Science and Technology

After spending five hectic, sleep-deprived days on the Gulf Coast assessing structural damage to buildings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, engineers from the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) have returned home to start doing the scientific work that they hope one day will help curb structural damage from future severe events.

Alan H. Guth, Ph.D., a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the "father" of the inflationary theory of the universe, will give the 12th annual Moti Lal Rustgi Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Sept. 23 in Room 215 in the Natural Sciences Complex on the University at Buffalo North (Amherst) Campus.

Efficient and highly scalable new chemical synthesis methods developed at the University at Buffalo's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics have the potential to revolutionize the production of quantum dots for bioimaging and photovoltaic applications.

Reestablishment of wastewater and drinking-water treatment facilities is a critical step for rebuilding New Orleans, but it likely will take months to get those systems operational, according to wastewater treatment expert at the University at Buffalo.

Ten days after 9/11, University at Buffalo structural engineers were at Ground Zero investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings. Thus began a new era in anti-terrorism research at UB, whichi now has more than $21 million in active federal and state grants to develop and investigate new methods for combating terrorist threats and attacks

The rebuilding of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina gives the city an unprecedented chance to create new city neighborhoods that are economically and racially diverse, says University at Buffalo urban geographer Meghan Cope, Ph.D., associate professor of geography in the College of Arts and Sciences.

"The most critical problems related to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina are related less to the lack of technological solutions than to the absence of a sound national policy for dealing with such events," says Shahin Vassigh, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina join 25 million people worldwide displaced by environmental catastrophes, events and processes, according to Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

Efforts to remove floodwaters from New Orleans should focus on flood bypass, strategic pumping and channel improvement, according to Christina Tsai, Ph.D., an expert on open-channel hydraulics and water-resources engineering at the University at Buffalo.

The wisdom of attempting to resettle the Gulf region "is highly questionable," according to Alfred Price, associate professor and interim chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo.