Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society Proceedings of a Symposium (2023) / Chapter Skim
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3 People Who Brought About Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society
3 People Who Brought About Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society
Pages 21-42
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From page 21... ...
, efforts to improve K–12 and undergraduate STEM education, and work at all levels of the education and career trajectories to improve the diversity of engineering. "This session is about people who have applied engineering principles to some of society's most challenging problems," said Edward Frank, cofounder and chief executive officer of Brilliant Lime, who moderated the session.
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From page 22... ...
once said, "the technology led the science in a sort of inverse linear model." Or, as Khargonekar observed, "Moore's law was a vision that led to major fundamental advances because we wanted to follow that vision." The second example he described involves the origins of Google. In 1994 NSF launched a program called the Digital Library Initiative with the ambitious goal of making all human knowledge in libraries digitally available.
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From page 23... ...
In particular, Khargonekar cited applications in biomedicine, where 3D printing is being used to make dental implants, tissue constructs, pharmaceuticals, and many other biomedical devices. "What's the lesson in all this?
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From page 24... ...
"I want you to go to your heart -- what do you really want to do -- and bring your creativity and your mind and heart together, and I'm here to make it possible." Finally, Khargonekar noted that his own work on control systems theory, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, renewable energy, smart grids, machine learning, and other areas has been supported by NSF, and he received an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award early in his career. "NSF has been the foundation of my research career from the very beginning." THE CARBON QUEEN In her 2022 book Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus, Maia Weinstock, deputy editorial director of MIT News, writes about "a brilliant materials scientist and engineer who earned the nickname queen of carbon for her highly influential discoveries relating to the properties of carbon, although she's certainly studied other materials as well, particularly semimetals." Throughout her nearly 60-year career Dresselhaus was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, later earning an appointment in the Department of Physics as well.
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From page 25... ...
The two would talk on the way to class; from Fermi she learned the importance of having a broad foundation in one's chosen field and how to change direction when necessary. In 1958 she married Gene Dresselhaus, a theoretical solid state physicist who also became one of her closest professional collaborators.
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From page 26... ...
It was instrumental in the discovery of buckyballs: configurations of 60 carbon atoms in a soccer ball–like configuration. She became expert on carbon fibers and carbon nanotubes, which have had engineering applications ranging from sporting equipment to batteries to cancer therapies to gas toxin sensors -- the list "could go on for a long time," said Weinstock.
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From page 27... ...
Obviously, I'll never forget that day." THE INFRASTRUCTURE BEHIND SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ADVANCES "Sometimes the big impacts come from the investments that are made behind the scenes," said Albert Pisano, dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) , adding that NSF has long supported large infrastructure projects that make many scientific and engineering advances possible.
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From page 28... ...
"That is one of our secret advantages to having the best earthquake standards on earth." The engineering of the shake table was itself a "huge endeavor." Electric pumps create pressure in large reservoirs, which release the energy created by the 400-horsepower pumps a thousand times faster, generating 400,000 horsepower of shaking force. Carefully engineered pipes enable the use of a special hydraulic fuel that does not absorb air.
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From page 29... ...
"We have since worked with the state of California to put together retrofit rules so that, without putting people out of business or making people broke, you can correctly retrofit the building in just the right way so that you do not get that catastrophic collapse." Investments in infrastructure like shake tables are essential if people are to survive disasters, Pisano concluded. "These things have a direct impact on saving lives and making our society more resilient." SOCIETAL IMPACTS OF TISSUE ENGINEERING Gilda Barabino, president and professor of biomedical and chemical engineering at Olin College of Engineering, was introduced to the idea of a wavy-walled reactor by a colleague when she was working at Northeastern University.
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From page 30... ...
As an example, Barabino cited an NSF-funded project called the Cross-Disciplinary Initiative for Minority Women Faculty. She and Cheryl Leggon used their involvement in this program to understand and enhance the careers of women of color in academic engineering and to help change the African American experience in engineering.2 Communalism, community building, networking, creating a sense of belonging, and collecting and analyzing longitudinal data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender all proved to be critical in understanding career trajectories and moving forward.
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From page 31... ...
This work is still ongoing." Finally, she mentioned an engineering deans forum on broadening participation, which grew out of discussions among a group of engineering deans who are also members of the Directorate for Engineering Advisory Committee about how to share best practices, network, and build partnerships around broadening participation. "We recognized the unique and special positioning of deans and their ability to provide leadership and create cultural shifts." Women of color are also underrepresented among entrepreneurs, an observation that led to an NSF-funded project, the Forum on Inclusive STEMM Entrepreneurship, designed to elevate the national conversation around broadening participation of underrepresented groups, and particularly women of color, in entrepreneurship.
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From page 32... ...
If a carbon nanotube transfers heat like a cylinder sitting on a plane, "you want to pack some putty or something soft and conformable to expand the width of the line content." He and his research group approached this problem through conformal polymer coatings. In 2011 he founded Carbice Corporation to commercialize the technology, in part through a program called the Georgia Research Alliance, which gave faculty members small grants to explore commercialization.
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From page 33... ...
The creation of Carbice "touched so many people, directly through my lab but also supporters and other people," said Cola. A facility in Atlanta is now "the largest production facility of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes in the world that go into real applications -- satellites, power modules for electric vehicles -- and it started with a 21 year old, with a thick neck and a mustache, doing undergraduate research at Vanderbilt." Cola's achievements led to his receiving the Alan T
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From page 34... ...
By 1993 the network was financially self-sufficient, it provided 24–7 support, and it had added a range of services, including connections to K–12 classrooms, "which was a teacher's first introduction to utilizing the internet." In California, San Diego was still the hub for many connections, but the internet was undergoing "unbelievable growth." Today, it is "an amazing thing to have the world in your pocket," Estrada concluded. In response to a question from the moderator, Estrada noted that in the early days of the internet many different communication protocols existed, but a program director at NSF named Dennis Jennings decided that the new networks being developed should all use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
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TARGETING CANCER CELLS WITH NANOPARTICLES Paula Hammond's interest during high school in making new material systems led her to attend MIT as an undergraduate, which gave her "an opportunity to learn how I can apply basic principles of chemical engineering to design new things." She stayed at the school for her PhD and became a faculty member there, with a focus on using polymers as a means of generating new material systems. Some of her earliest funding was from NSF on the use of polyelectrolytes of opposite charge to build thin films.
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From page 36... ...
"What's really exciting is being able to see them evolve and develop their own ideas." Hammond has participated annually in the MIT summer research program that hosts undergraduates for summer projects, taken part in a Meridian Institute effort to understand technological needs in Kenya and Ghana, chaired an institutewide MIT Initiative for Faculty Race and Diversity, and served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and on the Science Advisory Board of Moderna. COMMUNICATING THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF ENGINEERING TO THE PUBLIC At the conclusion of the session's talks, presenters came together for a roundtable discussion.
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From page 37... ...
For example, Estrada mentioned CERFnet's use of comic books to educate people about the early internet.4 "You have to find a way to make it very simple for people to understand a very complex technology. For us, it was the idea of a comic book character." COMMERCIALIZING TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS In response to a question about commercializing the products of research, Khargonekar noted that commercialization can have multiple pathways, not just one.
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From page 38... ...
Cola also emphasized the importance of financial stability. When he came to Georgia Tech, he had $70,000 in student loans from Vanderbilt, and starting a company enabled him to establish some economic security.
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From page 39... ...
Because who forms a question and what we're studying dictates a good bit about what you get." ANTICIPATING NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES In response to a question about how engineers can think about and forestall the potentially negative consequences of new technologies, Khargonekar recommended thinking about technology in three stages.
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From page 40... ...
The third, which he called "the power stage," is where a technology becomes so ubiquitous that it is a major part of life and society. At that point, it is too difficult to recall a technology that is changing societal power structures.
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From page 41... ...
But everybody can't be expected to do that." Finally, the panelists briefly described what motivated them to pursue engineering, including wanting to build equipment that would not harm workers (Pisano) , wanting to apply chemical engineering to improve health (Barabino)
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