• Republished with permission of emagination, a School of Engineering electronic publication

Two engineering students have received prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF GRF):  Erik Carboni, a doctoral candidate working in the laboratory of Dr. Anson Ma (Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Eng.) and senior Brittany Nkounkou (Computer Science & Engineering), who will pursue a doctoral degree at Cornell University in fall 2012.

Erik’s work involves the delivery of drug molecules to cancerous tumors via the use of nanoparticles. In particular, he is interested in the effect of blood flow on the diffusion and delivery of anti-cancer drugs to the tumor site.  Brittany, who is interested in programming languages, participated in UConn’s Bio-Grid NSF-sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program led by Dr. Chun-Hsi Huang and also conducted research with Dr. Yufeng Wu.  NSF Graduate Research Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend $30,000 plus a yearly $12,000 cost-of-education allowance.  In 2011, NSF awarded just 2,000 Fellowships from 12,000 applicants.

• Republished with permission of emagination, a School of Engineering electronic publication

The School of Engineering has named five outstanding faculty members as inaugural Castleman Term Professors in Engineering Innovation. In making the announcement, Dean Mun Y. Choi noted, “Each of these outstanding individuals embodies exceptional achievements and the application of innovative approaches in research, education and outreach.” The three-year professorships recognize outstanding faculty members at the assistant and associate professor level and honor Professor Francis L. Castleman, who served as a distinguished Dean of Engineering during the formative years of the School of Engineering.

Horea Ilies, Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Ilies’ research focus is on the development of new engineering models, representations, algorithms, and design semantics to enable systematic, and efficient design, analysis and manufacturing of engineering artifacts. He has received approximately $2.9M in research funding, including the NSF CAREER Award, holds two U.S. Patents, and has 2 book chapters, 24 refereed journal articles along with 23 full-paper conference proceedings. Dr. Ilies is a member of the Editorial Board for the Journals of Computer Aided Design (Elsevier), as well as Computer Aided Design and Applications, and a member of the Executive Committee of the ASME Design Automation Conference.

Yu Lei, Chemical, Materials & Biomolecular Engineering. Dr. Lei’s research focuses on sensors and environmental biotechnology for diverse applications, ranging from the diagnosis of disease to new drug discovery, screening and food safety, as well as pollutants. His scholarly output includes three patents, two book chapters, 67 archival peer-reviewed journal publications and 68 conference abstracts, with over 700 non-self citations to date. Dr. Lei has received more than $2.6M in federal research funding since joining UConn in 2006. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the journals Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Analytical Letters and two newly launched journals, Materials Focus and Energy Focus.

Nicholas Lownes, Civil & Environmental Engineering. Dr. Lownes is Director of the Center for Transportation and Livable Systems (CTLS) at UConn, and his research program focuses on public transportation systems. His research efforts include: a Department of Homeland Security-funded project aimed at developing methods for identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities to natural and human disruptions in public transportation networks; and the application to U.S. networks of a novel method for the prediction of optimal network evolution based on the growth of slime mold. Dr. Lownes has received more than $1M in research funding to date.

Laurent Michel, Computer Science & Engineering. Dr. Michel, who joined UConn in 2002, holds expertise in the design and implementation of domain specific languages for combinatorial optimization. Dr. Michel has developed several influential systems including Newton, Numerica, the Optimization Programming Language OPL, the constrained-based library Modeler++ and the local search tools Localizer and Localizer++ and Comet. His research grants total more than $1.2M to date, including his NSF CAREER Award, and he has published two books, more than 25 journal papers and over 50 conference papers, with cumulative citations of over 1500. Dr. Michel also serves on the Editorial Boards of Constraints and Mathematical Programming Computation.

Mohammad Tehranipoor, Electrical & Computer Engineering. Dr. Tehranipoor joined UConn in 2006 and has published 36 journal papers, 124 conference papers, four books and 10 book chapters. His work has received 1,200 citations to date.  Dr. Tehranipoor’s areas of expertise span computer-aided design and testing, reliable systems design at the nanoscale, secure integrated circuit design, hardware security and trust, and design-for-testability. He has received an NSF CAREER Award, IEEE Computer Society’s Meritorious Service Award, and been recognized as a distinguished speaker for the IEEE Computer Society and ACM. Dr. Tehranipoor has received more than $3.5M in research funding and gifts since 2006.

The selection criteria for the Castleman Term Professorships included research productivity and impact; teaching contribution, including student mentorship and the development of novel teaching activities; professional service; and the promotion of leadership and collegiality within and beyond UConn.

Professor Yu Lei and Ph.D. student Ying Wang describe the development of a new explosives detector that can sense small amounts of TNT and other common explosives in liquids instantly with a sensitivity that rivals bomb-sniffing dogs, the current gold standard in protecting the public from terrorist bombs. They report on the technology at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Watch the video.

• March 27th, 2012
• By John C. Giardina, republished with permission of emagination, a School of Engineering electronic publication

Two faculty members in the Department of Chemical, Materials, & Biomolecular Engineering have begun a project that has the promise to transform the work and protect the lives of military and law enforcement personnel around the world.  Associate Professors Brian Willis and Yong Wang, working on a grant funded by the Office of Naval Research, are attempting to develop an electronic chemical sensing device that can identify the presence of explosives by sampling the vapor around an object.
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), regularly used in terrorist attacks around the world, present a persistent threat to the people who are tasked to investigate these devices and to the public at large.  Because IEDs are often hidden or disguised, they are hard to identify without some kind of sensing technology.  “Soldiers rely mostly on their intuition to identify and disarm IEDs,” Dr. Willis says.  “There is no ubiquitous sensor that can tell whether a suspicious object is an explosive or not.”  Thus, the goal of Drs. Willis and Wang is to develop a device that is sensitive and selective: able to detect specific chemicals that are present at only miniscule amounts in the air.
To do this, the researchers employ a type of molecule called an aptamer, which is a short strand of either DNA or RNA.  Specific aptamers, defined by their nucleotide sequence, will often bind to a specific chemical, like those found in explosives.  The challenges Drs. Willis and Wang face are to, first, identify specific aptamers and their respective chemical targets, and then design a system where the binding of chemical to aptamer can be detected.
Dr. Wang’s work focuses on the identification of the specific aptamers.  “My side of the project focuses on the identification, amplification, and modification of aptamers,” he says.  To do this, Dr. Wang starts with a library of billions of different aptamers.  He runs a target chemical through the aptamers and isolates the ones that bind to it.  He then amplifies the isolated aptamers and runs the process again.  Repeating these steps multiple times, Dr. Wang is able to isolate aptamers that have a high affinity for specific target molecules.  At that point, Dr. Wang has to modify the aptamer.  “Whenever the chemical binds to the aptamer, the conformation, or shape, of the aptamer changes,” he says.  If the aptamers can be designed to change shape in a certain way, the binding of the chemical can be detected more easily.
Now, Dr. Willis’ work comes into play.  He is working on designing molecular scale electronic devices that will detect the conformation changes.  His research focuses on using electron tunneling devices to electronically detect the target chemical.  Electron tunneling is essentially the flow of electrons through a gap between two wires.  Normally, one would expect that electrons could not flow through two wires that were not touching, but if they are close enough, on a nano-scale, then the two wires will act like a completed circuit.  As it turns out, the flow of electrons is strongly affected by what is between the wires.  So, if an aptamer is placed between the two contacts, it will change the electrical current.  Moreover, any conformation changes will alter the electrical current as well.  Because these circuits are so small, a sensing device could have millions of them, with groups of the circuits dedicated to different aptamers.  To use the device, air would be flowed past the circuits.  If any of the target molecules are present in the air, they will bind to their specific aptamer, changing the conformation.  The current running through the circuit attached to the aptamer will then change as well, giving an electrical signal for the presence of the specific chemical in the air.
This project has the capability to make explosives detection much faster, more accurate, and safer than it is now.  The benefit of such a sensor, though, goes beyond military and law enforcement applications.  Dr. Willis says, “One can think of lots of other applications for chemical sensors, commercial applications, in the future as well.”  It is not hard to imagine the benefits in many areas of life that can be derived from immediate and accurate chemical detection.

Hollin is a UConn senior majoring in Chemical Engineering. She takes pride in her ability to maintain a well-balanced life by keeping up on her coursework and engaging in her favorite hobbies, rock climbing and home brewing. Watch the video.