FACULTY NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Assistant Professors Todd
Allen and Paul
Wilson were the guests on the University
of the Air show that aired June 5 on Wisconsin Public Radio.
A story, “State spends big
Homeland Security money in small places, perhaps not in proportion
to threat,” in the Nov. 5 issue of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, quoted Professor Vicki
Bier.
An August story in the New
Republic about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s
security policies also quoted Bier.
The websites lightsources.com,
physorg.com,
memsindustry.com and sciencenewsdaily.org
were among those that ran stories about ultrananocrystalline diamond
research for MEMS and NEMS by Associate Professor Rob
Carpick and colleagues.
A sidebar to the article, “Journey
to Chernobyl,” from the spring 2005 issue of the UW-Madison
alumni magazine On Wisconsin, included
quotes from Professors Michael
Corradini and Vicki
Bier.
A story, “Fusion energy:
Just around the corner,” in the July 21 issue of Nature,
paraphrased comments by Steenbock Professor Ray
Fonck.
Assistant Professor Paul
Wilson was a guest on the 5 p.m. news Aug. 5 on Madison’s
NBC 15 to discuss the recently passed energy bill.
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In September, Assistant Professor Todd
Allen chaired the Fuels, Materials, and Waste Forms working group
commissioned by the Department of Energy Office of Science. The group
evaluated research opportunities under the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative
that have the potential to minimize waste and long-lived radioisotopes,
and maximize energy output of advanced nuclear fuel cycles. Its report
is a first step in defining a long-term advanced fuel cycle research
program within the Office of Science.
Professor Vicki
Bier has been appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Homeland Security Advisory Committee, which advises the EPA on general
homeland security issues, including detecting, characterizing, responding
to and mitigating contaminants in buildings and public venues; improving
rapid-risk assessments for terrorismagents; and verifying performance
technologies used to monitor and ensure drinking-water quality.
Professor Jake
Blanchard received approximately $40,000 from the John & Jean
Berndt Technology-Enhanced Learning Initiative to develop innovative
teaching approaches. Working with Engineering Professional Development
Faculty Associate Tom Smith and John Stremikis in UW-Extension/EPD information
systems, Blanchard is developing course tools for delivering a Master
of Engineering in Professional Practice course via handheld devices.
The group plans to pilot its courses in spring 2006.
Associate Professor Rob
Carpick and colleagues, including collaborators from Argonne National
Laboratories, published research in the journal Advanced
Materials that is integral to understanding problems associated
with building lasting micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems, or MEMS
and NEMS. For uses that require repetitive sliding or rolling, the researchers
explored ultrananocrystalline diamond, rather than silicon, and found
that creating an atomic “cap” of hydrogen on the diamond’s
surface, -like varnish on a wood table-, makes it water-repellent—critical
for micro- and nanoscale machines that run without lubrication.
Wisconsin Distinguished Professor Michael
Corradini is chair of the National Academy of Engineering Committee
on Engineering Education until 2008. In addition, he was named to the
National Academies Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, which
provides independent advice to the executive and legislative branches
of government and the private sector on issues in energy and environmental
technology and related public policy. It also mobilizes a wide range
of expertise in engineering and the physical and social sciences. His
term runs through 2008.
Working with Professor of Medicine Dennis Maki and
Assistant Professor of Medicine Christopher Crnich, Associate Professor
Wendy
Crone and former student Jeremy Halfmann (BS ’04) published
results in the Aug. 10 issue of Infection Control
and Hospital Epidemiology that showed that a novel method that
uses ethanol for disinfecting long-term intravascular devices over time
should not have an adverse effect on their structural integrity. Crone
and Halfmann conducted rigorous tests of two common catheter materials
(polyurethane and silicone), locking them in a heated 70-percent ethanol
solution for up to 72 days, and found little change in the materials’
mechanical behavior.
Via a $20 million National Science Foundation Network, Crone, who is
director of education and outreach for the university’s NSF-funded
Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) on Nanostructured
Materials and Interfaces, will lead an effort to work with some of the
nation’s top science museums to create hands-on exhibits about
nanotechnology. Building on ideas and topics from MRSEC research, Crone’s
group will work most closely with the Science Museum of Minnesota, which
will lead the Center for Exhibit and Program Production and Dissemination.
The Naval Research Laboratory awarded a one-year,
$506,000 contract to the Fusion Technology Institute (FTI) to help design
a chamber to contain small, repetitive thermonuclear explosions. The
project continues four years’ worth of previously funded work
and includes Grainger Professor and FTI Director Gerald
Kulcinski, Professors Gregory
Moses, Jake
Blanchard, and Doug
Henderson, Assistant Professor Paul
Wilson, and Research Professors Mohamed
Sawan and John
Santarius.
Sandia National Laboratories has awarded the FTI a six-month, $265,000
contract to perform research on the design of an inertial confinement
fusion reactor facility. The effort includes Kulcinski, Moses, Professor
Dan
Kammer and Associate Professor Riccardo
Bonazza, Senior Scientist Laila
El-Guebaly and Associate Scientist Mark
Anderson.
Walter P. Kistler, President of the Lunar Transportation Systems Company,
has donated $25,000 to the FTI to study lunar resource development.
The gift supports FTI faculty, staff and student research focused on
recovering solar wind volatiles from the lunar surface. Matthew Gajda,
a graduate student in engineering physics, is designing a robotic mining
unit for recovering hydrogen, water and Helium-3 from the surface of
the moon.
Wisconsin Distinguished Professor Rod
Lakes is among a group of three faculty members to receive a $1.1
million grant from the NSF Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team
(NIRT) program. The four-year research program seeks to advance both
the fundamental understanding of ultrasonic cavitation-based solidification
processing of complex bulk Mg metal-matrix nanocomposite (Mg MMNC) materials
and components and their processing, structure, and property relationships.
Educational components of the program include multi-campus curriculum
development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California-Davis
and Georgia Institute of Technology. Outreach activities will expose
more K-12 students, teachers and industries to nanotechnology. Lakes
is collaborating with Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Xiaochun
Li and Materials Science & Engineering Professor Sindo
Kou.
Adjunct Professor Harrison
Schmitt has authored a new book, Return to
the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy in the Human Settlement
of Space. According to one book description, he proposes in the
book that we begin planning now to establish human outposts on the moon
-not just as an exercise in technology and discovery, and not just as
a way of fulfilling our destiny as explorers and pioneers. In this book,
he focuses on a return to the moon as a business proposition. A member
of the Apollo 17 mission, Schmitt is the 12th and most recent human
to have stepped on the moon.
Senior Scientist Kumar
Sridharan has been named a research professor. A researcher and
educator at UW-Madison for more than 20 years, he is an expert in high
temperature materials, corrosion and wear of materials, plasma-based
processing and surface modification of materials, metallurgy, and advanced
materials characterization. He serves on the editorial committees of
the International Materials Reviews and
Materials Engineering and Performance journals.
