the vehicle the first time around.”

Arizona State University has designed its engineering schools to not only teach engineering, but also to develop entrepreneurs. In addition to the traditional classroom education, students are given the space and the skills to invent, design, produce, and market what their minds conceive. 

“The entrepreneurial mindset has become more prevalent in today’s students than ever before,” says Richard Martorano, director of facilities and space renovations for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU. “They see the engineers and inventors who have become household names and want to emulate them.”

ASU’s Panagiotis Artemiadis says “no.”

Artemiadis has been trying to get more bandwidth using a 128-electrode EEG cap to allow a human to control a swarm of flying robots with their brain. “We can already decode basic concepts like closing a hand or moving an elbow, but we can’t decode more complex behaviors,” he said.

He has created a system that allows for a single person to control the collaborative movement of multiple drones, for example making the flock move closer together so that it can fit through a narrow pass.

“We are building these machines to serve humans,” he said.

A project supported by students at Arizona State University is working in underdeveloped countries to improve their access to clean drinking water.

Five ASU students — Pankti Shah, Paul Strong, Varendra Silva, Mark Huerta and Connor Wiegand — have joined the project, 33 Buckets, in the hopes of making a positive impact and addressing water crises around the globe.

It should be no surprise that a team of girls from an arts schools earned top awards at the recent Arizona FIRST LEGO League championship tournament, says the head of the Arizona School for the Arts. The competition managed by Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering focuses on robotics and research. The school’s CEO says the team’s success goes to show how arts education fosters creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills that translate into talent in taking on the challenges of engineering and science.

A team of seven Fifth through Eighth grade robotics students was recently named one of two winning teams selected to head to the FIRST LEGO League World Festival in Houston, Texas on April 19.

The all-girls team of arts students from downtown Phoenix charter school Arizona School for the Arts (ASA) competed against 96 teams in the Arizona State FIRST LEGO League Challenge hosted by the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering on Jan. 14-15. The competition encourages youth to think like scientists and engineers through problem-solving and teamwork.

The Southwest’s largest 3D printing research facility has opened at the Polytechnic School at Arizona State University’s Additive Manufacturing Research Center in Mesa.

The 15,000-square-foot addition, holding $2.5 million of plastic, polymer and 3D metal printing equipment, will be used for a variety of research and development activities with students.

Also see:  Arizona State University, businesses team up for Manufacturing Research and Innovation Hub, Arizona Business Daily, Jan. 30

Scientists and engineers are trying inventions such as artificial trees to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere

An excerpt from David Biello’s book, The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age, features the work of Klaus Lackner and his team at Arizona State University’s Fulton Schools of Engineering. 

An artificial tree on the Tempe campus — thin strips of beige, wavy plastic stacked one atop another in a clear box hidden from the desert sun by a piece of plywood covered in a black cloth — can suck CO2 out of the air.

Getting to the guts of the matter for autism is exactly what a group of investigators, led by scientists at Arizona State University (ASU), hopes to accomplish with its novel approach to effective autism treatments by focusing on improving the gut microbiome through fecal microbial transplants. While initial results from a small human study are promising, additional testing will be necessary before an FDA-approved therapy would be available or recommended to the public. The research team was led by ASU’s James Adams, a professor of materials science and engineering. The study results were published in the journal Microbiome.

Also see:  

• Researchers Are Studying Fecal Transplant as a Potential Treatment for Autism, Huffington Post, Jan. 31
• Fecal transplant shows early promise against autism, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 30
• Fecal Microbial Transplant Shows Potential for Treating Autism Symptoms
• Autism symptoms improve after fecal transplant, small study finds
• Fecal transplant reduces autism symptoms in children in small study

Mechanical engineering grad David Richardson has received funding for ASU spinout company bioSyntagma, developed while he was a research engineer at the Biodesign Institute. The company’s Light Stream FloCell™ allows researchers to understand how disease-causing cells interact with each other and may be able to answer questions relating to why cancers metastasize, which drugs are most effective for a patient at a given point in time, and what disease mechanisms are active in arthritis, diabetes, and dementia.

Arizona State University has been named the lead institution for a new U.S. Department of Transportation Tier 1 University Transportation Center and will work with the U.S. Department of Transportation on improving regional and local transportation systems. The Center for Teaching Old Models New Tricks, or TOMNET, will work to improve data models and analytical tools used to plan transportation infrastructure, said SEBE Professor Ram Pendyala, the center’s director.

“If we can find ways to successfully integrate these kinds of behavioral variables into our analytics, then I think we can make a quantum leap in our ability to predict future travel needs and desires,” Pendyala said

One of the ‘outstanding’ facilities is the Manufacturing Research and Innovation Hub, a 15,000-square-foot center containing a lab with over $2 million worth of polymer and plastic materials and 3D metal printing equipment. The university recently formed a partnership with Honeywell Aerospace, Phoenix Analysis & Design Technologies, Inc. (PADT), and Concept Laser to help build and make the new facility a reality.

“If you go to school in Arizona and hope to pursue a manufacturing engineering undergraduate degree, the only place you can get one is ASU’s Polytechnic School.”

A recent special issue of the Zygote Journal, which focuses on biologically inspired science and design, features interviews with speakers at the first Biomimicry Summit and Education Forum for Aerospace. Among the them is Konrad Rykaczewski, Fulton Schools assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering.

In his interview, he talks about how the abilities of a poisonous dart frog led him to an idea for a de-icing method that could make flight safer, and how mimicking the natural mechanisms involved in the way water interacts with prickly pear cactus could provide a basis for some useful technological developments. He also has found a particularly effective way to wash pesky insects off of vegetables.

Rykaczewski’s interview begins on page 96 of the digital magazine.You can download the issue, or enlarge it on your computer screen. Read more about Rykaczewski’s recent research at: http://intheloop.engineering.asu.edu/2017/01/30/turning-to-nano-engineering-to-fight-off-troublesome-frost-and-ice/

Intel Products Vietnam plans to expand its factory in Ho Chi Minh City in 2017.

According to Sherry Boger, CEO of IPV, the expanded factory will prepare large area for cleanrooms class 10. Intel has joined forces with VNPT Technology to set up a lab reserved for IoT research. 

The Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program, a project initiated by Intel and supported by ASU and USAID, has trained over 5,000 lecturers and high-ranking managers for eight schools throughout the country in accordance with ABET standards. HEEAP will be a source of supply for the workforce at Intel and the IoT market as a whole.

Intel Products Vietnam plans to expand its factory in Ho Chi Minh City in 2017.

According to Sherry Boger, CEO of IPV, the expanded factory will prepare large area for cleanrooms class 10. Intel has joined forces with VNPT Technology to set up a lab reserved for IoT research. 

The Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program, a project initiated by Intel and supported by ASU and USAID, has trained over 5,000 lecturers and high-ranking managers for eight schools throughout the country in accordance with ABET standards. HEEAP will be a source of supply for the workforce at Intel and the IoT market as a whole.

Scientists are investigating a range of technologies they hope can capture lots of carbon without a lot of cost, but ASU’s Klaus Lackner, director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, doubts one of the technologies can be sustained due to scale.

The Del E. Webb Foundation Altitude Chamber on the ASU Polytechnic Campus, has been used by two Mercury Seven astronauts, U-2 spy pilots, the world-record parachutist who jumped from the edge of space and recently the SpaceX program. The heavy-duty altitude chambers simulate extreme conditions and help save lives.

Mechanical engineer Liping Wang, an assistant professor at Arizona State University, imagines an energy sector enhanced by greater control over thermal radiation. To work toward this objective, he is designing and constructing a host of custom electromagnetic materials. Wang’s endeavor is supported by a Young Investigator Program research grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, totaling $360,000 over three years. The program received more than 230 proposals, awarding grants to only 25 percent of applicants.

Among the researchers at ASU’s Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing — or CUbiC — is one who doesn’t have a high school diploma. Yet.

Shreya Venkatesh, a high school senior at BASIS Scottsdale, is helping program the device’s vibration patterns. That “vibrotactile feedback,” as CUbiC calls it, is designed to alert Parkinson’s patients that a freezing episode may be ahead and help them avoid it.    

For the first time, researchers have synthesized semiconducting gallium telluride (GaTe) in the monoclinic phase as a pseudo-one-dimensional (pseudo-1D) material. This new class of materials is characterized by quasi-1D chains of atoms running in a particular direction along a 2D surface. 

The researchers, led by Sefaattin Tongay, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Arizona State University, have published a paper on the first synthesis of the pseudo-1D GaTe material in a recent issue of Advanced Materials.

Paulo Shakarian, a 2016 Fulton Entrepreneurial Professor and director of the Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Lab, has taken on the role of team leader for area veterans through the Armory Incubator. Shakarian, a West Point grad who served as a military intelligence officer, launched Cyr3con last year. The company focuses on cyber reconnaissance.

A Sensors & Systems blog about the mind-controlled drones of ASU’s Panagiotis Artemiadis, director of the Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab, was named one of the year’s top stories by Spatial Source.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship program wants STEM students to make a positive impact on science in the world today. This year, the NSF is focused on engineering students at ASU who show promise — three current graduate students pursuing doctorates at ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering received the NSF Fellowship this year. 

Ziming Zhao, an assistant research professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, has been named a member of the iSign International Advisory Committee. Zhao’s focus is on security and privacy related problems in computer and communications systems.

Commenting on the news, Gerard E. Munera , the Chairman of iSign, said, “Dr Zhao’s background, experience and intellectual capacities represent, without any doubt, a huge asset for our company.” Zhao joins ASU’s Gail-Joon Ahn on the iSign team.

A paradigm shift in our car-centric approach to urban development is what it will take to keep traffic congestion from clogging the roadways in our growing metropolitan areas. In this Op-Ed article, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Mikhail Chester and civil engineering postdoctoral research associate Andrew Fraser help to propose ways to make that shift. They and Fulton Schools Professor Ram Pendyala are also among co-authors of articles on the same topic in ACCESS magazine and the Journal of the American Planning Association.

Scott Parazynski, M.D., former NASA Astronaut and Physiologist with expertise in human adaptation to extreme environments, CEO of Fluidity Technologies and prolific product developer, joins VeritasGenetics as a scientific advisory board member.

Parazynski, an SBHSE professor, is one of three new advisory board members chosen for their complementary perspectives and expertise in the fields of biomedical informatics, physiology and molecular genetics.

Vice Staff Writer Mike Pearl had a conversation about what would happen if the EPA were disbanded with Brad Allenby, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Arizona State University and former senior environmental attorney for AT&T. Allenby said environmental protection is a whole lot more than just regulating of CO2 emissions, and that even hardcore capitalists can love some of what it does.

Fulton Schools Professor Meng Tao is working on ways to help society switch to more sustainable sources of energy through his research aimed at producing advances in solar energy technologies. He’s focusing on moving toward large-scale implementation of solar technology that could shift our energy dependence away from fossil fuels.

The Fulton Schools Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program is being adapted by Tirupalavanam Ganesh and Jennifer Velez to introduce middle school students to engineering careers. Ganesh is the Fulton Schools assistant dean of engineering education and an associate research professor. Velez is a senior coordinator for K-12 engineering education outreach.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s most recent Data Breach Report, Arizona ranks 20th overall in terms of susceptibility to crimes ranging from “identity-theft complaints per capita” to “average loss amount due to fraud.” Gail-Joon Ahn, director of ASU’s Center for Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, answers some questions about how to guard against identity theft.

In his latest article for a leading construction management and engineering industry magazine, retired Fulton Schools research professor Thomas C. Schleifer provides building contractors with a formula for assessing the potential financial risks and rewards of taking on projects outside of their specific areas of expertise and experience.

Surgeons at Phoenix Children’s Hospital are using 3D-printed hearts to plan complicated procedures. And the man who makes them, Justin Ryan, was an ASU art student who went on to earn a doctorate in biomedical engineering. Ryan now runs the Cardiac 3D Print Lab at PCH. 

Motherboard’s Daniel Oberhaus loses 3-1 in a game of hoops against SunDevil RX, the self-learning, basketball shooting robot from Assistant Professor Heni Ben Amor’s Interactive Robotics Lab at ASU. Ben Amor reinforcement learning algorithm, called sparse latent space policy search, allows it to “learn by doing” and accurately shoot a basketball into a hoop. The machine learning algorithms developed for SunDevil RX will have value in manufacturing environments where speedy recalibration of tasks is required.

The 13th Annual Arizona Pavements/Materials Conference began Tuesday on Arizona State University’s Campus with demonstrations of six different types of sustainable pavement.

The demonstrations took place on Orange Street and McAllister Avenue where folks from ASU, the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration showcased the sustainable pavement types.  The conference, which has more than 400 attendees, continues through Thursday, Nov. 17 and includes exhibitors from the construction and supply industries.

“What if, in response to crises, augmented and alternate reality games like Pokémon Go Switch into a mode that rewarded players for donating blood? Delivering water bottles? Filling sandbags? Offering temporary housing? Or evacuating areas threatened by storm, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, or other hazards?”

The future of civic disaster response using gamification is the subject of an article by Thomas P. Seager, associate professor and Susan Spierre Clark, research assistant professor, both from the Fulton School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, originally written for Zocalo Public Square.

Elevated pressure inside the skull can be deadly if it is not identified and relieved quickly, leading to a shortage of oxygen and glucose to the rest of the body. Most solutions for monitoring are invasive and inaccurate.

A collaborative team from ASU’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering and the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, led by ECEE’s Jennifer Blain Christen, is working on a low-cost sensor that could be easily and cost-effectively used to help scientists and doctors understand epilepsy and detect seizure zones in the brain area that might lead to surgical treatment of the disease.

After completing an extensive self-study and hosting a site visit by a three-member team of industry and education experts, the Graphic Information Technology program at Arizona State University was awarded national accreditation beginning September 1, 2016.  

The Arizona State University program is among 13, associate and baccalaureate level, graphic communications related programs nationwide currently holding this distinction.

Robotics researchers at Arizona State University, led by Heni Ben Amor, assistant professor of computer science, have a invented a robot that taught itself to shoot hoops — just in time for the beginning of basketball season.

In an interview on the nationally broadcast “Science Friday” radio program, Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Karmella Haynes talks about what her lab team discovered that could have a big impact on use of the new CRISPR cell-engineering technology. 

In an interview of the PBS-affiliate TV station Channel 8 in Phoenix, Micah Lande, a Fulton Schools assistant professor of manufacturing engineering, talks about what he and other ASU faculty members are doing to bring more people into Citizen Scientist endeavors.

While the new CBS drama featured a 3D printed heart as cutting edge technology, the  Cardiac 3D Print Lab at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, a collaboration with Arizona State University, can be traced to 2010 when art majors undergrad Justin Ryan was recruited for the team at the Image Processing Applications Lab. Ryan earned his doctorate in the biomedical engineering graduate program, and now runs the PCH lab.

John Hughes, a Fulton Schools mechanical engineering student who transferred from Estrella Mountain Community College, used 3D printing to create a series of prosthetic hands for a growing eight-year-old Noah Muns as a project in his Physics II class. Hughes finished his coursework at EMCC in the spring, but even after classes ended for the summer he was still hard at work perfecting Noah’s prosthetic. He continues to mentor current EMCC engineering students so they can build new prosthetics as Noah grows. 

A new kind of solar panel is being tested in water-scarce regions of Ecuador, Jordan, and Mexico where the device, called Source, pulls moisture from the atmosphere to provide clean drinking water. Developed by ASU Associate Professor Cody Friesen’s Arizona-based startup Zero Mass Water, the setup uses solar energy to produce potable water for a family of four or an entire hospital, depending on how many panels are in use. Last year, the company raised $7 million to back a series of pilot programs to prove how simple and cost-effective access to clean water can be.

Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner weighs in on debate about the potential impacts of using emerging carbon-capture technologies to keep the harmful effects of climate change in check. Lacker directs the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.

Kyle Squires, dean of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU, and Sethuraman Panchanathan, executive vice president of Knowledge Enterprise Development, participated in an Education Writers Association panel discussion last month on Innovation and the Future of Higher Education.  Their insights on entrepreneurship and inclusion were cited by The Atlantic.

Over the past 50 years, Fulton Schools Professor of Engineering Emerita Mary Anderson-Rowland has led efforts to boost diversity among Arizona State University engineering students. Even in retirement she continues to aid the cause of bringing women, underrepresented minorities and transfer students into ASU’s engineering programs.

A “synthetic tree” created by Fulton Schools Professor Klaus Lackner and his team at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions is capable of absorbing carbon dioxide. The technology could help reduce the accumulation of this troublesome greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM and other major players in the realm of artificial intelligence technologies are teaming up to address ethical issues arising with the rapid proliferation of AI devices — and to address misperceptions about them. Subbarao Kambhampati, Fulton Schools professor of computer science and the president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, offers some perspective on the many issues revolving around the uses of AI.

Phoenix-based technology distributor Avnet Inc. and the Arizona State University Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering have teamed up to accept applications for the next class of entrepreneurs for the Avnet Innovation Lab. Through the lab, entrepreneurs have access to the expertise of one of the largest technology distributors in the world – Avnet –  and Arizona State University.

ASU’s President Michael Crow and Leonardo Beltrán Rodriguez, deputy secretary for energy planning and transition for Mexico’s Ministry of Energy, authored an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News.  The article references Fulton Engineering’s collaboration with the Binational Laboratory on Smart Sustainable Energy Management and Technology Training at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico City.

Air Legs, an exoskeleton that enables soldiers to run a four-minute mile, was developed in ASU Engineering Professor Tom Sugar’s Human Machine Integration Lab on the Polytechnic Campus, was featured in an article about new technologies that help make U.S. troops faster, smarter and more resilient. 

ASU and other universities have teamed with private industry to create a water filter that should be easier to use and less expensive than reverse osmosis to reduce exposure to chromium-6 at home. 

Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden explains how his research center’s work to analyze sewage sludge collected at wastewater treatments plants is providing information that could guide us in efforts to protect human health. Listen to the audio of his interview that accompanies the text of the report.

Fulton Schools Assistant Professor Paulo Shakarian talks about the work being done in his Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Lab to find ways to defend against cyber attacks.

Channel 8’s “Horizon” program turned to Fulton Schools Professor Paul Westerhoff, an environmental engineer, to discuss health concerns sparked by a form of the metal chromium that has shown up in some Arizona water-supply systems.

Paulo Shakarian, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, talks with KJZZ’s Steve Goldstein about how his team’s ‘machine learning system’ is finding out what’s going on in the deep — especially if they’re possible starting points for cyber attacks.

The innovative work with imitation learning by Heni Ben Amor, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at ASU,  is featured in a round of some of the more significant advancements in machine learning.  

Researchers reveal how ants organize themselves into complex living structures to overcome obstacles — and how such acts can provide valuable insights for engineers and robot designers. Ted Pavlic, a Fulton Schools assistant professor whose expertise includes robotics and autonomous systems, helps explain what lessons ants’ collective intelligence can teach us.

Joshua Steele, a postdoctoral civil engineering student in the Human Health Observatory (H2O) Lab, explains how biomarkers in waste that can measure human habits and behaviors on an aggregate basis without invading privacy. “At a community level, we can gauge a measure, we can feel the heartbeat of a community and track these different signals.”

Rolf Halden, a School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment professor and director of the Biodesign Center for Environmental Security at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, has been tracking the detrimental effects of sanitizing soaps and wipes for years. The FDA agrees.

Assistant professor Jennifer Blain Christen from ASU’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering is working with a team to develop a patch that will diagnose anything from the flu to more serious diseases using sweat. The non-invasive, convenient and cheap tool is expected to be available in the next couple of years.

Assistant professor Jennifer Blain Christen from ASU’s School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering is working with a team to develop a patch that will diagnose anything from the flu to more serious diseases using sweat. The non-invasive, convenient and cheap tool is expected to be available in the next couple of years.

Sonoran Biosciences, an early stage pharmaceutical company spun out of Arizona State University, has received a $1.48 million research grant for its antibiotic gel to treat prosthetic joint infections.

Sonoran Biosciences was founded by a team led by Derek Overstreet, who worked in Associate Professor Brent Vernon’s Biomaterials Lab while earning his doctoral degree in biomedical engineering at ASU.  Overstreet remains an adjunct professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering.

It’s still unknown who recently broke through the cybersecurity defenses of the U.S. National Security Agency, and it has experts speculating that hackers may now have a new arsenal of weapons to breach computer systems’ firewalls. Paulo Shakarian, Fulton Schools assistant professor and director of the Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Laboratory, comments on how the NSA is likely to respond to the threat.

ASU’s EcoCAR3 team is revving up for year three of the four-year, GM-sponsored competition.

Chemical Engineering Professor Gregory Raupp, director of MacroTechnology Works for the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development at ASU, is teaming up with the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Greg Worrell to help people who suffer from seizures with new brain-mapping technology.