Best wishes for a safe, healthy holiday season. — Jeff Harris & the team at Harris Search Associates The Circuit News from the halls of academic engineering, science, and technology December 2020 Headlines STEM-ingNews thefrom the pandemic halls of academic engineering, science, and technology Campus-based engineers, data scientists target COVID-19 cademic engineering and technology remain at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19, as university-based researchersSeptember pursue 2020 — and deliver — breakthroughs in the detection and mitigation of the virus. Researchers at NorthwesternA University’s McCormick School of Engineering, for example, have Northwestern University developed an AI platform that detects COVID-19 by analyzing X-rays of the lungs. Dubbed DeepCOVID-XR, the machine-learning algorithm proved to be about 10 = times faster and up to 6 percent more accurate than a team of specialized thoracic AI MORE ‘EYES’ radiologists in spotting the disease. The researchers’ findings were published in the The lungs of many COVID-19 November 24 edition of the journal Radiology. “We are not aiming to replace actual patients appear patchy and hazy in X-rays — but so do the lungs testing,” said the study’s senior author, Aggelos Katsaggelos, PhD, the Joseph Cummings Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at of people with pneumonia, Northwestern. “X-rays are routine, safe, and inexpensive. It would heart failure, and various other take seconds for our system to screen a patient and determine if that illnesses. It takes trained eyes patient needs to be isolated.” Meanwhile, scientists at UCLA’s to tell the difference. Now, Samueli School of Engineering have demonstrated that cold though, an algorithm developed atmospheric plasma — an electrically charged gas known as the by researchers at Northwestern fourth state of matter — can kill the novel coronavirus on a variety of University offers another set of surfaces in as little as 30 seconds. According to a study published in ”eyes.” DeepCOVID-XR was Aggelos tested against five experienced Katsaggelos the journal Physics of Fluids, the virus can live for tens of hours on many surfaces, including plastic, metal, cardboard, and leather. The cardiothoracic radiologists on study’s leader, Richard Wirz, PhD, a professor of mechanical and aerospace 300 random test images from engineering at UCLA, noted that plasma, unlike chemicals and UV light, can Northwestern Medicine’s Lake decontaminate porous surfaces such as cardboard and skin without damaging them. Forest Hospital. Each radiologist A sampling of other recent advances: Scientists at the Stanford University School of took 2½ to 3½ hours to examine Engineering have produced a genetic “microlab” — half the size of a credit card — the images; the AI system took that can detect COVID-19 in 30 minutes; researchers at the University of Central 18 minutes. The radiologists’ Florida’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering have identified accuracy ranged from 76 percent physiological features common in “super-spreaders”; and engineers at Rensselaer to 81 percent, compared with Polytechnic Institute have developed an algorithm that helps physicians determine 82 percent for the algorithm. whether a COVID-19 patient should be hospitalized. READ MORE University at Buffalo The Structure for Outdoor Autonomy Research — or SOAR — at the University at Buffalo covers more than half an acre and stands 86 feet tall, making it one of the nation’s largest netted enclosures dedicated to the testing and development of uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones. Buffalo joins growing number of schools with drone-testing enclosures t might look like a driving range for the world’s worst golfers, but the newest research facility at the University at Buffalo (UB) is all about bogies, not ? bogeys. SOAR — short for Structure for Outdoor Autonomy Research — is a DRIVING RANGE Inetted, 24,000-square-foot complex that will enable UB faculty, students, and YUP — FOR UAVs research partners to conduct experiments with uncrewed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, more commonly known as unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. The SOAR will enable faculty, students, facility, located on the university’s North Campus, will “help solidify UB’s position and research partners to pursue at the forefront of research and education in a technology that could improve advances in four fast-growing fields: everything from commerce and national security to emergency response and Autonomous technology agriculture,” the university said in a news release. The structure will also serve as Artificial intelligence will allow a resource for undergraduate and graduate students studying robotics and UAVs, self-driving vehicles, and computer vision. SOAR covers more than half an acre and stands 86 feet tall. In other machines to function — and terms of cubic feet, it is believed to be the third-largest netted drone complex in even improve their operation — the United States. Similar drone “cages" can be found on or near a growing without human intervention. number of campuses, including Kansas State University, the University of Sensors and surveillance California-San Diego, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, the Remote monitoring could prove University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, and Virginia Tech. Because useful in myriad arenas, including the foregoing test sites are enclosed and thus considered indoor flight facility, the homeland security, agriculture, researchers who use them are not subject to Federal Aviation Administration firefighting, engineering, public regulations. “The University at Buffalo is committed to addressing society’s most health, and law enforcement. challenging issues,” said Kemper Lewis, PhD, dean UB’s School of Engineering Parcel delivery and logistics and Applied Sciences. “By creating a research complex dedicated to exploring the UAVs have shown promise as a tremendous potential of uncrewed aerial vehicles, UB researchers, students, and means of making deliveries to our partners will advance cutting-edge solutions that can help global food security remote, congested, or otherwise challenges, disaster response, and anti-terrorism.” SOAR’s construction was difficult-to-access locations. made possible by a $393,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program. The funding was secured by Drone-fleet management Chase Murray, PhD, an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering Multiple UAVs flying in unison in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “Our plan is to leave the might have applications in combat, netting up year-round,” said Murray, who studies UAV routing and logistics. disaster relief, and even the arts. “This will enable us to conduct tests and improve the performance of UAVs in the often-harsh winter weather conditions that we encounter.” READ MORE University of Michigan; Lynn Conway Professor Emerita Lynn Conway delivered the 2018 Winter Commencement address at the University of Michigan, where she taught after working with elite research and development teams at Memorex (top) and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (upper right). IBM apologizes for firing a transgender researcher five-plus decades ago ifty-two years after firing a promising computer engineer who had revealed to supervisors that she was changing gender, IBM has issued a formal apology and presented the former employee, now 82, with IBM’s Lifetime Achievement Award for her pioneering work in computer science, The New York Times reports. Lynn Conway was Fhonored last month at a ceremony streamed live to some 1,200 company employees. “I wanted to say to you here today, Lynn, for that experience in our company and all the hardships that followed, I am truly sorry,” said Diane Gherson, IBM’s senior vice president and a special adviser to the company’s CEO. Gherson added that although the company now actively supports “transitioning employees,” no amount of progress could make up for the treatment that Conway received in 1968. Conway said the event brought her a degree of closure. “It was so unexpected,” Conway told The Times in an interview. “It was stunning.” Conway landed a job at IBM in 1964, after graduating from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. At the time, she was living as a man named Robert. Her bosses at IBM were so impressed with her work and intellect that they assigned her to an elite team secretly designing the world’s fastest Conway worked for IBM supercomputer, a pet project of the company’s then-chairman, Thomas Watson Jr. Conway’s from 1964 to 1968. once-bright future at IBM dimmed when she told a supervisor that she was “undertaking a gender transition to resolve a terrible existential situation” that she had faced since childhood. IBM executives feared that Conway’s continued employment would elicit “scandalous publicity,” and the company’s medical director reportedly expressed concern that Conway’s colleagues “might suffer major emotional problems.” Following her firing, Conway underwent gender confirmation surgery and set out to rebuild her career. She found work at Memorex in 1971. Two years later, she was recruited by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where she developed computer-chip design methods that eventually would be adopted by tech companies around the world. In 1983, Conway was picked to head a supercomputer program at the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. In 1985, she became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan and associate dean of the university’s College of Engineering. She was subsequently elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Conway did not publicly reveal that she was transgender until 1999, when she learned that researchers were delving into the IBM project on which she had worked prior to her termination. In 2000, she created a website to share her story — and “illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition.” Conway told The Times that said she harbored no ill will for the IBM executives who fired her.