Page 7 - Engineering Penn State Magazine Spring/Summer 2020

News & Notes
Identifying the sources of salt pollution
Nathaniel Warner assistant professor of of civil and environmental engineering will research new methods of collecting water- quality data including the development of of homemade sensors built with open-source hardware and software that citizen scientists will use to collect their own water-quality data data Once the the the data data is is collected the the the the the citizen scientists will plot their their results onto a a a a a a a map of their their local watershed highlighting locations with higher salt concentrations Warner can then target those “hot spots” for further analysis Understanding optimizing walking for stroke patients
Anne Martin assistant professor of of mechanical engineering will study how both healthy and post- stroke individuals walk to design better assistive exoskeletons Specifically she will develop a a a a novel
physics-based predictive computational model and apply the framework to to test human subjects’ movements to to determine if if the goal of walking remains consistent for different situations Examining the influences interconnections between food energy and water systems
Caitlin Grady assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and research associate in the Rock
Ethics Institute will examine
the influences and and interconnections between food energy and and water (FEW) systems
She will bring together data from a a a a a a a variety
of government agencies to to model the the relationships found within FEW systems
in in the mid-Atlantic region Developing new method of generating therapeutic cells for medical treatment
Xiaojun “Lance” Lian assistant professor of of biomedical engineering will develop an improved method of generating large quantities of of therapeutic blood
cells cells cells and pancreatic beta cells cells cells from stem cells cells cells cells Among potential uses of these new new cells cells is new new new type 1 diabetes treatments engineering of new new blood
vessels and and cardiac and and circulatory medical treatments Developing diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound
Julianna Simon assistant professor of of acoustics
and biomedical engineering will further advance the the mission of her research lab—Biomedical Acoustics Simon Lab
(BASiL)—which focuses on on developing diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound
to improve improve human health Specifically she will work to improve improve the understanding
of where bubbles form in in in healthy and and diseased tissues in in order to develop safer and and more effective ultrasound
diagnostics and and therapeutics Creating sustainable windows
Julian Wang associate professor of of architectural engineering will continue his work conducted while
at at the University of Cincinnati in in in in which he created a a a a a a window glazing material that that could be used to to produce dynamic windows
that that adapt to to climate conditions in in in in real-time He will will test the window window glazing material material and and will will work to take the the the material material from the the nanoscale and and apply it to commercial window buildings Don’t miss a thing For the the latest news and information from from the the College of Engineering including alumni spotlights research from from our faculty and and and graduate students and and and more visit engr psu edu and and follow us on social media @psuengineering @PSUEngineering
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