Standing over their robots are, from left, Witch Doctor teammates Paul Grata, Jennifer Villa, Andrea Suarez, B.S.B.E./M.S.B.E. ’11, and Michael Gellatly, B.S.M.E. ’06.

Witch Doctor is a 220-pound robot, which, with its flame-throwing sidekick, Shaman, has fought to destroy other robotic competitors in the second season of ABC’s BattleBots.

Andrea Suarez, B.S.B.E./M.S.B.E. ’11, and Michael Gellatly, B.S.M.E. ’06, are two of the creators behind the robotic duo of Witch Doctor and Shaman, which took part in grueling matches during the BattleBots two-hour season premiere on June 23 and again in the qualifying round on June 30. They came out victorious and lived to battle another day.

The show airs at 8 p.m. Thursdays on ABC. Read more at UM News.

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Pen Ultimate

Photo: Julien Lanoo

Using 10,000 pens, Landolf Rhode-Barbarigos, an assistant professor of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at the University of Miami, along with AAU Anastas and Yann Antere, fashioned “The BIC Structure,” an experimental suspended pavilion, for the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures 2015 Symposium on Future Visions in Amsterdam. “The BIC Cristal pen was obviously not designed to be implemented structurally,” state the work’s creators. “However, like all objects, it has mechanical and aesthetic properties that could change its function. This project is not about the object itself, but more about the process transforming its initial function.” It’s also about broadening perspectives on recycling, reusing, and sustainability.

Disease Gene Discovery

UM researchers discovered and characterized a previously unknown disease gene linked to the degeneration of optic and peripheral nerve fibers, which has implications for all forms of neurodegeneration, including Lou Gehrig’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The study is published in the journal Nature Genetics. “This finding builds on our discovery of MFN2 as a major disease gene in this area over 10 years ago,” says Stephan Züchner, professor and chair of the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human Genetics at the Miller School of Medicine and a senior author of the study with assistant professor of biology Julia E. Dallman. Investigators from nine universities and research institutions in the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom collaborated on the effort.

Boon for Big Data

The University of Miami, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the University of Cincinnati were awarded a $20 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to create a center that will integrate and analyze large, diverse datasets of cellular signatures as part of the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative. The award, of which there is only one in the nation, is to establish a Data Coordination and Integration Center for the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures program, a large-scale effort to study the molecular underpinnings of disease compared with healthy cellular programming. “Our center will facilitate the processing of enormous amounts of data that will lead researchers across a broad spectrum to make key discoveries,” explains UM principal investigator Stephan Schürer, associate professor of molecular and celular pharmacology at the Miller School and interim program director of drug discovery at the Center for Computational Science.

Autism and Zebra Fish

Biologist Julia E. Dallman was the lead investigator for a study that pinpointed where and when two genes associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affect the brain. By manipulating the SHANK3 and SYNGAP1 genes in zebra fish embryos, which are transparent and develop outside the mother, researchers were able to gain “an in vivo perspective on how ASD genetic variants impact neural circuit development in embryos,” she explains. “Our work begins to address a major gap in our current understanding of ASD.” Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Professor of Human Genetics at the Miller School, is co-author of the study, which appears in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

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New Engineering dean brings distinguished career, collaborative approach

Dean Jean-Pierre Bardet directed UTA’s Urban Water Institute. Photos: Andrew Innerarity

After Los Angeles suffered a series of disastrous water main breaks in 2009, city officials turned to Jean-Pierre Bardet—then professor and chair of the University of Southern California’s civil and environmental engineering department—to lead a team of experts in helping to uncover the cause of the ruptures.

During a national search earlier this year, the University of Miami tapped this renowned civil engineer to take the helm at the College of Engineering.

Dean Bardet, whose professional interests range from earthquake engineering and tsunamis to geomechanics, civil infrastructure systems, and megacities, started August 15. He succeeds James M. Tien, the college’s dean since 2007, who remains on the engineering faculty.

Before UM, Bardet had served as dean of the University of Texas at Arlington’s College of Engineering, during which time enrollment, research expenditures, and fundraising hit record highs. Most recently, he was director of UTA’s Urban Water Institute, whose mission is to transform North Texas’s water-related challenges into opportunities by innovating sustainable solutions that affect the economy, people, and environment.

Bardet sees the work he did as director of the institute as very relevant to Miami and looks forward to fostering close collaborations with other schools and colleges on projects that will create “a nexus of engineering excellence with other disciplines,” he says. “Engineering in the 21st century demands not only creative and analytical skills but also compassion and collaboration to answer global issues.”

Educated in engineering in Lyon, France, Bardet received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology. During his 28 years as a professor at USC, he founded the Center on Megacities, a multidisciplinary effort to prepare and sustain the world’s largest cities for future challenges. He also served as chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, which was named after a $17 million gift from a real estate developer.

President Julio Frenk says Bardet’s “extensive experience in engineering, academic administration, and community building will help to engage our students, faculty, and external partners in transformational learning and research with real-world applications.”

Bardet’s research is widely published in scientific journals. He belongs to the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists, Tau Beta Pi: The Engineering Honor Society, and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He has authored or co-authored six books, including a textbook called Experimental Soil Mechanics. He has received numerous awards, including from the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering Science and Technology, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Science Foundation.

“Miami as a gateway to the Americas poses challenging opportunities for greater collaborations with the diverse students and academic institutions in the region,” says Bardet, who moved to Miami this summer with his wife, Olga, and their 4-year-old daughter, Katherine. “UM is a great place to be, and it is the right time to be here.”

The post Seeking Sustainable Solutions appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

Magic Leap’s Rony Abovitz, B.S.B.M.E. ’94, M.S.B.M.E. ’96. Photo by Tom Stepp

Being a successful entrepreneur, he explained, is like jumping off a high cliff with a bag of parts and building the airplane that will save you on the way down.

“Bold means you can’t be timid,” Abovitz, B.S.M.E. ’94, M.S.B.M.E. ’96, told a rapt audience of engineering students, professors, and others February 23 at the University of Miami’s Newman Alumni Center. “If you’re going to do something, you just got to do it. You’ve got to be unafraid. If you’re not bold, don’t do it.”

“And,” added the featured speaker at the College of Engineering’s 2015 M. Lewis Temares Entrepreneurship Forum, “make sure you build the plane before you hit the ground.”
Read more at UM News.

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A glimpse inside four UM-fueled,
eco-friendly housing projects

More than just a place to rest your head, home should be a safe haven. But these days, we worry whether the paint on our picket fence is toxic. We fear that our dream house may be spewing waste or simply wasting resources. In need of a little green-spiration, we found four diverse dwellings to highlight. Each of these eco-friendly abodes addresses environmental concerns with elegant, innovative, and livable solutions, proving that sustainability, like charity, can indeed begin at home.

Presidential Preserve

Christopher Poehlmann’s custom light fixture for Ibis House is made of discarded plumbing pipes. Photo by Donna Victor

Its eye-catching interior includes a light fixture assembled of discarded plumbing pipes, a backsplash fashioned from recycled cans, wallpaper made of Sunday funnies, and floors crafted from Florida sand and seashells.Ibis House, the University of Miami president’s new home, is green down to its last detail. Completed in August 2012, it recently earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.Low-E glass windows block solar heat, a white roof and walls reduce heat load, and roof-installed solar panels heat water. High-efficiency water fixtures, safer paint coatings, nontoxic pest-control products, and green cleaning agents are among its many other eco-friendly features.A few new custom pieces, such as a striking Odegard rug, have been mixed with furnishings recycled from the president’s previous home to conserve University resources.

Ibis House is the final green jewel in the 32-acre crown of Smathers Four Fillies Farm, a sustainably built community for University faculty and administrators located in Miami-Dade County’s Village of Pinecrest. The 31 single-family homes sit on land bequeathed to UM by philanthropist, horticulturist, and longtime UM trustee Frank Smathers Jr., J.D. ’34. He and his wife bought the lush estate in 1967 and named it in honor of their four daughters (thus the “four fillies”).

Four Fillies’ mango grove is “the single most important mango collection in the world,” notes Bruce Greer, chairman of the board of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, which has partnered with UM to maintain and preserve the property’s more than 21 acres of fruit groves and natural hammock.

The community—built on 11 acres, with two-thirds of the parcel left intact—earned the Urban Land Institute’s Woolbright Dream Green Reality Award, which recognizes projects that reduce environmental impact through energy and water efficiency, use of green building materials, and clean indoor air quality.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Although this one-story may look similar to others in the neighborhood, life is definitely greener on the Jones side of the fence.In 2009, Richard K. Jones, B.Arch. ’91, M.B.A. ’01, and his wife, Dawn Jones, B.B.A. ’90, completed an extensive remodeling project that earned a Platinum rating—the highest obtainable—under the Green Building Council’s LEED certification system. The upgrades also earned the family a tax break from Uncle Sam.

Green upgrades at the Jones household included a 100 percent recycled-paper countertop and high-efficiency appliances. Photo by Tom Stepp

Jones, the associate vice president for facilities design and construction at UM, incorporated into his South Miami residence some of the basic sustainability strategies he’s used in spearheading green facilities at UM such as the LEED-certified Clinical Research Building on the Miller School of Medicine campus.“We looked at almost every aspect of our home, from the air-conditioning system and insulation to the landscaping and finishes,” Jones says.

Improvements included a reflective white roof to keep the house cooler, countertops made of recycled paper, solar tubes, LED lights, drought-resistant landscaping, and much more.

The renovation added 1,100 square feet to the 1,200-square-foot mid-century-style house the couple had purchased 11 years earlier—before their three children were born. Even with nearly twice the living space, says Jones, the family’s annual energy consumption has dropped 73 percent. He estimates that, compared with a traditionally built house of similar size, they save $3,500 a year in energy costs.

Ian McKeown, A.B. ’07, M.S. ’09, sustainability coordinator in UM’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety, applauds the platinum standard Jones has set by taking his work home with him. “He’s willing to make a commitment not only to helping the University be more sustainable, but to his own home and lifestyle,” McKeown says. “Anyone can learn a lesson from this.”

Grid Relief

The Net-Zero unit’s drinking water still comes from the city. Courtesy James Englehardt

If James Englehardt has anything to do with it, treated wastewater will be coming soon to a tap near you.But first the environmental engineering professor is perfecting an experimental water treatment process on campus.

Backed by a $2 million National Science Foundation grant, Englehardt is leading an interdisciplinary effort to develop and demonstrate a low-energy, low-emission system for recycling residential wastewater in one of the University Village apartments.

The “Design for Autonomous Net-Zero Water Buildings,” known more informally as the “Zero Water Project,” went online this semester. Currently four students reside in this historic home laboratory. Their apartment’s novel system collects used water from sinks, laundry, showers, the dishwasher, and toilets, and treats it to above drinking water standards with calcium carbonate, natural ozone, hydrogen peroxide, and ethanol. Tested three times daily, the treated water returns to the test community’s taps for all uses but cooking and drinking. A rainwater cistern and city source supply those needs.

The project team includes students and faculty from the College of Engineering, School of Architecture, College of Arts and Sciences, and Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.

Englehardt’s co-principal investigator, Kamal Premaratne, professor of electrical and computer engineering, is developing smart technology to detect risk to the system in real-time.

UM cultural anthropologist Kenny Broad, along with a psychologist and two architects, is assessing potential motivations for adopting this kind of technology. “We’re learning how to explain and present these systems to the public so they can be accepted,” says Englehardt.

Though not yet completely “off the water grid,” this preliminary demo is intended to point the way toward a global model for conserving energy, saving water, and reducing burden on our natural resources.

According to Englehardt, South Florida’s treated wastewater currently meets 87 of the 93 numerical drinking water requirements, but instead of entering a direct potable reuse system like the one in University Village, it gets pumped into the ocean or deep saltwater aquifers. That means it has to be treated again and reconveyed to users at great energy expenditure and expense. Water flowing to and from centralized treatment plants uses about 3 percent of this nation’s total electricity, he notes.

Those resources could be better spent getting rid of pharmaceuticals and chemicals in our water supplies, he contends, adding, “We can learn from ecosystems by treating waste as a resource.”

Eco Park

Plans for the eco-tent, situated at the edge of Florida Bay, call for solar lights. Rendering Courtesy School of Architecture

In 2005 a one-two punch from Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma damaged a 107-room hotel and 12 cottages in Everglades National Park so severely that officials decided to demolish what was left of them. Ever since, visitors have had to pitch tents or use an RV to camp at the park’s southernmost Flamingo section on the bay.

But demand for permanent sleeping facilities remained, says Park Superintendent Dan B. Kimball. “What we heard loud and clear was that there were family traditions based on staying overnight, and people wanted us to return to that tradition,” he adds.

The park took a giant step toward meeting those demands this past Decem-ber, when it unveiled a 200-square-foot eco-tent designed and built by University of Miami architecture students.

The furnished dwelling, which had a waiting list of 80 by its first day, sleeps four comfortably for $16 per night. It boasts bamboo and recycled-plastic flooring; screening that captures breezes yet keeps mosquitoes out; and a roof fashioned from a durable hand-sewn fabric.

Rocco Ceo, the School of Architecture professor who co-teaches the semester-long Design Build Studio, says the idea was to give the park “something that would minimally impact the landscape while supporting the park’s mission and promoting environmental awareness.”

One of the materials used, for example, is heat-treated pine, which lasts longer than its chemically treated counterpart.

Throughout the 2012 spring semester, 11 fifth-year students designed, constructed, and tested the eco-tent on UM’s Coral Gables campus. They disassembled the finished product for transportation to Everglades National Park. A generous grant from the South Florida National Parks Trust funded the project.

Violet Battat, B.Arch. ’12, who took the lead finding a suitable roof fabric, decided on a strong solution-dyed polymer yarn material intended to withstand water, mildew, and even vultures. Michael Galea, B.Arch. ’12, made sure the custom hardware connected the eco-tent’s poles properly. “The biggest challenge was measuring 50 times and cutting once because we had one chance to get everything correct,” he says.

Pleased with UM’s prototype, park officials would like to build 20 more. Says Kimball: “To team up with the University of Miami and young students who came up with something that’s innovative and functional and also beautiful is fabulous for the park.”

The eco-tent is open from mid-November to mid-April.

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Living Colors

Saramati Narasimhan
Photo by Richard Patterson

Creative expression gives engineering student Saramati Narasimhan a path out of pain.

One bright Saturday in August, Saramati Narasimhan stood on campus sheathed in a plastic Glad bag as friends armed with paint bottles squirted a rainbow of fluorescent colors all over her.

“I had to tell them to stop flinging paint into my eyes,” Narasimhan, 21, recalls with a laugh.

In minutes she was dripping tropical shades of pink, blue, green, and yellow—the line blurred between artist and art.

The celebratory project marked Narasimhan’s triumphant return to the University of Miami after almost a year spent struggling to move.

Narasimhan used photos of her paint-splattered form taken that day to promote her Art for a Cause charity. She says she began creating art while bed-ridden. Despite what she describes as excruciating pain, she found that she could sketch and paint.

Born and raised in Miami to Indian parents who are both ’Canes, Narasimhan says, “UM is in my blood.” Her father, Ram Narasimhan, Ph.D. ’88, is the director of advising and an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the UM College of Engineering, where she is studying biomedical engineering.

Narasimhan was always active. She danced salsa, played piano and violin, and biked up to 20 miles a night.

But in October of her sophomore year, everything changed. “It felt like my bones were breaking when I took a step,” she says. “To go from that level of activity to being completely handicapped was a drastic jump, to say the least. Moving was a nightmare.”

At Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, doctors worked to diagnose her sudden condition and alleviate its symptoms. They had no clear answers.

During that dark time, a visiting friend surprised Narasimhan with a sketch pad and colored pencils. “I would do a lot of art just to keep occupied,” she recalls. “The other patients admired my work and wanted to buy it, but I couldn’t take money from people with cancer.”

So Narasimhan, who says she has a chronic pain disorder, began to use her art for philanthropy, launching Art for a Cause. She sells hand-painted henna tattoos and original art, advertising that all proceeds go to treat children with cancer.

She’s also working overtime to graduate by December. Her own unresolved illness managed by holistic treatments, Narasimhan says she’s acutely aware of the profound duty and potential affiliated with her chosen academic path: “I have an entirely new appreciation for the fact that my work might one day offer a solution for someone else who is desperate for a cure.”

—Robin Shear

VIDEO: Saramati Narasimhan Body Painting at the University of Miami

The post Student Spotlight appeared first on University of Miami: Miami Magazine.

Citizen ’Cane

Rocking the Red Planet

Photo by NASA / JPL Caltech

From her undergraduate days studying mechanical and aerospace engineering in Miami through her master’s degree projects at M.I.T., Missouri-raised Erisa K. Hines, B.S.M.E. ’02, dreamed of exploring space.

That opportunity arose in 2006, when she was hired by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. Just five years later she was working on the agency’s largest Mars rover yet, Curiosity.

Hines, an attitude control systems engineer, was on the team tasked with keeping the spacecraft on target—aligned with Earth for communications and the sun for solar power. She developed commands to communicate with the spacecraft during its eight-and-a-half month, 354-million-mile cruise towards Mars.

Hines shared the spotlight with hundreds of other “blue shirts” in JPL’s Pasadena control room as they famously erupted in cheers and tears when the rover’s 13,000-mile-per-hour entry, descent, and landing phase (dubbed “seven minutes of terror”) ended seamlessly in the wee hours of August 5, 2012.

The surprise, Hines notes, was how smooth the landing was: “We did a few dress rehearsals and, each time, something went wrong. When the time came for the actual landing, it was flawless. The rover hit within 1.5 miles of the landing target, well within the success parameters.”

As keynote speaker at the 2012 College of Engineering Homecoming Breakfast, Hines said her own trajectory was guided by supportive family and mentors. “There are probably at least three professors in this room who remember me crying in their office during my first two years, while I was trying to figure out how engineering works,” she shared. By junior year, though, her advisor insisted that she apply to graduate school at M.I.T. “That’s how much he believed in me.”

Another mentor was her grandfather Robert H. Colledge, ’53, who died two weeks before the landing. “He was always proud of Erisa’s many accomplishments,” notes his widow, Barbara Colledge, B.Ed. ’59.

Now, with her cosmic career launched, Hines is on the surface mobility team, which includes simulated Martian terrain testing intended to help Curiosity scour the Red Planet for answers to vast questions. “Dream big,” urges Hines. “These moments are why we do what we do.”

—Annette Gallagher, B.S.C. ’94

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Tackling unprecedented dilemmas in the robotic age

Amir R. Rahmani, a UM College of Engineering assistant professor, displays 
a micro aerial vehicle. Photo by Catharine Skipp, A.B. ’79

Robotic aircraft and drones, unmanned machines with names like Predator and Reaper—in our brave new world, high-tech robots are becoming increasingly prominent in war, law enforcement, and many aspects of civilian society. The legal, ethical, and policy questions raised by such advances were addressed during We Robot, an international conference inaugurated at the University of Miami School of Law in April 2012.

The conference’s director, A. Michael Froomkin, the school’s Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law, came up with the idea for the event, taking inspiration for its name from the title of Isaac Asimov’s 1950 book I, Robot. The objective, Froomkin told Miami Law magazine, was to “start a conversation now between people who make the robots and those who make the rules.”

The weekend forum gathered experts in robot theory, design, and development, as well as those who influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

One of those presenters, Brigadier General Richard M. O’Meara, professor of international law in the Division of Global and Homeland Security Affairs at Rutgers University, said the field of military robotics has grown so fast that there has been little time in which to “consider the legal, ethical, and moral appropriateness” of their use. He recommended “creating new international treaties and practices, amending old ones, and forging new ethics for the use of new weapons.”

Video Archive of We Robot 2012

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