Researching how to stimulate nerve regeneration. Building unique, cable-connected structures to shelter future moon dwellers. Improving semiconductor lasers so compact discs can hold four times as much information. These are some of the cutting-edge research projects even freshmen pursue at The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Engineering.
"One benefit of studying at a great research university is the opportunity to learn with professional engineers contributing at the very forefront of their fields, " explains engineering Dean Ben G. Streetman. "Our teaching mission benefits enormously from state-of-the-art research." The following outlines some of the research UT undergraduates are carrying forward.
REGROWING SEVERED NERVES -- James Camp, a just-graduated chemical engineering student from Georgetown, Tex., spent three undergraduate semesters working with tissue engineering pioneer Dr. Christine Schmidt. Schmidt’s research team is pursuing various avenues of research to coax severed nerves to regrow.
Previous research has shown that an electrical charge helps stimulate extension of nerve cells. Schmidt and her students are investigating polypyrrole, an electrically conducting plastic that could provide a support structure to help bridge the ends of severed nerves. A patch on the patient’s skin could be used to deliver a slight electrical charge over the injured area, stimulating the damaged nerve to regrow across the structure. Camp’s particular part of the research has focused on adding negatively charged hyaluronic acid, a natural structural molecule, to the positively charged polypyrrole films. Hyaluronic acid is known to aid in wound healing, nerve generation, and blood vessel reconstruction in the body.
Camp is very enthusiastic about his research experience. "Usually, unless you’re in graduate school, laboratory experience is limited to following a very specific list of instructions. But in true research like this, you’re given a blank piece of paper and told to fill it in," Camp relates. He believes his research experience helped gain his graduate school admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall. "Graduate schools put a lot of value on independent work," he noted. Camp will pursue a doctorate in bioengineering and hopes to someday be a professor himself.
BUILDING TENSEGRITY STRUCTURES --Jacinda Collins of Sugarland, Tex., and Robert Hermosillo of El Paso, both architectural engineering majors, have worked several semesters with Dr. Katherine Liapi on her "tensegrity" project. Tensegrity, a word coined by geodesic dome inventor Buckminster Fuller, is a contraction of "tensional " and "integrity." It refers to a type of structure consisting of cables and bars, such that bars are connected only to cables, and not to each other. As a result, bars look like they are floating inside a network of cables.
When simple three-dimensional tensegrity units, which have a square or triangular basis, are combined, the resulting structures offer several advantages. The lightweight, collapsible and portable components snap together quickly with simple tools, so that even a large structure can be completed in a few hours, without a crane or a massive anchorage system. Tensegrity structures are ideal for covering large open spaces such as stadiums and swimming pools, for temporary or emergency structures such as storage facilities or medical stations, and for folding structures in space.
The UT tensegrity team focuses on geometric design, computer visualization of the structures’ shape, joint design, methods for collapsing and erecting the structures, and ways to attach lightweight fabric to the structures. Collins, who was a childhood fan of LEGOs and who describes tensegrity as "an innovative way of building things," has conducted preliminary studies on how to erect and collapse a tensegrity spherical dome. Hermosillo has built several small-scale tensegrity models, and Kevin Fagan, an architectural engineering major from St. Louis, Mo., who has just joined the group, will be working on the geometric configuration of a cylindrical tensegrity dome.
Liapi notes that tensegrity models, in addition to teaching students structural and aesthetic concepts, offer an ideal way to help students develop three-dimensional perception, an important skill for architectural engineers. "You can’t think in two dimensions with tensegrity," she points out. She has all her students doing hands-on tensegrity projects as early as their sophomore year.
IMPROVING SEMICONDUCTOR LASERS--Steve Turini, a chemical engineering major from Houston, spent the summer processing gallium nitride, a semiconductor material, under the guidance of computer and electronics engineering professor Dr. Russell Dupuis. Gallium nitride is a crystalline solid used in semiconductor device manufacture (for example in LEDs, which are used in computer "on" lights) and in laser technology. The special lure of gallium nitride is the ultraviolet light it produces when excited by electrical current or light. Current-day compact-disc (CD) players, digital versatile disc (DVD) players, and other electronics use semiconductor lasers from the red and infrared end of the spectrum; however, the wavelength of ultraviolet light is half of those colors, so twice as many microscopic waves can fit into the same space. This translates into a fourfold increase in data storage— or compact discs that could someday hold four times the information.
Gallium nitride has other advantages. At the earth’s surface, it is "blind" to solar rays, making it perfect for use in detecting fires, missile and rocket exhaust, and jet engine emission. It will also function at higher temperatures than silicon. This could result in smaller computers, since cooling areas now require a majority of a computer monitor’s interior space. In addition, more accurate computerized sensors such as those found in car engines would result if the sensors could be moved closer to the hot, moving parts they monitor.
Turini is equally pleased with the practical education he received through his undergraduate research. "I’ve learned more here through hands-on experience than in most of my chemistry and electronic engineering classes."
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About the Cockrell School of Engineering:
The Cockrell School ranks among the top ten engineering programs in the United States and aspires to move into the top five. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty members elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the Cockrell School's more than 7,000 students work with many of the world's finest engineering educators and researchers. This environment prepares graduates to become engineering leaders and innovators working for the betterment of society.