Category Archives: Awards

‘Refrigerator’ Without Electricity

photo of pot in pot

2000 Rolex award to Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigeria for the Pot in Pot Cooling System:

Ingenious technique that requires no external energy supply to preserve fruit, vegetables and other perishables in hot, arid climates. The pot-in-pot cooling system, a kind of “desert refrigerator”, helps subsistence farmers by reducing food spoilage and waste and thus increasing their income and limiting the health hazards of decaying foods. Abba says he developed the pot-in-pot “to help the rural poor in a cost-effective, participatory and sustainable way”.

The pot-in-pot consists of two earthenware pots of different diameters, one placed inside the other. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand that is kept constantly moist, thereby keeping both pots damp. Fruit, vegetables and other items such as soft drinks are put in the smaller inner pot, which is covered with a damp cloth. The phenomenon that occurs is based on a simple principle of physics: the water contained in the sand between the two pots evaporates towards the outer surface of the larger pot where the drier outside air is circulating. By virtue of the laws of thermodynamics, the evaporation process automatically causes a drop in temperature of several degrees, cooling the inner container, destroying harmful micro-organisms and preserving the perishable foods inside.

He also received the 2001 Shell Award for Sustainable Development. Great stuff:

Born in 1964 into a family of pot makers and raised in the rural north, Mohammed Bah Abba was familiar from an early age with the various practical and symbolic uses of traditional clay pots, and learned as a child the rudiments of pottery. Subsequently studying biology, chemistry and geology at school, he unravelled the technical puzzle that led him years later to develop the “pot-in-pot preservation/cooling system”.

Thompson and Tits share 2008 Abel Prize (Math)

Thompson and Tits share the Abel Prize for 2008

John Griggs Thompson, Graduate Research Professor, University of Florida, and Jacques Tits, Professor Emeritus, CollÃ¨ge de France, have been awarded the 2008 Abel Prize “for their profound achievements in algebra and in particular for shaping modern group theory.” In the prize citation, the Abel Committee writes that “Thompson revolutionized the theory of finite groups by proving extraordinarily deep theorems that laid the foundation for the complete classification of finite simple groups, one of the greatest achievements of twentieth century mathematics.”

In 1963, Thompson and Walter Feit proved that all nonabelian finite simple groups were of even order, work for which they both won the Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Algebra from the AMS in 1965. Thompson also won a Fields Medal in 1970. In the Abel citation for Tits, the committee writes that “Tits created a new and highly influential vision of groups as geometric objects. He introduced what is now known as a Tits building, which encodes in geometric terms the algebraic structure of linear groups.” The committee noted the link between the two winners’ work: “Tits’s geometric approach was essential in the study and realization of the sporadic groups, including the Monster.” Tits received the Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences in 1976, and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in 1993.

The Abel Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics. The prize amount is 6,000,000 Norwegian kroner (over US$1,000,000).

Propeller Innovation by Engineering Students

Innovation propels students’ careers

Four fifth-year students from the electrical and mechanical departments won a national innovation competition and are now in preliminary talks with oil and gas behemoth Shell for a propeller design that is more efficient, watertight, pressurized and powerful than other models. “The motor housing creates drag (on other models),” said electrical engineering student Dave Shea. “So we integrated it into the propeller itself. There’s no drag, there’s no dead zone. It’s also much bigger and more powerful.”

Most propellers have a body encasing the motor. There’s air inside, which can cause the body to collapse when submerged in oceanic depths. The casing also creates drag, slowing the machine down and making it difficult to move backward.

But Shea, along with Brian Claus, Peter Crocker and Toren Gustafson, devised a way to build the motor in the casing that surrounds the propeller blades. The parts are assembled in a ring shape then encased in epoxy, making the motor waterproof. The propeller is fastened inside the ring, allowing it to easily move forward or backward.

2008 Intel Science Talent Search

When Shivani Sud was six years old, one of her immediate family members was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Inspired by the doctors who helped her loved one recover, Shivani set her sights on a career in medicine.

Fast forward to Intel STS 2008, where the 17-year-old senior from Durham, North Carolina, presented research focused on identifying stage II colon cancer patients at high risk for recurrence and the best therapeutic agents for treating their tumors. Whereas the standard method of characterizing tumors relies on visual information (such as size, degree
of metastasis, and microscopic structure), Shivani developed a “50-gene model” which uses gene expression to link multiple genetic events that characterize various tumor types to more accurately predict the recurrence of colon cancer. Additionally, Shivani’s model can be used to identify drugs that may be most effective in treating each patient.

In 2006 she attended the Davidson Institute, summer program at Davidson College and received the Davidson Fellows Scholarship.

And now I can segue to the Davidson Wildcats victories in the NCAA basketball tournament last weekend (I graduated from Davidson, by the way, and grew up in Madison). Davidson will play the Wisconsin Badgers on Friday. My picks are doing pretty well.

$10 Million X Prize for 100 MPG Car

Progressive Automotive X PRIZE

The window for applications will be open until mid 2008, when a thorough qualification process will assess safety, cost, features and business plans to ensure that only production-capable, consumer-friendly cars compete. Those that qualify will race their vehicles in rigorous cross-country stage races in 2009 and 2010 that combine speed, distance, urban driving and overall performance. The winners will be the vehicles that exceed 100 MPG, meet strict emissions standards and finish in the fastest time. Host cities involved in the competition route are to be announced shortly.

#1 Engineering Blog

Right now we are the number one rated engineering blog on blogged (with a 9.1 excellent rating). We are also the first Google result for engineering blog – #1 on Yahoo too, but not on MSN. Well, it seems to me, MSN needs to improve their search results :-).

See our directory of science and engineering blogs.

2008 Draper Prize for Engineering

Draper Prize for Engineering Medal

2008 Charles Stark Draper Prize will be awarded to Rudolf Kalman for the development and dissemination of the optimal digital technique known as the Kalman Filter. The award recipient receives a $500,000 cash award. 2007 Draper Prize to Berners-Lee – 2006 Draper Prize for Engineering

The Kalman Filter uses a mathematical technique that removes “noise” from series of data. From incomplete information, it can optimally estimate and control the state of a changing, complex system over time. The Kalman filter revolutionized the field of control theory and has become pervasive in engineering systems. It has been applied to systems and devices in nearly all engineering fields and continues to find new uses today. Applications include target tracking by radar, global positioning systems, hydrological modeling, atmospheric observations, time-series analyses in econometrics, and automated drug delivery.

Administered by the National Academy of Engineering, the Draper Prize is endowed by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., and was established in 1988. The Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement, particularly innovation and reduction to practice, in engineering and technology contributing to the advancement of the welfare and freedom of humanity.

Collegiate Inventors Competition

A novel way to treat cancer has won the top honor at the 2007 Collegiate Inventors Competition, an annual program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation. Ian Cheong of Johns Hopkins University was announced as the grand prize winner, receiving a $25,000 prize, during a ceremony last night on the campus of the California Institute of Technology.

This year’s winners also include John Dolan of the University of California, San Francisco in the graduate category for his work on the Dolognawmeter, a device to measure the effectiveness of painkillers, and Corey Centen and Nilesh Patel of McMaster University in the undergraduate category for their work on creating a CPR assist device. The McMaster team and Dolan each received a $15,000 prize from the competition, which is sponsored by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Abbott Fund.

The Collegiate Inventors Competition has recognized and encouraged undergraduate and graduate students on their quest to change the world around them for 17 years. Entries for 2008 are due by 16 May 2008 and must be the original idea and work product of the student/advisor team, and must not have been (1) made available to the public as a commercial product or process or (2) patented or published more than 1 year prior to the date of submission to the competition. The entry submitted must be written in English.

The invention, a reduced-to-practice idea or workable model, must be the work of a student or team of students with his or her university advisor. If it is a machine, it must be operable. If it is a chemical, it must be complete with evidence of successful application of the idea. If it is a new plant, color photographs or slides must be included in the submission. If a new or original ornamental design for an article of manufacture is submitted, the entire design must be included in the application. In addition, the invention should be reproducible.

Ian Cheong, 33, arrived at Johns Hopkins University from his native Singapore prepared to focus on cancer therapy. Drugs used in cancer treatment routinely kill the healthy cells as well as the cancer cells because they are potent but nonspecific. Cheong took on the task of finding a way to make the cancer drugs more specific. He injected bacterial spores into the subject which made their way to oxygen-poor areas within cancerous tumors. Then, Cheong put a cancerfighting drug in lipid particles and injected those liposomes into a subject. The germinated bacterial spores also secrete a protein that makes liposomes fall apart when the drug-containing liposomes are in the proximity of the tumors, and the drug is released only in those specific areas. Cheong, originally educated as a lawyer, received his Ph.D. in cell and molecular medicine from Johns Hopkins and is currently working on postdoctoral research. His advisor, Bert Vogelstein, receives a $15,000 prize.

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NSF CAREER Award Winners

Engineer Roy Choudhury wins NSF Early Career Award

Assistant Professor Romit Roy Choudhury has received a 5-year, $437,000 National Science Foundation Early CAREER award. The distinction recognizes and supports the early career development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become academic leaders
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“A smart antenna is like a spotlight,” Roy Choudhury explains. “It forms a focused beam that can be used to precisely transmit and receive information. This opens up a new realm of possibilities, including concurrent communications, higher transmission range, better information hiding, etc. In contrast,” he said, “old school ‘dumb’ antennas are analogous to lightbulbs. You turn them on and they spread light everywhere, or in this case, interfere with all the other communications around them.”

“Security and privacy are additional advantages of antenna-aware protocols”, said Roy Choudhury. “By focusing your beams intelligently, you may prevent eavesdroppers form listening to your conversation, and even jam them selectively. Such capabilities have obvious implications for national security.”

Through his NSF CAREER project, named Spotlight, Roy Choudhury plans to develop the theoretical basis for antenna-aware networking, design distributed protocols, and implement them on an experimental testbed.

You can get the press releases on CAREER on nsf.gov for 1996-2000? Do they know it is 2008?

Here are some more awardees from this year: Worcester Polytechnic Institute Professor Wenjing Lou – Clarkson University Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Narayanan Neithalath – Engineering’s Ghosh Wins NSF Award for Novel Transistor Research at the Nanoscale – Shengquan Wang is an assistant professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn – Dr. Glen Jackson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Bio Chemistry at Ohio University – Dr. C. Heath Turner, Reichhold-Shumaker assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at The University of Alabama

Thailand’s Contribution to the ISEF

Intel to send 5 to US

Intel Microelectronics (Thailand) Ltd is sponsoring five young Thai students to participate in the 59th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in Atlanta, Georgia
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Two of the individual entries are a musical instrument sound analysis and recognition system, which won the first prize in the computer science category, and was developed by Boonyarit Somrealvongkul, and a method of measuring a curved path’s radius with a modified car, which took first prize in the engineering category and was developed by Ronnapee Chaichaowarat.

The third project is a team entry, “New Plywood Products”, the first prize winner in the environmental science category, developed by Pheemadej Prasitwarawej, Tanavorakit Bangkeaw and Manapas Hararak, from Montfort College, Chiang Mai.

Over 1,500 of the brightest young scientists from around the world attend the fair every year, where they share ideas, showcase cutting-edge science projects and compete for more than $3 million (94.5 million baht) in awards and scholarships.