THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
AND APPLIED SCIENCE

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ENGINEERING WETLANDS TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT

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Its only been in the last 20 years that weve begun to understand the full benefits of wetlands. Acre for acre, wetlands support more plants and animals than any other type of ecosystem, providing crucial rest stops and nesting areas for migrating birds and critical spawning grounds for fish. In many cases, wetlands serve as a buffer between large bodies of water and land, dissipating the energy of storms and preventing shoreline erosion. Because they can absorb large quantities of water, they can also help control flooding. Civil engineering professor Shaw Yu is interested in wetlands for yet another of their remarkable qualities: they act as natural filters, slowing the flow of water and removing contaminants through a variety of physical, chemical, and biological processes. As an engineer, Yu is not simply interested in protecting existing wetlands. He helps create new ones, using engineering principles to reproduce these natural filtering systems. Yus work has attracted widespread attention. He has played an important role in a program implemented by the Virginia Department of Transportation to build mitigated wetlands. Many of these wetlands collect highway runoff as their water source, and Yus research has documented the ability of these wetlands to purify road runoff. By the end of 1999, the department had created over 230 new roadside wetlands. Yus research work has also attracted the attention of officials in the rapidly industrializing, densely populated nations of Asia. He played an instrumental role in creating the Water Environment Research Center at the National Taipei University of Technology, which is charged with researching the sustainable use of water, offering workshops for water management professionals, and promoting international collaboration. He has shepherded the creation of a series of alliances, between the University of Virginia and the National Taipei University of Technology as well as between the School of Engineering and the National Taiwan University, to promote the exchange of scholars and students interested in wetlands construction. In 1999, he assembled a team of experts and traveled to mainland China at the request of its government to discuss methods of preserving and extending wetlands in the Yellow River Delta. Water quality in Chinas second-largest river had deteriorated because of industrialization and extensive fertilizer use. International collaboration is extremely important, he says. Our goal is to create techniques that work in a variety of economic, social, and physical environments.

thru st AREAS

ACCORDING TO THE DEAN

Given the unrelenting pace of technological change, successful researchers must be visionaries. The real challenges lie on the horizon, and the ability to identify these challenges and the determination to address them is one of the qualities that distinguish our faculty. Its the reason that the National Science Foundation honored the Engineering School by naming it as the site of one of just four new materials research centers funded nationwide.

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around the web Environmental Engineering at U.Va. www.cs.virginia.edu/~civil/envir.html U.Va. Stormwater Group Homepage www.people.virginia.edu/~enqstorm/ Water Environment Research Center www.ntut.edu.tw/~wwwwec/English/fp.htm

Richard W. Miksad

VOLUME THREE

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NUMBER ONE

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A LIFELONG LEARNER

PROFILE
After 35 years, BOB BENNETT has returned again to the Engineering School at the University of Virginia because the knowledge and intellectual training he received as an undergraduate proved so valuable. Graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1967, the cardiologist is currently studying systems engineering in our Falls Church Executive Masters Program and preparing for a new career advising the healthcare industry on process improvement.
Bennetts engineering background had another lasting consequence. It increased his awareness of inefficiencies in the healthcare system. For eight years, he served on committees at Bon Secours hospitals in Richmond that looked at the effectiveness of collaborative groups and proposed ways to improve their performance. Now after almost 20 years in practice, hes decided to devote himself full-time to tackling these issues on a larger scale. He established Medical Reengineering Consultants to advise hospitals as well as insurance and pharmaceutical companies on such issues as improving disease management. And when he found out about the Executive Masters Program in Systems Engineering in Falls Church, he decided that a return to U.Va. would give him the knowledge and credentials needed to make this new venture a success. The Engineering School truly offers lifelong learning, he says. I am finally putting a name to things Ive been doing intuitively for a long time. At the same time, the systems approach has enabled me to see the problems confronting the healthcare system from a much larger perspective.

Bob Bennett took an unusual route in preparing himself for medical school. Rather than study biology or chemistry, he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia. After all, the study of machine design, his concentration, has obvious applications to the study of the human body. Bennett found, however, that the intellectual rigor he gained at the Engineering School gave him another advantage. At U.Va., you were trained to analyze a situation and then respond, a critical skill when working with patients, he says.

www.executivemasters.com /

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A PROJECT WITH A POINT

Assistant Professor Bill Walker feels it is important to convey to students his conviction that engineers, like lawyers and physicians, have a responsibility to apply their skills pro bono to help groups who could otherwise never afford their services. Not surprisingly, when this biomedical engineering professor was presented with the challenge of designing a cheap, safe, secure needle disposal system that could be used by public health workers in developing countries, he jumped at the opportunity to involve students in the project. Walker was approached by Janine Jagger, the director of U.Va.s International Healthcare Worker Safety Center, and Dr. Charles Sagoe-Moses, a top public health official in Accra, Ghana. People in Ghana, like poor people around the world, are of necessity avid recyclers. They rinse used syringes in tap water and reuse them, inadvertently creating a huge public health risk. Walker is using the project not only to underscore the importance of public service by engineers, but to give his students firsthand exposure to engineering design. With Walkers guidance, a team of undergraduate and graduate students formed the Syringe Disposal Design Team. Starting with two dozen possible designs, they devised a quantitative method to rank them according to criteria established for the project and chose two for further development. I really encouraged students to take the lead on the project and learn how to make decisions as a team, Walker says. I acted as an adviser. The students wrote a successful funding proposal to the National Collegiate Invention and Inventor Association and received a $20,000 grant. They are using the funds to refine the two designs, conduct a market analysis, and construct prototypes. If all goes according to plan, the team will seek corporate partners interested in licensing the technology and manufacturing the products.

www.med.virginia.edu/bme/needle/gnsd.html www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2000/

A number of our Technology, Communications, and Culture faculty have been recruited by the dean of the College and himself a historian. We appreciate the vote of confidence!

College of Arts and Sciences to teach required classes in the Department of Historyby Mel L

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grants

U.VA. CONSOLIDATES LEADERSHIP IN NANOTECHNOLOGY

AWARDED

When U.Va. thinks big about small things, it pays off. The U.Va. Engineering School has just won a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish an ambitious new Center for Nanoscale Design. It is one of just four new NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers funded nationwide. The grant will strengthen U.Va.s position at the forefront of materials research in areas ranging from novel electronic devices to fabrication of materials at the atomic level. It will also serve as an education resource for both high school and university students, according to Robert Hull, principal investigator and professor of materials science and engineering. What is truly exciting about the grant is that it allows us to pursue our interests, to fund fundamental research in areas we select, Hull says. The center will allow us to recruit two new outstanding faculty members and bring together about 10 current faculty members from several departments. The funds also will allow a dozen top graduate students to work in the center, as well as providing research experience for several dozen undergraduates. In essence, were creating one of the most outstanding nanotechnology groups in the country. The NSF award will reinforce an already strong program in materials science research at the University. The Department of Materials Science ranked twenty-first in the country in the most recent U.S. News & World Report study. The school is planning to raise $14 million in new funding to construct a building to house the new center.

http://ginsburg.ipm.virginia.edu/nanoprint/index.html

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CLASSROOM
Courtney Salthouse capped off four years in the Engineering School by spending her summer after graduation as an intern in the Capitol Hill offices of Virginia Representative Virgil Goode. I think it will serve me well in my career to have a better understanding of how government works, she says. In Congressman Goodes office, Salthouse fielded inquiries from constituents, both on the phone and in writing. The range of issues that people contact their congressman about is pretty broad, she observes. And it was very important to Mr. Goode to deal with them appropriately. Her experience doing research in the Engineering School stood her in good stead. Salthouse also attended briefings and sat in on committee meetings. Overall, Salthouse was impressed by the quality of the leaders she encountered on the Hill. My internship changed my perception of politicians and the political process, she notes. All the interns I met said that their boss was the greatest. She also had the opportunity to hear other notables, including Bob Dole, Sam Donaldson, and John Lewis, speak as part of a series of presentations organized for congressional interns. Inspired in part by Salthouses experience, the School of Engineering is formalizing its own summer internship program in Washington in conjunction with MIT. Targeted at second- and third-year students, it is designed to give undergraduates exposure to engineering policymaking at the national level through internships in government agencies, think tanks, and trade associations.

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SEAS STUDENTS ON THE HILL

V E F N E W S E X C E E D I N G E X P E C T AT I O N S
Theres no stopping the School of Engineeringor our supporters. We reached our original goal of $37.5 million two years ago, exceeded our second goal of $50 million, and hope to have raised $80 million by the end of June 2001.

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THE WORD IS GETTING OUT

Developing the mathematical models to predict the likely value of intellectual property is a project being tackled by systems engineering professor Peter Beling and his colleagues. The automated prediction capabilities of the models allow them to limit the scope and number of judgments required of evaluation officers, resulting in a faster and more objective evaluation process.
Last year, applications and acceptances from Thomas Jefferson High School, one of the best magnet schools for science and technology in the nation, increased

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CONNECTION

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO FINANCING START-UPS

Small technology start-ups run into a wall when they try to secure financing. Commercial lenders shy away from these businesses because they have no physical assets that can serve as security. At best, lenders insist on an accelerated payment schedule that can increase the risk of failure. A new company in Charlottesville, Mosaic Collateral Asset Management Inc. (MCAM), has stepped into the breach by offering banks and investors a guaranteed purchase price for intellectual property owned by a loan applicant. This effectively allows the bank to treat intellectual property as collateral.

The initial phases of this work were conducted under a $30,000 Innovation Award from Virginias Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) and MCAMs parent company, Mosaic Technologies. CIT recently honored this project as the Best University Research and Development Project in a statewide competition. Beling and his associates are continuing this work under a $600,000, three-year award from MCAM.
www.sys.virginia.edu/~ferg www.m-cam.com

dramatically. As a result, we have 21 students from Thomas Jefferson in the class of 2004, compared to eight in 2003.

U.S. POSTAGE
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION

CHARLOTTESVILLE PERMIT NO. 164

engineering that makes a difference

The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science Thornton Hall Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4246 804.924.3072 www.seas.virginia.edu www.seas.virginia.edu / impact

featured

inside

volume three number one

T h e U .Va . E n g i n e e r i n g S c h o o l h a s j u s t w o n a F I V E - Y E A R , $ 5 M I L L I O N GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION