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Wearable electronics have become ubiquitous—smart watches and fitness trackers are a few of the more popular devices. But, some people require body-attached medical devices. These include wearable defibrillators, blood-pressure monitors, heart-assist devices and infusion pumps. They’re a less common, but, to the patients who require them, they play a vital role.

These devices help keep patients alive, healthy and report metrics back to healthcare professionals, so we should expect them to be safe to wear and reliable.

That’s not always the case.

“Failures can cause malfunction,” said Mehdi Kohani, a graduate research assistant with the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), “which may result in patient injury or death.” As a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, his research focus is on medical device reliability.

Kohani is currently working at CALCE with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help develop new standards for wearable electronics. His research will help eliminate the threat of Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) in malfunctioning devices by qualifying new tests for device manufacturers to ensure their products are safe, he said.

ESD is the abrupt transfer of electricity between electrically charged objects—typically caused by contact. That’s similar to building up a static charge while walking across the carpeted floor of a room and then feeling a shock when you reach for the door knob.

This may not seem like such a threat, but at least two people have died due to ESD events, which lead to the malfunction of their ventricular-assist devices.

“The devices that are worn need to be robust enough to be safe, and they need to be able to maintain their normal operation without being disturbed,” he said. At this time, the FDA doesn’t have specific defibrillation-proof safety standards for wearable electronics.

Kohani’s research continues through November, Kohani said, “our work will be to provide [manufacturers with] guidance, guidelines, new standards and new models for these devices”

Source: A. James Clark School of Engineering, News Story

The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, College Park were ranked among the top tier in the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings of colleges and universities released Tuesday.

Johns Hopkins was ranked 11th and College Park was ranked 61 in the category of Best National Universities. University of Maryland Baltimore County was ranked 159.

U.S. News and World Report released the rankings, which factor in everything from the SAT scores of entering freshman, to graduation and acceptance rates, to the quality of college presidents and administrators.

U.S. News also asked college presidents and administrators which schools are making the most innovative improvements in curriculum, campus life, faculty and technology. UMBC was ranked seventh and College Park was ranked 15th.

“These rankings reflect the respect thought leaders across the country have for our university, and they speak to our strength as an institution focused on both research and the undergraduate educational experience,” UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski said in a statement. “We are proud to be included on both lists.”

UMBC was also rated as the seventh most innovative university in the country and the 13th top national university for strong commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Katie Lawson, a spokeswoman for University of Maryland, College Park, said in an email that “UMD is especially proud to be named the 15th most innovative school in the country in recognition of our entrepreneurial programs and pioneering research. In fact, we are the nation’s first Do Good campus, dedicated to inspiring a culture of philanthropy and social innovation where entrepreneurial thinking drives positive social change.”

Johns Hopkins University officials said in a statement that the rankings showed it “continues to be one of the nation’s best colleges and universities.”

Two Maryland schools ranked in the top 30 of public universities. The Naval Academy was second and St. Mary’s College of Maryland was fifth.

The Naval Academy was ranked 21st among liberal arts colleges, a fall from the 12th spot the year before. Meanwhile, St. Johns College in Annapolis was ranked 53rd, Goucher College was ranked 112th and McDaniel College was ranked 134th. St. Mary’s College and Washington College were tied for 96th in that category. Towson University, Goucher and McDaniel colleges were also listed as “A+ schools for B students.”

Of the historically black colleges and universities in the country, Morgan State University was ranked 16th, University of Maryland Eastern Shore was ranked 20th and Bowie State University was ranked 22nd.

Towson was also ranked 10th among top public regional universities, and 41st among private and public regional universities, in the northern United States.

The U.S. News rankings have come under criticism for years by some universities and college admissions counselors.

David Hawkins, the executive director for educational content and policy at the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, said his members have suggested that U.S. News include students’ opinions of their colleges.

“The rankings adhere to a set formula that rewards colleges for certain behaviors,” he said, adding that they rise when they are more selective and accept students with high test scores.

Morgan State University President David Wilson is gratified his institution is ranked higher than it was last year. However, he said, “I think institutions try so hard to move up into the rankings that some of them can lose site of what their goals are.”

The rankings, Wilson said, do not reward colleges that accept students who may be farther behind academically and work hard to help those students graduate.

“The rankings do not represent the great majority of American universities that are doing the heavy lifting in educating the great majority,” he said.

Skywatchers who couldn’t make it to the path of totality—or simply want to remember the event—can experience the total solar eclipse through videos and photos taken by Clark School of Engineering faculty, staff, and students.

The Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Test Site recorded 360-degree video from altitudes as high as 400 feet in Casper, Wyoming and Charleston, South Carolina. Project Engineer Jacob Moschler also collected data on wind conditions during the event, which will be shared with University of Maryland meteorologists to support investigations into how wind velocity and other phenomenon are impacted by eclipses.

Photos and videos are available on the test site’s YouTube and Flickr pages.

Images capturing the scene as roughly 25 students sent an 8-foot helium-filled balloon approximately 104,000 feet above Williamston, South Carolina are also available on the Department of Aerospace EngineeringFacebook page. Led by visiting professor Mary Bowden, the operation collected data for a handful of experiments, including ones to measure the radiation change during the eclipse and the impact of that on cell cultures.

Reference:

News Story: A. James Clark School of Engineering

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Three University of Maryland engineers have been awarded new National Science Foundation (NSF) grants through an NSF program that fosters research on how human neural and cognitive systems interact and intersect with advances in engineering, computer science and education.

These grants are among 19 NSF awards issued to U.S. cross-disciplinary teams to conduct work that is  “bold, risky, and transcends the perspectives and approaches typical of single-discipline research efforts.” According to the agency, the awards will contribute to NSF’s investments in fundamental brain research, in particular support of Understanding the Brain and the BRAIN Initiative, a coordinated research effort that seeks to accelerate the development of new neurotechnologies.

Professor Jonathan Simon, who holds joint appointments in electrical and computer engineering (ECE), biology and UMD’s Institute for Systems Research (ISR), and Assistant Professor Behtash Babadi, who holds joint appointments in ECE and ISR, have received a $900,000 grant for research that will take advantage of recent advances in noninvasive neuroimaging to learn more about how the brain’s neural mechanisms work in adaptive auditory processing. Simon and Babadi are two of more than 140 UMD faculty in the university’s Brain and Behavior Initiative, which seeks to revolutionize the interface between engineers and neuroscientists by generating novel tools and approaches to understand complex behaviors produced by the human brain.

UMD Associate Professor Sarah Bergbreiter, who holds a joint appointment in mechanical engineering and ISR,  and two colleagues from Northwestern University, L. Catherine Brinson and Mitra Hartmann, were awarded a $1,000,000 grant to better understand how animals use the sense of touch to gather information and then use this information to perform complex behaviors. The University of Maryland’s portion of the grant is $320,000.

Using brain imaging to study how our brains adapt  to varying sound environments 

Recent, growing evidence suggests that sophisticated brain functions happen when more than one region of the brain is activated at the same time, and the brain forms networks between these regions that can dynamically reconfigure. These networks allow humans to rapidly adapt to changes in their sound environment, such as when walking from a quiet street into a noisy party. Currently, little is known about the workings of these brain networks, which bind, organize, and give meaning to higher cognitive functions.

Adaptive auditory processing is one such higher function. It is the brain’s ability to attend to, segregate, and track one of many sound sources, to learn its identity, commit it to memory, robustly recognize it, and use it to make decisions. And it is in this area that the new NSF funding will support new research by Simon and Babadi.

“Deciphering the neural mechanisms underlying the brain’s network dynamics is critical to understanding how the brain carries out universal cognitive processes such as attention, decision-making and learning,” notes Simon. “However, the sheer high-dimensionality of dynamic neuroimaging data, together with the complexity of these [brain] networks, has created serious challenges, in practice, in its data analysis, signal processing, and neural modeling.”

The researchers will use modern signal processing techniques to combine high temporal resolution, non-invasive recordings with high spatial resolutions.

“Our work will bring new insight to the dynamic organization of cortical networks at unprecedented spatiotemporal resolutions, and can thereby impact technology in the areas of brain-computer interfacing and neuromorphic engineering,” says Babadi. “It will also allow for the creation of engineering solutions for early detection and monitoring of cognitive disorders involving auditory perception and attention.”

Neuromorphic engineering is the use of a very large-scale system of integrated circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system.

Using robotic whiskers to help understand how animal brains’ use real ones

The research by Bergbreiter and her two Northwestern colleagues will advance understanding of how animals first gather information through the sense of touch and then how the use this information to perform complex behaviors.  At Maryland, Bergbreiter will be developing artificial, modular, reconfigurable whiskers that imitate the functions of animal whiskers.

The whiskers will be mounted on robotic platforms that can mimic the head movements of animals, contributing to the development of novel robots and sensors that use touch to sense an object’s location, shape, and texture, to track fluid wakes in water, and to sense the direction of airflow.

“Engineering arrays of sensors to serve as physical models of a rat’s whiskers will allow us to better understand the connections between what a rat senses and its actions,” Bergbreiter says. “Using this understanding, we can design robots with the ability to explore dark areas or work in other challenging environments that require a sense of touch or flow.”

The NSF Neural and Cognitive Science Program

The complexities of brain and behavior pose fundamental questions in many areas of science and engineering, drawing intense interest across a broad spectrum of disciplinary perspectives while eluding explanation by any one of them. Rapid advances within and across disciplines are leading to an increasingly interconnected fabric of theories, models, empirical methods and findings, and educational approaches, opening new opportunities to understand complex aspects of neural and cognitive systems through integrative multidisciplinary approaches. According to NSF this program seeks to support innovative, integrative, boundary-crossing proposals that can best capture those opportunities

“It takes insight and courage to tackle these problems,” said Ken Whang, NSF program director in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE). “These teams are combining their expertise to try to forge new paths forward on some of the most complex and important challenges of understanding the brain. They are posing problems in new ways, taking intellectual and technical risks that have huge potential payoff.”

Source: UMD Right Now News Story.

College Park, Md. — On August 14, 2017, state and university leaders gathered at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) campus to officially launch the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEI²), created by the state to turn research breakthroughs by Maryland academic institutions into commercial, clean energy solutions that meet the needs of the state and its people.

“[The Maryland Energy Innovation Institute] of course is a great collaboration between the University of Maryland and the Maryland Clean Energy Center, which has been a really important part of the state’s strategy for consistency in our clean energy policies,” said U.S. Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen. “More than 100 [University of Maryland] faculty have been involved already in developing breakthrough technologies in the areas of solar, wind, energy efficiency, and battery and fuel cell technology, and [the University] will expand those efforts with the launch of this institute.”

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan authorized $7.5 million in state funding earlier this year for MEI², an initiative that is designed to catalyze clean energy research programs at academic institutions in the state and attract and develop private investment in clean energy innovation and commercialization. The institute will seek to bolster economic jobs in the clean energy industry sector in Maryland, and also promote the deployment of clean energy technology throughout the state.

MEI² is a partnership between the state’s Maryland Clean Energy Center (MCEC), directed by Katherine Magruder, and the University of Maryland Energy Research Center (UMERC), directed by Eric Wachsman and situated within UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. Wachsman is also director of MEI².

“Clean energy is an engineering challenge of our day and, more importantly, of the 21^st century,” said Darryll Pines, dean of UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering and Nariman Farvardin Professor. “Because of the extraordinary commitment of our elected officials who are here today with us, and our partners across the campus and state, we can continue to grow investments in clean energy, innovation, and commercialization for the State of Maryland.”

“When you look at our energy past and our energy future, the first gas lamps in North America turned on in Baltimore almost 200 years ago exactly. The pivot to fossil fuels started here in Maryland—so, isn’t it fitting that the pivot to the next generation of energy also happens in Maryland,” said Maryland State Senator Richard Madaleno. “That’s why I’m so excited, the General Assembly is so excited, to participate in [the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute] so that the clean energy revolution starts here, and we can capture in Maryland not only the environmental benefits, but the economic benefits, as well.”

Additional speakers included University of Maryland President Wallace Loh; Mary Beth Tung, director of the Maryland Energy Administration; and Joshua Greene, chairman of the MCEC board and vice president of A.O. Smith. Also present were Maryland State Delegate Tawanna Gaines, other government officials, and corporate partners, as well as UMD researchers affiliated with the institute who showcased examples of the kind of battery, fuel cell, solar, and energy efficiency technologies that MEI² will work to move into commercial use.

Source: James Clark School of Engineering News Story.

Title: FRAMEWORK FOR SMALL FATIGUE CRACK PROPAGATION AND DETECTION JOINT MODELING USING GAUSSIAN PROCESS REGRESSION

Date and Time: Tuesday,August 22nd,2017  from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM

Location: DeWALT Conference Room, Glenn Martin Hall

Committee:

Dr. Mohammad Modarres (Chair)

Dr. Enrique Lopez Droguett

Dr. Aris Christou

Dr. Monifa Vaughn-Cooke

Dr. Sung Lee (Dean’s Representative)

Today’s robots can perform more complex tasks than robots of a decade ago, and they’re at work in a variety of industries. With increased complexity and usage growth in mind, the scope of robotics research is expanding.

Several advancements have fueled robotics development, including Internet of Things connectivity that permits devices to be mobile, says John Santagate, a research manager at IDC.

“The growth today is a function of the technology that surrounds robotics: sensors, artificial intelligence, improvements in safety and software,” he says. “That’s really driving the current levels of adoption.”

More Streamlined Software Eases Communication

Standardized software now makes it easier for various components of a robotic system to communicate, says Cornelia Fermuller, an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and instructor at the Maryland Robotics Center.

“If I want a robot to pick something up, a camera has to point at it and give me the images, and those images have to be passed to software that controls the arm and maybe plans how it moves. The planning software has to call the arm, and the arm starts executing,” Fermuller says. “Before, I’d have to do every stage from scratch. Now, the vision and the executor talk to each other.”

In recent years, UM researchers have pursued exploratory projects, ranging from developing a robotic ­system that learns to cook by watching online videos to creating Robo Raven, a robotic bird. Much of their current work involves robots interacting with unstructured environments, says Sarah Bergbreiter, the center’s director and an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

Industry Experts Needed for Robotic Future

Unlike a factory setting, where robots might be stationary, unstructured environments require robots to perceive and avoid obstacles as they move around an area. For example, a robot might be equipped with a processing architecture that allows it to reason and learn how to respond to complex goals.

“The idea is being able to perceive your world. That requires a lot of computation and computer vision — a lot of emphasis on use, for example, of graphics processing, sensor processing and learning algorithms,” Bergbreiter says. “Robotics has changed quite a bit in the last decade or two. We’re moving away from the paradigm of giant robots to smaller, more social robots being used in applications beyond manufacturing and defense.”

Some institutions are already preparing for this emerging field. At the University of Michigan, construction of the $75 million Ford Motor Company Robotics Building is under way, and the University of Pennsylvania has launched an online robotics course.

“In the future, there will be far more robotics and, therefore, a demand for folks who understand how to engineer from a mechanical and application perspective,” Santagate says. “Autonomous vehicles, warehouse robotics, medical robotics — all of those areas are going to take off. There’s going to be a lot of incentive for academic institutions to train students.”

On August 3, the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland received one of twelve grants awarded by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the sole purpose of mitigating disasters. Peter Sunderland, FPE Professor and PI on the Project entitled, “Temperature Measurements of Airborne Firebrands,” will use the funding to study the wildland urban interface (WUI). Wildfires have become a huge problem in the U.S. Indeed, the federal government spends over $1 billion every year in suppression costs. A better understanding of firebrands (i.e. pieces of burning wood), which are the main reason these fires continue to spread and burn out of control, could significantly mitigate wildland fire destruction. Size and temperature are significant attributes of firebrands, although their temperatures have not yet been studied.

“An improved understanding of firebrand temperature is crucial to understanding the viability of firebrands to ignite spot fires,” Sunderland stated in his NIST proposal. “If the temperatures of airborne firebrands can be measured easily and accurately in laboratories and in wildland fires, the [data obtained] could be transformational,” providing improved fire resistance to communities in WUI areas (e.g. northern California and Montana, where developed areas mix with natural areas). This NIST proect will begin August 15.

Over the summer, Sunderland was also informed of his receipt of funding for a National Science Foundation (NSF) project. This project, also supported by NASA ACME (Advanced Combustion via Microgravity Experiments) and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), will study cool diffusion flames (CDFs) – a phenomenon first observed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2012.

“Cool diffusion flames aren’t very hearty, and require very special conditions to ignite and continue burning,” said Sunderland. “On Earth, buoyancy sweeps the gases away before a cool diffusion flame can establish itself. This is where a microgravity environment will be key. CDFs probably require large fuels like propane or butane, but no one knows…. yet.”

The conditions necessary for CDFs to ignite and burn consistently will be studied aboard the ISS over a three-year period beginning September 1. The data collected will yield valuable insight into cool flame chemical kinetics and, hopefully, aid in the development of cleaner, more efficient internal combustion engines – currently a huge driver of pollution and the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’

Related Media:

UMD Experiments Launched into Orbit on SpaceX Capule – June 6, 2017

Gravity’s grip on heat and fire to be studied in space – August 9, 2017 (NSF)

Abstract: Wildland fires pose a significant threat to the environment and society at large. While steps have been taken to predict their behavior, the large amount of unknowns and the intermittent nature of the fire itself makes predictions much harder than those typically encountered with the built environment, especially under the influence of wind. It’s well known that the spread rate of a fire depends largely on forward heating from the flame to unburnt fuels. In wildland fires, the intermittent nature of fame is thought to be important to the flame spread process. In this work, both the averaged and time-dependent aspects of the flame will be studied, including the total heat flux distribution on the downstream surface, flame extension and attachment, and flame pulsation frequencies. Correlations of these properties, dependent on both fire size and ambient wind will provide a means to describe the fuel heating and ignition processes in wildland fires.