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Earthquake Engineering Project WillSave Lives and Billions of Dollars

VOLUME 32 NUMBER 1SPRING 2009

INSIDE THIS EDITION

arizonaengineer

Published by the College of Engineering

•

Online at www.engineering.arizona.edu/news

$2.5 million studywill lead to improvedbuilding codes

The 6.7 magnitudeearthquake that struck theLos Angeles communityof Northridge at 4:30 a.m.on Jan. 17, 1994, killed57 people, injured morethan 5,000, and causedan estimated $20 billionin damage, making it thecostliest seismic disaster inU.S. history.Structures that should havewithstood the quake, such asparking garages and freewayoverpasses, collapsed and setin motion a major overhaul of building codes.“If the earthquake hadhappened three hourslater…” The potential horrorof what could have beencauses Professor RobertFleischman’s speculation totrail off. Fleischman, whoholds the Delbert R. LewisDistinguished Professorshipin Civil Engineering andEngineering Mechanics, is

about to nish the rst phase

of a 5-year, $2.5 millionearthquake engineeringstudy that will lead toimproved building codes,

NSF Career Awardsfor Jennifer Duan andRoman Lysecky

Aerospace alum winsnew TMAL award forshaping the future

Mary Poulton namedas director of newminerals institute

Solar racing teamcompletes gruelling2,400-mile race

CONTINUED ON PAGE 21

Movers and Shakers

—Doctoral students Matt Schoettler of UCSD (left) and Dichuan Zhang of UA (center), and Professor Robert Fleischman (right) inspect the second floor of the 500-ton test parkingstructure at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center.

Courtesy of Jennifer Eufemi

Arizona Engineer

equal opportunity, afrmative action

institution. The University prohibitsdiscrimination in its programs and activitieson the basis of race, color, religion, sex,national origin, age, disability, veteran status,sexual orientation or gender identity, and iscommitted to maintaining an environmentfree from sexual harassment and retaliation.

spring 2009 • volume 32 number 1

Arizona Engineer

is now available online at

www.engineering.arizona.edu/news

Many stories in this print edition havebeen edited for length, and it is notfeasible to include related multimedia

material such as video and audio les,

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arizonaengineer

32:1 spring 2009

The University of ArizonaCollege of EngineeringP.O. Box 210072Tucson, AZ 85721-0072

editor/designer

pete brown

telephone

520.621.3754

e-mail

pnb@email.arizona.edu

www.engineering.arizona.edu

By Jeff Goldberg, Interim DeanCollege of Engineering

I’m sure some of you were expectinga different photograph on this page.I’m Jeff Goldberg and I became deanon Jan. 1, 2009, when my good friendand colleague Tom Peterson went toWashington, D.C., to lead the National

The Future: Mission Possible

New school and departmentwill secure College’s future

Science Foundation’s Directoratefor Engineering. Since then, I havebeen working with faculty, staff andstudents to chart our direction duringthe next 5 years while Tom has beendeciding how to spend the engineeringdirectorate’s share of the NSF’s$3 billion stimulus package.My role as dean is to develop aninfrastructure that will enable us tobest perform our mission of education,research, service and outreach. As Ievaluate how we currently work—andhow we might work in the future—Iremain focused on creating anenvironment that attracts the beststudents, faculty and staff.Many changes are under way atthe UA and College, including thecreation of a Department of BiomedicalEngineering, and the establishment ofthe School of Sustainable EngineeredSystems, or SSES, which will consistof the departments of Civil Engineeringand Engineering Mechanics,Mining and Geological Engineering,Chemical and EnvironmentalEngineering, Materials Science andEngineering, and Systems andIndustrial Engineering.The SSES will focus on criticallinkages between systems inenvironment, energy, waterand materials. The school will bringtogether more than 50 faculty membersand draw on expertise throughoutthe campus. We see SSES as thecornerstone in using basic science andknowledge to bring problem-solvingsystems and devices that considerpublic policy and market challenges.One of the many strengths of theschool is the inclusion of Systemsand Industrial Engineering. Taking thesystems approach, rather than tacklingindividual components, will enable usto design interfaces, understand andquantify unexpected consequences,and consider large-scale models—all

critical for solving difcult problems.

Biomedical engineering is an areaof tremendous potential for Tucsonand Arizona. We are already strong inmedical imaging, nanomedicine, andcardiovascular and neural engineering.Bringing in faculty from the colleges ofMedicine, Science, and Agriculture andLife Sciences will intensify that strength.I look forward to working with each of

you as we continue to rene and enrich

the College of Engineering. Please feelfree to contact me and please drop in ifyou are in the neighborhood.

DEAN’S VIEWPOINT

Mechanical engineering senior Azeem Shahidhas been awarded a Discovery Scholarship by King Abdullah University of Science andTechnology in Saudi Arabia.Shahid will graduate from UA in May 2010 witha bachelor’s degree, and enroll in a master’sdegree program at KAUST inthe fall of 2010. “Most likely inchemical and biological engineering,” Shahidsaid. KAUST is scheduled to open in September2009 and will only offer graduate degrees.

Senior Gets Scholarship at Saudi University

James Baygentsis the College ofEngineering’s newinterim associatedean of academicaffairs. He succeedsJeff Goldberg, whorecently became theinterim dean.Jim Baygents joinedUA Engineeringfaculty as assistant professor in 1991, thesame year he got his doctorate in chemicalengineering from Princeton University.Baygents received a master’s degree inchemical engineering from Princeton in 1981and a bachelor’s degree in the same subjectfrom Rice University in 1980.For three years before joining UA, Baygentswas a visiting scientist, then a research fellow,at the NASA Space ScienceLaboratory of the MarshallSpace Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. In1995 he received the Arizona Mortar BoardSenior Honor Society award for outstandingfaculty service. In 1997 he was awarded anInternational Research Fellowship by theNational Science Foundation for study at theUniversity of Melbourne, Australia. He is amember of Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi andPhi Lambda Upsilon societies; and of theCollege of Fellows at Rice University’s WillRice College.“Jim has a clear sense of the goals of anengineering education,” said Goldberg. “Hehas worked on all phases of our curricula,including analysis, practice and design,teamwork, communication, and ethics. He iswell known for being a passionate advocatefor quality in education, from both faculty andstudent perspectives.”Baygents’ research interests include transportprocesses in natural and engineered systems.He is a member of the Department ofChemical and Environmental Engineering andthe Program in Applied Mathematics at UA.

32:1 spring 2009

arizonaengineer

Ribbon-Running Robots

Jim Baygents AppointedInterim Academic Dean

Azeem Shaheed

As part of the Introduction toEngineering course (Engineering102, Section 1),engineering studentsdesigned robots that could climbthree stories up a ribbon.Engineering freshmen tested their

robots for the rst time Dec. 2 in the

courtyard of the AME building. Thetest run enabled the students to plan

last-minute design modications in

preparation for the Engineering 102open day on Dec. 4.The open day was part of a Collegepilot program with Hamilton HighSchool in Chandler, Ariz.

Eye Robot

—An Engineering 102 student watches his Lego robot scale a ribbonsuspended from one of the AME bridges.

College of Engineering

/Pete Brown

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