Engineering in the News September 2009

Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau. This collection of September excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS
Scientific American (Sept. 30) -- “Ninety-five percent of the energy that life on Earth requires is fueled by photosynthetic processes,” says Klaus Schulten, a physics professor at Illinois.

OPERATIONS RESEARCH
LiveScience (London, Sept. 30) -- An interview with Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at Illinois who has used operations research to tackle issues ranging from security to health.

POLYMER PRODUCTION
Chemical & Engineering News (Washington, D.C., Sept. 14) -- A novel method to synthesize peptidic brushlike polymers – linear structures with appended peptide “bristles” – could make it easier to create highly uniform polymers for a range of self-assembly applications. The method was devised by professor Jianjun Cheng and graduate research assistant Hua Lu from the department of materials science and engineering at Illinois and Yao Lin and Jing Wang of the University of Connecticut.

TOPS IN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
Crain’s Detroit Business (Sept. 28) -- According to a recent study, the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and Michigan State University ranked fifth in technology licensing revenue, while the Illinois research cluster (the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University) was at the top, generating $193.7 million in technology-licensing revenue.

PARALLEL COMPUTING
CNN Money (Sept. 28) -- Microsoft and Intel have invested $20 million in parallel computing research centers at Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley.

MATERIALS SCIENCE
Materials Views (Weinheim, Germany, Sept. 28) -- John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, and colleagues have developed circuits that can stretch, bend and even twist.

FROM SUNLIGHT TO PUMP
The Bioenergy Site (Sept. 28) -- "There's not as much information on energy crops as we have on corn and soybeans and wheat and cotton. So we have to build on those past successes and learn," said University of Illinois agricultural engineer K.C. Ting.

STUDENT TEAM WINS GRANT FOR ENERGY AUDITS
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Sept. 25) -- A team of students from the U of I will use its $50,000 Ford Challenge Grant to help prospective tenants in the area learn the energy efficiecy of apartments they might rent.

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
AZoNano.com (Sydney, Australia, Sept. 23) -- U of I physics professors David Ceperley and Brian DeMarco are part of a Rice University-led team of physicists at seven U.S. universities that has won $5 million from the Department of Defense to build a simulator capable of tackling high-temperature superconductivity, one of the most vexing mysteries of modern physics. Also: Nanotechwire (Philadelphia, Sept. 23).

MACARTHUR AWARD WINNER
The New York Times (Sept. 22) -- John A. Rogers, 42, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, is among the 24 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards,” announced today by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “For a lot of us, walking between the boundaries of disciplines and a bit off the beaten path, it’s good to get a confirmation that people think highly of your work,” said Rogers, a professor at the Beckman Institute. He invents electronic devices that, according to the MacArthur citation, “lay the foundation for a revolution in manufacture of industrial, consumer and biocompatible technologies.” Also: Bloomberg (Sept. 22), Chicago Tribune (Sept. 22), Inside Higher Ed (Sept. 22), Los Angeles Times (from The Associated Press, Sept. 21), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (from The Associated Press, Sept. 22), The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, D.C., Sept. 22), The Chronicle of Philanthropy (Washington, D.C., Sept. 22), The Washington Post (Sept. 22), United Press International (Sept. 22), USA Today (Sept. 22), News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Sept. 22), Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 23), Photonics (Pittsfield, Mass., Sept. 22), Science NOW Daily News (Washington, D.C., Sept. 22), WBBM-Channel 2 (CBS; Chicago, Sept. 22).

NEW INORGANIC LEDs CAN BE BRIGHTER, LIVE LONGER
Chemical & Engineering News (District of Columbia, Aug. 24) -- Inorganic light-emitting diodes can be brighter, more robust, and longer lived than their organic counterparts. Yet until now, inorganic LEDs have been limited to relatively low-resolution applications. Those limitations may now be a thing of the past as a result of new procedures for making ultrathin and ultrasmall inorganic LEDs developed by a team of researchers that includes Sang-Il Park, Yujie Xiong, and John Rogers at Illinois.

CAZOODLE
Consumer Electronics Net (Bozeman, Mont., Sept. 22) -- Cazoodle Shopping Search, the first and only organic shopping search service, uses technology developed at the U. of I. to organize data in both the surface Web and the deep Web.

SEWAGE CONVERTER
Greentech Media (Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 21) -- Mark Shannon, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the Illinois, is raising funds to build a prototype anaerobic digester that will convert sewage into re-useable water, methane and a sludge of minerals that can be sold to manufacturers or brick makers.

THEORETICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOPHYSICS
Medical News Today (Bexhill-on-Sea, England, Sept. 20) -- The theoretical and computational biophysics group, directed by physics professor Klaus Schulten and comprising faculty from physics, computer science, chemistry, pharmacology, and biophysics, combines world-class expertise in modeling and visualization with advanced computer engineering.

SCIENCE EDUCATION
Reuters (Sept. 15) -- The U of I is one of several universities partnering with Semiconductor Research Corp. and the Intel Foundation on a program that provides science and engineering undergraduates with research experience and mentoring.

SELF-HEALING MATERIALS
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 11) -- U of I researchers are developing a material that could let a circuit self-repair small but critical damage caused by, say, dropping a cell phone. “We want to address common failures in cell phones and other portable electronics,” says Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering at the U. of I. who leads the research project with Jeffrey Moore, a professor of chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Also: Ethiopian Review (from Technology Review, Cambridge, Mass.; Washington, D.C., Sept. 10), ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 11).

EARTHQUAKE RESEARCH
Inside Indiana Business (Indianapolis, Sept. 10) -- The U of I will collaborate with Purdue University in the George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. Also: PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Sept. 10).

SELF-HEALING NANO MATERIALS
Popular Science (Sept. 11) -- Electronic devices of the future may self-repair tiny cracks or breaks in their circuitry with the help of nanotubes thanks to researchers at Illinois. Also: Daily Commercial News and Construction Record (Markham, Ontario, Sept. 11), Smart Planet (Sept. 16).

SMART GRID
Reuters (Sept. 9) -- The U of I is a participant in the Illinois Smart Grid Collaboration, an effort to make Illinois a hub for the effective innovation, validation, deployment and evaluation of Smart Grid technology. The statewide initiative seeks to bring $60 million in federal stimulus money to Illinois to lower electricity bills, reduce blackouts, make energy cleaner and create green jobs. Also: FOX Business (Chicago, Sept. 9), iStockAnalyst.com (Bend, Ore., Sept. 9), Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 12).

SELF-HEALING MATERIALS
Engineering: Go for It (Sept.) -- Engineering research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is mentioned on page 2 of the magazine published by the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) for K-12 students, parents, and techers. The short article that discusses nanotechnology and self-healing materials being developed at Illinois.

ELECTROLUMINESCENCE
AZom.com (Sydney, Australia, Sept. 9) -- Researchers at the U. of I. worked with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory to demonstrate electroluminescence by using highly aligned arrays of single-walled carbon nanotubes.

BIOENGINEERING
Science (Sept. 4) -- Huimin Zhao, a bioengineer at Illinois, and others are now working to re-engineer yeast to make n-butanol instead of ethanol, which it readily produces. If researchers succeed in turning yeast or cyanobacteria into second-generation fuel producers, ethanol's days atop the biofuel heap may be waning.

EARTHQUAKES
Fox News (from Popular Science, Sept. 3) -- A research team led by Stanford and the U of I successfully tested a structural system that holds a building together through a magnitude-seven earthquake, and even pulls it back upright on its foundation when the quaking stops. The key: embracing the shaking, by limiting the damage to a few flexible, replaceable areas within the building's frame. Also: News Guide (Sept. 2), Science Daily (Sept. 4).

BIOCOMPATIBLE PHOTONIC COMPONENTS
Medical News Today (Bexhill-on-Sea, England, Sept. 1) -- There is a growing need for biocompatible photonic components for biomedical applications – from in vivo glucose monitoring to detecting harmful viruses or the telltale markers of Alzheimer's. Researchers at Tufts University and the U of I have demonstrated a new method for fabricating silk-based optical waveguides that are biocompatible, biodegradable and can be readily functionalized with active molecules. The research capitalized on Tufts' knowledge of silk-based biopolymers and biophotonics and the expertise of U of I materials science and engineering professor Jennifer A. Lewis and graduate student Sara T. Parker in direct-write assembly to create complex planar and three-dimensional structures. Also: Science Centric (Sofia, Bulgaria, Sept. 1), The Engineer (U.K., Sept. 2).

BICYCLING
Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Ill., Sept. 1) -- Bicycles used in “Lose the Training Wheels,” a program designed to help disabled children learn to ride a bicycle, were designed by Richard Klein, a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Illinois.
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Contact: Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.