Category Archives: Engineering
NY Construction Central – Engineering News-Record
H2M, ENR New York's Design Firm of the Year, designed Station Yards, a mixed-use community built around the Ronkonkoma Long Island Rail Road Station.
Photo courtesy of H2M architects + engineers.
H2M has been named by ENR New York as its 2024 Design Firm of the Year and will be recognized in the May print issue. The firm has demonstrated regional success in its growth and revenue increase as well as in innovation, creativity and a commitment to giving back to its community.
During the last 90 years, H2M has become a leading professional service provider in the region and played a significant role in advancing engineering services. H2M uses cutting-edge technology to offer multiple quality services and sound judgement while adhering to its distinct core values.
The firms capabilities include the full range of professional engineering services such as civil, site, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, structural, water supply management, wastewater management, environmental management, industrial hygiene, solid and hazardous waste management, planning, survey and GIS/mapping.
H2M has engineered and designed projects of nearly every size, shape, scope and discipline for communities in Long Island, N.Y., and beyond. The firm has been instrumental in developing key infrastructure while protecting the Islands environmental resources. H2M has been the Engineer of Record for more than 30 public water suppliers and sewer districts, in some for as long as 70 consecutive years.
This past year, H2M has expanded to over 550 employees and opened four new office locations bringing its total to 15.
Part of that ongoing expansion results from the companys focus on professional development and employee empowerment, including supporting licensing and access to professional memberships, tuition assistance, and comprehensive training opportunities for leadership and supervisory roles to promote upward mobility. These initiatives have led the firm to train and employ 117 professional engineers, 45 engineers in training, 72 registered architects, 37 LEED accredited professionals and 12 LEED Green Associates.
H2M ranked atNo. 18 on last years ENR New York Top Design Firm list,reporting $93.44 million in 2022 revenue. The previous year, it wasNo. 22 with $86.90 million in revenue.To find out where H2M now ranks, check out the latest ENR New York Top Design Firm list appearing in the May issue of ENR New York.
Recent notable firm projects include: MEP Engineering for Stony Brook Clinical at Smith Haven Mall
Stony Brook Clinical is a cutting-edge healthcare hub that offers a "one-stop shop" for patients seeking a multitude of medical specialties. The 170,000-sq-ft space, previously occupied by Sears, was poised to reshape the way healthcare services are accessed and experienced, creating a seamless blend of medical expertise and retail convenience. The Advanced Specialty Care Facility at Smith Haven Mall stands as a testament to the power of innovation, collaboration, and engineering excellence in service of the community.
Hutchinson Valley Trunk Sewer Realignment
The Hutchinson Valley sewer trunk was a sewer pipe with push on joints that was at risk of contaminating a downstream nature preserve. H2M provided assistance during bidding, pre-construction and site meetings, traffic control plans, construction-related services, and the safe abandonment of the old pipe and manholes. Construction involved trenching along the Parkway shoulder, across the exit ramp, and onto a road island. There were no subconsultants on this project but a contractor conducted construction inspections. The final cost was approximately 10% under budget and two months ahead of schedule. West Nyack Revitalization Park and Environmental Impact Study
West Nyack Revitalization Park and Environmental Impact Study is a renovation and improvement of the degraded parks wetlands, as well as the aging amenities of the park. H2M proposed the following design features: a constructed wetlands area; naturalistic channels with improved riparian buffer; off-street parking; a new playground; an updated passive park; and an environmental education trail. H2M assisted the Town in obtaining a Green Innovation Grant from the New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation to offset costs from this project without using taxpayer dollars.
Justin Rice is Editor for ENR MidAtlantic and ENR New England
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Re-engineering the way the construction business works – Global Construction Review
In Australia, a voluntary alliance of tier 1 contractors, government agencies, specialist subcontractors, engineering firms, cost consultants, architects, and material manufacturers representing the whole construction supply chain are working together to find ways to drive carbon out of the construction process.
Initiated in 2022, it has 160 members, and its growing.
They think of themselves as a do tank, not a think tank, because Meclas 11 working groups ask what each bit of the sector can start doing this afternoon, tomorrow, and the next day to build momentum for change.
They know construction is a complex market system with carbon entrenched, and that they wont be able to build a low-carbon market unless everyone works together on it.
It has to be done now, they say. Theres no time for incremental change.
When that new market is functioning with as least carbon as possible, Mecla disappears.
In March, CIOBs head of environmental sustainability, Amanda Williams, interviewed Meclas chair, Hudson Worsley. What follows are some highlights of that conversation. More will follow on the 21CC podcast in June.
AW: So youve got this big goal of cutting embodied carbon in the built environment but, in your mind, what does the roadmap look like to getting there?
HW: Okay, weve got these 160 organisations. Were building critical mass at the tier 1 level of the Australian market, and with government agencies like Transport for New South Wales and Infrastructure Victoria.
The next step is tier 2 contractors and suppliers because outside the bubble of the leadership group, many industry participants still dont have embodied carbon on their radar. So, getting them conversant with the concepts and opportunities, understanding that government procurement is going to require this and that it will filter down to private procurement, thats key.
The next one is advocacy on government to keep the pressure up. We want headline projects like the Brisbane 2032 Summer Olympics to be carbon-zero, or low embodied carbon where we can. We want government to understand that their procurement role is an absolutely vital lever for this change.
We want to maintain pressure on suppliers. Its really hard, particularly steel and cement. We need to keep that pressure up. No resting on your laurels that youve done a good job so far, or youve made a breakthrough. Until were at zero, weve got to keep pushing.
We also want to influence designers and architects, so its not just about material substitution, its about better design. Its quite common in Australia to double the size of the girder, or the pillar, or the pile, because of risk aversion. Until climate came along, that was the safe thing to do, but now that carbon is a measure of success, we have to look at design as a big opportunity.
Finally, its supporting the ecosystem. So when theres a legal issue over how to specify a carbon clause, we get the relevant people onto it. When theres a change to the curriculum for architects at university level, lets see what we can do to help that.
Were penning the roadmap as we drive along, its not predefined. Opportunities come as we move; thats what rapid change looks like, and how it has to be.
AW: How close are we to low-emissions concrete, for example, and how important is cracking those individual material types?
Weve been using cement since the Romans, and its the most ubiquitous material, so we cant exactly go cold turkey.
Thereve been big strides. Some of the global cement makers can offer an off-the-shelf, 60%-reduced embodied carbon product. And thats fantastic: 60% is a big saving.
But even though its a saving, its still additional emissions because were building new things that werent there before, so there is a way to go.
There are alternatives, like geopolymer cement using substitute cementitious materials. The use case for those where are they best suited, where are they not thats still being hammered out. One of the barriers to entry can be very prescriptive specifications, rather than a performance-based specification.
But essentially, were still super-heating lime to develop clinker as the core component of cement and concrete. That last 40% is still hard, particularly where really high-performance concrete is required.
But we still need to encourage take-up of the lower-emissions alternatives already there. Weve heard that tier 2 contractors just flatly say theyre not taking the risk. If the foundations and floor of the warehouse fail, end of company. At the same time, tier 1 contractors say theyve been doing it for a couple of years and its absolutely fine. We want to bring those players together to talk and find a way through.
So its not just Thou shalt cut emissions, its hey, this is where it was done, this is how it worked, this is what was overcome.
We call ourselves a do tank rather than a think tank, and thats the doing: bringing those whove done it together to show those who are yet to do it that this is the way forward, so lets get on with it.
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Re-engineering the way the construction business works - Global Construction Review
Social media revives chip art AKA silicon doodles and keeps its history alive – NPR
Kenton Smith designs circuit boards and has long been fascinated by computers. He was examining chips a few years ago when he found one smiling back up at him. Courtesy of Kenton Smith hide caption
Kenton Smith designs circuit boards and has long been fascinated by computers. He was examining chips a few years ago when he found one smiling back up at him.
An owl. A sharky looking bullet. The Hindu deity Ganesh. The Yin and Yang sign. All painstakingly selected and etched onto a microchip that measures about an inch square. Each microscopic silicon doodle was the handiwork of engineers at Qualcomm Incorporated, a San Diego-based company that creates wireless technology-related products and services. The engineers slipped the drawings into Qualcomm's Q1650 data decoder with care not to disturb any of the chip's functions.
They were purposeless etchings, never meant to be uncovered.
These doodles, also known as silicon art, chip graffiti or chip art, and dozens others like it, are remnants of tech historyfrom Silicon Valley's infancy to the early 2000swhen innovation was rapid fire and the tech still had a very human touch. Engineers would add the sketches to their microchip designs in the techie equivalent of signing their artwork. They'd etch them on chips that may end up in your cellphone, laptop or calculator. They spent hours crafting them, even though they were frowned upon by those in the C Suite.
The existence of these doodles came to light decades ago, but social media is discovering them anew. And there is now a small but determined group of online hobbyists working to keep that history alive. They are still cataloguing the miniscule drawings many smaller than the width of a human hair and can't be seen without a microscope.
These devotees post glossy videos of themselves shucking chips like oysters to see their iridescent insides and the itsy bitsy sketches that may be hidden on them. And they are eagerly saving them from the scrap heap.
Richard Kerr spent 15 years at Qualcomm starting in the mid 1980s.
His first doodle was inspired by his then-4-year-old son, Jesse Kerr, who would ask to help with his chip designs.
"Well, he was into trucks at the time, so I designed a little '56 Chevy pickup truck," Kerr said.
Kerr only recently learned that others had discovered his decades-old doodles, from a friend who found a video on YouTube of the doodle packed Q1650 data decoder. "I was just blown away that somebody actually found it. And then it was like, you know, total memory lane," he said.
"Mine is the shark bullet. Because my son (Jesse) was a body boarder at that time. And so he decided that that was cool because he saw it on somebody's wetsuit," Kerr said.
Many of the doodles came from engineers who weren't doing it for an audience.
"We did it for ourselves," said Willy McAllister, a retired electrical engineer who worked for more than a decade at Hewlett-Packard (HP) and helped craft a chip with the sleek image of a cheetah on it. "Nobody ever expected it to be cracked open 10 years later and marveled at. That was never the point."
The cheetah was picked as a visual representation for an HP project code named after the world's fastest land animal.
McAllister's wife, Monica, sketched the cheetah, which was transferred to the chip. One of the big cat's spots is about 4 microns across far thinner than a sheet of paper.
So how did this tiny art make its debut? The late research scientist Michael W. Davidson who ran the optical microscopy laboratory at Florida State University for about decade until his retirement (and death) in 2015 had a microscope he used to photograph integrated circuits. One day in the late '90s while scanning a circuit, he found Waldo. Or at least, the etched outline of Waldo's head.
"Waldo is the first Silicon Creature that we discovered," reads the Silicon Zoo website. "And this led to an exhaustive search for more creatures and construction of the Silicon Zoo gallery."
Davidson built the Silicon Zoo website to record his findings and he was tireless in his search for this art.
"At one point, I would say in '99 it was that the word was out in Tallahassee that we were collecting (chips)," said Eric Clark, who helped Davidson build the site. "We had a mountain of just computer parts and chips."
The site has catalogued dozens of doodles, many that wink to the function of the integrated circuit, like an elephant on a memory chip, or a can o' worms nodding to the many problems a designer faced.
But there are still more out there.
That's where people like Kenton Smith come in. Smith designs circuit boards and has long been fascinated by computers. He was examining chips a few years ago when he found one smiling back up at him.
"I was just opening up a bunch of different types of chips," he said. "And eventually I came to one and it had a smiley face on it. And to find that was one of the best feelings I've ever had in the world."
The discovery led him deep into the world of silicon scribbles, and he now buys bulk chip lots on eBay and regularly posts videos showcasing his finds.
"One of the the driving forces, I think, to buying so much stuff on eBay is that there's always this feeling that if I don't get it, I may never see that chip again," Smith said. "And it's going to be recycled and we'll lose parts of our history."
Smith posts about his finds across various social media, using his @Evilmonkeyzdesignz accounts that have hundreds of thousands of followers among them.
This is a hobby that takes dedication. First you have to find the chips. Then you have to snip them from their casings. Sometimes the chips shatter into pieces. Sometimes acid is needed to eat away at decades old adhesive.
"I go to flea markets almost every week," said the man behind the @CPU_Duke accounts. "I'm looking at boards and I get a feeling for this could be interesting, this is an interesting brand. Could have a doodle on it. An Easter egg." He didn't want to use his real name for privacy reasons.
The doodles represent an amusing a collision of technology and art.
Albert Folch, a professor at the University of Washington's bioengineering department, is an expert in the field. He has long merged science and art in a program he calls BAIT (Bringing Art Into Technology). The walls in his office are covered in colorful microfluid artwork, which blend scientific photography with artistic flourishes.
For Folch, the micro doodles are a joyful distraction.
"I think it's a lot of fun," he said. "When I was designing chips myself, I never did it. But I think it's something that if it had occurred to me, I probably would have done it, just for fun."
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Social media revives chip art AKA silicon doodles and keeps its history alive - NPR
A Cooler Future? Study Suggests Cloud Engineering as an Effective Painkiller for Global Warming – SciTechDaily
Recent findings indicate that marine cloud brightening, a method of increasing cloud cover to cool the Earth, could be more effective than previous models suggested, offering significant cooling effects but serving as a temporary mitigation rather than a solution to global warming.
New research suggests that cloud engineering might be more effective at cooling the climate than previously believed, due to the production of increased cloud cover.
In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers at the University of Birmingham found that marine cloud brightening (MCB), also known as marine cloud engineering, works primarily by increasing the amount of cloud cover, accounting for 60-90% of the cooling effect.
Previous models used to estimate the cooling effects of MCB have focused on the ability of aerosol injection to produce a brightening effect on the cloud, which in turn increases the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.
The practice of MCB has attracted much attention in recent years as a way of offsetting the global warming effects caused by humans and buying some time while the global economy decarbonizes. It works by spraying tiny particles, or aerosols, into the atmosphere where they mix with clouds and with the primary aim of increasing the amount of sunlight that clouds can reflect.
Experiments with the technique are already being used in Australia in an attempt to reduce bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. However, the ways in which MCB creates a cooling effect, and the ways in which clouds will respond to aerosols, are still poorly understood, because of variable effects such as the confounding from co-varying meteorological conditions.
To investigate the phenomenon, the researchers created a natural experiment, using aerosol injection from the effusive eruption of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii to study the interactions between these natural aerosols, clouds, and climate.
Using machine learning and historic satellite and meteorological data, the team created a predictor to show how the cloud would behave during periods when the volcano was inactive. This predictor enabled them to identify clearly the impacts on the clouds that had been directly caused by the volcanic aerosols.
They were able to show that the cloud cover relatively increased by up to 50% during the periods of volcanic activity, producing a cooling effect of up to -10 W m-2 regionally. Global heating and cooling is measured in watts per square meter, with a negative figure indicating cooling. Note that doubling CO2 would lead to a warming effect of +3.7 W m-2 approximately on a global average.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the Met Office, the Universities of Edinburgh, Reading and Leeds, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and the University of Maryland and NASA in the USA.
Lead author, Dr Ying Chen, of the University of Birmingham, said: Our findings show that marine cloud brightening could be more effective as a climate intervention than climate models have suggested previously. Of course, while it could be useful, MCB does not address the underlying causes of global warming from greenhouse gases produced by human activity. It should therefore be regarded as a painkiller, rather than a solution, and we must continue to improve our fundamental understanding of aerosols impacts on clouds, further research on global impacts and risks of MCB, and search for ways to decarbonize human activities.
The research comes alongside increased interest in cloud engineering around the globe. UK Research and Innovation has recently launched a 10.5m research programme looking at informing policymakers on solar radiation management approaches, including MCB, while the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), is focused on researching technologies for climate and weather management. In the USA, a team from the University of Washington recently carried out its first outdoor aerosol experiment from a decommissioned aircraft carrier in Alameda, California.
Reference: Substantial cooling effect from aerosol-induced increase in tropical marine cloud cover by Ying Chen, Jim Haywood, Yu Wang, Florent Malavelle, George Jordan, Amy Peace, Daniel G. Partridge, Nayeong Cho, Lazaros Oreopoulos, Daniel Grosvenor, Paul Field, Richard P. Allan and Ulrike Lohmann, 11 April 2024, Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01427-z
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Amphib USS Boxer Cuts Short Deployment After Another Engineering Casualty – The Maritime Executive
Just 10 days after deploying to the Indo-Pacific, the amphib USS Boxer has turned around to head back to port for repairs, Navy officials have confirmed to USNI and Military.com. It is the latest setback in a long string of maintenance-related delays for the Boxer, and further extends her time off-hire.
At the time of the casualty, Boxer was operating in the Pacific and conducting exercises with a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey squadron. That squadron has disembarked and Boxer is returning to port. The nature of the casualty was not disclosed.
Boxer has been in various phases of repair and preparation since 2022, and the process has been repeatedly delayed by maintenance quality and operational problems. The previous delays all come down to human factors and contractor skill level, according to a recent command investigation.
In November 2022, two of the forced draft blowers on USS Boxer's steam plant failed, the victims of improper repairs. They were overhauled multiple times, and suffered oil and water leaks every time. An examination by the OEM found that improper parts were used, machined sealing surfaces did not line up, and reassembly techniques were substandard and noncompliant.
In May 2023, USS Boxer experienced an unspecified incident during a boiler light-off, which the strike group commander attributed to complacency and a departure from "sound shipboard operating principles." The incident could have resulted in severe injuries, but no crewmembers were harmed. In mid-July 2023, Boxer's engineering team spun the main gearbox for two hours without lubrication, and did not notify the commanding officer of this potentially damaging decision until 27 hours later.
"Every level of senior engineering leadership failed to provide a safe, professional, and procedurally compliant work environment in engineering department. These failures had direct, measurable impacts on USS Boxer's upcoming deployment and impeded the overall accomplishment of the strike group's mission," concluded the expeditionary strike group's commander last year.
The chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, has ordered a "deep-dive" review of the problems aboard USS Boxer and other amphibs in the fleet. "I think there's some good lessons learned with Boxer," Franchetti told media at a defense conference last week.
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Amphib USS Boxer Cuts Short Deployment After Another Engineering Casualty - The Maritime Executive
Tesla’s top engineering exec, who led development of critical technologies, has resigned after 18 years, adding to … – Fortune
Two of Tesla Inc.s top executives have left in the midst of the carmakers largest-ever round ofjob cuts, as slowing electric-vehicle demand leads the company to reduce its global headcount by more than 10%.
The cuts could reach closer to 20% in some divisions, two people familiar with the matter say.
In addition, Senior Vice President Drew Baglino resigned from the company, he said on X Monday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. Baglino been one of just four named executive officers at Tesla, leading engineering and technology development for its batteries, motors and energy products.
The 18-year company veteran who co-hosted earnings calls and shared the stage with Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk at multiple events, including Teslasinvestor dayjust over a year ago is leaving along with Rohan Patel, the carmakers vice president of public policy and business development. Patel alsoconfirmedhis departure on social media, and Muskrespondedbythankingboth executives.
The carmakers shares dropped more than 3% Monday. The stock has fallen 33% this year.
Musk announced the decision tocut headcountby potentially more than 14,000 people globally amid the deteriorating outlook for EV sales. In an email to staff, the CEO cited duplication of roles and the need to reduce costs.
As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity, Musk wrote in the memo, which was seen by Bloomberg News. There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done.
Leaders at Tesla were given aggressive goals to cut costs in their organizations and license to take strong action in reaching them, according to one of the people. That included deeper cuts in some cases beyond the threshold Musk had outlined, the person said.
The departure of Baglino is likely to reinforce concerns among some investors aboutsuccession planningat Tesla, where Musk has been CEO since 2008. The billionaire leads six companies and doesnt devote his full time or attention to the worlds most valuable automaker. Musk also said early this year that he preferred tobuild products elsewhereunless hes awarded around 25% voting control.
The CEO lost another top deputyin August, when Zachary Kirkhorn stepped down as CFO after 13 years with Tesla.
Its not clear whether the departure of the top Tesla executives was connected to broader struggles at the EV maker. Tesla reported vehicle deliveries early this month that missed expectations by awide margin, posting its first quarterly decline in four years.
Several analysts are bracing for the EV makers sales to potentiallyshrinkfor the year, citing slow output of its newest model theCybertruck and a lull in new products until the company starts producing a next-generation vehicle late next year.
Tesla ended last year with 140,473 employees, almost double its total three years earlier. Its been ramping up output at two plants one in Austin, and the other outside Berlin that started cranking out Model Y sport utility vehicles in early 2022. The company startedslashing pricesacross its lineup as those facilities reached higher volumes.
Over the years, we have grown rapidly with multiple factories scaling around the globe, Musk wrote in the email, which was reported earlier Monday by the blog Electrek. With this rapid growth there has been duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas.
Musks biographer, Walter Isaacson, described Baglino as a personable engineer with an easy laugh. In his book on Musk published last year, Isaacson recounted a tense first meeting Baglino had with the CEO over how many battery cells Tesla would need to hit its range target.
I never want to be in another meeting with Elon, Isaacson quoted Baglino saying to Tesla co-founder J.B. Straubel, who left the company in 2019 but joined its board of directorslast year.
Isaacson writes that Straubel reassured Baglino, whos quoted saying that Musks battery-cell calculation proved correct.
Read More:Musk Vetoing a $25,000 Tesla Comes Back to Bite
Baglino has netted about $96 million from periodic share sales since he was appointed a senior VP and had to start publicly disclosing his transactions, according to Bloomberg calculations. The sales have been executed under multiple pre-arranged trading plans, filings show.
Baglino and Teslas board chair, Robyn Denholm, set up share-trading plans late last year allowing them tosell significant sumsof stock. Baglino made arrangements to potentially sell up to 115,500 shares through the end of this year, according to aregulatory filing.
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Engineering Professor Earns Grant To Improve Trust Between Humans and Robots – UVA Engineering
Humans and robots will one day soon be working on the same teams, so were going to need to trust each other.
That belief underpins the research of Tariq Iqbal, an assistant professor at the University of Virginias School of Engineering. He recently earned a three-year, $450,000 grant for emerging scholars from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to continue and extend his work.
AFOSR will award about $21.5 million in grants to 48 scientists this year, including Iqbal, as part of its 2024 Young Investigator Program.
Iqbal specializes in robotics and artificial intelligence. His lab focuses, in general, on optimizing fluency and fluidity in human-robot interactions.
So the goal here is: How can we make the robots work effectively with humans? he said.
When it comes to safe and effective collaboration, trust will be a key factor. Having just the right amount of trust not too much, not too little is a well-understood predictor of success in human teams, Iqbal noted.
And trust is already starting to matter on teams with both robots and humans, such as in automobile manufacturing and autonomous driving, he added.
In factories right now, there are robots that are building cars, and they can do it very rapidly, Iqbal said. But if you look at the same assembly line, downstream, there are humans doing all the screw tightening, putting all the parts together, checking the lines and everything. So we have the robots end of the line, and the humans end of the line, but there is a wall between them."
So we have the robots end of the line, and the humans end of the line, but there is a wall between them. How do we break that wall and make it a full team?
How do we break that wall and make it a full team? If we can do that, we can achieve something that neither the humans nor the robots can achieve alone.
There are dangers, however, in developing too much trust, he said. For example, most autonomous driving accidents are caused by a driver who fully trusts the auto-drive, even though safe operation requires hands on the wheel.
The research funded by the grant is titled A Psychophysiological and Behavioral Measure-based Multimodal Trust Model for Generating Real-time Intervention to Facilitate Human-Robot Teaming. Its an early step toward establishing the baseline measurements that researchers will need to quantify and measure trust in these brave, new team environments.
The first goal will be to figure out an objective measure of human trust toward robots, Iqbal said.
But the research will also seek ways to help robots sense the human trust level and respond appropriately.
This function could help a robot sense whether a person is over- or under-trusting its capability to perform the task. Then, the robot can take appropriate action to optimize trust for the entire teams benefit.
The challenge is not the robot itself; its actually the human, Iqbal said. Modeling the human can be the most challenging part.
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Engineering Professor Earns Grant To Improve Trust Between Humans and Robots - UVA Engineering
Alumnus guides AI-powered company using systems engineering | Binghamton News – Binghamton University
Ryon Batson 21 always has maintained a strong passion for business, and during his time as an undergraduate at Binghamton University, he was conflicted about what path to choose in life.
During his sophomore year, Batson pursued electrical engineering at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science. Although he enjoyed it very much, he still craved a path that involved a business-inventive aspect.
This led to his discovery of industrial and systems engineering, where he could pursue his entrepreneurial and engineering interests in tandem. After graduation, Batson co-founded FairSplit, an artificial intelligence-powered insurance company designed to reduce tensions between workers and employers during employee transitions.
Q: What attracted you to Watson College?
A: When I came to Binghamton University, I wasnt sure what I wanted to do as a career. My dad was an electrician and had a private electrical company, and during the summers I would go out to work with him. I enjoyed doing electrical work, so I figured that I would follow in my fathers footsteps and pursue electrical engineering. In addition, as a first-generation college student, receiving an engineering degree seemed like a very notable thing to do.
Although I didnt get into Watson College my first year, I persevered and got accepted my second year after applying through the intra-university transfer application. With the Engineering Design Division program at Watson, I was able to explore the various options in engineering.
Q: Why did you choose ISE?
A: I quickly realized that electrical engineering was very different from being an actual electrician. The time invested in studying compared to my academic results quickly made me realize how important it was that I followed my own passions. I always had a passion for entrepreneurship, and I became conflicted with pursuing electrical engineering and wanting to transfer to the School of Management.
When I transferred to Watson, not only did I have my mind set on engineering, I also invested my first year taking general education courses directed toward Watson College. Transferring to SOM certainly would have set me back. I didnt want to drop engineering totally, so I went to speak with my counselors and advisors, and they mentioned a program called industrial and systems engineering. I wasnt aware of what it was, but it sounded like business with engineering principles. I started taking some courses, and I could immediately sense that my passion was being fulfilled.
Q: Where did you intern as an undergrad?
A: I interned for three startup companies Relo, Unified Scholars and Beam (formerly Edquity). I was privileged enough to learn the inner workings of launching a company. I was able to apply the knowledge that I was receiving at Watson directly to these companies, and that reassured me my decision to pursue ISE was the right call.
Primarily, it involved immersing myself in various roles within the companies, gaining practical experience in the process of designing and coding systems. This allowed me to witness the progression of projects from inception to completion firsthand.
Q: Did your experiences in your internship influence the development of your startup, FairSplit?
A: Absolutely. Funny enough, Relo is now FairSplit. I stayed involved with Relo past my internship, first as a volunteer, then as a part-time employee, and eventually becoming full-time as a co-founder and COO of FairSplit. At that time, we were focused on developing a system for people to relocate from one area to another and provide an insurance in the case they defaulted on their payments.
Since then, the pandemic and the advancement of technology prompted us to pivot from our original concept and confront a broader challenge. It became evident that our services were irrelevant without a stable income. Consequently, we decided to address the root cause: the transitions of employees into unemployment.
FairSplit, now an AI-powered insurance company, focues on streamlining various business activities such as mergers, acquisitions, headcount reductions and employee transitions through automated compliance measures. Additionally, we offer real-time insights into finances, employee benefits and industry trends to aid our clients in risk mitigation, thereby reducing costs. Our prepaid insurance system enables us to decrease the expenses related to offboarding benefits by over 15%.
Q: Did you ever think your ISE degree would lead you to this career path?
A: I didnt quite know where my ISE degree was going to lead me. I originally thought it would have been either a heavily focused engineering path or a path related to business somehow. To my very own surprise, I landed a career thats allowed me to apply both my technical background and the hint of business that industrial and systems engineering prepared me for.
Q: Can you share any specific lessons you learned from your journey?
A: You must learn how to measure the small wins. It is easy to become discouraged if you only visualize success from the broad scope. I like to say that every stroke of the paintbrush on a canvas matters to the overall concept or final image. Its the same with developing a business. Every code written, every system built and every idea thought of contributed to the overall execution of the business model. Learning to value the small wins is necessary to be successful.
Secondly, successful entrepreneurship is more than just an amazing and unique idea. The idea is merely just the first step to entrepreneurship. There are other factors that go into being successful as an entrepreneur, like an exceptional founding team, and the ability to convince investors and partners that you are the one to execute this vision. Are you a second-time founder? Did you have a successful exit prior? These are also important. If the answer to these questions is no, you must be prepared to produce exceptional results and persevere much longer than your counterparts whove accomplished these things.
Q: Do you have any advice for Binghamton students?
A: Practice your introspection. If we take time to deliberately examine our thoughts, emotions and experiences to gain insight and self-awareness, we empower ourselves for greatness. This is a practice I have been doing subconsciously since 2017 when I decided to no longer pursue electrical engineering. That decision set me up for all my internships and led me to co-found FairSplit.
I encourage everyone to take note of the outcomes when you are following your instinct or gut feeling. Monitor the results of those decisions, and monitor what happens when you do not. The results should increase your confidence to follow that internal feeling. That is your guide to success.
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Civil engineer looks to remedy inequities in traffic safety – EurekAlert
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Alyssa Ryan, University of Arizona assistant professor of civil and architectural engineering and mechanics
Credit: University of Arizona College of Engineering
Alyssa Ryan, an assistant professor ofcivil and architectural engineering and mechanics, in the University of ArizonaCollege of Engineering, is leading a national study to identify disparities in traffic safety for all transportation users, including drivers, bicyclists and walkers.
"Transportation engineering is very focused on people and impacting society and how people interact with the world," said Ryan. "If you don't have transportation, you can't do anything."
With a $467,000 award from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and building on Ryan's previous research, the project aims to identify populations most at risk for crash injuries given factors such as location, race, sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic status.
"In our quest to ensure safe mobility for all communities," said Rebecca Steinbach, senior researcher at the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, "we need a better understanding of the extent of disparities, contributing factors and countermeasures to mitigate disparities where they exist. The rigorous approach of this project will help identify meaningful solutions that can be applied by a variety of professionals to improve equity in traffic safety."
National resources, such as theInfrastructure Investment and Jobs Actpassed in 2021, are providing billions of dollars to states for equitable transportation improvements, and the researchers plan to take their findings and recommendations to officials in every state.
"We're really looking for trends, what is happening across the United States and who is getting into these crashes," said Ryan, also assistant director at theCenter for Applied Transportation Sciencesin the College of Engineering.
Ryan, in collaboration with Oregon State University professor David Hurwitz, will analyze massive datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau, National Emergency Medical Services Information System, Federal Highway Administration Highway Statistics and the Fatal Accident Reporting Systems to identify crash trends among different groups. This is the first time that data of such magnitude has been used to research traffic inequity on a national scale.
"This is an issue in society, but it presents itself in transportation in really compelling ways," saidHurwitz, the co-principal investigator who is a professor of transportation engineering and director of the Kiewit Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Research at OSU.
Hurwitz and Ryan, fellow University of Massachusetts Amherst alums, will split the data collection and analysis of four demographically diverse states, including Arizona and Oregon.
Historically, fatal crashes have been the preferred data source, said Ryan, and studies typically compared fatalities to race. In 2021, aHarvard studyfound that Black and Latino Americans were more likely to be killed in traffic than other racial or ethnic groups per mile traveled.
"But it's not enough data to really dive into what's happening," said Ryan. "In reality, the number of crashes we have every year in the U.S. alone is in the millions, so we're looking at the crashes themselves. It'll give us a much better perspective."
To help broaden the scope, this study combines layered national and state demographic data from sources such as the Census with injury and fatality data from Emergency Medical Services.
Tackling Tough History
Disparities have existed since the inception of the U.S. transportation system.
"These inequities are grounded in our history, and we need to do something about it," said Ryan.
"The interstate system that runs across the United States primarily went through neighborhoods and homes of people who were Black, people who were poor, Indigenous populations destroying their communities and displacing them."
Further, regions with fewer resources for transportation infrastructure, including low-density, rural areas, often experience higher rates of serious crashes per capita. For instance, communities with less to spend on sidewalks next to roads tend to see more pedestrian-related crashes.
Ryan's previous crash data analysis also uncovered gender disparities.
"Female drivers were more likely to get injured in a crash, and they were more likely to walk away with certain injuries," she said.
Her2020 studyshowed that no crash dummies with proportions characteristic of females had been used to date and concluded that women drivers' safety is overlooked in vehicle design and testing. The study found that female drivers are more likely than male drivers to experience a primary injury to the abdomen, chest and extremities.
Equity Equality
University of Arizona civil and architectural engineering and mechanics doctoral studentSaquib Haroon, who is helping build machine learning models to distill the mountains of data and identify patterns, said the project makes an important distinction between social equity and equality.
Equality means everyone is treated similarly, he explained, whereas equity accepts that some individuals need to be provided with additional or different resources to be successful.
"We all need to understand that not everything in this world is going to be equal and focus on ensuring those who are disadvantaged receive adequate resources," he stressed.
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
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Civil engineer looks to remedy inequities in traffic safety - EurekAlert
Alex K. Jones Is New EECS Chair in the College of Engineering and Computer Science Syracuse University News – Syracuse University News
The College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) welcomes Alex K. Jones as the Klaus Schroder Endowed Professor for Engineering and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS).
Jones joins Syracuse from the University of Pittsburgh, where he had a 21-year career in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) with courtesy appointments in computer science (CS) and physics and astronomy.
Alex K. Jones
Im thrilled to join Syracuse University at this important time, says Jones. The designation of Syracuse University as a core partner in a Regional Tech Hub for computer chips along, with the establishment of the new Micron fabrication facility, is a tremendous opportunity to become a national leader in the semiconductor space with direct access to opportunities through the CHIPS and Science Act. I am also excited about the outstanding potential within EECS in topics like artificial intelligence, sustainable energy, quantum science and information, and many others thanks to the talented faculty, students and staff. In partnership with ECS and Syracuse University, broadly, I think you will see great things from EECS in the coming years that will benefit our students, our city, our state and beyond.
Jones research interests are broadly in the areas of computer architecture and compilers. He is best known for research and leadership advancing the field of sustainable computing. His contributions are related to applying full lifecycle thinking to the study of environmental impacts and optimizations for computing systems including projections of environmental impacts, such as with servers in data centers.
Jones demonstrated that the critical environmental impacts from manufacturing these servers can meet or exceed those from the powering their operation in data centers. This trend has started to be noted by industry over the last half decade. More importantly, in handheld systems like mobile phones, 80% or more of the greenhouse gas emissions comes from manufacturing.
Among his research contributions in this area, Jones work has demonstrated that leveraging existing silicon in novel ways, such as processing-in-memory, creates an opportunity to holistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has created a tool suite called GreenChip to help encourage the use of environmental-related metrics in the development of next generation computing systems. Jones has received a Carnegie Science Award, a Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation Faculty Fellowship and was elevated to Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to sustainable computing.
Jones has a significant background in academic leadership. He served as Pitts director of computer engineering from 2011-17, a joint program comprised of faculty from the CS and ECE departments. He led the program to unprecedented growth and an increase in visibility and rankings nationally. Jones philosophy combined better engagement between students and faculty in the program and a curriculum that included the newest developments in the field and aspects of the excellent research undertaken by computer engineering program faculty. During his tenure as director, computer engineering at Pitt became a top 50 program nationally, where it remains today.
Following his tenure with computer engineering, Jones joined the National Science Foundation Space, High Performance and Resilient Computing (SHREC) Center and served as associate director from 2018-20. He led a project team in memory reliability for high performance and space applications. He demonstrated that off-the-shelf dynamic random access memory (DRAM) used in commodity computers had specific radiation properties such that 9599% of the faults were from predictable locations. He developed a technique that combined a fault repository and low-level error correction that could protect standard DRAM from radiation faults in space, avoiding the need to use radiation hardened devices that are expensive and trail the state of the art by several generations.
In August 2020, Jones joined the NSF as a program manager in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate in the Computer and Network Systems (CNS) Division as part of the Computer Systems Research (CSR) cluster. A significant accomplishment was his creation of the Design for Environmental Sustainability of Computing (DESC) program. He was also the managing program director of the ATHENA AI Institute led by Duke University. In his third year at the NSF, he was elevated to serve as cluster lead for CSR. In his fourth year, he was appointed as the deputy division director for the Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division, which is a member of the senior leadership team of the Engineering (ENG) Directorate.
While at NSF, Jones established a new personal research direction in quantum computing. Attracting nearly $3 million in funding from foundation and Department of Defense grants with his physics colleague Michael Hatridge (Pitt/Yale) and the latter with Hatridge and Robert Schoelkopf (Yale) to develop modular computer architectures, Jones research demonstrates better target quantum gates and interconnection topologies that can be realized with high fidelity superconducting systems. These approaches improve the size of quantum applications that can be solved in noisy quantum machines.
Jones received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University, where he was a Walter P. Murphy Fellow. His first major paper at Northwestern on translating MATLAB applications into hardware descriptions went on to be a seminal work (top 25 paper of all time) in the IEEE Field Programmable and Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) Conference. His Ph.D. work in compilation/high-level synthesis of C/C++ codes into hardware descriptions crystallized his interest in compilation and configurable computing. This work informed some of his early work at Pitt in design automation of coarse-grain reconfigurable computing fabrics and radio frequency identification (RFID) devices. Compilation remains a core focus of Jones research as applied to configurable architectures and most recently in terms of programming quantum systems (transpilation).
In his spare time, Jones is a freelance clarinetist. In Pittsburgh he was the principal clarinetist of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic, where he has been a featured soloist, served briefly as its artistic director, and served as guest conductor. He also enjoys downhill skiing.
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