News from Engineering at Illinois August 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 August stories focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

GAS MASKS
National Geographic (Aug. 30) -- John Georgiadis, a professor of mechanical engineering at Illinois, explains how gas masks work.

MARC ANDREESSEN
Al Jazeera (Aug. 31) -- A profile of Marc Andreessen, a U. of I. alumnus, who created the first popular Internet browser.

STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS
The Boston Globe (Aug. 29) -- Harvard University scientists have built a clear, artificial “muscle” in the laboratory and controlled its rapid vibrations with precision. John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, says the work is “promising and remarkably simple,” with potential applications for surgical tools, sensors that can wrap around curvy, soft structures in the body, and implants. Also: Discovery News (Aug. 29).

ARTIFICIAL SPIN ICE
Science 360 (National Science Foundation, Aug. 29) -- A team of scientists has reported direct visualization of magnetic charge crystallization in an artificial spin ice material, a first in the study of a relatively new class of frustrated artificial magnetic materials-by-design known as "Artificial Spin Ice." These charges are analogs to electrical charges with possible applications in magnetic memories and devices. The research team's findings appear in the August 29 issue of the journal Nature (see original journal article). Also: Phys.Org (Aug. 28), Science Daily (Aug. 28), ScienceBlog (Aug. 28).

TRANSIENT ELECTRONICS
IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Aug. 26) -- Illinois materials science professor John Rogers makes electronic films that stick to the skin or may be laminated on like temporary tattoos. Radio-frequency communication circuits in the material can forward data from sensors on the skin to a computer.

ANCIENT ART INSPIRES SCIENCE
Smithsonian magazine (Sept. 2013) -- The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a super­sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints. The ancient nanotech works something like this: When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the color depending on the observer’s position. Gang Logan Liu, an engineer at Illinois, who has long focused on using nanotechnology to diagnose disease, and his colleagues realized that this effect offered untapped potential. “The Romans knew how to make and use nanoparticles for beautiful art,” Liu says. “We wanted to see if this could have scientific applications.” Also: Forbes (Aug. 25), The Vine (Aug. 26), Okezone (Indonesia, Aug. 26).

BASEBALL
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Aug. 26) -- "If the weather is warmer, all other things being equal, the (base)ball is going to carry further and you'll have more homers," says Alan M. Nathan, a professor emeritus of physics at the U. of I.

THE ENGINEER GUY
Science 360 (NSF, Aug. 23) -- Video by ChemE professor Bill Hammack, who dissassembles an LCD monitor to reveal its inner workings and explain the science behind this ubiquitous technology.

SMART-GRID TEST FACILITY
News-Gazette (Aug. 21) -- Ameren Illinois has opened a $3.3 million testing facility near the University of Illinois campus that companies can use to try out smart-grid technologies on a live grid. The utility's new Technology Applications Center s equipped with a substation and two distribution circuit feeders.

NICK HOLONYAK
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 21) -- U. of I. engineering professor Nick Holonyak makes MIT’s “Seven Over 70” list of distinguished researchers.

ALUMNUS RECOGNIZED AMONG BEST UNDER 35
Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass.) -- Engineering at Illinois alumnus Liangfang Zhang, a nanoengineering professor at UC San Diego, is listed as one of the top "35 Innovators Under 35 for 2013" by MIT's Technology Review magazine.

Related story: Technology Review (Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 22) -- Roozbeh Ghaffari, who made MIT’s “35 Innovators Under 35” list, says one reason for his success was meeting John Rogers, a U. of I. materials science professor.

BATTERIES
Silicon India (Bangalore, India, Aug. 20) -- If researchers at Illinois and Harvard are successful, people will soon be able to print their own batteries. Scientists have created lithium-ion batteries the size of a grain of salt with a 3-D printer that sprays conductive inks onto a glass substrate with gold wires.

ALUMNUS IN SPACE
Chicago Tribune (Aug. 19) -- More than 20 years ago, Michael Hopkins was studying for his aerospace engineering degree, hoping to one day land in space. Now that dream has become a reality. Hopkins is one of six astronauts assigned to Expedition 37, and he will head into space next month to assist in research for more than 200 scientific experiments. The Missouri native, who graduated in 1991, played defensive back and was a team captain at Illinois. Also: WGN-TV (Aug. 20).

BIO-BOTS
New York Times (Aug. 18; print edition, Aug. 20; link to article and video) -- Not all bioengineers who are using printers in the lab are trying to create tissues or organs. Some are intent on making biological machines. In the laboratory of Rashid Bashir, head of the bioengineering department at the University of Illinois, researchers have made small hybrid “biobots” — part gel, part muscle cell — that can move on their own. The research may someday lead to the development of tiny devices that could travel within the body, sensing toxins and delivering medication. Also: The Scientist (Midland, Ontario, Aug. 22).

CS ALUMNUS
Chicago Tribune (Aug. 18) -- Volition, a video game company under new corporate ownership, has high hopes for the next year. Volition evolved from Parallax Software, a PC game-maker co-founded in 1993 by Mike Kulas, a computer science alumnus from Illinois.

CYBER RESEARCH
San Francisco Chronicle (from The Associated Press, Aug. 17) -- The U. of I., Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and Michigan are involved in a $10 million National Science Foundation project to research better ways to protect medical records sent by cellphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

TRANSIENT ELECTRONICS
GMA News (Quezon City, Philippines, Aug. 16) -- Researchers at Illinois, Tufts and Northwestern created a program called “Born to Die” to further study transient electronics

SOLAR DECATHLON HOUSE RETURNS
News-Gazette (Aug. 14) – An solar-powered house built by University of Illinois students for the international Solar Decathlon will return to campus to anchor a mini-neighborhood of environmentally friendly homes. The University has made space for its three solar houses from the past competitions on the Energy Biosciences Institute Research Farm on South Race Street, starting with the "Element House" built for the 2007.

BASEBALL
NPR (Aug. 14) -- Why don’t more pitchers throw the knuckleball? According to U. of I. emeritus physics professor Alan Nathan, there’s a stigma attached to the knuckleball by many in baseball. “It’s seen as a ‘trick pitch,’ ” he says. “ It’s not ‘really baseball.’ ”

FLEXIBLE ELECTRONICS
Discover Magazine (Sept. Issue) -- Cover story highlights the work of John Rogers who has spent more than 15 years developing electronics that can bend and stretch without breaking. His devices, from surgical sutures that monitor skin temperature to biodegradable sensors that dissolve when their useful life is done, share a unifying quality: They can slip seamlessly into the soft, moist, moving conditions of the living world.

Related article: Engineering.com (Mississauga, Ontario, Aug. 20) -- Kevin Dowling is looking for a new way to process and use electronics so they have properties such as flexibility and can be worn (for medical applications, for example). The basis for these innovations comes from ideas developed with materials scientist John Rogers at Illinois.

UI LABS
Crain's Chicago Business (Aug. 13) -- A year ago, UI Labs was just an interesting notion to build a high-profile research hub in Chicago that would bring together top-flight university researchers with private-sector companies to tackle big problems. UI Labs is zeroing in on a home in downtown Chicago, said Larry Schook, the University's vice president for research. The UI Labs effort could get a huge jolt if it lands a $70 million Defense Department grant to create an institute for advanced digital manufacturing.

ELECTRONIC SKIN
IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Aug. 12) -- A team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed the first user-interactive “electronic skin” that responds to pressure by instantly emitting light. John Rogers, a materials science professor at Illinois, says, “The work illustrates the extent to which research in nanomaterials, once confined strictly to fundamental study on individual test vehicles, is now successfully moving toward sophisticated, macroscale demonstrator devices, with unique function. The results provide more evidence that the field is headed in the right direction.”

FIREFIGHTING ROBOT SCOUT
FOX News (Aug. 8) -- The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department has worked with engineers at Illinois and the University of California, San Diego’s Coordinated Robotics Lab to develop a firefighting robot scout that will create 3-D virtual versions of fires, giving those rushing into harm’s way a detailed picture before entering a burning building.

COMPUTER SECURITY
Enterprise Networking Planet (Aug. 8) -- Researchers at the Ocean Cluster for Experimental Architectures in Networks (OCEAN) lab at Illinois are using a Software Defined Networking (SDN) test bed to verify network correctness, security, and fault tolerance in real time, with low latency and low network performance impact. This has particular importance for application-defined networks, since their high level of programmability and the needs and priorities of different applications may result in conflicts.

MOVING EDUCATION
Scientific American (Aug. 8) -- Tim Stelzer, a physics professor at Illinois and a co-creator of the smartPhysics learning system, compared the changes in education to rapids, because “standing still is not an option, but if we allow the current to dictate our path, the results will be disastrous.”

NANO-SAW
Chemistry World (Cambridge, England, Aug. 8) -- Scientists in Germany and Australia have teamed up to make an ultra-thin saw made of carbon nanotubes sprinkled with diamonds. Nick Glumac, a materials science professor at Illinois, explains the typical diamond-making process. “If you try to deposit diamond onto a non-diamond carbon surface (such as carbon nanotubes), you end up etching away the non-diamond carbon as you deposit the diamond,” he says.

NICK HOLONYAK
Rockford Register Star (Illinois, Aug. 7) -- LED inventor Nick Holonyak Jr., a U. of I. electrical engineering professor, has retired. Colleagues say he’ll almost certainly continue doing research. Also: News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, IL, Aug. 7; Aug. 11--opinion section), Daily Journal (from The Associated Press, Aug. 7), Daily Illini (Aug. 7),

FLEXIBLE GOLD
IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Aug. 5) -- A team of researchers at the University of Michigan recently found that a material made of gold spherical nanoparticles nested in polyurethane is conductive even when stretched up to several times its original length. Nicholas Kotov, one of the Michigan researchers, hopes these flexible conductors can help resolve some of the problems associated with brain implants. “The next steps will be to determine routes for integrating these materials into functional systems and assessing their performance compared to alternatives,” says John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois who has worked extensively to create flexible conductors.

NUCLEAR ENGINEERING
Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Aug. 5) -- The U. of I. is among six schools selected as centers of excellence by the National Nuclear Security Administration for focus on the emerging field of predictive science. Illinois will receive $3.2 million each year for five years under NNSA’s Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program II agreement.

STRETCHABLE BATTERY
The Engineer (London, Aug. 5) -- A team led by materials scientist John Rogers at Illinois has developed a battery that can be stretched by a factor of three in any direction.

TECH CAREERS IN CHICAGO
CBS Chicago (Aug. 3) -- College students looking for high tech careers say Chicago is becoming more and more attractive as a place to work. Mayor Emanuel was at the West Loop headquarters of the tech firm Acquity Group, trying to convince a room full of the company’s young prospects to take jobs here. Several Engineering at Illinois students were in attendance.

ALUMNUS LEVCHIN INTERVIEWED
Charlie Rose (Aug.) -- Video feature: An hour with Max Levchin--co-founder of PayPal and Slide--on his latest project, tech incubator HVF.

SMARTPHONE BIOSENSOR
USA Today (Video feature from The Associated Press, Aug. 1) -- Researchers and physicians in the field could soon run on-the-spot tests for environmental toxins, medical diagnostics, food safety and more with their smartphones. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the phone’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules. Also: Washington Post (Aug. 1), CBS Atlanta (Aug. 1), NBC News (Aug. 1), ABC News (Aug. 1), MSN (August 1), AoL On (August 1), Victoria Times Colonist (Canada, August 1), Herald-Sun (Melbourne, Austrailia, Aug. 1), Helena Independent Record (Montana, Aug. 1), Belleville News-Democrat (Illinois, Aug. 1), news.com (Sydney, Aug. 1), The Boston Globe (Aug. 1), The Philadelphia Inquirer (Aug. 1), WGCL-Channel 46 (CBS; Atlanta, Aug. 1), Yahoo! News (Aug. 1), CTV News (Aug. 1), MedCity News (Aug. 1), Mother Nature Network (Aug. 1), Newstrack India (Aug. 2), Post-Bulletin (Rochester, MN, Aug. 1), New York Daily News (Aug. 1), Daily Mail (UK, Aug. 1), OpposingViews.com (Aug. 2), KWTX-Channel 10 (CBS; Waco, Texas, Aug. 1), CBS News (Aug. 1), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Aug. 4), Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Aug. 5), The News & Observer (from Mother Nature Network, Atlanta; Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 19).

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
Upclose (Aug. 1) -- As part of a new interview series discussing behind the scenes of the latest research on pharmaceutical and personal care products, Timothy Strathmann, a U of I environmental engineer, talks in detail about what happens to pharmaceuticals at a chemical level when water is treated, the risk these chemicals pose after they are broken down, and how his research is helping to develop new, more efficient treatment technologies needed to ensure sustainable water quality.
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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.