abstracts bios learn what’s inside of ret projects step … · 2018-10-25 · project stepstep...

Project STEPProject STEP

Learnabout STEP’s involvement with the Family Science Academy

Abstracts of RET projects from this summer.

Biosof our 2009/2010 STEP Fellows

NSF Program Officer pays GK-12 Project STEP a Visit

In early May 2009, Dr. Ping Ge, a Program Officer of Graduate Education at the National Science

Foundation, visited the GK-12 project run by principal investigator Dr. Anant Kurketi at the University of Cincinnati. She came to visit this UC NSF GK-12 project, called the Science and

Technology Enhancement Program (STEP), as a best practice example. Over the course of her two day visit, she met with many participants in the program. Graduate Fellows in UC engineering programs, K-12 teachers, K-12 students, UC coordinators, UC faculty members, and UC administrators met with her

during her stay. She was able to witness the STEP Open House first hand and interact with the participants. All of the members of the UC STEP Program were proud to showcase the many strengths of the project. Some of these strengths include: excellent training of the Fellows (yearlong), detailed description of responsibilities of all participants, integration of engineering

concepts in K-12 mathematics and science classrooms,integration of the Fellows research advisor and positive partnership relations. Background-Former Fellow Gabriel Wickizer shows current Fellow Chelsea Sabo his lesson poster at the STEP Open House. Below-Dr.Ping Ge expresses her gratitude for the for her time with STEP at the STEP Open House. For more infomation about Dr.Ge and NSF-GK12 please visit http://www.nsfgk12.org/

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May-June-July 2009

Mrs. Andrea Burrows

Ret Teachers and STEP Fellows TRY to hit Coordinators with water ballons for summer lesson

http://www.eng.uc.edu/step May-June-July 2009

Nanoparticles (NP) may adversely af-fect the adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), onto activated carbon, the current best available technology for water treatment. This

research focuses on the potentially inhibiting effects of humic acid (HA), NOM, and nanoparticle iron oxide on the adsorption of trichloroeth-ylene (TCE) by powdered activated

carbon (PAC). Six isotherms were prepared using various combinations of TCE, PAC, HA, and Fe2O3. The study established a relationship between the amount of TCE adsorbed and amount of PAC used. It was also found that NP ‘s act as a secondary adsorbent for TCE, though both PAC and NP adsorption of TCE is inhibited in the pres-ence of humic acid.

The search for new, cleaner sources for energy is becoming increasingly important in today’s society. Today’s resources are dwindling as demand in-creases. Many problems can be solved

by making these technologies cheap and available. The main problems with the technology are the lack of mass production and distribution networks. Most research is now being done to im-

prove efficiency and refine the technol-ogy already available.

Project 1Availability of Safe Drinking Water

Project 2Renewable Energy System

Abstracts of RET Projects

Project 1 Teacher Kurt Whitford

Project 2 Teacher Philip Mercatili

Project 1 Teacher Melissa Stolz

Project 2 Teacher Jon Souders


Many approaches for in-situ structural health monitoring (SHM) have been proposed in literature to provide more frequent damage monitoring. These

techniques are not cost effective for large composite structures. Composite materials were instrumented with CNT thread sensor without altering

the structure of the material to provide the state of strain in real time. The opera-tion of the sensors is governed by electrical impedance spec-troscopy. Composite samples were me-chanically and electri-cally characterized under 4-pt bending to determine strain, stress and resistance over time. We cor-

related the strain with the resistance to obtain the gage factor for the CNT threads sensor.

Project 3Nanostructured Composite Materials

The purpose of this project is to exam-ine three methods of biodiesel pro-duction using waste frying oil (WFO)

with varying amounts of free fatty acids (FFAs). The first method used an alkaline catalyst. The second method

incorporated an acid pre-treatment followed by an alkaline catalyst. The final method utilized only an acid catalyst. Methods were chosen by titrat-ing WFO samples and calculating the percent-age of FFA present. Each method was analyzed based on the amount of reaction time needed, percent yield, and quality of fuel produced.

Project 4Measurement of Air Pollutant Emissions

from Biodiesel Blends Systems

Project 3 Teacher Michael Day

Project 3 Teacher Sarah Woodward

Project 4 Teacher Katie Godby Project 4 Teacher Peggy Dunn


Project 5 Teachers Grant Keys and Kate Kulesa, and Graduate Assistants Vijay Krishna Nemalapuri and Zhuo Yao

Project 6 Teacher Rachel Rice

Structural engineers attempt to overcome the issues caused by earthquakes by designing buildings that are better suited to resist them while maintaining cost effectiveness. In this program, we are studying

damping devices (active and passive) used to affect the natural frequency and/or the damping coefficient of the building. First we determined the stiffness and natural frequency of a single story

steel building model. We then altered this original undamped design by adding base isolators and later a viscous damper to test the response with a similar initial disturbance. Finally, we used a computer controlled shake table and active damping device to simulate earthquakes of

varying intensity in order to compare and contrast all of these methods.

When traveling people want to be on time and avoid any traveling delays. We worked to determine travel time

reliability along the I-71 corridor. This study will provide a buffer time index that will determine specific travel times

along different segments of I-71. We analyzed the stability of the quality of service of this particular transporta-tion system is supposed to provide to its users was analyzed. An advanced GPS data collection method was used to provide travel times along specific segments of I-71 along with volume data from ARTIMIS surveillance video. We expect to find travel time reliability and average delay times using the 85th percentile travel speed, and the 95th percentile of travel times. Furthermore, we determined the critical segments of the trips and calculated how this affects the travel time, buffer time, and the planning time. Finally, to predict within 95% probability the travel time along I-71. As an example, the buffer time of 12 min and 17 sec is needed to achieve a 95% on time arrival rate on the south-bound I-71 section.

Project 5Mobility Reliability of Transportation Systems

Project 6 Buildings that Resist Earthquakes Better

Project 6 Teacher Brad Hunt


My name is Christopher Korte and I am one of the STEP Fellows. I am currently working on my

Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering with Dr. Bruce Walker. My current research deals with morphing aircrafts. My previous research was 2-Dimensional POSE esti-mation, which is taking an image and a model of a specific target and estimating its position and orientation in 3-dimen-sional space. I will be working at Oak Hill High School this year, with Mr. Daniel Boles, Mr. Andy Schroeder, Ms. Michele Taylor, and Ms. Elizabeth Ludwig. I was a teaching assistant for two freshman labs and twice for Mechanics I. I also had an opportunity to teach a class on Reliability for my advisor in his Probabilistic Engi-

neering class.After I graduate I plan to get a job in industry for a few years so I can get some “real life” experience in my field. Eventu-ally I would like to end up as a professor at a university teaching engineering. I hope to get some good teaching experi-ence from this program, which will help me later on in my career as a professor. I really enjoy teaching and I plan to have a great year teaching with the teachers at Oak Hills this year.

Step Fellow Bios

Ihave worked on multiple research projects while attending the Uni-versity of Cincinnati. A fairly new

project I have started working on in-volves applying Neuro-Fuzzy Dynamic Programming for real-time resource al-location and decision making in emer-gency situations. The idea is to maxi-mize the advantages of each control method (neural nets, fuzzy logic, and dynamic programming) to approach the problem at hand. This algorithm may be applied to emergency events such as wild-land fires. Wild-land fires are dynamic in nature and the algo-rithm would be used to maximize the effectiveness of our resources (aerial vehicles, satellites, ground crews) while minimizing the damage caused by the fire. Another interesting project is ap-plying fuzzy logic control to adjust tire

pressure under dynamic road condi-tions to improve vehicle fuel efficiency while maintaining vehicle safety.

I have worked as a systems developer for a pharmaceutical company devel-oping an in-house proprietary enter-prise computer system. As a small-sized organization, I have experienced both sides of the IT programmer world: operations and development. Addi-tionally, I have worked in all facets of the software development life cycle including gathering user require-ments, software and database design, code development, testing, validation, implementation, training, and mainte-nance. During this experience, I was able to work with a diverse group of individuals, each with their own unique skill set to add to the team.

Nick Hanlon

Christopher Korte

Mike Borowczak is a 3rd year PhD student in Computer Engineering and Computer

Science. Mike completed his BS in Computer Engineering in June 2007 at the University of Cincinnati. His primary research interests include the design of Computer Aided Design tools for Very Large Scale Integration (computer chip design). In particular his interests are in developing secure methods for implementing cryptographic algorithms in hardware. While an undergraduate student Mike held co-op positions at Texas Instruments - a large semiconductor corporation, International Techne Group Inc – a local software company and Clifton Labs – a proof of concept

and computer engineering consulting firm.

Mike has also been greatly involved in Engineering Ambassadors, Society of Women Engineer’s (outreach), and within his department as Vice President of the graduate student association. In the past seven years at UC, Mike has had countless opportunities to share his engineering knowledge and experiences with middle school, high school and college level students. Finally, while Mike’s strengths are in mathematics, electronics, and physics he also has an affinity to strengthen other core areas such as natural sciences, chemistry and biology.


Step Fellow Bios

I was born in Egypt where I spent most of my life. Coming from a multicultural background with

an Egyptian father and a German mother I also spent many years in my

second home Germany, where I went to college. Since my early years in school I was very interested in science and its tremendous applications. I obtained my German Diplom, which is equivalent to the American bachelor and master’s degree combined from the Technical University of Darmstadt/Germany in Civil Engineering in 2003. I am currently in the PhD program in the department of Civil Engineering with an emphasis in Construction and Project Management. I hope to graduate in fall 2010. The main focus of my research is on sustainable construction and green building. Since, sustainable development involves a social and an educational aspect, STEP is a very good ground for gaining insight. The experience I will gain through reading, preparation and actual team work with different

types of people, such as high school teachers, professors, Fellow students and high school students will widen my horizon and hopefully give me a better understanding of interdisciplinary work. My primary goal as a college professor is to focus and hopefully excel in teaching and sharing my knowledge. I aspire to seeing my thoughts and ideas being used and applied beyond the walls of the university and helping people in their own research.

Amr Safwat

Mike Borowczak


I am a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati where I focus on intelligent control in

Aerospace Engineering. I completed my undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a B.S. in Engineering Mechanics with an Astronautics option. I will complete my Master’s in the area of path planning using fuzzy logic this summer (2009) and will be continuing on to get my Ph.D. on intelligent control of tensegrity structures for space applications. I have also had proposals about my research accepted for presentation and spoken at the 47th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando and the 34th AIAA Dayton-Cincinnati Aerospace Sciences Symposium.I have served as a graduate assistant during my two years at UC, where my main focus is research, but I have also worked as a teaching assistant for several courses. As a researcher I developed a two-dimensional fire-growth simulation and developed control algorithms for path planning of a wildland fire-fighting aircraft using fuzzy logic. As a teaching assistant, I developed the final project for the

Fundamental Control course which included an experiment in the “Intelligent Aerospace Systems” lab and created and graded assignments related to final project. I also supported the final projects for the Intelligent Systems course and prepared and taught lectures. My previous job before this has been as a camp counselor for Camp Badger at the University of Wisconsin. This was an engineering camp for students going into the 8th grade, and I worked for two summers as both a day and night counselor and also gave demonstrations at the wind tunnel.Because my studies have led me to the field of intelligent control, I have applied and been accepted as an Associate Member of the AIAA “Intelligent Systems Technical Committee.” Within the ISTC, I serve in the sub-committee for enhancing outreach programs to K-12. In the area of outreach, I am initiating a “Science Night” for local high school students to learn about intelligent systems and am hoping to eventually make this material available to other AIAA groups nationwide. This will hopefully help to increase knowledge and interest

in the field of intelligent systems. In addition to this, I have volunteered to do outreach in various ways. Through AIAA, I have been a judge at the Wisconsin Science Olympiad, given a presentation on women in aerospace at a Girl Scouts badge day, lead a presentation and activity on the egg drop for a 4-H night, and spoken to incoming freshman about engineering and AIAA.

Chelsea Sabo

Thanks for a good year last year...08/09 STEP Fellows

Next IssueSTEP Fellow Showcase

STEP Schools

Creating your very own Solar CellRequired Items

2 Pieces of Conductive Glass 2 Small Binder Clips

2 Coffee Filters2-3 Q-tips

4LEDs (Red and Green – Optional, Numbers may vary)TiO2 Solution

Iodine Solution Plastic Cups (Get 2)

Berries – Blackberry, Raspberry, BlueberryPencils

Scotch Tape (Optional)Distilled Water

GlovesHouse Construction Materials

Toaster Ovens (Running at 20 min intervals)

Project STEP and Family Science academy did a lesson on building your own Solar Cell. Above is the listed material required to complete the lesson. To view the lesson step by step please go to http://www.eng.uc.edu/step/fsasolarcell

Chelsea Sabo, STEP Fellow, teaching FSA student.

Dr.Anant Kukreti, Head STEP PI, Teaching FSA students.

Chris Korte,STEP Fellow, teaching FSA students.


STEP and Family Science Academy

abstracts bios learn what’s inside of ret projects step … · 2018-10-25 · project stepstep...

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