C o l l e g e o f e n g i n e e r i n g2009 annual report

I n s p i r i n g L e a d e r s I B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h I G l o b a l R e s u l t s

Associate professor Bill Warnes (center right) helped establish the Atlantis Bachelor program, a collaboration with European universities. Participating students, including (left to right) Benjamin Kelkel, Andreas von Flotow and Ian Winter, pursue a dual mechanical engineering and materials science degree in Corvallis, Sweden and Germany.

Inside

2 Letter from the Dean

5 Leading the wave: NNMREC moves wave-energy technology closer to commercial reality

6 Making waves: Advanced physical modeling helps researchers protect coastal infrastructure

9 A better way to make thin films: OSU researcher uses nanotechnology to improve efficiency, reduce waste

10 Putting next-generation nuclear power to the test: New OSU testing facility to evaluate safety of new reactor designs

13 Prediction and preservation: Sophisticated computer modeling is helping protect our ecosystems

13 Making a career out of giving back: Engineers Without Borders

14 Earning two degrees on two continents: Atlantis Bachelor degree program

15 Seeing the big picture: Building diverse communities in engineering

15 Tops in competition, first in collaboration: Formula SAE

17 Making a smooth transition: INTO-OSU

18 Advisory Board

19 Operational Summary

20 Leadership Team

C o l l e g e o f e n g i n e e r i n g2009 annual report

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Ron Adams

ron Adams College of Engineering Dean

Today, America’s engineering colleges have the capacity to critically influence the future of this nation and the world. Our need for secure, sustainable sources of energy — and for economically and environmentally sound approaches to infrastructure development — is driving us to heighten our focus on delivering engineers who are capable of addressing these issues in the years to come. Meanwhile, engineering institutions throughout the country are also intensifying their efforts to achieve technological breakthroughs today.

At Oregon State our work in these areas centers on an initiative we call SENERGI, Sustainable Energy and Infrastructure. The SENERGI initiative has goals that are both demanding and practical. We are working to discover high-impact solutions, commercialize breakthroughs and develop engineering leadership. To attain those objectives, faculty and students are working on projects across the spectrum of energy production and efficiency.

Together with educational, government and industrial partners, Oregon State project teams are bringing a fresh perspective to critical energy issues. We are also attracting record numbers of students, expanding our collaborative focus and spinning out new ideas into commercial enterprises spanning renewable and nuclear energy generation as well as energy conservation technologies.

At the core of SENERGI is our world-class faculty. This exceptional team of educators and researchers attracts and inspires talented students through their innovative teaching and dedicated mentoring, as well as by providing a wealth of learning opportunities both within and beyond the classroom. Intent on finding solutions to society’s most pressing technological and environmental problems, they play leading roles in numerous cross-institutional collaborations that serve as additional venues for student learning and engagement.

In the following pages, you will see great examples of the faculty talent that abounds in the College of Engineering and how their research is opening doors and creating opportunity for our students, both locally and internationally, while delivering impact through SENERGI.

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Assistant professor Jason Ideker (top right) confers with construction engineering management major

Thana Prasoppokakorn on his presentation for Ideker’s green building materials course.

Oregon State University has the only School of Civil and Construction Engineering in the U.S. housed in a LEED Gold-certified building. Kearney Hall, which

reopened in 2009 after a $12 million renovation, features exposed construction details that provide an

interactive learning environment.

Civil Engineering major Greta Gustafson (right) gives her presentation for Ideker’s class.

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Oregon State’s leadership in wave energy research attracts top graduate students, including (left to right) Steve Meicke, Kelley Ruehl, Pukha Lenee-Bluhm and Justin Hovland.

Opportunities for global impact draw students to Oregon State

Leading the resurgence in wave energy research attracts the top minds — at all levels. Today, students are coming to Corvallis from all over the world to work on projects that will impact global energy production.

One of these is Steve Meicke, a master’s student in mechanical engineering, who came to Oregon State by way of Virginia Tech. A member of NNMREC director Bob Paasch’s research group, Meicke is applying his engineering knowledge toward designing reliable and survivable systems for harsh marine environments.

Justin Hovland, an ME graduate student from Wyoming who is also working with Paasch, is fascinated by the ocean, its immensity and sheer power. Now, his research goal is making the cost of ocean power competitive.

“It’s great to know the research we’re doing at Oregon State is contributing to the clean energy future,” Meicke says. Hovland agrees: “Studying wave energy here gives you an insight into the birth of an industry — one that can change the way we power our society.”

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Leading the wave

nnMreC Moves wAve-energy teChnology Closer to CoMMerCiAl reAlity

B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h

When the energy crisis hit hard in the 1970s, scientists started looking in earnest for ways to harness power from the sun, wind and sea. At that time, solar and wind energy got the most attention, partly due to the greater complexities of working in the harsh ocean environment.

But today, Oregon State University is among the national leaders of a resurgence in research on ocean wave energy, which is joining wind and solar options as important components of the College of Engineering’s SENERGI initiative — and providing answers to the world’s future energy needs.

This revival began in the mid 1990s with the pioneering efforts of two electrical engineering professors in

the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Together, Annette von Jouanne and the late Alan Wallace established the internationally known Wallace Energy Systems and Renewables Facility (WESRF) at Oregon State. In turn, WESRF played a key role last year in attracting $13.5 million in Department of Energy and other funding that established the Oregon-based Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC).

A collaboration between Oregon State, the University of Washington and the National Renewable Energy Lab, NNMREC is one of only two DOE-sponsored marine renewable energy centers in the U.S. (the other is located at the University of Hawaii in Manoa). NNMREC’s mission is to help commercialize marine energy technology, inform regulatory and policy decisions and close key gaps in scientific understanding.

While UW is focusing on tidal energy, OSU is leading NNMREC’s wave energy efforts, which include building a mobile wave-energy test berth — the first of its kind in the U.S. — to provide data for commercial wave-energy technology developers.

“This center is not about device development; it’s about assessment,” notes Bob Paasch, Boeing Professor of Design in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering and NNMREC director. “Commercial interests are developing the devices, and we’re their research partner, evaluating the technology.”

As well as being an inter-institutional collaboration, NNMREC is highly collaborative within OSU, involving faculty from throughout the College of Engineering — which houses seven of the center’s principal investigators — as well as from the Hatfield Marine Science Center, the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon Sea Grant and the Department of Sociology.

All of these players are working together to take a big-picture look at wave energy — not just how much power it will produce, but how taking energy out of waves

impacts the ocean shoreline and marine ecology. While wave energy harvesting may well prove benign to physical and biological environments, “we really don’t know,” Paasch says. “That’s what we’re here to do: answer the unanswered questions.”

“With the help of Oregon Sea Grant, we’re doing the kind of community outreach no one else is,” adds Meleah Ashford, NNMREC program manager. “To gain a holistic view of wave energy and its impacts, we’re talking to fishermen and engaging local communities, making sure we work with the people this technology will affect.”

If wave energy was once secondary to wind and solar research, it isn’t anymore. Its potential is dramatic: Projections show one wave energy buoy could average 100 kilowatts of power; a network of 500 such buoys could power the downtown Portland business district.

And OSU is helping make wave energy production a reality. As Paasch points out, “As the national test center for wave technologies, we’re leading the country in this area of energy research.”

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Brian Gray

Casting a sustainable future in concrete

Their research, funded by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, will ultimately be conducted in OSU’s Green Building Materials Laboratory that opens in the spring of 2010. This signature facility, which is part of the Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST), is a collaboration between the Colleges of Engineering and Forestry. The goal is to bring together academia and industry for innovative, hands-on research that advances the green building industry.

So as Gray ponders, in one project, how to cut weight on his team’s canoe without losing structural integrity, in another he’s contributing to research with a global impact.

“As a new student, you might think the university is just a place to get a degree,” Gray says. “But we also get to do hands-on research work. There’s so much opportunity here.”

Brian Gray, a construction engineering management junior from Gaston, Ore., has been busy this year, solving concrete design issues as he and his teammates construct a vessel for the 2010 ASCE Regional Concrete Canoe Competition. But Gray’s work with concrete at Oregon State extends beyond boat building. As an undergraduate research assistant working with Jason Ideker, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Gray is also helping develop the next generation of sustainable building materials.

Gray is applying what he’s learning about concrete in the canoe competition to his work in Ideker’s research group. The group is investigating methods of blending recycled and virgin aggregate — and even industry waste products such as fly ash — to create a new, more environmentally friendly concrete that outlasts the material it replaces.

Coastal residents and the infrastructure they rely on are under constant threat by a combination of a rising population and the potential for major storms and earthquakes. But a new $1.1 million wavemaker at the College of Engineering’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory (HWRL) is helping engineers and ecologists plan a more sustainable future for coastal regions around the world. The wavemaker — the largest of its type in the nation — more accurately simulates the waves and flooding that can damage coastal infrastructure like bridges and buildings.

“Worldwide, more people are moving to the coast, while the coast is moving the other way,” says Dan Cox, a professor of coastal and ocean engineering in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering (CCE). “And here in Oregon, we not only have receding shorelines with more people and increasing storm frequency, but also a statistically significant chance, in the next 50 years, of a major earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone off our coast. To deal with all of this, we need better engineering techniques and coastal management plans, and the new wavemaker gives us valuable information to develop them.”

The piston-type wavemaker, funded by the National Science Foundation, is being used in a series of major research projects at Oregon State. One key project, headed by Cox and a CCE colleague, structural engineering professor Chris Higgins, studies tsunami impacts on coastal structures. Researchers use a combination of numerical simulation and physical modeling to test the strength of various materials and designs.

“We can build a physical scale model of a structure in a lab and run a wave directly at it to study the impact,” Cox says. “For example, we’ve studied bridge damage incurred during the Ivan and Katrina storms by building 1:5-scale models of those bridges and hitting them with varying levels of water force to determine their breaking points.”

The knowledge gained by projects like this, Cox says, will lead to more effective repair and retrofit of existing structures, as well as more resilient designs for new construction.

The wavemaker is also being used in several other major projects. A collaboration with Jackson State University in Mississippi, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, is exploring new methods for protecting levees during big-wave events by simulating floodwaters. A team project with

I n s p i r i n g L e a d e r s6

Making waves

AdvAnCed physiCAl Modeling helps reseArChers proteCt CoAstAl infrAstruCture

OSU horticulture professor Dennis Albert is using wave action to study how coastal wetland ecosystems protect people on shorelines, and how changing the ecosystems to reduce the effect of natural hazards can be done without damaging the balance of species diversity. And a third project is following up on wave-energy work pioneered by Annette von Jouanne, using wave modeling to determine how to design more durable and efficient wave-energy equipment, as well as study the effects that equipment will have on coastal ecosystems.

This kind of approach has not gone unnoticed. “We’re a national leader in this work,” Cox says. “We’ve had visitors from 15 universities, as well as from Australia, Asia and Europe — people make specific trips here to see what we’re doing. It’s a global problem, and our work is generating global interest.”

Professor Dan Cox uses a piston-type wavemaker and computer models to simulate tsunami impacts, testing the strength of different construction materials and designs.

B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h7

Students gain from — and contribute to — research breakthroughs

Behind every Oregon State research breakthrough is a student like Seung Yeol Han.

A Ph.D. candidate from Yeungnam University in South Korea, Han was recruited to OSU by Chih-hung “Alex”

Chang to work on Chang’s microreactor-assisted thin-film project — and was the first student to join the research team.

Beyond the opportunity to work on an innovative new process for producing thin films, Han relishes Chang’s mentorship. “Some professors just give you an idea and want the results,” he says. “Dr. Chang comes by the lab almost every day to provide guidance. If we have a problem he’ll even do an experiment with us to solve it.”

The benefits of a mentor–mentee relationship run in both directions. “Without students like Han, I could not do anything,” Chang says. “I provide an idea, and they’re the ones who work in the lab and get things done.”

Professor Brian Paul holds a microreactor used in the process associate professor Chih-hung “Alex” Chang developed for producing thin films.

Seung Yeol Han

I n s p i r i n g L e a d e r s8

Collaboration is one of the hallmarks of the College of Engineering, as evidenced in research centers like the Corvallis-based Microproducts Breakthrough Institute (MBI). And the new process Chih-hung “Alex” Chang has developed for producing thin films is just the latest example.

Soon after joining the CoE in 2000, Chang, an associate professor of chemical engineering and Sharp Laboratories Faculty Scholar in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, decided to check out the cutting-edge work in microreactor technology his colleagues were doing at the MBI, a partnership between Oregon State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). From that investigation, Chang found both the inspiration for and means to develop a process innovation that could revolutionize manufacturing for products from eyeglasses to solar panels.

Microreactors are palm-sized devices that contain hundreds, thousands or even millions of microchannels in which chemical mixing, heating and reaction take place almost instantaneously. In learning about some of the microreactor applications being explored at the MBI, Chang became intrigued by the possibilities of using microchannel devices to produce nanomaterials and apply them as thin-film coatings. These surface layers — less than 100 nanometers

thick — are used to alter or enhance the function of the substrate.

The traditional approach to creating nanomaterials and thin films involves large-scale, batch chemical mixing. But many of the nanostructures produced with batch processing are unusable, creating an excessive amount of material waste, which is both costly and ecologically unsound.

“I had a bit of a ‘Eureka’ moment,” says Chang. “Seeing the microreactor research, I got the idea to use these devices to better control distribution of the chemical solution.”

Chang put that idea to work, developing a new process using a microreactor to gain precise control of chemical reactions during mixing. The microreactor process enables more efficient production and application of high-quality thin films. And it dramatically cuts the amount of material and energy waste, reducing production costs and environmental impacts.

This innovative nanomanufacturing approach was perfected at the MBI, which provides not only the lab space and sophisticated research equipment needed for such efforts, but also a highly collaborative setting that leads to the kinds of advances Chang and other CoE faculty are spearheading.

“The MBI brings together industry, national laboratory and university collaborations all under one roof,”

says Brian Paul, a professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, who is also the MBI associate director for nano/microfabrication and one of Chang’s colleagues in advancing the new microreactor-assisted nanomanufacturing technologies. “These collaborations accelerate the research, discovery and innovation process, which means the results can have a broader impact more quickly.”

Chang, Paul and their colleagues are already putting their new knowledge to work and demonstrating the commercial impact of this breakthrough by applying the new thin-film coating technique to several manufacturing processes.

For example, using a National Science Foundation grant, Chang, Paul and College of Business associate professor Jimmy Yang worked together to develop and commercialize a low-cost, microreactor-assisted process for applying nanostructured anti-reflective coatings to eyeglasses.

Chang and Paul’s graduate students worked on the engineering-related project components, while Yang’s MBA students created a business plan. The result is the decentralization of the coating process so it can be applied using cheaper deposition equipment in multiple locations, including offices.

A Department of Energy-funded project involving OSU, PNNL, CH2M HILL and Oregon-based photonics manufacturer Voxtel is exploring solar energy applications. In this instance, the nanomanufacturing process can reduce the energy, environmental discharge and production costs associated with current nanoscale thin-film manufacturing for photovoltaic cells.

“We’ve demonstrated the benefit of this technology already,” Chang says. “Now we’re working to scale up the process and find as many applications for it as possible.”

A better way to make thin filmsosu reseArCher uses nAnoteChnology to iMprove effiCienCy, reduCe wAste

B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h9

Putting next-generation nuclear power to the test

new osu testing fACility to evAluAte sAfety of new reACtor designs

Associate professor Brian Woods is the principal investigator for testing next-generation High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) designs.

There’s a new generation of nuclear reactors on the horizon: innovative “Generation IV” designs that incorporate High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology. When operated at very high temperatures, HTGRs, which are cooled by helium, are not only cleaner and more energy efficient than existing water-cooled nuclear reactors, they could also be used to produce hydrogen fuel more cost effectively than via electrolysis. And the College of Engineering has a vital role in bringing this new technology to the world’s energy infrastructure.

Two and a half years ago, in a proactive bid to collaborate on reactor technology development, Oregon State’s Department of

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics (NERHP) made an unsolicited proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to perform safety testing on two HTGR designs. Twelve months later, the NRC awarded OSU not just the contract, but also the funding to design, build and operate the testing device. This device, called a High-Temperature Testing Facility (HTTF), comprises a ¼-scale model of an HTGR whose core can be reconfigured according to which design is being tested. Slated for completion in 2011, the HTTF will be housed in a new addition to the OSU Radiation Center, construction of which is being financed by the College of Engineering as part of a $9.5 million lab and equipment upgrade project.

The HTTF is the third in a legacy of nearly 20 years of nuclear technology testing on the Oregon State campus. NERHP first collaborated with the NRC on testing the APEX 600 Pressurized Water

Reactor in the 1990s and more recently tested the successful and newly commercialized Multi-Application Small Light-Water Reactor design for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Principal investigator on the $3.6 million HTTF project is Brian Woods, an associate professor of nuclear engineering in NERHP. Along with the NRC, the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Lab is also

collaborating with Oregon State on HTTF implementation; potential commercial vendors, including General Atomics, Westinghouse and AREVA, may be involved going forward. Another $3 million from the NRC is funding additional HTGR design studies (not directly related to the HTTF project) being conducted by one of Woods’ NERHP colleagues, nuclear engineering professor Todd Palmer, along with collaborators at Texas A&M and Michigan.

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I n s p i r i n g L e a d e r s

Attracting students by reputation

Seth Cadell, a doctoral student in nuclear engineering, credits other schools for his decision to come to Oregon State.

When Cadell was checking out prospective graduate programs around the U.S., OSU’s name kept coming up in conversation. “I witnessed the respect all of these institutions have for Oregon State and its faculty,” he recalls.

Likewise, when Brian Jackson, a fellow NE doctoral student, was considering graduate school, he heard “lots of good things” about OSU from a friend who works at Pacific Northwest National Lab.

Now, working with dissertation adviser Brian Woods and the rest of the HTTF research team, Cadell is exploring instrumentation techniques for next-generation nuclear power plants, and Jackson is developing safety analysis tools.

The two are excited to be involved with a project that’s part of the College of Engineering’s SENERGI initiative to solve the challenges of sustainable energy. And a recent interaction only reinforced their decision to come to Oregon State.

“Brian and I were sitting at a dinner table with professors from a different university I had considered for graduate school,” Cadell says. “They expressed near-jealousy that Brian and I were able to work on such an amazing and important project here at OSU.”

Seth Cadell

Brian Jackson

Once up and running, the HTTF will operate a testing loop to see how the two HTGR designs — pebble bed and prismatic block — handle simulated accidents and other “problem situations.” No actual nuclear fuel will be involved in this testing; the HTTF is heated electrically. The process essentially involves determining how a given design could fail in order to preempt the possibility of it ever doing so in actual use, explains Woods.

“We ask, ‘What are the potential incidents that could happen?’” he says. “Then we ‘run’ those incidents to see what happens: How will the reactor perform in each situation?” OSU will collect data that are then compared to computer codes built into the reactor’s design, looking for discrepancies between the expected performance and testing protocol results.

The HTTF is also a rich opportunity for hands-on student learning, and Woods has structured a team that involves students at every level. Doctoral candidates are producing design drawings and numerical modeling; master’s students’ calculations will support the design work; and undergrads are helping design the data acquisition system. The completed facility will be the only one of its kind in the U.S. and among only a few in the world.

Once testing is successfully completed and HTGR reactors receive NRC certification, Woods is confident they’ll play a role in our energy future. “They make electricity very efficiently, and they may provide a way to produce hydrogen at a low cost,” he says. “And like other nuclear reactors, they produce no greenhouse gas emissions.”

B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h11

Incorporating computational modeling into interdisciplinary research

Zoology graduate student Phoebe Zarnetske is another researcher using the flexible computer modeling techniques Tom Dietterich developed, in this case modeling coastal species distributions. Combining elements of ecology, statistics and Geographic Information Systems, the project has sparked her interest in a future in interdisciplinary research.

Awarded an Eco-Informatics/Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (EI-IGERT) fellowship, Zarnetske has collaborated with OSU engineers and geomorphologists on a wind tunnel experiment at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab to measure how different dune grasses bind sand together and create dunes. She is continuing her Ph.D. project in New Zealand, collaborating with researchers at the University of Otago in Dunedin to model implications of dune-grass invasions on dune geomorphology and ecology.

In addition, Zarnetske is working on a project with researchers at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Department of Conservation. The project is generating species distribution models to predict the spread of some invasive species in New Zealand.

Over the course of her research, Zarnetske has worked with engineers, mathematicians, geomorphologists and ecologists — an innovative interdisciplinary investigation she calls “truly a breakthrough experience.”

Connecting informatics and ecology

An interdisciplinary approach to research and problem-solving prevails across Oregon State and the College of Engineering, and the Eco-Informatics Summer Institute (EISI) is one of the latest examples. This innovative program teams up undergraduate students from engineering, computer science, math and ecology to examine the challenges facing the world’s ecosystems. The 10-week course starts with a rafting trip on the Deschutes River, which serves as a relationship-building opportunity for group members as well as a chance to do geologic research.

Moving to the foothills of the Cascades at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, the program covers topics such as wood movement in streams, ocean storm patterns and the relationship between topography and fire frequency. Students combine their knowledge of ecology with that of informatics, using sophisticated data to understand phenomena or predict future events.

“We’re advancing both ecology and informatics by melding the two sciences,” says Desiree Tullos, assistant professor in the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering and EISI director. “This program introduces students to the research life cycle, and it gives them a sense of working on research based in natural resource management. They can apply sophisticated tools to problems, using a multidisciplinary approach.”

Phoebe Zarnetske

Caption here

Assistant professor Desiree Tullos leads an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students each summer to examine the challenges facing the world’s ecosystems.

Professor Tom Dietterich has developed sophisticated computer models to study and preserve threatened ecosystems.

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Computer modeling is not new — the ability to use machines to process data and make predictions has been available for decades. But just as Moore’s Law holds that processing speed increases exponentially, so too has the capability of computers to produce complex models involving larger amounts of data and more variables. Tom Dietterich, a computer science professor and director of intelligent systems research in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), is helping preserve the world’s ecosystems by using all of that new capability.

“We’re looking to find new and interesting problems to apply our computers to,” he says. “To boldly go where no computers have gone before.”

Dietterich’s Star Trek allusion may be humorous, but the work he’s doing has serious and far-reaching goals — as well as strong appeal to students with a passion for protecting the environment. He and numerous collaborators both within and beyond the College of Engineering are using the power

of computational modeling to study — and ultimately preserve — ecosystems that are under threat from climate change, emerging diseases and human activities.

“To do the best possible job of managing our ecosystems, we need better tools for predicting and evaluating the outcomes of different policy choices,” Dietterich says.

New developments in modeling techniques are making that possible. Until about 15 years ago, computer modeling was based on parametric techniques developed in the first half of the 20th century. But recent rapid advances in computer science have given rise to new, more powerful and flexible methods for handling complex, large-scale data more effectively. This allows a more integrated approach to ecosystem study, one that can take into account multiple species and data sets and capture more of the interactions among ecosystem elements.

“We can observe how an ecosystem responds to many different factors, look for patterns, and then use this information to develop more accurate scientific models and

make better predictions,” Dietterich explains.

Consider the example of forest fire management, one of the areas Dietterich and his collaborators are studying. When deciding whether to fight a wildfire, many variables must be considered, including what species are in the fire’s projected path, how much fire fuel is present and how close the fire is to human settlements. What’s more, the benefits and costs of fighting — or not fighting — a fire may not fully emerge for several decades.

“To understand the long-term consequences of a single fire, we have to simulate 40 years of future fires,” Dietterich says. “Our choices for how to handle it must take into account a wide range of uncertainties in our knowledge of fire behavior, forest ecosystems, future climate and future fire events. This requires a decision-making process that is as robust as possible, and computer modeling helps that process.”

The work to achieve this level of modeling involves a massively collaborative effort — one that’s well matched to Oregon State, with

its long-established strengths in earth systems science and natural resources. With a five-year $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Dietterich and colleagues at Cornell University, Bowdoin College and Howard University have created an Institute for Computational Sustainability to spearhead this work.

At Oregon State, Dietterich is working with colleagues in EECS, the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, and the U.S. Forest Service, along with OSU geoscientists, forest economists, entomologists and statisticians, to gather and analyze ecosystem data from study locations throughout the United States and in Australia.

For Dietterich, taking computer science into this new frontier is a vital part of ensuring our planet’s future. “Sustainability is more than just energy management,” he says. “We depend on ecosystems for food, shelter and clothing, and for air to breathe and water to drink. Understanding them is critical to our survival.”

Prediction and preservationsophistiCAted CoMputer Modeling is helping proteCt our eCosysteMs

B r e a k t h r o u g h R e s e a r c h13

eArning two degrees on two ContinentsInnovative international dual-degree program draws students to the College of Engineering

Many Oregon State international programs offer hands-on, real-world learning opportunities that go beyond the usual semester abroad. And the innovative Atlantis Bachelor dual-degree program is not only attracting students already attending OSU, but in some cases, it is what draws them here in the first place.

A collaboration with two European institutions — Luleå University of Technology in Luleå, Sweden, and Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany — the program is funded by the EU European Commission and U.S. Department of Education’s Funds for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) program. This unique international undergraduate experience concludes with bachelor’s degrees in both mechanical engineering and materials science.

OSU program participants spend two years in Corvallis taking core engineering and language courses. They then spend a quarter in Sweden and three in Germany, where they complete — and defend in German — a materials science bachelor’s thesis before returning home for the final year of the program.

In Europe, they form a cohort with the Swedish and German program participants, moving through their last two years as a multinational group. They complete their mechanical engineering degree requirements, including the capstone design project, during their senior year at Oregon State.

In addition to earning two degrees, participants gain invaluable professional preparation, notes Bill Warnes, an associate professor of materials science in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the OSU Materials Science program director. Warnes helped develop the Atlantis Bachelor program and coordinates it at OSU. “It’s a globally connected work environment today, and our students know they will graduate ready to work as engineers on an international level.”

Making a career out of giving back

A question on the application for a 2007 Engineers Without Borders (EWB) trip to El Salvador — “What do you want to do with your life?” — was to prove life-changing for mechanical engineering major Aparna Shrivastava.

Considering this question in the context of the EWB project — building a rain catchment system in a rural Salvadoran community — made her reconsider her long-standing plans to become an automotive engineer. “I suddenly realized: cars are great, but there are people who don’t have water,” she says.

Shrivastava’s experience in El Salvador was only the beginning of her EWB involvement at Oregon State. Last year, as president of the EWB–OSU chapter, she helped initiate another potable water project, this time in rural Kenya. Now she is serving as the Kenya project coordinator.

The experience of having a direct impact on the quality of life for people around the world has convinced Shrivastava that “helping improve everyone’s access to basic human needs through a career in international development” is what she most wants to do with her life.

“As engineers, we have the knowledge to do a lot of good for humanity,” she says. “I don’t want to retire someday and give back. I want to do it all along.”

Aparna Shrivastava in El Salvador

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seeing the big piCture — And their plACe in itIt’s a hard fact: Underrepresented minority students graduate from college at a lower rate than the general student body. But two College of Engineering faculty — one African American, the other Latino — are committed to changing that.

Building Diverse Communities in Engineering, a section of OSU’s U-Engage program for first-year students, is taught by Ron Metoyer, an associate professor of computer science in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Tona Rodriguez-Nikl, an instructor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering. The course, a collaboration with the Women and Minorities in Engineering program, targets students in the critical first term, when they’re deciding whether or not they belong at OSU. For many of them, the course provides the first clear view of their path into the world of engineering.

“Most of these kids are first-generation college students,” Metoyer says. “They need a place where they’re comfortable asking all the questions they’re thinking about.”

The two-credit course emphasizes the global role of engineering and its international career opportunities, as well as discussing success skills, time management and student resources.

“We want them to see the connection between engineering careers and what they’re doing here,” Rodriguez-Nikl says. “It’s more about seeing a broader picture — and all the possibilities out there for them.”

Ron Metoyer (center left) and Tona Rodriguez-Nikl (below) lead Building Diverse Communities in Engineering, a first-term class that helps underrepresented minority students see their future as engineers.

G l o b a l R e s u l t s15

tops in sAe CoMpetition, f irst in CollAborAtionUnique team approach prepares students for real-world projects

What do you get when you combine student design teams from two universities on two continents? A better race car, a more real-world project experience — and a collaboration that is the first of its kind in the world. That, plus top-placing finishes at two international competitions.

OSU’s Formula SAE program, together with the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Ravensburg, a university in Friedrichshafen, Germany, offers a blueprint for the kind of distributed design projects engineering students can expect in their careers.

The two teams have been moving on a collaboration continuum for several years. In 2008-09, the teams tested project management tools collaboratively, and this year they are jointly designing and building identical cars, with students from each country working on-site with the other team.

2009 brought the best results ever for OSU, which placed second out of 50 entries at the Formula SAE California competition in Los Angeles in June. The team went on to capture the gold at Formula Student Austria in August, competing against top-rated teams from around the world.

“This international collaboration is more realistic than traditional overseas study programs,” says Bob Paasch, Boeing Design Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and the SAE program advisor. “Out in the real world, companies routinely form internationally distributed design teams for complex projects, and we’re giving our Formula SAE students the same experience. No other universities anywhere are taking this approach.”

OSU’s trophy-winning Formula SAE team is

a unique international collaboration that prepares students to work on global

design teams.

I n s p i r i n g L e a d e r s16

MAking A sMooth trAnsition into-osuAbdulsalam Alhawsawi comes from a family of high achievers. His father was an Arabic language university instructor in Saudi Arabia. One brother is a pilot. Another is an organ transplant surgeon. Alhawsawi is continuing the family tradition. On his way to becoming a radiation safety specialist, he is earning a master’s degree at Oregon State.

Alhawsawi is part of INTO-OSU, a new university partnership that recruits international students to Oregon State. This fall, INTO-OSU welcomed about 250 new students from all over the world, including China, the Middle East, Russia and Vietnam.

Alhawsawi had been accepted into a Saudi program that funds high-achieving students to study abroad and then to apply their new skills at home. He applied and was accepted into Oregon State’s English Language Institute (ELI), which has become part of INTO-OSU. He started taking English classes through ELI in preparation for entering the INTO-OSU program in the fall.

But it was an Oregon State professor who made a real difference in Alhawsawi’s transition to studying in the United States. Former College of Engineering associate dean Chris Bell, now a member of the INTO-OSU transition team, guided Alhawsawi in both academics and living arrangements.

“He was like a big brother to me, showing me where to go,” Alhawsawi says. “He showed me all the possible ways to combine my radiation health physics major with management, which I will probably do. I will always be grateful to him.”

Abdulsalam Alhawsawi

G l o b a l R e s u l t s17

Advisory boArd(Current March 2010)

James b. Johnson (board Chair)President and CEO, Tripwire

kay e. AltmanCFO, Altman Browning and Company

fred briggsRetired, Verizon Communications

JJ CadizPrincipal Program Manager, Microsoft

darry CallahanRetired, Chevron

kevin w. ClarkeSite Manager, Barco Medical Imaging Systems

Mary CoucherVice President, IBM

brian edwardsManufacturing Engineer, Wah Chang

lee kearneyRetired, Kiewit Construction Group

tom MckinneyPrincipal Vice President, Bechtel

Jeff peaceRetired, Boeing

rod QuinnCTO, Battelle Pacific Northwest National Lab

rod rayPresident and CEO, Bend Research

scott r. schroederPresident and CEO, Mega Tech of Oregon

randall l. smithVice President of Electronics, CH2M HILL Industrial Design & Construction

rex smithRetired, Microsoft

Abhi talwalkarPresident and CEO, LSI Logic

Michael vanbuskirkSenior Vice President, Innovative Silicon

eMeritus boArd MeMbers

larry ChalfanExecutive Director, Zero Waste Alliance

Mark ChristensenPresident, Global Capital Management, LLC

ron dilbeckRetired, RadiSys

dwayne foleyRetired, NW Natural and OSU Alumni Association

d. w. “Chuck” halliganRetired, Bechtel

James A. JohnsonVice President, Intel

sue laszloTransportation Section Manager, HDR

Mark A. lasswellPresident and Chief Group Executive, CH2M HILL OMI

paul lorenziniCEO, NuScale Power

Jeff ManchesterRetired, Fort James

ted MolinariRetired, Praegitzer Industries

steve nigroVice President and General Manager, Hewlett-Packard

Jim poirotRetired, CH2M HILL

robert l. polviRetired, Bechtel

hal pritchettRetired, Oregon State University

david skillernRetired, Isilon Systems

Milton r. smithPresident, Smith Investments

Jim streetRetired, Shell

Jean watsonRetired, Chevron

Mike westCEO, UDEKA

ted wilsonRetired, Hewlett-Packard

18

operAtionAl suMMAryoregon stAte university College of engineering, 2008-09

The Campaign for OSU (2004-2011)

Engineering share

Campaign goal for Engineering $138 million

Cumulative through June 30, 2009: $110 million

Research expenditures

2013 goal: $39 million

FY 2009 goal: $33 million

FY 2009 actual: $30 million

Undergraduate degrees

2013 goal: 570

2009 goal: 560

Number awarded: 536

Doctoral degrees

2013 goal: 45

2009 goal: 40

Number awarded: 36

Master’s degrees

2013 goal: 175

2009 goal: 150

Number awarded: 138

2009 Engineering degrees (summer 2008 – spring 2009)

19

leAdership teAM(Current March 2010)

ron AdamsDean, College of Engineering

scott AshfordHead, School of Civil and Construction Engineering

belinda battenHead, School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

John bolteHead, Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering

bella boseAssociate Head, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

david CannAssociate Head, School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

terri fiezHead, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Merrick hallerAssociate Head, School of Civil and Construction Engineering

kathryn higleyActing Head, Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics

Jim lundyExecutive Associate Dean, College of Engineering

Thomas ManessHead, Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management

kartikeya MayaramAssociate Head, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

brett McfarlaneDirector, Undergraduate Engineering Programs

luke McilvennyBusiness Manager, Division of Business and Engineering

ellen MomsenDirector, Women and Minorities in Engineering Program

kathy parkSenior Development Director, OSU Foundation

gary petersenDirector, MECOP

Jose reyesHead, Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health PhysicsOn leave at NuScale Power

tracy Ann robinsonMarketing Liaison, College of Engineering

todd shechterDirector of IT, College of Engineering

Joe tanousInnovation Liason, College of Engineering

stel walkerAssociate Head, School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

ken williamsonHead, School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering

new fACulty 2009School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineeringgreg hermanAssociate Professor, Chemical Engineering

School of Civil and Construction Engineerngdavid trejoProfessor, Construction Engineering; Construction Education Foundation Endowed Chair

david hurwitzAssistant Professor, Civil Engineering

david hillAssociate Professor, Civil Engineering

Michael olsenAssistant Professor, Civil Engineering

Armin stuedleinAssistant Professor, Civil Engineering

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienceglencora borradaileAssistant Professor, Computer Science

Alex groceAssistant Professor, Computer Science

Christopher scaffidiAssistant Professor, Computer Science

School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineeringrob stoneProfessor, Mechanical Engineering

kendra sharpAssociate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health PhysicsMark galvinAssistant Professor, Nuclear Engineering

Alexei soldatovAssistant Professor, Nuclear Engineering

20

The state-of-the-art Kelley Engineering Center was designed with large open spaces to encourage collaboration and interaction between students and faculty.

College of engineering

oregon stAte university

101 Covell hAll

CorvAllis, oregon 97331-2409