UB Engineering eNews

Departmental News:

• Chemical and Biological

  • Koffas’ Extract Leads to License Agreement

    

    Anthocyanins, naturally occurring pigments and antioxidants, may help in controlling blood glucose levels, aiding weight management and conditions such as diabetes. Through SUNY’s Research Foundation, CBE Assistant Professor Mattheos Koffas has been able to develop these molecules for the first time, through a proprietary application licensed to a subsidiary of Irvine, California-based ChromaDex Corp.  

  • Neelamegham Applies Novel Systems Biology Approach to Study Human Inflammatory Diseases

    

    CBE Professor and CoE investigator Sriram Neelamegham co-authored two widely noticed papers. One was originally published in The FASEB Journal and the other in Bioinformatics. The innovative systems biology approach to understanding cells’ carbohydrate structures is leading to a new understanding of how human inflammatory illnesses and cardiovascular disease develop.  

• Civil, Structural, and Environmental

  • CSEE Celebrates Fiftieth

    2008–2009 marks CSEE’s fiftieth anniversary year, whose graduate program was ranked 30th out of 143 by US News and World Report. CSEE boasts national and international faculty experts in computational mechanics, earthquake engineering, environmental systems simulation, geotechnical engineering, large-scale destructive testing of components and systems under extreme conditions, and structural engineering. 

  • New Emphasis in CSEE

    

    CSEE’s appointments Assistant Professor Qian Wang and Professor Adel Sadek are developing CSEE’s transportation engineering specialization, to address critical transportation issues facing the US and New York State. 

  • Chen Builds SnowMan

    

    CSEE Professor Stuart Chen has designed “SnowMan,” a desktop software package that helps transportation engineers cost effectively design roadways less prone to snow drifts and allows maintenance personnel to more precisely situate snow fences to reduce drifting on roadways. 

  • Tsai Finding Uncertainty Is a Key Flood Predictor

    

    CSEE Associate Professor Christina Tsai is working to develop more comprehensive models to predict how extreme flow events near lakes and rivers, like hurricane-induced floods, will impact urban areas.  

  • MCEER, CSEE Bridge With Pakistani Academics

    UB Engineering has formed relationships with Pakistani universities and academics to extend knowledge of earthquake and structural engineering. 

• Computer Science and Engineering

  • CSE’s Rudra and Zhong Win NSF CAREER Award

    

    CSE Assistant Professors Sheng Zhong and Atri Rudra have received NSF CAREER awards, bringing the CSE departmental total to five CAREER winners in the past five years.

  • Srihari Advancing Shoe Print Forensics

    

    SUNY Distinguished Professor Sargur Srihari (CSE) is developing algorithms for searching and matching shoeprints, a great advance in identifying shoeprints at crime scenes.  

  • Govindaraju in a Smart Room

    

    CUBS Director and CSE Professor Venu Govindaraju won a competitive Hewlett-Packard Innovation Research Award to do research on getting computers to recognize speech and gestures from a distance.  

• Electrical

  • Cartwright: Solar Energy Collection

    

    EE Professor and UB’s Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives Alexander Cartwright and Distinguished Professor Paras Prasad (Chemistry) have widely published in the past year on work enabling highly efficient solar energy conversion with chemically synthesized semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots). 

  • Sergeyev Published on “Magic Time Machine” Nano Device

    

    EE Research Associate Professor Andrei Sergeyev provided theoretical support for a team publishing research describing a “magic time machine,” a nanosensor capable of detecting light in the THz range, the far-infrared spectrum and longest of the infrared wavelengths, where 98% of the light transmitted since the Big Bang is found.  

• Industrial and Systems

  • New Emphasis in ISE

    

    New areas of study will be introduced by recent hires to the ISE department, Assistant Professors Changhyun Kwon and Jun Zhuang. 

  • Paquet Works Toward Accessibility

    

    ISE Associate Professor Victor Paquet’s research on over 300 anthropometric wheeled mobility device users has resulted in an interactive database characterizing body sizes and users’ abilities for device designers’ use.” 

• Mechanical and Aerospace

  • Madnia: Large-Eddy Simulations for NASA

    

    MAE Professor Cyrus Madnia is working with NASA to develop and implement modern large eddy simulation (LES) techniques for high fidelity prediction of high-speed turbulent combustion systems. 

  • NYSCEDII Study on High-Risk Teen Drivers

    

    NYSCEDII Senior Research Associate Kevin F. Hulme designed and operates the simulator. He explained that previously it was more generic. With no roof, it had an “entertainment” feel – fine for simulating a roller coaster – “but for research applications like flight or driving, it didn't feel authentic enough.” 

• New Faculty, By Department

  • UB Engineering Welcomes New Faculty

  Civil, Structural, and Environmental

  

  Adel Sadek, Assistant Professor

  

  Qian Wang, Assistant Professor

  (See New Emphasis article, CSEE Departmental News section)

  Industrial and Systems

  

  Changhyun Kwon, Assistant Professor

  

  Jun Zhuang, Assistant Professor

  (See New Emphasis article, ISE Departmental News section)

  Mechanical and Aerospace

  

  John Y. Fu, Assistant Professor

  MAE Assistant Professor John Y. Fu received his PhD in EE from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) at University Park. Before joining MAE, he was a postdoctoral research associate in Materials Research Institute at PSU. His research includes phase transition phenomena in ferroelectric materials at the mesoscopic scale, novel ferroelectric materials, polymer materials, and the flexoelectric effect in biomaterials.

  

  Matthew Ringuette, Assistant Professor

  MAE Assistant Professor Matthew Ringuette earned his PhD from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in Aeronautics (Fluid Mechanics). His research interests include experimental fluid mechanics, bio-inspired propulsion for autonomous vehicle design, unsteady vortex dynamics, and fluid-structure interactions.