They are applying their expertise in environmental biofilms, mechanics��and materials modeling to design a novel therapy using bioacoustics that could enhance how acute infections of the lung are managed.

The airways of cystic fibrosis patients fill with a thick mucus that is a breeding ground for bacteria and fungi. When colonized by these microorganisms, the mucus becomes part of a biofilm. Current therapies use nebulized antibiotics and a vibratory vest to mechanically dislodge the biofilm. But once it’s established, the biofilm is difficult to suppress.

“Biofilms are known for their resistance to antibiotics,” said Nerenberg. “We believe the bioacoustic effect — low-frequency ultrasound (sonication) in combination with antibiotics — will make the bacteria more responsive to antibiotics.”

According to Cerrone, the bioacoustic effect has already shown great promise with single-culture biofilms.

“The next step is to understand the effect in mixed cultures, because the airways of cystic fibrosis patients are colonized by different species of bacteria,” he said.

“Antibiotics have different effectiveness against different bacteria. This means antibiotic regimens might inadvertently target some bacteria over others, allowing the survivors to grow uninhibitedly.”

Nerenberg and Cerrone believe that low-frequency ultrasound might be the great equalizer for different bacteria. While they have not yet confirmed the underlying mechanisms, they believe that ultrasound produces intrinsic changes in bacterial cells, which makes them more susceptible to antibiotics. Ultrasound also could “cut” a network of channels in the biofilm to facilitate antibiotic transport.

“Our goal is to develop a simple, mechanics-based strategy that works with existing therapies,” said Cerrone. “This is especially important for cystic fibrosis patients, as some of the antibiotics used for treatment are toxic. Finding ways to make the antibiotics more effective, even reducing dosage amounts, could prevent unwanted secondary effects.

“We may eventually be able to incorporate low-frequency ultrasound into an upgraded cystic fibrosis vest as a way to efficiently provide the new combination therapy for patients in their homes.”

Notre Dame engineering students also are working on the project. Doctoral student Yanina Nahum is measuring how single-culture biofilms respond to the combination therapy. She is focusing on viability, antibiotic kinetics��and the mechanical properties of biofilms.

Neila Gross, a senior studying chemical engineering, is observing the disrupting effect of low-frequency ultrasound on biofilms. Both students have used the confocal microscope in the Notre Dame Integrated Imaging Facility to record novel spatiotemporal measurements of sonicated biofilms.

The Notre Dame team will partner with Andrea Ravasio, a biomedical engineer from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Ravasio is an expert in lung modeling. He will assist the team in modeling environments that are more representative of lung airways.

The project is supported with a one-year seed grant from the at Notre Dame.

Originally published by the on Oct.��22.

“A better understanding of how and when fog forms is key to being able to predict it more accurately,” said , the Wayne and Diana Murdy Endowed Professor of and Geosciences at the University of Notre Dame and lead principal investigator of the Coastal Fog Research Program (C-FOG).

C-FOG researchers recently identified several components of conventional weather models that had been leading to erroneous predictions relating to fog. Their findings, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, provide new insights into the life cycle of fog and point to the deficiencies in forecasting models.

“Weather models often fail to predict fog accurately, which was the case during the field portion of C-FOG,” said Fernando. “But because of the comprehensiveness of our instrumentation and analyses, our team was able to pinpoint which components of the models led to the failure of the overall predictions and what physics needed to be better included in the models to ensure accurate results.”

Sponsored primarily by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, C-FOG includes a multidisciplinary team from Canadian and U.S. universities, with collaborators from the military and other governmental institutions. The project centered on a field campaign on the coasts Newfoundland and Nova Scotia — two of the foggiest spots in the world — with measurements being captured simultaneously on land and aboard a dedicated research ship.

The team measured a wide range of fog-related factors including wind profiles, turbulence, heat flux, precipitation, droplet size, aerosol composition, electromagnetic wave propagation, and air and surface temperatures.

Conventional weather prediction models used in the study focused on mesoscale weather systems ranging between one and 10 kilometers. “We tested two conventional models, and both produced substantial errors, which were identified as due to incorrect representation of the physical processes of fog,” Fernando said.

Fog physics occur at micrometer scales, which can’t be captured by current models. “The best weather prediction models we have only capture spatial scales of motion that are a billion times larger than fog scales,” said Fernando.

Micrometer scale measurements like those collected through the C-FOG study provide physical insights to develop additional techniques to better forecast one of the most elusive meteorological phenomena. The team’s findings will be incorporated into coastal fog models by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to improve forecasting accuracy.

Learn more about C-FOG at .

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Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

, associate professor of ��at the University of Notre Dame, and doctoral student Yipu Du have created an innovative hybrid printing method — combining multi-material aerosol jet printing and extrusion printing — that integrates both functional and structural materials into a single streamlined printing platform. Their work was recently published in

Zhang and Du, in collaboration with a team at Purdue University led by professor Wenzhuo Wu, also have developed an all-printed piezoelectric (self-powered) wearable device.

Using their new hybrid printing process, the team demonstrated stretchable piezoelectric sensors, conformable to human skin, with integrated tellurium nanowire piezoelectric materials, silver nanowire electrodes��and silicone films. The devices printed by the team were then attached to a human wrist, accurately detecting hand gestures, and to an individual’s neck, detecting the individual’s heartbeat. Neither��device��used an external power source.

Piezoelectric materials are some of the most promising materials in the manufacture of wearable electronics and sensors because they generate their own electrical charge from applied mechanical stress instead of from a power source.

Yet printing piezoelectric devices is challenging because it often requires high electric fields for poling and high sintering temperatures. This adds to the time and cost of the printing process and can be detrimental to surrounding materials during sensor integration.

“The biggest advantage of our new hybrid printing method is the ability to integrate a wide range of functional and structural materials in one platform,” said Zhang.

“This streamlines the processes, reducing the time and energy needed to fabricate a device, while ensuring the performance of printed devices.”

Vital to the design, said Zhang, are nanostructured materials with piezoelectric properties, which eliminate the need for poling or sintering, and the highly stretchable silver nanowire electrodes, which are important for wearable devices attached to bodies in motion.

“We’re excited to see the wide range of opportunities that will open up for printed electronics and wearable devices because of this very versatile printing process,” said Zhang.

Originally published by the on Oct.��20.

The human nose captures those gases in a way that , the Bernard Keating Crawford at the University of Notre Dame, is working to duplicate in a device with sensors.

He and his team have developed a prototype of an electronic nose, using nanoengineered materials to tune the sensitivity and selectivity to mimic the performance and capabilities of a human nose. That’s a tall order since the human nose with its approximately 400 scent receptors can distinguish millions of different smells.

According to Myung, the chemical properties of gases affect the electrical properties of the sensing materials. By manipulating the size and shape of the nanoengineered materials, he and his team can make more precise sensors that function more efficiently and economically.

“An electronic nose can be used for a variety of applications,” said Myung. “For example, we can detect air pollutants or greenhouse gases. But we can also use it to uncover drugs and bombs, sniff out cancer and bacterial infections, as well as identify natural gas leaks and assess food quality.”

Myung was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Center for Bioanalytical Metrology for a Smart Process Analytical Technology System to monitor chemical/biochemical reactions in industrial and laboratory chemical processing applications in real time.

He and his team also are designing a smart agricultural sensor system to monitor the nitrogen cycle in fields to help eliminate greenhouses gases while enhancing the yield of the produce being grown. In addition, they are developing a wearable smart sensor system for military personnel that can detect poisonous gases and other threats.

“Developing better sensors is critical for a number of industries,” said Myung. “The future will be shaped by our ability to design and build smart, accurate��and low-powered sensors that will help us better understand and interact with the world around us.”

Originally published by the on Aug.��31.

These power cells — which also drive power supplies, solar power storage, surveillance systems, electric wheelchairs, portable power packs��and cellphones — have been the top choice for rechargeable batteries for more than a decade.

Lithium-ion batteries power the modern world, yet they have drawbacks. They are easy to overcharge, which results in overheating and can cause fires;��have a limited lifespan;��and cost up to 40 percent more than nickel cadmium batteries.

While some researchers are working to develop improved lithium-ion batteries, , associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, is developing new alternatives for rechargeable batteries.

Her National Science Foundation funded project, “Engineering All-Solid Metal-Sulfur Batteries: Transport, Speciation, and Kinetics in Sulfur Copolymer Composite Cathodes,” explores the fundamental knowledge needed to develop new batteries based on sustainable materials that offer improved safety and lighter weight.

“The energy density of metal-sulfur batteries, such as magnesium-sulfur, can exceed that of lithium-ion batteries,” said Schaefer. “However, it is difficult to engineer them at the low electrolyte-to-sulfur ratios necessary to achieve that high performance.”

She and her team are creating a polymer (plastic) electrolyte and cathode so the new metal-sulfur battery would weigh less, take up less space��and need to be charged less frequently. It would also be safer, as the polymer is not as flammable as the liquids used in today’s lithium-ion cells.

Additionally, said Schaefer, sulfur is readily available around the world, unlike the transition metals used in lithium-ion batteries, so the new battery would cost less to produce.

Schaefer works with her team of graduate and undergraduate students. The project also will include visiting undergraduate researchers from Xavier University of Louisiana.

Their work is supported through Electrochemical Systems, a program in the National Science Foundation’s Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental��and Transport Systems.

Originally published by the on July 19.

Their virtual season was celebrated during an online ceremony, at which Notre Dame received awards in five divisions of the competition. The team took:

• Third place in the Launch Division
• First place in the Safety Division
• Second place in the Altitude Division
• Third place in Educational Outreach
• Third place in Team Spirit

The annual program challenges middle school, high school and university students nationwide to design, build, fly and land a high-powered amateur rocket between 3,500 and 5,500 feet above the ground.

Student teams are asked to predict their rocket’s altitude months in advance of launch day using rocketry principles and computer simulations. They tailor their altitude to maximize the return of scientific value from their payload in the same way that NASA teams target specific altitudes for their missions.

“We are a completely volunteer team,” said Brooke Mumma, a 2021 graduate and the NDRT project manager. “But we approached the challenge the same way working engineers do — going through the design cycle from concept to construction, testing and iteration. Different sub-teams worked together to integrate all of the complex subs-ystems into our rocket.”

This year, the payload mission for college teams was a lander that deploys from the rocket during descent. The vehicle had to land upright or contain a system to upright itself, leveling within 5 degrees of vertical and taking a 360-degree panoramic image of the location, which was transmitted back to the team.

Some of the sub-systems designed to accomplish the challenge, Mumma said, included a recovery system, which was capable of returning all the parts of the rocket to the team, and an apogee control system, designed to help reach the target height of 5,300 feet.

“Being part of the NDRT for the last four years helped me to become a better engineer,” Mumma said. “I developed strengths in designing for manufacturing, creating thorough documentation, learning how to interface with an interdisciplinary team and many other skills that you don’t always get in a classroom.”

For the last 20 years, NASA’s Student Launch program has provided a realistic experience for students that resembles the operational lifecycle NASA and industry engineers use when developing and operating new hardware.

, research associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, has served as NDRT adviser since 2014.

“The NDRT team has grown from a small club to a serious 56-member organization with officers, team leaders and a team captain,” he said. “I have witnessed a profound change in the team’s approach to safety, design, outreach, marketing, financial and engineering stewardship of their activities. Students benefit from the truly collaborative environment where all technical, financial and leadership challenges must be resolved through everyone’s contributions.”

Another significant benefit to the Student Launch competition, Jemcov said, is that a third-party professional organization (NASA) judges each team’s solutions and strategies. The feedback given to the teams helps students learn from their successes and failures.

Originally published by the on June 23, 2021.

Notre Dame students and faculty gathered on May 11 for the first high-altitude balloon launch by , a new student-run satellite development group.

A team of well-trained students attached payloads containing research projects to a weather balloon filled with helium, then released the balloon to rise approximately 115,000 feet (35 kilometers) in the air, until the balloon burst and the payload,��attached to a 7-foot parachute,��drifted safely to the ground.

IrishSat focuses on developing CubeSats and other satellite-related hardware. CubeSats are research-based nanosatellites, approximately 4 inches��square, that carry research into space through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative. The initiative is a means for researchers to expand and test their work in space while introducing students to satellite technology and space exploration.

The Notre Dame design team, which features students from aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and engineering, physics, and marketing and finance, worked with faculty to develop a CubeSat and a “FlatSat” payload to carry multiple projects on the balloon.

In addition to designing and building the nanosatellites and the balloon, the students developed a sensor to study clouds and air moisture, obtained the required radio licenses for the launch��and worked with the Federal Aviation Administration for flight clearance.

“We created IrishSat to give Notre Dame students the opportunity to explore the space industry and gain real-world experience,” said club co-founder Will Karpick, IrishSat project manager and junior pursuing a degree in

Owen Kranz, a junior aerospace engineering major who serves as the team’s chief engineer, says the main lesson he’s taken from the experience is one of the value of bringing talented people together to accomplish something greater than their individual skills. “I’ve learned how powerful teamwork can be,” he said.

The balloon carried a payload that included infrared image arrays — small-scale sensors with potential commercial applications for space equipment. It also carried high-speed light detectors to capture images of solar wavelengths invisible to the human eye and a solar panel deployment technology demonstration.

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, associate professor of and IrishSat adviser, said student-run design teams like IrishSat let students take ownership of challenging technical projects. They develop real-world technical and management skills while working on fun, rewarding��and scientifically meaningful projects.

“The act of imaging an object, designing and building it, and then using it to accomplish something no one has done before can’t be taught from a textbook,” said Howard.

“The same can be said about developing leadership and communication skills. The experience of designing complex engineering systems, evaluating the outcomes��and interacting with an engineering team develops invaluable skills.”

Lisa Spaniak, a sophomore studying marketing and real estate, is a member of the business team.

“Working with IrishSat has taught me how important it is to be involved in and knowledgeable of other fields of study,” she said. “Working with such a well-rounded team has highlighted how essential it is to fully commit and understand the goals of a project in order to communicate it well.”

The balloon launch is the first step in applying for funding from NASA for its own CubeSat program. The results of the balloon launch will be included in a proposal submitted to the CubeSat Launch Initiative next fall in preparation for the team’s first full-scale nanosatellite build and launch.

Originally published by the on May 14.

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He succeeds Joannes J. Westerink, the Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Science, who returns to the CEEES faculty after serving 10 years as chair of the department.

earned his bachelor's degree��in mechanical engineering from University College Dublin and his master's and doctorate, both in mechanical engineering, from the University of California at San Diego. He served as a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona prior to joining the Notre Dame Engineering faculty in 2010.

Bolster is well acquainted with leadership roles. In addition to his research and teaching, he serves as associate director of Notre Dame’s Environmental Change Initiative, where he oversees the��. He also serves as director of graduate studies for CEEES.

His research focuses on environmental fluid flows and contaminant transport, including groundwater flows, stream and river flows, confined buoyancy-driven flows in enclosed spaces such as buildings, and larger-scale buoyancy-driven atmospheric flows. His specific research projects promote environmental stewardship by providing useful tools for practitioners and policymakers.

He teaches courses in fluid mechanics, groundwater, probabilistic methods for engineers and scientists, and the fate and transport of contaminants in environmental flows.

Bolster received the National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award in 2014 and the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from Notre Dame in 2017.

“I’m pleased that Professor Bolster has agreed to take on this important role and grateful for the decade of departmental leadership provided by Professor Westerink,” said , professor of civil engineering and the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering.

“The first and oldest of Notre Dame’s engineering departments plays a vital role in the future. All of us look forward to working with Professor Bolster as the department and the college continue to grow and shape the world.”

Originally published by the on April 13.

is an assistant professor whose work lies at the intersection of engineering and medicine. He studies the lymphatic system — the part of the immune system that rids the body of toxins and other unwanted materials. He looks at how to restore dysfunctional lymphatic networks, which are associated with a wide range of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological conditions��and metabolic syndromes.

Now Hanjaya-Putra and his team — ��student Laura Alderfer, along with Elizabeth Russo, a 2019 graduate; Adriana Archilla, a student from Syracuse University;��and Brian Coe,��class of��’19��— have demonstrated how extracellular matrix stiffness affects lymphatic vessel function.

The team is combining this knowledge with polymer science and mechanical engineering to build new lymphatic cord-like structures, which help restore normal behavior to dysfunctional lymphatic systems and allow the body to fight the disease.

“Cells can sense mechanical stimuli, such as matrix stiffness, and this activates certain genes to promote lymphatic formation,” said Hanjaya-Putra. “We used hydrogels made from hyaluronic acid (a natural sugar molecule) to enhance the cell-binding motif with appropriate mechanical stimuli (matrix stiffness) in a 2D model of lymphatic vessels and successfully stimulated new lymphatic vessel formations.”

The team has�� of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

This type of research is only possible, Hanjaya-Putra said, because of advances in imaging and stem cell biology.

“Traditionally, medical students spent hours studying the cardiovascular system, but not as much emphasis was placed on the lymphatic system,” said Hanjaya-Putra. “The reason, in large part, was due to the difficulty in visualizing lymphatic vessels, which are transparent.

“Recent advances have allowed us to use specific cell markers to distinguish between blood endothelial cells and lymphatic endothelial cells, so we can now see and study these very important networks in vitro and in vivo.”

Hanjaya-Putra and his team are now developing hydrogels that can be implanted under the skin to promote wound healing as well as gels that can be injected into the body at the site of injury.

Alderfer, the lead author on the FASEB article, was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Grant to study at the University of Helsinki. She will be studying lymphatic vessel formation in vivo in wound and cardiac injury models with Kari Alitalo, a global leader in the research of lymphatic vessels and translational cancer biology.

Originally published by the ��on March 29.

Today, engineers like , assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, continue the quest to improve the quality of medical diagnosis and treatment using near-infrared optical imaging.

O’Sullivan and his team are developing a powerful, pocket-sized optical imager that may once have seemed like the stuff of science fiction.

“When envisioning medicine of the future, many people think of Dr. Leonard McCoy, a physician in the original 'Star Trek’ series,” said O’Sullivan.

“Dr. McCoy used a handheld tricorder to scan an individual and immediately assess injuries or diseases anywhere in the body. We don’t have a commercial product like McCoy’s tricorder yet, but we’re close to making it a reality. We’re developing new medical imaging technology that uses light to give us a better view of the function of tissues and cells deep under the skin in a way that is safe and relatively low-cost.

“Equally important, we’re scaling that technology down to fit in a doctor’s pocket so it is as portable as a stethoscope or a thermometer.”

CT and MRI scans revolutionized the way diseases were diagnosed and monitored, O’Sullivan said. But they can’t be used frequently. CT scans use low doses of radiation; a single scan takes about 10 minutes and costs up to $2,500. MRI uses magnetic and radio waves. One scan takes up to an hour and can cost as much as $4,000. Both procedures require entire rooms of hardware.

“The small device we’re developing uses light, which is very safe, to help a doctor scan for the earliest signs of disease during an office visit — or even give you a device to take home,” O’Sullivan said.

“The device also could be used to monitor progression and treatment — from breast cancer to brain function to personal health — with more exacting precision.”

The new platform collects large amounts of data quickly, reconstructing it into 2D and 3D images, O’Sullivan said.

For this research project, which is supported through a from the National Institutes of Health, O’Sullivan has engaged with collaborators at the University of California,��Irvine and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

Originally published by the ��on Feb. 17.

Recently, materials that have an index of refraction that vanishes have gained significant interest across the scientific and engineering communities. These materials, called epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, show great promise for applications in imaging small objects, detecting minute concentrations of targeted molecules (e.g., explosives, toxic chemicals, pollutants)��and enabling a new generation of optical devices and circuits.

A team from the University of Notre Dame in collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University��and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell has shown how the optical properties of ENZ materials can be engineered to improve optical devices. Their work uses many of the same materials that are used in industry for high-power electronics and could one day allow for the integration of this novel optical behavior into optical devices.

Optical devices create, manipulate��or measure electromagnetic radiation — light, both the visible and invisible. Eyeglasses and camera lenses, microscopes and telescopes, lasers, light-emitting diodes��and solar cells are examples of common optical devices that have been developed to help see and sense the world. Each of these devices exploits the index of refraction in a different way.

The team shared its results in a recent paper published in Optics Express.

“Many molecules have vibrational modes in the mid-infrared spectral region, and these vibrations can be used to detect them,” said Irfan Khan, an�� doctorate student and the paper's lead author. “We used ENZ materials to couple to a special optical mode, known as the Berreman mode, to engineer specific optical responses in semiconductor materials currently used in industry.”

Engineering these novel optical modes using semiconductor materials is a critical step to incorporating ENZ materials into future optical devices and circuits, says , associate professor of electrical engineering and project lead.

“The fact that ENZ materials are readily available, simple to fabricate��and operate well on a very small scale also makes them ideal for a variety of applications.”

“David Go is highly regarded as an outstanding teacher and scholar within and outside of the Notre Dame community,” said , the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering. “I am happy that someone of his caliber and commitment has agreed to take on this important leadership role.”

Go, who serves as the director of graduate studies for the department, also holds a concurrent appointment in the . He is widely published in the areas of plasma science and engineering, heat transfer and fluid dynamics, and chemical analysis. He holds six patents and patent applications, which have led to two licensed technologies.

An ASME fellow and president of the Electrostatics Society of America, Go has received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Electrochemistry Society Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, the Electrostatics Society of America Rising Star Award��and the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Early Achievement Award.

“I am excited by this opportunity to serve the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering,” said Go. “Ken was a wonderful leader who oversaw great growth across our undergraduate and graduate programs and research productivity. I look forward to working with my colleagues to continue this excellence as we look to the future.”

Go received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Notre Dame in 2001 and was a design engineer at General Electric Aviation where he completed the Edison Engineering Development Program and concurrently received a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 2004. After leaving GE Aviation, he completed his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 2008 and joined the Notre Dame faculty.

Now, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame is building a new class of fast, tunable imaging detectors with the ability to capture images of solar wavelengths invisible to the human eye.

“Because the surface of the sun is so hot, we see most of its light just by looking up at the sky,” says , the Frank M. Freimann Professor of and principal investigator of the three-year project. “It also has significant emissions at much longer wavelengths. The more wavelengths we can detect, the more we can learn about what is happening on the sun. The technology we are developing will provide new insights into the physics of solar flares, sunspots and magnetic fields on the sun that contribute to weather on Earth.”

The sun’s surface reaches a temperature of close to 5,800 degrees Celsius (nearly 10,500 degrees Fahrenheit), its light reaching wavelengths around half a micron — not even one millionth of a meter. Based on nanoscale antennas and thermocouples, the new multi-spectral infrared detectors are designed to selectively capture wavelengths from 3 to 100 microns. Bernstein and his team will use that data to determine the temperature of the sun’s lower atmosphere, measure the spectrum of solar flares and gain a better understanding of the role magnetic fields play in solar flare generation.

The detectors will also allow researchers to capture images at those wavelengths and create high frame-rate movies to study the role magnetic fields play in generating solar flares and to predict solar activity that could affect power grid systems and satellite activity.

As part of the NASA-funded project, the team hopes to install the detectors on U.S. satellites.

The high-speed sensors could be used across a wide range of applications, such as aiding navigation of self-driving vehicles, mapping agricultural resources, capturing information about chemical reactions, protecting aircraft from laser attacks, and providing feedback to control manufacturing processes.

The Notre Dame research team includes faculty members , , , and Gergo Szakmany, along with David Garcia, an undergraduate studying electrical engineering.

The team will collaborate with the United States Air Force Research Laboratory and manufacturer Space Micro Inc.

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Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

He returned to Notre Dame as an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 1965 and was named a full professor in 1967. In addition to his teaching and research commitments, he served as department chair from 1978 to 1988. He also served as visiting professor at the Imperial College of Science, Technology��and Medicine in London and visiting professor and scientist at the Kernforschungszentrum in Karlsruhe, Germany. He retired from teaching in 2002, having directed more than 40 graduate students, including 15 doctorate and 25 master’s degree recipients.

Szewczyk was a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics��and member of the American Physical Society, the Society of Sigma Xi, Pi Tau Sigma, Sigma Gamma Tau��and the American Society for��Engineering Education.

For more than 30 years he was also a member of the Algonquin Table at Notre Dame’s University Club, a group of colleagues and lifelong friends with whom he shared many memories.

“When I arrived at the University in 1986, Al Szewczyk was chairman of the department,” said Mihir Sen, professor emeritus of aerospace and mechanical engineering. “He set the tone for collegiality in the department, and he and his wife,��Barbara, often opened their home to faculty members, extending their family to include departmental colleagues and their families.” ��

“Al Szewczyk was an outstanding scholar for whose work I have the deepest admiration. As the department chairman, he was a motivating factor in my decision to come to Notre Dame,” said Flint O. Thomas, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering. “Thirty-two years later, I can say he was responsible for one of the best decisions I ever made.”

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame is developing an to more accurately predict coastal water levels, currents, waves, ice and related flood hazards on Alaska’s coastal floodplains. The team’s work will help Alaskan communities assess threats from a specific storm and determine the potential impact of a flood and evaluate safe evacuation routes.

“The Alaskan coast, an irreplaceable natural and economic resource, encompasses an extensive continental shelf and coastal floodplains,” said , the Joseph and Nona Ahearn Professor of Computational Science and Henry J. Massman Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at Notre Dame. “Strong winter storms, changing sea ice cover, wind waves and the intricacies of air-sea momentum transfer make predicting water levels and flood-related hazards a challenge.”

Alaska’s changing environment, highlighted by sustained warmth, less and more fragmented sea ice and late ice formation and early ice break-up, is also causing problems, Westerink said. For example, sea ice modulates regional storm surge response and can either mitigate storm surge or greatly enhance it. Sea ice can also effectively damp out wind waves. Correctly simulating this complex physics is particularly critical during winter months when the arctic sees its largest and most intense storms.

Westerink and his team will integrate information on surge and tides; wind waves; and ocean temperatures, salinities, and currents; along with sea ice properties by coupling several existing models. Together these models can better account for the combined processes of the ocean around Alaska, producing more accurate forecasts as part of the integrated Alaska Coastal Ocean Forecast System.

“The linkages and interactions between the four existing models will help us better visualize the impact of storm events,” said Westerink. “Each model focuses on a specific process in the environment and will inform the other models, so we’ll be able to span the entire energy spectrum of the ocean. The combined model physics, together with the implementation of high-resolution unstructured computational meshes in the nearshore and coastal floodplains, will produce highly localized results, giving communities a better picture of an event and helping ensure their safety.”

Westerink, will serve as the principal investigator on this project. Other researchers at Notre Dame who will contribute to the project include , research associate professor; , associate professor; Guoming Ling, doctoral research associate; and Mindo Choi, research fellow.

The team also includes researchers from the University of Texas at Austin; The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory; Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan; Alaska Ocean Observing System; Axiom Data Science; NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction; and NOAA’s National Ocean Service — Coast Survey and Development Laboratory.

Project collaborators include the Alaskan Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys and Alaska’s National Weather Service and Weather Forecast Offices. Partners include the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Western Alaska Land Conservation Cooperative, and Alaska’s NOAA National Weather Service Weather Forecast offices. The project is funded by an Integrated Ocean Observing System, Ocean Technology Transition Project Grant.

Westerink is an affiliated member of Notre Dame’s .

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Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

Testing challenges have led to an influx of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 requiring CT scans which have revealed visual signs of the disease, including ground glass opacities, a condition that consists of abnormal lesions, presenting as a haziness on images of the lungs.

“Most patients with coronavirus show signs of COVID-related pneumonia on a chest CT but with the large number of suspected cases, radiologists are working overtime to screen them all,” said , associate professor in the at Notre Dame and the lead researcher on the project.��“We have shown that we can use deep learning — a field of AI — to identify those signs, drastically speeding up the screening process and reducing the burden on radiologists.”��

Shi is working with Jingtong Hu, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, to identify the visual features of COVID-19-related pneumonia through analysis of 3D data from CT scans. The team is working to combine the analysis software with off-the-shelf hardware for a light-weight mobile device that can be easily and immediately integrated in clinics around the country. The challenge, Shi said, is that 3D CT scans are so large, it’s nearly impossible to detect specific features and extract them efficiently and accurately on plug-and-play mobile devices.

“We’re developing a novel method inspired by Independent Component Analysis, using a statistical architecture to break each image into smaller segments,” Shi said, “which will allow deep neural networks to target COVID-related features within large 3D images.”

Shi and Hu are collaborating with radiologists at Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital in China and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where a large number of CT images from COVID-19 pneumonia are being made available. The team hopes to have development completed by the end of the year.

The research is being funded by the National Science Foundation through a Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant.��

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Contact: Jessica Sieff, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-3933, jsieff@nd.edu

Kwang-Tzu Yang, professor emeritus of at the University of Notre Dame, died in his home Wednesday, July 29.

He will be remembered by his students and colleagues for his joy, his genuine smile and his significant contributions to the field of thermal sciences. An article in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, celebrating his 80^th birthday and numerous accomplishments, described his approach to life: “Yet to him it is all simply a search for understanding and a part of the unity of knowledge…and he is always looking for new ways of stimulating the interest of his audience and of getting them to participate in the quest for understanding.”

Yang was born in Suzhou, China, in 1926 and came to the United States in 1948 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. While there, he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1951, master’s degree in 1952 and completed his Ph.D. in 1955 under the supervision of Max Jakob, physicist and pioneer in the field of thermal heat transfer.

Soon after receiving his doctorate, he joined the Notre Dame faculty of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. He was promoted to professor in 1963, served as department chair from 1967 to 1978 and was appointed the Viola D. Hank Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 1986.

He received numerous honors for his contributions to the heat transfer community, including senior editorship of the Journal of Heat Transfer, North American editorship of the International Journal of Experimental Thermodynamics and Fluid Flow, Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award and the Foreign Research Award of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering. He also received the prestigious lifetime achievement award — the Max Jakob Heat Transfer Memorial Award — named for his mentor.

When he retired from Notre Dame in 1998, Yang had graduated a total of 31 Ph.D. students. Since he did not believe in a ‘restful retirement,’ he continued to serve as a guest lecturer at many leading universities throughout Asia, to enjoy his children and grandchildren and to fill his seat as a member of the viola section of the South Bend Symphony.

Early in his career , professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, worked with Yang on several projects and committees. “I learned a lot from K.T. Yang and thoroughly enjoyed our interactions,” Powers said. “He influenced generations of students and faculty at Notre Dame. His wisdom, leadership and scholarship were always leavened with wit, kindness and charity.”

A graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kurtz recently received a three-year Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship supporting his efforts to bridge the gap between classical control theory, formal methods��and robotics.

“Today’s best legged robots work well under certain conditions, but they perform poorly in unstructured environments outside the lab,” Kurtz said.

“If we want to be able to use them in dangerous and uncertain environments, robots must be able to better mimic the way humans and animals walk, especially over uneven ground when balance is critical.”

Current control algorithms — mathematical instructions written into code to achieve a task, like avoiding obstacles or balancing without falling — for legged locomotion are complex and require extensive hand-tuning by the robot’s operators.

Kurtz connects the simple models most roboticists use to control legged robots with more complete physics-based models. These mathematical connections enable robots to recover from larger push disturbances and walk over more difficult terrain. The connections may even provide clues to how animals move so effectively over land.

Kurtz is continuing his work with his adviser, , professor of electrical engineering��and , assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, to design safe and effective control methods for humanoid and quadruped robots.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in American women, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women, according to the American Cancer Society. It claimed the lives of more than 41,000 women in the United States in 2019, and changed the lives of 3.5 million breast cancer survivors.

At the University of Notre Dame, a research team led by , assistant professor of and an expert in biomedical optical sensing and imaging, hopes to revolutionize breast cancer treatment by developing the first “smart” breast marker clip.

“As researchers, we were seeking a way to provide the most relevant and timely information possible to indicate that a tumor or metastasis was either responding to or becoming resistant to treatment,” said��O’Sullivan. “Since marker clips were already routinely introduced in breast tumors, we began to envision ways to create ‘smart’ versions of these markers that could provide that information in near real-time so they could be used to optimize treatment at the earliest possible opportunity.”

About the size of a sesame seed, breast marker clips are commonly placed in the body during a biopsy, where breast tissue was removed. The biologically-safe clip “marks” the biopsy area and can be seen on post-biopsy mammograms to more quickly identify the affected tissue.

O’Sullivan and his team are developing a wireless, low-power, light-based sensor the size of standard breast marker clips. However, instead of simply marking the place of the abnormal tissue, the sensor continuously measures the composition of the surrounding breast tissue — without potentially toxic contrast agents or ionizing radiation — and relays it to a handheld device, similar to a glucose monitor.

Information obtained from the smart clip would allow physicians to quickly access and respond to the data regarding the regression or progression of the disease and personalize treatment for each patient based on the data received from the smart clip.

The clip could also be used to monitor benign breast lesions that are at high risk of becoming cancerous. This would decrease the number of mammograms and scans employing radioactive tracers that a woman would typically need to undergo for her physician to obtain comparable information about a lesion.

In addition to fabricating a functional smart breast clip system, the team will demonstrate the safety of the clip — to ensure that the low-power device does not affect tumor growth — and, using mouse models, validate that the smart clip can track how a tumor responds during chemotherapy.

The team includes Alicia Wei, a student in the ; Siyuan Zhang, the Nancy Dee Associate Professor of Cancer Research at the Mike and Josie Harper Cancer Research Institute and associate professor of biological sciences at Notre Dame; and Joshua R. Smith, the Milton and Delia Zeutschel Professor in Entrepreneurial Excellence and director of the Sensor Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington.

A team of Notre Dame engineering researchers has been from the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE/NETL) to design, develop and test a one-step, plasma-assisted catalytic process for direct conversion of natural gas to liquid chemicals.

DOE/NETL focuses on applied research for the clean production and use of domestic energy resources.

The U.S. relies heavily on domestic natural gas for residential, commercial and industrial energy use. Yet each year, billions of cubic feet of natural gas are wasted when gas is flared (burned off) at collection sites where pipelines are not available.

To capture and transform this valuable resource, Notre Dame researchers envision developing a modular and flexible catalytic process that could be used at collection sites to safely and reliably turn methane into liquid chemicals.

“Low-temperature plasmas can create incredibly reactive chemical environments capable of converting gaseous hydrocarbons into more valuable products,” said Jason C. Hicks associate professor of and lead principal investigator. ��

“We hypothesize that coupling the plasma with the proper catalyst will facilitate production of liquid chemicals from natural gas feeds and reduce the need for flaring.” The liquids could then be more easily transported to be converted into higher value chemicals or fuels, Hicks said.

Co-principal investigators on the project include , professor of ; Casey O’Brien, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering; and William F. Schneider, the H. Clifford and Evelyn A. Brosey Professor of Engineering.