Marston Muses-Fall 97  
Contents
Cover Story

Undergraduate and Learning

Research and Graduate Education

College Briefs

Alumni

Cross Cutting

Credits

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Research excellence

From the infinite possibilities of virtual reality to the dirty business of hog waste management, the diversity and magnitude of research in the College of Engineering boggles the mind.

At $38 million and counting, research totals nearly half of the college’s annual budget. For good reason: Research is the underpinning of the college’s educational and outreach programs, said Associate Dean Ted Okiishi. “Research enriches the educational experience of undergraduates, and it is absolutely vital to the success of our graduate education programs.”

Leading researchers in the college agree. Distinguished Professor William Lord and other faculty in ECpE integrate undergraduates into teams of faculty, post-doctoral students, and graduate students on some research projects. “Our philosophy has always been one of integrating research into undergraduate education—that’s the very essence of a Research 1 university,” said Lord, who is the Palmer Chair in Electrical Engineering and the 1998 recipient of the college’s highest award for research. “There’s no reason why undergraduate students shouldn’t benefit from the fantastic research that’s going on.”

Integrating research into the undergraduate curriculum introduces students to real-world problems. Lord’s students have worked on developing nondestructive evaluation tools to inspect transmission gas pipelines to avoid catastrophic failure in an urban area. “That’s not an artificial problem. Students know it’s a real, meaningful issue,” Lord said. “It provides them with an opportunity to experience first hand the reduction of scientific principles to practice.”

A research experience opens students to a kind of problem solving they can’t experience in the classroom, Lord said. “The very essence of engineering is creativity. It’s a matter of learning as much as you can about engineering tools—mathematics, science, and technology—and bringing those things to bear on problems that have not yet been solved. That’s tremendously creative. We can’t teach that in lectures; students have to learn it by doing it.”

Collaborations
A significant portion (43 percent) of the college’s research is conducted in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and centers of ISU’s Institute for Physical Research and Technology (IPRT). Three engineering faculty direct IPRT centers: AEEM and MSE Distinguished Professor Bruce Thompson heads the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation (CNDE), which pursues the research and development of new theories and techniques for use in quantitative NDE. ME Professor James Bernard leads the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT), which focuses on using virtual-reality technology to solve problems of engineering and science. ME and ChemE Professor Robert Brown oversees the Center for Coal and the Environment (CfCE), which focuses on developing environ-mentally sound technologies for the utilization and processing of energy sources.

Such on-campus research centers provide students with tremendous opportunities to work on industrially relevant research, said Thompson. “At CNDE, we’re developing generic technologies for companies and applying those capabilities to specific problems of particular companies. Some aspects require rapid turnaround and are best done by researchers. Other longer range things are better accomplished by a graduate student and will result in a graduate thesis. The student works on a real problem, but can move at a pace appropriate to learning needs.”

The results are sometimes spectacular in unexpected ways. Bernard speaks with pride of his former student, Chris Clover, BSAeroE’91, MENAEEM’92, PhDME’96, who started a company after doing graduate work in ICEMT. “He started MechDyne a couple of years ago and has hired several of our grads. They’re building innovative virtual reality environments all over the world from Marshalltown, Iowa. They pay taxes there and add to the town’s economic well being,” he said. “They’re as direct a product of the ISU system as anybody is likely to be. They’re young folks with an ‘R&D/Can Do’ attitude. They’re the new entrepreneurs.”

Faculty who oversee graduate students’ research have a personal stake in students’ success, Bernard said. “They’re proud of what their students do…Faculty help them get where they are. Meanwhile, the faculty member’s career benefits when a grad student does really great things. There’s a symbiotic relationship.”

There’s another benefit to strong collaborations between the college and IPRT. Their centers enable multidisciplinary research to occur within the predominantly single-discipline structure of a university. “It’s a very entrepreneurial type thing. Lots of us are interested in changes that are just too big to take on with one expertise,” said Bernard. “When a team from different disciplines comes together to focus on a particular technical challenge, and they’re accomplishing things together, it’s really, really exciting.”

Some of the greatest research advances in the future may occur at the boundaries between different disciplines. One such collaboration is just getting under way. Thompson and AEEM and ME faculty at CNDE recently received a $900,000 grant to work with medical faculty from the University of Iowa to develop image-guided surgery. The team will apply NDE tools to problems encountered in biomedical imaging. The image-guided surgical technology is expected to improve precision and speed, thereby reducing a patient’s hospital stay.