Author Archives: Matthew Levis

Civil grad student awarded Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship

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Amy Wyman, a second-year doctoral student in civil engineering, has been awarded a prestigious graduate fellowship from the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program. The $35,500 award from the U.S. Department of Transportation provides funding for “the nation’s brightest minds” to pursue master’s or doctoral degrees in transportation-related disciplines.

Wyman, who grew up in Portland, earned her Honors Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Oregon State University in 2017. After graduating, she spent two years in Phoenix working as a traffic engineer for consulting firm Burgess & Niple.

She returned to Oregon State in 2019 with the ultimate goal of becoming a professor herself. Her current research focuses on human factors in transportation, with an emphasis on improving safety for pedestrians and bicycles on shared roadways.

“I love that civil engineering is dedicated to public service, and that I share that desire to be a public servant with many of my classmates,” Wyman said. “Of course, I like the technical aspects of my discipline, but it’s the people who have made my experiences in industry and academia truly special.”

Wyman says she has had several fantastic mentors along the way who have inspired and guided her. One of those mentors is her graduate advisor, David Hurwitz, professor of civil and construction engineering and Eric H.I. and Janice Hoffman Faculty Scholar. Wyman was fortunate to meet him when she was still an undergraduate; he also served as her Honors College thesis advisor.

“Dr. Hurwitz was the first, and only, person to suggest I might consider a career as a professor,” Wyman said. “At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to me. A light clicked on, and I realized, ‘Oh yeah, Dr. Hurwitz has a job!’”

Wyman also credits the Women and Minorities in Engineering program at Oregon State, DKS Associates in Portland (where she did her first internship), and her project manager in Phoenix among those who have helped guide her. She says she hopes to “pay it forward” someday, by doing for future students what her mentors have done for her.

“I really love being part of the School of Civil and Construction Engineering, and I genuinely think it’s a special community,” she said. “I’ll never forget how Cindy Olson, who works in the front office, was so welcoming when I first walked in as an uncertain undergraduate hoping to change my major to civil engineering. She knew my name after the first visit. I remember thinking, ‘This is a good place.’”

Designing a better undersea robotic arm

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Robotics researchers in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University are working with colleagues at the University of Washington through a partnership with the Pacific Marine Energy Center to help the Navy develop new technology to expand the abilities of robotic arms mounted on remotely operated vehicles beneath the ocean surface. 

The Office of Naval Research earlier this year awarded a three-year, $3.3 million grant to the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab, of which $2.2 million will go to Oregon State. Geoff Hollinger, associate professor of mechanical engineering and robotics, heads up the Oregon State team. 

ROVs are “unoccupied, highly maneuverable underwater machines that can be used to explore ocean depths while being operated by someone at the water surface,” according to the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Think of them as remote-controlled submarines. ROV operations eliminate human presence underwater and are thus safer and easier to conduct than operations employing divers or occupied submersibles. 

Initially developed for industrial tasks like pipeline inspection, ROVs have been adapted for a variety of other tasks, many of them scientific and educational. A typical ROV is equipped with cameras and lights at minimum, but they often come loaded with additional instruments, such as probes or robotic arms. ROVs can be as small as a toaster oven or as large as a truck. Whatever their size, they’re controlled remotely by an operator in a surface vessel with a joystick, similar to a video game controller. 

“Our project focuses on moving the role of the operator from one of low-level control to that of providing high-level, explainable goals for subsequent execution by the robotic arm,” Hollinger said. “We’re doing fundamental research on algorithms for robotic control, perception, planning, and decision-support, as well as hardware design, to improve the efficiency and reliability of subsea manipulation of the robotic arm.” 

The researchers, including Oregon State engineers Julie Adams, Joe Davidson, Heather Knight, Fuxin Li, and Kagan Tumer, will work with a robotic arm mounted on a test stand, with the future goal of mounting the arm on remotely operated vehicles while maintaining human-in-the-loop control authority, Hollinger said.

— Keith Hautala