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OSU student engineers finished first and third in cars they designed and built for the 2004 Mini-Baja West competition.

Team members pose in front of the award winning design

Battling a dirt and rock strewn course near Portland–as well as more than 90 teams from schools as far away as Florida and Mexico–OSU students finished first and third overall in the Society of Automotive Engineers 2004 Mini-Baja West competition.

Belinda King, head of OSU’s department of Mechanical Engineering, said winning first and third is an unprecedented accomplishment for the OSU engineering program. The students competed with students from some of the nation’s best engineering programs on a grueling course that included crawling over huge boulders and logs, as well as a four-hour endurance leg.

And the finish was no fluke. In 2003, an OSU team finished second in the same competition at Logan, Utah.

The interdisciplinary OSU team, coached by mechanical engineering professor Bob Paasch, designed, modeled, tested, and built the racers.

“This definitely shows that OSU’s hands-on approach to engineering education works and works well,” King said.

It worked well for the students pictured above with one of the winning cars. Darren Johnson (right) graduated in June of 2004 went to work at Warn Industries, where he had previously done an internship, and is now a design engineer at the company.

After the team’s victory at the competition, David Elia (left) was contacted by recreational vehicle manufacturer Polaris with an offer of a paid internship. “This is my dream job, and I got it before graduation,” says Elia, now a senior. “And the amazing thing is they called me!”

News release on OSU group’s mini-Baja win

OSU mini-Baja group home page

OSU Department of Mechanical Engineering

Robert Dziak uses a U.S. Navy hydrophone to listen to seafloor earthquakes off the Pacific Northwest coast.

Bob Dziak is working on listening to earthquakes

Robert Dziak has seen–or rather heard–thousands of earthquakes in the Pacific Ocean off the Northwest coast during the past several years.

Dziak and other scientists are using U.S. Navy hydrophones to listen to the sounds of seafloor earthquakes and other phenomena from their laboratories. Many of the earthquakes aren’t even detectable by land-based devices.

Dziak, who has a dual appointment with OSU and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is stationed at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, says the hydrophones are providing scientists with critical information.

“It is the only real-time hydrophone system in the world–at least for civilians,” says Dziak. “It allows us to listen to the earthquakes as they occur, and when something unusual happens we can send out a group of scientists to study events as they unfold.”

Discover Magazine, in its top 100 science articles, recognized Dziak and five other Northwest researchers for documenting for the first time tectonic plate movement sucking water into the porous mix of rock and sediment beneath the ocean. The discovery was reported in the July 15 issue of the journal Nature.

“Just when you think you’re beginning to understand how the process works, there’s a new twist,” Dziak says. “There was an episode of seafloor spreading on a portion of the Juan de Fuca Ridge that was covered with about a hundred meters of sediment, and what usually happens in that case is that lava erupts onto the ocean floor and hot fluid is expelled into the water.

“In this case, though, it actually drew water down into the subsurface, which is something scientists have never before observed.” Dziak’s research also was honored in 2000 when he was awarded a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award, one of only 60 granted that year in the nation.

News release on use of hydrophones

Hatfield Marine Science Center website

Skip Rochefort interests kids in engineering by showing them that it is fun and exciting.

Skip Rochefort working with younger students

When Skip Rochefort arrives at work each day, he’s ready to have fun–and maybe play a part in making the world a better place.

“All the best students want to save the world,” says Rochefort, associate professor of chemical engineering and director of OSU’s Precollege Programs. “So we want to recruit these kids to study engineering here at Oregon State.”

He plays his role in this with creative programs that make engineering exciting, interesting, and extremely hands-on. He hooks students when they’re young and believe in dreams. He keeps them engaged.

Rochefort seems perfect for inspiring young minds. He’s a bit of a kid at heart and loves what he does. His desk is cluttered with Silly Putty, a “grow shark” gel toy, Gumby and Pokey bendable toys, the absorbent polymer from baby diapers, a foam “cheese head” hat, and a mix of other “hands-on learning tools” that any kid would find irresistible. To local school students, he is known fondly and simply as “Dr. Skip.”

His main research interest, polymer science, offers a highly effective connection to children. Every kid likes to make goop or gel, he says. “We can talk about Silly Putty and Jell-O, and they get excited about chemical engineering.”

His programs come with cool names and acronyms like SESEY, SKIES, E-Camp, AWSEM, and LEGO Robotics Camp. How can kids resist? The Summer Experience in Science and Engineering for Youth (SESEY) is a one-week summer research program for high school girls and ethnic minorities co-directed by Rochefort, Chemical Engineering professor Michelle Bothwell, and graduate student Jason Hower. SKIES stands for Spirited Kids in Engineering and Science, an 11-week summer camp for K-8th graders in collaboration with KidSpirit, directed by Karen Swanger.

E-Camp is an engineering camp for middle school kids that Rochefort established with Ellen Ford of Saturday Academy. At LEGO Robotics Camp, middle schoolers learn engineering concepts using LEGOs, in a course developed and taught by Chemical Engineering colleague Keith Levien.

Advocates for Women in Science, Engineering, and Math (AWSEM) is an awesome experience that connects middle school girls with women role models.

“Every day I can go home and say I’ve had some influence,” he says. “My motto is, ‘do what you like and like what you do.’ Nothing else matters.”

News release on Skip Rochefort’s programs

Skip Rochefort’s chemical engineering page

SESEY website

OSU Precollege Programs

Article in College of Engineering newsletter

Melinda von Borstel is getting well-prepared in college so she’ll be ready for whatever curves life throws her way.

Melinda von Borstel is setting a foundation for a solid health care career

Melinda von Borstel is a presidential scholar and University Honors College graduate in nutrition and food management and in international studies, a community volunteer–and a future pharmacist.

Melinda has been preparing herself carefully for her career and her life. She chose nutrition and food management because it provided a good base for a health care career.

She also minored in Spanish, knowing how the country’s demographics are changing. She felt she lacked fluency in Spanish, so she spent several months in Chile, then went on an exchange to Spain. And she took several courses that focused on gerontology, in recognition of our aging population.

That doesn’t even take into consideration the three summers she worked as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Theresa Filtz, an assistant professor of pharmacy at OSU, for which Melinda received an Undergraduate Research Innovation Scholarship Creativity (URISC) award.

And she’s experienced at working with people in the community. She has earned numerous scholarships for academic excellence and for her volunteer work, which includes teaching Sunday School, working for Habitat for Humanity, staffing soup kitchens, reading to grade school kids, cleaning Oregon beaches and highways, and helping out at food drives.

Her long-term goal is to work as a pharmacist, where she can use her language and people skills, as well as her preparation. “The profession is changing from being a pill counter to working with people in a consultative way,” von Borstel said. “And I can’t wait to be a part of that.”

Joe Hendricks, dean of the University Honors College, puts it into perspective when he says: “If she is going to be a pharmacist, then that is the pharmacy I want to go to in the future.”

College of Pharmacy website

University Honors College website

Future ocean research instruments may create their own fuel by “eating” plankton.

Reimers is working on plankton fuel cell technology

During the past couple of years scientists have been able to use decomposing organic matter on the ocean floor to create fuel cells that can provide low levels of electrical power for months.

Now OSU researchers have gone a step farther, creating the same power-producing decomposition activity from plankton taken at the surface.

While the fuel cells on the floor provide power for equipment that doesn’t move, such as listening devices for earthquakes, this new development holds greater promise.

“By harnessing plankton power, we potentially could fuel autonomous mobile instruments that would glide through the water scooping up plankton like a basking shark, and converting that to electricity,” says Clare E. Reimers, a professor in the College of Oceanographic and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU and director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies, a collaborative effort between OSU and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The power generated by the plankton isn’t large-scale, but if a free-gliding ocean instrument used the plankton in its path, it might extend its survey mission for months, or even years.

“The fuel is there–in the mud, or in the plankton,” says Reimers. “Our focus is on developing power for oceanographic equipment. Who knows what spin-offs will develop beyond that?”

Meanwhile the sea floor research goes on. In October Reimers, who works out of a lab in OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center at Newport, led a cruise off the Oregon coast where researchers deployed eight fuel cell prototypes along the ocean shelf. The instrumentation packages will stay imbedded in the sediment about 20 kilometers offshore for a year and then be recovered.

Plankton Power news article

Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies

“Fizzy Fruit” combines the health benefits of fruit and the pizzazz of a bottle of soda.

Imagine biting into a juicy apple, a pear, or a slice of Hermiston watermelon and having your mouth come alive with a zinging, fizzy sensation.

That will soon be possible thanks to the efforts of OSU researchers who are working on getting Fizzy Fruit to market.

The carbonated fruit was discovered accidentally by Galen Kaufman, a Texas scientist, who bit into a pear that had been in a cooler chilled with dry ice. He sensed a delightful fizziness in the fruit and quickly figured out that some of the dry ice in the cooler had changed from a solid into carbon dioxide gas and entered the fruit.

He contacted the Oregon Food Innovation Center in Portland, a joint effort of OSU and the Oregon Department of Agriculture, asking for the center’s help in developing a patentable process for carbonating fruit on a commercial scale.

OSU’s Qingyue Ling, product development engineer for the Food Innovation Center, came up with designs to make the manufacture of fizzy fruit feasible on a large-scale basis. Patents are now pending, with OSU and Kaufman’s company, Fizzy Fruit North America, as co-owners.

The inventor and the OSU researchers say the fizzy fruit may encourage people to eat healthier by choosing fruit instead of other snack foods. Ling says it could become a big hit with school children and their parents. “Children like something fun like fizzy fruit,” says Ling. “And their mothers like the fact that their kids will be eating more fruit. Eating more fruit will also help with the national obesity epidemic.”

Fizzy Fruit news release

Food Innovation Center

Fighting osteoporosis is a lifelong process, according to researchers at the OSU Bone Research Laboratory.

Jumping can increase bone mass as much as 5 percent

Osteoporosis is generally considered only an issue for older people, but researchers at OSU’s Bone Research Lab have found that protection from the disease can start at an early age.

In a recent study, researchers found that a regimen of jumping and other load-bearing activities for children can increase bone mass by as much as 5 percent. “A 5 percent increase may not sound like a lot, but it translates into a 30 percent decrease in the risk of a hip fracture in adulthood,” says Christine Snow, director of the laboratory.

Osteoporosis is a low bone mass disease that reduces bone strength and increases risk of fracture. It’s a significant problem in the United States, and the numbers are startling.

Osteoporosis is a serious health threat for 44 million Americans, 80 percent of whom are women.
In the United States, more than 10 million people have osteoporosis and another 34 million have low bone mass, putting them at increased risk for the disease.
One of every two women and one of every four men over 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in their lifetime.

The Bone Research Laboratory is committed to reversing these trends through a lifespan approach that involves building bone mass during youth and building bone and preventing bone loss in adulthood.

For those most at risk, research at the laboratory has shown that a long-term exercise program with weighted vests reduces hip bone loss and the risk of falling in post-menopausal women.

The laboratory also serves the community by performing clinical bone scans to determine individual risk for fracture and to help people and their physicians determine what treatment might be indicated. All scans require physician referral.

An active education program also is part of the laboratory. Graduate students are actively engaged in teaching and research every year, and there are opportunities for undergraduates to gain practicum and internship experience.

“I came to OSU because of the strong reputation of the Bone Research Lab,” says doctoral student Hawley Chase Almstedt. “The knowledge I have obtained here will enable me to become a professional who can significantly contribute to the field of bone health and osteoporosis prevention.”

Bone Research Lab home page

A little creative thinking, a planning committee, and a pair of talented students turned routine repainting in the College of Pharmacy into a work of art.

Students work on the mural in the College of Pharmacy

When OSU Facilities Services painter Charles Vail and his manager, Joe Majeski, were discussing the need for an interior repainting for the Pharmacy Building, they wondered if they could achieve their department’s mission: “to wow” with something as routine as that.

“When we got to the west entrance, we noticed a beautiful frame with nothing in it,” Vail says. “That led to a ‘what if’ and ‘why not’ discussion of the possibility of murals.” Majeski gave the go-ahead and the idea was off and running.

Vail located an art student, Emidio Lopez and contacted the art department where he found another student, Kim Smith, interested in working on the project. A committee, led by pharmacy professor Lee Strandberg, developed a plan for the murals to depict the past and the future of pharmacy.

With the help of Kay Cooke, director of external relations in Pharmacy, things moved rapidly. Miller Paint Company donated the paint, Facilities Services provided the scaffolding, the College of Pharmacy gave Emidio and Kim a stipend, and the art department agreed to give the students project credit for their creative efforts.

“This has truly been a team effort,” says Vail.

The unveiling of the murals took place during the homecoming celebration on October 23.

College of Pharmacy

Department of Art

OSU’s Institute for Natural Resources offers a place for Oregonians with diverse opinions to freely explore–and perhaps resolve–environmental challenges.

Gail Achterman is the executive director of the Institute for Natural Resources

When the executive director of the Oregon Garden in Silverton wanted help with a new initiative that used plant materials to solve environmental problems, he turned to the Institute for Natural Resources.

When Oregon’s governor wanted an unbiased scientific evaluation of a federal report that could affect coastal communities and marine resources, he asked the Institute for Natural Resources for help.

And when managers of the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests wanted to review their salmon strategy, they sought assistance from the Institute for Natural Resources.

“I see the INR as having several important roles,” says James Brown, natural resources advisor for Gov. Ted Kulongoski. “It can get people together to talk about difficult issues and try to find pathways to good public policy. It can collect, store, and provide access to data about natural resources. And it can conduct unbiased research for policy makers.”

All of that falls into the lap of Gail Achterman, the executive director of the INR.

“One of our primary goals with the INR is to bring people together, and sometimes we have to do that literally,” Achterman says. “We’re having a series of monthly dinner meetings in Portland to bring together policy leaders, scientists, private industry, anyone who might be able to help address some of the tough natural resource issues that we face. We get people who rarely meet each other in the same room, let them talk and trade ideas about what needs to be done, how we might solve some of these problems.”

Achterman and other experts say there is no shortage of problems the institute might tackle. They have already brainstormed a list of 70 to 80 potential projects, such as ways to promote business development and the state’s economy in an environmentally sensitive way or do a better job of environmental restoration without unnecessary government regulations.

Institute for Natural Resources website

INR reports

Alan Mui and his partners, Howie Price, Brian Gin, and Chris Allen, developed an affordable web-based surveillance system.

“Put 285 students in Weatherford Hall–all of whom have an interest in starting their own business–and I can guarantee that you will see some innovative concepts come through.”

That observation by Ilene Kleinsorge, OSU’s College of Business dean, is getting its first full test with the opening this fall of the renovated Weatherford Hall as a residence hall and laboratory for students in the new Austin Entrepreneurship Program.

One of the first businesses to come out of the program was established by Alan Mui, an engineering major who graduated in June before having an opportunity to live in the residence hall.

The new business started with a project in OSU professor Justin Craig’s class. Mui and Howie Price, a business major, were assigned to develop a feasibility plan on an entrepreneurial idea. They discovered not only that they worked well together, but that there was a real demand for their product, an Internet surveillance system. Mui came up with the idea while trying to help his father set up a low-cost security system for the family’s business, the Republic Cafe together, and sometimes we have to do that literally,” Achterman says. “We’re having a series of monthly dinner meetings in Portland to bring together policy leaders, scientists, private industry, anyone who might be able to help address some of the tough natural resource issues that we face. We get people who rarely meet each other in the same room, let them talk and trade ideas about what needs to be done, how we might solve some of these problems.”

Institute for Natural Resources website

INR reports

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Author Archives: andrewsc

About andrewsc

Hard work pays off

Ranked with the best

His work is play

Scholar, researcher, volunteer–she’s prepared for the future

Harnessing “plankton power”

Adding zing to fresh fruit

Jumping for stronger bones

Routine paint job becomes mural project

Tackling Oregon’s natural resource issues

Entrepreneurs find a home at OSU

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