Momentum 2008 Fall

Engineering that is out of this world

inside this issue:A different kind of circusDecoding civilian life Students plug-in to needs Green with energy

FALL

200

8

Dear Friends and Alumni,

In the past few months as president of the American Society of Engineering Edu-cation (ASEE), I have had the opportunity to travel the world as an ambassador for not only the ASEE, but for the Bagley College of Engineering. In this role I’ve had the fortunate and unique experience of offering assistance and advice to other countries interested in learning about the benefits of national accreditation boards for engineering programs and participation in the Washington Accord or other multi-national accreditation partnerships. The Washington Accord is a partnership among various nations that defines the level and quality for which its engineer-ing programs strive to meet. These standards are especially important to graduates who are trying to gain a professional engineering licensure, as well as for the global corporations who are seeking highly qualified engineers.

Unfortunately, many of the developing countries do not have national accredita-tion boards and often have great variability in the quality of their engineering programs. As a result, their graduates are often not adequately prepared to enter the workforce. To maintain their global competitiveness, corporations have been forced to provide intensive training programs for new hires. One such global company is providing training to as many as 14,000 recent engineering graduates annually, with training taking up to one year to complete.

What is exciting to see is the passion and desire of the faculty to improve the learning environments for their students, in spite of often very limited resources, and the desire of academic leaders to develop accreditation standards to ensure program quality. Over the summer, I had the opportunity to participate in the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) summer faculty institute held in Mysore, India. Over a six-week period some of the world’s best educators each spent a week or more teaching more than 500 Indian faculty state-of-the-art educational pedagogy, so they could have a positive impact in terms of improving the quality of engineering education in their own classrooms and share the results of this training with their colleagues.

Meeting with world renown educators and making connections with key indus-trial leaders is providing the college unlimited international exposure that a univer-sity dean would have difficulty generating without serving in the leadership role of a major professional organization. It’s these kinds of relationships that prove to be invaluable, especially in these challenging economic times.

My Best,

Sarah A. Rajala, Ph.D. Dean of the Bagley College of Engineering Earnest W. & Mary Ann Deavenport Jr. ChairPresident, American Society for Engineering Education

I have had the opportu-

nity to travel the world

as an ambassador for

not only the ASEE, but

for the Bagley College of

Engineering. In this role

I’ve had the fortunate

and unique experience of

offering assistance and

advice to other countries

interested in learning

about the benefits of

national accreditation

boards for engineering

programs and participa-

tion in the Washington

Accord or other multi-

national accreditation

partnerships.

table of contentsEditor

Kay Jones

WritersDiane L. Godwin

Susan Lassetter

Ar t DirectionHeather M. Rowe

PhotographersMegan Bean

Diane L. Godwin Russ HoustonSusan Lassetter

Heather M. Rowe

Editorial BoardJohn Brocato

Lori Mann BruceBennett EvansSarah A. RajalaDonna Reese

Subscription, Inquiries &

Address Changes:Momentum

PO Box 9544Miss. State, MS 39762

orpublications@

bagley.msstate.edu

Subscribe toour monthly

podcasts & electronic newlsetters by

sending an email request to [email protected]

www.bagley.msstate.edu

06Engineering that is out of this world

Cover: Two BCoE graduates are working on the next manned spaceship that will replace the shuttle. The new spacecraft’s conical form, similar in shape to the Apollo spacecraft, is the safest and most reliable for re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. This artist’s rendering represents a concept of the Orion crew exploration vehicle in lunar orbit. Photo credit: Lockheed Martin Corp.

04Students plug-in to nation’s needs

06Engineering that is out of this world

10Decoding civilian life for America’s veterans

12Modern wrangler

14Green with energy

17Behind the lens

20Interview with the dean

22A different kind of circus

24Team gets last laugh

26‘Rising star’ lights way

28Interdisciplinary team works together to help asthma sufferers

29Gifts and guidance from the gridiron

29PACCAR forms partnership with the BCoE

30Movers & Shakers

32Development Notes

FALL 2008

Students plug-in to nation’s needsBy Susan Lassetter

After becoming the General Motors (GM) Challenge X national cham-pions and spending the summer taking a “victory lap” around the country, returning to regular classwork just doesn’t have the same spark it once did. Not willing to stand on the sidelines while others make research history, Bagley College of Engineering (BCoE) stu-dents have found a new way to electrify their education by plugging in to a new competitive endeavor.

4 Momentum Spring 08 www.bagley.msstate.edu

MSU will be one of 17 competitively selected institutions to compete in Eco-CAR: The NeXt Challenge, the newest installment of the Department of Energy’s advanced vehicle technology competitions. The three-year program, which began this summer, asks teams to re-engineer a Saturn View to improve its fuel economy and emissions without reducing vehicle perfor-mance, utility or consumer appeal.

“A hybrid version of the Saturn View is already on the market, so our ultimate objective is to build a car that will out-perform one designed by hundreds of GM engineers,” explained Marshall Molen, the team’s adviser. “It’s kind of a tall order for a group of students, but that is exactly what we did with Challenge X and I have no doubt we can do it again.”

The new EcoCAR team returns many stu-dents from the Challenge X group, includ-ing team lead Mathew Doude. However, the group is not resting on the laurels of past success. They actively began recruiting new students this fall, with more than 100 people attending the interest meeting and subsequent follow-up sessions, each hoping to get in on the ground floor of the new proposed technology.

“With Challenge X we created a charge sustaining hybrid and it performed well, but our EcoCAR will be even better

because we are going to try a plug-in hy-brid,” Doude said. “The idea behind it

is to be able finish your daily driving without ever starting the engine or

burning any petroleum.”

Molen, a professor in electrical engineering, added, “We at CAVS (Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems) believe that the plug-in concept has a lot of potential and could be what we need to wean this country off of petroleum imports. This car’s energy would come from the power grid, which can be fueled by renewable resources. The energy won’t be free, but it would equate to about a dollar a gallon for consumers.”

This first year of the EcoCAR competition involves design, simulation and modeling. Before ever touching the actual car, the team will utilize special software to evaluate various configurations and the compat-ibility of different components in a process similar to what is practiced in the automo-tive industry.

“MSU students are very good at developing practical ideas, thanks in part to the tools available to us through CAVS,” Doude explained. “A lot of teams propose outland-ish ideas that can’t be implemented, but we work to stay realistic and that has been part of our success.”

Doude, a graduate student in electrical en-gineering, is not one to underestimate the competition or the expectations that come with being two-time national champions. He believes that there are a lot of good schools in the competition and that his team definitely has a bull’s eye on its back, however the team is confident that with the support of the university and local commu-nities, it can come out on top once again.

“It is great to see our students realize that they can compete with and beat big-name schools,” Molen said. “After all, our team members have gone on to jobs with some of the biggest automakers in the country and our research has helped bring industry to Mississippi. We are very excited about the potential for this team and the ideas that will come over the next three years.”

Bagley College of Engineering Momentum 5

Engineering that is out of this worldBy Diane L. Godwin

6 Momentum Fall 08 www.bagley.msstate.edu

Chad Purser and David Page have what many engineers would think are dream jobs, and they are making aerospace his-tory. Purser, a mechanical en-gineering graduate, and Page, who earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in aero-space engineering from Mis-sissippi State, are working on NASA’s next manned spaceship called the Orion. The Lockheed Martin engineers are the stress leads for the crew module (CM) structure and the thermal pro-tection system (TPS), popularly known as the heat shield.“Since I’m the stress lead for the CM structure, let me describe what that is,” offered Purser. “The crew module is the part of the Orion spacecraft that houses the astronauts. It is where they live and operate, and it is how they return to earth. The CM structure is the ‘skeleton’ of the crew module. Not only does the structure provide the load path for all flight loads (liftoff, abort, re-entry, landing), it also provides mounting points for all subsystems.

“Subsystems are everything that must fit in the crew module or mount onto the crew module, such as seats, walls, batteries, tanks, thermal protection, computers, displays, and so on,” he continued.

The Orion Crew Module is a cone-shaped cap-sule, similar to the Apollo command module, but the similarities are only surface deep. The chal-lenge for Purser’s group is that they must figure

out a way to meet a CM structure weight load of just 2,000 pounds, which is 10 percent of the total 20,000-pound weight of the crew module.

“We’re incorporating 21st century computer, electronics, life support, propulsion, and TPS technology,” said Purser. “The crew module is a lot larger. It will house four crew members on missions to the moon and six on missions to the international space station.”

NASA’s specifications right now are set for the Orion crew module to have a 16.5 feet diam-eter and a height of 10.8 feet. The astronauts will have a livable space of 692 cubic feet, while Apollo only had a cabin crew volume of 218 cubic feet, a diameter of 12.8 feet, and height of 11.4 feet. However, since the Lockheed Martin and NASA teams are in the very initial stages of production and design work, those specifications change daily.

“Right now we’re in the preliminary design and testing phases,” described Purser. “We’re in the second stage of design analysis cycles where we are trying to meet weight requirements, lift capabilities, and landing requirements, and we go through these cycles until we get it right. Sometimes we will work on a design and almost be completed, and for some technical reason, a requirement will have to be added or deleted and then we have to start the process all over again.”

The Orion crew module will be designed to land on the ground or water. The spaceship’s compo-nents include the Ares I rocket that will carry the launch-abort system, the crew module, and the support service module. The Ares V rocket is the cargo launch vehicle that will carry heavy, large-scale hardware to space, from the lunar landing craft and materials for establishing a moon base to food, fresh water, and other staples needed to extend a human presence beyond earth’s orbit. All of the components are part of NASA’s over-arching space project called the “Constellation Program.” By 2020, officials are hoping to send the next human explorers to the moon, Mars, and beyond in the newly designed spaceship and service module. The CM will sit on top of the slimmer Ares I rocket and will launch separately from the Ares V rocket. Both rockets, launching at separate times, will dock together in orbit and travel onward to the moon or to Mars.


“An international space station mission is a little different from the lunar mission. The ISS space mission will involve just the Ares I rocket carrying the Orion crew module to the space station where they will transfer crew and cargo and then return to earth,” clarified Purser.

Page is the stress lead engineer for the components that protect the astronauts when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. His team is working countless hours on the heat shield structure, which isn’t an easy task. According to NASA, the new spaceship of the future must endure searing temperatures capable of melting iron, steel, or chromium as the spacecraft streaks into the Earth’s atmosphere on the way back from the moon. Faster than the fastest bullet, Orion will enter earth’s atmosphere at 6.8 miles per second, which equates to 24,480 miles-per-hour, generating surface temperatures equivalent to more than 4,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

“When you’re working on it every day, you kind of get used to it. It’s what we do, it’s what we trained for, so I guess we get a bit desensitized, but yeah, when I think about it, it is exciting to work on something with true historic relevance,” mentioned Page. “This, maybe, is like working on the Mayflower, the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria.”

Lockheed Martin has teams located around the world working on the Orion. Although the teams are separated by thousands of miles, the space systems company has cultivated a culture of teamwork and family—fostering an atmosphere of camaraderie—wherever the engineers are located.

“We have Lockheed here in New Orleans, and we work with teams in Houston, Fort Worth, Denver, or Sunnyvale, Calif., and everyone is intent on sharing knowledge among groups,” ex-pressed Purser. “It’s definitely a team atmosphere. Everybody brainstorms and builds off each others’ ideas—there is no such thing as a bad idea—and that is what is so good about Lockheed Martin…we’re keen on transferring knowledge and helping other people when they need it.”

“It’s an environment where you work with a lot of good and very smart people who know

how to separate themselves from their egos to accomplish the best for this program,” Page added. “I come to work every day to a group of people who are a great support system and we’re friends, too.”Apollo’s team of engineers and astronauts estab-lished the teamwork environment and attitudes of Lockheed Martin and NASA long ago. They are called the Apollo Legacy Engineers and Astro-nauts who are handing down from generation to generation their knowledge and positive spirit of humankind.

“We have a lot of young people. Most everybody that I have working in my group has been here less than five years and out of school less than five years, so we have a very young team,” said Purser. “We really depend on the legacy engineers and astronauts for the smart way to do things. I mean you really can be working on a problem for a month and they can help you solve it in two days. You show it to them and they say, ‘Oh, I’ve run into this before,’ and it is solved. So, they are just priceless.”

“Right,” offered Page. “I learned at Mississippi State that I may not be the smartest guy in the room, but it sure helps to be a friend with some-one who is. I went through school with Gary Hataway and Jeff Birdsong and they were pretty much known as the two smartest guys in class.”

Purser laughed and jokingly said to Page, “Yeah, they became your best friends.”

Page expressed his amusement by hooting and said, “Yeah, they were my best friends! I did homework with them, I studied tests with them, we did lunch, but seriously, I really do think fostering a group learning environment pays off because when you come into an environment like this, you know how to get along with people.”

Page and Purser are working across the street from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New

L-R: Chad Purser and David Page


Orleans. It is the largest manufacturing produc-tion facility for major components of space flight hardware and boasts 43 acres under one roof. It is here where tests of the space shuttle external tank are conducted. According to Linda Leavitt-Bell, senior communication specialist for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., the entire 832-acre site is a well-kept secret. Most people who live north of Picayune and Baton Rouge, La., don’t realize the facility exists.

“The engineers here at the Michoud Assembly Fa-cility are providing next-generation technology for the next-generation spaceship. The highly skilled workforce will manufacture and assemble the upper stage of the Ares I rocket, the core stage and Earth departure stage of the Ares V cargo rocket, and the Orion crew exploration vehicle, and will conduct final systems integration and checkout of Ares I avionics systems,” clarified Leavitt-Bell. “There will be a variety of contractors working to-gether here on the Constellation Program. Boeing employees will manufacture and assemble the Ares I upper stage and conduct avionics systems inte-gration and checkout. Lockheed Martin will build structures for the Orion crew exploration capsule, as well as the capsule’s launch abort system.”

“In future years, NASA plans to build the Ares V core stage and Earth departure stage at Michoud, which will be needed for the return to the moon. There are a lot of other centers involved in the Con-stellation Program, but Michoud is the real nuts and bolts for the program. It really is the beginning of production for all of the Constellation compo-nents,” commented Marion Lanasa, public affairs

director for Lockheed Martin Space Systems.The design of the Orion crew module is under way and will complete production in 2014. The Lockheed Martin Michoud assembly team will have four more production phases that begin in 2012 and will continue until 2019. Bagley Col-lege of Engineering alumni Page and Purser are the only two Mississippi State graduates work-ing on the program at the New Orleans facility, and they are encouraging alumni and soon-to-be graduates to apply.

“This is a once-in-a-generation program, like the shuttle was a once-in-a-generation program and the Apollo before that. Hopefully this is the once-in-a-generation spaceship for this program,” Purser reflected. “We have a very young team; this is a good time to get in on the ground floor and be with this program for its entire lifespan. Our young team members will, hopefully, be able to retire if they want with this program.”

“Currently, we don’t have any interns or coopera-tive education students from Mississippi State. I don’t understand it. State, one of the best engi-neering schools in the Southeast, which is only five hours away from New Orleans,” Page said. “We want to bring in students to train and bring them up through the organization, so when they get ready to graduate, they will hit the ground running. Where else can they start from ground zero and design a brand new space vehicle? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”



Decoding civilian life for America’s veteransBy Susan Lassetter

Professors in the Bagley

College of Engineering (BCoE)

hope to help America’s veterans

trade in their military codes

of conduct for the binary code

contained on digital media.

By making a few adjustments

to their already successful law

enforcement digital forensics

training, these computer scien-

tists can provide transitioning

and disabled veterans a mar-

ketable skill that will ease their

segue into civilian life.

“These soldiers, airmen, and sailors have completed their service and are looking for new careers,” Dr. Ray Vaughn, a Vietnam War veteran and endowed professor with computer science and engineering, said. “They took a job in the military to support their country and will likely look for a way to continue to serve their communities as civilians. This makes them ideal students for this type of training.”

The current digital forensics courses offered by the BCoE teach law enforcement officers what types of media to look for during search and seizure, as well as how to evaluate the evidence once it is collected. In a proposal to the National Science Foun-dation, Vaughn, a retired Army colonel, and Dr. Dave Dampier, associate professor in computer science and engineering who served in the Army for 20 years, outlined plans for restructuring these classes to provide vocational opportunities for veterans.

“We have a great need for forensics examiners in this country and there just aren’t enough people in the field,” Dampier explained. “With our new program we have an opportunity to satisfy a need in the workplace and, more importantly, provide a service to the veterans we all respect because of the sacrifice they made.”

Although Dampier and Vaughn already have a team of instructors who teach digital forensics, they have partnered with Auburn and Tuskegee universities to expand the scope of the project. Having received 100 percent of the requested funding, the institutions will share the $1 million in order to acquire equipment and train person-nel for the classes, which will be initially offered at veterans hospitals in Jackson and Tuskegee, Ala.

“The Veterans Administration will handle signing up the students because they know who is capable of going through this training,” Vaughn said. “Some students will be under medical care, while others will have completed their recovery but are still in the area working with the vocational rehabilitation specialists to find new vocations.”

The classes will be taught in three phases to accommodate students with varying levels of computer experience and physical limitations. Dampier explained that even though the military has classified someone as disabled, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are limited physically, citing his hearing impairment as an example. He further explained that these classes will not focus on the actual “bag and tag” aspects of seizing evidence. Classes will focus on analyzing the media once it is collected, giving successful stu-dents the option to use veteran assistance programs to return home to open their own consulting firms, in addition to seeking employment with the government.

“The veterans’ training will be more about the investigation and examination of digi-tal media. This will allow us to train people who may have lost mobility,” Dampier explained. “Someone who has lost their legs, or even a hand, will still be able to sit at a desk and use a computer. Our classes will give these disabled and transitioning vets the opportunity to become productive civilians again and still provide for their families.”

The NSF grant runs for three years. The program has been well-received as Vaughn and Dampier have visited with the Army Wounded Warriors and Navy Wounded Warriors programs, the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C. They are close to reaching an agreement to provide training at Wal-ter Reed Army Medical Center, home of the country’s Warriors in Transition program.


During the days of western expansion, when frontiersmen found their boundaries under at-tack, they called in the guys with white hats—the guys who would ride in on their trusty steeds to save the day. Well, today’s frontier is of the cyber variety and the steed is more than likely a desk chair, but it’s still the guys in white hats working to stave off unwanted attacks.

White hat hackers work to breech the system, any system that is suppose to be protected, but, unlike their unlawful counterparts, they don’t do it for illegal gain. They do it to detect potential problems before the glitches can be exploited, which is exactly what doctoral candidate Wesley McGrew was doing when he found a problem in control system software being used in critical infrastructure throughout the country.

“As part of my research, I look for vulnerabilities in software. I launch attacks from the lab to see if the security features for a specific product actually do what they say,” McGrew said. “I have found vulnerabilities before, where I just notified the vendor direct-ly, but this was the first time it’s ever been at this level.”Through his work with MSU’s Critical Infra-structure Protection Center (CIPC), McGrew discovered a “significant software vulnerability” that could have provided hackers access to the control systems of numerous industries, such as nuclear power, oil and public utilities. Recog-nizing the potential threat to national security, he and the center’s director, Dr. Ray Vaughn, immediately notified the proper authorities.

“We contacted the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which immediately broadcast an alert

about the vulnerability,” McGrew explained. “After a conference call with the leadership of the DHS National Cyber Security Division we began a dialogue with the vendor about what the problems were and how they could be fixed.”

Vaughn added, “This is a good example of a research effort’s results being quickly incorpo-rated into industry for a safer environment for the citizens of the U.S. We can all be proud of the efforts of our faculty and students who unselfishly give of their time and talents for the good of the larger community.”

Although it may seem odd that a student like McGrew is our nation’s first line of defense against hackers, that is exactly what the National Security Agency had in mind when it funded the Bagley College of Engineering’s development of the CIPC and its supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA) lab, one of the most advanced university labs of its type in the country.

“A lot of similar university labs simulate the work that is covered with control system soft-ware, but we actually have the hardware that is used to control these networks,” McGrew noted. “We can test security features and cre-ate honey pots to trap malicious hackers and study their actions. By acting like a canary in a mine shaft, these honey pots can help us detect trouble and take actions to stop it.”

McGrew, who received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from MSU, explained that normal security mecha-nisms stop attackers without allowing research-ers to study how they gain and use access to the systems. Through his work as a research assis-tant at CIPC, he is helping software program-mers develop better defenses and determine what they are protecting against. While he chose this field because he enjoys it, he under-stands that his work has a broader impact.

“I enjoy working to find ways around the system and for the safety of our utilities, I hope if there are vulnerabilities, it is always a white hat hacker like me who finds them before the attackers do,” McGrew said.

ModernwranglerBy Susan Lassetter


“I enjoy working to find ways around the system and for the safety of our utilities, I hope if there are vulnerabilities, it is always a white hat hacker like me who finds them before the attackers do,” McGrew said.


Green Energy

Green with energy A two-part seriesBy Diane L. Godwin


Imagine municipal and industrial

wastewater treatment facilities

located across the nation generat-

ing billions of gallons of oil that

can produce a low-cost, quality

biofuel consumers can use to fill

up their fuel tanks. Now, envision

the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency being so excited about

this recyclable resource that they

are working with two Mississippi

State researchers to figure out

how to transform existing waste-

water treatment plants into energy

producers. Add the fact that most

of the country’s facilities are dete-

riorating from old age—most are

anywhere between 30-50 years

old and will at least need renova-

tion—and the cost of reconfigur-

ing these wastewater treatment

plants becomes feasible.

Do we have your attention yet? Well, the good news is you can stop dreaming. Drs. Rafael Her-nandez and Todd French, both assistant profes-sors in chemical engineering at Mississippi State, have identified oleaginous microorganisms that naturally grow in wastewater and become ex-tremely fat with oil when feeding off wastewater nutrients. Yes, the nutrients are produced from the stuff that is thrown in the garbage disposal or flushed, and this also includes runoff from

washing machines and storm sewers. Figure in the research’s other attractive element––reducing waste in landfills––and it becomes a recyclable process that also is great for the environment. French and Hernandez are the first in the world to discover this renewable process of making the microorganisms grow even fatter and extracting the oil they produce.

“We can generate with municipal wastewater treatment plants about seven billion gallons––not million––billion gallons a year. That is the potential the technology has with wastewater treatment plants. And, it can produce it for under $2.50 a gallon and that translates into $105 a barrel,” expressed French.

“Now, imagine the ‘gi-normous’ amounts of bio-fuel we can produce if we add all the industrial wastewater treatment plants into the mix,” Her-nandez said. He stressed the point even further with this explanation. “When we consider just the plants located in major metropolitan areas, such as Chicago, which has just one facility that receives two billion gallons of waste a day, that equates into potentially producing 400 million gallons of biocrude annually—just from that one wastewater treatment plant.”

The wastewater facilities are the perfect me-dium for growing microorganisms because they naturally contain the right mix of water, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus for growing micro-organisms that produce the biocrude. In order for the oleaginous microorganisms to produce higher quantities of biocrude, the researchers add sugar generated from biomass—waste contents, such as grass, tree limbs, or paper products—to their natural food source. Once mixed, these microorganisms convert the sugar to biocrude.

“We have a lengthy list of oleaginous micro-organisms that we’ve identified that naturally exist in our ecosystem—some in the wastewater itself—and if we combine and put them into their own little wastewater consortium, they will feed on the nutrients naturally grown in the water. When we add sugar, we’ve found that they can gain 20 to 80 percent of their dry weight in oil,” said French. “That means a lot of oil. Not much attention has been paid to this list of microorganisms, because people have been conditioned to believe the only fuel that can be


generated from sugars is ethanol and the fact of the case is that nature offers another path, and this is the production of fat, such as biocrude.”

Current biofuels, biodiesel and ethanol only displace approximately 4 percent of petroleum. The biocrude made from wastewater treatment plants has the potential to displace much more than that. Another economical advantage, in ad-dition to using existing infrastructure to convert the biocrude into fuels, is that it can be trans-ported using the existing national pipeline. The location of many wastewater treatment plants, where the biocrude will be created, is close to oil refineries, which already have a national pipeline in place for fuel transportation.

“Biocrude, the oil we are producing from these wastewater treatment plants, has a dual pur-pose,” explained French. “The oil can be used to create biodiesel or it can be converted—using existing oil refineries—into green diesel and Jp8 fuel. Both of them could be distributed through-out the U.S. using existing pipelines.”

“We’re producing a biocrude in a sustainable way, so that is the environmental aspect of it: the clean water, the clean soil, and the clean air we still have after we produce the biofuels that are so needed,” clarified Hernandez. “Plus, this technology could make it affordable for the world’s poorer countries to provide clean drink-ing water for their citizens, while at the same time recycling their wastewater to transform and produce biocrude that could stimulate and build their economy and lessen their need for foreign petroleum.”

Unlike other alternative fuel processes, there is no need for fresh water and valuable farmland used to produce food resources in the produc-tion of biocrude. As populations grow, waste-water volumes will increase, resulting in the potential for more biocrude production. So, the question becomes, “When can the two research-ers begin production?” It could feasibly start to happen in about a year. It all depends on if Hernandez and French’s research receives the funding that will enable them to start working in a wastewater treatment plant producing oil. If they receive financial backing this year, they hope to have a process that can be expanded to other facilities in three to five years.

Hernandez and French put into plain words what is required to make this dream a reality: “We need the finances for a pilot system that needs to be constructed and operated to improve the economic and operational information required to transfer the technology to wastewater treatment facilities.”

There are so many important stories to share of the groundbreaking, alternative fuel research conducted at the college’s Sustainable Energy Resource Center that this series, “Green with Energy,” will be continued in the spring issue of Momentum. Look for the stories of how Dr. Mark White, director of the David C. Swalm School of Engineering; Dr Phil Steele, professor in the College of Forest Resources; and Bill Co-lumbus, a senior research associate in agriculture and biological engineering, are collaborating to create alternative fuels from the bi-products of one of Mississippi’s natural resources—wood. They are not only creating a sustainable alterna-tive fuel, but they may also create an alternative market for the state’s logging industry.

L-R: Drs. Rafael Hernandez and Todd French


The late wildlife conservationist and host Steve Irwin, who fascinated us with his television show “The Crocodile Hunter,” shared this passion. So did the late host of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” Merlin Perkins. And, if you watch the “David Letterman Show” or “Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild,” you will notice host and ani-mal lover Jack Hanna shares it, too. What these wildlife conservationists all have in common with Dr. James Martin and his wife Joyce is that they all share a love for wildlife, as well as trying to educate the public to care about animals and inspiring them to respect their natural habitats. The difference is that instead of a popular televi-sion show, the Martins have published five books about wildlife adventures that tell stories—from the grizzly bears of Yellowstone to the wolves of Alaska to the elk of the Grand Teton Mountains.

“Most people wouldn’t view our vacations as a typical vacation,” said James Martin, a professor and the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. chair in civil and environmental engineering. “We’re on location before dawn, set up and then snap wildlife photos just as the sun is coming up. We usually take pho-tos all day, grab something to eat and then select and edit the photos until midnight.”

Martin has studied wildlife for many years; his first degree was in wildlife management. He then earned a master’s in biology and began teaching the subject in high school. During a summer break he went to work for Union Carbide and DuPont as a coordinator for their summer out-reach program designed to help attract minori-ties into engineering. It was that experience that changed his life.

Behind the lens By Diane L. Godwin


“I had always been around scientists and biolo-gists and through that program I started getting more involved with engineers,” stated Martin. “After spending the summer working with civil and environmental engineers, I realized my pas-sion, so I went back to college for a bachelor’s in engineering and then completed a doctorate at Texas A&M.”

Today, Martin’s expertise centers on water quantity and water quality management and the impact they have on the ecosystems around them, a background that helps him capture realistic wildlife portraits. The Martins’ love of wildlife and passion for photography created an oppor-tunity for them to share it with others as a way to motivate people to conserve Earth’s natural resources and protect the environment.

“The Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs asked to use some hummingbird photos for educational posters they were producing for the annual hummingbird festival,” explained Joyce Martin. “It was from that experience of vis-iting with the guests at our hummingbird photo

booth that we discovered we wanted to produce a book, ‘Backyard Visions: The Ruby-throated Hummingbird.’”

The book offers tips about the proper feeding of hummingbirds and how to attract them along with an account of their life history through the Martins’ photographs.

Another book produced just this year, “The Eagles at Noxubee NWR: Our 2008 Diary,” gives an extraordinary account of a pair of bald eagles who had been nesting in the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge since 2003. Seeing a pair of bald eagles raise three young is extremely rare, however, the Martins captured it all.

“It was really interesting because they have nested out there in the same place for the last three or four years. The nest was never visible. However, this year the pair moved their nest to an old dead pine tree that was located 200 yards from the road,” expressed James Martin. “When they moved, the public could see the nest, although it was more than two football fields away. The dis-


tance made it difficult for photography, but with lens extenders and other accessories we got some really great pictures.”

The Martins spent four months and countless evening and weekend hours documenting the life of the bald eagle family, until the day the three, 11-week-old eaglets fledged from their nest.

“Our middle daughter graduated from State on May 3, 2008, and, symbolically, that’s the day that she, as they say, ‘left the nest,’ and so did our three Noxubee eaglet friends,” said James Martin. “All of us parents were sharing a proud and sad moment. It’s experiences like these that you always remember.”

After finishing their book on bald eagles, the Martins traveled to Malaysia on business to visit Dr. Noor Baharim Hashim, a former Mississippi State colleague and graduate who works at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Johor. After the university professors talked about study collabo-rations and shared environmental interests and methods, the Martins had the opportunity to experience Malaysia’s wildlife conservation efforts firsthand. They photographed and fed red and white Malaysian eagles.

“There was a small cove on one of the islands where boats would motor in and throw fish into the water to attract red eagles and white Malay-sian eagles,” explained James Martin. “We saw dozens of eagles soaring, diving, and feeding on the fish, and of course we’re clicking away with our cameras. So, this last year really was our ‘year of the eagles.’”

Back in the states, the couple has taken advantage of James’s intuitive sense of animal habits. Conse-quently, they have come across some astonishing interactions, including a mama grizzly bear with four cubs, walking across a valley in Yellowstone National Park.

Joyce said, “We got too close.”

James agreed, laughed and said, “We got pretty close, at one point, I probably got about 70 yards from her but there were probably 60 or 70 people between her and me. There is the old adage about, ‘How fast do you have to be to out run a

grizzly bear? Just faster than the other guy.’ Well, I had the perfect angle of being off to the side, and she would have had to go through a lot of people before she got to me.”

What happened was what Yellowstone refers to as a ‘bear jam.’ It’s when all the cars on the road stop and cause a massive traffic jam because they are bear watching.

“Funny thing too, there was the motorcycle rally at Sturgis, so about half of the vehicles that were stopped were motorcycles. Well, the mama griz-zly decided she wanted to cross the road.” James Martin nodded his head and said, “I couldn’t be-lieve people were so mesmerized that they weren’t thinking that a motorcycle doesn’t give a lot of protection against a grizzly bear. Fortunately, the ranger showed up about that time and tried to get everybody to move away because a mama grizzly bear and cubs are not exactly the safest critters in the world to be around.”

Although Martin was joking to make a point, he stressed what a tragedy it would have been if one of the vacationers prompted an attack from the mama grizzly. The result would have been the destruction of the adult bear and consequently her two cubs, all because vacationers failed to use common sense.

“You know, this is a hobby we’re using to educate people about their interactions with wildlife and their environment. It’s not important to us that we get rich off of it, but it is important to us that people interact with wildlife in a safe and enjoy-able way,” expressed the Martins.

The Audubon Society Center in Holly Springs continues to support the Martin’s work; a recently published book about the center features a cover from the Martins’ collection. Their photos also have been exhibited by the Starkville and Colum-bus art councils and at the GTR airport. All five of the Martins’ books may be found online at lulu.com. Selected books also are on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.



Interview with the deanIn June, the Bagley College of Engineering welcomed Dr. Sarah Rajala as the new

dean of the Bagley College of Engineering. Having joined the Bulldog family in 2007

as head of the department of electrical and computer engineering, she brings more

than 25 years of experience to the position vacated by Dr. Kirk Schulz when he be-

came the university’s vice president of research and economic development.

One semester into her tenure as dean, Rajala has begun to work to implement her

vision for the future of engineering at Mississippi State. In the exchange below she

shares her plans and hopes for the BCoE.

What do you hope to accomplish as dean of the BCoE?Rajala: I would like our college to be known as the engineering college of choice in the southeast for educating future engineering leaders, creating new knowledge and improving the world in which we live. To achieve this goal we must generate recognition for the quality of the work being done here, as well as for the quality of our faculty and staff. It is also important that we continue to grow our graduate programs, especially at the doctoral level. We need to enhance our competitive research funding opportunities and our scholarly output, while not sacrificing the quality of the education that we provide our students. It requires balance, but I think we have a great opportunity for continued success and growth in all of these areas.

What role do you see the BCoE playing in the future of engineering?Rajala: I see the BCoE as a strong contributor both to engineering education and scholarly innovation. We have a strong reputation of providing a quality education for our students. To be competitive in this global economy, we must find ways to not only produce the best engineers, but tomorrow’s engineering leaders. We can achieve this by providing engineering students more opportunities to enhance their busi-ness, leadership, teamwork, and entrepreneurship skills as part of their engineering education. It will also be important for us to identify key research areas for future investment. For instance, we have the resources and expertise to become a national leader in energy research and the timing is right for us to capitalize in this area. We have recently created the Energy Institute to help facilitate success in this area. As we move forward, we will work together to identify the other areas in which we have the expertise and the opportu-nity to achieve excellence.

How can supporters of the college—faculty, staff, students, alumni, and industry partners—pull together to support the college?Rajala: To achieve excellence, we will need to find ways to align our educational, research and economic development missions so we can maximize the impact in each area. In these challenging financial times, it will be especially important for us to clearly articulate our priorities, and then work together to identify the resources to achieve our goals. It will be important for everyone who supports the college to be on the same page and helping to invest our resources wisely.


Different kind of circusBy Susan Lassetter

Ringling brothers, eat your hearts out––no circus performer can ever match the masterful juggling skills of an en-gineering student under pressure. Although, with as many “balls in the air” as Yamilka Baez has, it’s a wonder she doesn’t try to run away to join the circus!


In just four years, Baez went from being a young wife in Puerto Rico to a mother and doctoral candidate on the move. Although many women in her position find they have to postpone their education as life’s circumstances change, the Bagley College of Engineering (BCoE) has helped her capitalize on the opportunities it has provided since she first arrived in Starkville.

“We moved to Starkville for my husband to work on his doctorate at State. I planned on starting my career, but I couldn’t find a job to fit my background,” Baez explained. “After a semester of cooking, cleaning and knitting, I decided to look into getting my doctorate as well.”

Baez earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico. Although she hadn’t given much thought to pursuing a doctoral degree, she excit-edly accepted a meeting with Dr. Noel Schulz when the opportunity arose. In addition to the chance to study under a world-renowned profes-sor, this tutelage offered something else Baez had always desired–-the chance to work with a fellow female engineer.

“Everyone in power systems engineering knows of Dr. Schulz. When she asked to meet me I grabbed my resume, transcript, and pretty much anything else to show her my abilities,” Baez recalled. “I started working for her on an hourly basis and began working towards my doctoral degree the next semester. It is really nice just to work with her because she knows the material, but she is also a woman. It’s inspirational to me because I know if she can do it, I can too.”

For young female engineers, the chance to work with an established engineer of their gender can provide a much-needed confidence boost. Ad-ditionally, these women understand the trials of balancing family life with professional ambition and can be a great source of support for the next generation. While Baez never failed to appreciate this relationship with her adviser, she was particu-larly grateful when she needed time off to be with her newborn son.

“Students don’t get maternity leave. If you are out, you don’t get paid your stipend,” Baez explained. “I was so grateful to have a female department head and adviser who understood. Dr. (Sarah) Rajala established a fellowship that

allowed me to stay at home with my son for a month and that first month is not easy. You have this baby—your first one—and you’re not quite sure what to do. I was far away from my family, so it was really nice to have that time to adjust.”

Although the university does not have a policy establishing family leave for graduate students, Rajala, who is now dean of the BCoE, was able to let Baez and another student take a month’s leave to acclimate to motherhood. By securing private funds, she was able to continue to fund their monthly stipends even though they had minimal time to devote to research.

“Female students and faculty have particular challenges with respect to balancing family and careers. You have very bright, young women interested in continuing their education and, yet, our policies and procedures are not as supportive as they need to be,” Rajala said. “We need to think outside the box to find a way to encourage them to take advantage of educational opportuni-ties. It’s like an engineering problem and we have to find the best solution given the constraints.”

Baez returned to her research in September 2007. However, less than nine months later, her life changed again as her husband’s graduation and subsequent job search caused the family to relocate to North Carolina. Yet again, she and the BCoE rose to the challenge to find a way for her to finish her degree while living more than 500 miles away.

Utilizing laptop software, conference calls, in-numerable e-mails, and monthly trips back to Mississippi, Baez has successfully continued her progress towards graduation without disrupting her research or home life.

“Thanks to the willingness of my professors to allow me to work away from campus, I was able to follow my husband and not have to sideline my goals. It’s a delicate balance, and I have to be self-motivated, but I am able to be with my baby while I work on my research,” Baez said. “I have loved my experiences with Mississippi State so much that I have decided to go into academia myself. I am making a list, so that when I have my own students I can implement the same things my professors have, which helped me bal-ance my life.”


Team gets last laugh By Susan Lassetter

Students from six differ-ent majors walk into a lab…Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Repre-senting a hodgepodge of engineering disciplines with an elementary education major added for good measure, these students make up Mis-sissippi State’s team Xipiter. Working together, they designed, built and tested an aircraft for the Association for Unmanned Vehicular Systems International’s Unmanned Aerial Sys-tem (UAS) Competition. Although it took nearly a year, their hard work paid off, allowing the team to get the last laugh by flying circles around their competitors.

“We decided to start preparing for this year’s competition as soon as we returned to Starkville from last year’s contest,” explained Chris Edwards, a graduate student in electrical engineering. “Our dedication paid off. This year, after all the results were tallied, not only had we won, but we scored more points than any team ever in the six-year history of the competition.”

This was Edwards’ second year on the team.

During the 2007 competition, he helped rally the team to an eight of sixteen finish and “Best Use of Intel Award” after an untimely crash seemed to have dashed their competition hopes. As the 2008 team lead, he worked to get the team off to an early start on the road to redemption. Like in years past, the team began preparation by dividing the 17 participating students into airframe and systems groups.

“Having such a diverse team really gives us a lot of points of view for every problem we face,” explained airframe lead Marty Brennan. “Because we have people who know both the electronics side and the airframe side, all of the elements of our plane, and even our team, really come together as a whole and function as a unit.”

Brennan has been on team Xipiter since his fresh-man year, giving him five years of experience in the competition. He believes that MSU’s unique team make-up prevents the team from focusing too much energy on one aspect of the competi-tion. While both the airframe and systems groups focus on their respective specialties, open commu-nication keeps both groups working in unison to meet the overall goals of the team and objectives of the competition.

“Much of this competition is based on technical skills like understanding the engineering prin-ciples of computer, electrical and aviation systems, but to be successful, the team has to function like a company,” Brennan said. “You have to have everything working together at once—scheduling, budgeting, public relations, as well as the techni-cal aspects that we have been preparing for since our freshman year.”

On track to graduate in December, Brennan says his experience on the team has helped prepare him for a future career by allowing him to gain

experience with the business-related aspects of a large project. Additionally, he and many of his teammates feel that the hands-on experience provided by UAS competition preparation helps solidify the theories and information learned through their coursework.

“I’m probably the most atypical engineer. Math and having to remember a lot of informa-tion doesn’t come natural to me. I have to work at it,” explained Savannah Ponder, an aerospace engineering major. “Having a project that I can work on at the airport helps things make more sense to me. It has helped a lot in my structures class, because it gives me something 3-D to look at, instead of just a drawing on a page.”

By designing and building their own plane and systems, the students test their comprehension of engineering principles. With five engineer-ing majors—aerospace, biological, computer, computer science, and electrical—represented on the team, students also test their understanding by explaining processes to those from different disci-plines, including Melissa Lyons, a senior majoring in elementary education.

“This was definitely an eye-opening experience for me and the engineering students. I asked a lot of questions like ‘Why do you do that?’ and when they answered with ‘Because that’s the only way.’ they had to stop, slow down and explain it to me,” Lyons said. “Doing that made them really think about their logic. Being on the other side of the lessons helped me realize that just telling my students that 2+2=4 isn’t enough to make it make sense to them. It gave me a different educational perspective and I think this experience will help me to be a more dynamic teacher”

During her year on the team, Lyons also was busy working as a student-teacher in sixth grade math and science. She was disheartened to see students not applying themselves in the subjects, because they couldn’t see how it ever could be useful. Us-ing her newfound grasp of engineering applica-tions, she was able to expose them to practical uses of the information that they had probably never considered.

“I actually had Chris (Edwards) come in and give a presentation. He talked about how math and science work together to make things happen,”


Lyons explained. “They really enjoyed that and realized that what they had been learning is im-portant. I want to help students plug-in to where they fit and I think this helped them see opportu-nities they might never have known about.”

Lyons said that following the presentation, the students expressed a renewed interest in math and science. Although those students have many years of primary education ahead of them, they might be the next generation of Bulldog engineers to carry on the tradition of competition excellence that the 2009 team hopes to build on.

In all, the 2008 team earned four awards, includ-ing first place overall and Best Flight, but they also set a precedent for future teams to live up to. Team Xipiter was the only team to identify a tar-get by its exact coordinates and the first to identify a “pop-up target” which required that the autono-mous plane veer away from its set flight plan. This was no small feat, considering that the targets are only four feet wide and must be identified during the 40-minute flight using images captured by the plane from an altitude of 500 feet.

Ponder explained that everything came together during the competition, with the team function-ing like an assembly line. While one student took hundreds of still shots from the video captured by the plane, she and Lyons worked to identify the targets, so other students could record the data and present it to the judges. At the same time, other students were handling the remote con-trols and managing the computer systems. Such seamless synchronicity can be hard to come by on a team like Xipiter, which consists of college students from many different backgrounds, but now that it has been achieved, all the students have high hopes for the future.

“We achieved many firsts at the 2008 competi-tion, including earning over 50 percent of the available points,” explained graduate student Chris Brown. “Now, our goal will be to compete perfectly with a completely autonomous flight and earning all of the available points.”


‘Risingstar’ lights wayBy Susan Lassetter

Seeing someone earn as many firsts

as Lakiesha Williams leads people

to assume that she possesses the

necessary moxie to battle through

tough trials. Although she may have

that personality trait, one meeting

with her shows she doesn’t over-

come obstacles by being confron-

tational; she does so by not seeing

them as obstacles at all. Instead,

she uses her positive outlook and

determination to be a “Rising Star”

in engineering.

“That’s how my mind works. I find solutions. That’s what I’m paid to do as an engineer and it’s what I’ve done my whole life,” Williams explained. “Even if something is perceived as a negative, I find a way to make it an asset.”

Williams was the first African-American female graduate in both her master’s program at Loui-siana State University (LSU) and the biomedical doctoral program at Mississippi State. In 2006, she became the first female faculty member in the BCoE’s department of agricultural and biologi-cal engineering. Even though these milestones secure her place in the history of the institutions, she doesn’t recall ever realizing that she was a trailblazer.

“I didn’t realize the significance of my graduation at either LSU or MSU until my final semesters. I knew I didn’t necessarily see anyone else like me in my classes, but it didn’t bother me. I was just focused on my grades,” Williams said.

A native of New Orleans, La., Williams wasn’t exposed to a lot of engineering applications dur-ing her high school career. Thanks to the support

of her family, she always knew college was an option, but it wasn’t until her freshman year as an undergraduate that she realized the true extent of her potential.

“My father didn’t finish high school and my mother had minimal college experience, but I have to say that the encouragement and love they gave had more of an impact on getting me to where I am today than any class I could have taken,” Williams said. “They couldn’t necessar-ily teach me calculus, but they taught me that I could learn calculus, which gave me the courage to pursue engineering.”

Today, in her role as an assistant professor, Wil-liams works to provide her students with the same encouragement and support that she has benefited from throughout her academic career. In addition to her research in the mechanics of biological tissues, she chairs the monthly Women of Color in Engineering Roundtable for the BCoE and takes an active role in mentor-ing students who may otherwise feel alone or overwhelmed.

In October, she attended the national Women of Color STEM Conference where Women of Color magazine and conference sponsor IBM Corp. for-mally recognized her as a “Rising Star.” Although she is deeply grateful for this recognition and the enhanced visibility it provides, personal gain is not her motivation.

“It’s my life’s goal to contribute to

the community and help encour-

age others,” Williams explained.

“I have been so blessed that I feel

it is my duty to help others reach

their potential. Exposure is key,

and I want to be sure our students

capitalize on every opportunity

they are given.”


Williams focuses her

research efforts on the

mechanics of biological

tissues, measuring the

stresses applied

to various substances

by motion in an effort

to help develop

artificial tissue

constructs.


The interdisciplinary team also includes experts from Mississippi State’s aerospace, mechanical and computational engineering programs, who are building a computer model that simulates airflow in the bronchial tubes of the lungs, as well as experts in human physiology modeling from the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“We’re studying the solution properties of asthma medications mixed with our artificial spit and how microliter-sized droplets of these solutions behave when placed in contact with cow lung,” explained Lamb. “When aerosol drugs are inhaled, they can collect in spit, mucus membranes of the mouth and nose, the upper lung pathways, and some do exactly what’s intended, settle in the lower-level bronchial tubes and reach the blood stream.”

According to the research team, only about 10 percent of the administered aerosol drug is absorbed into the blood stream; the other 90 per-cent is ineffective and simply removed from the body. The objective of the study is to predict the various trajectories and uptake mechanisms of the medicine particles to ensure optimal drug delivery. That’s where the team’s expertise combines.

Walters, a former Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty award recipient, explained, “The experimental data will help computational and aerospace engi-

neers build computational models of the human lungs. The resulting models and research data will tie into computational simulations that will show more precise predictions of the flow paths and deposition for current and new drug particles.”

The ability to convert abstract theories, test them in a research laboratory and then convert the results into visual animated simulations help medical experts understand the research data more thoroughly and accurately.

Equally important is Walters’ teaching techniques and belief in her undergraduate and graduate students’ abilities to transfer and apply their classroom knowledge into a laboratory research environment. Providing students with valuable research methods that are applicable in any state-of-the-art laboratory are inspirational experiences for the learners.

“If we can help medical professionals design faster, more effective aerosol drug technologies, that can impact a lot of people who rely on aerosol drugs on a daily basis and it can also lead to other appli-cations,” explained Lamb. “For instance, instead of taking a pill for a headache, patients may be able to inhale the medication and in two minutes their pain will be lessened, compared to the 45 minutes they wait now.”

Experimental spit. That’s what Michael Lamb, a junior chemical engineering

major, is creating in the lab. If his research experiments are successful, it may

have a positive impact on the more than 22 million adults and children who

suffer from asthma. Lamb is working with chemical engineering assistant

professor Dr. Keisha B. Walters to study the transport and uptake of asthma

medication once it enters the body. Their research is the experimental segment of

a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation to help medical

experts understand how to design better techniques for aerosol drug delivery.

Interdisciplinary team works together to help asthma sufferers By Diane L. Godwin


Gifts and guidance from the gridironBy Susan LassetterAs head football coach for Mississippi State, Sylves-ter Croom spends much of his time thinking about angles, leverage and measurements. While he applies his knowledge of these subjects to Xs and Os in a playbook, he understands that to students in the Bagley College of Engineering (BCoE), these same topics are the basis for revolutionary discoveries in areas almost as competitive as Southeastern Confer-ence (SEC) football.

“If there is one academic group we migrate towards, it would be engineers. A lot of engineering and football is conceptual and the same cognitive abilities are used in both. They are also pretty competitive,” Croom said. “I have always had an affinity for engineers and after learning of some of the programs within the college, I wanted to help.”

A proud supporter of academics, he donated $5,000 to the BCoE’s Increasing Minority Access to Graduate Education program, which provides undergraduates early exposure to and preparation for scientific study and research. The program also hosts a summer bridge program, which strives to help minority high school students acclimate to college life. Croom explained that although athletics is very important to him, he also wants to see students succeed academically.

“There is a lot of ability in the minority community other than the ability to shoot hoops or make a great run,” Croom explained. “Programs like this will help foster that idea and I think we will start to see more students at the elementary and high school levels take advantage of opportunities like this to succeed beyond the court or the field.”

Croom utilized his platform as a collegiate football coach to inspire future Bulldogs with stories about his life. In July, he met with the 2008 Summer Bridge group to speak to the students about the opportuni-ties they are being given. Croom stated to the group that he never thought he would have the opportunity to be a head coach, let alone see an African-American become president of the United States. This led him to stress to the group, “You have a great opportunity today to be whatever you want to be. Absolutely nothing is going to stop you from achieving your dreams. Education is the way to change the world.”

*Editor’s Note: Sylvester Croom resigned as head football coach for Mississippi State University on November 29, 2008.

During a fall morning ceremony at the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, Dr. Sarah Rajala, dean of the Bagley College of Engineering, announced that PACCAR was creating a new academic chair in the mechanical engineering department.

PACCAR is a global leader in the design and manufacture of light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks under the Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF nameplates. It is building a 400,000-square-foot plant in Lowndes County to produce fuel-efficient medium- and heavy-duty diesel engines. The $400 million, high-technology facility is sched-uled to open in late 2009.

“The Bagley College is very appreciative of PACCAR’s support of the engineering faculty and students,” said dean Sarah Rajala. “The endowed chair will help the department retain faculty members, as well as recruit top scholars in the future and assist others already enrolled.”

Endowed positions are among the most significant awards given to tenured faculty members. The invested funds provide salary, benefits and research support, along with a long-term commitment that enables cutting-edge educational development and research projects.

In his remarks, PACCAR plant manager Lex Lemmers praised the 130-year-old land-grant institution and its engineering college, one of the two oldest academic programs on campus.

“PACCAR values the strength of Mississippi State’s engineering programs and looks forward to further partnering with the university and its engineering college,” Lemmers said. “PACCAR is committed to being a community leader in supporting education.”

In addition to the PACCAR Chair in mechanical engineering, the gift creates the PACCAR Student Projects Endowment to provide assistance for student projects in the college’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems.

PACCAR forms partnershipwith the BCoE


A BCoE student team captures the bronze medal at the an-nual International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. The three-mem-ber team designed a genetic part that breaks down lignin, a glue like substance that holds wood together. L-R: Dr. Filip To, Robert Morris, Samuel Pote, and Caleb Dulaney.

BDr. Kirk H. Schulz, MSU’s vice president for research and economic development, earn the rank of Fellow with the American Society for Engi-neering Education (ASEE). Dr. Noel Schulz, electrical and computer engineering profes-sor, was sworn in at the annual awards banquet as a member of the ASEE board of direc-tors, representing the profes-sional interest council IV (PIC IV) chair.

CThis year’s Outstanding Senior Award recipients, L-R: Kyle Bourdeau, Erin Smith, Peter Ireland, Paul Weir, Laura Hicks, Jimmy Peason, Zach-ary Bugg, Brittany Sowell, Andy Lindeman, and Paul Weidick.

DLashell Vaughn awards M.J. Hill, a junior computer sci-ence major, the Hilton Hotels Scholarship.

EStudents claim the top spots in the only two international competitions sponsored by the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) 2008 International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Sympo-sium. Team members include: Jacob Bowen, Jeff Brant-ley, Matthew Lee, Saurabh Prasad, Terrance West, and adviser Dr. Lori Mann Bruce

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www.bagley.msstate.edu

Movers & ShakersAlumniLauren Elizabeth Bradford was born on May 15 2008, to Robert (Brian) Brad-ford (BS, chemical engineering - 1999) and Mittie “Elizabeth” Sessions Bradford (International Business Program: BA, Ger-man - 1999 and BBA, Accounting - 1999). She was 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long.

MSU civil engineering alumnus, Arthur E. (Gene) Goldman, named the new director of NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

Faculty & StaffDrs. Rafael Hernandez and Todd French, chemical engineering assistant professors, and Mark Bricka, associate professor in chemical engineering, were presented a grant by the EPA’s Regional Applied Re-search Effort (RARE) Program. The grant will help support their biofuels research dealing with the conversion of wastewater into transportation fuel.

The Mississippi Automotive Manufactures Association elected Dr. Roger King to serve on their Board of Directors.

Women in Engineering Proactive Network recognized Dr. Donna Reese, an associate dean for the Bagley College of Engineer-ing, with the highly coveted Presidential Award. The honor is given to individuals who work to improve engineering educa-tion, and contribute to the success of aspir-ing young women in engineering.

Several Bagley College of Engineering faculty members moved to the head-of-the-class recently after being named the recipients of this year’s College of Engi-neering Faculty Awards. Dr. Donna Reese, associate dean for academics and adminis-tration, received the Career Achievement Award. Reese also was among those receiv-ing this year’s Outstanding Instructional

Paper Award. She shared the award with fellow CSE department members Dr. Jef-frey Carver, assistant professor; Lisa Hen-derson, instructor; and department head Dr. Julia Hodges. Other award recipients include Outstanding Educator, Dr. David Bridges, an associate professor in aerospace engineering; and Outstanding Researcher, Dr. Jenny Du, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering. Dr. Ed Swan, associate professor in computer science and engineering, received the Out-standing Research Paper Award.

Dr. Kari Babski-Reeves, assistant profes-sor of industrial and systems engineering, was presented the Alexander C. Williams Jr. Design Award for her work with the research and development of the UPS Intergrad Training System. The computer based training system was funded by a Department of Labor grant to UPS.

The National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates (NAME-PA) has appointed Dr. Tommy Stevenson, assistant dean of diversity programs and student development, at the Bagley College of Engineering to the organization’s presi-dent elect leadership position.

StudentsJenna Grantham, a sophomore mechani-cal engineering major, earned the Chal-lenge X Rookie Women in Engineering award. Former Indy racecar driver Lyn St. James selected and honored Grantham, a member of the two time national cham-pion MSU Challenge X team, with the award. St. James and other representa-tives from GM served as judges for the Challenge X: Crossover for Sustainability competition. General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored the four-year competition, where 17 competitively selected engineering colleges re-engineered an SUV with advanced technologies that improve fuel economy and lower emis-sions while maintaining driver comfort and vehicle performance.

Tutku Karacolak, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and a member of the ECE Electromagnetic Research Group, secured third place in the Student Paper Competition at the 2008 International Microwave Symposium.

Andy Lindeman, a senior computer science major, was selected as the newest recipient of the Harry Charles F. Sim-rall Award for Engineering Excellence. Presented annually by the Mississippi State Association of Retired Faculty (ARF), the award recognizes excellence in academics, professional leadership and community service.

Eric Rutan, a senior chemical engineer-ing major, earned a second place national honor for a research and poster presenta-tion titled “Field Strength Dependency of Red Blood Cell Rupture Rate in a Di-electrophoretic Microdevice.” He earned the accolade at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers 2008 National Con-ference competing in the Pharmaceutical/Biotechnology category.

Kiran Solanki, a ME graduate student and research associate from the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, has been se-lected to receive the SAE Henry O. Fuchs Student Award. The purpose of this award is to promote the education of engineering students in the area of fatigue technology.

Have you received a promotion, a new job, an exciting recognition or award? Send alumni updates to the

Publications & Communications Office so we can spread your good news to your colleagues and peers.

Publications and Communications OfficePO Box 9544Mississippi State, MS 39762


Greetings from the Bagley College of Engineering. It’s true what they say, time flies when you’re having fun!

In my eight months since joining the col-lege, I have enjoyed visiting and getting to know the alumni, friends and supporters of the BCoE. In July, we welcomed Brett Aldridge to the college as the new as-sistant director of development. A native of Pensacola, Fla., he earned a bachelor’s in communication from MSU in 2005. After working in Birmingham, Ala., as an account representative for Bellsouth he returned to MSU to begin his fundraising career as a development officer for MSU’s Division of Student Affairs.

Brett and his wife Kelly live in Starkville, where they met as students. He is a second generation Bulldog having followed in the footsteps of his mother and all of her siblings. I am excited to have Brett in the development office to join me in getting to know the BCoE and its supporters.

We are proud to announce that Mississippi State University and the Bagley College of Engineering have surpassed our goals for the State of the Future Campaign. To date, the total amount raised for MSU is $444,000,000, which is $44,000,000 more than the stated goal.

Thanks to everyone’s support and generos-ity, we are proud to say that the BCoE has surpassed its individual goal by $7,500,000 raising a total of $85,800,000. We appreci-ate everyone that helped us to exceed this goal and thank you for your commitment to the Bagley College of Engineering and MSU.

Although December marks the official end to the campaign, we will continue to focus our attention on key areas of support such as: advancing plans for the new Civil and Environmental Building Complex; naming departments; developing endowed chair positions, fellowships and scholarships; and renovating existing buildings.

Thank you for your continued support. I look forward to meeting many more alumni and friends of the Bagley College. If you would like to learn more about how you can make a difference, please contact me at (662)325-0386 or Brett Aldridge at (662)325-2464.

Bennett Evans Development Director for the BCoE

Bagley College of EngineeringPO Box 9544Mississippi State, MS 39762

Mississippi State University complies with all applicable laws regarding affirmative action and equal oppor-tunity in all its activities and programs and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, handicap, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran.

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