News in engineering: Accepting the challenge

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Find out how Ohio State engineering faculty, students and alumni are tackling the 14 most pressing issues facing today’s society in the latest issue of News in Engineering. The work of Ohio State electrical and computer engineers is featured in several articles in this issue, including:

  • Accepting the Challenge: Highlights how College of Engineering researchers and alumni are tackling the Grand Challenges for Engineering and features work by Yuan F. Zheng and David Orin to design new algorithms to make humanoid robots more powerful for fast and dynamic locomotion.
     
  • Biosensor System Detects Human Emotion: Emre Ertin and his team are working to develop a wearable wireless sensor system for continuous assessment of humans’ stress levels in their natural environments.
     
  • Changing Course for UAVs: Researchers from the ElectroScience Laboratory solved a radar and surveillance problem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with the help of atypical collaborators: embroidery experts.
     
  • New Materials Hold Promise for Turbine, Antenna Use: Work by Leonard Brillson and experts in chemistry and physics could solve aerospace engineering faculty members’ problem of having sensing devices that can operate near the intense heat of aircraft turbine engines.
     
  • Semiconductor Could Turn Heat into Computing Power: Roberto Myers and his colleagues are studying how heat can be converted into electron spin in a semiconductor called gallium manganese arsenide. Once developed, the effect could enable integrated circuits that run on heat rather than electricity.
     
  • Alumni Highlight: ECE alumnus J. Adam Wilson (’03) used a brain-computer interface to send a message through Twitter. Now doing his post-doctoral research at the University of Cincinnati, Wilson is studying a brain activity called “spreading depression” which occurs in up to 60 percent of patients following serious traumatic brain injury.

This issue of News in Engineering also includes recipients of this year’s College of Engineering alumni awards, winners of the College of Engineering 2010 Faculty Awards and much more.