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these spacers work like diffusers and allow the patient more time to draw the entire dose of medication into their lungs moreno said and when you're suffering from respiratory illness this may be very important dan metzen system director of pharmacy services at houston methodist said diffusers are currently in short supply due to the increased use of inhalers for both confirmed and suspected covid-19 patients leaving the hospital itself with a limited supply

metzen said nebulizers could also be used to administer the medication but metered dose inhalers are preferred due to a concern that nebulizers used by patients with covid-19 in the hospital could spread the virus although the concept being utilized for the diffusers is not new this is among the first times it has been locally 3d printed and delivered on this scale anticipating that this shortage is likely not unique to houston methodist moreno and his team are making the stereolithography (stl) file for the 3d-printable design publicly available at no cost additionally the team has designed an alternate smaller 3d-printable device designed for areas that may be more resource limited this device is essentially an inhaler interface that allows one to use a common plastic water bottle as the diffuser chamber

houston methodist has a partnership with the texas a&m college of medicine and college of engineering through the enmed program an integrated educational and research medical program with a focus on innovation dr roderic pettigrew executive dean of enmed said this rapid response by moreno and his team to develop a use-inspired solution in the 3d printed diffuser serves as a perfect example of the programs concept in action engineers are great at solving problems that benefit society and the health care delivery system right now is very much in need of help with problem solving as we struggle with this pandemic and all of its associated challenges pettigrew said enmed has risen to the occasion right here in houston to serve people in need were working with our colleagues at houston methodist hospital in order to devise practical solutions to real problems on the front lines of treating covid-19 patients

twelve research projects have been chosen for funding as part of the texas a&m university system national laboratories offices multi-element program to increase engagement between researchers from the a&m system and the los alamos national laboratory (lanl) researchers could apply for funding in two different categories: developmental fellowships and research projects developmental fellowships are designed to formally initiate a research project between a&m system faculty and lanl researchers who have already identified a mutual interest this is a one-year proposal submitted annually each fall research projects are designed for a&m system researchers who have mature ties with lanl collaborators and have identified research topics suitable for a joint effort and joint funding from the a&m system and lanl these are up to four-year awards and proposals are accepted annually each fall the following funded proposals were selected after undergoing a review process that involved numerous technical experts from the a&m system and lanl research projects swaroop darbha j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering; and harsha nagarajan lanlmodeling and discrete optimization algorithms for robust complex networks ibrahim karaman amine benzerga and alan needleman department of materials science and engineering; and ricardo lebensohn lanldesign of novel thermo-mechanical processing approaches using inverse optimization for light-weighting rupak mahapatra department of physics and astronomy; and richard van de water steven elliott william louis and rajan gupta lanllos alamos a&m dark-matter and neutrino alliance narasimha reddy department of electrical and computer engineering; and brad settlemyer and gary grider lanlkey-value storage systems for hpc lin shao and frank garner department of nuclear engineering; and stuart a maloy lanladvanced reactor structural materials under extreme radiation conditions sherry yennello lauren (heilborn) mcintosh and evgeny tereshatov cyclotron institute; and jonathan d burns nuclear education and science center; eva birnbaum michael fassbender etienne vermeulen and stosh kozimor lanlproduction of radioisotopes (at-211 + tb-149) for cancer therapy developmental fellowships karim ahmed department of nuclear engineering (pi); and anders david ragnar andersson lanlquantitative mesoscale modeling of high burn-up structure (hbs) formation and evolution in uo2 carlos bertulani texas a&m university-commerce department of physics and astronomy (pi); and eddy timmermans lanlstudy of dilute gas bose_einstein condensates matthias katzfuss department of statistics (pi); and earl lawrence lanlscalable gaussian-process methods for the analysis of computer experiments michael nippe department of chemistry (pi); and stosh kozimor lanlcorrelating f-block covalency with magnetic exchange in actinide-lanthanide heterometallics: towards highly anisotropic 5f-4f spin systems sarah wolff department of industrial and systems engineering (pi); and don brown samantha lawrence and adam wachtor lanlcharacterizing components from the directed energy deposition (ded) additive manufacturing process for new materials yu xuan (kelvin) xie department of materials science and engineering (pi); and arul kumar mariyappan lanlcharacterizing understanding and predicting the deformation mechanisms of metallic systems

today the texas a&m university system announced the name of its landmark five-acre campus in houston texas at the prominent intersection of holcombe blvd and main st near the texas medical center setting a new standard for collaboration in engineering medicine research and education is the first all-new mixed-use campus for the texas a&m system in houston: texas a&m innovation plaza the texas a&m system initiated the new campus by acquiring and renovating an 18-story office building at 1020 holcombe to be the home for enmed a unique two-degree program that provides students the chance to earn a masters degree in engineering from texas a&m university and a medical degree from the texas a&m college of medicine the enmed building will open later this year complementing the academic research discovery and innovation missions of the enmed program texas a&m innovation plaza will provide a welcoming secure and vibrant experience to the campus population and visitors alike with generous green spaces and lifestyle amenities not commonly found in the texas medical center area with the groundbreaking scheduled in late 2020 the a&m systems public-private partnership (p3) developer is bringing an additional investment of $401 million to fulfill unmet needs with two complementary towers totaling an additional 19 million square feet enmed is just the first example of innovation that the texas a&m system intends to bring to the texas a&m innovation plaza said chancellor john sharp we are excited to have such a visible location in the texas medical center scheduled to be delivered in june 2022 is a 19-story 714-bed student housing tower that will overlook a scenic plaza flanked by a large garage with retail and dining as well as convenient affordable parking for 2 800 vehicles texas a&m medical students and prairie view a&m university nursing students will be given priority for housing but students from other institutions could fill open slots if available scheduled to be delivered in january 2024 is a 17-story 515 000-square-foot integrated medical building that will be built atop the 13-story parking structure with generous efficient floorplates and robust building technologies this integrated medical building will be ideally suited for medical clinical biomedical tech and office use accessible via main st holcombe blvd and fannin st texas a&m innovation plaza is also adjacent to the metro texas medical center station providing convenient connectivity via bus and light rail service to the texas medical center museum district and downtown houston the developer for the p3 projects is medistar corporation american triple i partners founded by texas a&m alum henry cisneros is part of the financing team

the texas a&m university system is one of the largest systems of higher education in the nation with a budget of $63 billion the system is a statewide network of 11 universities; a comprehensive health science center; eight state agencies including the texas division of emergency management; and the rellis campus the texas a&m system educates more than 151 000 students and makes more than 22 million additional educational contacts through service and outreach programs each year system-wide research and development expenditures exceeded $1 billion in fy 2019 and helped drive the states economy

innovation was on full display this week at the sixth annual texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) due to safety concerns amid the covid-19 pandemic organizers shifted the event to a virtual platform dr albert huangs company allotrope medical took home the top $50 000 prize for the stimsite technology which is a smooth muscle stimulation technology that allows surgeons to rapidly and safely identify critical tissue structures like the ureter during surgery winning this years tnvc competition is truly the highlight of 2020 for us not only will the award allow us to continue our rapid advancements and commercialization but it has increased our visibility within the startup ecosystem in texas and beyond huang said certainly this years competition was different by necessity but thanks to the hard work of tnvc the connections interactivity and overall flow of the event over the course of two days were seamless during these uncertain times this competition was one of the rare moments where the startup community can join together from afar to support one another and see the amazing things we are all doing even though many of us are working from home innovation doesnt stop we just all have to adapt he said despite having to move everything pretty quickly over to a fully online format this year we had a tremendous group of startups competing it was important to us and to them to hold this years event said chris scotti entrepreneur-in-residence for tees and chair of the competition these startups are not only providing the opportunity to support the local and state economies but their ideas have the potential to improve the health and well-being of our citizens and the environment the prize pool for this years competition was nearly $400 000 in cash and in-kind services the full list of winners includes: 1st – $50 000 – allotrope medical 2nd – $35 000 – sensytec 3rd – $25 000 – polyvascular 4th – $15 000 – bezoar laboratories llc 5th – $10 000 – bondwell technologies 6th – $5 000 – intelligent nanofiber elevator pitch competition: 1st - $5 000 – veradermics 2nd - $4 000 – novothelium 3rd - $3 000 – allosense inc 4th - $2 000 – feel the color 5th - $1 000 – hipr innovation inc additional prizes: southwest pediatric device prize – hipr and veradermics aggie angel network investment prize – allotrope medical innovators legal – endpoint security inc and polyvascular paragon innovations prize – allosense inc thomas | horstemeyer ip legal services – sensytec and xebec inc amerra visualization services prize – em device lab inc schwegman lundberg and woessner ip legal services prize – texpower hollinden marketing and strategists services prize – novothelium and polyvascular biotex investment prize – em device lab inc axle-box services prize – bezoar laboratories llc and sensytec brazos valley economic development corporation launch prize – bezoar laboratories llc

simple toys to custom prosthetic parts are made from plastic which is also a popular 3d printing material however these printed parts are mechanically weak a flaw caused by the imperfect bonding between the individual printed layers that make up 3d-printed parts researchers at texas a&m university in collaboration with scientists from essentium inc have now developed the technology needed to overcome 3d printings weak spot by integrating plasma science and carbon nanotube technology into standard 3d printing the researchers welded adjacent printed layers more effectively increasing the overall reliability of the final part finding a way to remedy the inadequate bonding between printed layers has been an ongoing quest in the 3d-printing field said dr micah green associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering we have now developed a sophisticated technology that can bolster welding between these layers all while printing the 3d part a full description of their findings is described in the february issue of the journal nano letters plastics are commonly used for extrusion 3d printing known technically as fused-deposition modeling in this technique molten plastic is squeezed out of a nozzle that prints parts layer by layer as the printed layers cool they fuse to one another to create the final 3d part however studies show that these layers join imperfectly; printed parts are weaker than identical parts made by injection molding where melted plastics simply assume the shape of a preset mold upon cooling to join these interfaces more thoroughly additional heating is required but heating printed parts using something akin to an oven has a major drawback if you put something in an oven it's going to heat everything so a 3d-printed part can warp and melt losing its shape green said what we really needed was some way to heat only the interfaces between printed layers and not the whole part to promote inter-layer bonding the team turned to carbon nanotubes since these carbon particles heat in response to electrical currents the researchers coated the surface of each printed layer with these nanomaterials similar to the heating effect of microwaves on food the team found that these carbon nanotube coatings can be heated using electric currents allowing the printed layers to bond together when the researchers tested the strength of 3d-printed parts using their new technology they found that their strength was comparable to injection-molded parts this work is supported by funds from the national science foundation

the primary author of this research is dr c brandon sweeney a former texas a&m materials science and engineering student in greens laboratory he is the head of research and development and co-founder at essentium inc the research team also collaborated with dr david staack associate professor in the j mike walker ‘66 department of mechanical engineering to generate a beam of charged air particles or plasma that could carry an electrical charge to the surface of 3d printed parts to allow electric currents to pass through printed parts heating the nanotubes and welding the layers together

spoiling foods souring wine and worsening wounds have a common culprit a process called oxidation although the ill effects of these chemical reactions can be curtailed by the action of antioxidants creating a sturdy platform capable of providing prolonged antioxidant activity is an ongoing challenge researchers at texas a&m university might have solved this problem with their new antioxidant mats made from an intertwined network of ultra-fine strands of a polymer and an antioxidant found in red wine the researchers said these mats are strong stable and capable of delivering antioxidant activity for prolonged periods of time our innovation is that we have fine-tuned the steps needed to spin defect-free ultra-microscopic fibers for making high-performing antioxidant mats said adwait gaikwad a graduate student in dr svetlana sukhishvilis laboratory in the college of engineering each fiber is intermolecularly linked to several antioxidant molecules and so the final mat which is made of millions and millions of such fibers has enhanced antioxidant functionality a description of their study is in the february issue of the journal acs applied materials & interfaces although oxidation is a common natural phenomenon left unchecked this chemical reaction can be detrimental for example in alcoholic beverages too much oxidation leads to the formation of acetaldehyde from alcohol altering the drinks taste color and aroma in the body oxidative stress causes a buildup of free radicals that can harm healthy cells and body tissue

however oxidative reactions can be kept in control by the action of antioxidants these compounds readily combine with ambient oxygen or donate electrons to neutralize charged radicals of the many antioxidants a molecule found in red wine called tannic acid is particularly attractive because it is also antibacterial and antiviral the researchers said these remarkable properties are due to the presence of groupings of atoms called polyphenols within tannic acids molecular structure in past studies antioxidants were blended into synthetic mats made by mixing a polymer and antioxidants together then flattening them into a sheet but these mats have lower functionality because the surface area for antioxidant activity is limited to increase the surface area for antioxidant activity the researchers created an antioxidant mesh made with ultrafine fibers of polymer and tannic acid thus each strand of this mesh-like mat could contribute to antioxidant activity we have created antioxidant mats with a high surface area robust mechanical properties and the ability to provide long-term antioxidant protection said gaikwad also the release of tannic acid is on-demand the hydrogen bonds hold the antioxidants in the material until there is an external stimulus like ph these properties make our mats suitable for diverse applications from bandages for wound-healing to inner linings of containers for food storage this work is also supported by the national science foundation

dr roderic i pettigrew a phd and md who is the robert a welch professor in the college of medicine and professor of biomedical engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university has been elected into the american academy of arts and sciences the honorific academy one of the nations oldest was founded in 1780 by john adams george washington thomas jefferson and benjamin franklin to recognize remarkable people working to advance the public good members are categorized into five classes; however pettigrew has joined under the prestigious new interclass category which identifies members recognized in more than one class i have always been drawn to the intersection and convergence of the physical sciences life sciences and engineering said pettigrew who also spent 15 years as the founding director of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering my ultimate research goal is to eliminate heart attacks and strokes the way to do that is by integrating a range of disciplinary techniques that is through transdisciplinary research pettigrew hopes to develop a beyond the state of the art mri system able to see the wall of the coronary artery in fine detail pushing the limits of mri physics to the maximum point that is tolerated by the human body such a scanner which could help eliminate heart attacks would be unique in the world he said pettigrew is also collaborating with dr john cooke at houston methodist hospital to study the problem of cell aging and its stimulation of atherosclerosis using a human progeria model we are studying the behavior of endothelial cells at the cellular and molecular level he explained this includes understanding the biomechanics of cells the impact of aging at the cellular level and the impact of molecular therapies such as delivering the gene that codes for telomere length we are studying the mechanogenomics of rapidly aging cells and the response to molecular therapies telomeres are protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that protect against the effects of cell aging or cell senescence every time cells divide and chromosomes get reproduced they lose some protective coating defects resulting from the protective caps wearing away over time can cause cellular dysfunction identifying how to restore that coating can return cells to a more functional state given that one of the major factors leading to heart disease is cell senescence pettigrew is interested in understanding and modulating this process through investigating progeria cells and why they behave differently pettigrew also serves as executive dean for the engineering medicine (enmed) collaboration between texas a&m and houston methodist hospital in which students study a blended engineering and medicine curriculum to earn both md and me degrees in only four years enmed has emerged from a movement that recognizes the inherent value in merging engineering and medicine with the biological and physical sciences pettigrew said traditionally weve separated these areas as individual disciplines but in life there are no boundaries enmed graduates called physicianeers will be conceptually fluent in multiple scientific languages such as engineering and medicine so that they better understand life processes and are trained to innovate and invent solutions across the whole health care landscape the goal is to transform the health care ecosystem so that we all have good health through the entirety of our lives said pettigrew since its founding 240 years ago the american academy of arts and sciences has welcomed many distinguished members that span across history and include exceptional names such as john f kennedy martin luther king jr toni morrison charles darwin albert einstein winston churchill akira kurosawa and nelson mandela pettigrew will join their ranks in cambridge massachusetts on friday oct 9

a typical nuclear reactor uses only a small fraction of its fuel rod to produce power before the energy-generating reaction naturally terminates what is left behind is an assortment of radioactive elements including unused fuel that are disposed of as nuclear waste in the united states although certain elements recycled from waste can be used for powering newer generations of nuclear reactors extracting leftover fuel in a way that prevents possible misuse is an ongoing challenge texas a&m engineering researchers have devised a simple proliferation-resistant approach for separating out different components of nuclear waste the prescribed one-step chemical reaction described in the february issue of the journal industrial & engineering chemistry research resulted in the formation of crystals containing all of the leftover nuclear fuel elements distributed uniformly the simplicity of their recycling approach also makes the translation from lab bench to industry feasible

our recycling strategy can be easily integrated into a chemical flow sheet for industrial-scale implementation said dr jonathan burns research scientist in the texas a&m engineering experiment stations nuclear engineering and science center in other words the reaction can be repeated multiple times to maximize fuel recovery yield and further reduce radioactive nuclear waste this simplified single-step process is also proliferation-resistant since plutonium is not isolated but incorporated within the uranium crystals in addition to addressing the fuel recycling problem and reducing proliferation risk said burns our strategy will drastically reduce nuclear waste to just the fission products whose radioactivity is hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands of years

the basis of energy production in nuclear reactors is thermonuclear fission in this reaction a heavy nucleus usually uranium when hit by subatomic particles called neutrons becomes unstable and tears apart into smaller lighter elements however uranium can absorb neutrons and get progressively heavier to form elements like neptunium plutonium and americium before once again splitting and releasing energy over time these fission reactions lead to a buildup of lighter elements in the nuclear reactor but roughly half of these fission products are deemed neutron poisonsthey also absorb neutrons just like used nuclear fuel leaving fewer for the fission reaction eventually bringing the energy production to a halt hence used fuel rods contain fission products leftover uranium and small quantities of plutonium neptunium and americium currently these items are collectively considered nuclear waste in the united states and are destined to be stowed away in underground repositories because of their high radioactivity

the texas a&m university system national laboratories office (nlo) and los alamos national laboratory have formed a collaborative research effort to make extremely large data sets indexable and more easily searchable we are excited to be partnering with our colleagues at texas a&m on this important and potentially game-changing research this collaboration leverages extreme strengths in data management research from both our organizations said gary grider division leader for high performance computing at los alamos fine-grain annotation of scientific data sets composed of trillions of mesh cells or particles is critical in making extremely large data sets indexable and more easily searchable typical multi-dimensional indexes analyze only the most interesting queries and typically require multiple passes over extremely large data sets and multiple days of dedicated processing time we expect this collaboration to lead to the development of novel storage systems that will address high performance computing needs at the national labs said narasimha reddy jw runyon professor in electrical and computer engineering in the college of engineering at texas a&m university an efficient and resilient key-value interface with hardware support to accelerate fundamental operations offers significant promise to make the enormous data sets generated by large-scale multi-physics simulations as well as machine learning model training and inferencing available for efficient analysis and provides scientists with powerful tools for both analyzing and understanding extreme-scale simulation data sets further it protects data for long-term storage and enables efficient queries for data analysis at scale fine-grained annotation of scientific data sets is critical to enabling scientists to extract insight and understanding from the massive simulations we perform at los alamos the key-value research we are engaged in with texas a&m is a major element in unlocking that insight and accelerating the pace of scientific discovery said brad settlemyer senior scientist in the high-performance computing design group at los alamos this collaboration focuses on exploiting potential upcoming key-value flash devices to enable much more rapid analysis and insights of large data sets it is based on recent work by texas a&m in the area of hardware-assisted erasure protection for key-value stores it is an excellent demonstration of utilization of processing power near/on storage devices to provide additional functionality and more powerful interfaces to applications this collaboration is jointly sponsored by the efficient mission centric computing consortium (emc3) and the nlo in this consortium high performance computing (hpc) consumer organizations researchers and system developers can collaborate together to attack this challenging problem of higher efficiency extreme scale mission-centric computing the hpc consumer base along with national and international hpc component and system developers are encouraged to join emc3 visit lanl's emc3 website for news and additional information about these efforts

dr le xie a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and assistant director of energy digitization at the texas a&m energy institute is working with his research team to collaborate on a project to release a first-of-its-kind cross-domain open-access data hub to track the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on electricity markets in the usthe coronavirus disease-electricity market data aggregation+ (covid-emda+) integrates cross domains of data including the electricity sector public health covid-19 case data weather data cellular phone location data and satellite imaging data into a compact format and is updated daily to capture the evolving dynamicsthis data hub provides a unique opportunity for a data-driven scientific approach to tracking and measuring the short-run impacts of covid-19 on the power sector and it also supports other interdisciplinary research xie saidthere is still uncertainty on how the gradual reopening of states will impact the electricity sector due to social distancing protocols and many americans working from home there has been a significant change in electricity consumption the covid-emda+ tool allows xie's research team to analyze the scope of this change and better assess how to move forwardthe goal of this research is to provide a timely open-access data resource accompanied by rigorous analysis to aid the power community in making scientifically informed decisions in the current moment

the texas a&m energy institute pursues and supports new approaches for multi-disciplinary energy research education and external partnerships these approaches cross departmental and college boundaries and address all facets of the energy landscape that naturally connect engineering sciences technologies economics law and policy decisions

the united states army research laboratory is lending support to a texas a&m university research project investigating potential improvement of ballistic performance of armor materials the project led by dr justin wilkerson assistant professor and james j cain 51 faculty fellow ii in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering focuses on identifying what damaging effects could be caused by particular flaws known as vacancies in the atomic structure of aluminum wilkersons research paper on the topic evolving structure-property relationships in metals with nonequilibrium concentrations of vacancies was recently featured on the cover of the journal of applied physics the paper was co-authored with wilkersons former postdoctoral advisee dr sara adibi although similar research has been conducted by dr celia reina and coworkers from the california institute of technology wilkersons study delves deeper into the subject by calculating the effect of changes due to vacancies over time on the materials mechanical properties mechanical behavior of these materials could not be understood via the lattice kinetic monte carlo simulations alone which was what had been done prior to this said wilkerson to take the next step forward we made use of supercomputing facilities to conduct a suite of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations

atoms are arranged in a highly ordered pattern referred to as a crystal lattice and if an atom is missing from a perfect lattice structure this defect is called a vacancy at high temperatures the vacancies can come together forming vacancy clusters wilkerson said a large concentration of vacancies in a material may be generated under shock loading which could impact ballistic performance metrics including spall strength the effect of vacancies on the mechanical behavior of materials on short timescales such as microseconds has remained largely unexplored said wilkerson even on such short timescales we find that vacancies may also play a significant role in the high-temperature failure of metals subject to very high tensile pressures a prospective idea from the findings is that it may be possible to use this knowledge to improve the ballistic performance of next-generation armors for the us army now that we better understand the importance of this mechanism to ballistic performance the next step is to develop material processing strategies that slow vacancy production rates in shocked materials said wilkerson

the texas a&m university systems george h w bush combat development complex (bcdc) under construction at the rellis campus is the result of a partnership with the army futures command the bcdc will bring together academic researchers the military and the private sector for collaboration demonstrations and high-tech testing of various national security initiatives

a team of researchers led by the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university is looking to help scientists combat the secondary effects of covid-19 using artificial intelligence (ai) by participating in an open challenge called ai cures the team is led by dr shuiwang ji principal investigator and associate professor in the department and includes students lei cai meng liu and limei wang hosted by the abdul latif jameel clinic for machine learning at the massachusetts institute of technology ai cures aims to contribute to the development of new antibiotics to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria through machine learning in a recent study published in the lancet scientists observed that a large number of nonsurviving adult patients who were severely ill with covid-19 developed a secondary bacterial pneumonia infection due to significantly depleted lung function new antibiotics are desperately needed to fight the emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria that causes bacterial pneumonia but developing them can take several years and cost more than $1 billion the participating teams have been tasked with developing an ai model that can predict if a molecule will be positive or negative for bacterial pneumonia and then be used to identify new antibiotics jis team proposes using advanced deep learning and machine learning methods for graph neural networks to achieve this covid-19 is one of the most contagious pandemics weve experienced and it has resulted in a great loss of human life said ji developing new drugs can be an effective way to control the virus and researchers from all over the world have gotten involved to achieve this ai cures provides a platform that brings researchers together to develop ai tools for drug discovery and as computer scientists it is our honor to contribute to the development of a new drug our lab has accumulated many technologies to analyze the properties of molecules which can be helpful to this project

while data specific to covid-19 is still limited today the abdul latif jameel clinic for machine learning has released a new screening dataset and is reporting current results the ai cures challenge started in march and dr shuiwang ji's research team began work on the project in may their results are currently ranked first on the leaderboard

a grant to help train military service members in texas and north carolina for biopharmaceutical manufacturing careers has been approved by the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) and several educational and industry partners requested more than $400 000 for the initiative its one of 14 to be funded this year by niimbl as part of its project call 31 program dubbed military service members in biopharma manufacturing (msmbm) the initiative will provide targeted technical training to complement the leadership and other soft skills learned in the military it will help prepare a minimum of 50 service members veterans and military spouses for biopharma manufacturing jobs tees through its national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is the lead organization for msmbm as texas has a substantial military presence and will benefit directly from the program ncbiotech will lead marketing and outreach and help coordinate the efforts of project participants corporate partners pfizer and merck will connect service members to career opportunities in biopharmaceutical manufacturing both pharmaceutical companies have large manufacturing operations in the research triangle area four north carolina community colleges will develop course materials and provide technical training they include central carolina community college durham technical community college bionetwork at wake technical community college and gaston college nctm will do the same for texas participants military training instills a strong sense of responsibility professionalism dedication and the ability to successfully navigate demanding work environments said dr laura rowley director of life science economic development at ncbiotech we want to create a sustainable pathway to connect north carolinas growing biopharma manufacturing industry with these skilled professionals and we want to better enable service members to transition to a rewarding civilian career in a sector they may not have otherwise considered military veterans transitioning service members and military spouses represent a significant an underutilized talent pipeline for the biopharma manufacturing industry added jenny ligon nctm assistant director this project aims to elevate their preparedness for careers in biopharma by linking their readily transferable soft skills with targeted training niimbl is a public-private partnership funded through a $70 million cooperative agreement with the national institute of standards and technology in the us department of commerce it has the support of more than 150 members from industry academia and government and is headquartered at the university of delaware the organizations mission is to speed the pace of biopharmaceutical innovation develop standards to improve manufacturing know-how and help build a world-leading biopharmaceutical workforce project call 31 grants cover technology workforce development and the global health fund which niimbl established with help from the bill and melinda gates foundation to support technologies that cut the cost of biopharmaceutical manufacturing the total value of this years awards is approximately $10 million kelvin h lee niimbls director said the projects will add speed efficiency and potential savings to an industry that must always be prepared to move quickly new manufacturing technologies are crucial to bringing safe life-saving treatments to patients faster and now more than ever the biopharma industry is seeing an increased demand for skilled talent he added niimbl said $63 million has been invested in technology and workforce development projects since the institute was launched in 2017 this work is performed under financial assistance award 70nanb17h002 from the us department of commerce national institute of standards and technology

the national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry

the federal government has reserved a high-tech biomanufacturing facility here for mass production of a covid-19 vaccine as part of a program discussed monday by president donald trump the new federal task order is reserving production capacity at one of the college station facilities to mass manufacture vaccines through the end of 2021 the order which supports operation warp speed is between the federal government and the texas a&m university systems center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing (ciadm) the ciadm was developed in response to the h1n1 influenza pandemic as a subcontractor to the texas a&m system fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies texas (fdb) owns and operates three facilities built through the ciadm program they can be tapped for emergency use by the federal government fdb is slated to use the reserved capacity at one of the fdb facilities for the covid-19 vaccine candidate of novavax inc nvx-cov2373 valued at about $265 million the task order also will accelerate a planned expansion at the fdb facility by helping fund new equipment for use in the current pandemic and in future emergencies the texas a&m system is ready to save lives and help protect the country said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system this whole project is a triple win its a win for the texas a&m system its a win for fdb its a win for the nation

operation warp speed aims to begin delivering millions of doses of covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year if the us food and drug administration determines candidates are safe and effective novavax is being funded by the government to complete late-stage clinical development including a pivotal phase 3 clinical trial; establish large-scale manufacturing; and deliver 100 million doses of nvx‑cov2373 novavaxs covid-19 vaccine candidate the fdb plant in north carolina where president trump visited monday is already producing the novavax vaccine candidate for its clinical trials fdb is slated to transfer the manufacturing process to college station in late 2020 and start bulk production in early 2021 fdbs facilities and workforce in texas can accommodate multiple vaccine technologies and help expedite the governments large-scale manufacturing efforts the manufacturing preparation is being done in parallel with ongoing clinical trials and the fdas safety and effectiveness approval process fdb calls the facility reserved for novavax vaccine production its flexible biomanufacturing facility fujifilm diosynth biotechnologies is committed to be a partner for life and deliver these much-needed covid-19 vaccine doses said dr gerry farrell chief operating officer of fdb in texas we are ready to move swiftly to deliver on multiple vaccine candidates as directed by the us government the texas a&m systems ciadm was one of three centers developed in the us in response to the h1n1 influenza pandemic by the biomedical advanced research and development agency (barda) part of the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the us department of health and human services the task order is an amendment to the ciadm contract between the system and barda this validates why the ciadm program was established said dr w jay treat texas a&ms chief manufacturing officer for the ciadm we have state-of-the-art facilities ready to make millions doses of vaccines to meet the critical needs of our citizens

high blood pressure is the single biggest risk factor for heart disease stroke and other health problems the only way to know if youre at risk is to have it checked often while one in three american adults has high blood pressure about 20% of people are unaware that they have it because it is largely symptomless researchers at texas a&m university hope to help remedy this with a wrist-worn system that monitors blood pressure during sleepdr roozbeh jafari a professor in the biomedical engineering computer science and engineering and electrical and computer engineering departments and his team have received a $36 million grant from the national institutes of health (nih) to create a system a user can wear all night while they sleep for constant readings blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of arteries as the heart pumps blood high blood pressure also referred to as hypertension is when that force is too high and begins harming the body if left untreated it will eventually cause damage to the heart and blood vessels regular blood pressure monitoring systems use a mercury-based (or the digital equivalent) inflatable cuff-based sphygmomanometer many factors can affect blood pressure readings like caffeine stress and exertion and most people do not have theirs checked outside a doctors officethere is a significant need to understand how blood pressure fluctuates throughout the day and night said jafari nobody knows that and there's really no technology that can capture this continuouslyjafari said there is a value to measuring blood pressure continuously in the natural context of the users environment especially during sleep without being disturbed by the instrument but the nature of the current cuff device allows for only infrequent measurements and its somewhat invasive nature and associated discomfort prohibits additional nocturnal measurements the objective of this research a collaborative project with the yale school of medicine is to create an unobtrusive wrist-worn cuffless blood pressure monitor for measurement and identification of nocturnal nondipping hypertension (when theres a smaller decrease in nocturnal arterial blood pressure) the research which began initially about three years ago includes extensive validation with state-of-the-art ambulatory blood pressure monitors at nighttime in the presence of varied treatment models the research team's proposed technology will be able to provide a wealth of information to physicians help identify certain short-term dynamics and variations of blood pressure and allow effective monitoring of response to medication among other things

nighttime blood pressure is actually a really good indicator for the health of the cardiovascular system jafari said at nighttime typically the body itself shows its true behavior you and i can get stressed out we can have a relaxing time and you could be very active physically right all those specific stimuli will impact the blood pressure but at nighttime you don't have that so you're sort of having a baseline another significance of nighttime blood pressure is that you don't have a lot of movement the movements themselves introduce a significant amount of noise and challenges with respect to capturing clean signals jafari said nocturnal measurements would obviously provide additional prognostic value in identifying risks but despite these benefits no wearable noninvasive device for continuous blood pressure monitoring exists on the market simply because none have been reliable enough to be considered clinical gradethe researchers set about developing a robust and reliable blood pressure monitor that uses bioimpedance sensors (a measure of how well the body impedes electric current flow) and for the first time demonstrates clinical-grade reliability they use sensors that measure pulse-wave velocity (pwv) along with several other derivatives for cardiovascular parameters including heart rate and blood volume changes in arteries which correlate with the blood pressurethe system will incorporate a hardware design to localize the underlying vascular system of the body and focus on arterial sites for enhanced accuracy the device will include a motion sensor to take into account the users movements and the contact quality and reliability of the measurements advanced machine learning techniques leveraging both general and personalized models will be developed to convert bioimpedance measurements to blood pressureresearchers hope to validate the system and analytics in both a healthy patient cohort and a hypertensive cohort learning the impact that nocturnal nondipping hypertension and anti-hypertensive treatments have on pwv and other correlated cardiovascular and blood pressure estimatesother collaborators on the project include dr harlan krumholz and dr erica spatz yale school of medicine; dr melissa grunlan department of biomedical engineering; dr tom ferris department of industrial and systems engineering; and dr bobak mortazavi department of computer science and engineering

while jafari and his research team have been working on their device for the past three years with a previous nih grant with the new funding they will begin two new phases of the project at texas a&m where they will create novel techniques and methods will refine their prototype design and continue testing itthe next version will be fully wearable and effectively would look like a smartwatch jafari said once we have that we are going to start the evaluation of that technology on a cohort of human subjectsthe last phase of the project will be at the yale school of medicine where they will do extensive testing on hypertension patients who are on different medications eventually their hope is that after decades of relying on the inflatable cuff-based technique this new system could represent a significant change in how blood pressure is measuredwe still have more battles to fight but i think the likelihood of success at this point is very high jafari said our objective actually is to build a system that can work for anyone even somebody who has absolutely no problem with blood pressure but the ultimate objective is to enable anybody and everybody to have this kind of technology at their disposal

as the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge worldwide there is an urgent need for anything that can bring us closer to a vaccine or treatment that will protect people from future infections sars-cov-2 (also known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) is the virus that infects cells and causes the coronavirus disease in humans researchers could theoretically eliminate the threat of the coronavirus if they can discover how to prevent this virus from binding to cells in the first place preventing this binding is easier said than done but the texas a&m engineering experiment stations (tees) national center for therapeutics manufacturing (nctm) has received funding from the national institute for innovation in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals (niimbl) to help find a way to do just that nctm is producing spike proteins to identify antibodies that can attach to the sars-cov-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain and prevent the virus from binding to key sites thus obstructing the virus from entering and infecting human cells there are hundreds of virus-fighting antibodies in plasma and using recombinant spike proteins is the fastest way to detect the correct ones we need to fight covid-19 said dr zivko nikolov professor in the department of biological and agricultural engineering at texas a&m university and director of nctm

nctms strategy is derived from what happened with dr kent brantly who survived ebola then donated his plasma to help others recover as well doctors and scientists identified antibodies in his blood that could recognize the ebola virus and prevent it from multiplying further in patients similarly nctm researchers are making versions of covid-19 spike proteins that can be used to measure antibody responses to the sars-cov-2 virus spike proteins in order to aid in the recombinant development of these antibodies in the future nctms spike proteins will also be useful once a covid-19 vaccination is available beyond screening convalescent plasma the spike proteins will be needed to determine if protective responses are being generated in response to the vaccination how long responses persist and if having antibodies to the spike protein provides a person with immunity such that they can safely return to the workplace without fear of reinfection said tees research scientist dr susan woodard nctm is collaborating with the army research lab (arl) whose research affiliates have been studying coronavirus spike proteins since 2013 the most promising constructs designed by arl partners have been shared with nctm to produce more proteins the proteins that nctm makes in cell culture will be provided to arl and they will work with houston methodist hospital to use the purified material in serology assays to screen donors for convalescent plasma therapy arl will also use nctms proteins to screen monoclonal antibodies that neutralize the virus the purified spike proteins are important for determining the strength of antibodies present in recovered covid-19 patients and antibodies made against the spike proteins are expected to prevent the virus from binding to and infecting human cells i am excited to scale up the effort to produce spike proteins and to deliver hundreds of milligrams of purified proteins to collaborators at the arl houston methodist hospital the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology and niimbl nikolov added i truly believe nctm is uniquely qualified to respond to the education training and applied research needs of texas a&m university and the broader community this work was performed under financial assistance award 70nanb20h037 from the u s department of commerce national institute of standards and technology

the national center for therapeutics manufacturing is a first-of-its-kind multi-disciplinary workforce education institution and biopharmaceutical manufacturing center located at texas a&m university in college station texas the nctms workforce development mission is to provide education training and outreach programs to produce a highly skilled workforce for the vital us and global pharmaceutical industry

dr amir asadi and his team have developed a new manufacturing process for hybrid polymer composites – a vital component in the aerospace automotive marine and defense industries this new process will produce super-strong composites to be used in load-bearing mechanical components in various industry sectors across the nationasadi is an assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university and his project is funded by the national science foundationmy research is like tailoring asadi said you put fabrics together and sew them to make something out of it with the desired properties and level of performance in your mind these nanomaterials are the nanothreadscarbon fiber reinforced polymer (cfrp) composites the most commonly used in the aerospace industry are able to withstand the highest load-to-weight ratio which makes them highly desirable for aerospace and defense applications

unfortunately the current cfrps are expensive – both in carbon production cost and time needed to manufacture them – and have reached a plateau in their strength capabilities additionally while studies suggest that integrating carbon nanotubes into cfrps can overcome these strength limitations the process includes invasive treatment that leads to uneven distribution of the nanotubes and damaging carbon fibers that can actually counterproductively weaken the final productin response to this asadi and his team have established a new method of manufacturing that utilizes cellulose nanocrystals in place of chemicals time- and cost-ineffective processesthe new process enables the production of nanostructured hybrid cfrp composites at a large scale with desired structure and performance with fewer processing steps asadi said

along with reducing the time and expense associated with making composites asadi's process opens the door for more customizable materialsright now we have very large and bulky materials and we start to cut them and make something out of them " said asadi "if we achieve this process successfully we can start to build complex structures from the nanoscale we would be able to engineer structures from the bottom to the top so this is exciting for me because first of all you are mimicking nature and second of all you can create structures with desired properties without wasting any material

in 2020 global research and development (r&d) investment reached $24 trillion and a significant part of that r&d is performed in the academic laboratories in universities and research centers the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) with its international partners is launching a webinar series to bring together stakeholders from different regions of the world to address the challenges and opportunities involved in the commercialization of deep technology ideas the first workshop of the deep tech talk webinar series will be presented on july 13 at 8 am (north american central standard time) this webinar series will present and discuss experiences from around the world about the path for commercialization of deep technologies that advance scientific frontiers registration is free for all participants including faculty researchers and graduate students interested in moving ideas to the marketplace deep technologies address the biggest societal and environmental challenges and shape the way we solve the most pressing global issues in diverse industries such as agriculture health care energy and transportation examples of deep technologies include advanced materials artificial intelligence blockchain biotechnology drones and robotics photonics and electronics and quantum computing advancing innovations from research labs to the marketplace in the deep technology space is very challenging said dr saurabh biswas chairperson of the webinar series and executive director of tees commercialization and entrepreneurship our deep tech talk webinar series is a global platform where faculty executives entrepreneurs and investors will be sharing their key learning and strategies to transition great ideas toward commercial viability the webinar series will focus on attributes of deep technologies collaborations and roles of universities in the ecosystem and opportunities and challenges in the development of disruptive technologies speakers will have significant expertise in the transfer of technologies from a university setting to the marketplace the integration of technologies into corporations and acceleration of the transfer of products to the marketplace through startup companies and agencies that support the transmission of research outcomes to the marketplace arnaud de la tour ceo of hello tomorrow will deliver the keynote presentation the path for commercialization of deep technologies dr blake teipel from essentium inc cosimi corleto from stil marposs and dr sam saltiel from beta cae systems will offer company perspectives view the july workshop schedule for more details this webinar series is an international partnership with texas a&m university at qatar aristotle university of thessaloniki in greece and arts et métier in france and the advisory board represents different geographic regions organizations universities and industries

the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic has led to such a stark shortage of personal protective equipment (ppe) that health care professionals have resorted to wearing trash bags as makeshift gowns in hopes of mitigating these obstacles texas a&m university researchers dr david staack and dr matt pharr from the college of engineering and dr suresh pillai from the college of agriculture and life sciences began studying ways to recycle ppe through radiationprior to covid-19 a large portion of staacks research already focused on medical device sterilization and decontamination staack pillai and pharr were working on a similar medical device sterilization project funded by the department of energy that identified how polymers and plastics are changed when directly exposed to electron beams or gamma rays when the pandemic struck it wasnt difficult for the research team to shift their focus to begin sterilizing and recycling ppe like surgical masks gowns face shields and most importantly n95 respirators there are two components of an n95 mask that determine its functionality: filtration and fit the n95 mask is composed of microscopic pores meant to filter out contaminants such as dust and fumes down to about 03 microns combined with an electrostatic charge on the non-woven polypropylene fiber for nanoscale particle trapping the mask is capable of filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size if worn properly designed to fit snuggly around the nose face and chin the mask can prevent germs from escaping through the sides of the mask when speaking or breathingas part of their research staack and his team sent brand new n95 masks and other ppe through their radiation recycling process at the electron beam facility while they found that the mechanical properties of the equipment were not damaged the n95 mask no longer filtered 95% of particles

the radiated masks ended up going from filtering 95% of particles 300 nanometers in size to only filtering between 50% and 60% of particles a few hundred nanometers in size said staack the sallie and don davis 61 career development professor in mechanical engineering thats still a lot better than a homemade mask made from a t-shirt for perspective a strand of human hair is approximately 80 000 to 100 000 nanometers in diameteradditionally some of the electrostatic filtration of the n95 mask is lost from a day of wear hence the disposable nature and while the first option is to immediately reach for a brand-new mask each day pandemics like ones caused by covid-19 can quickly lead to a stark shortage in ppe for health care professionals so what's the best backup strategyelectron beam irradiation is a common proven and fda-approved method of medical device sterilization irradiation by electron beam gamma and x-ray methods account for approximately 50% of the market of all medical devices sterilized worldwide the electron beam facility is already equipped for industrial use and based on staacks research is able to process and recycle 10 000 masks an hourtheres still some logistical issues were working through said staack can we do it safely can masks be distributed to someone other than the original user these are the questions were researching now so that if something happens in the short term like another wave of covid-19 were ready and if something happens in the long term were more knowledgeable about itthere are approximately 50 to 100 electron beam facilities in the united states alone staacks goal is to be able to share the teams results and distribute this critical information around the world so that everyone is better equipped to tackle a global pandemic

staack pharr and pillai teamed up using the food technology facility for electron beam and space food research and the plasma engineering and non-equilibrium processing laboratory on the texas a&m campus they also referenced research from dr mike moreno dr john criscione and dr sarah brooks at texas a&m showing that t-shirt masks only filter about 10% of particles and don't conform well to the face leaving germs and contaminants likely to enter and escape thus making recycled ppe a viable second-place strategy

col rosendo ross guieb has been named as the first executive director of the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) effective today guieb moves from the senior staff of army futures command (afc) to the new role of managing the bcdc a complex being built on the 2 000-acre rellis campus in bryan texas to help accelerate military innovation who better to lead this critical national defense initiative said john sharp chancellor of the texas a&m university system ross understands the challenges of modernization inside and out he will be instrumental as we assist the army with next-generation battlefield readiness guieb will report to dr m katherine banks vice chancellor of engineering and national laboratories for the texas a&m system ross will be integral to our program and will keep serving our country in this new role banks said his experience will help ensure that the strategic partnership between afc and the texas a&m system remains perfectly aligned guieb will manage the vision goals and execution strategies of the bcdc while working to expand relationships with other key stakeholders in national defense innovation he will work alongside dr john e hurtado deputy director and chief technology officer of bcdc

to learn more about guieb and his new role with the bush combat development complex see the announcement about guieb's appointment as executive director and the story of his background on the bcdc website

inspired by the same modeling and mathematical laws used to predict the spread of pandemics researchers at texas a&m university have created a model to accurately forecast the spread and recession process of floodwaters in urban road networks with this new approach researchers have created a simple and powerful mathematical approach to a complex problemwe were inspired by the fact that the spread of epidemics and pandemics in communities has been studied by people in health sciences and epidemiology and other fields and they have identified some principles and rules that govern the spread process in complex social networks said dr ali mostafavi associate professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering so we ask ourselves are these spreading processes the same for the spread of flooding in cities we tested that and surprisingly we found that the answer is yesthe findings of this study were recently published in nature's scientific reportsthe contagion model susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (seir) is used to mathematically model the spread of infectious diseases in relation to flooding mostafavi and his team integrated the seir model with the network spread process in which the probability of flooding of a road segment depends on the degree to which the nearby road segments are floodedin the context of flooding susceptible refers to a road that can be flooded because it is in a flood plain; exposed refers to a road that has flooding due to rainwater or overflow from a nearby channel; infected refers to a road that is flooded and cannot be used; and recovered refers to a road where the floodwater has receded the research team verified the models use with high-resolution historical data of road flooding in harris county during hurricane harvey in 2017 the results show that the model can monitor and predict the evolution of flooded roads over timethe power of this approach is it offers a simple and powerful mathematical approach and provides great potential to support emergency managers public officials residents first responders and other decision makers for flood forecast in road networks mostafavi saidthe proposed model can achieve decent precision and recall for the spatial spread of the flooded roads if you look at the flood monitoring system of harris county it can show you if a channel is overflowing now but theyre not able to predict anything about the next four hours or next eight hours also the existing flood monitoring systems provide limited information about the propagation of flooding in road networks and the impacts on urban mobility but our models and this specific model for the road networks is robust at predicting the future spread of flooding he said in addition to flood prediction in urban networks the findings of this study provide very important insights about the universality of the network spread processes across various social natural physical and engineered systems; this is significant for better modeling and managing cities as complex systems the only limitation to this flood prediction model is that it cannot identify where the initial flooding will begin but mostafavi said there are other mechanisms in place such as sensors on flood gauges that can address thisas soon as flooding is reported in these areas we can use our model which is very simple compared to hydraulic and hydrologic models to predict the flood propagation in future hours the forecast of road inundations and mobility disruptions is critical to inform residents to avoid high-risk roadways and to enable emergency managers and responders to optimize relief and rescue in impacted areas based on predicted information about road access and mobility this forecast could be the difference between life and death during crisis response he saidcivil engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant chao fan led the analysis and modeling of the hurricane harvey data along with xiangqi (alex) jiang a graduate student in computer science who works in mostafavis urbanresilienceai labby doing this research i realize the power of mathematical models in addressing engineering problems and real-world challenges this research expands my research capabilities and will have a long-term impact on my career fan said in addition i am also very excited that my research can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure servicesthis research is funded by the national science foundations crisp 20 type 2 project in which mostafavi is the lead principal investigator

if you look at the flood monitoring system of harris county it can show you if a channel is overflowing now but theyre not able to predict anything about the next four hours or next eight hours also the existing flood monitoring systems provide limited information about the propagation of flooding in road networks and the impacts on urban mobility but our models and this specific model for the road networks is robust at predicting the future spread of flooding he said in addition to flood prediction in urban networks the findings of this study provide very important insights about the universality of the network spread processes across various social natural physical and engineered systems; this is significant for better modeling and managing cities as complex systems the only limitation to this flood prediction model is that it cannot identify where the initial flooding will begin but mostafavi said there are other mechanisms in place such as sensors on flood gauges that can address thisas soon as flooding is reported in these areas we can use our model which is very simple compared to hydraulic and hydrologic models to predict the flood propagation in future hours the forecast of road inundations and mobility disruptions is critical to inform residents to avoid high-risk roadways and to enable emergency managers and responders to optimize relief and rescue in impacted areas based on predicted information about road access and mobility this forecast could be the difference between life and death during crisis response he saidcivil engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant chao fan led the analysis and modeling of the hurricane harvey data along with xiangqi (alex) jiang a graduate student in computer science who works in mostafavis urbanresilienceai labby doing this research i realize the power of mathematical models in addressing engineering problems and real-world challenges this research expands my research capabilities and will have a long-term impact on my career fan said in addition i am also very excited that my research can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure servicesthis research is funded by the national science foundations crisp 20 type 2 project in which mostafavi is the lead principal investigator

as new infectious diseases emerge and spread one of the best shots against novel pathogens is finding new medicines or vaccines but before drugs can be used as potential cures they have to be painstakingly screened for composition safety and purity among other things thus there is an increasing demand for technologies that can characterize chemical compounds quickly and in real time addressing this unmet need researchers at texas a&m university have now invented a new technology that can drastically downsize the apparatus used for raman spectroscopy a well-known technique that uses light to identify the molecular makeup of compounds raman benchtop setups can be up to a meter long depending on the level of spectroscopic resolution needed said dr pao-tai lin assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of materials science and engineering we have designed a system that can potentially replace these bulky benchtops with a tiny photonic chip that can snugly fit within the tip of a finger in addition lin said that their innovative photonic device is also capable of high-throughput real-time chemical characterization and despite its size is at least 10 times more sensitive than conventional benchtop raman spectroscopy systems a description of their study is in the may issue of the journal analytical chemistry the basis of raman spectroscopy is the scattering of light by molecules when hit by light of a certain frequency molecules perform a dance rotating and vibrating upon absorbing the energy from the incident beam when they lose their excess energy molecules emit a lower-energy light which is characteristic of their shape and size this scattered light known as the raman spectra contains the fingerprints of the molecules within a sample

typical benchtops for raman spectroscopy contain an assortment of optical instruments including lenses and gratings for manipulating light these free-space optical components take a lot of space and are a barrier for many applications where chemical sensing is required within tiny spaces or locations that are hard to reach also benchtops can be prohibitive for real-time chemical characterizationas an alternative to traditional lab-based benchtop systems lin and his team turned to tube-like conduits called waveguides that can transport light with very little loss of energy while many materials can be used to make ultrathin waveguides the researchers chose a material called aluminum nitride since it produces a low raman background signal and is less likely to interfere with the raman signal coming from a test sample of interest to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops

to create the optical waveguide the researchers employed a technique used by industry for drawing circuit patterns on silicon wafers first using ultraviolet light they spun a light-sensitive material called nr9 onto a surface made of silica next by using ionized gas molecules they bombarded and coated aluminum nitride along the pattern formed by the nr9 finally they washed the assembly with acetone leaving behind an aluminum waveguide that was just tens of microns in diameter for testing the optical waveguide as a raman sensor the research team transported a laser beam through the aluminum nitride waveguide and illuminated a test sample containing a mixture of organic molecules upon examining the scattered light the researchers found that they could discern each type of molecule within the sample based on the raman spectra and with a sensitivity of at least 10 times more than traditional raman benchtops

lin noted since their optical waveguides have very fine width many of them can be loaded onto a single photonic chip this architecture he said is very conducive to high-throughput real-time chemical sensing needed for drug development our optical waveguide design provides a novel platform for monitoring the chemical composition of compounds quickly reliably and continuously also these waveguides can be easily manufactured at an industrial scale by leveraging the already existing techniques to make semiconductor devices said lin this technology we believe has a direct benefit for not just pharmaceutical industries but even for other industries like petroleum where our sensors can be put along underground pipes to monitor the composition of hydrocarbons other contributors to this research are megan makela from the department of materials science and engineering; and paul gordon dandan tu cyril soliman dr gerard coté and dr kristen maitland from the department of biomedical engineering this research is funded by the national science foundation precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center

the precise advanced technologies and health systems for underserved populations (paths-up) engineering research center was funded by the national science foundation in 2017 paths-up aims to change the paradigm for the health of underserved populations by developing revolutionary and cost-effective technologies and systems at the point-of-care the initial paths-up technologies and systems are designed to help with chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease which are leading causes of morbidity and mortality world-wide

dr tracy hammond professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university was recently named the director of the institute for engineering education and innovation (ieei) the appointment is effective sept 1 and she will devote 40% of her effort to lead the ieei i am thrilled at the opportunity provided to me by the college of engineering hammond said i look forward to bringing our already excellent faculty to even greater heights ieei is a center within the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) its mission is to serve as a focal point and academic resource for engineering education research for faculty and administrators in order to advance the practices of engineering education in the texas a&m university system and worldwide hammond is also director of the sketch recognition lab and chair of the engineering education faculty at texas a&m she is an international leader in engineering education and her background includes degrees from columbia university and the massachusetts institute of technology (mit) including a masters degree in anthropology from columbia and a doctoral degree in computer science from mit she has received several awards for her contributions to the texas a&m engineering program and her professional field including the 2011 charles h barclay jr ‘45 faculty fellow award and the 2020 tees faculty fellow distinction she has also earned multiple educational teaching and best paper awards hammond is an international leader in activity recognition (focusing on eye body and sketch motions) haptics intelligent fabrics smartphone development and computer human interaction research her publications on the subjects are widely cited and her engineering education research has positively impacted learning across k-12 and is part of the engineering curricula at georgia tech texas state university san jose state university letourneau university texas a&m and several high schools her work has also been featured on the discovery channel and other national and international news sources additionally she has received over $13 million in research funding including 28 engineering education research grants with 13 of these from national science foundation engineering education directorates

the institute for engineering education and innovation is a texas a&m university system and texas a&m engineering experiment station wide institute that initiates engineering education research with kindergartners through 12th graders undergraduates graduate students professionals and faculty the institutes research helps inform texas a&m university and the engineering education community with strategies for developing the best engineersand more engineersfor the 21st century

the covid-19 pandemic resulted in a sudden shift in operations focused largely on maintaining established and essential businesses which appeared to leave many innovators and startup companies on their own to find new ways to continue to network secure funding and track market trends even in the midst of a global pandemic it is important for the entrepreneurship ecosystem to carry on operating as normal because maintaining momentum when entering a constantly evolving marketplace is crucial to successfully forming companies and commercializing inventions the texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) recognizes the paramount importance of the state of texas innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and thus swiftly converted its annual competition for innovators to a completely virtual delivery system in only two months ensuring innovators investors and mentors all over the state of texas would be able to network with their peers and engage with potential business contacts as well as have access to over $400 000 in funding and prizes during a time when you cant necessarily go and network at an incubator or business function we put together a virtual event that connected several hundred people around entrepreneurial commercialization said chris scotti chair of tnvc and entrepreneur-in-residence with the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) even if people couldnt meet in person and with the pandemic in mind it was even more crucial to the texas economy that we provide a virtual space where they could engage instead

tnvc assists deep technology startups at a critical stage of commercialization with funding and connections and it also provides an easy way for early stage investors to identify and fund texas best startups taking these science and engineering technologies from lab to market not only benefits society with cutting edge inventions and research it also fuels economic growth and builds stronger communities during these uncertain times this competition was one of the rare moments where the startup community can join together from afar to support one another and see the amazing things we are all doing even though many of us are working from home said allotrope medicals albert huang winner of 2020s tnvc innovation doesnt stop we just all have to adapt huang added the state of texas boasts five million jobs related to commercialized intellectual property (ip) and the jobs at these ip-intensive companies pay 297% higher than their ip-focused peers employees from more than 100 companies that tnvc has touched through their competition over the past six years have gone on to contribute in excess of $70 million in economic impact annually in texas im looking forward to working with the texas a&m engineering experiment station to support texans seeking innovative solutions for the real world issues facing our state said texas workforce commission chairman bryan daniel the work being done will create cutting edge businesses with new exciting job opportunities tnvc hopes to grow their program through related events year round and also looks forward to being involved in regional and industry-focused feeder competitions throughout texas in cooperation with regional entrepreneurial ecosystems given the impressive virtual delivery of this years tnvc event collaboration with others within and beyond the texas a&m university system to help create similar virtual programs are also on the horizon the tees commercialization & entrepreneurship team is fully committed to working with our partners to grow tnvc to support our innovators across the texas a&m university system and also across the state of texas said dr saurabh biswas tees executive director for commercialization and entrepreneurship this year's successful outcome reinforced for us the need and important role this event plays in the texas innovation ecosystem and we look forward to building up on this success in years to come

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's (tees) clean energy incubator has received a $50 000 grant from the wells fargo innovation incubator (in2) as part of its program to help startup companies retain staff and cope with the impacts due to covid-19 wells fargo in2 is awarding $900 000 to help experts in agtech finance and clean technology companies and the program is co-administered by the national renewable energy laboratory according to wells fargo research recent studies have shown that 74% of startups have seen revenues decline since the beginning of the covid-19 crisis the clean energy incubator first received a grant in 2017 from the texas state energy conservation office part of the state comptrollers office to pioneer a program for distressed clean energy startups called ctrl-alt-del with the wells fargo grant the clean energy incubator will expand those services to distressed clean technology startups by providing pandemic response support advisory services and curated information and resources to clients we know that small businesses across america are being hit especially hard right now said trish cozart manager of the program according to john pappas the clean energy incubators principal investigator with the advent of covid-19 our clients needed an urgent change of focus covid-19 changed the entire work environment raised the specter of cash crunches and changed the risk calculation coupling our ctrl-alt-del program with lessons learned from our own response to covid-19 means we could help immediately" pappas continued "innovation can and will persist even during times of contraction and this expedited funding is designed to support that" wells fargo is also starting its in2 channel partner awards program – a $5 million total fund – that hopes to strengthen sustainable technology initiatives and address barriers that startups face on the path to commercialization the new round of award funds will be allocated toward programming or operational assistance designed to address the unprecedented challenges that startups within the partners portfolios are experiencing in the current business environment wells fargos partnership with texas a&m has always been focused on making impacts to those that we serve said shane hinckley vice president of brand development at texas a&m this is a great example of how a campus-wide partnership with texas a&m can have a far reaching effect the grant to tees' clean energy incubator is greatly appreciated and in line with the vision of where we wanted this relationship to be when we became partners besides tees other college winners include new york university the university of texas and the university of nebraska

the clean energy incubator encourages commercialization of clean energy technologies from tees and texas clean energy technology refers to any energy-related technology that improves efficiency reduces waste or has a favorable environmental impact during the last six-month reporting period client companies reported $8 642 630 in capital investment raised $546 864 in revenue earned $1 475 982 spent in texas and 107 jobs supported it is supported by the texas state energy conservation office the us department of energy the wells fargo in2 program and tees

recent discoveries made by researchers at texas a&m university could change the way ovarian cancer is understood and treated dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering and the department of medical physiology in the college of medicine collaborated with researchers from the departments of gynecologic oncology and cancer biology at md anderson cancer center to gain a better understanding of the interaction among ovarian cancer tumors blood vessels and platelets they found that tumors break the blood vessel barriers so that they can communicate with the blood cells such as platelets when these tumors come into contact with platelets they can then metastasize or begin to spread to other sites in the body the collaborative research was recently published in the journal blood advances currently researchers understand that platelets are one of the initiators of ovarian cancer metastasis but did not know what led to the introduction of the platelets to the tumor cells instead of struggling to view this relationship in animal models jains team brought a new solution to the table: organ-on-a-chip research organs-on-a-chip are microfluidic medical devices the size of a usb drive the team designed on the ovca-chip to give researchers an easier window to view the biological processes between tumors and platelets

in an interview with the international society on thrombosis and hemostasis jain explained that "it basically is a microenvironment where ovarian tumor cells can be co-cultured along with their blood vessels and then they can interact with blood cells once we learn about these interactions we can then move forward to look into how drugs will impact these kinds of interactions" viewing the interaction between tumors and blood vessels on the ovca-chip led the researchers to an extraordinary result the tumor cells systematically broke down the endothelial cells which are the barrier that lines the interior surface of blood vessels and prevents exterior interaction with blood cells once this barrier was gone blood cells and platelets entered the tumor microenvironment and could be recruited for metastasis harnessing this knowledge could change how clinicians approach ovarian cancer treatment jain said suggesting that anti-vascular drugs could be considered along with anticancer treatments a benefit of the organ-on-a-chip is that it can also test these novel drug treatments and drug combinations another application of the chips could be diagnostics "you have to understand that these are chips that are living they contain living cells the advantage is that these are all actually human samples " jain stated in the interview "so what we think the future for this technology is is perhaps we can advance it in the direction of personalized medicine where we could actually take stem cells from patients and other patient-derived cells and make this entire chip from a single patient"

the texas a&m university systems george hw bush combat development complex will soon feature the nations largest enclosed hypersonic testing facility as well as an outdoor range for trying out autonomous combat vehicles today the texas a&m university system board of regents approved spending a total of $603 million for the two facilities at the george hw bush combat development complex located on the rellis campus the bush combat development complex (bcdc) is being built as part an agreement between the a&m system and the us army futures command based in austin the complex will serve us researchers from universities the military and industry as they develop advanced technologies to modernize the us army of the total expenditures approved $378 million will be spent on the innovation proving ground (ipg) an outdoor testing site for autonomous aerial ground and subterranean vehicles ipg construction is expected to start next summer and be completed a year later also $225 million will be spent on the ballistic aero-optics and materials (bam) test range a hypersonic and laser testing facility bam construction is scheduled to begin in february with substantial completion expected by october 2022 for more information see the a&m systems press release

the texas a&m university systems george h w bush combat development complex (bcdc) located on the 2 000-acre rellis campus is the result of a partnership with the us army futures command the bcdc will bring together academic researchers the military and the private sector for collaboration demonstrations and high-tech testing of various national security initiatives learn more about all of the bcdcs planned facilities and capabilities

the built environment where someone lives (private) or works (public) influences a persons daily life and can help or hinder their mental health this is especially true for those with mental health conditions such as ptsd or post-traumatic stress disorder researchers in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university are working to determine which elements of built environments affect veterans with ptsd the most and how they can be altered to help veterans thrive we have already established collaborations with veteran support groups to develop veteran-centered tools for monitoring and self-management of ptsd said dr farzan sasangohar assistant professor principal investigator of the project and 2020 tees research impact award winner through interactions with hundreds of veterans diagnosed with ptsd we realized the need to also investigate the context in which these tools are used and became interested in the design of built environments the researchers looked at three themes: architectural design features interior design features and ambient features as part of the project researchers interviewed veterans with ptsd about their triggers in public and private spaces from their interviews the researchers categorized and provided suggestions for each theme area that would provide the greatest positive impact for veterans alarmingly we learned there is a general gap in built environments design guidelines for mental health habitants in general and ptsd patients in particular so we leveraged our wide network of veterans to study their preferences sasangohar said architectural design features architectural design features are permanent features of a building or space that would be difficult or expensive to change after construction is completed like the entrance and exit locations in the study veterans identified six areas that made a difference toward their comfort: windows – large windows located closer to the ground made veterans feel safer in a space they also preferred to have multiple windows in a space so they could see what was going on outside entrance and exit location – veterans liked to easily see the entrance and exit to a room or building this helped keep them from feeling trapped in a space walkways/hallways – larger hallways that allowed for increased maneuverability and reduced the chance of touching other people were preferred by veterans open floor plans – open spaces allowed veterans to see their surroundings and provided them with feelings of security sharp turns and blind corners caused stress due to the inability to see what was around the bend green space – open spaces with vegetation made the veterans feel calmer and gave them more visibility interior design features interior design features are parts of a built environment that are easier to change and could be accommodated in spaces that are already built veterans preferred spaces with fewer pieces of furniture and walls that were painted in brighter more vivid colors instead of muted colors ambient design features ambient design features are the easiest features to change in a space and include lighting and air quality overall veterans preferred natural light some said that poor light including too much artificial lighting could trigger stress air and sound quality was important also including ventilation odor and noise levels many veterans said that certain odors could trigger fear or bad memories and that loud unexpected noises were particularly startling for them they felt that soundproofing was important in spaces they visited or lived in what can be done while this research addressed an important gap in research and practice the research team identified the need for more work to understand issues related to the design of built environments for those with ptsd further research should include a wide range of stakeholders including veterans veterans affairs architecture and housing regulatory bodies we hope that this research contributes to the curriculum codes and standards regulatory documents and general practice of designing built environments including health care facilities which are sensitive to the needs of veterans who are affected by ptsd and others with mental health conditions sasangohar said this research article veteran-centered investigation of architectural and space design considerations for post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is featured in the health environments research & design journal

natures blueprint for the human limb is a carefully layered structure with stiff bone wrapped in layers of different soft tissue like muscle and skin all bound to each other perfectly achieving this kind of sophistication using synthetic materials to build biologically inspired robotic parts or multicomponent complex machines has been an engineering challenge by tweaking the chemistry of a single polymer researchers at texas a&m university and the us army combat capabilities development command army research laboratory have created a whole family of synthetic materials that range in texture from ultra-soft to extremely rigid the researchers said their materials are 3d printable self-healing recyclable and they naturally adhere to each other in air or underwater their findings are detailed in the may issue of the journal advanced functional materials we have made an exciting group of materials whose properties can be fine-tuned to get either the softness of rubber or the strength of load-bearing plastics said dr svetlana sukhishvili professor in the department of materials science and engineering and a corresponding author on the study their other desirable characteristics like 3d printability and the ability to self-heal within seconds make them suited for not just more realistic prosthetics and soft robotics but also ideal for broad military applications such as agile platforms for air vehicles and futuristic self-healing aircraft wings synthetic polymers are made up of long strings of repeating molecular motifs like beads on a chain in elastomeric polymers or elastomers these long chains are lightly crosslinked giving the materials a rubbery quality however these crosslinks can also be used to make the elastomers more rigid by increasing the number of crosslinks

although previous studies have manipulated the density of crosslinks to make elastomers stiffer the resulting change in mechanical strength was generally permanent crosslinks are like stitches in a piece of cloth: the more stitches you have the stiffer the material gets and vice versa said sukhishvili but instead of having these ‘stitches be permanent we wanted to achieve dynamic and reversible crosslinking so that we can create materials that are recyclableso the researchers focused their attention on the molecules involved in the crosslinking first they chose a parent polymer called prepolymer and then chemically studded these prepolymer chains with two types of small crosslinking molecules furan and maleimide by increasing the number of these molecules in the prepolymer they found that they could create materials stiffer in this way the hardest material they created was 1 000 times stronger than the softest however these crosslinks are also reversible furan and maleimide participate in a type of reversible chemical bonding put simply in this reaction furan and maleimide pairs can click and unclick depending on temperature when the temperature is high enough these molecules come apart from the polymer chains and the materials soften at room temperature the materials harden since the molecules quickly click back together once again forming crosslinks thus if there is any tear in these materials at ambient temperatures the researchers showed that furan and maleimide automatically re-click healing the gap within a few seconds

the researchers noted that the temperatures at which the crosslinkers dissociate or unclick from the prepolymer chains are relatively the same for different stiffness levels this property is useful for 3d printing with these materials regardless of whether they are soft or hard the materials can be melted at the same temperature and then used as printing ink by modifying the hardware and processing parameters in a standard 3d printer we were able to use our materials to print complex 3d objects layer by layer said dr frank gardea research engineer in the united states army research laboratory and a corresponding author on the study the unique advantage of our materials is that the layers that make up the 3d part can be of vastly different stiffnessas the 3d part cools to room temperature he added that the different layers join seamlessly precluding the need for curing or any other chemical processing consequently the 3d-printed parts can easily be melted using high heat and then recycled as printing ink the researchers also noted that their materials are reprogrammable in other words after being set into one shape they can be made to change into a different shape using just heat other contributors include qing zhou primary author of the paper and zhen sang from the department of materials science and engineering; and dr seunghyun lee and dr matt pharr from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering this research is funded by the united states combat capabilities development command army research laboratory

in the future the researchers plan to increase the functionality of their new materials by amplifying its multifaceted properties outlined in the current studyright now we can easily achieve around 80% self-healing at room temperature but we would like to reach 100% also we want to make our materials responsive to other stimuli other than temperature like light said gardea further down the road wed like to explore introducing some low-level intelligence so that these materials know to autonomously adapt without needing a user to initiate the process

dr gerard coté director of the center for remote health technologies and systems texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i received the walston chubb award for innovation from sigma xi the scientific research honor society i am honored that i was considered to receive the chubb award from sigma xi and that the committee felt our research merited their high standards for promoting creativity in science and engineering coté said i say ‘our work as much of what has been accomplished has been a team effort with my students staff and colleagues coté was recognized for his leadership in the development of biomedical optical systems for an array of medical applications with clinical impact along with a stipend coté will be recognized and present at this years annual meeting and student research conference which will be held virtually in november since the award is focused on innovation and the audience is broad including distinguished scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines as well as high school undergraduate and graduate students i plan to discuss engineering for impact with a focus on technologies for monitoring health at the point-of-care coté said the endowed award was formed to recognize research into new areas of potential scientific importance novel approaches to a long-standing problem in science or engineering or research that may create a new methodology of importance to science or engineering

the center for remote health technologies and systems is developing breakthrough remote health technologies algorithms and health analytics as well as using advanced systems engineering to solve the global health grand challenges and enable healthy living these powerful advances are not only helping to answer the critical needs of patients and providers they are shifting the health care landscape from disease management to disease prevention

imagine needing a part to fix something in your home but not being able to go out to the store to get it like those unable to go to the store to get something for a home repair project astronauts and inhabitants of future space missions will face a similar dilemma while living in space habitats or will they researchers at texas a&m university along with seven universities and three industry partners are working to make this problem solvable with on-demand metal additive manufacturing through the habitats optimized for missions of exploration (home) institute their work will allow space inhabitants to manufacture parts as needed with or without a human operator texas a&m has been working in the additive manufacturing of metallic parts for close to seven years which fits into nasas space technology research institutes goal of manufacturing metallic parts in microgravity said dr alaa elwany associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering imagine a part such as a gear fails on the space habitat rather than transporting an enormous amount of spare parts initially to the habitat the majority of which might not even get used we can simply send a digital model of that part and manufacture it on site through 3d printing elwany said additive manufacturing is challenging on earth and these challenges multiply when there is low gravity the research done by texas a&m will enable printing in microgravity and testing of parts to ensure they are able to perform effectively this research is a part of nasas in space manufacturing initiative and will be used in future missions including habitation on the moon and mars the funding provided by nasa to texas a&m will be used to support doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers the home team includes the university of california davis in partnership with the university of colorado boulder carnegie mellon university the georgia institute of technology howard university texas a&m and the university of southern california collaborators in industry include sierra nevada corporation blue origin and united technology aerospace systems

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's early research efforts in space contributed to texas a&m becoming a space-grant institution in 1989 meaning they "participate in nasas aeronautics and space projects by supporting and enhancing science and engineering education research and public outreach efforts"

researchers in the us army combat capabilities development command's army research laboratory (arl) are working to develop a drone with the ability to morph while in flight to better fit its mission for example shortening and lengthening the wing for efficiency and speed to begin their work they turned to the expertise of researchers at texas a&m university for assistance with the complex analysis and design stage a team led by dr darren hartl assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering tackled part of this first step by developing a novel fluid-structure interaction algorithm this vital tool will provide arl researchers with a streamlined means to analyze the interaction between fluid and air flows and flexible or adaptable solid structures in their pursuit of a transforming drone in aerospace a really common problem that we have to consider is the interaction between fluid flows and the solid structure that your vehicle is comprised of said hartl that analyzing of how the fluid pushes and deforms the structure and how the changing shape of the structure changes fluid flow in a simultaneous way is what is known as fluid structure interaction to elaborate an airplane for example is designed largely based on aerodynamics and should stay stiff and not change shape mid-flight however if the wings were allowed to lengthen on longer international flights the shape change would alter how the air flows around the original design and how it interacts with the actual physical structure of the plane

fluid-structure interaction in morphing vehicles is much more complicated because motion is intentional " hartl added "so that's why we leaned into this problem; we needed a better way to solve fluid-structure interaction traditionally fluid-structure interaction is analyzed by running individual fluid and structural codes one at a time updating the pressure one increment at a time to see how it affects the structure and then updating the structural shape to see how it affects the pressure this impacts the design process because if any aspect of the design is changed the expensive fluid-structure interaction scheme has to be redone this could take days of computation going back and forth to find the sweet spot for design to fix this hartl and his team developed an algorithm that substantially cuts down the computational cost by simultaneously running analyses for various pressures and structure shapes and then using mathematical tools to stitch together two matching solutions i know that up until this point weve basically been unable to do serious design studies on morphing aircrafts because of this computational expense problem said hartl frankly this is one reason why there's not a lot of morphing airplane solutions the only way to have done this in the past was to design build and test and one primary problem with structures that can move is that wrong answers quickly lead to catastrophic failures the research team is comprised of collaborators from the us army combat capabilities development command's arl and texas a&m recently they published their work in uncoupled method for massively parallelizable 3d fluid-structure interaction analysis and design

hartl especially values this collaboration because it illustrates what is possible by having the army futures command and arl integrated with texas a&m this algorithm and idea are only a couple years old and the team was able to harvest it and use it because they were here " hartl said "they were the first ones to hear and see about this new way of solving a problem and immediately began applying it to their work the texas a&m university systems george h w bush combat development complex (bcdc) under construction at the rellis campus is the result of a partnership with the army futures command the bcdc will bring together academic researchers the military and the private sector for collaboration demonstrations and high-tech testing of various national security initiatives

researchers from the texas a&m university college of engineering will play a key role in a consortium sponsored by natura resources llc to build an advanced research reactor in the state of texas the $305 million effort to design and license a research reactor is a collaboration with three other universities: abilene christian university georgia institute of technology and the university of texas at austin the texas a&m team has been awarded $35 million over the next three years for their portion of the project nuclear engineering faculty members drs pavel tsvetkov mark kimber and sean mcdeavitt and their respective research groups are members of the consortium texas a&m plays an important role on the team supporting the design thermal management and fuel characterization efforts toward the reactor said tsvetkov associate professor of nuclear engineering and lead of the texas a&m team we are excited to be part of the consortium this is going to be the first advanced reactor to be built in the 21st century in the us and the first to be built as a university research reactor it will enable the nuclear engineering community as well as serve the strategic role of workforce development supporting advanced reactors dr kimber and dr mcdeavitt have years of unique experience in important areas of the project allowing us to provide high-impact assistance to the team

dr tony hill natura director of product development said we are incredibly pleased and honored to sponsor this remarkable multi-disciplinary collaboration of talented researchers – physicists engineers chemists and their students – to support our vision to develop advanced energy systems that are inherently safe sustainable and environmentally friendly" launched in spring 2019 the consortiums goal is to design license and commission the first university-based molten salt research reactor ive been working with molten salts for nuclear applications off and on for over 25 years said mcdeavitt nuclear engineering professor and director of the nuclear engineering and science center this is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the actual construction of a nuclear energy system that has the potential to impact future generations the thermal management team will focus on validating modeling efforts aimed to predict thermal performance during normal and off-normal scenarios added kimber assistant professor of nuclear engineering being able to place a known confidence in those models is especially important with this advanced reactor design because it sets the stage for future reactor designs to follow suit texas a&m nuclear engineering department head dr michael nastasi stressed the importance of this project over the next several decades the energy environment must undergo a transformation to a minimal carbon future if greenhouse gasses are to be sufficiently limited molten salt reactors fit perfectly into this future because of their innate safety as well as their ability to consume spent nuclear fuel from conventional nuclear reactors he said additionally this project will help educate a new cohort of engineers who are equipped to work with advanced reactors

texas a&ms department of nuclear engineering was established in 1958 and strives to serve the state nation and global community by nurturing nuclear engineering professionals and leaders to meet the complex challenges associated with the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and enhancing global security it is the largest program in the us with a current enrollment of 292 undergraduate and 141 graduate students the program is ranked second nationally among undergraduate and fifth nationally among graduate programs included in public universities by us news and world report

dr roderic pettigrew has written an essay humanity binds us which will be included in the fall edition of the bridge the flagship quarterly publication of the national academy of engineering the issue will be online mid-september and is dedicated to the memory of us congressman john lewis who passed away july 17 the essay is currently available on the association of american medical colleges website pettigrew is ceo of engineering health (enhealth) and executive dean for engineering medicine (enmed) at texas a&m university and houston methodist hospital as well as the robert a welch professor in the department of biomedical engineering

two faculty members from the texas a&m university college of engineering have been recognized by sigma xi the scientific research honor society for their exemplary achievements in science and engineering they will be recognized during the societys national meeting in november which will be held virtually nov 5-8 the two engineering faculty members and the awards they will receive are: gerard l coté texas a&m regents professor and holder of the james j cain professorship i department of biomedical engineering walston chubb award for innovation for leadership in the development of biomedical optical systems for an array of medical applications with clinical impact bonnie j dunbar tees eminent professor department of aerospace engineering john p mcgovern science and society award for leadership and contributions in aerospace engineering; work spanning industry academia and government; a commitment to furthering engineering and science education at texas a&m; and outreach to k-12 students in addition each faculty member will serve as a plenary speaker at the societys virtual research conference and art exhibit hacking the brain: the intersection of art and neuroscience dr marcetta y darensbourg from the department of chemistry was also recognized for significant contributions to bioinorganic chemistry from her work on chemistry of the di-iron hydrogenases congratulations to our remarkable faculty members on their selection for these well-deserved awards said dr mark a barteau vice president for research their individual contributions to bioinorganic chemistry aerospace engineering and biomedical sciences are representative of texas a&ms commitment to expanding the frontiers of science and its applications recognition by sigma xi a champion of the importance of scientific research is a testament to the impact of these scholars

us army secretary ryan d mccarthy visited the rellis campus today to see construction progress at the texas a&m university systems george hw bush combat development complex the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) will be used to modernize the us military leading researchers will work with warriors on high-tech solutions to real-world national security challenges its no wonder that secretary mccarthy marveled at the breadth of what were building said col ross guieb bcdc executive director this will be a mini-research pentagon a high-tech hub for army industry and university-based experts to collaborate in one state-of-the-art location together well develop next-generation defense capabilities to deter adversaries and convincingly win on any battlefield the bcdcs first strategic partner is the us army futures command (afc) which has contracted with the texas a&m system to research experiment with and test prototypes for next-generation soldiering mccarthy also toured two other texas a&m research laboratories for hypersonics and directed energy and he met with students from the corps of cadets at texas a&m for more information see the full press release about mccarthys visit

the george hw bush combat development complex (bcdc) located on the 2 000-acre rellis campus is the result of a partnership between the us army futures command (afc) and the texas a&m university system texas a&m engineering experiment station and the state of texas the $200 million complex will bring together researchers from us universities the military and the private sector for collaboration demonstrations and high-tech testing of initiatives to help accelerate military innovation the bcdc is funded with $50 million from the state legislature $65 million from afc and $85 million from the texas a&m system for more information about the bcdc visit the 2020 special edition of the texas a&m engineer magazine

dr roderic pettigrew texas a&m universitys chief executive officer of the engineering health program and executive dean for engineering medicine will receive a prestigious lifetime achievement award from the national science board (nsb) pettigrew will be presented with the vannevar bush award which is considered one of the nations highest science awards it honors lifelong science and technology leaders who have made exceptional contributions to the welfare of the nation through public service in science and technology and in shaping public policy roderic pettigrews passion and creativity have spurred innovation in biomedicine said victor mccrary vice chair of the national science board and chair of the 2020 nsb honorary awards subcommittee his reimagining of health-care solutions is helping converge science fields narrowing gaps between disciplines in a way that really impacts society pettigrew is helping us to see what might be what could be and what is possible pettigrews contributions are wide-ranging they include: his service as the founding director of the national institute of biomedical imaging and bioengineering at the national institutes of health his advanced treatment for spinal injuries that enabled some chronically paralyzed men to regain voluntary muscle movement and sensory function his use of radiation in cancer treatments his work to use mris to image the beating heart and quantify blood flow his establishment of a partnership with the indian government to develop cuff-less blood pressure measurements along with other low-cost diagnostic and therapeutic technologies pettigrews work also involved bringing out the best in others while at nih he created the quantum grants program to encourage researchers to undertake medical moon shots to solve major challenges through technological innovation pettigrew continues to help others achieve greatness at texas a&m where he is executive dean of enmed in houston the program blends engineering and medicine in a four-year curriculum to develop problem-solving physicianeers; graduates who earn a medical degree and a masters degree in education plus they must invent a solution to a health care problem that is ready for a patent it is an incredible honor to receive the vannevar bush award which is so steeped in science history pettigrew said my only regret is that my parents are not alive to share this honor they were my first role models pettigrew was raised in rural georgia and attended segregated public schools before attending morehouse college in atlanta through a merrill scholarship after graduating with a bs in physics in 1972 he earned an ms in nuclear science and engineering at rensselaer polytechnic institute and a phd in applied radiation physics at massachusetts institute of technology where his work resulted in a new type of neutron activation radiation treatment of malignant brain tumors being pioneered at mit-harvard in 1979 he received an md from the university of miami in recent years he has been elected to the national academy of medicine the national academy of engineering the american academy of arts and sciences and the national academy of sciences india he has received the pierre galletti award from the american institute for medical and biological engineering the distinguished service award of both the international society of magnetic resonance in medicine and the national medical association the pritzker achievement award of the biomedical engineering society and was the first winner of the gold medal of the academy of radiology research he also was awarded a gold medal from the radiological society of north america and received the arthur m bueche award from the national academy of engineering the nsb created the award in 1980 in memory of vannevar bush who served as a science advisor to president franklin roosevelt during world war ii helped to establish federal funding for science and engineering as a national priority during peacetime and was behind the creation of the national science foundation past award recipients include: leon lederman (fermilab) nobel laureate harold varmus (former nih director) nobel laureate charles townes (uc berkeley -laser inventor) david packard (hewlett-packard company) rita colwell (former nsf director) charles vest (former mit president) and last year walter massey (university of chicago – oversaw giant magellan telescope)

dr chandler benjamin and his lab determine how to design materials so that they behave predictably in certain situations using material characterization and nonlinear models one of the main areas of benjamins research focuses on harnessing these models to help health care providers combat cardiovascular diseases affecting the bodys largest artery the aorta one disease in particular aortic dissection has been a primary focus of benjamins research an aortic dissection typically occurs when an injury to the innermost layer of the aorta allows blood to flow between the layers of the aortic wall forcing the layers apart if an aortic dissection occurs on the arch – the part that attaches right into the heart – i hope you are already in the hospital on the operating table said benjamin an assistant professor in the j mike walker 66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university if it occurs in the descending or the abdominal aorta it's very bad and you have some time to get to the hospital but still the fatality of that disorder is high unfortunately the condition is difficult to diagnose and can often be confused with an aneurysm based on current methods of detection including an mri which leaves physicians with no choice but to perform surgery to physically observe the artery to help assist health care providers in determining the likelihood of an aortic dissection benjamin and his lab group are working to create a model that could accurately detect the conditions under which it might occur most of the time you know this right before something bad is about to happen benjamin said we're trying to predict these things well before they occur if you could detect this before it ever becomes a serious problem then you can take steps toward prevention to accomplish such goals benjamin and his team take the materials they study and seek to determine how they behave when put under stress it is at this point where benjamins lab sets itself apart taking these characterizations and using them to test nonlinear models while more traditionally considered engineering materials use linear models biologically grown materials like the aorta require the use of nonlinear models similar to paint and toothpaste and are much more difficult to characterize if youre unable to describe how a material is going to behave under different loads and different conditions and if you have no models to represent this you cant even start benjamin said you cant even think about how youre going to predict something like this so this is always the first step in any mechanical development its the first thing that has to be done

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's health care market segment advances research in the key areas of medicine health care-related technology and life sciences using a multi-disciplinary approach our strengths include bioinformatics computational biology and systems biology for agricultural environmental and life sciences next generation medical devices and systems and education training and outreach programs for pharmaceutical workforce development

research led by dr wonmuk hwang has led to better understanding how components of the bodys immune system detect intruding or damaged cells which could lead to novel approaches to viral and cancer treatments hwang associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has recently published his research in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences when viruses enter the body the immune system kicks into gear to seek out and destroy the intruders t-cells are one component of the immune system and they seek out viruses hiding in host cells acting as an ultimate line of defense against antigens or foreign bodies t-cells probe the surfaces of other cells examining materials scooped from inside the cells and presented by the major histocompatibility complex (mhc) molecules on the surfaces of the cells the problem is there are hundreds of thousands of mhc molecules displaying peptides and only a few are from invading cells if at all hwang said the rest of them are normal products of cellular metabolism which means the t-cell needs to be able to see that needle in the haystack researchers have discovered recently that t-cells increase their detection power mechanically: when t-cells probe the surfaces of other cells there is a natural contact force created if the cell is infected by an antigen the applied force results in a catch bond between the t-cell receptors (tcrs) and mhc molecules which strengthens the contact this bond does not occur between tcrs and mch molecules that do not carry specific antigens however it is almost impossible to see this interaction in atomic details experimentally so hwang developed a computer simulation that could realistically demonstrate and analyze the interaction between tcrs and mhc molecules when force is applied only the simulation can see and analyze molecular motion under load a lab experiment doesnt have the resolution hwang said experimentally determined atomic structures of proteins are static snapshots but when the molecule moves you have basically no way to see the motion what hwang discovered was how the motion between the parts of the tcr controls their interaction with the mhc molecules when force is applied the motion is suppressed only when the mhc molecule has the matching antigen thereby stabilizing the entire complex other cases will refuse to interlock with the tcr and the constant motion between the two eventually leads to them disconnecting it is like a lock-and-key system where the lock and key constantly change shape and only with a perfect match and under an adequate level of force can the molecules interlock hwang said the knowledge of which parts of the molecule respond to force can help tailor t-cells for certain applications other than fighting infections tcrs are also the rising stars of cancer therapy if you can train the t-cell to see those cancerous antigens itll be really specific therapy hwang said chemotherapy kills all the cells but t-cells you can train to recognize cancer cells with extreme accuracy hwang said the next step for him is to investigate what is general and what pertains to specific t-cell receptor systems to see how this principle applies to different t-cell receptors im going to expand this initial finding hwang said this is the very first work that has found the operation mechanism of t-cell receptors under force hwang collaborated with researchers from vanderbilt university and harvard medical school and the research was supported by grants from the national institutes of health

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's health care market segment advances research in the key areas of medicine health care-related technology and life sciences using a multi-disciplinary approach our strengths include bioinformatics computational biology and systems biology for agricultural environmental and life sciences next generation medical devices and systems and education training and outreach programs for pharmaceutical workforce development

dr jens figlus associate professor in the department of ocean engineering at texas a&m university at galveston and a team of researchers are creating better designed hybrid coastal structures to safeguard coastal communities exposed to flooding and destruction in light of rising sea levels eroding coastlines and devastating hurricanes these structures combine the benefits of coastal sand dunes with those offered by traditional human-made structures like seawalls sea dikes and rubble mounds to elevate their effectiveness and resilience the teams work inspired by natural sand dunes will bridge the gap between research and application – allowing such structures to be utilized around the globe figlus details these types of hybrid structures in innovative coastal risk reduction through hybrid design: combining sand cover and structural defenses published in the journal of coastal research in the last decade or so the tide has turned to not approach everything with just brute force – so with concrete and steel type structures figlus said the direction coastal engineering has gone is more toward what some folks call engineering-with-nature approaches instead of trying to constantly battle and work against nature or protect against nature we're trying to use natural processes and more natural features to do the job that we intend to do as engineers like reducing the risk of flooding and destruction and increasing the level of protection

working with the coastal engineering lab the center of texas beaches and shores and researchers from other institutions such as the stevens institute of technology and delft university of technology in the netherlands figlus is testing how the combination of sand dunes and hard structures can best weather a storm the idea is that we're trying to make something look like and have vegetation ecosystems like a natural dune but in its core hidden underneath the sand layers would be a hard structure said figlus the combination of sand cover and hard structure is intended to do the job of reducing the risk of flooding inundation and destruction behind it in the event of a big storm surge and massive wave attack – like during hurricane ike but at the same time provide the aesthetic appeal and ecosystem services like a natural dune under normal conditions

research producing data-backed designs and guidelines for the construction of hybrid coastal structures has been lacking to fill this vital gap figlus and his team have conducted physical model tests and simulations utilizing the haynes coastal engineering wave basin in college station the team built a hybrid dune consisting of a rubble mound fortified core with sand on top they tested various storm scenarios– changing the wave and water levels to explore how the structure reacted and deformed when hit by storm waves

one primary objective of such a structure is to reduce the risk of flooding by limiting wave overtopping or the amount of water that goes over the structure this included testing what physical properties – such as slope and height of the dune – produce the best outcome and resilience against storm surge and wave impact the practical application is really the coastal spine intended to reduce the risk of flooding and storm surge damage to the greater houston-galveston region figlus said we're actively working on concepts that could hopefully be used by the army corps of engineers to design that potentially 70-mile-long coastal barrier these hybrid systems are a really good alternative

earthquakes hurricanes and tsunamis can have a catastrophic impact on infrastructuredr petros sideris assistant professor in the zachry department of civil and environmental engineering at texas a&m university has been awarded a national science foundation (nsf) grant to advance the fundamental understanding and computational simulation of the damage and failure mechanisms of reinforced concrete structures under extreme natural eventsaccurate predictions of damage and the failure of reinforced concrete structures are essential when designing and assessing risk especially by federal and state agencies and local communities this research will support structure- and community-level resilience effortsspecifically it will help accurately assess the performance of new and existing structures against natural hazards identify key vulnerabilities prioritize and guide retrofitting upgrade actions and develop and refine new designs to protect people and property from disastersthis research will produce computational simulation tools that will become available to the engineering community to support a wide range of efforts on addressing structure- and community-level resilience challenges sideris said i am very excited and humbled by this award which will allow me to pursue research that will advance our capability to predict structural failures under natural hazards in order to support efforts to improve the resilience of structures and communitiessideris research focuses on infrastructure resilience with particular emphasis on mitigating the effects of natural hazards on the built environment through understanding of the behavior of existing structures and the development of new resilient and sustainable designs realized via novel response mechanisms advanced materials and new construction methods his work lies at the nexus of performance-based engineering computational structural mechanics and dynamics and experimental methods for large-scale structures and materials

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's infrastructure market segment addresses obstacles related to all aspects of land and sea organizational structures and facilities our strengths include infrastructure renewal advanced materials and structural systems deep-water platforms slender and large body hydrodynamics non-traditional materials and deep ocean seafloor engineering

in 1967 prominent aerospace engineer tn edelbaum wanted to know how many velocity impulses – and in what direction and at what time – must be used to allow a spacecraft to fly from its starting point to reach a specified destination with a minimum total impulse its an issue that arises in virtually every space flight mission and dr john junkins and his research team have finally uncovered the rigorous process to answer it over 50 years later how do you optimally fly from a to b asked junkins distinguished professor and holder of the royce e wisenbaker chair in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university that's really the kind of problem i'm dealing with in this research and thats a tough problem that requires us to combine judicious control forces with gravitational field effects to fly from one moving object to another recent advances in low-thrust propulsion means that some spacecrafts are literally propelling for decades of powered flight between objects separated by many astronomical units so the trajectory design problems are getting more difficult as a consequence working alongside dr ehsan taheri an aerospace engineering adjunct assistant professor junkins formulations and algorithms have led to a new way to determine continuous thrust minimum fuel orbit transfers by varying the theoretical maximum-thrust allowed by x amount their approach ultimately reveals the solution for any maximum thrust level as the theoretical maximum thrust is allowed to approach infinity longer coasts appear between ever shorter optimal thrust arcs the limiting case is the answer to edelbaums optimal impulse question for any feasible orbit transfer this research is published in a special edition of the journal of the astronautical sciences dedicated to the 50 glorious orbits of junkins career to date and it also helped to earn him the robert h goddard astronautics award from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics in may 2019 the work taheri and i did extended and unified existing methodology said junkins who was also recently awarded a 2020 texas a&m engineering experiment station research impact award for his contribution to the development of his space navigation and control research he is also director of the hagler institute for advanced study and a member of the national academy of engineering its really amazing that many researchers and flight control engineers worked on this for a half century continued junkins and even though i was born a bit too late to be a key player in the apollo program during edelbaums time i wasn't born too late to bring closure to an important question he raised in the process i established new tools to design space missions optimally and with computational efficiency

the hagler institute for advanced study provides a catalyst to enrich the intellectual climate and educational experiences at texas a&m university it is a mechanism for attracting world-class talent to the texas a&m and is driven by nominations of national academy and nobel prize-caliber researchers that align with existing strengths and ambitions of the university

over the last few years there has been a significant increase in the use of twitter to share updates seek help and report emergencies during a disaster social media platforms can be instrumental for keeping track of events like damage to personal property or injuries during natural disasters however algorithms keeping track of social media posts to signal the occurrence of natural disasters must be swift so that relief operations can be mobilized immediately a team of researchers led by dr ruihong huang assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has developed a novel weakly supervised approach that can train machine learning algorithms quickly to recognize tweets related to disasters because of the sudden nature of disasters theres not much time available to build an event recognition system said huang our goal is to be able to detect life-threatening events using individual social media messages and recognize similar events in the affected areas the researchers described their findings in the proceedings from the association for the advancement of artificial intelligences 34th conference on artificial intelligence texts on social media platforms like twitter can be categorized using standard algorithms called classifiers most classifiers are an integral part of machine learning algorithms that make predictions based on carefully labeled sets of data in the past machine learning algorithms have been used for event detection based on tweets or a burst of words within tweets to ensure a reliable classifier for the machine learning algorithms human annotators have to manually label large amounts of data instances one by one which usually takes several days sometimes even weeks or months the researchers also found that it is essentially impossible to find a keyword that does not have more than one meaning on social media depending on the context of the tweet for example if the word dead is used as a keyword it will pull in tweets talking about a variety of topics such as a phone battery being dead or the television series the walking dead to build more reliable labeled datasets the researchers first used an automatic clustering algorithm to put them into small groups next a domain expert looked at the context of the tweets in each group to identify if it was relevant to the disaster the labeled tweets were then used to train the classifier how to recognize the relevant tweets using data gathered from the most impacted time periods for hurricanes harvey and florence the researchers found that their data labeling method and overall weakly-supervised system took one to two person-hours instead of the 50 person-hours that were required to go through thousands of carefully annotated tweets using the supervised approach despite the classifiers overall good performance they also observed that the system still missed several tweets that were relevant but used a different vocabulary than the predetermined keywords users can be very creative when discussing a particular type of event using the predefined keywords so the classifier would have to be able to handle those types of tweets said huang theres room to further improve the systems coverage in the future the researchers will look to explore how to extract information about the users location so first responders will know exactly where to dispatch their resources this work is supported by funds from the national science foundation

what if you could provide emergency responders with technology that could not only potentially save lives but make their work more precise and efficient at the same time through the use of novel human augmentation technologies this concept called learner is on its way to becoming a reality thanks to an award from the national science foundation (nsf) learner (learning environments with augmentation and robotics for next-gen emergency responders) is a mixed-reality learning environment with physical augmented and virtual reality components for users to learn to work effectively with nascent human augmentation technologies this new learning environment will feature powered exoskeletons and head-worn augmented reality interfaces to augment responders physical and cognitive capabilities learner is a personalized learning platform that will incorporate physiological neurological and behavioral markers of learning into real-time emergency response scenario evolution that can be accessed via tiered hardware-based learning experiences ranging from laptops/desktops to vr (virtual reality) and ar (augmented reality) headsets at field houses to haptic suits at in-situ emergency response training at national training centers said dr ranjana mehta principal investigator on the two-year $5 million project and associate professor in the wm michael barnes 64 department of industrial and systems engineering at texas a&m university and director of the neuroergonomics lab the project is funded through the nsfs newly formed convergence accelerator program which integrates use-inspired team-based science cross-cutting partnerships and multidisciplinary efforts to produce impactful solutions toward national-scale societal challenges "convergence accelerator is producing true innovation " said douglas maughan nsf convergence accelerator program head "all 2019 cohort teams worked hard to further develop their initial concepts strengthen their teams and engage with customers and partners; however phase ii is where we expect to see high-impact deliverables" throughout the process especially in our evaluation and assessments we are poised toward staying focused practical and user/customer-centric by closely working with the learner advisory board that includes leaders from core technology development companies (eg ford boeing) stakeholders and trainers from emergency response organizations and decision-makers from government agencies (eg federal emergency management agency national fire protection association) said mehta the learner team includes researchers from virginia polytechnic institute and state university the university of florida knowledge based systems inc and sarcos robotics dr jason moats and his team from the texas a&m engineering extension service a world-renowned leader in emergency response workforce development and the national institute of standards and testing are providing guidance content building and testing capability dr saurabh biswas from the texas a&m engineering experiment station is a senior personnel member on the project providing guidance on commercialization the team was among 43 phase i award winners selected in 2019 phase i award winners competed through a proposal and pitch peer-review process and nine were selected for awards in phase ii over the next 24 months the team will advance learning by creating a scalable and replicable platform that will increase the speed of integration and adoption of innovative and emerging human augmentation technologies that benefit the future workforce not only in emergency response but also across other industrial sectors such as manufacturing construction and health care imagine if health care workers are quickly able to learn how to use powered exoskeletons using learner fewer workers would be needed for safer patient handling thereby potentially reducing the spread of covid-19-related infections the award will accelerate our efforts to make immediate impacts to address challenges of national importance such as this said mehta

the neuroergonomics lab examines the mind-motor-machine nexus to understand quantify and predict human performance when interacting with emerging technologies (unmanned collaborative and wearable systems) in safety-critical extreme environments (eg emergency response space exploration oil and gas) the lab's research advances knowledge of human neuromuscular functioning particularly under stress and in underserved populations

a researcher at texas a&m university is launching a project to better understand how light can affect neurons in the brain dr alex walsh assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering recently received a grant through the air force office of scientific researchs (afsor) young investigator research program the grant supports walshs research to better understand why neurons in the brain are affected by infrared light we know that the infrared light induces a thermal gradient so it heats the neurons it happens very fast within milliseconds and changes the neurons electrical signals walsh said but we dont know how one hypothesis is that the stimulation affects the ion channels in neurons but responses are observed even in cells that lack light- and heat-sensitive channels with the air force grant walsh will pursue research to test if theres a relationship between infrared light and cellular metabolism if the infrared light is impacting how cells produce energy it could be modulating the neurons activity because ion channels need energy to function we use infrared lasers and fiber optics to deliver the infrared light on top of the cell and then use electronics to shape the pulses of the light to be milliseconds in duration walsh said we can apply pulse trains or single pulses

walsh said one challenge that has limited the broader field of studying infrared lights impact on cells is that optimizing parameters is difficult everyone uses different laser sources wavelengths and pulse parameters so comparing studies across different labs is challenging walsh said her lab has applied for a grant to buy multiple laser sources for a head-to-head comparison of different wavelengths rather than using just one which can make replicability difficult being able to stimulate neurons to control cell behavior could have a wide variety of applications in the healthcare field walsh said many diseases ranging from seizures and pain management to heart arrhythmias could be treated by stimulating neurons to turn off another application involves turning the neurons on to interact with medical devices current prosthetic devices are integrated with the brain through electrical stimulation but there are limitations that impact the precision of the connection there may be times we want to stimulate neurons for man-machine interfacing if you have a machine like an artificial leg and you want to be able to control it the infrared light could be a precise way to tune biological responses walsh said she is also interested in learning if infrared light impacts other cell types as this may provide a light-based technology to control cell function

the texas a&m engineering experiment station's health care market segment advances research in the key areas of medicine health care-related technology and life sciences using a multi-disciplinary approach our strengths include bioinformatics computational biology and systems biology for agricultural environmental and life sciences next generation medical devices and systems and education training and outreach programs for pharmaceutical workforce development

in a new study researchers at texas a&m university have described their novel plant-based energy storage device that could charge even electric cars within a few minutes in the near future furthermore they said their devices are flexible lightweight and cost-effective integrating biomaterials into energy storage devices has been tricky because it is difficult to control their resulting electrical properties which then gravely affects the devices life cycle and performance also the process of making biomaterials generally includes chemical treatments that are hazardous said dr hong liang oscar s wyatt jr professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering we have designed an environmentally friendly energy storage device that has superior electrical performance and can be manufactured easily safely and at much lower cost their research is outlined in the june issue of energy storage energy storage devices are generally in the form of either batteries or supercapacitors although both types of devices can deliver electrical currents when required they have some fundamental differences while batteries can store large amounts of charge per unit volume supercapacitors are much more efficient at generating a large quantity of electric current within a short duration this burst of electricity helps supercapacitors to quickly charge up devices unlike batteries that can take much longer supercapacitors have an internal architecture that is more in line with basic capacitors both these devices store charge on metal plates or electrodes however unlike basic capacitors supercapacitors can be made in different sizes shapes and designs depending on the intended application furthermore supercapacitor electrodes can also be built with different materials for their work liang and her team were attracted to manganese dioxide nanoparticles for designing one of the two supercapacitor electrodes manganese dioxide is cheaper available in abundance and is safer compared to other transition metal oxides like ruthenium or zinc oxide that are popularly used for making electrodes said liang but a major drawback of manganese dioxide is that it suffers from lower electrical conductivity

past research has shown that lignin a natural polymer that glues wood fibers together used with metal oxides enhances the electrochemical properties of electrodes however liang said there have been few studies looking into combining manganese dioxide and lignin to leverage both of their useful propertiesto create their electrode liang and her team treated purified lignin with a commonly available disinfectant called potassium permanganate they then applied high heat and pressure to initiate an oxidation reaction that results in the breaking down of potassium permanganate and the deposition of manganese dioxide on lignin next they coated the lignin and manganese dioxide mixture on an aluminum plate to form the green electrode finally the researchers assembled the supercapacitor by sandwiching a gel electrolyte between the lignin-manganese dioxide-aluminum electrode and another electrode made of aluminum and activated charcoal upon testing their newly designed green electrode they found that their supercapacitor had very stable electrochemical properties in particular the specific capacitance or the ability of the device to store an electrical charge changed little even after thousands of cycles of charging and discharging also for an optimal lignin-manganese dioxide ratio the specific capacitance was observed to be up to 900 times more than what has been reported for other supercapacitors liang noted that these supercapacitors are also very light and flexible these properties extend their use as structural energy storage elements in vehicles for example in this study we have been able to make a plant-based supercapacitor with excellent electrochemical performance using a low-cost sustainable method said liang in the near future wed like to make our supercapacitors 100% environmentally friendly by incorporating only green sustainable ingredients other contributors to this research include swarn jha raj likhari and weston stewart from the mechanical engineering department; yan chen from the department of materials science and engineering; siddhi mehta from the texas a&m energy institute; and dr dilworth parkinson from the lawrence berkeley national laboratory california this research was funded by a texas a&m energy institute fellowship

upon testing their newly designed green electrode they found that their supercapacitor had very stable electrochemical properties in particular the specific capacitance or the ability of the device to store an electrical charge changed little even after thousands of cycles of charging and discharging also for an optimal lignin-manganese dioxide ratio the specific capacitance was observed to be up to 900 times more than what has been reported for other supercapacitors liang noted that these supercapacitors are also very light and flexible these properties extend their use as structural energy storage elements in vehicles for example in this study we have been able to make a plant-based supercapacitor with excellent electrochemical performance using a low-cost sustainable method said liang in the near future wed like to make our supercapacitors 100% environmentally friendly by incorporating only green sustainable ingredients other contributors to this research include swarn jha raj likhari and weston stewart from the mechanical engineering department; yan chen from the department of materials science and engineering; siddhi mehta from the texas a&m energy institute; and dr dilworth parkinson from the lawrence berkeley national laboratory california this research was funded by a texas a&m energy institute fellowship