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  Professional development, outreach, and technology awareness with The Mobile Lab

  Jeremy Worm

  The Mobile Lab is a one of a kind mobile event facility operated by the Advanced Power Systems Research Center (APS LABS). The Mobile Lab travels the country providing hands-on Professional Development short courses, STEM Outreach, and as a venue for increasing awareness of new technologies. The Mobile Lab consists of a classroom, two full-functional powertrain test cells, a fleet of over 25 vehicles, and a chassis dynamometer. The configurability of the Mobile Lab enables support of virtually any technical or non-technical short course or outreach. The Mobile Lab commands attention, generating large crowds at conferences, expos, and community events, making it an effective means of disseminating research findings and increasing awareness of new technologies. Come find out how the Mobile Lab can strengthen and expand your particular program.

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  Autonomy at the end of the Earth

  Jeremy P. Bos

  Despite press accounts to the contrary, significant challenges remain in the development of true autonomous vehicles. Though these challenges are many and varied my research focuses on two areas. First, operation of autonomous vehicles in inclement weather with emphasis on ice and snow. The other focus is on developing functionally safe mobility solutions. In this talk, I will briefly describe some approaches I am developing to solving these challenges.

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  Batteries in-n-out: Multiple lives mobility

  Lucia Gauchia

  As batteries become more extended across all applications, battery second life or re-purposing is gaining traction. This adds another degree of mobility to batteries. Not only do they move with the person/mobile/vehicle during operation, but also after their life in that application ends. Then they can be re-purposed for other less demanding applications, such as residential or buildings. As batteries move in and out of applications as their performance degrades, they show an interesting mobility and life cycle analysis which presents better environmental solutions, lower costs and new opportunities.

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  Multi-sensor fusion on mobile platforms

  Timothy C. Havens

  An important goal for many mobile platforms---terrestrial, aquatic, or airborne---is reliable, accurate, and on-time sensing of the world around them. The PRIME Lab has been investigating multi-sensor fusion for many applications, including explosive hazard detection and infrastructure inspection, from terrestrial vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). New developments in multi-sensor fusion using radars, imaging sensors, and LIDAR will be discussed that encompass advancements from novel signal processing approaches for mobile ground-penetrating radar to more theoretical approaches for optimal fusion of measurements from multi-modal sensors. This talk will explore the area of sensor-fusion both from a practical, application-focused standpoint and also from a theoretical learning-theory approach to information fusion.

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  Multimodal interaction in conneted automated vehicles

  Myounghoon Jeon

  Electric vehicles and automated vehicles are getting more pervasive in our everyday life. Ideally, fully automated vehicles that drivers can completely trust would be the best solution. However, due to technical limitations and human factors issues, fully automated vehicles are still under test, and no concrete evidence has yet shown their functionalities are superior to human cognition and operation. In the Mind Music Machine Lab, we are actively conducting research on connected and automated vehicles, mainly using driving simulators. This talk specifically focuses on multimodal interactions between a driver and a vehicle as well as the driver and nearby drivers. In this autonomous driving context, we facilitate the collaborative driving by estimating the driver’s cognitive and affective states using multiple sensors (e.g., computer vision, physiological devices) and by communicating via auditory and gestural channels. Future works include refining our designs for diverse populations, including drivers with difficulties/disabilities, passengers, pedestrians, etc.

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  Mobility and safety: Do drivers behave as engineers want them to behave?

  Pasi T. Lautala

  As engineers, we thrive to provide environment for safe mobility through proper geometric designs, regulations, guidance and warnings. However, safe movements are still heavily dependent on the individual behavior and reactions by the drivers/users (at least for now). Traditionally, understanding drivers’ behavior has been a difficult topic to research, but today we have increasing number of data and tools available to improve that understanding. One of the tools that has recently become available is the Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) database that provides an opportunity to investigate the behavior of almost 3,500 instrumented vehicles and drivers in six different regions of the country. There are numerous opportunities for the data, but currently we are harnessing it toward development of driver behavior trends at highway-rail grade crossings, and eventually toward investigating the correlation of behavior in simulated vs. natural settings.

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  Persistent operation of mobile robots

  Nina Mahmoudian

  Success of numerous unmanned mobile missions in space, air, ground, and water is measured by the ability of the robots to usefully operate for extended time in dynamic and uncertain environments. This talk will provide an overview of the recent progress towards performing autonomous long-term missions. The approach includes task and energy routing scheduling, efficient path planning and coordination, and low-infrastructure platforms. The goal is to provide practical solutions by lowering deployment and operating costs, while also increasing efficiency, endurance and persistence during complex missions like disaster responses and long-term science discoveries.

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  Autonomy on and in the sea

  Guy Meadows

  Within cold water regions, such as the upper Great Lakes and possibly the Arctic Ocean, the scientific potential of autonomous surface and sub-surface vehicles lies primarily in assessment of lower food web dynamics and its physical/chemical drivers, during the strong, annual transition times when conventional platforms (buoys, gliders and research vessels) are precluded from safe or efficient operation (early and late winter when large regions are not fully ice covered). During these times, it is possible to operate well-equipped autonomous vehicles to gain basic science observations, measurements and samples that have previously not been possible. Scientists in the upper Great Lakes and Lake Superior in particular, currently lack the capabilities for real-time science observations during this significant and critical portion of the annual thermal cycle.

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  DOE APRA-E NEXTCAR program on connected and automated vehicles in collaboration with GM

  Jeffrey D. Naber

  Within the $3.5M ARPA-e NEXTCAR program, Michigan Tech in collaboration with GM will development and demonstrate on a fleet of eight 2017 Chevrolet Volts and a mobile connected cloud computing center, a Vehicle Dynamics and Powertrain (VD&PT) model-based predictive controller (MPC) encompassing a real-time VD&PT dynamic model leveraging vehicle conductivity (V2X) with real-time traffic modeling and predictive speed horizons and eco-routing. The objective is to achieve a minimum of 20% reduction in energy consumption (electric + fuel) through the first ever real-time implementation and connection of route planning, powertrain energy management MPC algorithms. Connectivity data from vehicles, infrastructure, GPS, traffic and desired route planning combined with a dynamic model of the powertrain-vehicle system allows prediction of the vehicle’s future speed profile and enables forward looking optimization of powertrain mode selection, energy utilization from the battery and fuel source, and distribution of propulsive torque from the electric motors and/or internal combustion engine. Development and testing will be done at MCity and within a complete integrated vehicle and traffic simulation model.

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  Ignimbrites to batholiths

  Chad Deering

  Ignimbrites sample large magma reservoirs in the Earth’s upper crust, sometimes digging deep enough to link the volcanic realm with the plutonic world. Integrating textural, petrological, geochemical, and geochronological information on such deposits with geophysical signals suggest incremental growth and evolution of subvolcanic magma bodies that are dominated by high crystallinity mush zones, but sometimes remain sufficiently liquid to erupt. The eruptible upper portions are either extracted melt from the mush and constitute only a small volumetric fraction of the vertically extensive mushy batholithic magma body. The high-flux, ignimbrite flare-up phases are typically preceded by waxing magmatism that prime the crust to hold large, upper crustal silicic reservoirs where melt rich magma accumulates. Gas exsolution within such mushy reservoirs, and accumulation of the low density bubbles in the most melt-rich parts of the system, will also enhance eruptibility, emphasizing some of the observed chemical differences between evolved plutonic and volcanic rocks.

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  Learning from the past: 19th century student perspectives on science education

  Andrew Fiss

  This talk indicates the central conceit of my research: that we can improve twenty-first-century STEM education through recovering student perspectives from the nineteenth century. In the US, many of the subjects, rationales, and pedagogical techniques in our current classrooms started to appear around the time of the Civil War, and studying the past can therefore tell us about the roots of our current problems of underrepresentation, standardization, and science engagement. Student perspectives are especially important, as they are today, because they provide diverse accounts of the pitfalls and promises of past classes. In this respect, my research looks to unlikely sources for new evidence: doodles, diaries, exhibits, plays, textbook burials, and unofficial ceremonies.

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  Bird response to land use change in Northern Argentina

  David J. Flaspohler

  Land use change is responsible for changes in wildlife populations including declines for many species. When one land cover type is converted into another for forestry, agriculture or pasture, some bird species are harmed while others may be favored. Understanding how biodiversity responds to land use change is essential to allowing us to anticipate and respond to management options and economic drivers of change. We studied the response of a diverse bird community in an historically grassland portion of northern Argentina, where eucalyptus plantations are expanding rapidly to support timber, pulp and incipient bioenergy industries. Plantations contained the fewest bird species and distinct and largely unique (little overlap) bird communities were found in the alternative grassland, agricultural and remnant savanna ecosystems.

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  Energy and the macroeconomy

  Latika Gupta

  I specialize in the field of energy economics and the macroeconomy. Currently I am researching the demand and supply side effects of oil markets. I examine the impact of demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market on industrial production in the US and other OECD countries (as opposed to treating oil price shocks as exogenous). My work examines the functional form & structural stability of the relationship between oil prices and the economy using disaggregated data. My research agenda includes the effect of oil prices on labor markets; role of energy policy; and effects of steel prices on the economy. In addition to energy economics, I have presented and written papers in areas of economics education, worked on an inter-disciplinary research project on bottled water use in Mexico, and co-authored a white paper describing the results and conclusions from an NSF funded food-energy-water nexus workshop at Michigan Tech.

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  Culture in-color

  Stefka Hristova

  As an Assistant Professor of Digital Media in an interdisciplinary humanities department, my research explores the relationships between visual media, visualizing technologies, and community in order to better understand how the visual constitutes and is constitutive of historical, political, and cultural processes.

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  Clubs for the unclubbable: Humor and literary sociability

  Laura Kasson Fiss

  What’s a club for the unclubbable? A book or magazine. This notion underlies a strain of humor about clubs in the aftermath of Britain’s 1870 Education Act. Beneath the jokes about men gathering to hide behind their newspapers lies an earnest aspiration to create a print equivalent of a club ethos: an institution that cultivates fellow feeling. Humorists such as Jerome K. Jerome, J. M. Barrie, Israel Zangwill and G. K. Chesterton jokingly redefined the club for new classes of readers, who tended to be “unclubbable” not because of the quality of their sociability, but for reasons of class, gender, or other social factors. The imagined space of print culture created a club for these “unclubbables,” one with looser rules of affiliation. Thinking of print culture as a club sheds light on literary sociability, specifically the ways in which the simple act of reading the same book can connect us.

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  Electrospun nanofibers as neural guidance scaffolds

  Michael Mullins

  Highly-aligned electrospun PolyLactic-L-Acid (PLLA) nanofibers have been shown to promote and direct the axonal outgrowth of Central Nervous System (CNS) neurons. Aligned fibers deposited on 3D printed stages have been tested in vitro using chick Dorsal Root Ganglia (DRG's), and show highly directed neurite growth with improved extension. In vivo studies on rats indicate that similar results are attained, with substantial regrowth of fully transected spinal cords. Extension of these studies to new generation of coaxial nanofiber scaffolds which allow electrical stimulation are in progress.

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  APS LABS (Advanced Power Systems Research Center)

  Jeffrey D. Naber

  Our mission is to promote & facilitate education and research in clean, efficient, and sustainable power and powertrain systems. The center was established in 2007 and in 2014 the 55,000 sq ft APSRC building located near the airport was denoted as a MTU core facility. Our new research contracts in FY2016 were over $2.5M. Our partners include automotive OEMs: GM, Ford, FCA, Toyota, Honda; Commercial OEMs: Cummins, Deere, Detroit, Isuzu, MHI; Suppliers: Delphi, Denso, Borg Warner, Hitachi; and DOE Labs: ANL, ORNL, PNNL, SNL, & INL. We have seven staff to assist in educational and R&D programs and facilities to support research at the fundamental to applied scale. The Mobile Lab provides outreach, education, and demonstration platform. We were recently awarded a $3.5M DOE ARPA-e program with GM to advance mobility and efficiency through connected an automated vehicle technologies. View more online at http://apslabs.me.mtu.edu.

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  Co-opting capitalism through sneaky social ventures: Possibilities and challenges

  Latha Poonamallee

  My work is based on the premise that capitalism has outlived its utility and society needs new normative frameworks of organizing for building a just, sustainable, and prosperous world. Social ventures offer a vehicle for addressing the grand challenges such as global health, sustainable agriculture, clean technology, and financial inclusion through co-opting capitalism while serving societies. By explicitly and simultaneously focusing on social/environmental impact, underserved markets, and financial sustainability, they disrupt markets, products, and funding models. This has also led to a growth in impact investors and alternative legal forms of incorporation such as the Benefit Corporation, L3C, and Social Purpose Corporation. By co-opting capitalism, these sneaky ventures focus attention on big issues that matter while being financially sustainable. Co-optation also carries with it the danger of being co-opted and requires vigilance on the part of the founders.

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  Gearing for future connectivity

  Darrell L. Robinette

  The trend in automotive power transfer systems is to add more fixed gear ratios, add electric motors and increase operating flexibility with multiple driving modes. The increase in complexity and content is a direct result of stricter regulations on CO2 emissions and, as a result, increases engineering effort on propulsion system matching, subsystem engineering and added layers of model based controls for drive quality and operating efficiency. The emerging thrust towards autonomous vehicle control has brought opportunity in the use of connected vehicle data to optimize propulsion system control to reduce fuel/energy consumption. In synergy with these trends, a recently awarded project to Michigan Tech from the DOE’s ARPA-e agency in connected and automated vehicle powertrain and vehicle dynamics control for reducing energy consumption is highlighted.

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  Mechanics of soft polymers

  Trisha Sain

  Understanding the mechanics and physics of soft polymers are essential due to their widespread applications across disciplines. (e.g.-composite materials, bio mechanics, soft robotics etc.) The soft polymers in general inherent lightweight, high stretchability, extreme viscous damping and stimuli responsive behavior. Development of computational modeling strategy to predict their constitutive response, stimuli responsive behavior is indeed helpful for designing novel multifunctional soft composites, artificial mussels/tissues. In this talk I will briefly emphasize how we are developing multiscale-multiphysics based modeling methods for soft polymers to understand their macroscopic deformation mechanism, failure and other mechanical properties. The long term goal is to develop an integrated computation driven-coupled experimental design strategy for polymer based material systems.

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  Premortem light: Improving planning using a lightweight, perspective shifting technique

  Elizabeth Veinott

  Teams can be overly optimistic regarding the likelihood of their plan’s success. This “planning fallacy” may result from ineffective plan-evaluation strategies. The PreMortem technique, imagining that a plan has failed and then trying to explain why, leverages a perspective-shifting strategy. However, very little research has been conducted to evaluate the validity of this technique. In this experiment, a Premortem Light was tested in a challenge course. Forty-eight members of Michigan Tech’s ROTC completed 6 novel field challenges in small teams. Each team used the Premortem Light for half of the challenges, and their typical plan-evaluation strategy (baseline) for the other half. Compared to the baseline, when teams used the Premortem Light, their plans were better, they fixated during problem solving less, and they made statistically fewer errors. Furthermore, there was no overall increase in course time. This technique can be effective in a variety of situations, including disaster response.

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  Stem cell and tissue engineering research

  Feng Zhao

  My research focuses on stem cell and tissue engineering. By combining stem cell biology and engineering tools, the Zhao Lab seeks strategies to biofabricate completely biological tissues to regenerate or repair damaged tissues or organs. The function of engineered tissues is being strengthened by recapitulating the in vivo environment of natural tissues. The underlying mechanism is being explored through investigating the interaction of cells with environmental factors such as topographical cues, biophysical forces, and oxygen tensions. We also prompt stem cell research at Michigan Tech to meet the progress and advance of the outside scientific society. Training opportunities are consistently provided to graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, especially underrepresented students. In the TechTalk, I will introduce our stem cell-based cardiovascular and skin tissue engineering research.

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  Solid state sound: A "hot" topic

  Andrew Barnard

  As seen with the latest iPhone 7 release, traditional audio components can now be a limiting factor in technology design. What if we could make a loudspeaker with no moving parts and virtually no weight? Carbon nanotube loudspeakers are such devices. They create sound using heat oscillations, as opposed to a moving diaphragm. They have the thickness of only a handful of carbon atoms, are flexible and stretchable. In this TechTalk I’ll discuss the carbon nanotube loudspeaker and the design challenges in maturing this intriguing technology.

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  Enriching health-related research through glycobiological approaches

  Tarun K. Dam

  In the Laboratory of Mechanistic Glycobiology at Michigan Technological University, we have been working in four distinct but related areas. Our findings can significantly influence human health-related research. (1) We have documented a molecular strategy that can improve drug designing. (2) We have shown that the tumor-associated protein galectin-3 can create problems in cancer biomarker assays by hiding the biomarkers. (3) In another project, we reported that the role of galectin-3 in cancer could be more complicated than what is reported in the literature. (4) Our team also detected a novel natural product with anti-fungal and anti-cancer activities.

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  Exercise as a form of medicine

  Steven J. Elmer

  My research goals are to find better ways to restore musculoskeletal function, maintain health, and improve mobility in healthy and clinical populations. Students in my laboratory (engineering, kinesiology, physical therapy) investigate how humans move and implement new exercise interventions to improve physical conditioning and performance. We work with populations ranging from individuals living with a spinal cord injury to adults recovering from ACL surgery to elite athletes. Applications for our research range from basic aspects of muscle contraction to applied human performance in a variety of settings including rehabilitation, ergonomics, and sport.