Volume 32 No. 1 September 2011Volume 32 No. 1 September 2011Engineers’ ForumEngineers’ Forum

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Engineers’ ForumSeptember 2011

Virginia Tech engineering team’s hybrid car wins international EcoCar Challenge

page 4

Researchers characterize biomechanics of ovarian cells in mice according to their phenotype at early, intermediate, and late-aggressive stages of cancer

page 6

The Race to Mars: An Introduction

page 12

New X-Prize -New Heightspage 10

First undergraduate engineering student to intern at Rolls Royce

page 9

The engineering of a three-dimensional liver may shed light on effects of chemicals in the environment

page 14

Making sure good ideas come to fruitionAnything but an island vacation

page 16

What You Missed This Summer: Robot Rock Stars

page 18

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 1

3

Editor-in-ChiefSumedha Mohan

Managing Editor Valeriy Vislobokov

Layout and DesignKatherine Eckenfels, Mary Dassira

WebmasterPranav Angara

Chief PhotographerAndrew Mussey

Copy EditorAlex Gomez

WritersAishwarya Venkat,

Lynn Nystrom, Steven Mackay, Valeriy Vislobokov

Editorial Adviser Lynn Nystrom

Director of News and External Relations for the College of Engineering

Engineers’ Forum is Virginia Tech’s student-run en-gineering magazine. Engineers’ Forum is published four times during the academic year. The editorial

and business office is located at:

223 Femoyer Hall Virginia TechBlacksburg, VA 24061Phone: 540-231-7738Email: forum@vt.edu

URL: http://www.ef.org.vt.edu/Member of Engineering College Magazine Asso-ciated. The opinions expressed in the Engineers’ Forum do not necessarily reflect those of the ad-ministration, faculty or student body of Virginia Tech. Copyright 2009 Engineers’ Forum. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without

permission is prohibited.Printed in the USA.

From The Editor

Dear Readers,

As a new semester begins, I would like to extend a warm wel-come to the freshmen and the returning students on behalf of the Engineer’s Forum magazine. As the semester progresses, you will get involved in classes and grades, so I take this opportunity early on to talk a little about the magazine.

First, let me clear a misconception. This magazine is not limited to engineering students. The editorial board is comprised of both engineers and non-engineers. All majors are welcome to join us. We offer opportunities for writing, web designing, photography and the other avenues of creativity. Our articles deal with life both inside and outside the classroom. This is a platform for students to express their interests, their frustrations and also what they would like to see changed.

The month of September is important since the Engineering Expo and other job fairs take place. Browse through the maga-zine to know about the latest job opportunities and what the employers are looking for. The themes of the September issue are twin fold – innovation and research, with a little bit of fun mixed in. Brush up your summer knowledge by reading the Reading rock stars. Say 3 cheers for the award winning hybrid car team after reading the EcoCar article. Learn about Melissa Hughes and what was she doing in England this summer. Last, but not the least, expand your knowledge about the race to Mars. The topics of articles are as diverse as the Forum itself.

We are a completely student-run organization. Everything from the interviewing to the photography to the business management is done by students. The Forum is always looking for talent so if you have it JOIN US. The best part? You learn and we pay you for your efforts.

There is always a scope of improvement so we welcome your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve ourselves. Visit us on Facebook and the Engineer’s Forum website to know how you can become involved. For comments and suggestions send us an email at forum@vt.edu.

Good Luck with the classes,

Sumedha Mohan

Editor-in-Chief

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech has won the international EcoCAR Challenge, a three-year design competition that seeks to inspire science and engineering students to build more energy-efficient “green” automobiles. Awards were presented in Washington, D.C., after a two-week finale completion that had teams at General Motor’s Milford Proving Grounds in Milford, Mich., and then the U.S. Department of Energy’s headquarters in the nation’s capital.

In all, the team of Virginia Tech College of Engineering graduate and undergraduate students won 14 First Place awards at the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge: Best Vehicle Testing Complete Presentation, Shortest Braking Distance, Lowest Fuel Consumption, Best Dynamic Consumer Acceptability, National Instruments Most Innovative Use of Graphical System Design Award, Best Progress Reports and Fastest Autocross ‘Fun Run’ Time. They tied for Best AVL Drive Quality, and won Second Place or Runner Up for Battery Worksmanship Award, Lowest Petroleum Energy Use and Lowest Tailpipe Emissions.

Among individual awards, Rachel Dobroth, a graduated senior from Massanutten, Va., who double majored in Communication and Interdisciplinary Studies won for Best Outreach Presenter, and Kat

Pecinovsky, a graduated senior in mechanical engineering from Woodbridge, Va., won the Women in Engineering Rookie of the Year Award. During an autocross event, team member and College of Engineering graduate student Patrick Walsh posted the event’s best time, beating drivers from General Motors, a major co-sponsor of the event.

The team already previously stood out in the three-phase competition, winning second nationally during Phase Two in 2010. A total of 16 collegiate teams from across the United

By Steven Mackay

The team’s goal was to take a standard automobile and reengineer to be more efficient, reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining consumer acceptability, stock appearance and safety.

“ ”

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech poses with their vehicle, VT- REX, or Virginia Tech Range Extended

Crossover, outside the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. At far left is Doug Nelson,

faculty adviser on the project and a professor of mechanical engineering.

States and Canada participated in the competition, with 14 teams making it to the final day of competition in Washington, D.C. Serving as faculty adviser to the Virginia Tech team was Doug Nelson , a professor of mechanical engineering.

Based in the College of Engineering’s Joseph F. Ware Jr. Advanced Engineering Laboratory, the team’s goal was to take a standard automobile and reengineer to be more efficient, reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining consumer acceptability, stock appearance and safety. In addition to cash prizes and trophies, several team members landed jobs at General Motors and other automotive companies upon graduation.

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 5

Masoud Agah directs Virginia Tech’s Microelectromechanical Systems Laboratory or VT MEMS Lab. The lab resides within the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the MicrON Research Group. Some of its recent work includes: the development of micro gas analyzers for environmental and healthcare applications, and biochips for cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment monitoring.

Using ovarian surface epithelial cells from mice, researchers from Virginia Tech have released findings from a study that they believe will help in cancer risk assessment, cancer diagnosis, and treatment efficiency in a technical journal: Nanomedicine http://www.nanomedjournal.com/article/S1549-9634%2811%2900184-5/abstract

By studying the viscoelastic properties of the ovarian cells of mice, they were able to identify differences between early stages of ovarian cancer and more advanced and aggressive phenotypes.

Their studies showed a mouse’s ovarian cells are stiffer and more viscous when they are benign. Increases in cell deformation “directly correlates with the progression from a non-tumor benign cell to a malignant one that can produce tumors and metastases in mice,” said Masoud Agah, director of Virginia Tech’s Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Laboratory http://www.ece.vt.edu/mems/ and the lead investigator on the study.

Their findings are consistent with a University of California at Los Angeles study that reported lung, breast, and pancreatic metastatic cells are 70 percent softer than benign cells. http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v2/n12/full/nnano.2007.388.html

The findings also support Agah group’s previous reports on elastic properties of breast cell lines. The digital object identifiers to find the studies on the web are: doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2010.05.023

doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2010.02.034

Agah worked with Eva Schmelz of Virginia Tech’s Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise http://www.hnfe.vt.edu/about_us/Bios_faculty/bio_schmelz_eva.html, Chris Roberts of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine http://www.vetmed.vt.edu/org/dbsp/faculty/roberts.asp, and Alperen N. Ketene, a graduate student in mechanical engineering http://www.me.vt.edu/, on this work supported by the National Science Foundation and Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. http://www.ictas.vt.edu/

They are among a number of researchers attempting to decipher the association of molecular and mechanical events that lead to cancer

By Lynn Nystrom

Continued on page 8Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 7

and its progression. As they are successful, physicians will be able to make better diagnostic and treatment decisions based not only on an individual’s genetic fingerprint but also a biomechanical signature.

However, since cancer has multiple causes, various levels of severity, and a wide range of individual responses to the same treatments, the research on cancer progression has been challenging.

A turning point to the research has come with recent advanc`es in nanotechnology, combined with engineering and medicine. Agah and his colleagues now have the critical ability to study the elastic or stretching ability of cells as well as their ability to stick to other cells. These studies on the biomechanics of the cell, linked to a cell’s structure “are crucial for the development of disease-treating drugs and detection methods,” Agah said.

Using an atomic force microscope (AFM), a relatively new invention by research standards, they are able to characterize cell structure to nanoscale precision. The microscope analyzes live cultured cells and it is able to detect key biomechanical differences between non-transformed and cancerous cells.

From these studies, cancerous cells appear softer or deform at a higher rate than their healthier, non-transformed counterparts, Agah said. In addition, their fluidity increases.

The Virginia Tech researchers selected to study ovarian cancer because it is one of the most lethal types in women and is normally diagnosed late in older patients when the disease has already progressed and metastasized.

Agah reported that no previous information existed about the

biomechanical properties of both malignant and benign human ovarian cells, and how they change over time.

However, the mouse studies conducted by this interdisciplinary group of researchers at Virginia Tech have now shown how a cell, as it undergoes transformation towards malignancy, changes its size, loses its innate design of a tightly organized structure, and instead acquires the capacity to grow independently and form tumors.

“We have characterized the cells according to their phenotype into early-benign, intermediate, and late-aggressive stages of cancer that corresponded with their biomechanical properties,” Agah reported.

“The mouse ovarian cancer model represents a valid and novel alternative to studying human cell lines and provides important information on the progressive stages of the ovarian cancer,” Schmelz and Roberts commented.

“Cell viscosity is an important characteristic of a material because all materials exhibit some form of time-dependent strain,” Agah said. This trait is an «imperative» part of any analysis of biological cells.

Their findings confirm that the cytoskeleton affects the biomechanical properties of cells. Changes in these properties can be related to the motility of cancer cells and potentially their ability to invade other cells.

“When cells undergo changes in their viscoelastic properties, they are increasingly able to deform, squeeze, and migrate through size-limiting pores of tissue or vasculature onto other parts of the body,” Agah said.

Cancer Cells Continued from page 6

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 9

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By Lynn Nystrom

Melissa “Missy” Hughes of Blacksburg, Va., a Virginia Tech student majoring in mechanical engineering http://www.me.vt.edu/, was the first undergraduate from the university to intern with Rolls Royce in the United Kingdom under the auspices of the new partnership between the company and the state of Virginia.

Hughes worked at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Center in Sheffield, United Kingdom during the summer as part of Virginia Tech’s partnership with Rolls-Royce. She was responsible for identifying how improvements could be made in the flow of information at the center, and subsequently recommend new strategies.The partnership was announced in 2007 when Rolls

First undergraduate engineering student to

intern at Rolls Royce

Royce first decided to build a new jet engineering manufacturing plant in Prince George County in Virginia. As part of Rolls-Royce’s decision to locate its facility in Virginia, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia became part of an innovative partnership that included the Virginia Com-munity College System to collaborate with the company on a variety of fronts in both engineering and business.

Hughes, who also pursued a minor in music, graduated Franklin County High School of Rocky Mount, Va., and attended the Roa-noke Valley Governor’s School.

She previously interned with General Elec-tric, and she was a mechanical engineering research laboratory assistant.

While at Virginia Tech, she has received a

host of honors: the Nathnael Gebreyes Service Scholarship, the Bernard Silverman Scholarship, Tom and Tonya Carter Alumni Scholarship, Edward H. Cahill Memorial Scholarship, Robert C. Byrd Scholarship, Pamplin Leadership Scholarship, the Nation-al Association for Retired Federal Employees Scholarship, and the Franklin County/Smith Mountain Lake Alumni Association Scholar-ship.

Hughes served as a mentor for first year women engineering students, and has traveled on two mission trips to Haiti. With the Wesley Foundation, she was active with Habitat for Humanity, Relay for Life, the Big Event, and the Montgomery County Christ-mas Store.

In the fall she will be a section leader with the Marching Virginians.

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 11

By Valeriy Vislobokov

The X-Prize is a recently established award that recognizes great strides in critical technology by offsetting the costs of taking those strides. By hosting a number of different scientific “tourna-ments”, X-Prize encourages private innovation and competition in order to advance technology further.

The X-Prize foundation is perhaps best known for the achievements of Burt Rutan’s company in winning the Ansari X-Prize. His aircraft development company Scaled Composites began their successful enterprise by sending the first private space ship out of Earth’s atmosphere in 2004. At that time, the goals of the Ansari X-Prize were simple: have a private company put a man (and the mass equivalent of a second man) into space, then bring them safely back to the planet’s surface. The risks are great, and the reward is $10 million – fairly miniscule in the world of space travel.

“Why is this so difficult?” you might ask. “Hasn’t this been done thousands of times before by American astronauts, Soviet cosmonauts, and now, Chinese taikonauts?”

Yes, it has. But the logistics behind a government run operation and a private effort are vastly differ-ent. The former has essentially unlimited finances and resources at its disposal; only requiring the right political will. Private and commercial mis-sions however, are primarily hindered by a fixed income from a contract and relative inexperience in the field of space travel.

With that in mind, private space flight is begin-ning to change. With the Apollo-era NASA engineers gradually leaving the field and the Russians running most of their manned space operations on the Soyuz technologies developed in the 1950s, the once powerful government space agencies are on a much more level playing field with the private firms. While these firms struggle to repeat past accomplishments (doing in 20 years what Apollo did in 8), President Obama’s 2011 NASA budget changed the game to favor rockets developed by outside firms as SpaceX (Space Ex-ploration Technologies Corp.) and United Launch Alliance (Lockheed Martin & Boeing partner-ship). After that, all it took to get the ball rolling was a catalyst.

Enter the X-Prize Foundation. Founded in 1995, X-Prize oversees a number of public competi-tions in technical innovation that seek to benefit mankind, the first of which was the Ansari X-Prize. Each X-Prize prize includes a monetary reward for accomplishing specific goals in a field. Currently there are several competition subjects

including optimizing oil cleanup processes, mapping the ocean, and developing faster human genome sequencing. The legacy of space in the X-Prize Foundation, however, lies in the Google Lunar X-Prize (GLXP).

Google has been known as the widespread tech company that, like Microsoft, has been sticking its fingers in more and more areas of innovation that have less and less to do with its initial inter-net search product. But Google is unique in its diversity, straying farther from things like email services and smart phone operating systems, and more towards investing in solar and wind farms nationwide, developing its own line of TVs and laptops, and launching a satellite. For a company that recently bid nearly $1 billion on a number of Nortel patents, providing a grand prize of $20 million for its X-Prize seems paltry in compari-son.

So what does $30 million buy in space? Accord-ing to Google, it’s enough to get to the moon. Announced in September of 2007, the GLXP will award $20 million to the first team to land safely on the lunar surface, traverse it for a minimum of 500 meters, and send back glorious high definition images and video to Earth. Another $5 million will become a lovely parting prize for the runner-up. Teams may also get up to $4 million for secondary goals such as photos of Apollo rem-nants, traveling more than 5,000 meters on the lunar surface, providing secondary proof of the existence of water on the moon, and/or making it

“Team Astrobotics’ lunar explorer.”Picture used with permission and belongs to Team Astrobotics.

New X-PrizeNew Heights

“The greatest result from the Ansari X-Prize was the faith it built in the private industry’s ability to safely put people into space.” -Valeriy Vislobokov

through nighttime on the moon (difficult due to the lack of a light source on the dark side of the moon when it is behind the Earth). Finally, a $1 million prize goes to any team that makes great strides in ethnic diversity in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.

The competition is restricted to private endeavors only, but government agencies are in the running as well – in a limited way: if any government succeeds in a similar venture to the moon before the award expires in 2015, the grand prize will drop to $15 million. However, both America and Russia’s space programs are past their prime, and only the Chinese seem to have a chance of lower-ing the prize, but the country’s progress remains well-guarded due to its inherent privacy.

Knowing all of this, one may wonder how to even begin such an undertaking. There are no awards for milestone accomplishments (i.e. getting money as certain objectives are met à la DARPA projects), all of the 29 teams still in the running are either startups or very small tech companies with little of their own money to spend, and ac-cess to space is by no means cheap. Getting your own rocket for putting a satellite in orbit around Earth will cost you no less than $20 million.

Not all is lost. Investors are eager to throw money at teams in the hope of advertising space on the moon, and because the owners of these teams are often experienced veterans of the space industry, the investments are relatively sound. Further-

more, while your own rocket can cost you the equivalent of several hundred arms and legs, hitching a ride on a rocket carrying other space-crafts/satellites will save you millions. In addition to heavyweight advertisers, third party awards also exist for increased incentive, such as Space Florida willing to give $2 million to every team that launches their mission from Florida. Even NASA also wants a hand in the game, offering thousands of dollars in exchange for mission data from any team willing to sell it.

Even with the encouragement and financial backing, a privately funded lunar landing will be by no means easy. There has already been a one-year deadline extension, and most of the teams regularly run into delays. It is also important to remember that there hasn’t been a lunar landing of any kind since 1976, and even missions putting a satellite into lunar orbit are few and far between, most of which use the same, outdated technology used in the earlier launches.

Is it even worth it? What’s been obvious in this project from the beginning is that no one is in it for the money. The prize will only slightly offset costs and most teams have used millions already in production of their craft. What really matters is the end result. For instance, SpaceShipOne, the craft that won Scaled Composites the Ansari X-Prize, inspired a new generation of private space endeavors: UVa alum. Eric Anderson’s Space Ad-ventures program manages access to tourism of space and the International Space Station aboard Russia’s Soyuz craft, Robert Bigelow has devel-

“The lunar explorer currently in development by team Odyssey Moon is a larger example of the various designs under GLXP.”Picture used with permission and belongs to Team Odyssey Moon.

oped two inflatable prototype hotels currently in orbit, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic offers private rides to space.

It would be remiss, of course, not to mention that the greatest result of all from the Ansari X-Prize was the faith it built in the private industry’s abil-ity to safely put people into space. This newfound trust and support currently powers America’s next fleet of low earth orbit and space station delivery vehicles as part of the White House’s COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) and CCDev (Commercial Crew Development) award programs.

The potential from a successful GLXP mission could produce a number of wonderful private lunar efforts. Unique innovations such as team Next Giant Leap’s plan to win the 5000 meter bo-nus by “hopping it” (blasting off from the surface to land yet again) represents the kind of cunning that will propel future lunar exploration forward. Anything from having your remains stored on the moon to an online market for moon rocks could be possible. However, one might also suspect that this initial investment is simply part of Google’s plan to open a facility on the moon to house its more anti-social programmers.

Anything could come of the Google Lunar X-Prize. When it comes to space, we only have the stars to look up to.

Valeriy Vislobokov is a senior in Aerospace Engineering.

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 13

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December 19, 2012. In addition to being suspiciously close to the day of the Mayan apocalypse, that day is also significant as the 40th anniversary of Apollo 17’s arrival back to Earth - the last mission of NASA’s Apollo program. Since that mission, no human has traveled be-yond Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The Race to Mars: An IntroductionBy Valeriy Vislobokov

Many fans of space exploration around the world will be celebrat-ing the legacy of America’s lunar program, and rightfully so. Apollo and its Lunar Modules, Command/Service Modules, and behe-moth Saturn V rockets were giants of their time. They were a feat of engineering, a demonstration of American strength in the face of communism, and a source of pride for members of the Ameri-can workforce who contributed to putting men on the moon. Like a science fiction drama come to life, Apollo had its moments of glory with the pioneering Apollo 11 moonwalk and thrilling Apollo 13 rescue mission, as well as the tragedy of the Apollo 1 disaster.

The upcoming anniversary will also be the final punctuation mark on a change in the mechanics of the United States space pro-gram. After the Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely on the dawn

of July 21st,, 2011, America faced the end of the 30-year successor program to Apollo, and the transition to the next step in space exploration. However, what that next step will be is still under much scrutiny from many different directions.

The next destination in space for both America and the rest of the world has often been a point of contention throughout the full history of the Space Shuttle, and even more so in recent months. Although the possibility of another moon landing has been frequently discussed, particularly in President George W. Bush’s 2004 Vision for Space Exploration plan, other potential options include a manned land-ing on an asteroid, flights to both Venus and Mars,

Phot

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edit:

NAS

A

The landing of Atlantis marks the end of an era of American space exploration

and the establishment of multiple space stations beyond LEO. Yet more than any other program, a manned flight to Mars has long been the “final destination” for humanity. For Wernher von Braun, chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, Mars was the original goal of the space program. As the largest potentially habitable planet aside from Earth, a successful Mars program would stand as a new paradigm for human exploration and settlement of the solar system.

On the other hand, while the phrase “the race to Mars” is symbolic of what many believe should be the direction of current space hardware development, it is also a kind of parody of the lunar race of the 1960s with the USSR. While the moon race was a true competition, and in some ways an example of the proxy conflicts present throughout the Cold War, the current “race” aspect of the phrase is virtually nonexistent. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and its Russian successors are currently resting on their laurels, flying on the Soyuz craft developed in the 1960s, using technology from the 1950s. The Russian space program simply doesn’t have the technological muscle or political will to accomplish another deep space effort. The two other major players in the international manned space industry, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), lack vital experience as well as the financial weight neces-sary to blast a man or woman past the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).

The only true contender for a rival position against the United States is China. While they have the resources and a mighty political swing reminiscent of the Soviet Union, they are still going through the motions of space exploration development and likely will not be ready to tackle Mars until they have both landed on the moon and developed a fully functional space sta-tion (the first module of which is already skyward).

This leaves the United States in a very lonely stage of its space exploration career, and the lack of an opponent only strengthens those opposed to NASA’s efforts to explore another planet. What are those sources of opposition? And why is our space program encountering them frequently enough to be at a virtual standstill? Finally, what can we look forward to in the fu-ture of people in space? Those topics and others will be covered in future issues of Engineers’ Forum throughout this school year.

Valeriy Vislobokov is a senior in Aerospace Engineering.

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 15

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Blacksburg, Va., June 6, 2011 – The liver is the primary organ in the human body that metabolizes foreign compounds such as drugs, alcohol, cigarette smoke, and environmental chemicals. Using the liver as an alarm system, researchers are starting to better understand the different levels of toxicity from these com-pounds and their effects on the human body.

One of these researchers is Padma Rajagopa-lan http://www.che.vt.edu/people_prajagopalan.php, director of the Virginia Tech Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science’s Center for Systems Biology of Engineered Tissues http://www.isbet.ictas.vt.edu/. She is a

The engineering of a three-dimensional liver may shed light on effects of chemicals in the environment

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded one its three-year $750,000 Science to Achieve Results award that it calls STAR to Padma Rajagopalan, a member of the chemical engineering faculty and part of the core faculty in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences at Virginia Tech, and two of her colleagues. They will use the award to work with a liver mimic as an effective model for studying the effects of different types of toxicants on this vital organ of the human body.

past recipient of a National Science Founda-tion CAREER Award to fund her work on cell migration, and in the past two years she has received more than $1 million in funding to create and study engineered tissues that mimic the human liver.

Now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded one its three-year $750,000 Sci-ence to Achieve Results award that it calls STAR to Rajagopalan of chemical engineering and core faculty in the School of Biomedi-cal Engineering and Sciences http://www.sbes.vt.edu/. T.M. Murali http://www.cs.vt.edu/user/murali of Virginia Tech’s Department of Com-puter Science is a co-principal investigator on this award and is also co-director of the

systems biology center. Marion Ehrich http://www.vetmed.vt.edu/org/dbsp/faculty/ehrich.asp of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine and co-director of its Laboratory for Neurotoxicity Studies will serve as a consultant on the project.

The newly funded work will take advantage of Rajagopalan’s in vitro three-dimensional liver mimic, an engineered functional tissue. Since the liver plays a central role in the detoxification of the human body, the new project will establish this liver mimic as an effective model for studying the effects of different types of toxicants on the liver.

Rajagopalan said, “With the increasing number of chemicals, such as pesticides, being used in agriculture and industry today, humans are ex-posed to these substances to much greater extents. However, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the cell-and organ-wide effects of mix-tures of toxic substances and how interactions among them can lead to chronic health problems. These gaps in our knowledge pose fundamental barriers to preventing or mitigating life-threatening toxicant-induced health issues.”

This award will specifically look at chemically-driven liver damage re-sulting from exposure to carbon tetrachloride, found in cleaning agents among other products, and to dichloroethylene, used as a solvent in floor finishes such as waxes and lacquers, among other purposes.

With Murali’s expertise in computer science and bioinformatics, they will be able to establish a combined experimental and computational pipeline for toxicity testing and risk assessment based on three-dimensional liver mimics and biological process linkage networks.

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 17

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Can you imagine a hospital that does not have regular access to clean water? Or a medical staff whose members throw their waste into a pile outside the hospital doors?

Neither can the Virginia Tech student members of Engineers Without Borders.

So, one of their current four projects is resolving clean water and sanitation issues for the St. Therese Hospital in Hinche, Haiti. In another project, they developed a maintenance and operation plan for a malfunctioning ultraviolet disinfection system for a free health clinic run by the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in the Dominican Republic town of Verón.

Engineering students working on both projects were able to travel to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, divided into the two countries, during their spring break in 2011, partially due to the $1,000 in support from the Student Engineers’ Council at Virginia Tech, according to Chelsea Shores, the 2010-11 president of the chapter and an ocean engineering major. “We have to fund all of our own trips, so a large portion of our efforts is fundraising,” she says.

“Once we start a commitment, such as our projects in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, we maintain them for a minimum of five years. This often represents a challenge as our membership turns over. We have about 50 to 60 active members, and we are one of the largest in the nation for the number of projects we are involved in,” Shores reports.

Darius Emrani, one of the members of the group traveling to Haiti, describes his academic spring break spent in the central Haitian city of Hinche as anything but an island vacation. However, he left with a spirit of the university’s motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), and inspired to achieve his long-term goals. “Engineers can create things that can have an impact on millions, billions of people. We have to make sure good ideas come to fruition,” Emrani says. “Every day people’s needs are going unmet, and it affects people’s health.”

Emrani knows this problem first-hand from his trip. The hospital he visited was built in 1929, and the increase in patients as the result of Haitian earthquake in 2010 and the ensuing cholera outbreak compromised its aging problems even further.

“In terms of sanitation, there were two main issues. Poor hygiene in general was due to the lack of toilets for patients and a lack of clean

water for personal hygiene, drinking, and cleaning the hospital. And in terms of medical waste, a recently installed incinerator was missing one of its components and was not operational” Emrani, an electrical

engineering honors student, says.

During their five-day stay in Haiti, Emrani and the other members of his group, including faculty advisor Theo Dillaha, of biological systems engineering, met with the director of the hospital to understand its priorities, as well as with administrative specialists. They then evaluated the hospital complex, walking the site and building a computer-aided-design diagram of every meter of the space, including the locations of sinks, drainage, toilets, pit latrines, abandoned wells, water system

infrastructure, and even structural components, such as bad gutters.

They met with the regional director of the National Department of Potable Water to speak about needs and learn about the available sources of water.

Within a week of their trip, the students developed an alternative to the water system at the hospital that addressed water pressure, which they perceived to be a major issue. They had discovered that – because of low water pressure in the public water system and the elevation of the hospital’s water storage tank – the tank could not be filled when it received water three times a week. A further complication was the generators – required to pump the water in the hospital – could not be run for more than eight hours per day since the cost of fuel was prohibitive. Hence, power outages were common. Their solution: the Department of Portable Water agreed to supply municipal water to the hospital every night, and the hospital would then run a generator nightly to transfer municipal water from a below-ground storage tank to the hospital’s elevated water-storage tanks.

EWB may be able to accomplish even more for the hospital working with Partners in Health, The Haitian Health Care Foundation, the local Hinche Rotary Club, and the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population. The water-pressure problem is just one aspect of the teamwork.

Can you imagine a hospital that does not have regular access to clean water? Or a medical staff whose members throw their waste into a ps is resolving clean water and sanitation issues for the St. Therese Hospital in Hinche, Haiti. In another project, they developed a maintenance and operation plan for a malfunctioning ultraviolet disinfection system for a free health clinic run by the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in the Dominican Republic town of Verón.

Engineering students working on both projects were able to travel to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, divided into the two countries, during their spring break in 2011, partially due to the $1,000 in support from the Student Engineers’ Council at Virginia Tech, according to Chelsea Shores, the 2010-11 president of the chapter and an ocean engineering major. “We have to fund all of our own trips, so a large portion of our efforts is fundraising,” she says.

“Once we start a commitment, such as our projects in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, we maintain them for a minimum of five years. This often represents a challenge as our membership turns over. We have about 50 to 60 active members, and we are one of the largest in the nation for the number of projects we are involved in,” Shores reports.

Darius Emrani, one of the members of the group traveling to Haiti, describes his academic spring break spent in the central Haitian city of Hinche as anything but an island vacation. However, he left with a spirit of the university’s motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), and inspired to achieve his long-term goals. “Engineers can create things that can have an impact on millions, billions of people. We have to make sure good ideas come to fruition,” Emrani says. “Every day people’s needs are going unmet, and it affects people’s health.”

Emrani knows this problem first-hand from his trip. The hospital he visited was built in 1929, and the increase in patients as the result of Haitian earthquake in 2010 and the ensuing cholera outbreak compromised its aging problems even further.

Engineers without Borders-USA at Virginia Tech has its own fundraising committee that allows it to participate in its inter-national projects. The funds they solicit are used to subsidize costs for travel, material, and equipment.

Corporate SponsorsWSP Environmental

Schnabel Engineering Wiley and Wilson

McDonough Bolyard Malcolm Pirnie

CDM CH2M Hill

Jansen Land Consulting

Individual DonorsTheo Dillaha

Brian McDonald Kathy Norrenbrock

Edward Hofler David Danner Betty Sinclair

Marilyn Mitchell Shirley Grossman

Chemical Engineering Department Honors Program

Student Engineers’ Council

John Markunas John Allevi

Making sure good ideas come to fruition

Continued on page 20

Anything but an island vacation “In terms of sanitation, there were two main issues. Poor hygiene in general was due to the lack of toilets for patients and a lack of clean water for personal hygiene, drinking, and cleaning the hospital. And in terms of medical waste, a recently installed incinerator was missing one of its components and was not operational” Emrani, an

electrical engineering honors student, says.

During their five-day stay in Haiti, Emrani and the other members of his group, including faculty advisor Theo Dillaha, of biological systems engineering, met with the director of the hospital to understand its priorities, as well as with administrative specialists. They then evaluated the hospital complex, walking the site and building a computer-aided-design diagram of every meter of the space, including the locations of sinks, drainage, toilets, pit latrines, abandoned wells, water system infrastructure, and even structural components, such as bad gutters.

They met with the regional director of the National Department of Potable Water to speak about needs and learn about the available sources of water.

Within a week of their trip, the students developed an alternative to the water system at the hospital that addressed water pressure, which they perceived to be a major issue. They had discovered that – because of low water pressure in the public water system and the elevation of the hospital’s water storage tank – the tank could not be filled when it

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 19

By Aishwarya Venkat

The VT College of Engineering’s very own Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) team won the international robotics competi-tion known as RoboCup in Istanbul, Turkey this summer.

Equivalent to the World Cup of robotics, the RoboCup games invite robotics engineers from all around the world to challenge each other with soccer-playing robots, as well as other competitions. The games have been held annually since 1997, and since their inception, they have grown from 40 original teams to nearly 500 teams across 4 com-petition categories and over 20 countries.

The Virginia Tech team placed first in both the Kid Size and the Adult Size leagues for the RoboCup Soccer competition. Our very own Team DARwIn won 8:1 against Japanese team CIT Brains in the Kid Size league, and our Team “CHARLI” won 1:0 against Robo Erectus from Singapore Polytechnic in the Adult Size final.

RoMeLa also won the Best Humanoid Award, the Louis Vuitton Hu-manoid Cup, and finished in third place for the Technical Challenges category. More than just a university-level accomplishment,

The Louis Vuitton Human-oid Cup is an international triumph, since this is the first time an American team has won the trophn, breaking the traditional European and Asian domi-nation of this competition. Director of RoMeLa and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dennis Hong reflected,

“Since 2002, [the Hu-manoid Cup] has been in Japan for seven years, then Germany took it and had it for two years, and finally the United States – Team CHARLI from Virginia Tech – brings it home,

RoboCup challenges design teams to create robots for various sce-narios. RoboCup Soccer, one of the spotlight challenges, is an ambitious project that aims to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer by 2050. The RoboCup Rescue competition aims to develop robots that can operate in disaster situations, ano help solve socially significant issues. RoboCup@Home aims to integrate artificial intelligence and robots in our everyday lives in order to assist humans in the real world.

Criteria for performance includes nuances like object manipulation, be-havior integration, vision and object recognition, navigation, mapping perception, and level of autonomy. RoboCup aims to find solutions to these difficult research problems through international collaboration and innovation.

Two RoMeLa robots competed in the competitions. CHARLI-2 (Cog-nitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) competed in the adult-size class, while DARwIn-OP (Dynamic Anthro-pomorphic Robot with Intelligence–Open Platform) competed in the kid-size class. Engineering students from University of Pennsylvania also collaborated with the Virginia Tech Team DARwIn to help with the development of DARwIn-OP.

CHARLI is a 4.6 feet tall, 12 kg robot, equipped with three motors, a Logitech C905 camera and various sensors. I’s current walking speed is 300 millimeters per second, which is slower than the average human walking speed of 1000-1500 millimeters per second. But with all the current robotics research being conducted internationally, the gap between the two is rapidly closing.

The VT College of Engineering’s very own Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) team won the international robotics competi-tion known as RoboCup in Istanbul, Turkey this summer.

Equivalent to the World Cup of robotics, the RoboCup games invite robotics engineers from all around the world to challenge each other with soccer-playing robots, as well as other competitions. The games have been held annually since 1997, and since their inception, they have grown from 40 original teams to nearly 500 teams across 4 com-petition categories and over 20 countries.

The Virginia Tech team placed first in both the Kid Size and the Adult Size leagues for the RoboCup Soccer competition. Our very own Team DARwIn won 8:1 against Japanese team CIT Brains in the Kid Size league, and our Team “CHARLI” won 1:0 against Robo Erectus from Singapore Polytechnic in the Adult Size final.

RoMeLa also won the Best Humanoid Award, the Louis Vuitton Humanoid Cup, and finished in third place for the Technical Challenges category. More than just a university-level accomplish-ment,

The Louis Vuitton Human-oid Cup is an international triumph, since this is the first time an American team has won the trophn, breaking the

traditional European and Asian domination of this competition. Director of RoMeLa and Associ-

ate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dennis Hong reflected,

“Since 2002, [the Humanoid Cup] has been in Japan for seven years, then Germany took it and had it for two years, and finally the United States – Team CHARLI from Virginia Tech – brings it home,

RoboCup challenges design teams to create robots for various sce-narios. RoboCup Soccer, one of the spotlight challenges, is an ambitious project that aims to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer by 2050. The RoboCup Rescue competition aims to develop robots that can operate in disaster situations, ano help solve socially significant issues. RoboCup@Home aims to integrate artificial intelligence and robots in our everyday lives in order to assist humans in the real world.

Criteria for performance includes nuances like object manipulation, be-havior integration, vision and object recognition, navigation, mapping perception, and level of autonomy. RoboCup aims to find solutions to these difficult research problems through international collaboration and innovation.

Two RoMeLa robots competed in the competitions. CHARLI-2 (Cogni-tive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence) competed

Robot Rock Stars

Robots teams from USA and Japan compete in the Kid Size RoboCup Soccer tournament.

Doctoral student Jeakweon Han waits behind robot CHARLI-2 as it attempts to make a goal. Although it takes a few seconds for Robo-Cup robots to react to movements, research is well underway to make them walk, talk and react like human beings.

Continued on page 20

Engineers’ Forum • September 2011 • 21

EWB Continued from page 17

Robot Rock StarsContinued from page 18in the adult-size class, while DARwIn-OP (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence–Open Platform) competed in the kid-size class. Engineering students from University of Pennsylvania also collaborated with the Virginia Tech Team DARwIn to help with the development of DARwIn-OP.

CHARLI is a 4.6 feet tall, 12 kg robot, equipped with three motors, a Logitech C905 camera and various sensors. I’s current walking speed is 300 millimeters per second, which is slower than the average human walking speed of 1000-1500 millimeters per second. But with all the current robotics research being conducted internationally, the gap between the two is rapidly closing.

CHARLI-L (the original, lightweight version) was first built with $20,000 seed money from the Student Engineers’ Council at Virginia Tech, with donated equipment from tech companies National Instru-ments and Maxon Precision Motors. Partly inspired by the humanoid robots in I, Robot, The ultimate goal for CHARLI is to mimic human movement, reasoning, and emotion. CHARLI-H (heavy), which is still in the making, is expected to walk on changing terrain, pick up objects, open doors, and otherwise operate like a real human being.

CHARLI’s cousin, DARwIn-OP, is a friendlier-looking robot with big cir-cular “eyes”. It is 1.5 feet high, has one motor, touch sensors, and walks at a speed of 240 millimeters per second. Designed by doctoral student Jeakweon Han, CHARLI is all about firsts. He is the “first untethered, autonomous, full-sized, walking, humanoid robot with four moving

limbs and a head, built in the United States.”

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation in 2003, and built in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, and Robotis Co., DARwin is relatively old robot, but over those years it has gained support from major companies like SAIC, Altria Grou, Inc., National Instruments, and TORC Technologies LLC. The truly open platform of DARwIn-OP encourages other robotics enthusiasts to modify hardware and software components as they wish. Every aspect of the design process, from CAD files to instruction manuals and demo video, are available online on SourceForge for free. This effort aims to build a community that promotes interaction between designers from all over the world, and encourages the spread of robotics and technol-ogy education, which in turn results in feedback improving the existing design.

received water three times a week. A further complication was the generators – required to pump the water in the hospital – could not be run for more than eight hours per day since the cost of fuel was prohibitive. Hence, power outages were common. Their solution: the Department of Portable Water agreed to supply municipal water to the hospital every night, and the hospital would then run a generator nightly to transfer municipal water from a below-ground storage tank to the hospital’s elevated water-storage tanks.

EWB may be able to accomplish even more for the hospital working with Partners in Health, The Haitian Health Care Foundation, the local Hinche Rotary Club, and the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population. The water-pressure problem is just one aspect of the teamwork.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the island, Will Ayers, a civil engineering major, led the EWB team that busily repaired the ultraviolet water purification system used by the clinic and elementary school in Verón, adjacent to the resort town of Punta Cana. His team included Rafael Suriel, a native of the Dominican Republic, and Jessica Hwang, of mechanical engineering. They found some other U.S. colleagues there from the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, which sends some of its students to the Veron medical facility for clinical experience.

The purification system had not functioned for some five months, and the Haitians had no ability to maintain its vital components. Ayers and his team developed a maintenance plan, including diagnostic procedures; a parts list; and general cleaning guidelines. They met with the engineer at the nearby resort and briefed him and his technicians about the plan. “The ultraviolet aspect was the unique part of the system that they were not familiar with,” Ayers explains.

When the EWB team left, the purification system was working, and the clinic had a manual on how to keep it a clean and functioning. It probably helped that Ayers had already obtained a chemistry degree and worked in water quality management for the U.S. Geological Survey before he decided to pursue his second degree in engineering at Virginia Tech. And it also helped that Dillaha has a UV water purification system at his home near campus where the team could educate themselves before they traveled to the island.

Ayers, an avid traveler who at one point in his life took the time to hike the Pacific Crest from Mexico to Canada, also worked with his team to prepare a visual assessment of the piping at Veron’s elementary school. “It had a lot of leaks, causing a lot of loss in pressure,” he says. A future project will probably evolve from this discussion.