Research & Innovation
The Opus College of Engineering is transforming engineering education by preparing engineers to be creative problem solvers
Health & Human Performance
Biomedical Engineering
By Chris Jenkins
Relearning How to Move
A few years back, tennis great Roger Federer reinvented his backhand to strengthen his game after a period of unsatisfying performances. It worked. But how did the competitor reteach his body to move differently after years of rehearsing the same movements? Dr. Leigh Ann Mrotek, research professor of biomedical engineering, is collaborating on a $406,266 National Science Foundation grant with Michigan State University assistant professor Dr. Rajiv Ranganathan and Dr. Maura Casadio, associate professor at the University of Genoa, Italy, to examine how people learn to perform a task differently than how they originally learned it.
Ranganathan is examining how well people can learn to perform a complex hand movement task and then relearn to perform the task under different conditions. At Marquette, Mrotek and Casadio are investigating how well violinists can execute a typical musical scale on a normal violin compared with a modified violin that requires the musician to play the same scale in a different order of movements.
Faculty and students at all three universities will work together to test how well people can relearn the tasks depending on whether the new conditions are similar to or different from the original conditions; how long the person executed the original task; and whether practice conditions are different for the new condition.
“The expected findings will not only transform current theories of motor learning and movement rehabilitation, which largely ignore the existence and influence of prior coordination patterns,” says Mrotek. “But the principles identified will also have broader implications for other fields of learning, like language acquisition, where prior learning has a critical influence.”
Marquette is collaborating on this project and other related ones with the University of Genoa. Supported by a separate three-year NSF-IRES grant, students will prepare their research projects under the guidance of Marquette faculty, then travel to Italy to collect data and begin data analysis under the mentorship of the collaborating University of Genoa faculty.
“The goal is to foster understanding of global health care issues and to cultivate the cultural competence required to develop biomedical engineering solutions to improve the health status of individuals around the world,” says Mrotek.
Breath
In the U.S. alone, 75,000 deaths, 3.6 million hospital days and $5 billion in health care costs annually are attributed to severe cases of acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. Dr. Said Audi, Eng ’88, Grad ’90, ’93, professor of biomedical engineering and director of graduate studies, was awarded a $378,335 grant from the National Institutes of Health to use clinical imaging and computational algorithms to detect and quantify changes in specific lung cellular targets during the progression and regression of ARDS.
With this support, Audi expects to develop a clinical means for early detection of ARDS; new prognostic information for patients with mild ARDS; and an understanding of the role of a key cellular target in ARDS’ progression and regression. Audi received the Opus College’s 2019 Outstanding Researcher Award.
The total square footage of the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center’s Neuroscience and Biomechanics Laboratories, which have been under the direction of Dr. Frank Pintar, Eng ’82, Grad ’86, since 1991. Pintar was named founding chair of the joint Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2018.
His most recent grants have focused on the physics of trauma to the human body, with a primary interest in head and spine injuries. His research derives engineering definitions of human tolerance to injury for the primary purpose of prevention, and the labs’ findings have been used to define the safety design standards of today’s automobiles, airplanes and military vehicles.
Cervical cancer ranks as China’s third most common cancer among women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to estimates from the Catalan Institute of Oncology/International Agency for Research on Cancer. Dr. Bing Yu, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has developed SmartME, an affordable and portable microendoscope device on a smartphone platform, to revolutionize cervical cancer diagnoses in low- and middle-income countries.
SmartME is expected to have a diagnostic accuracy better than those of benchtop diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) systems and high resolution microendoscopes (HRME) alone, and it can wirelessly transfer data to a remote server for processing, potentially returning results to the device within a minute or sooner. With a $300,000 grant from Smart Biophotonics LLC, Yu will conduct patient studies of SmartME in China this year.
Biomedical Engineering
Preventing Airway Collapse
Obstructive sleep apnea — a sleep disorder in which a person’s breathing is briefly and repeatedly interrupted during sleep — affects between 2 and 7 percent of the adult population, according to a Wisconsin Sleep Cohort study. Caused when the airway fails to stay open, untreated sleep apnea can lead to serious health consequences, including chronic fatigue, hypertension, car accidents and even death.
Dr. Guilherme Garcia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is researching the biomechanics of upper airway collapse during obstructive sleep apnea. His team’s goal is to quantify how mechanical stability of the upper airway is determined by a patient’s anatomy and soft tissue properties. Their research includes computer simulations using 3D, anatomically accurate, patient-specific models built from MRI or CT scans.
Supported by a $200,000 Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment grant, Garcia’s research is expected to help develop surgical techniques that are more effective at preventing airway collapse. “Also, if we can understand how the anatomic structure causing airway collapse correlates with airflow shapes recorded during a sleep study, we may be able to identify the anatomic structure causing airflow limitation,” Garcia says. “This could help clinicians select individualized treatment for each patient.”
Right now, identifying the site of airway collapse in patients with obstructive sleep apnea requires an endoscopy under sedation, an expensive exam that is not universally available. “If our research is successful, this could potentially reduce health care costs and help clinicians select more effective treatments,” he adds.
Water
Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
Bacteria Busting
Elizabethkingia made headlines in the spring of 2016, when the bacteria strain was blamed for 66 confirmed infections and 18 deaths in southeastern Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. It was the largest documented Elizabethkingia outbreak in history. Samples from tap water, environments in common facilities and patient homes, and consumer products were all negative, and the outbreak source was never identified.
Elizabethkingia bacteria, commonly found in soil and water, typically pose little risk to human health. However, these bacteria also tend to exhibit a high degree of antibiotic resistance and mortality, according to Dr. Brooke Mayer, PE, associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. Previous outbreaks in other regions provide evidence the bacteria can colonize sinks, pipes and aerators.
“Given the emergence of this pathogen, recent serious outbreaks and evidence of bacterial colonization in plumbing, it’s imperative that we develop a better understanding of how to effectively inactivate these bacteria in water environments,” she says.
Armed with nearly $50,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation’s RAPID program, which offers a mechanism for quick-response research on natural or anthropogenic disasters, Mayer and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Kyana Young studied the bacteria’s response to common disinfectants, including free chlorine, chloramines, ozone and UV irradiation. Relative to reports for other bacteria, Elizabethkingia exhibited higher resistance to disinfection using free chlorine, ozone and UV.
“Of these strategies, ozonation most efficiently inactivated the bacteria and would be suitable for use in stemming waterborne outbreaks,” says Young. “In comparison, chloramine disinfection
was quite slow and is not recommended.”
The pair’s research results are of immediate interest as they contribute to deeper understanding of waterborne Elizabethkingia disinfection and could be used to avoid future public health disasters and limit outbreaks.
3D
Dr. Cris Ababei, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Dr. Ronald Coutu, Jr., PE, V. Clayton Lafferty Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering; and Mitchell Shreiner, Eng ’19, teamed up to design and build a semi-autonomous underwater drone. Made from 3D-printed parts, a camera, video components, water sensors and more, the fully-functioning vehicle is intended for water quality monitoring in pools, water treatment tanks, ponds and lakes.
“We hope this design will be adopted in educational and research settings, as it can serve as a platform to study 3D printing and mechanical design, embedded programming, controls, and wired and wireless communications,” says Ababei. The project was supported by a William and Nancy Stemper Award.
3 fields + 1 lab
Engineering Hall’s green roof, Marquette’s Victory Garden and the stormwater treatment wetland below the 35th Street Viaduct are extending Dr. Anthony Parolari’s research lab as he tries to identify whether such urban green spaces have a positive impact on water pollution. As investments in green infrastructure are growing, Parolari says it’s vital to understand whether they create unintended consequences — such as nutrients running off into aquatic ecosystems.
The assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering is collecting data — via soil sensors that measure biogeochemical conditions and nutrient retention; soil and water samples collected during wet weather events; and resin bags capturing nutrient ions released by microbial activity in the soil — to determine the extent of nutrient retention in these systems. This data will be used to develop design recommendations to optimize retention and minimize harmful nutrient runoff. The Fund for Lake Michigan is supporting this yearlong project.
Transportation & Infrastructure
Mechanical engineering
Blast Off
If hit by a blast or impact, explosives and propellants used in
airbags, rockets, mining, munitions and other engineered systems can accidentally detonate. Dr. John Borg, PE, chair and professor
of mechanical engineering, received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study the design and safety of materials that may be susceptible to accidental detonation.
The research is being done in Borg’s Shock Physics Lab, where
researchers investigate how condensed matter responds under
extreme conditions. To test reactions, researchers use a gas gun
with the capabilities to launch a 2-inch-diameter projectile down
a 15-foot-long barrel at speeds of nearly 1,200 meters per second,
or Mach 3, and measure thermodynamic response upon impact
in a target tank via laser light.
For this project, Borg uses a surrogate system made of sugar and epoxy to imitate the substructure of explosive energetic systems. “The current perspective is that energetic systems are composed of both hard and soft components that create a pinch that stresses the material,” Borg explains. “By mimicking these hard and soft materials with sugar and epoxy, we can run a series of tests to see how the system responds to differing stress loads.”
X-rays, light and electron microscopy are used to image the sugar and epoxy substructure. lmages are then imported as computer codes to simulate the dynamic response of the surrogate systems. The sugar and epoxy systems are subjected to shock and blast loads using the gas gun, and data collected from it will be compared with the imaging simulations to characterize how energetic materials can be modified to reduce accidental detonations.
The number of children from El Aguacate, Guatemala, who are being taught in a new three-classroom schoolhouse designed and built by Marquette’s Engineers Without Borders chapter this summer. Thanks to the new structure, the school can add kindergarten to the list of grades offered and now can accommodate an anticipated growth in students.
The number of heavy wheel passes applied to solar road panels at the Marquette University Heavy Vehicle Simulator. Dr. Ronald Coutu, Jr., PE, V. Clayton Lafferty Endowed Chair in Electrical Engineering, and Dr. James Crovetti, associate professor emeritus of civil, construction and environmental engineering, conducted this testing to validate the structural integrity and road worthiness of these panels as part of a research project sponsored by Solar Roadways Inc. and the Federal Highway Administration. This novel roadway material is intended to extend roadway replacement timelines, lower annual maintenance costs and provide energy to the power grid.
Technology & Systems
Electrical and computer engineering
Hybrids in the Air
Marquette researcher Dr. Ayman EL-Refaie is partnering with The Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin–Madison and other universities in a NASA University Leadership Initiative to develop next-generation, high specific power electrical components to enable commercial hybrid propulsion for aerospace applications.
EL-Refaie’s team will concentrate on design aspects of motors and generators, with special attention to design challenges related to higher system voltage at altitude, winding design and thermal management.
EL-Refaie, the Thomas H. and Suzanne M. Werner Endowed Chair in Secure and Renewable Energy Systems, has focused his research on advanced electrical machines, advanced power electronic converters and their control, with special focus on transportation electrification and energy sustainability. “There is wide recognition that hybrid-electric systems can provide significant benefits for aerospace applications in terms of reducing fuel consumption, improving system efficiency and reliability,” he says.
In this joint project, EL-Refaie’s team is supporting the development of very lightweight motors/generators that can be used for MW-scale hybrid-electric propulsion systems for large commercial planes. The plane’s propulsion is provided by both a jet engine as well as electric motors driving propellers (for a hybrid system) or only electric motors driving propellers (in case of electric propulsion) and covers a wide range of applications from drones to large commercial planes.
“Reducing the mass of the electrical components is critical in order to reap the benefits of the hybrid-electric system in aerospace applications,” EL-Refaie says. “The specific power target for these electrical components is two to three times higher than what is currently state-of-the-art, and that is what we are trying to accomplish.”
To address complex, multidisciplinary discovery and innovation needs of more than 8,000 faculty and researchers, the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure supports and coordinates the development, acquisition and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources essential to advancing 21st century science and engineering research and education.
This includes cyberinfrastructure technologies such as advanced computing, networks and services for computational and data-intensive research, which the NSF deems essential to sustaining U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.
Dr. Majeed Hayat, chair and professor of electrical and computer engineering, received $133,866 in NSF funds to develop a new approach to improving the performance of modern cyberinfrastructure systems by optimizing resource allocation based on advanced computational modeling and optimization of system performance. His research will enable software cyberinfrastructure, applications, and system architects to make effective end-to-end performance trade-offs, increasing the efficiency of important strategic computing systems.
Electrical and computer engineering
A Vision of the Future
As an undergrad research assistant using images to understand how bacteria colonies were populating in a petri dish, Dr. Henry Medeiros did not envision the dramatic progress that would take place in computer vision and image processing research in the years since.
Now, as assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, Medeiros is using similar techniques to develop computer vision applications for manufacturing, agriculture and security advancements.
One of his projects, supported with a three-year $299,930 grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, aims to measure the performance of a robotic manipulator mounted on an automated guided vehicle, or AGV. His team is investigating how accurately the robotic vision system can identify test points on a mapped artifact while both the AGV and manipulator simultaneously move.
The machine-learning algorithms developed by Medeiros and his team are first evaluated in simulation and then executed on hardware, using both proof-of- concept models and industrial mobile manipulators. A motion capture system measures the performance of the robots during experiments. This robotic technology, currently used in space exploration and military operations, is being tested for use in manufacturing assembly.
“Computer vision research began 60 years ago, but in the first 50, progress was very slow,” Medeiros says. With recent advances in machine learning, the field now is evolving at a much faster pace, and Medeiros thinks, “It’s a great time to be a part of that.” With even “more significant advances developing over the next decade,” Medeiros’ research seems to be surging with the technology tide.
Medeiros received the Helen Way Klingler Young Scholar Award from the university this spring.
Long-term deposit formation in water pipes affects the accuracy and
reliability of flow meters. When new flow meters and their components
are being tested before coming to market, determining how deposits v
affect them requires measurements over a long period. Dr. Florian Bender, research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering,
received $100,000 from Badger Meter to develop an accelerated test
system that will speed the process of deposit formation in water pipes.
“The system will be designed to permit varying the water temperature
and adding specific ionic impurities to further control the nucleation
process and promote rapid formation of either aragonite or calcite, the most common crystal forms of calcium carbonate deposits,” Bender
says. “It will allow for accelerated testing and development of flow
meter systems and components that take deposit formation into account.”
