News from Engineering at Illinois June 2013

This monthly summary includes excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau and other media search tools. This collection of June stories focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

BUG-EYE CAMERA
NSF Science Now (Episode 14, June/July) -- Researchers at Illinois led by John Rogers, have created the first digital cameras that mimics insects’ unique, 180-degree vision (third video story in report).

RESEARCH
Crain’s Chicago Business (June 29) -- Larry Schook, the U. of I. vice president for research, is looking at changing how universities and private industry pursue research.

CS CAMP FOR GIRLS
The News-Gazette (June 27) -- A day camp for middle-school girls on the University of Illinois campus is centered around computer science, but that doesn't mean the students involved are only concerned with computers. Instead, the camp coordinators at the Girls Engaged in Math and Science Camp are teaching them about how computer science can solve worldwide problems, how it can be artistic as well as technical and how it's accessible to them, perhaps as a career. Also: ASEE FirstBell (June 28).

BASHIR FEATURED
American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS Member Spotlight, June 25) -- As a youngster growing up in Pakistan, Rashid Bashir enjoyed putting together transistor radios from kits. In 2012, Bashir’s research team built a self-propelled bio-bot using heart cells from a rat, hydrogel, and polymer scaffolding made with a 3-D printer. Smaller than a sugar cube, these miniscule machines represent a sweet success for the world of bioengineering.

CONCRETE CANOE
New York Times (June 23) -- At the National Concrete Canoe Competition, civil engineering students use a material that is normally the stuff of dams and parking garages to build a 20-foot-long craft that will float even if completely swamped. To do so, they replace the gravel and sand of conventional concrete with exotic materials like glass spheres. The result, to judge by the finals of this year’s competition, where 23 teams of 10 or more students gathered at the University of Illinois here, is a concrete that is exceedingly light and, with added fibers, strong as well.

Related articles: USA Today (photo story and video feature from The Associated Press, June 24) -- Does concrete float? Teams representing 23 schools were judged on how well they applied their engineering skills to building boats from concrete. Also: WBTV (June 24), The Washington Post (June 24), ASEE FirstBell (June 25), Daily Motion (June 24), Globe and Mail (June 24), Yahoo News (June 24), San Francisco Chronicle (June 24), NBC News (June 24), WFAA-TV (Dallas, TX, June 24), Denver Post (CO, June 24), Seattle Post (WA, June 24), Daily Democrat (Woodland, CA, June 24), CBS Atlanta (June 24), Tyler Morning Telegraph (TX, June 24).

News-Gazette (June 19) – The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is hosting engineering event this week which pits custom-made craft from all over the world. Though the modern concrete canoe was born at the U of I decades ago, this is the first time the campus will officially host the national competition. Nearly two dozen custom-made canoes from across the country will be on display Thursday on the College of Engineering's Bardeen Quad. the three-day event will culminate with concrete canoe races Saturday at nearby Homer Lake. Also: News-Gazette (race prep photos), ASCE (June).

Sentinel and Enterprise (Lowell, MA, June 19) -- It's all about concrete marinas for a group of UMass Lowell students who loaded their 19-foot, 8-inch boat into a truck Monday morning, bound for an American Society of Civil Engineers contest in Illinois. Also: Lowell Sun (June 18), UMass Lowell (June 18).

Andover Townsman (Md., June 20) -- It’s a 132-pound canoe made of concrete. But it floats — so well, in fact, that 20 area college students, including an Andover resident, will race their physics-defying vessel in a national competition being held this week at the University of Illinois.

TV14 News (Evansville, IN, June 19) -- A group of UE students and their concrete canoe are off to the National Concrete Canoe Competition at the University of Illinois. The Evansville students named their canoe "Palus" after a surface feature of the moon, and it fits. Also: WFIE-TV (Evansville, IN, June 24).

NEW DEAN FOR COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
News-Gazette (June 21) -- Andreas Cangellaris, head of the department of electrical and computer engineering, was named the next dean of the UI College of Engineering. He is a co-founder of iFoundry, and serves on the leadership team for the Grainger Engineering Breakthroughs Initiative, a $100-million effort that touches every aspect of the College. Also: Daily Illini (June 21), ASEE FirstBell (June 24).

PRINTING MICROBATTERIES
The Times of India (from Asian News International, Washington, D.C.; New Delhi, June 19) -- 3-D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them. To make the microbatteries, a team at Illinois and Harvard printed precisely interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, each less than the width of a human hair. Also: Science 360 (NSF, June 19) Electronics News (Sydney, June 19), Engadget (San Francisco, June 19), Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., June 18), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., June 18), Gizmodo (June 19), NDTV (June 19), Engineering and Technology Magazine (June 19), Forbes (June 19), TG Daily (June 19), Red Orbit (June 19), Science Recorder (June 19), Nature World News (June 19), GigaOM (June 18), SmartPlanet (June 19), Science World Report (June 19), Top News (June 19), New Electronics (June 19), USA Today (June 19), Computerworld (Framingham, Mass., June 19), Discovery News (June 20), Live Science (New York City, June 19), Yahoo! News (June19), Engineering.com (June 20), Voice of America (June 20), ComputerworldUK (June 19), ECN magazine (June 19), Daily Tech (June 20), Daily Mail (UK, June 20), Popular Science (June 21), Scientific American (June 21), ASEE FirstBell (June 21), CIO (Munich, Germany, June 20), PCB Design (Seaside, Ore., June 20), The Wall Street Journal (subscription needed, June 22), Smithsonian (blog, June 25), The Boston Globe (June 28).

TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
Crain’s Chicago Business (June 19) -- Motorola Mobility’s special-projects outfit is teaming up with the U. of I. and seven other top research universities to accelerate research and development of new technologies. In addition to U of I, other schools include CalTech, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Texas A&M University and Virginia Tech. Also: Scientific American (June 19), San Francisco Business Times (June 19), Texas Tribune (June 19), Houston Business Journal (June 21), Bryan College Station Eagle (TX, June 20), ASEE FirstBell (June 21), WSJ Marketwatch (June 19), Pittsburg Business Times (blog, June 19).

DISSOLVABLE ELECTRONICS
Inside Science (video, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md., June 18) -- John Rogers, a professor of materials science at Illinois, talks about his work on dissolvable electronics.

ENGINEERING FACES
Science 360 (NSF, Washington, D.C., June 17) -- Video features U. of I. civil and environmental engineering professor Glaucio Paulino, who combines medicine and engineering to restore disfigured faces.

GRAPHENE OSCILLATORS
Physics World (Bristol, England, June 17) -- A team led by U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor Eric Pop and Roman Sordan, of the Politecnico di Milano, says it has made the first integrated graphene oscillators – with the added bonus that the devices operate at 1.28 GHz.

HEADWEAR MONITORS ATHLETES SAFETY
The New York Times (June 15) -- A crop of new lightweight devices that athletes can wear on the field may help people on sidelines keep better track of hits to players’ heads during games and practice sessions. The devices, packed with sensors and microprocessors, register a blow to a player’s skull and immediately signal the news by blinking brightly, or by sending a wireless alert. Many of the systems are in research and development, but a few products are coming to the market this summer, including the CheckLight, a washable beanie created jointly by MC10, a startup company founded by U. of I. engineering professor John Rogers, and Reebok. Also: GigaOM (June 8), Bloomberg BusinessWeek (June 13), ASEE FirstBell (June 17), Time (June 19).

BIONANOTECHNOLOGY
IEEE Life Sciences Portal (June 2013 -- In a featured video, Rashid Bashir, an Abel Bliss Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering & Bioengineering and Director of the Micro and NanoTechnology Laboratory at Illinois, discusses "Using BioNanotechnology to Solve Medical Problems." Bashir is the recipient of the 2012 EMB Technical Achievement Award from IEEE.

SOLAR HOUSE
China Daily (Washington, D.C., June 14) -- Construction began on Friday of a 99-square-meter single solar house with two bedrooms and one bathroom near the east gate of Peking University. The house, named Etho, was jointly designed by about 160 students from Peking University and the U. of I.

AQUAPORINS
Science (June 2013) -- Moving water across cell membranes in a quick and controlled fashion is crucial to most life-forms, and it’s a job done with dispatch by a family of membrane proteins called aquaporins. A team of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, and the University of Illinois has now solved the structure of a yeast aquaporin at 0.88 Å, the highest resolution structure ever obtained for any membrane protein. Also: Chemical & Engineering News (June 17), Science 360 (NSF, June 17), ScienceShot (AAAS, June 13).

BASEBALL
The Wall Street Journal (June 13) -- Alan Nathan, an emeritus professor of physics at the U. of I., says baseballs can be “juiced” by doing two things: increasing the coefficient of restitution – or the bounciness – of the ball, or making the seams lower in order to reduce drag.

COMPUTING
The Seattle Times (June 13) -- Massive systems used for advanced research have been Cray’s specialty since it was founded in 1972. A highlight this year was completion of the company’s largest ever supercomputer, the Blue Waters system at U. of I.

ETHANOL
Ethanol Producer Magazine (Grand Forks, N.D., June 13) -- The Energy Biosciences Institute has been granted its first patent since the public-private research partnership was established in 2007. According to the EBI, the newly patented discovery resulted from work completed by teams at Illinois and the University of California at Berkeley to optimize sugar conversion yields by yeast in the production of ethanol.

Related article: Bioenergy Insight (Surrey, England, June 19) -- Researchers from the Energy Biosciences Institute at the U. of I. are evaluating the biomass potential of woody crops, and their work is making them take a close look at the Robinia pseudoacacia tree – otherwise known as the black locust.

POWER GRID
Digital Journal (Boston, June 13) -- The Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid Center is an $18 million multi-university center, led by the U. of I., that seeks to protect the nation’s power grid by significantly improving the way the power grid infrastructure is built, making it more secure, reliable, and safe.

UI SOLAR DECATHLON TEAM
The News Gazette (June 13) -- Designing a "net zero" solar-powered house is challenging enough without trying to do it in two languages across two continents with a 13-hour time difference. The latest University of Illinois solar house, dubbed "Etho," is being built in conjunction with a team at Peking University for the first-ever Solar Decathlon China competition in early August. Also: WCIA-TV (CBS, June 12).

STORM DAMAGE
The News-Gazette (June 10) -- Poking around in the wreckage from a massive EF5 tornado that struck Moore, Okla, two civil engineering professors from the University of Illinois hunted for clues about how buildings hold up during a devastating storm. The engineers--Jim LaFave and Larry Fahnestock--from the Mid-America Earthquake Center wanted to survey the damage while it was still relatively undisturbed, to try to understand how the safety of airports, schools, bridges and other structures can be improved to protect against all kinds of hazards — terrorism, earthquakes, tornadoes and the like. Also: ASEE FirstBell (June 12).

NANOTECHNOLOGY
Phys Org.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, June 10) -- Researchers from the U. of I. and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have developed large-scale heteroepitaxial growth III-V nanowires on a Si wafer.

FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS
AZoNano (Warriewood, Australia, June 10) -- The development of electronic tattoos began in a lab on the U. of I. campus, where John Rogers, the world’s leading researcher in flexible electronics, served as mentor to several postdoctoral fellows.

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY
Wired (San Francisco, June 7) -- Quantum cryptography can, in principle, allow you to encrypt a message in such a way that it would never be read by anyone whose eyes it isn’t for. Some researchers have worked with the U. of I. to show that quantum cryptography was two orders of magnitude faster than conventional techniques in encrypting smart grid information.

OPTOMECHANICAL SENSORS
Phys.Org (June 7) -- Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Michigan have developed optomechanical sensors in which extremely minute forces exerted by light are used to generate and control high-frequency mechanical vibrations of microscale and nanoscale devices that will help unlock vibrational secrets of chemical and biological samples at the nanoscale. Also: Nanowerk News (June 7), Red Orbit (June 7), Science Blog (June 7), News-Medical (June 7), Science Codex (June 7), EarthSky (blog, June 7), Science Daily (June 7), R&D Magazine (June 7), Nanotechnology Now (June 7), Laboratory Equipment (June 10), Photonics (June 10), Frogheart (June 10), Tikalon (blog, June 28).

CRYPTOGRAPHY
Wired (San Francisco, June 7) -- Physicist Richard Hughes and his collaborators have worked with the U. of I. to show that quantum cryptography was two orders of magnitude faster than conventional techniques in encrypting smart grid information.

FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS
Science (Washington, D.C., June 7) -- U. of I. materials science professor John Rogers doesn’t look like a cyborg yet, but his transformation has begun. His research team has been able to track arm motion, allowing researchers to control a toy helicopter’s flight path with a wave of the arm. Through a startup company that he founded called MC10, Rogers has teamed up with NBA and NFL stars such as Grant Hill and Matt Hasselbeck to use the technology to monitor head impacts during sports. Working with the stars “is pretty cool,” Rogers says. “It gives you a lot of credibility with your 10-year-old son.”

FIREFIGHTING
Nature World News (New York City, June 6) -- A new collaboration involving the U. of I. is aiming to develop robot scouts to help firefighters.

MICROFLUIDIC TRAP DEVELOPED
Science Codex (June 5) -- Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new flow-based method for manipulating and confining single particles in free solution."This method is a first-of-its-kind tool for manipulation and trapping of small nanoparticles in solution," explained Charles M. Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Illinois. "Using fluid flow in a microfluidic device means that electrical, magnetic, optical, or acoustic force fields are not necessary." Also: Science Daily (June 5), R&D Magazine (June 6), Science Blog (June 6).

MIND-CONTROLLED MODEL
Nature (London, June 5) -- A model helicopter can now be steered through an obstacle course by thought alone. But the mechanical whirlybird isn’t the first vehicle to be flown by the brain. In 2010 a team at the U. of I. reported an unmanned aircraft that flies a fixed altitude but adjusts its heading to the left or right in response to a user’s thoughts.

POLLUTION
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska, June 5) -- According to U. of I. civil and environmental engineering professor Tami Bond, in one to two weeks, a pound of black carbon (also known as soot) absorbs 650 times as much energy as a pound of carbon dioxide gas will absorb over 100 years.

FIREFIGHTING
Nanowerk News (Honolulu, June 5) -- A new collaboration involving the U. of I. is aiming to develop robot scouts to help firefighters.

CRACKING THE HIV CODE
News-Medical.net (Sydney, June 1) -- Researchers, including U. of I. physics professor Klaus Schulten, report that they have determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects the virus’s genetic material and is a key to its virulence. The capsid has become an attractive target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs.

BIOSENSOR
The Guardian (London, June 1) -- U. of I. researchers have developed a phone application and cradle that will allow an iPhone to act as a powerful sensor device. Using the phone’s camera and processing power as a biosensor, they say phones will be able to detect GMOs, toxins, bacteria, protein, viruses and other elements that may be harmful to health.
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If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.