Category Archives: Awards

2007 William G. Hunter Award

T.N. Goh received ASQ Statistics Division’s 2007 William G. Hunter Award. He sent me this email:

You may not realize that I first met Bill 38 year ago, when he was in Singapore helping us set up the first school of engineering in the country. He persuaded me to go to the graduate school at UW-Madison and I daresay that’s the best advice I ever got in my whole career. Now when I come to think of it, what Bill stood for in his lifetime has not been, and never will be, out of date. He had advocated the use of statistical thinking and the systems approach, which if anything is even more critical today in handling issues such as global warming and government effectiveness.

Also, statistical design of experiments has assumed an increasingly important role in performance improvement and optimization in the face of constrained resources, again something always in the minds of engineers, managers and business leaders. From time to time there are others who package statistical tools under labels Bill might not even have seen himself, such as “Design for Six Sigma“, but the underlying idea is still the same: recognize the existence of variation, and the earlier you anticipate it and do something about it, the better off you will be in the end.

Bill’s zeal in spreading the message and sharing his knowledge and expertise with people in other parts of the world is well known; I would even say that he had recognized that “the world is flat” way before the likes of Tom Friedman discovered the reality of globalization!

So that’s to share my thoughts with you, having being honored by the Bill Hunter award. I am copying this to Stu, also to Doug who chairs the committee for this award. I reality enjoy the professional association and friendship with you all.

I had not realized Dad was helping set up the first school of engineering in Singapore. This is an example people telling me the positive impact Dad had on their lives that I mentioned in: The Importance of Management Improvement.

Packard Faculty Fellowship for Nathaniel Dominy

UC Santa Cruz anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy wins prestigious $625,000 Packard Fellowship

Dominy will receive $125,000 per year for the next five years to support his investigation of the diet and foraging behaviors of hominins, the early human ancestors who lived 2 million years ago. The Packard Foundation awards these fellowships to young scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise and creativity.
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Dominy’s research interests center around the acquisition and consumption of food, which he believes fueled the development of bipedalism and big brains. Two of his recent studies made headlines around the world in recent months: The first added compelling new evidence to the hypothesis that hominins may have eaten starchy, nutrient-rich underground plant structures, including bulbs and tubers, while the second revealed that humans are uniquely equipped to digest starch. The revelation that humans have many more copies of the salivary amylase gene than any of their ape relatives bolsters the idea that starch was a crucial addition to the diet of early humans, and that natural selection favored individuals who could make more starch-digesting protein.

Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award: the Windbelt

Shawn Frayne’s Windbelt Wins Popular Mechanics 2007 Breakthrough Award

Frayne’s device consists of a flat, taut membrane that flutters within its housing as air passes through it. At each end of the membrane are magnets that oscillate between metal coils as the band flutters, effectively creating an electric charge. According to the 28-year-old Frayne, prototypes of the Windbelt have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines.
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Frayne, now based in Mountain View, Calif., gathered a variety of lessons while studying at MIT, especially under the tutelage of Amy Smith (a 2004 MacArthur fellow) in her “D-Lab” class. In this design lab, Frayne learned the politics of delivering technology to poor nations, as well as the technical aspects of mechanical engineering.

I blogged on Amy Smith another blog awhile back: Engineering a Better World (which includes a great web video). Read about 9 more Breakthrough awards.

2007 Nobel Prize in Physics

Nobel Prize in Physics 2007

This year’s physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.

In 1988 the Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter GrÃ¼nberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR. Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current. Soon researchers and engineers began work to enable use of the effect in read-out heads. In 1997 the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched and this soon became the standard technology. Even the most recent read-out techniques of today are further developments of GMR.

UW Concrete Canoe Team Victorious in the Netherlands

Concrete Canoe Team victorious in the Netherlands

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Concrete Canoe Team dominated the 30th annual Dutch Concrete Canoe Challenge Sept. 7–9 in the Netherlands. The team took first place overall, with victories in five out of the six race categories. The team’s 20-foot, 176-pound canoe, Descendent, also won the construction and innovation categories for its design and use of environmentally sound concrete.

Eight members of the UW-Madison team and their advisor, Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Chin H. Wu, traveled to Amsterdam for the competition, also known as the Beton Kano Race. The team was invited to compete after winning the U.S. national championship for the fifth consecutive time in June. The UW-Madison team was one of 12 participating teams, most of which hailed from the Netherlands or Germany.

2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2007 awarded to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans and Oliver Smithies for their discoveries of “principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells”

This year’s Nobel Laureates have made a series of ground-breaking discoveries concerning embryonic stem cells and DNA recombination in mammals. Their discoveries led to the creation of an immensely powerful technology referred to as gene targeting in mice. It is now being applied to virtually all areas of biomedicine – from basic research to the development of new therapies.

Gene targeting is often used to inactivate single genes. Such gene “knockout” experiments have elucidated the roles of numerous genes in embryonic development, adult physiology, aging and disease. To date, more than ten thousand mouse genes (approximately half of the genes in the mammalian genome) have been knocked out. Ongoing international efforts will make “knockout mice” for all genes available within the near future.

Mario R. Capecchi, born 1937 in Italy, US citizen, PhD in Biophysics 1967, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Biology at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

Sir Martin J. Evans, born 1941 in Great Britain, British citizen, PhD in Anatomy and Embryology 1969, University College, London, UK. Director of the School of Biosciences and Professor of Mammalian Genetics, Cardiff University, UK.

Oliver Smithies, born 1925 in Great Britain, US citizen, PhD in Biochemistry 1951, Oxford University, UK. Excellence Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

The USA gains 2 Nobel Laureates born elsewhere – the incidence of this happening 30 years from now will be less I believe than it has been recently.

Engineering Efficient Vehicles

Read the Cal Poly Supermileage blog to track the progress of the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo eco-vehicle team. There goal is to achieve the best gas mileage possible using a gas powered, 3 wheeled, fully faired vehicle. At the Eco-Vehicle Student Competition they achieved 1902.7 mpg. The blog also posts on interesting related matters. A great example of students learning about engineering by doing engineering.

Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar Xprize

seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change.
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we hope to usher in an era of commercial exploration and development, in which small companies, groups of individuals and universities can build, launch and explore the Moon and beyond.

Sergey Brin: “So now, we are here today embarking upon this great adventure of having a nongovernmental, commercial organization return to the Moon and explore. And I’m very excited that Google can play a part in it.”

Herr wins $250,000 Heinz Award

Professor Hugh Herr, a double amputee whose work has led to the development of new prosthetic innovations that merge body and machine, has won the 13th annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. The award is among the largest individual achievement prizes in the world. Herr, of the Media Lab, was recognized for “breakthrough innovations in prosthetics and orthotics.” He is among six distinguished Americans to receive one of the $250,000 awards presented in five categories by the Heinz Family Foundation.
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At age 17, Herr lost both legs below the knee in a mountain climbing accident, but returned to the classroom after a few years to earn an undergraduate degree in physics, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard. Today, his work at the Media Lab focuses on human amplification and rehabilitation systems – technologies that interact with human limbs, mimicking biological performance and amplifying function. Herr predicts that in 5 to 10 years, leg amputees will be able to run faster and move with a lower metabolic rate than people with biological limbs.

Google 3D Campus Competition

The seven winning teams
Purdue University – Depts of Computer Graphics Technology and Education, Concordia University
Loyola Campus – Dept of Civil Engineering
Stanford University – Dept of Architectural Design
Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne – Depts of Engineering and Computer Science
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering – Dept of Engineering
Dartmouth College – Depts of Computer Science and Digital Art
University of Minnesota – Dept of Architecture
of Google’s Build Your Campus in 3D Competition will get to visit Google’s Mountain View Headquarters. It is nice to see Google continue to provide opportunities for students.

Stanford team puts campus on map; wins Google Earth 3-D modeling contest – view the Standford buildings:

In addition to having their entries displayed on Google Earth, the winners were invited to the Google headquarters for four days, Aug. 6-9. They attended workshops, met with professional 3-D modelers, got a grand tour of the compound and enjoyed the famous free lunch.
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We’d initially planned to do nearly all the buildings on campus,” Lehrburger said. “But we underestimated the time it was going to take. I think we thought the learning curve was going to be a little bit better than it actually was, so we had to readjust our plans.”

Though they were proud of their final outcome and hard work—Lehrburger and Bergen worked late into the night as they got closer to deadline—neither of the team leaders was overly optimistic. They had modeled 94 out of the 300 or so buildings on campus and worried their model of Stanford would be considered incomplete.

Google contest motivates students to ‘rebuild’ WMU (Western Michigan University designs):

A group of seven WMU students answered an invitation by the Internet giant Google to participate in its Build Your Campus in 3-D Competition. The teams’ submission placed among the top 30 out of some 350 entries from across the United States and Canada and will be incorporated on Google Earth, the company’s popular geographic information feature.