INSIDE Dean’s Message ............................................2 ENGINEERING Alumni inducted ...........................................3 RoMeLa wins RoboCup ...............................4 CAREER awards ...........................................6 Foundry dedicated .......................................8 news VIRGINIA TECH COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING SPRING 2012 Feng unveils HokieSpeed, a supercomputer for the masses okieSpeed, the new super another in and across large metal computer from Virginia racks, each roughly 6.5 feet tall, to Tech’s College of Engineer- create a single supercomputer that Hing, debuted in December 2011 occupies half a row of racks in a vast under the guidance of Wu Feng, as- university computer machine room. A sociate professor with the computer majority of the supercomputer’s fund- science and electrical and computer ing came from the National Science engineering departments. He said Foundation. HokieSpeed was Virginia Tech’s lat- Feng sees HokieSpeed as a est war horse in the research arena. tool that one day will be readily avail- “This instrument will empower fac- able to the public. In particular, small ulty, students, and staff across disci- businesses and researchers from plines to tackle problems previously smaller universities can gain access viewed as intractable or that required to technology previously available heroic efforts and significant domain- only to well-funded corporations or specific expertise to solve.” universities. The supercomputer, as of press “The next frontier is to take time, boasted a single-precision high-performance computing, in Wu Feng, associate peak of 455 teraflops, or 455 trillion particular supercomputers such as professor of computer operations per second, and a dou- HokieSpeed, and personalize it for science and electrical and ble-precision peak of 240 teraflops, the masses,” he said. computer engineering, or 240 trillion operations per second. HokieSpeed is 22 times faster spearheaded design and That was enough computational ca- and yet a quarter of the size of Sys- construction of HokieSpeed. pability to put HokieSpeed at No. 96 tem X, the first major supercomputer on the latest Top500 List, the indus- developed at Virginia Tech. That try-standard ranking of the world’s using less energy to do more. Feng Located at Virginia Tech’s Cor- machine, debuted in 2003, placed 500 fastest supercomputers, and No. also heads the Green500 List, with co- porate Research Center, the $1.4 mil- the university among the world’s top 11 on the Green500 List, a compila- founder Kirk W. Cameron, associate lion machine contains 209 nodes, or computational research facilities and tion of supercomputers that excel at professor of computer science. separate computers, connected to one garnered national headlines. Duma’s helmet impact research expands, gains national attention During the past year, Stefan Duma expanded his derstanding of child brain biomechan- research of football helmet impacts and the prevention ics and will lead to improvements in of concussions from the college level to youth football, youth practice and game techniques and launched a new helmet safety ranking system. He as well as the development of im- also announced a new study to instrument and map proved helmets specifically designed head impact exposures of youth football players ages for children. Each team will receive 6 to 18 years, starting with a program that will instru- new helmets outfitted with special ment more than 240 helmets on six different teams in impact sensors, similar to those used North Carolina and Virginia. by the Virginia Tech football team The new program, announced in late February, since 2003, and then again with the comes on the heels of the first-ever publication of data 2011 study that focused on the 7- and on head impacts from youth football players. That 8-year-old players of Montgomery paper was published in a recent Annals of Biomedical County’s Auburn Elementary School Engineering, available online for free download. The football team. Each time a player im- manuscript includes the details of more than 700 head pacts his head during play or practice, impacts measured on 7- and 8-year-old youth football data is recorded and wirelessly down- Stefan Duma tests football helmets in his lab at Virginia Tech. players, and was previewed in a Jan. 30, 2012, epi- loaded to a computer on the sideline. sode of ABC’s “The View” featuring television journalist “This new study for 2012 allows for dramatically Duma predicts more than 50,000 head impacts Stone Phillips. Its findings: some impacts endured by increased sample size and head exposure mapping will be recorded through 2012 as part of the KIDS the children reached magnitudes considered high even for all age groups,” said Duma, professor of biomedical study. Findings from the 2011 Auburn study, in which for college players. engineering and head of the Virginia Tech – Wake For- researchers collected data on more than 750 hits. The Duma says the new study, called the Kinematics est University School of Biomedical Engineering and highest recorded impact was measured at 100-g, as in of Impact Data Set (KIDS), will greatly enhance the un- Sciences. See Helmet, page 8 Signature Engineering Building scheduled for 2013 opening The Signature Engineering Building has been a dream project of the College of Engineering since 2005, de- signed to alleviate crowded academic space for our undergraduate engineering students and provide state-of- the-art, highly specialized laboratories that will support hands-on problem solving and active learning in the en- gineering disciplines. In 2011, the building became reality. In April, we received a university-record single private donation of $25 million, architecture plans were finalized, and ground was broken in September. In fall 2013, we will open the doors of the Signature Engineering Building and welcome a new class of future engineers, scientists and leaders. For more on the Signature Engineering Building, turn to Page 2. newsENGINEERING CC OO LL LL EE GG EE NN OO TT EE SS Dean’s Message Signature Engineering Building, new programs on the horizon The past year has brought This is $50 million more than our $155 million target. ready have held several conversations with faculty, staff, much excitement at the College of Speaking of finances, in our annual report to the and administrators that produced five themes central to Engineering of Virginia Tech. American Society of Engineering Education, we report- our future growth: 1) provide a high quality environment After years of planning and ed $152.7 million in research expenditures for fiscal year for teaching, learning, and research; 2) recruit, educate, fundraising, construction of our new 2011. This is a college record, and up 13 percent from and graduate a high-quality and diverse undergraduate $100 million Signature Engineering $134.8 million in fiscal year 2010. student body; 3) recruit, educate, and graduate a high- Building began in September 2011. There is much else to tell from the past year, and to quality and diverse graduate student body; 4) address If you’ve been to campus during talk about for the coming years. problems of regional, national, and global importance; the past six months, or watched the In November 2011, the Virginia Tech Board of Visi- and 5) support a diverse community of faculty, staff, and constant live web camera at tors approved a nuclear engineering program for mas- students. www.eng.vt.edu/seb, you have ters and doctoral degrees. As well, two new undergradu- During the past six years the College of Engineer- seen the frame of the building rise Richard Benson ate minors, biomedical engineering, and interdisciplinary ing has been well served by the 2006-2012 strategic from the ground in just a few short engineering and science, are currently working their way plan. In that period we have seen great growth in the months. As of this writing, we were three weeks ahead through university governance. productivity and external reputation of the college, of schedule, thanks in part to a mild winter. After the The Institute for Critical Technology and Applied sometimes in the face of great economic adversity. I am facility opens, it will serve as the centerpiece of the col- Science (ICTAS), under the leadership of Roop Ma- confident that we will create a strategic plan for 2012- lege, and a teaching tool for our students. hajan, expanded its facilities in 2011 to include ap- 2018 that will be of equal value in setting an enhanced The efforts of several present and past members proximately 7,000 new square feet in the new Virginia 21st Century course for the College of Engineering. of the College of Engineering Advisory Board during the Tech Research Center in Arlington. The location is a As you read the following pages, you will see we past five years helped spur this building to reality. Their short distance from many leading federal science and already are blazing great new trails for the future. From efforts ranged from fundraising to helping gain attention research agencies and many high-technology compa- engineering electric cars to building robots that can fight and support for the building from the Virginia General nies. This new facility is in addition to the three buildings fires aboard ships, making the sport of football safer for Assembly and Governor’s Office. Our success was truly ICTAS occupies on campus, including the ICTAS head- players from the elementary school level to the NFL, our based on a team effort. Our message for support of quarters at the corner of Turner and Stanger streets, the students and faculty are the shining example of Virginia the building and for our college as a whole was and is Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Lab at Vir- Tech’s mantra: Invent the Future. simple and constant: engineering is a driver in the well- ginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center, and the newer Sincerely, being and future enhancement of the state’s economy, ICTAS-II in the university’s life sciences corridor.