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Campus
News: Week of March 5, 2001
Rensselaer
Centrifuge Part of Nationwide Earthquake Information Network
 A
team of earthquake researchers from Rensselaer will receive $2.38
million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of
a larger NSF effort to form an Internet collaborative that will
promote earthquake engineering research and information sharing
across the country.
The
10 institutions involved will receive a total of $45 million in
equipment awards as part of the George E. Brown Jr. Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). NEES is a collaborative
effort to improve the seismic design and performance of the U.S.
civil and mechanical infrastructure. NSF plans to spend up to
$81.9 million by 2004 under NEES to meet its goals.
Ricardo
Dobry, professor of civil engineering and principal investigator
on the Rensselaer project, said that the NSF funds will be used
to upgrade, develop, and install new equipment and software, including
an in-flight earthquake simulator (shaker) and in-flight robot,
on the 100-g ton geotechnical centrifuge in the basement of the
JonssonEngineering Center.
The
NSF funds will be used to upgrade, develop, and install new
equipment and software, including an in-flight earthquake
simulator (shaker) and in-flight robot, on the 100-g ton geotechnical
centrifuge in the basement of the Jonsson Engineering Center.
— Ricardo Dobry—
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"The
tremendous progress and increase in capabilities of sensors, Web-based
data acquisition systems, and other technologies—as well
as the fast growth of Internet-based capabilities for teleobservation
and teleoperation of experiments and distributed computations—means
that the context and meaning of our experimental work will be
completely transformed in the next few years. This is a great
use of information technology in earthquake research," said
Dobry.
Dobry
added that Ahmed-W. Elgamal, a former colleague and now professor
at the University of California, San Diego, will help the Rensselaer
team conduct the first remote tests of the system through teleobserving
and teleoperating of centrifuge experiments at Rensselaer. Dobry's
team includes a team of civil engineers: Mourad Zeghal, assistant
professor and recent NSF CAREER awardee, Tarek Abdoun, research
assistant professor, and Thomas Zimmie, professor. In addition,
mechanical engineering professors James Li and Stephen Derby are
helping in the design of the new shaker and robot, and civil engineering
professors Jacob Fish and Mark Shephard, also director of SCOREC,
are participating through related computational research and networking
developments.
A
six-month scoping study led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
is already under way to define user requirements, computer hardware
and software technologies, and support infrastructure needed for
the network, which will cost about $10 million. Eventually, a
community-led consortium of earthquake engineers will be selected
to manage and operate NEES until at least 2014.
To
link to a movie of what can be learned from earthquake data, click
on http://www.rpi.edu/~dobryr/centrifuge/visualization.htm,
scroll down to "Real-Time Movies" and click on "Soil
Structure Seismic Response." This requires Windows Mediaplayer.
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Grief
Counseling, Memorial Planned in Response to Tragic Death
Robert
Svensson, a graduate student in computer science, died
in a tragic caving accident in Clarskville Cave on Monday,
Feb. 26. Svensson, 24, had graduated from Rensselaer with
a bachelor's degree in computer science in May. He was
a Class B Caving Leader with the Rensselaer Outing Club
and had been certified through Stonehearth Outdoor Learning
Opportunities (SOLO), a wilderness medical and rescue
program based in New Hampshire.
"We
are deeply saddened to hear of this tragic and untimely
accident," said President Shirley Ann Jackson. "Our
hearts and our deepest sympathies go out to Robert's family
and friends. Our first priority is to come together to
provide a support structure for those who are grieving.
Counseling and support services have been made available
to the students and an on-campus memorial service is being
planned."
Rensselaer's
Dean of Students Office, the Counseling Center, and the
Chaplains Office are providing ongoing grief counseling.
Students, faculty, or staff may inquire about counseling
services through the Gallagher Health Center at ext. 6287,
the Dean of Students Office at ext. 6266, or the Chaplains
Office at ext. 6518.
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Tuning
In to Improvisation May Help Emergency Personnel
 Researchers
at Rensselaer are creating a tool to help emergency personnel
improvise during emergency response operations. The design of
the tool is based upon studies of improvisation by jazz groups
and emergency response personnel. The work is supported by the
National Science Foundation.
Jazz
performance and emergency response both require groups to deal
with unanticipated contingencies, according to Al Wallace '61,
professor of decision sciences and engineering systems (DSES).
A study of the cognitive processes of group improvisation in
both jazz and actual disasters led to the development of software
called Emergency Management imPROViser (EMPROV).
Jazz
performance and emergency response both require groups to
deal with unanticipated contingencies.
—Al Wallace '61—
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In
creating EMPROV, Wallace and doctoral student David Mendonça
organized jazzperformances where musicians were videotaped and
then asked to describe the thought processes they had while
playing.
Using
the transcripts from these sessions, codes were assigned to
different types of interactions such as coordination, creativity,
and idea generation.
In
addition to the jazz sessions, Wallace is examining interviews
with emergency response personnel from Hurricane Camille in
order to describe how they improvised.
Wallace
is collaborating with Neil Rolnick, chair of the arts department
and director of iEAR, and several graduate and undergraduate
students in EMAC as well as in DSES. "This is true interdisciplinary
research that combines two diverse areas," explained Wallace.
"Neil has been a tremendous asset, because music is his
practice. His ability to keep us from inferring results that
are not really there is crucial."
Wallace,
Mendonça, and Giampiero Beroggi '91, professor at the
Delft University of Technology, assessed EMPROV in exercises
with emergency response personnel from the Port of Rotterdam
in the Netherlands. Results from the exercises are helping them
improve the software.
They
anticipate that the software will eventually be accessible via
the Web to allow experts at remote locations to participate
in an emergency situation. In addition, they will extend this
research to include other organizations that deal with crisis
situations.
New Building Contract Awarded to Firms Experienced in Biotech
Design
The
contract to design the Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies
Building has been awarded to a joint venture of two Pennsylvania
architectural firms with experience in biotechnology design—Burt
Hill Kosar Rittelmann of Butler, and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
of Pittsburgh.
"Our
selection of such premiere architectural firms with their
distinctive success in the design of research facilities
is indicative of our commitment to the best in academic
research and to the beauty of our campus and our community."
—Shirley Ann Jackson—
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"Our
selection of such premiere architectural firms with their distinctive
success in the design of research facilities is indicative of
our commitment to the best in academic research and to the beauty
of our campus and our community," said President Shirley
Ann Jackson.
The facility of roughly 200,000 square feet will be constructed
on 15th Street, adjacent to the George M. Low Center for Industrial
Innovation, and north of Academy Hall, the former School 14.
It will be comparable in size to the George M. Low Center for
Industrial Innovation and the J. Erik Jonsson Engineering Center.
The cost of the building is expected to total between $60 million
and $70 million. Its design and construction will be enabled,
in part, by the anonymous gift of $130 million recently made
to Rensselaer. Groundbreaking is expected late in 2001 or early
in 2002.
The architectural firms have previously collaborated on such
projects as the $21.9 million Software Engineering Institute
at Carnegie Mellon University. Burt Hill Kosar Rittelmann designed
the $88 million Biomedical Science Tower in Pittsburgh and the
$34.6 million Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology
at the University of Maryland.
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed the $49 million Natural Sciences
Laboratory Building at the University of California.
Several
of the architects on the joint venture are Rensselaer alumni:
Dick Rittelmann '60, principal-in-charge; Peter Bohlin '58,
design architect; and Jon Jackson '73, lead architect. Harry
Gordon '73 and Michael Maiese '90 are also on the team.
Alan Balfour, dean of the Rensselaer School of Architecture,
served on the selection committee chaired by President Jackson,
and reviewed the list of architects invited to participate.
"Virtual"
College Fairs Becoming More Popular
The
Web and online college fair hosting sites such as onlinecollegefair.com
are causing "a tremendous decline in serious students attending
'real' college fairs," says Teresa Duffy, Rensselaer's
dean of enrollment management. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, however.
The
online version of a college fair allows parents and prospective
students the opportunity to enter a private chat room with
an admissions counselor for one-on-one attention.
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The
online version of a college fair allows parents and prospective
students the opportunity to enter a private chat room with an
admissions counselor for one-on-one attention. Duffy says the
online chats are attracting more serious students who have already
done their homework about Rensselaer.
Interestingly,
Duffy says the "quality of conversation can be exponentially
different and even better in the online format."
Because
of an increase in prospective students using the Web to conduct
online college searches, Duffy predicts the traditional college
fairs, especially large national ones, may be a thing of the
past as students and parents rely more on technology.
"They're
going to just do nothing but grow," Duffy says about the
chat room format. "They're fun, fast, informative, and
they give students and parents the opportunities to have private
chats with counselors without ever leaving their living room."
Duffy
says the Web is making for a much more savvy student consumer
and it is forcing her to reallocate admissions staff to accommodate
a substantial increase in e-mail inquiries, which are up 132
percent from last year.
Since
1998-99, Rensselaer has decreased participation in "real"
college fairs by 49 percent and further reduced it by another
30 percent last year. Additionally, the number of students Rensselaer
has seen at "real" college fairs is down from 7,907
in 1999-00 to 6,721.
The
next online fair will be held April 18, for students of color.
Go to http://admissions.rpi.edu
and click on 2001 Online College Fair Schedule for more
information.
Intellectual
Property Career Forum
 An
Intellectual Property Career Forum was held in the Heffner Alumni
House Feb. 23. Representatives from law schools, law firms,
the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office, and other businesses
were on hand to speak with students about career opportunities
in the intellectual property fields.
There
also were panel discussions on careers in intellectual property
fields.
This
event was sponsored by the offices of Technology Commercialization,
Career Development, and Alumni Relations.
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