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New tools to treat burn victims

An update on new research initiatives at Stevens Spring 2015

IMPACT

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STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SMALL WORLDProfessor E.H. Yang helps Stevens forge big-league research at very small scales

Truth and Consequences: New Lie-Detecting Technology from Stevens

Stevens Team Tests New Way of Imaging Severe Burns in Hospitals

A psychologist might say we accumulate experiences, changing our behavior as we go, prioritizing and acting from memory banks. Mathematicians and neuroscientists take a different tack, focusing on the dynamical systems and rules that govern both the individual and group behavior of the nearly 100 billion neurons within each human brain. For them, the question of how we learn essentially boils down to one of how a dynamical system processes information. Despite tremendous recent progress in the modeling of neuronal dynamics, the actual computational properties of neurons remain largely a mystery.

Now a Stevens-Texas A&M team hopes to shed new light on the rules and actions of neurons and neuronal networks as they rapidly process changing information and learn. The team is determined to focus on developing an understanding of the principles that govern neuronal information processing, rather than on replicating biology of neuronal dynamics in even greater detail.

“It’s that aha moment,” says Michael Zabarankin, a Stevens mathematician who is one of four principal researchers in a new initiative to investigate and model neuronal networks. “When does the comprehension of a set of basic facts, whatever they are — directions, perceptions, recognitions of threats — magically assemble into knowledge, awareness, understanding and adaptation? How and where does it happen? Finding answers to these questions is no doubt an extraordinarily

ambitious goal, but that’s what we hope to learn more about.”

The team proposes to use information-processing principles to derive neuronal dynamics and the synaptic update ‘rules’ that govern the strengthening of connections among brain neurons, and to understand the ways in which neuronal networks self-organize and optimize the brain’s information processing.

By matching the increasingly intelligent behavior of laboratory mice solving spatial problems (such as running through a maze repeatedly) to observed firing patterns of the mice’s grid cells — special neurons in the brain’s medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) that are central to the formation of mouse (and human) cognitive maps of spatial environments — the team hopes to link neuronal network optimization to successful real-world ‘learning’ for the first time.

Such insights, says Zabarankin, could help pave the way for more effective understanding of how humans form and remember mental maps of the environment and could shed more light on the nature of such neurological diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. As these insights are refined into computational models, they could also result in more intelligent software architectures and may eventually be able to be implemented or replicated in circuitry, a process known as neuromorphic engineering, he adds.

Mathematician Michael Zabarankin and Team Investigate the Ways We Learn

True or false? Detection of deception in written messages is now possible with a personal computer or a smartphone thanks to the work of two Stevens researchers.

True.

Jaasuz, a new technology developed by professors K.P. “Suba” Subbalakshmi and R. “Mouli” Chandramouli, can quickly determine with high reliability whether written text in various languages is genuine or deceptive, as well as the author’s gender. The technology was recently featured on FOX News Channel and will appear on Apple’s iTunes app store in 2015 after four-plus years of development. A web-based version of the software has also been available online for several years.

The software works by reading written texts and quickly searching for dozens of clues indicating intent to deceive, drawn from complex statistical patterns extracted from a database of hundreds of confirmed online hoaxes. Potential applications for the fraud-detecting technology might include uses in the insurance, law enforcement, cybersecurity and legal professions.

“We have refined the algorithms a great deal since creating it,” explains

Subbalakshmi. “It can now do very accurate analyses of texts based on very few words, such as the number that appear in a tweet or an SMS (text message). We believe enterprises will be extremely interested in this capability, particularly given the number of cyberattacks that originate as tweets, text messages or social media posts.”

Additional components of Jaasuz will soon be rolled out that can detect malicious or sexual intent in chat rooms; detect coded discussions of insider trading of securities; and perform psychometric (identity) authentication based on personal characteristics, adds Chandramouli.

ABOUT STEVENSStevens Institute of Technology, The Innovation University®, is a premier, private research university in Hoboken, N.J. Within the university’s four schools, more than 6,300 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate with more than 350 faculty members to advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront global challenges. Stevens is home to three national research centers of excellence, as well as joint research programs focused on critical industries such as healthcare, energy, finance, defense, maritime security, STEM education and coastal sustainability. The university is consistently ranked among the nation’s elite for return on investment for students, career services programs and mid-career salaries of alumni.

When Eui-Hyeok “E.H.” Yang peers into very small worlds, he sees big things.

Yang, a Stevens professor of mechanical engineering, leads teams working in several distinct and exciting areas of micro- and nanotechnology. The work could lead to potential applications in diverse areas including space systems engineering, medicine, optics, energy storage and wastewater treatment.

“There’s always something new to explore,” explains Yang. “The world of materials is especially fascinating, because once there is a new material—such as a particular smart polymer, or a form of graphene—to work with, you need to determine the material’s unique characteristics under

various conditions, and how that material might be used or applied. And that process of discovery is where we are really making our mark here.”

Quicker blood tests, better batteries

Yang received his undergraduate degree in control engineering and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Ajou University in his native South Korea. After postdoctoral work at two of the world’s top research institutions—the University of Tokyo

and California Institute of Technology (Caltech)—Yang began a tenure as a senior member of the engineering staff at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he focused on innovations such as space-telescope mirrors that could deform to correct for aberrations

How do we learn? It’s a simple, yet vexing, question — and one that remains largely unanswered.

Robert Chang, a Stevens assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is collaborating with Hackensack University Medical Center’s Department of Emergency Medicine to test a new method of quickly and accurately assessing burn victims’ wounds.

The technology, known as hyperspectral imaging (HSI), acquires images of burns in narrow bands in the visible and near-infrared ranges of electromagnetic spectra in real time with a portable camera. HSI can detect specific reflected wavelengths indicating the presence of serious burns, and then map the shapes of those burns more precisely.

“That’s important, because the treatments and response time required for the varying extent and severity of burns — superficial, partial thickness or full thickness — are each different,” says Chang. “This could serve as a promising objective tool to augment human vision and judgment when assessing skin layers in the ER, helping clinicians more rapidly triage burn patients.”

The camera quickly snaps hundreds of images of burned skin, each at slightly different wavelengths of light. Special software algorithms then mine the ‘stacks’ of resulting images, checking both for chemical signatures and physical surface features that indicate burn topography and severity. One key marker is methemoglobin — a bluish-brown variant of hemoglobin that forms when skin and blood are burned at elevated temperatures.

The HSI camera is compact enough to deploy in emergency rooms and ambulances, and the technology has proven promising in studies of animal models. Chang’s team hopes to bring the imaging system to several regional clinical settings and burn centers soon for testing on patients.

“This is exciting to me personally,” he says, “because it could help save lives and reduce patient morbidity associated with burn trauma.”

SOUND INVESTMENTStevens acoustic research provides new tools for air and maritime defense, industrial manufacturing and even pest control

INSIDE HIGHLIGHTS:

A small jet screams across the U.S. border at top speed — its type, origin and destination unknown.

Somewhere on a remote location along that border, a microphone array mounted on a pole suddenly catches the sound of the jet’s engine as it approaches, relaying it to a trailer parked just below. Instantly, a computer inside the trailer identifies the class of aircraft and transmits the information to remote operators thousands of miles away; a split-second later, a camera on the same pole pivots and begins tracking the jet by sound, snapping

a few pictures that are transmitted to the operators.

Science fiction? In fact, it’s already happening thanks to years of Stevens research in the field.

“Radar can tell you something is there, but it cannot detect small drones and ultralights. It cannot tell you what it is,” says Hady Salloum, associate dean for research in the university’s Schaefer School of Engineering and Science. Salloum manages Stevens’ development of a host of programs, including ‘passive acoustic-detection’ technologies

and applications in diverse fields including border security and agriculture.

“This system may prove extremely useful for homeland security,” he says.

Sea and sky

The system, known as Acoustic Aircraft Detection (AAD), actually has its roots under water. Literally.

The aircraft-detecting technology is built upon the same concept as the Stevens Passive Acoustic

4stevens.edu

Modeling the brain’s neuronal networks

Detecting lies with an app

Author Michael Lewis’ 2014 book Flash Boys uncovered the lengths to which certain sophisticated traders and firms have deployed new technologies to ‘beat’ fellow investors by closing trades milliseconds ahead of competitors. The book, along with an FBI investigation and multimillion-dollar Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fines for the New York Stock Exchange and two related exchanges, threw new scrutiny on the practice of high-frequency trading (HFT).

Now new research from Stevens has been forwarded to Congress and the SEC, proposing an innovative solution to key issues of speed and fairness created by HFT.

The work, commissioned by the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute in New York City, proposes an “information transmission zoning” concept to regulate high-frequency trades. Traders within an “innermost zone” — those who receive prices any time (even milliseconds) prior to those in the general market — would be considered market-makers and thus be required to obey special SEC regulations for market-makers. Other traders would function normally.

That distinction, say the researchers, would create a fair playing field with respect to the dissemination of price information without decreasing liquidity and without eliminating HFT.

“Our research seems to offer a pragmatic solution where investors — whether high or low frequency, whether holding for milliseconds or years — can coexist in the same market while adhering to trading rules for access, fairness and transparency,” says Stevens financial engineering professor and division director Khaldoun Khashanah, who served as lead author of the report.

Stevens professors Ionut Florescu, the director of the university’s Hanlon Financial Systems Lab, and Steve Yang also contributed significantly as co-authors of the report.

SPEED ZONEStevens high-frequency trading research lays out bold new flash-trading solution

Welcome to 2015 and welcome back to IMPACT.

During the holiday break, I found my thoughts turning increasingly to ‘global universities.’ What does this really mean? Does a university’s coalescence of a body of students and faculty around a hub of programs that have international emphasis make it a global university? How does a university position itself to serve a global community of scholars? Is being regarded as a ‘global university’ the next big thing — or should it be the next best thing?

My goal is to make Stevens a destination of choice for international students and scholars who can both advance our university’s vision and objectives while learning to become world citizens. I picture a talented student — in Brazil, let us say — who plans on enrolling at a university outside his or her own country, sitting at a computer looking over possible choices.

What influences this student’s final choice? As Vice Provost for Research, I believe my responsibility is to build a research program at Stevens that is relevant not only to our national interests but to the

world community of students and scholars. I see this as an opportunity rich with possibility, rather than a burden heavy with challenge.

I constantly ask these questions: Do prospective students feel their views and experiences will be adequately represented here? Do they feel their experiences at Stevens will prepare them to participate and act as decision-makers, not only in their own communities and countries but also in the global community? Do they view our research program as highly relevant to global issues? When they leave Stevens, will they be academically prepared to assume a prominent role in the global academic and entrepreneurial arenas? Was Stevens a wise final decision?

I believe we are, and it is my mission to ensure we remain so. Developing and implementing a globally relevant research program is already underway here — and we intend to be a prime influence on the next generations of global thinkers, leaders, scientists and citizens.

Please join us.

We Are the World: Stevens Research and Global Responsibility

STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

unknown sounds to proprietary libraries of aircraft-engine noises and can quickly report the ones that match.

“We are also testing the same technology so that it could potentially be used for the detection and classification of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles,” Salloum adds, noting that the technology also holds potential for use at sports stadiums during practices and games to detect surveillance activity.

To build a reference library of drones’ acoustic profiles, radio-controlled aircraft powered by both electric and gasoline engines were piloted above Dobbelaar Field while microphones acquired samples of their flight sounds.

Safer tires, fewer pests

Variations of the same technology have also been studied for industrial applications by Stevens researchers.

“We can use a similar technique for nondestructive evaluation of large civil structures such as bridges,” says Salloum.

Other areas of acoustic research at Stevens touch upon such fields as tire damage detection and rodent and pest control.

In collaboration with a major tire manufacturer, for example, Stevens has designed a system that analyzes vibrations in order

to investigate tire integrity during the manufacturing process. A hammer on a production line thumps finished tires, and the sounds of those thumps are then analyzed against a library of sounds previously acquired from damaged or defective tires.

“You can evaluate every single tire for defects, instead of every tenth tire, at very little relative cost, using this system,” points out Salloum.

There is also an effort to deploy Stevens’ acoustic-detection tools for rodent and pest control. Salloum came up with the idea after visiting a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility for inspecting incoming agricultural products. Watching inspectors sort bags of rice in stainless steel bins by hand, he wondered if there might be a better way.

“Just as a diver makes a distinctive sound when he or she is breathing, insects and rodents make distinctive sounds when they are chewing, moving, mating or in distress,” explains Salloum. “This is of interest worldwide, where introduced non-native pests or species can wreak havoc on native environments and food supplies. It seemed to me that there might be a match with our research.”

Stevens is now investigating a system, he adds, that would use microwave and acoustic technologies to detect pests in unopened containers of grain.

SMALL WORLD continued from cover

SOUND INVESTMENT continued from cover

Dr. Khaldoun Khashanah

and microscale actuators and valves that could be used to build experimental, basketball-sized spacecraft then being developed by the lab.

Yang joined Stevens in 2006, where he has established novel research programs investigating the surface properties of conjugated polymers and the growth of one- and two-dimensional nanostructures for sensing and energy applications. He currently directs Stevens’ Micro Device Laboratory (MDL), a state-of-the-art multi-user fabrication facility that includes the university’s ‘clean room’ and several sophisticated lithography and etching systems, among other tools.

“I received the first Ph.D. in Korea in MEMS (microelectromecha-nical systems), and for a time that was my chief research interest and specialty,” Yang recalls. “But after I arrived at Stevens, I began branching out. I wanted to investigate new areas.”

Indeed. Some of the innovations his research group has studied include:

• Carbon nanotubes grown on graphene. When Yang’s graduate students attempted to create nanopatterns with armchair or zigzag edges on sheets of graphene (a strong, light, carbon-based material with excellent properties of heat and electrical conductivity) using nanoparticles, something unexpected happened: carbon nanotubes (CNTs) began forming and growing upward from the sheets. After further testing and perfecting of the optimal heat and chemical ‘recipes’ required to produce ideal CNTs on graphene, Yang’s team realized the nanoarchitectures were structurally useful.

One application he has studied is the use of CNTs and graphene to create supercapacitators that can store energy efficiently. Arrays of tiny CNTs placed between sheets of graphene can hold large quantities of electrical charge and might prove useful in new battery- or cellphone-charging technologies in the future, Yang points out.

• Graphene sensors. Applications for graphene have become a rapidly growing area of nanomaterials research. Yang has received grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the U.S. Army to develop new means of infrared detection, among other projects.

Working with Stevens physics professor Stefan Strauf, Yang is involved in a project to use very tiny bilayer ribbons of graphene to adjust the sensitivity of detectors to wavelengths within sensing devices that could represent a huge breakthrough in optics if it pans out. Current semiconductor technology only reacts to a narrow spectrum of infrared radiation, and the materials are consumed during detection, making the process expensive. Yang’s technology holds

the potential for a much quicker or more flexible response by the material, which could prove important in areas such as space exploration, observatory design or military reconnaissance.

• Microfluidics for use in blood testing, wastewater treatment and other applications. More recently, Yang has pursued microfluidics — the study of the behavior of small droplets of liquid — in collaboration with fellow mechanical engineering professor Chang-Hwan Choi. The area is receiving increasing focus, spurred by the development of a host of new ‘tunable’ surfaces.

In one application, Yang’s team is working to manipulate droplets on ‘smart’ polymer surfaces and attempting to move the droplets along specific pathways to react with test reagent indicating the presence of specific diseases. The polymers change their attraction to the droplets as voltage is applied; the droplets change shape, flow and ‘stick’ in what turn out to be predictable ways depending on the specific quantities of voltage applied.

“Our hope is that, one day, medical-test analyzers that currently require large, costly high-voltage devices in medical offices could be reduced to test kits roughly the size of a smartphone and powered by the equivalent of a AAA battery,” Yang explains.

Variations of the technology could also be useful in such areas as wastewater treatment (where oils and liquids must be separated at early stages of processing) or the cleaning of petroleum-industry facilities and devices.

In addition to his engineering and materials research, Yang is passionate about educating Stevens’ undergraduates in the basics of nanotechnology. NSF supports Yang’s Nanotechnology EXposure for Undergraduate Students (NUE-NEXUS) initiative, an offering of science elective courses in nanotechnology each semester to engineering undergraduates who would normally receive little to no exposure to this rapidly growing field.

“We hope some of them will develop and pursue an interest in micro- and nanotechnology,” says Yang. “I truly enjoy giving these courses to undergraduates in what is traditionally a graduate-level topic, and the undergrads seem to enjoy it, too.”

Detection System (SPADES), a patented technology previously created at Stevens and subsequently licensed to a British sound technology firm, Sonardyne.

SPADES works by placing arrays of hydrophones underwater, then acquiring and rapidly analyzing sounds to detect human divers, as well as the distinctive sounds of a variety of small boats. SPADES’ software filters out ambient noise and can spot a diver breathing from a distance of hundreds of yards.

Its boat-tracking capability was honed through a series of tests in Florida, California and New Jersey, building an ever-growing library of signatures of engine and propeller frequencies to which SPADES can compare unknown vessel sounds.

“The aircraft-detection work was then a natural outgrowth of this,” says Salloum, noting that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has supported both underwater-craft and aircraft-detection research efforts at Stevens.

For the AAD application, Stevens engineers developed new portable microphone arrays consisting of 64 tiny linked microphone capsules, each roughly the size and shape of a watch battery.

As with SPADES, a cluster of microphones transmits sound to a nearby computer, which filters out ambient noise and quickly analyzes spectrograms of target sounds of interest. The software compares those

THROUGH COLLABORATION…IMPACT • Spring 2015