Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself?

Rachel McLoughlin: I’m in my first year of my PhD in Bioengineering at Pitt, and I’m working under Dr. April Chambers in the Human Movement and Balance Laboratory (HMBL). Prior to starting my PhD, I completed both my undergraduate degree and my DPT here. My undergraduate education included a B.S. in Bioengineering along with a minor in Exercise Science. Both my undergraduate and graduate engineering studies focused on biomechanics.

Q: Why did you want to pursue both a PhD and a DPT, not one or the other?

Rachel McLoughlin: Sports have always been a cornerstone of my life, from the time I began playing recreational soccer at four years old to high school, where I was a three-sport athlete. Throughout my athletic career, I saw firsthand the debilitating effects that injuries have on athletes. Therefore, I decided that I wanted to center my future career around shortening the time athletes spend on the sidelines due to injury. 

When I visited Pitt as a high school senior and witnessed the deep-rooted collaboration between bioengineering research labs and medical facilities, I knew I had found the school for me. I chose to pursue both a DPT and a PhD because together they equip me to make the greatest impact on injured athletes. The DPT provides me with a deep understanding of the human body and allows me to interact directly with patients through clinical practice. Regularly helping patients rehab back to the activities they love gives me a more immediate sense of fulfillment while also revealing the unmet clinical needs that inspire my research. The PhD allows me to investigate those unmet needs and gives me the technical skills to develop solutions that can make a greater long-term difference in the field. The teaching responsibilities that accompany the PhD present additional opportunities for impact through sharing information with the next generation of clinicians and engineers. 

Q: Where do your specific research / clinical interests lie? What are you working on at the moment?

Rachel McLoughlin: My specific research and clinical interests lie in sports performance. Seeing an athlete get injured is devastating, but being in the trenches with them each day after to support them through rehab and then watching them take the field for the first time post-injury is a feeling unlike any other. I also think the interdisciplinary collaboration that occurs within high-level sports teams is fascinating and presents countless opportunities for learning. Because I’m still in my first year of my PhD, I’m working on a few different projects to explore potential thesis topics. I’m planning a research study in collaboration with the Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition to determine the accuracy of markerless motion capture for analyzing common weightlifting movements. I’ve also helped collect biomechanical pitching data for the baseball team and hope to conduct a similar analysis for the softball team. In addition, I’ve been working on data collection and analysis for a project in collaboration with Dr. Benedict Alter, Director of Translational Pain Research in the School of Medicine's Division of Pain Medicine, to investigate the relationship between pain signals in the brain, joint biomechanics, and physical therapy outcome measure scores in individuals with knee osteoarthritis.

Q: How has your experience been so far? What have you learned that surprised you?

Rachel McLoughlin: My experience has been great so far! One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is how differently people from different disciplines approach the same problem. That may seem relatively obvious, but in interdisciplinary clinical and research settings, it can almost seem like people are speaking different languages. Even though everyone is working toward a common goal, their individual priorities are based on their specific backgrounds and experience. Now that I have both an engineering degree and a clinical degree, I’ve been surprised to see how my problem-solving thought process has evolved. I feel like I can see both sides more clearly, so it’s become much easier to collaborate across disciplines and find common ground.

Q: What would you say are some of your favorite aspects of the program?

Rachel McLoughlin: My favorite aspect of the program so far has been the community. My class in the DPT program was very close-knit. We spent nearly every day together for two and a half years! Everyone was constantly rooting for each other’s success, and we started fun traditions like ice cream Thursdays and run club Saturdays to maintain a good school-life balance. I’ve been excited to start carrying these traditions over to my lab now too! Both the DPT and Bioengineering faculty have also been extremely supportive throughout my time at Pitt. They lift me up when I doubt myself and are always willing to use their expansive networks to help me advance towards my dream career. I feel fortunate to have so many mentors pour into my development.

Q: Any challenges or details that prospective students should know about?

Rachel McLoughlin: At times, the amount of school I committed myself to can seem daunting. My time at Pitt has honestly flown by, though, and I can’t believe that I’m already past the halfway point here. The main thing I would advise prospective students to be aware of is the transition between each phase of the program. Physical therapy and engineering require different ways of thinking and learning, so it can take some time and patience to adjust back and forth and realize that they complement each other. It’s well worth it, though, and that’s where I found it especially beneficial to lean on my classmates and professors. If you’re considering the program, I’d be happy to answer questions or share more about my experience. Please don’t hesitate to reach out ◡̈

This past May, as Bursic transitioned to emeritus faculty, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) recognized her contributions to engineering education with its prestigious 2026 Donald G. Newnan National Engineering Economy Teaching Excellence Award. Bursic was honored in person at the 2026 ASEE Annual Conference, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 21 – 24. The award, which celebrates exceptional teaching and scholarship, is a testament to Bursic’s dedication to her students, to industrial engineering, and to the craft of teaching.

On the plant floor 

When Bursic enrolled at Pitt in 1980, she knew she wanted to be an engineer but wasn’t sure what kind. As she recalled, “I picked industrial engineering because they said you get to use these new things called computers a lot.”

Bursic thrived in the program and after earning her bachelor’s degree, she took a job with General Motors at a metal-stamping plant in West Mifflin, PA, where she became a supervisor on the plant floor. While at GM, she enrolled in graduate courses at Pitt, earning her MS in industrial engineering.

Although Bursic would later work as a senior consultant at professional services company Ernst & Young, she continued graduate courses at Pitt and earned her PhD in 1990.

Of her early successes, Bursic is grateful for her thesis advisor, David Cleland, who wrote the book on project management and is considered a leading figure in the field. “He was probably the most influential person early in my career because he never doubted that I could do the PhD. He made sure I progressed through the program and never questioned my ability as a female engineer, which was kind of a big thing back then.”

Bursic also credits her husband, Frank Bursic (BSECE ’80, MSIE ’87), who supported them as she pursued her PhD. “He encouraged me throughout my career,” she said.

Into the classroom

By 1994, Bursic had taken time to start a family but wanted to translate the realities of the production floor into the classroom. She taught a course at Penn State and others through professional societies. Then Harvey Wolfe, emeritus professor of industrial engineering at the Swanson School, hired Bursic to teach part time at her alma mater.

Back at Pitt, Bursic quickly immersed herself in pedagogy. She’d been a member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) since studying as an undergraduate and would then join ASEE. She found support from Professor Bopaya Bidanda, who was then chair of industrial engineering and who encouraged her to attend conferences and take on leadership positions.

Bursic also learned from mentors like Kim LaScola Needy (BSIE ’84, MSIE ’87), former professor of industrial engineering at Pitt and now Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arkansas. The two had met as undergraduates, and LaScola Needy became a supportive colleague who, as Bursic said, “still mentors me today.” 

LaScola Needy served as the undergraduate program director, and when she stepped down from this role, she encouraged Bursic to apply. “That's what I did, and the rest is history.” That history has involved advising countless students, helping them progress in the program just as she had years earlier.

“Karen is one of the best hires we made,” Bidanda said. “During her time, she transformed our undergrad program into a leading-edge program that had initiatives that no other industrial engineering program had.”

Bursic had begun teaching full time and applied what she was learning at conferences and in the literature. “When active learning first became a thing, I would always sign up to any workshop that I could. I would go to them all and see what techniques I could use to improve teaching.”

For Bursic, though, it wasn’t enough to just try something new. She applied her industrial engineer principles to test the efficacy of these techniques. She turned her classes into teaching labs to collect data and see what worked. She immersed herself in assessing student learning.

Her research and conversations with colleagues like Mary Besterfield-Sacre and Larry Shuman led Bursic to write “An Engineering Economy Concept Inventory,” which was published in the journal The Engineering Economist and later won the ASEE Eugene L. Grant Award, which is annually given to the best paper published in that journal.

“It stunned me,” Bursic said of the award. “I was not expecting that.”

It was one of many honors for Bursic. She is a Fellow of IISE and ASEE and has received IISE’s Engineering Economy Wellington Award and the Engineering Economy Division Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2014, she was named the Swanson School’s Outstanding Educator.

These awards reflect Bursic’s dedication to her craft and to supporting her students, a commitment that extends beyond the classroom. Just as Bursic credits invaluable mentors throughout her career, she has become that very person for junior faculty. 

“Karen was instrumental in how I advise industrial engineering students,” said Renee Clark, associate professor of industrial engineering at the Swanson School, who was recognized as the 2025 Swanson School Educator of the Year. “When I was learning how to do this, no question I asked her was ever too simple or too repetitive. Her responses sent me down the path of being able to significantly contribute to my department in this way today.”

“Karen’s contributions to our program and our students cannot be overstated,” said Lisa Maillart, Leighton E. Orr and Mary N. Orr Professor and department chair of industrial engineering. “She is an exceptional teacher and advisor and a supportive colleague who uplifts all those around her. This award is a perfect culmination to an amazing career.”

In retirement, Bursic is excited to spend more time with her five grandchildren. “That's the number one thing – family,” she said. She also plans to be more active in her church. And she’s planning to teach engineering management to University of Nebraska graduate students online, asynchronously, so she might not be done with teaching just yet.  

Steven Jacobs has been around radios his entire life. His father, Paul Jacobs, designed them and launched three companies that built systems for data communication. Jacobs worked at these companies over many summers and was fascinated by the technology that could send and receive bits of data through the air.

Engineering intrigued Jacobs, but he hesitated to pursue it until a college course and its professor won him over. The experience set Jacobs on a path to devote his career to teaching electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. 

This past May, after three decades in the classroom, Jacobs retired, but he leaves a legacy of engaging and challenging his students, mentoring junior faculty, and occasionally surprising them all with his saxophone.

Signals and Systems

Jacobs grew up in Chicago and moved to a suburb of Rochester, New York, as a teenager after his dad took a job with Harris Corporation, which produced technology like wireless equipment and tactical radios.

After high school, he returned to the Midwest to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where a Signals and Systems course taught by Professor Donald L. Snyder would alter Jacobs’ trajectory.

“Signals and Systems is foundational for students interested in any kind of signal processing, especially communications and control systems,” Jacobs said. “It’s also a famously difficult course.”

Yet Jacobs said that Snyder made the material accessible and inspired in him something more than just an interest in the material: he showed Jacobs the power of good teaching. 

“He was an outstanding instructor, really gifted at grabbing your attention and leading you through difficult material so you understood it,” Jacobs said of Snyder. “That experience had a huge influence on me in terms of being excited about the field and in trying to be an instructor who inspired students the way he did.”

The teaching track

Jacobs would go on to earn his BS and MS in electrical engineering at WashU, and as a master’s student he met his future wife, Julie Fiez, who was studying psychology and neuroscience.

After beginning his PhD studies at Northwestern University, Jacobs returned to WashU to earn his degree, investigating how automated radar systems could recognize different types of aircraft. While the problems he wrestled with fascinated him, Jacobs realized that it was teaching that captivated him the most. 

In 1997, Jacobs and his wife both accepted jobs at Pitt, with Jacobs hired as a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Jacobs said that he thrived on teaching and engineering education. He became an assistant professor and in 2016 was promoted to associate professor, the same year that he received the Swanson School Educator of the Year Award.

“Steve is one of the most influential educators that I’ve ever had,” said Samuel Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Vice Chair for Education and Director of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program. “I was one of his students, and he taught the class that I now regularly teach. I modeled much of my teaching style after his and even now still use the notes that he used to teach me digital logic circuits.”

Added Dickerson, “Steve is known as the most rigorous faculty member we have. He is also one of our most beloved and celebrated educators by both faculty and students.”

The power of a well-documented lab

Essential to Jacobs’ teaching philosophy is a belief that students should learn by doing, which starts with well-documented labs. “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve built labs for courses and written documents to describe what the students should do and learn.” 

While at Northwestern University, where he took as many teaching assistant positions as possible, Jacobs encountered mimeographed handouts that had been passed down year to year and served as the labs for the circuit courses. In what would become a hallmark of Jacobs’ career, he set to work rewriting and updating all the documents for the labs, providing detailed explanations, on his own initiative.

At Pitt, he would do the same for the courses he taught. If labs existed, he’d create new documentation. If there were no labs or too few, he would build them from scratch.

“In the last year and a half, for my digital communications course, which I've taught for years, I developed a new series of demos,” Jacobs said.

He created computer programs that students use to learn about error-correcting codes, the protocols that detect and correct errors that can arise when bits of information are sent wirelessly. Students experiment with the codes, including those used on the Voyager spacecraft to reconstruct digital images sent from outer space. 

“Even if it’s not a lab course, I always like to put things like this into my classes,” Jacobs said. “These activities are opportunities for the students to apply what they've learned because, you know, that's the reason why they're here as engineers.”

“Dr. Jacobs was passionate when it came to teaching analog communications,” said Jacob Jones, who is a second year master's student in electrical and computer engineering. “He would write equation after equation, derivation after derivation on the board that he made seem almost like art. We were in for a treat when he wheeled in equipment that was probably older than all of us just to show off a simple concept. His classes may have been hard, but we always walked away learning something new.”

Jacobs’ belief in engaging his students has extended beyond the classroom. In 2014, he became a faculty advisor for Pitt’s Beta Delta Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN), the honor society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Participation in Pitt’s chapter had waned. Recognizing the importance of fostering community and support in the program and across universities, Jacobs, with colleague Amro El-Jaroudi, helped rebuild the chapter.

“There were many people who didn’t see value in our chapter and in HKN as an organization,” said Sabrina Helbig, a Pitt PhD student in electrical engineering who held many leadership positions in the honor society. “I could tell that Dr. Jacobs cared. The success of our chapter mattered to him because he saw its potential and because it mattered to us. Having respected, visible, and caring leaders made such a difference.”

Indeed, by 2023–2024, the chapter received an Outstanding Chapter Award, the society’s highest honor.

“Steve has been such a valuable part of our program and has made a lasting impact on his students and colleagues,” said Alan George, department chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and founder of SHREC and Pitt Space. “Through example, generosity, and creativity, he has been an amazing mentor to our newer faculty, especially to our teaching-track professors. I wish him all the best in his retirement.”

The sax

In the morning after the Swanson School spring graduation ceremony, Jacobs woke up and thought, “I don’t have anything I need to do today. How is that?”

What Jacobs did that Sunday morning was work on creating another lead sheet, arranging the parts he and fellow horn players use while performing.

Jacobs began playing the saxophone in fifth grade and played in marching and jazz bands in junior high and high school. While in graduate school, he received a phone call from a fraternity brother whose rock band needed a horn section. Jacobs grabbed his sax and joined. 

After moving to Pittsburgh, he played open mics until 2006, when he joined a rockabilly band that lasted until 2022. In 2019, he also joined a Blues Brothers tribute act, the Fabulous Booze Brothers.

Jacobs has increasingly become interested in arranging original songs. Using open-source software, he creates full charts. “I've made probably 30 charts in the last six months, entire songs – what all the horns have to do in every measure,” he said.   

Whether he is designing and documenting new labs or new songs, Jacobs heads into retirement still inspired by his students and fueled by his fascination with sound, signals, and systems.

Renerva, Inc., led by Chief Technology Officer Bryan Brown (BioE PhD '10), professor of bioengineering at Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, and CEO Lorenzo Soletti (BioE PhD '08), successfully implanted the first patient with its Renerva PNM-CAP™ device at The Ohio State University (OSU) Wexner Medical Center. The procedure was led by Principal Investigator Amy M. Moore, MD, Interim Dean of the OSU College of Medicine.

"From a bioengineering perspective, we know that simply putting a mechanical block over a severed nerve isn't enough to stop neuroma formation," Brown said. “PNM-CAP is engineered to intervene at the site of the nerve injury, guiding tissue repair in a way that stops uncontrolled nerve growth and entanglement before the onset of pain." 

The Renerva PNM-CAP™ is designed to prevent neuroma formation, a painful, disorganized nerve growth that commonly develops after amputation and other nerve injuries. Neuroma formation is a primary driver of chronic pain and opioid dependence among the more than two million Americans living with limb loss.

"This is a monumental milestone," said Soletti. “We moved from FDA Investigational Device Exemption approval to first-in-human implantation in just a few months."

.

“None,” his colleague said. “That's just a piece of tissue I put under the microscope.”

"My jaw dropped," said Vande Geest, professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering. “The ability to image collagen in 3D without fixing it first means I can look at it under mechanical load, and I can also watch it grow and change. As a soft tissue biomechanist, there is really no better thing."

Two-photon microscopy is just one of the many impactful imaging modalities that are put to work across Pitt’s campus. Bioengineering researchers like Vande Geest have built the tools and expertise to ask and answer questions that couldn't have been posed before, from the tiniest cellular movements to the complex architecture of the aging human brain.

Two-Photon Microscopy

Two-photon microscopy fires pulses of infrared light into tissue. Unlike conventional light, infrared travels deep without scattering, but it only produces fluorescence at the precise focal point where the beam converges. At Pitt’s Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, you willl find a few of these microscopes, each customized for a different scientific purpose. One of these devices is helping Takashi (TK) Kozai, Ernest E. Roth professor of bioengineering, peer into the brain to analyze a largely unexplored corner of neuroscience. 

"Brain tissue is like a very foggy, hazy environment, and neurons aren't on the surface level, so we have to image a little deeper to actually see them," said Kozai. “That’s where two-photon comes into play and can help us see very specific areas of the brain.”

Kozai’s team studies what happens when devices like electrodes are implanted, not just to neurons, but to the surrounding community of glial cells. Because glial cells don't generate electrical signals that electrodes can detect, they are effectively invisible to conventional methods. 

"But with 2P, you can label different subtypes of neurons or other cell-types so that you can see which ones are activated under which type of stimulus," Kozai said. "You can decode beyond what an electrode can decode."

Kozai’s microscope is available for researchers of all disciplines to use, which helps him better understand how to improve the long-term performance of implanted devices toward the ultimate goal of restoring motor function in people with spinal cord injuries or treating vision loss in patients who are blind. Vande Geest, on the other hand, uses his scope for different terrain entirely: studying the extracellular matrix of soft tissues found in the eye, blood vessels, peripheral nerves, and more. Collagen, the structural protein that gives these tissues their mechanical character, produces a signal under two-photon illumination that makes it visible without any dye or label. More importantly, it stays visible while the tissue is alive, under load, and changing over time.

"I study how tissues are built and how they change, and this is the system that lets me do it. I can image it, deform it, and image it again," he said. “I can literally watch collagen remodel.”

Vande Geest has also reconfigured his microscope to function as a 3D printer that can fabricate structures at the scale of individual cells. The same instrument that shows the architecture of a tissue sample can now print scaffolds that replicate it, opening a path toward implantable tissues that could treat vascular and ocular disease.

“A majority of the intellectual property (IP) I've developed involves benchtop platforms for mimicking human disease in 3D tissue culture," Vande Geest said. "We can take human stem cells, differentiate them, and assemble them into something that might actually tell a clinician whether a patient should be treated more aggressively for something like glaucoma, and that specialized platform gives you information that clinical measurement alone just can't."

A Picture’s Worth 

For Lance Davidson, William Kepler Whiteford Professor of bioengineering, collecting an image is only the beginning. Using traditional confocal microscopy, which uses focused laser light to build three-dimensional images one optical slice at a time, his lab studies how cells rearrange inside tissues under mechanical stress, using frog embryos as a model system. These embryos are optically transparent and mechanically tractable in ways that make them ideal for stretching, compressing, and perturbing living tissue while imaging what happens inside it.

"We use a lot of microscopy to collect images, and it's all light microscopy, not anything too complex." Davidson said. "But we combine these tools with molecular genetic approaches, so we can install a fluorescent protein within a cell or tissue that indicates where forces are generated, or how material properties adapt to the environment.”

After collecting time-lapse sequences of cells moving through a tissue, Davidson’s team builds custom image processing pipelines that segment individual cells, track which cells are neighbors at each time point, and quantify how frequently and in what direction those relationships change. In a recent study, that analysis revealed something novel in the raw footage: a pair of counter-rotating flows inside a developing tissue, moving in opposite directions.

 "Once we processed it, we could see these really incredible flows.” Davidson said. “They looked like tropical cyclones or vortices on the surface of the sun, and so we turned to quantify the strength of those rotations using tools borrowed from astrophysics."

For Davidson, however, the most important work happens after the microscope turns off. A striking image is still just a picture until it's been broken down, processed, and reduced to something a statistician can work with.

"The adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is actually quite terrible for science," Davidson said. “Numbers are like currency, and we use images to get that currency, so you really want each picture to be worth a single number."

Sound as Sight

Of all the imaging modalities in use, ultrasound may be the easiest to underestimate. It's one of the oldest, the most affordable, the most common, and it doesn't carry the glamour of a two-photon beam. But across the university, researchers are finding new uses for it that go far beyond the routine. 

Kozai's lab, for instance, recently found that low-intensity ultrasound can reduce the glial scarring that builds up around implanted brain electrodes, keeping signals clearer over time and opening new possibilities for modulating non-neuronal brain cells. In addition, Kang Kim, professor of bioengineering and medicine at UPMC’s Heart and Vascular Institute, is also pushing ultrasound far beyond its typical uses.

"Ultrasound has been out there for decades," Kim said. "It's safe, non-invasive, and real-time. But because of how well we understand physics, we can now start to combine it with other modalities and push it in directions people didn't think were possible."

One of Kim’s current projects involves a catheter-based imaging system designed to peer inside blood vessels at the microscopic level. The project addresses plaque vulnerability, assessing which arterial plaques are likely to rupture and send a clot toward the heart or brain. One signature of a dangerous plaque is the presence of tiny microvessels growing within it, and to detect them, Kim's team developed an intravascular probe and signal processing approach that can image those structures at scales previously considered beyond the physical limits of the modality.

"We claim this is one of the first kinds of intravascular super-resolution imaging of microvessels," Kim said. "There are emerging fields even beyond imaging where ultrasound can be used. It is not just a tool for looking; it is becoming a tool for doing."

MRI and the Whole-Brain Picture

While microscopes allow for cellular or tissue analysis and ultrasound can peer inside vessels and soft tissue in real time, there's a hard physical limit to how deep light can travel. When researchers need to see the structure, connectivity, and metabolic activity of the entire brain, they turn to MRI. 

Bistra Iordanova uses a combination of optical imaging techniques in her work, but uses structural and functional MRI (fMRI) in tandem with optical approaches to get a window into brain-wide activity that no light-based  system can match.

"With optics, we can get the cell resolution, but MRI covers the entire brain at once, which makes it indispensable for questions about large-scale connectivity and system-wide disease," said Iordanova, assistant professor of bioengineering. “Structural MRI shows the size and shape of brain regions and how they change with age, while fMRI tracks blood flow oxygenation as a proxy for neural activity in real time.”

Using these techniques, she's currently working on a methodologically unusual project: directly comparing data between mice and humans to help design multiscale models of how brain metabolism can change the risk for dementia. This approach spans three scales: two-photon microscopy to quantify blood cell velocity, neural activity, and metabolite levels at the cellular level; wide-field imaging to capture how mitochondrial activity moves across cortical networks; and whole-brain MRI to explore how energy metabolism shapes functional connectivity across both animal models and human cohorts.

"To make these comparisons work, we transform the imaging data to the same parameters," Iordanova said. "In the human brain, a vessel might be two centimeters long, but in a mouse brain, it’s two millimeters. And a mouse only lives two years while a human lives 80. This kind of cross-species translation can actually be quite difficult, but it's where the real clinical relevance lies.” 

Building the Brain Scan

While many researchers like Iordanova are using the existing MRI scanners in their work, Tamer Ibrahim, professor of bioengineering, has spent more than 20 years engineering the technology itself. 

For MRI, the stronger the magnetic field, the greater the signal-to-noise ratio, and the finer the structural detail that becomes visible. But scanners at a high magnetic field like 7 Tesla come with a serious engineering problem: the interactions between high-frequency electromagnetic waves and human tissue can create dead zones in the image, or regions of the brain that simply produce no signal. 

Ibrahim's lab, the 7 Tesla Bioengineering Research Program (7TBRP), has solved this problem with a custom radiofrequency coil system called Tic-Tac-Toe, and its second-generation successor, the Tac G2, introduced in 2022. The Tac G2 is, by Ibrahim's account, the only system in the world that has comprehensively eliminated the signal void problem, allowing researchers to run any type of MRI study at 7T without imaging barriers.

"There are significant challenges when scanning at 7T," Ibrahim said. "But our anti-claustrophobia Tac G2 coil system is, to my knowledge, the only one in the world that has successfully and comprehensively solved this problem.” 

The practical consequences are substantial. A study published in Human Brain Mapping from Ibrahim's team, comparing 3T and 7T performance across 350 healthy adults, found that 7T produces stronger correlations with age-related brain changes across every measure examined such as cortical volume, subcortical volume, white matter, cortical thickness. More importantly, it found a study that would require 350 participants at 3T could achieve the same statistical significance with approximately 100 participants at 7T.

That efficiency gain means that studies that were previously too expensive, too slow, or too logistically demanding to conduct become feasible. Since the Tac G2's introduction, it has been used in more than 2,500 human scans, already surpassing its predecessor's total in less than half the time. More than 40 NIH-funded studies across aging, psychiatry, neurology, and neuroscience are currently running on the system.

"When our coils are used in human studies, it's incredibly rewarding, far more rewarding than just publishing a paper," he said. "We're developing devices that clinicians and scientists use, and the result isn't just pretty pictures. We're not making something that just could be used some time in the future, we’re impacting human life now."

The Full Picture

These researchers work with different tools, different tissues, and different diseases, yet the opportunity for collaboration between modalities seems to increase by the day. A shared conviction ties all of their work together: there is no perfect imaging modality. Every technique involves tradeoffs between resolution and depth, speed and sensitivity, invasiveness and detail. For Iordanova, those limitations are precisely what makes the field so interesting and allows for such innovation. 

"If you don't have solid image analysis, it doesn't matter if you have a fancy machine," she said. "That's the beauty of bioengineering - you get to reach into any pocket you want. Optics, electrical engineering, image processing, artificial intelligence. The biology department says stick to cells, the electrical engineering department says just do the signal processing, but bioengineering lets you have it all."

Interested in using a 2P microscope for your research project? Contact TK Kozai for more information at tdk18@pitt.edu. 

In the overall rankings, the Swanson School moved up one spot to #42 among all engineering programs and held steady at #24 among public universities and #21 among members of the American Association of Universities. The most notable gain was in electrical engineering, which jumped nine places to #52 overall and rose from #36 to #28 among publics. Computer engineering also improved significantly, climbing four spots to #46 (#24 among publics). Industrial engineering held its position at #24 overall while improving to #16 among publics and #13 among AAU institutions.

“Our continued upward movement reflects the sustained commitment of our faculty, students, and staff,” said Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “As we approach our 180th year of engineering at Pitt, ranking among the top 25 public engineering schools speaks to our deep history and an exciting future.”

The rankings reflect a period of sustained growth for the Swanson School. Research expenditures reached a record $63.5 million, and researchers earned 41 patents - 38% of all patents issued to the University of Pittsburgh that year. The school also welcomed its largest first-year class, enrolling approximately 780 students.

Additional highlights include biomedical engineering at #29 overall (#13 publics), mechanical engineering at #54 (#30 publics), and materials engineering at #50 (#31 publics).

Learn more about graduate and professional studies at the Swanson School.

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Photo: Third-year ECE PhD graduate student researcher Sabrina Helbig in the Swanson School Makerspace. (Tom Altany)

An entrepreneurial student team developing a new IVF needle guide is taking their invention to South Bend, Indiana, this month to represent the University of Pittsburgh at the 2026 ACC InVenture Prize innovation competition.

Sydney Barber, Arshia Cyrus Shams, Ashlyn Odenwald, Ishan Patel, Colby Shores, and Lyric Zimmermann, bioengineering undergraduate students at the Swanson School of Engineering, will showcase abdOguide, a first-of-its-kind device designed to improve IVF egg retrieval for patients whose ovaries cannot be accessed through the standard transvaginal approach. At the competition, teams of undergraduates representing each ACC university will pitch their inventions before a live audience and a panel of judges and compete for $30,000 in prizes. 

“Our team members are very entrepreneurial, and this competition presented itself just as our device began showing some promise in the clinic,” Shores said. “There was just a perfect storm of hard work and opportunity that led us to this moment.”

abdOguide mounts directly onto an abdominal ultrasound probe and guides the needle along a fixed, aligned trajectory. The design allows a single fertility specialist to perform a procedure that typically requires two clinicians. By transforming a complex two-operator procedure into a single-clinician workflow, the team hopes that abdOguide can create a more streamlined path to parenthood by expanding fertility access for underserved patients while reducing procedural costs for hospitals nationwide. 

Support the team:

The Pitt community can show their support by voting for abdOguide in the People’s Choice competition. Voting opens on Monday, March 23, and closes following the final team presentations on Friday, March 27. To cast a vote, text “Pitt” to 415-965-7445.

The final event will be broadcast live on PBS at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on March 27.

From student success and research breakthroughs to the launch of a new undergraduate degree, 2025 was a year of remarkable momentum. This year’s Swanson School of Engineering Annual Report captures some of that excitement and innovation. 

Despite challenges across higher education, our students, faculty, and staff exceeded expectations. Our research expenditures hit a record high of $63.5 million, while students broadened their experience both in and out of the classroom. This year’s theme spotlights excellence in energy, and the many initiatives underway to strengthen and expand our century-plus legacy of leadership in this vital area. For more than a century, the Swanson School has helped shape Pittsburgh’s energy story and today, we are extending that legacy and advancing the technologies, systems, and talent needed for a more resilient, secure, and sustainable future.

This new year marks the 180th anniversary of engineering education at Pitt. The achievements in this report reflect what has always made this School distinctive: ingenuity, collaboration, and a shared commitment to improving the world around us. I hope you will take pride in what our community achieved this year and join our excitement for the year ahead.

Sincerely, 
Michele V. Manuel 
U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering

More often than not, the answer was a resounding yes. Whether they needed academic guidance, a bit of perspective, an entertaining story — or even an impromptu moment to cry — bioengineering students at the Swanson School of Engineering knew that Arash Mahboobin’s door was always open. 

After more than a decade of shaping the undergraduate experience, however, the professor of bioengineering and associate chair for undergraduate education is stepping down from his professorship and leadership roles. This career shift marks a milestone in his lifelong passion for education: growing up in Iran and inspired by multiple family members working in medicine and academia, pursuing higher education was a natural path for Mahboobin to follow.

“I kind of fell into the biomechanics field, as it was a bit of a homage to my father, who was an orthopedic surgeon.” Mahboobin said.

Although research brought him to pursue his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching and mentorship ultimately kept him here. He hadn’t planned on leadership, but his rapport with students made him stand out to department staff and leadership, who recommended him to step into the role of undergraduate program director. 

“I always wanted to teach, but I wasn’t really seeking a leadership role in the department,” Mahboobin said. “But people talked and students said positive things, so I eventually began a two-year, carefully structured transition into directing the undergraduate program.”

Since his official tenure in the role began in 2018, Mahboobin has consolidated bioengineering program information into an incredibly organized handbook, streamlined advising, and used student feedback as a key driver of curriculum improvement every step of the way. Among many other accomplishments, he was monumental in the Swanson School’s 2023 ABET accreditation and received the 2024 Swanson School of Engineering Outstanding Educator Award.

“There was already a great foundation in the department, so I just continued to strengthen what was good about our program,” Mahboobin said. “I wanted to stay true to the data, and use every piece of information I had to continually improve our curriculum.”

Mahboobin also enjoyed teaching and optimizing the courses like Biosignals and Systems and  Dynamic Systems - A Physiological Perspective, creating interactive digital laboratories that provide students with unlimited opportunities to test hypotheses, observe outcomes, and iterate on their understanding of complex engineering concepts. But even with the satisfaction of his academic accomplishments, Mahboobin’s motivation has always come back to those students visiting him in his office each day. 

“As professors, we don't have a hippocratic oath like doctors, but I've always felt that it's my responsibility to take care of our students.” Mahboobin said. “The logistics and curriculum are great to fine-tune, and we've made a lot of changes, but at the end of the day, it's really all about helping our students have a good experience here.”

As Mahboobin prepares to leave the University, he’s looking forward to returning to the family that inspired his path from the very beginning — and exploring new ways to share his talents, knowledge, and passion beyond academia.

“Spending more time with my family is definitely what I’m looking forward to most, since I’ve been in school full time in some way or another since I was seven years old.” Mahboobin said. “I’m excited to see how I can take all of my experiences here and still contribute to education in some way in a new chapter of my life.”

Led by Chief Technology Officer Bryan Brown (BioE PhD ‘10), professor of bioengineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, and CEO Lorenzo Soletti (BioE PhD ‘08), Renerva, Inc. was founded in 2017 to develop and commercialize transformative implantable technologies for patients affected by peripheral nerve injury. Now, the company has received its first FDA Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) approval to begin a human clinical study of its Renerva PNM-CAP, a device designed to prevent painful neuroma formation. 

Putting a cap on chronic nerve pain

When a nerve is damaged during injury or amputation, the axons inside the nerve can form a disorganized nerve growth, called a neuroma, which makes the nerve extremely sensitive and can cause severe chronic pain. Neuroma pain impacts quality of life and is a major driver of opioid use disorder, so Renerva’s PNM-CAP is designed to prevent neuroma formation and pain from the start. 

“Our nerve cap is designed to limit how far those axons can grow.” Brown said. “As the cap degrades, it’s replaced with healthy, natural connective tissue. We’ve found that this process stops the axons from becoming entangled, halts their growth, and prevents the formation of painful neuroma.”

IDE approval was supported by preclinical data recently published in npj Regenerative Medicine. “Our preclinical studies demonstrate that PNM-CAP profoundly inhibits nerve growth and leads to a 3.5-fold reduction in average pain behavior observed over a four-month period compared to untreated controls.” Brown said. 

Renerva’s earliest technology was jointly developed at Pitt and Cornell University, and early support from Pitt’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship helped connect Brown with Soletti to explore commercialization pathways. With additional funding from success in several campus innovation competitions, the team built the scientific foundation and business strategy that led to Renerva’s 2017 launch — and ultimately to this major achievement. 

“This is a pivotal milestone for Renerva, transitioning us into a clinical-stage company and significantly de-risking our business,” Soletti said. “This achievement allows us to proceed with our first-in-human study with a world-class US center for peripheral nerve injury and repair and is a major validation of our rigorous, evidence-based product development.”

The clinical trial will test the nerve cap in 10 patients over the span of one year, hoping to evaluate whether the device can reduce pain, limit opioid use, and improve overall quality of life for patients. Renerva plans to pursue market clearance for the cap once interim clinical data becomes available.

“I came to Pitt in 2018 ready to dust off my physics textbooks and maybe understand what fluid dynamics is, but I quickly realized I was in for so much more than that.” Beresford said.

He didn’t expect to end up as CEO and co-founder of Respair, Inc, a Pittsburgh based medical device manufacturing company designing improved endotracheal tubes. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, 12.1% of patients experienced endotracheal intubation for mechanical ventilation while hospitalized, and while critical for intensive care units worldwide, endotracheal tubes frequently cause ventilator assisted pneumonia (VAP) due to a design that hasn’t been changed in decades.

“The current tubes that doctors use haven't changed for about 45 years, with an inflatable balloon to seal the airway and stop bacteria from getting in your lungs and making you sick.” Beresford said. “But it doesn't do a very good job of that, because the balloon can crease in the airway, allowing dangerous fluids to sneak around it and make patients sick.”

Beresford is one of many Pitt Bioengineering students, faculty, and alumni translating research into biomedical solutions. From startups developing better detection of aneurysms and treatments for peripheral nerve injuries to collaborative research that bridges engineering and clinical needs, Pitt Bioengineering is a hub for turning ideas into impact.

The ‘BioE’cosystem

The momentum behind this innovation begins with dedicated researchers who have pushed bioengineering from concept to clinic. Take Harvey Borovetz for example: the distinguished professor of bioengineering and former department chair is a pioneer in the development of artificial heart transplantation. Featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the 40^th anniversary of the first artificial heart implanted in Pittsburgh, Borovetz helped guide the clinical translation of ventricular assist devices, which launched UPMC as one of the most successful and innovative mechanical heart programs in the country.

Today, Borovetz is one of many experienced professors teaching in the MS in Medical Product Engineering (MS-MPE) program, the same program that Beresford entered in 2018. A professional master's degree that prepares engineers to translate medical technologies from concept to clinical use, the MS-MPE program guides students through the full medical product development process, from identifying unmet clinical needs to designing, prototyping, testing, and navigating regulatory and commercialization pathways.

“Our professors always pushed us to be curious and to ask the questions: What do people need this device to do? Who will be using it? Why will it matter to them?” Beresford said. “That mindset forces you to confront your own assumptions and biases to make sure you’re building the right product.”

MS-MPE students work directly with bioengineering professors, UPMC clinicians, and industry mentors to develop solutions rooted in real patient and provider challenges. Many projects lead to patents, continued product development, or startup ventures like Respair, Inc., which began as an in-class project supported by clinical mentorship.

ROI: Research of Impact

Innovation is also seen across the department among research groups that have spent years in the lab refining their expertise before moving toward commercialization. David Vorp, professor of bioengineering and senior associate dean for research and facilities at the Swanson School of Engineering, co-founded Aneurisk, Inc. in 2023 to improve assessment of aortic aneurysms and currently serves as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer.

“Clinicians typically assess aneurysm rupture risk by measuring their diameter, a one-size-fits-all method that overlooks patient-specific differences in vessel shape, tissue strength, and other potentially important factors” Vorp said. “No two aneurysms are alike, and diameter alone doesn’t really reflect the true mechanics of rupture risk.”

Aneurisk’s technology provides a more personalized approach to rupture risk assessment by creating 3D models of the aneurysm, evaluating morphological parameters, estimating wall stress and strength distributions, and integrating patient clinical data through machine learning. Early testing and validation suggest this AI-based method can outperform diameter-only assessment and better guide decisions about whether a patient needs surgical intervention.

“My entire career has been focused on understanding aneurysms as mechanical systems.” Vorp said. “The dream was always to develop a tool that clinicians could use to better predict who is at risk. It took thirty years, but now we finally have the platform and the environment to make that possible.”

To move the technology toward clinical use, the company turned to Micah Guffey (BioE MS-MPE ‘23), now Aneurisk’s Chief Operating Officer. With Guffey’s assistance and an experienced scientific advisory board spanning both academia and industry, Aneurisk is now preparing its first product for FDA submission, with the goal of achieving clearance in 2026.

“It is really exciting to see Aneurisk take the substantial background work that had already been done in the Vorp Lab and to actually be involved in moving it toward commercialization and clinical impact,” Guffey said. “I didn’t think I’d end up in this role at first, but to help take something from the research space into a product that could be useful clinically is what made me want to stay and be part of this.”

Like Aneurisk, Inc., Swan NeuroTech, founded by Kacey Marra, professor of plastic surgery and bioengineering, is also transforming decades of laboratory research into life-changing tools. Her company is developing solutions to improve peripheral nerve regeneration following traumatic injury, tumor removal, or surgical complications.

“There are only a handful of nerve repair products on the market, so it's not a big field at all.” Marra said. “And these injuries can result in lifelong loss of function without treatment.”

Swan NeuroTech’s initial products include a nerve wrap designed to reduce scarring and speed healing after nerves are sutured, and a nerve guide for short gaps. Its most advanced technology, a drug-releasing nerve conduit, has successfully bridged two-inch nerve gaps in non-human primate models, far exceeding the two-centimeter limit of currently approved devices.

“Getting a product off the ground can be tedious, especially because it’s a whole new world outside of academia.” Marra said. “But I always tell my students to be persistent, patient, and passionate, and if you have those three p’s, just keep going.”

Respair, Inc., Aneurisk, Inc., and Swan NeuroTech are just a few examples of Pitt Bioengineering’s impact at large. Another Pitt-led startup, Renerva, Inc., was just cleared for its first-in-human FDA clinical trials, bringing their advanced nerve cap technology to patients to reduce chronic pain in amputees and prevent painful neuroma formation. 

BioE faculty, students, and staff are advancing the field daily, whether it’s bioprinting revolutionary tissue models, creating magnetic biomaterials for drug delivery, developing diamond-based wireless electrodes to improve better treatments for neurological disorders, or developing prosthetics that can actually feel touch. Across these efforts, the focus remains the same: working together to create meaningful change, and for Beresford, that mindset shaped the course of his career.

“None of this was on my radar before I came to Pitt, so interacting with the research ecosystem and faculty here was really the inflection point that made all of this possible,” Beresford said. “What began as a napkin sketch in class has become a product, a company, and jobs for people in the region. It’s a very cool thing to see become real.”

Through the Plus3 Transfer Plus Program, students explore the intersections of engineering, technology, and society in the Czech Republic. Thanks to renewed scholarship support from the Maiorana Trust of the Nationality Rooms & Intercultural Exchange Programs, 15 scholarships, each worth up to $3,500, will be available for 2026 participants in the two-week, three-credit program. 

“Even though we design our programs to be as cost-effective as possible, airfare and travel costs can still be barriers,” said Alicia Olalde, director of Global Experiences and Engagement at the Swanson School. “Having dedicated scholarship funding for this program helps us ensure that more of our students have access to global learning opportunities.”

The program immerses students in the engineering, cultural, and historical context of Prague, and highlights industrial ties between the Czech Republic and Pittsburgh. Led by Mary Besterfield-Sacre, senior associate dean for academic affairs and director of the Engineering Education Research Center, the program features a mix of company and university visits along with cultural excursions, including stops at the Bohemian Innovation Center, automobile manufacturer Škoda, historic sites such as Terezín and Kutná Hora, and visits to silver mines, cathedrals, power plants, and more. 

“Sometimes you can’t see how engineering impacts societies unless you’re looking at it from a perspective that’s not usual to you.” Besterfield-Sacre said. “When you’re born and raised in Pennsylvania, you can get used to certain things, but when you look at engineering as an outsider, you can pick up on insights you might have missed before, which is fundamentally why we bring these students abroad.” 

14 Swanson School students were awarded Nationality Room scholarships from the Maiorana Foundation for the summer 2025 program. For third-year bioengineering student Amaris Mbuagbaw, who traveled to Prague with the program last summer, the experience deepened her understanding of global research and collaboration. Even with visits to the International Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry and learning about cancer research in the Czech Republic, Mbuagbaw found that one of the strengths of the program was its interdisciplinary nature. 

“Initially, I thought I would learn more about bioengineering, but my final paper was actually more focused on civil and environmental engineering.” Mbuagbaw said. “Going on this trip, you can really think outside the box and invest your time into learning different things that are technically not in your field of study.” 

Unlike other SSOE Plus3 programs for first-year students, this program is open to SSOE sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and priority acceptance is given to students who have transferred into the school. Scholarship applications are open until December 1, 2025, and the complete program application is due January 28th, 2026. 

“I think being a responsible engineer today means developing a global perspective,” Olalde said. “Engineering solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all—the right answer in Pittsburgh may look very different in West Virginia, South Africa, or the Czech Republic. You have to design with context in mind, and there’s no better way to learn that than through experiential opportunities like Plus3.

Don’t have a passport? The Swanson School’s Global Experiences and Engagement Office is offering a passport raffle to support first-time U.S. passport applicants, funded through generous alumni donations. Eligible students must be U.S. citizens who have never held a passport and are graduating after 2027. Winners will receive reimbursement of application and execution fees (up to $165) upon submitting proof of application by January 31, 2026. The raffle closes on Wednesday, November 19 at midnight, with winners announced the following day. Apply now!

While countless hours in the lab have honed Gleeson’s ability to assess and develop robust materials, his leadership roles have revealed a unique capacity to bring out the best in engineering faculty, staff, and students.

For the past 12 years, Gleeson, who is the Harry S. Tack Chaired Professor of  Materials Science, has served as the Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS) department chair. This past summer he stepped down to return to the faculty, but his passion for research and for supporting the program continues to leave an indelible imprint on the Swanson School of Engineering. 

A career that has crossed continents

Born and raised in London, Ontario, Canada, Gleeson excelled at math and science and was drawn to engineering. He earned his BS and MS in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the University of Western Ontario in his hometown of London before receiving his PhD in MSE from UCLA.

“It was there,” Gleeson said, “that I got my first taste of California living and figured I’d keep heading south.”

Head south he did, all the way to Australia, where from 1990 to 1998 he served as a postdoctoral researcher and then a faculty member at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Although he loved Australia and became a citizen, he was far from home. While on sabbatical in the US, Gleeson applied for and then accepted a faculty position at Iowa State University.

Two years later, he was appointed Director of the Materials and Engineering Physics Program at the Ames National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy lab focused on materials innovation.

“It was a large program,” Gleeson remembered. “It gave me my first experience in administration, working with a diverse group of individuals.”  

Serving the department

In 2007, Pitt recruited Gleeson to serve as the Harry S. Tack Chaired Professor, where he would continue to lead through his research into the high temperature oxidation and corrosion and degradation of materials. Pitt had a longstanding reputation as a leader in the study of high-temperature corrosion, with eminent faculty like Fred Pettit, Gerald Meier, and Neil Birks.

A year later, Gleeson was again pulled toward administration as the inaugural director of Pitt’s Center for Energy, a transdisciplinary initiative to advance energy research. A top accomplishment was helping the Center secure a $22 million grant from the RK Mellon Foundation.

In 2014, he was offered a new administrative position, as the MEMS chair. “It was an honor to be selected. I've always believed in the importance of faculty serving the department.”

Said Ed Eckert, BS MSE ’76, President of Apogee Technology, Inc. and who sits on the MEMS Visiting Committee, “I’ve worked with many people with strong academic acumen and then with others who have strong leadership skills. You don’t always find people who exemplify both qualities like Brian. For Brian, finances and research are a means to facilitate teaching, not the converse.”

Brendan Connolly, PhD MEMS ’16, Vice President of Steelmaking Technology at ELLWOOD Quality Steels and also a Visiting Committee member, added, “Brian has been an incredible advocate of the MEMS department, the students, the Swanson School, and Pitt.”

Under Gleeson’s leadership, the MEMS Department experienced significant and sustained growth across all major metrics. Today, MEMS is the largest Swanson School department, with approximately 650 undergraduate students and over 200 graduate students in mechanical engineering, materials science, and engineering science.

Through strategic faculty recruitment, Gleeson expanded and strengthened the department’s research portfolio, establishing recognized expertise in emerging and high-impact areas such as energy, quantum computing, computational engineering, and functional materials, while continuing to support and enhance existing research strengths. Notably, the department’s annual research expenditures—an indicator of external funding from government and industry—have increased by 413% since he was appointed department chair, reflecting both the department’s rising national prominence and the success of its faculty.

Leading with integrity and heart

“One of the most exciting and important responsibilities as chair is hiring and developing young faculty,” Gleeson said. “You have to facilitate, and you have to cheerlead.”

In 2022, Zachary Harris, assistant professor of materials science, came to Pitt from the University of Virginia in part because of Gleeson. “There are two things I value most about Brian: his honesty and his overall character. I accepted this job because I felt like Brian had my success at heart. His actions have proved true since I’ve started here.”

As Michele Manuel, the U. S. Steel Dean of the Swanson School, said, “Brian has imbued a deep sense of trust throughout the department, which is reflected in the continuous, upward trajectory of productivity at every level.”

“Our department covers three distinct fields,” said Harris. “Brian has done a great job managing such a diverse group of people.”

Gleeson’s approach, his ability to find consensus and to help others thrive, extended beyond MEMS faculty.

“Brian always took care of the staff and recognized them,” said Michael McConegly, the department administrator for MEMS. “He always provided time for us and kept his office open, even at the expense of his own research.”

McConegly, with his unique window into the department, has been especially impressed with Gleeson’s steadying influence. “Brian guided us through Covid and through leadership changes, providing strong leadership and support that kept the department together.”

Focusing on what matters most

Before the start of each school year, Gleeson would show the MEMS faculty what the students pay in tuition. “It’s important that we never lose sight of what matters most at Pitt: the students.”

Gleeson’s commitment to students and their ability to thrive at Pitt is reflected in his leadership in establishing the Student Advisory Board, formed in 2020 to give voice to underrepresented students in MEMS.

“It started with me and the student representatives meeting regularly, but then it grew,” said Gleeson. “It had faculty participation and became very productive. Through the dialogue you can start to appreciate how there are barriers.”  

“It’s important to engage with students and ensure that they're being looked after,” he added. “Student organizations and clubs build community.”

In addition to these groups, Gleeson was always willing to help individual students reach their potential, as Scott McElhinny, BS MEMS ’23, discovered during his senior design capstone with two fellow students.

“For the project,” McElhinny said, “we were helping develop an efficient, inexpensive combustor for home heating and power generation systems. It was like a jet engine.”

After graduation, Gleeson helped the three students set up in the subbasement of Benedum Hall to test the system. “This was after graduation, when he had no obligation to help us. But he understood the value of letting us run the system and learn through the testing process,” McElhinny added. “We had an afterburner going, with flames shooting out the back, and he made sure we had everything we needed to safely test and troubleshoot it.”

For McElhinny, who now works at Aerotech, a precision automation and control company, the experience has had a profound impact: “Getting to test and prove the device worked changed how I approach problems and has shaped how I take on large projects, which I do all the time now.”

Returning to research

Since stepping down, Gleeson has been, in his own words, “Decompressing.”

That doesn’t mean slowing down. The research he started in Ontario fascinates him as much today as it did then. “It’s quieter here in my new office on the eighth floor. I can give more of my attention to the literature, and there are new papers to be written.”

And service to his research community to be done. Gleeson directs the High-Temperature Corrosion Testing Laboratory at Pitt and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal “High Temperature Corrosion of Materials.”

For his contributions, a 2024 Material Science and Technology conference held a special international symposium in his name.

Gleeson’s passion for discovery has taken him around the world and back and has garnered him numerous accolades. Whether developing resilient alloys or guiding a thriving department, he has a rare ability to uncover the right elements for success.

On an early summer morning at Homewood’s Community Engagement Center (CEC), Dan Shiwarski was facing an unprecedented challenge. 

A Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, he’s used to teaching complicated scientific topics — so he was in for a surprise when his initial lesson plans weren’t clicking with his high school scholars. 

“I realized pretty quickly that a standard college lecture just wasn’t going to work to keep them engaged, so I ditched all of my PowerPoints and started from scratch on the first day.” Shiwarski said. “We ended up working collaboratively to sketch things out together and utilize hands-on exploration of our topics to become a part of the innovation process.”

Shiwarski was leading a session of CampBioE 2.0, a five week long STEM+ summer camp for elementary, middle, and high school students that introduces its scholars to hands-on, cutting edge activities in bioengineering. Led by Director Katrina Knight, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the Swanson School, the camp collaborated with Shiwarski’s VESSELS program at the Vascular Medicine Institute (VMI) to introduce a 3D bioprinting session to its CampBioE 2.0 high school scholars.

Curating the Curriculum

Instead of printing with plastic like a typical 3D printer, bioprinting allows researchers like Shiwarski to use biomaterials to create complex 3D structures that can mimic human tissues, cartilage, and even organs. During the two-week immersive workshop, Shiwarski taught his scholars to convert a commercial 3D printer into a 3D bioprinter and then design vascular scaffolds from hydrogel-based biomaterials. 

“Learning about things like 3D bioprinting is incredibly valuable for our high school scholars.” Shiwarski said. “It’s an emerging technology, and they can really dive into things they might not normally see in school, like CAD modeling, computer simulations, and printing and experimenting with the technology themselves in a fun environment.”

While the high school session emphasized bioprinting, Knight also recognizes the importance of creating meaningful and accessible STEM+ experiences for the camp’s younger scholars. Since she stepped into the director role in 2022, she has designed the camp to act as a pipeline to spark interest in science for young scholars as early as 2nd grade. This past summer, Knight dedicated the remaining three weeks of the camp to elementary and middle school students, immersing them in interactive bioengineering activities led by current undergraduate students at the Swanson School of Engineering.

“Our undergraduate counselors really run the camp.” Knight said. “As engineering students, they select the STEM+ topics that they’re personally passionate about and want to teach the young scholars.” Knight said. “They can really connect with the scholars in engaging ways that bridge the age gaps between them.”

This year, CampBioE 2.0’s counselors taught the scholars about the brain and the heart, demonstrated the use of magnetic ferrofluid and its potential application in medicine, and explored sustainability in a module from the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI). The scholars also participated in a design challenge to make modified cups for people with cerebral palsy, built brain models out of Play-Doh, and simulated dialysis with kidney tubing.

“One of our counselors also introduced our scholars to ferrofluids - magnetic liquids first developed by NASA - and the students used them to model targeted drug delivery and to simulate filtering microplastics from water.” Knight added. “We also designed wind-powered generators and took part in a UN-style climate summit to tackle global challenges like reducing CO².” 

Building the Pipeline to STEM+

Through CampBioE 2.0, Knight aims to cultivate consistent interest in STEM+ for students living in all of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods and surrounding areas. Through partnership with the CEC, Knight has been able to introduce bioengineering to students from all economic backgrounds by providing scholarships for scholars to attend the camp free of cost. 

“When I came in as director of the CEC, one of the neighborhood’s requests was exposing children to career exploration and science, and I think CampBioE2.0 is here to complement that,” said Vernard Alexander, Director of the Homewood CEC. “Dr. Knight, Dr. Shiwarski, and the counselors have all done a great job—from talking with kids I know personally and those here for the first time, it’s clear they really enjoyed this camp.”

For Knight, one of her proudest achievements thus far has been seeing the same scholars return each year, and building lifelong relationships with these scholars through consistent programming. 

“Doing this engineering programming with young scholars is so valuable, and whether or not they ultimately pursue STEM+ years from now, the exposure itself has such a lasting impact.” Knight said. “Especially during our elementary school week, we had a few scholars return from last year, and we even had two second graders, which was really fun to see them engaging at such a young age.”

That early exposure can ultimately set the stage for more advanced programming as scholars grow, building the confidence and skills that carry into high school, college, and beyond. 

“We worked on pretty complicated things, so when high schoolers with no experience in 3D bioprinting can create tissue scaffolds on par with PhD students in just two weeks, it’s really impressive.” Shiwarski said. “It gives these students confidence, shows them what they can accomplish, and can motivate them to keep pursuing these areas in their education down the line.”

The Department of Bioengineering would like to thank our generous donors, partners, and all who have contributed to CampBioE 2.0's continual success. Interested in attending CampBioE 2.0 next summer? Join our mailing list and visit our website for more information.

This past spring, after teaching his last class as an associate professor, Casson retired. With his wife and their Airstream travel trailer, he hit the road, heading north into Canada. But his many years at Pitt have left an indelible mark on him, and Casson plans to continue promoting an engineering education.

The way my brain works

Engineering always came naturally to Casson. His father was a civil engineer in New Port Richey, Florida, where Casson grew up.

“Working for my father’s company, I did some surveying and knew I would be an engineer,” he said. “It’s just the way my brain works, whether I’m organizing a closet, planning a trip, or researching wastewater removal.” 

Casson earned his BE in Civil Engineering and his MS in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from Vanderbilt University. At the University of Texas at Austin, he received his PhD in Civil Engineering.   

What happened next was serendipity. Chuck Sorber, associate dean at the University of Texas at Austin College of Engineering, was headed to Pitt to serve as Dean of the School of Engineering. He recruited Casson to join him.

Casson has never regretted the decision to follow Sorber to Pittsburgh. As he said, “It’s been great to influence young engineers and to teach them and do something so worthwhile.”

Making an impact

“What I especially liked about being at Pitt was the opportunity to work with Dr. Karl Lewis,” Casson said. “Karl developed the IMPACT program [now EXCEL], helping underrepresented students come to Pitt and succeed.

“Karl was also a civil engineer, and working with him on the program he started was one of the most important things I could do in my small part. I could help students. That tradition and history of caring for people is what kept me at Pitt.”

Among many advisor roles, Casson served as Graduate and Undergraduate Coordinator for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “The best part of that job,” he said, “was helping students graduate and achieve their career goals.”

Casson’s approach to teaching and advising has inspired countless students, like Isaiah Spencer, who earned his BS, MS, and PhD in civil and environmental engineering at Pitt and who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Water and the Environment.

“Dr. Casson was (and still is) a mentor to me, all the way from my start at Pitt through my PhD studies. He is one of the reasons I became absolutely fascinated with water disinfection,” said Spencer.

“What struck me about Dr. Casson was the time he spent holistically mentoring me and providing opportunities to develop and enhance the skills needed to succeed in the field,” he added. “I will always be grateful for him, and I look forward to doing my part in carrying the torch of disinfection and water treatment forward.”

A dinosaur of disinfection

“My research has been at the interface of biology, microbiology, and processes,” said Casson. “If I had to cast myself in one light, it would be as a disinfection person. In fact, at a conference, a student once joked that I was ‘one of the dinosaurs of disinfection.’”

Soon after coming to Pitt, Casson conducted research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) into the survivability of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in wastewater. For another NSF-funded project, he researched the presence of Ebola in wastewater and different techniques of disinfecting it.

In 2008, Casson received a secondary appointment in Pitt’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Graduate School of Public Health. 

He was recognized as a Water Hero for his extensive work on the Disinfection Committee at the Water Environment Federation, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting public health, water quality, and the environment. 

“If you do enough work for the Disinfection Committee, you get a golden toilet seat. I put mine up in the back of my office,” Casson noted. “It confused some students.”

The Yellow Submarine

The Cassons’ daughter is a doctor of audiology in Indiana, and their son a TOPGUN pilot for the U.S. Navy. In 2022, their son was stationed in California. To visit their children and grandchildren, the Cassons bought an Airstream travel trailer, named it the Yellow Submarine, and hit the road. 

Since 2022, they have crossed America twice. This summer, to kick off retirement, the Cassons set out again, into Canada, visiting places like Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Casson’s wife, Susan, documents their travels in her Yellow Submarine Adventures blog.

“I’m in retirement transition now,” Casson said. “I hope to get back to fishing and golfing.”

But he also plans to keep promoting an engineering education. “I’m an ABET commissioner, a team chair, and a program evaluator, so I get to visit other schools and engage with their programs,” Casson said. “It keeps me professionally active and allows me to give back to the profession.” 

For Casson, it’s all about giving back and helping students excel. As he said, “That’s the goal of teaching, empowering others to achieve more than you achieved.”

At the Swanson School of Engineering Department of Bioengineering, more than 30 primary and secondary faculty members collaborate on interdisciplinary research and mentor students in the department’s graduate programs in neural engineering. Their work spans five core areas of research:

• Neural stimulation and modulation
• Neural imaging and computation
• Neurodegenerative diseases and neurological rehabilitation 
• Neural interface development 
• Neuroethics, training, policy, and global health

Brain Computer Interface

One of the most impactful areas of neural engineering research at Pitt is brain-computer interface (BCI) technology—a system that detects brain activity and translates it into real-time outputs. Pioneered by Andrew Schwartz, distinguished professor of neurobiology, BCI technology has laid the foundation for modern neural prosthetics. Using BCI, Schwartz and his team decoded signals from the motor cortex in primates to enable actions like reaching and grasping, demonstrating that primates could use their brain activity to control robotic arms with remarkable precision. 

BCI technology at Pitt has since led to groundbreaking clinical breakthroughs, including a 2012 study where Jan Scheuermann controlled a robotic limb using only her thoughts—one of the first demonstrations of this kind in humans—and a clinical trial where Nathan Copeland has been able to experience the sensation of touch through a robotic arm. Researchers like Aaron Batista, professor of bioengineering who recently leveraged BCI technology to understand the sequences of neural populations, or Jennifer Collinger, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation who uses BCIs to restore movement for people with spinal cord injury and amputation at the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (RNEL), continue to utilize BCI technology in their research to better understand the behavior of the brain itself and to directly benefit patients.

“I am deeply committed to a clinical trial that is developing an intracortical brain-computer interface,” Collinger said. “The BCI is implanted into the motor and somatosensory cortex, and we are working with people who have tetraplegia to try to understand how the brain controls movement, how it is impacted by sensory feedback, and how we can restore sensory feedback that's been lost. Ultimately, our goal is to develop BCIs that restore upper limb function and increase independence and participation after injury.”

Neural Stimulation & Neural Interface Development

While BCIs offer a powerful way to decode brain signals, complementary approaches like neural stimulation are also expanding what’s possible in sensory restoration. Researchers like Takashi Kozai, associate professor of bioengineering, are advancing techniques such as intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) to restore sensory experiences, offering new possibilities for patients with brain injuries, neurodegenerative diseases, and other sensory impairments. ICMS stimulates specific regions of the brain responsible for sensory processing, but the challenge of neurostimulation goes beyond simply activating neural circuits. 

"ICMS works by activating both neuronal and non-neuronal cells, but understanding how these responses change over time is critical," Kozai said. “One challenge we face is perceptual fading, where the system’s effectiveness diminishes. Our goal is to understand the factors that contribute to this fading and design systems that maintain long-term, reliable function.”

Addressing these challenges requires not only advances in stimulation techniques, but also innovations in the physical interfaces between technology and the brain. Xinyan (Tracy) Cui, professor of bioengineering and a leader in neural interface development, designs biocompatible materials and coatings that improve the longevity and function of brain-machine interfaces. 

“As neural engineers, we are tool developers,” Cui said. “We develop the tools for neuroscientists and clinicians to study a wide variety of diseases, and we design the implantable devices that clinicians are using to directly help patients.”  

Cui and other neural engineers in her field develop implantable devices that record neural signals, stimulate the nervous system, sense neural transmitters, and deliver therapeutics. They also work to optimize how the brain interacts with these devices using novel techniques such as ultrasound to reduce scarring inside the brain when devices are implanted. 

Sharper Imaging, Deeper Understanding 

Neural engineering researchers at Pitt also have the ability to see detailed images of the brain and its activity through the work of Tamer Ibrahim, professor of bioengineering who develops ultrahigh field human imaging techniques using the 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imager (7T MRI). Consistently optimized by Ibrahim’s graduate students through “Tic-Tac-Toe” radiofrequency coil technology, the 7T MRI imager is frequently used for projects in bioengineering, psychiatry, neurology, and pathology, and helps researchers understand how a variety of conditions like aging, dementia, sickle cell disease, and depression appear in the brain. The 7 Tesla is the most complex MRIs in use, with extremely high resolution capabilities.

“Interventional studies on depression and Alzheimer’s disease can assess how neuroimaging biomarkers correlate with the medications that patients are taking, and help us determine whether they're improving on the medication or not,” Ibrahim said. “Getting homogeneous excitation in the human brain at 7 Tesla is quite difficult from a physics point of view, but the 2nd Generation Anti-claustrophobia Tic Tac Toe coil system developed by the 7 Tesla Bioengineering Research Program (7TBRP) gives us and our collaborators the ability to visualize the brain structures and connectivity with minimal artifacts.”

Clinical Collaborations Enhancing Patient Outcomes

Clinical translation of neural engineering technology directly impacts clinicians like Jorge González-Martínez, vice-chair of the department of neurological surgery and board-certified neurosurgeon, who studies brain electrophysiology, cognition, and language in patients undergoing epilepsy and movement disorder surgery. He also operates on many of these patients, providing direct treatment using Stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG), a minimally invasive procedure that uses electrodes placed directly into the brain to identify the source of epileptic seizures. 

"In order to advance medicine, especially in my field of epilepsy and functional neurosurgery, we need to collaborate with bioengineers,” González-Martínez said. “Progress simply won’t happen if we don’t join forces. Neural engineering is fundamental—it allows me to use signal processing to better understand where seizures originate in the brain, enabling safer and more effective surgeries. Bioengineers help us develop new methods, instruments, and treatment approaches, from device design to signal interpretation, and I will continue to rely on these collaborations because they are essential to advancing the field and improving patient care." 

Whether it’s for improving methods in neurosurgery with clinicians like González-Martínez, collaborating with industry partners and the FDA for translational technology development, or using basic science approaches to better understand chronic pain and psychiatric conditions, tackling the complex challenges of neural engineering requires a multidisciplinary approach. For Collinger, collaboration across the university is the driving force that allows researchers at Pitt to take these challenges head-on. 

“Neural engineering requires an understanding of biology, neuroscience, and medicine, and one person can't really be an expert in all of those things,” Collinger said. “But here, I think collaboration with each other is just part of our culture, and people are looking to work with other laboratories and try to make collaborations as seamless as possible, which I think is a major strength of this department and makes us really unique.”

A Legacy of Innovation and Student-Driven Research

Collinger arrived at Pitt in 1999 when she joined one of the earliest cohorts of undergraduate students in the bioengineering department. Her passion for biomechanics and rehabilitation ultimately led her to the bioengineering department’s PhD program, and since graduating, she’s been working at the university . As a former Pitt Bioengineering student herself, Collinger credits current students in the department for pushing cutting-edge neural engineering research forward each day. 

“Graduate and undergraduate students design studies and collect and analyze data; they are doing the work and driving the science forward,” Collinger said. “They are also great at helping us connect with other happenings in the department. That often evokes who we might be able to collaborate with or who we can ask about a particular challenge that we are having in the laboratory.”

Since its inception in 1998, Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering has grown from just four faculty members and a handful of students to more than 200 faculty members (45 primary and 158 secondary) and thousands of alumni. For Batista, one of the first neural engineers hired in the department, watching these novel breakthroughs emerge has been nothing short of spectacular. Having seen the department grow in both size and scope throughout the years, Batista credits the University’s physical environment and culture for fostering the essential collaborations that have cemented Pitt as a hub for neural engineering innovation. 

“The physical and intellectual environment here really sets us apart from other universities,” Batista said. “The fact that Pitt’s schools of medicine, rehabilitation sciences, and engineering are just minutes away from each other, our proximity to Carnegie Mellon University, and our leadership that fosters a culture of collaboration helps brain research at the University flourish."

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In the overall rankings, the Swanson School moved up two points to #43 among all engineering programs, and remained even with 2024 at #24 among public universities, and #21 among members of the American Association of Universities. Rankings also increased for civil engineering (#50 overall / #39 publics) and materials engineering (#50 overall / #32 publics). The highest engineering rankings were in biomedical engineering at #28 (#11 publics) and industrial engineering at #24 (#17 publics).

“Our graduate programs are competitive among our peers and we're excited to remain a top 25 public program,” noted Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “The competition is incredibly intense but as we plan for new degree and certificate programs, as well as expanded partnerships with industry, I expect our reputation to continue to grow.”

Learn more about graduate and professional studies at Pitt.

Last fall, the Swanson School's undergraduate rankings improved as well: Undergraduate biomedical engineering and industrial/manufacturing engineering were ranked for the first time, at Nos. 28 and 17, respectively, while Pitt landed at No. 63 on the Most Innovative Schools list.

Pratap Khanwilkar is no stranger to the Swanson School of Engineering.

During his previous tenure as founding director of Pitt’s Coulter Translational Research Partners II Program, Khanwilkar played a key role in helping translate Pitt research into impactful medical solutions. Now, Khanwilkar is back in Benedum Hall to lead Bioengineering master’s students to success with two programs that leverage engineering, business, and medicine. 

Khanwilkar was officially appointed the Director of Master's Programs and Professor of Practice in the Department of Bioengineering in 2024. Even with more than four decades of experience commercializing medical devices and founding more than 25 start-up companies, Khanwilkar returned to Pitt for a role that he finds even more rewarding. 

“I’ve realized that developing people is what gives me the most satisfaction now, even more so than starting and growing companies or developing new products,” Khanwilkar said. “I want to make a difference for our graduate students to succeed in their selected career path and in life.” 

Khanwilkar is joined by Ouahiba Boukaabar, assistant director of Master’s programs, in leading and promoting the department's two non-thesis programs, Medical Product Engineering (MS-MPE) and Neural Engineering (MS-NE). Both of these degree programs provide students with a specialized bioengineering education while emphasizing professional development to encourage success in industry, nonprofit, and government careers. 

About The Programs 

The MS-MPE program, founded by Alan Hirschman, director of the Center for Medical Innovation and professor of bioengineering, has graduated more than 250 students in the past 12 years. With Khanwilkar’s background in medical device technology development and commercialization and the University’s interdisciplinary atmosphere, MPE graduate students, from a variety of backgrounds including engineering, nursing, medicine, and law are immersed in a well-rounded and uniquely collaborative program. 

“The MS-MPE program places students at the center of the action by providing opportunities to connect and collaborate with the clinical and commercial worlds,” Khanwilkar said. “Our students gain hands-on experience with the entire product development lifecycle; they learn directly from faculty with real-world expertise and develop the skills to collaborate across and within diverse clinical settings, which employers highly value.”

Bioengineering’s Neural Engineering Master’s Program also emphasizes collaboration, with an academic focus on the biology of the nervous system and how to treat neurological disorders, build clinical devices, and develop computational models from an engineering perspective. For founding director Neeraj Gandhi, students’ proximity to the School of Medicine is a key component of their success. Gandhi anticipates an increase in industry collaboration in the years to come. 

“One of the most important considerations in running a master's program is placing students in successful careers post-graduation,” Gandhi said. “I’m looking forward to expanding our industry relationships for our students under Dr. Khanwilkar’s leadership.”

New Directions

Looking ahead, Khanwilkar wants to emphasize MPE graduates' impact on human health outcomes, increase flexibility in the program with specialized focus areas, and promote leadership development. He also hopes to expand the program’s reach through online offerings from greater collaboration with industry, alumni, UPMC, the Schools of the Health Sciences including Medicine, Nursing, Rehabilitation, the Katz Graduate School of Business, the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, and the Innovation Institute. 

Even with these improvements in mind, Khanwilkar believes that for students and experienced professionals alike, Swanson’s bioengineering master’s programs are the place to be. 

“We are exceptionally close to UPMC clinicians through an extremely collaborative relationship developed over decades, and the clinical access, interactions, and insight that students get here enabled by the close proximity between the two disciplines is unparalleled,” Khanwilkar said. “Having helped develop medtech ecosystems around the US and the world for over 40 years, I believe that the bioengineering-clinical collaboration at Pitt is the best in the world."

Dr. Khanwilkar is eager to collaborate with alumni, industry partners, and supporters to shape the future of the MS-MPE program. If you’re interested in contributing, please email khanwilkar@pitt.edu to engage with and support Pitt Bioengineering’s next generation of innovators.

• PennDOT Major Bridges P3 Project: This is an award-winning public-private partnership megaproject addressing Pennsylvania’s backlog of major bridges needing replacement and rehabilitation. The project includes the design, construction, sustainable financing, and routine and life-cycle maintenance of six critical interstate bridges across the Commonwealth essential to the intra and interstate transportation system.
• Pittsburgh International Airport Roads and Bridges Project: S&B USA is building the network of new roads, bridges and supporting infrastructure for the visionary new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport—highlighted by the dual-level bridge to connect arriving and departing travelers to the terminal.
• PennDOT I-376 Commercial Street Bridge Replacement Project: S&B USA is using accelerated bridge techniques to construct the new bridge alongside the current structure and slide it into place.

Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, says, “Industry, government, and the private sector have for decades been critical to the success of our engineering program and a pathway to student engagement and future employment across the university. S&B USA has been a long-time partner as well as employer of generations of alumni, and so we are excited to further expand our partnership.”

Sharon Novak, Chief Executive Officer of S&B USA and Chairman of S&B USA Construction, says, “We are proud to partner with the University of Pittsburgh, a cornerstone of our community, to offer engineering and business students with valuable, real-world experience in construction and project development. This collaboration not only supports the professional growth of emerging talent but also strengthens our shared commitment to Pittsburgh and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Together, we will do our best to support a future where education and industry intersect to drive innovation, cultivate rewarding careers and deliver impactful solutions for our region and beyond.”

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It’s a Monday, and you’ve overslept. You skip breakfast and rush to your car, hoping to make it to work on time. But a notoriously long red light delays you. You’re not just frustrated – you’re late. 

For an engineer who specializes in transportation, ensuring others arrive to work on time is just one of their priorities. 

“When we talk about road transportation, we have three areas that shape our work,” said Aleksandar Stevanovic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. “Safety is our primary concern, but we also think about efficiency and environmental implications. Most of the time, these areas go hand-in-hand.” 

Stevanovic has spent the majority of his career researching traffic control–which can be through road signs, traffic signals and pavement markings–on arterial streets. He has published more than 250 journal and conference papers and presented at more than 100 international, national and state seminars and professional meetings on the subject. He has been principal investigator on ~40 research projects for almost $5 million in funding, and has worked with various transportation agencies on the national, state and local levels. 

That’s a lot of time spent on the road(s). 

Smarter Streets 

Most recently, Stevanovic is part of a $160,814 project with the city of Pittsburgh to improve the city’s intelligent transportation system’s infrastructure and operations in disadvantaged neighborhoods, or SmartPGH. With Stevanovic’s help, the city plans to deploy different smart technologies on its streets that support multimodal operations. 

“By multimodal, I mean accessible public transportation by providing transit signal priority for buses, providing better detection of pedestrians, and more protected signal phasing for crossing the street,” Stevanovic said. “We are also looking into bike volumes and what areas people are delayed in their cars.” 

There is one caveat for Stevanovic and his team: when these technologies are installed, it’s uncertain how efficiently they’ll function together since they typically operate independently. Worst case scenario: less than ideal performance from these technologies.. 

“We can’t test in the field because we could potentially put lives at stake,” Stevanovic said. “Instead, we use a very sophisticated, high fidelity simulation to replicate the conditions that we have in the field with the same technologies that will be implemented.” 

The simulation is more similar to that of a digital twin than virtual reality, meaning the research group can control different conditions to produce a result in order to form accurate predictions. 

“You don't get like this 3D view of the objects around yourself, but the way how traffic performs, number of vehicles, how fast vehicles move, number of pedestrians, where pedestrians move, and how they move in the network,” Stevanovic said. “Those things are very realistic.” 

Reinventing the (Steering) Wheel 

Unlike SmartPGH, Stevanovic and his team are incorporating virtual reality into a $120,000 project, in collaboration with the University of Virginia, under a consortium of regional universities led by Morgan State University .

In his lab, there’s an interactive environment where one person drives a car, another walks as a pedestrian, and a third rides a bike—all within the same virtual space. All other cars, pedestrians, bicyclists and landscapes are simulated. The environment itself is based on a corridor in Newark, Delaware because of its notable multimodal environment, maintained by the Delaware Department of Transportation. 

Stevanovic emphasized that calling it a mere driving simulation system doesn't capture its complexity. 

“This creates a perfect environment for us to investigate multiple, multimodal traffic scenarios,” Stevanovic said. “By using these human agents in that environment, we can replicate some of the potential conflicts that happen and test the ability to avoid and resolve these conflicts without actually working with the people in the field. No one gets hurt.” 

Though remote  work has become more common, Stevanovic doesn’t believe it to be the perfect solution to traffic conditions. Stevanovic said it’s possible that multidisciplinary researchers could look at something as simple as the wheel – which dates back to the 4th millennium BC – and a car’s design to improve traffic conditions. 

“We’ve never really questioned what a car should be—its design, features, or purpose,” Stevanovic said. “We typically follow evolutionary changes, not revolutionary ones. Maybe it’s time for a radical redesign to improve how we use our time, reduce delays, enhance safety for everyone, and make cars more eco-friendly.”

A gift from Diane P. and Gerald (Jerry) D. Holder established a new annual lecture series at the Swanson School this month. Gerald Holder, Dean Emeritus of the Swanson School, served as U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering from 1996 to 2018. Jerry was an extraordinary pioneer, mentor, and leader at the Swanson School who led substantial growth in enrollment, student diversity, student engagement, and faculty research.

“I am so proud of Jerry's tireless commitment to educating the next generation to go above and beyond and bring new skills and knowledge forward to solve the world's hardest problems,” Diane Holder said. 

The lecture series annually rotates between the school’s six departments each fall. Beginning with the Department of Bioengineering, James J. Collins, PhD, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), presented the inaugural lecture, “AI for Good – Deep Learning for Antibiotic Discovery,” on September 12. 

“We are honored to select Jim Collins, a groundbreaking pioneer of synthetic biology, as the inaugural speaker.” said Sanjeev Shroff, chair of the department of bioengineering. “This new lecture series will allow us to bring in the very best in various fields of engineering. On behalf of my fellow department chairs, we cannot thank Diane and Jerry enough for this endowed lecture series that will enable us to welcome some of the most remarkable engineering researchers to Pitt each fall.”

Jerry Holder hopes that the lecture, which is intended to facilitate excellence in engineering education and research through exposure to distinguished faculty across the engineering disciplines, will broaden the horizons of Swanson School students. 

“When students have the opportunity to interact with leading scientists, it inspires innovation.” Holder said. “I hope this lecture series will provide an opportunity for dialogue from distinguished thought leaders in engineering science with Swanson School students, faculty, and the University at large.”

IN HONOR OF GERALD D. HOLDER, PhD

For two decades as U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, Gerald D. Holder led its growth as one of the top 25 public engineering programs. 

Dean Emeritus Holder earned his bachelor's in chemistry from Kalamazoo College, and his bachelor's, master's and PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. His research focus area is the phase behavior of natural gasses & petroleum with emphasis on natural gas hydrates. He joined the chemical engineering faculty at Columbia University in New York City in 1976 and served in that capacity until 1979, when he came to the University of Pittsburgh. He served as Chair of Chemical Engineering from 1987-95 and became Dean of Engineering in 1996. In these leadership roles, Holder fostered the development of programs in bioengineering, polymers, environment and energy, manufacturing, and materials. 

At Pitt, he has received awards for his research and teaching, including the School of Engineering Award for Outstanding Research and the Board of Visitors Faculty Award. His regional and national accomplishments include the William Metcalf Award for Lifetime Achievement in Engineering from the Engineering Society of Western Pennsylvania; Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Oak Ridge Associated Universities; and a General Motors Scholar. 

To mark his 20th anniversary as Dean of the Swanson School, former Provost Patricia Beeson appointed him as a Distinguished Service Professor, a title that recognizes distinctive contributions and outstanding service (e.g., professional, regional. national, international) to the University community in support of its multifaceted teaching/research/service mission, as well as performance excellence and national stature in his discipline.

On Nov. 25, however, a terrorist group successfully targeted the Municipal Authority of Aliquippa, raising concerns about further attacks in the United States and the vulnerability of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The risks associated with these attacks are forcing the worlds of operational technology and information technology to collide, but each field’s methodologies and solutions are vastly different, a disconnect that affects policy decisions and interventions.

This past summer, 16 interdisciplinary Pitt students worked to create solutions and inform action related to cyber-informed engineering (CIE) through the Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Experience in Electric Grid, or SHURE-Grid.

The 12-week program is a collaborative partnership between the David C. Frederick Honors College, the Swanson School of Engineering, Pitt’s Office of Research and the Idaho National Laboratory. With SHURE-Grid more firmly established, leading faculty took an innovative and interdisciplinary approach.

“The focus of the program is vastly different from last year,” said Mai Abdelhakim, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pitt and one of leading faculty members for SHURE-Grid. “We’re focusing more on developing educational content on CIE that can be incorporated in courses at Pitt and potentially other universities and used for training professionals.”

Comprehending and conquering CIE

Cyber-informed engineering (CIE), developed by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2022, is a framework designed to safeguard critical infrastructure by integrating cybersecurity at each stage in the life cycle of engineering systems, from conception to operation. In its 2022 strategy document, the Department of Energy outlined the core concepts of CIE, which integrates cybersecurity considerations into the foundation of engineering and energy systems design.

With the program’s second year focused on a wide-reaching approach, the need to recruit students studying areas outside of engineering and computer science became clear.

Rob Cunningham, vice chancellor for research infrastructure for Pitt, believes some of the greatest innovations emerge from diverse research groups. He views SHURE-Grid as an opportunity for undergraduates to engage in this collaborative discourse early in their careers.

“Leveraging expertise from vastly different backgrounds creates a better result,” Cunningham said. “Typically, student research has to be focused, mostly sticking to one or two fields of study. Students enrolled in SHURE-Grid have the opportunity — and in fact are required — to collaborate on research with students from four different fields and with faculty with even greater breadth.”

Recruitment resulted in students from 10 different majors, including from Pitt’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pitt’s School of Computing and Information, Pitt’s Film and Media Studies program and Departments of Neurology and Political Science.

Each group was given two case studies in each area to explore and were expected to produce an educational video, case study user guides with supporting media, and case-specific recommendations for organizational development in CIE industry areas. The groups worked with Kevin Smith, teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in broadcast, to improve their presentations and produce their final videos and sizzle reels.

“Media stretches over every possible subject matter, every discipline,” Smith said. “As we all know, every single network has TV shows that involve technology, engineering — all those aspects. All this does is make my students even stronger, moving forward for what they want to do, because diversity in the discipline is a strength.” 

[Meet Erin Clark, a junior who produced educational SHURE-Grid content.]

Selecting an interdisciplinary team of students meant working with faculty from a multitude of backgrounds, too. This stretch was as enriching for faculty as it was for the students.

“It was exciting for me to learn from my colleagues’ differing perspectives and viewpoints around multidisciplinary issues in cybersecurity,” said James Joshi, professor at the School of Computing and Information and director of the Laboratory of Education and Research on Security Assured Information Systems.

Some participants like Naomi Taylor, a junior majoring in film and media studies with a minor in Japanese, were only introduced to CIE in the first weeks of the program.

“During the first day, we had a two-hour intensive overview of what CIE was,” Taylor said. “I felt in over my head. I was primarily a STEM student in high school, but I pursued the arts in college. I didn’t think I would get the opportunity to revisit that type of work or research again, but one of the reasons I came to Pitt was to experience work that helped other people, leading me to join this program.”

Brandon Grainger, associate professor and Eaton Faculty Fellow of electrical and computer engineering, noted that students were given a heavy lift intellectually in 12 short weeks.  Students had to learn research and development approaches, establish domain knowledge in electric power and cyber-informed engineering, learn the basics of a software tool of choice, work to understand policy and organizational behavior and practice their technical writing and presentation delivery skills.

“Regardless of major, SHURE-Grid students have to be able to comprehend this information and then convert it into something digestible,” Grainger said. “That’s not only an important skill for them now, but something they will carry with them in any field that they pursue for their career.”

Site visits and meetings with different organizations and individual experts helped the students fully grasp the impact of CIE and organizational structure throughout the summer.

“We looked specifically at vulnerabilities with circuit breakers, which are supposed to prevent damage to the circuit if something goes wrong. You can control that, and if the wrong people get ahold of it, something bad can happen. I didn’t comprehend that at first,” said Abby Magistro, a senior studying computer engineering. “When we visited Mitsubishi Electric, we got to actually see how circuit breakers were made, and that was something none of us were familiar with.”

With organizational culture being one of the key concepts of CIE, Ravi Madhavan, Alcoa Foundation International Faculty Fellow at Pitt’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, led discussions and case studies on the subject.

“Technology solutions are embedded in organizations, which in turn consist of people,” Madhavan explained. “People have their own incentives and interests. With each case study and simulation, students had a better understanding of how people in organizations can affect technology solutions.”

The SHURE-Grid participants even met on their own time to further engage with the material. Brett Say, former director of honors research programs and now assistant director of surveys for the Office of the Provost, arranges stipends and housing for students in the program and has seen it evolve firsthand.

“This feels like the next step for SHURE-Grid and truly establishes how the future of the program will look,” Say said. “Last year, we were still working on the fundamentals of the program. This year, we’re providing a more holistic education for these students.”

Growing SHURE-Grid beyond Pittsburgh

The students’ work, in and out of the classroom, culminated in presentations that included a video detailing the work done throughout the semester. The groups also dissected problems and solutions for their case studies.

Ginger Wright, CIE program manager at Idaho National Laboratory, noted that the work done by Pitt students would inform new programs and educational courses for CIE.

“One of the largest challenges for CIE is building it into university curriculum, making sure the engineers of tomorrow come out ready to create defensible engineering designs,” Wright said. “What I saw during the final presentations was a glimmer of what’s to come. I saw elements of a curriculum that we can share with other universities — not just Pittsburgh.”

And compared to their first day in the program, Abdelhakim noted that students displayed noticeably more confidence during their final presentations. 

“They all grew tremendously over the past 12 weeks,” Abdelhakim said. “Any time you work on an interdisciplinary project, it will push you out of your comfort zone, but all of the students pushed through it and only went forward.”

Photography by Aimee Obidzinski

You’d just have to be the size of a toy soldier.

Students from Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering and History of Art and Architecture program built an interactive, miniature model of the center to demonstrate its capabilities and scope to the University community before construction is finished.

The model was created for XProjects, part of the Swanson School’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, where students design, prototype and test a real-world product or system over the course of a semester.

Shaista Rahim, a senior studying architecture, and her teammates didn’t know much about the center until they signed up for the project.

“We wanted to show what opportunities the building would have for students like ourselves,” said Rahim. “We highlighted key points of the building like the swimming pool, glass exterior and rock-climbing wall to give students like us a good idea of what it could be.”

Students met with Anastasia Dubnicay, Pitt’s project manager of architecture who is overseeing the construction of the center, and received CAD drawings, elevations and renderings and a model made with Revit, a building information modeling software. Dubnicay also accompanied the students on a visit to the center’s construction site to help them grasp the actual layout of the building.

Fiona Cheng, a senior studying mechanical engineering, said the site visit was the most valuable part of the project.

“The site visit is what gave us ideas on what to feature and how we wanted to go about modeling them,” Cheng said.

[Catch up on more construction projects around Pitt.]

Using the Revit files, students scaled down the model and translated it into something buildable using a laser printer. Chipboard, acrylic and wood were used to assemble the finished product. Lighting was added to draw attention to specific areas of interest.

“I want a mini-sized one for my desk,” joked Dubnicay, the project manager. “I think it will really help people get excited about the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center and shine a light on the students’ work at the same time.”

The XProject marked the first opportunity for students to work across disciplines, with architects and engineers collaborating closely, mirroring real-world practices. As a result, students eagerly signed up.

“As a mechanical engineer, it was eye-opening to see all the things that architects do and what they work with,” said Jordan Kelly, a junior studying mechanical engineering. “They taught us everything from the lingo to what goes into making a model, which I’ve never done before.”

Abby Burthe, a senior studying architecture, said her favorite part of the project was working alongside the engineers. “They made this project so unique by adding their ideas to the model and helped me realize how I can elevate my work as well,” she said.

Carla M. Panzella, the vice provost for student affairs, said the model “enthusiastically” represents the energy of the building.

“The Campus Recreation and Wellness Center began by listening to students’ voices and so engaging our students from the Swanson School of Engineering as well as students from the History of Art and Architecture program was a natural collaboration,” said Panzella. “The Campus Recreation and Wellness Center will be a transformative space at the heart of campus that will serve as the intersection of well-being at Pitt. This building will encompass many areas of health and wellness to serve our community. I can’t wait to celebrate the opening of this building with our community.”

The model is on display at the William Pitt Union until the end of the spring semester in 2025.

The programs include:

• Bioengineering (first accredited 1999)
• Chemical Engineering (first accredited 1936)
• Civil Engineering (first accredited 1936)
• Computer engineering (first accredited 1998)
• Electrical Engineering (first accredited 1936)
• Engineering Science (first accredited 2014)
• Environmental Engineering (first accredited 2016)
• Industrial Engineering (first accredited 1936)
• Materials Science and Engineering (first accredited 1988)
• Mechanical Engineering (first accredited 1936)

“We are extremely proud that all of our undergraduate programs were re-accredited by ABET with no weaknesses or deficiencies indicated,” said Sanjeev Shroff, Interim U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering. “It is a testament to the dedication and preparation by our department chairs, faculty, and ABET program managers as well as visiting committee members. My thanks and congratulations to Dr. Mary Besterfield-Sacre, senior associate dean of academic affairs, and her staff for marshalling this critical project.”

ABET accreditation assures that programs meet standards to produce graduates ready to enter critical technical fields that are leading the way in innovation and emerging technologies and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of the public.

"Earning and retaining accreditation is a key indicator of the exceptional quality of an institution, school or program," said Joseph J. McCarthy, Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor. "I congratulate the Swanson School of Engineering on its re-accreditation, which is an important reflection of the school's deep commitment to its students and to excellence."

Sought worldwide, ABET’s voluntary peer-review process is highly respected because it adds critical value to academic programs in the technical disciplines, where quality, precision and safety are of the utmost importance.

Developed by technical professionals from ABET’s member societies, ABET criteria focus on what students experience and learn. ABET accreditation reviews look at program curricula, faculty, facilities, and institutional support and are conducted by teams of highly skilled professionals from industry, academia and government, with expertise in the ABET disciplines.

ABET is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization with ISO 9001:2015 certification. It currently accredits 4,564 programs at 895 colleges and universities in 40 countries and areas.

More information about ABET, its member societies and the accreditation criteria used to evaluate programs can be found at www.abet.org. 

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Impact through ABET Accreditation 

Bidanda’s involvement with ABET has been a cornerstone of his career. He is currently on the Board of Delegates as an area delegate representing IISE. He is also a member of the ABET Global Council and assigns program evaluators for IISE. He continues to serve as a mentor for team chairs on international visits. In the past, has served as chair of the EAC Training Committee that helped transition from the (a)-(k) student outcomes to the current (1)-(7) learning outcomes. 

His leadership roles within ABET have allowed him to influence engineering education standards worldwide. Bidanda has played a pivotal role in shaping ABET’s accreditation criteria, leading revisions in program criteria for the industrial engineering and the Engineering Management disciplines, aligning these more closely with the needs of stakeholders and current curricula. 

“Getting involved with ABET has definitely been one of the high points of my career,” he explained. “Representing ABET on a visit is a unique and bonding experience that you share with your team members.” Bidanda recalled experiences he had during site visits, including his first EAC visit, reading an exit statement underneath a table during a tornado warning. 
Bidanda on a 2016 accreditation site visit for ABET with Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi Sheikh of Sharjah. 

STEM Education and Mentorship 

As a third-generation educator, Bidanda was inspired to make an impact on students’ lives. His favorite part of mentoring and educating is watching students grow from raw freshmen to polished graduates with successful careers. “I think anybody can take a bright, accomplished student and make her a superstar. It’s taking students that are ‘diamonds in the rough’ and watching them transform into stars that’s even more rewarding for me,” he said. 

In 2001, Bidanda expanded his mentoring efforts by organizing Doctoral Colloquia through IISE and the International Foundation of Production Research (IFPR) in 2014 to help Ph.D. students build foundational skills, develop professional networks, and identify good mentorships. These workshops help provide a roadmap for academic and industrial careers. “Helping students make career choices, pointing students in the right direction in terms of their careers, has always been a driving force for me,” he explained. Bidanda has since developed and implemented additional doctoral colloquia in India during his Fulbright semester, through various host institutions and societies. 

Reflecting on his career, Bidanda underscores the importance of lifelong learning and mentorship. “You never stop educating people. My mentors have taught me the value of flexibility and patience. No one can succeed without an army of mentors, and I’ve been fortunate to have that,” he said. He envisions a future where mentorship and enhanced collaboration play a pivotal role in shaping and leveling the playing field the next generation of global educators and engineers.

Within days of the group’s arrival in Rio Grande do Sul on Sunday, April 28, 150,000 Brazilians were displaced throughout Brazil’s southernmost state. At the height of flooding in mid-May, the International Labor Organization said that number had skyrocketed to nearly 700,000.

Felipe Junqueira, a senior studying electrical engineering, was born in São Paulo, Brazil, just northeast of the flooding. 

“While it is common for tropical cities like Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo to take on a few feet of floodwater during heavy rainfall, seeing infrastructure fail to the point where bridges collapse, roads are washed out, and power grids shut down are shocking,” he said. 

Indeed, less than a week after their arrival, the runways at Salgado Filho International Airport in the state capital of Porto Alegre were completely underwater, and the program’s scheduled activities and site visits around São Leopoldo were quickly canceled.

Witness to Disaster

While waiting to secure transportation out of the city, program directors Robert Kerestes, associate professor and undergraduate program director of Pitt’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Tony Kerzmann, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, were surprised to see how eager students were to help refugees arriving in São Leopoldo. 

When Unisinos – the program’s partner institution – opened its doors to approximately 1300 refugees on Saturday, May 4, Kerestes and Kerzmann suggested the group aid their relief efforts. The students were quick to lend a helping hand. 

Students folded and organized donated clothes, distributed bedding supplies, helped to move furniture, and made themselves as helpful as possible.

Junqueira said it was devastating to know he would be able to go home soon when other Brazilians were still trapped and waiting to take refuge.

“My peers are fortunate to have never experienced the rampant poverty in areas like this,” Junqueira said. “I was one of the only members in our group able to speak Portuguese with the refugees, and it was gut-wrenching to hear them and look in their eyes knowing what little they had was taken away.”

Cassidy Laffey, a rising junior studying environmental engineering, said that it’s one thing to see disasters on the news, but another thing entirely to experience one firsthand.

“The lives of these refugees had just changed forever, but all I could do was bring them a blanket,” Laffey said. “It seems very privileged for me to say the hardest thing I’ve ever done was pull myself together and help out as best I could.”

Unisinos faculty noted the Pitt students’ decision to help was an organic response to the catastrophic events they watched unfold. 

“This kind of decision-making is something we expect to see from undergraduate students,” said Tatiana Louise Avila de Campos Rocha, assistant director of undergraduate affairs at Unisinos. “I know the kind of character Pitt teaches their students, so we weren’t surprised to see them volunteer. Soft skills like teamwork, kindness and empathy are critical in understanding the human condition as an engineer.”

In Dark Times, There is Always Light

The close-knit, supportive atmosphere among the refugees resonated with the students. Justin Winslow, a rising junior studying civil engineering, said that the selflessness and generosity he witnessed at Unisinos – by volunteers and refugees – initially surprised him.

“As we were setting supplies on the floor, I flashed back to the COVID-19 situation in the United States where people would ransack store shelves for supplies,” Winslow said. “But there was no rush or panic to hoard supplies. I could see in the way people acted how much they still cared about their neighbors.”

This kind of community mindset didn’t surprise Joseph Rivera, a rising junior studying electrical engineering and a proud member of the Latino community. 

“As a Puerto Rican, I know the Latino community is always there for each other,” said Rivera. “It was beautiful to see the Brazilian community support each other the same way Puerto Ricans did after Hurricane Maria in 2017.”

Reflecting on an Unexpected Experience

After securing transportation out of the affected area on Monday, May 6, Kerestes and Kerzmann led the group to Florianopolis where they spent a day at Armaçāo Beach to decompress and reflect on what they had experienced. They finished their trip at the Itaipu Dam – the second leading producer of hydroelectric power in the world – in Foz do Iguaçu to round out the program’s purpose of exploring energy alternatives.

“We felt bonded after leaning on each other for support during the humanitarian efforts,” Laffey said. “After seeing the devastation of the flooding, one of our collective takeaways is that the small inconveniences we encounter daily don’t matter. We all feel extremely appreciative of our lives and the opportunities we have here at home, and we were so grateful to make the most of the last few days of our trip.”

Five bioengineering professionals who work in non-profit and government roles joined a professional development panel to give their career tips, wisdom and advice to bioengineering PhD students at the Swanson School of Engineering. One in particular, Mahiyar Nasarwanji, talked about that fork in the road and how it helped him understand his future.   

“Toward the end of my PhD, I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do,” Nasarwanji said. “I thought I could do industry work, which a lot of my peers were doing, or look for academic positions as a professor, but I didn't really enjoy industry because of my interest in research, and I felt like academia was so demanding.” 

Ultimately, Nasarwanji ended up choosing neither and landed a job with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a student, he was working on a NIOSH-funded project with his advisor when he decided to reach out to a NIOSH collaborator and inquired about employment. 

Nasarwanji is now in his tenth year and is a senior service fellow who works to improve the health and safety of those working in the mining industry by using his expertise in human factors, ergonomics and musculoskeletal disorders for injury prevention. What he enjoys about his career is being able to work a traditional job while still pursuing research. 

“My favorite part of my job is helping people—I think it's really rewarding when you can take what you've learned and actually apply it to change somebody's life,” Nasarwanji said. “I truly enjoy the whole scientific process and figuring out a way to answer questions, and then providing evidence-based information to the industry to help improve health and safety.” 

Nasarwanji also emphasized that federal bioengineering jobs are available to non-U.S. citizens, and that current salary information is publicly available on the U.S Office of Personnel Management website. Other panelists at the session included Anahid Ebrahimi, Health Program Specialist at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), Laurie Meszaros Dearolf, Operations & Administration Manager at the Bethel Musculoskeletal Research Center, and Fernando Aguel, former Assistant Division Director of the Office of Cardiovascular Devices at the FDA and current Vice President of Heart Failure & Circulatory Support Regulatory Affairs at MCRA, LLC. 

These panelists spoke about their personal career journeys and encouraged students to: 

• Research and connect with people who interest them on Linkedin
• Take advantage of their current Pitt connections and alumni network 
• Explore different types of fellowship opportunities 
• Have grace with themselves if they “fall out of love” with their envisioned career path
• Stay true to their passions and research interests
   

The panel was moderated by Kurt Beschorner, associate professor of bioengineering and associate chair of graduate student professional development, who encourages students to think outside of the box when exploring their future opportunities. Like Nasarwanji, Beschorner’s research is in health and safety, particularly preventing slips, trips, and falls. 

“Don’t limit your options prematurely,” Beschorner said. “Many students are unaware of career opportunities in government and nonprofit organizations and can overlook other compelling opportunities. Having conversations with people in a wide variety of careers can help you understand how they selected their careers and can help you figure out what is important in your own life.”

A full recording of the panel can be found on Panopto.

Coley, now an assistant professor in engineering at the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is “pushing the boundaries of traditionally heteronormative engineering environments through transdisciplinary approaches, qualitative research, and art-based methods,” according to the university’s website. Her projects have received national recognition and garnered millions of funds  in support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

“A lot of my work is about getting close and personal to the lived experience,” Coley said. “When I meet with individuals to further this work, I try to amplify their stories for awareness and accountability.” 

Coley has been experimenting with her approach through virtual reality by using these narratives and translating them into immersive scenarios that encompass experiences students face in navigating engineering. These scenarios target faculty, who play the role of an avatar, to – quite literally – see from the perspective of a minoritized student. In one scenario, The Silent Library, the avatar is a student with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and who is trying to complete a virtual lecture in a library despite myriad distractions. As the distractions pop up, the player must disable them through sustained focus to continue with the lecture. At the end of the module, the player is quizzed on the material. 

Coley noted that all who have taken it have failed the quiz after as a result of the distractions. 

The project has been praised by members of the ADHD community and informed empathetic orientations in professors that have completed it. 

“When I started doing this kind of work, I was really inspired by my own inquisitiveness about the landscape around me in the engineering that was and the empirical evidence needed to transform it,” Coley said. 

Much of Coley’s work has been cultivated and spread to other institutions and collaborators through the Center of Research Advancing Racial Equity, Justice, and Sociotechnical Innovation Centered in Engineering (RARE JUSTICE) at Arizona State University. The Center, with Coley as Founding Executive Director, operates to model “a radically just engineering future through an actionable, antiracist orientation applied across the realms of scholarship and metrics, dissemination, workforce development, and community engagement and outreach.” The center has expanded through both research and workshops and was recently part of an $800,000 NSF award to help build mentorship and provide evidence-based psychological support systems for Black engineering academics. Coley serves as co-principal investigator on the project. 

Pushing Through Boundaries at Pitt 

There has always been a societal implication to Coley’s work. 

While at Pitt, she studied slips, trips, and falls in older adults (those 65 and older) to explore whether a biomechanical strategy could minimize the severity of perturbations. She joked that it was difficult to find individuals who would willingly fall in her laboratory, but with the help of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UMPC) and the Claude D. Pepper Center, specifically, she was able to complete her research. 

For Coley, her work at Pitt was her first dabble in understanding how engineering could help others. 

“It was really my first research experience that had a direct application,” Coley said. “I could see that the work I was doing could impact someone’s life.” 

Her time at Pitt was formative in her own personal experience as well. 

Coley – a Black woman – felt like an outsider for much of her tenure, and particularly, following her experience as a Meyerhoff Scholar at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) She learned that a lot of other students of color had the same feelings. 

“In that time, only a small percentage of my peers graduated as intended with their PhD,” Coley said. “I was lucky to find community and support in the Pitt EXCEL program, which is committed to helping underrepresented students succeed, and push through.” 

She also credits Mark Redfern, the current Interim Chair of Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering, and Sylvanus Wosu, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and associate dean for diversity affairs, for their willingness to help Coley find where she fit in the world outside of Pitt. 

Redfern, who then was Coley’s mentor, remembers those conversations with Coley vividly and saw that she was struggling with what she actually wanted to pursue in her career. However, he noted that he could only guide her while she needed to discover her path on her own. 

“I remember my talks with Brooke fondly,” Redfern said. “Those conversations were hard. Anytime you are thinking about changing your path, it should be hard. Once she thought it through, she found a new direction, and it was perfect for her.”

While at Pitt, Coley formed one of her best friendships and professional connections in Kurt Beschorner, who was also a PhD student alongside Coley. Most notably, they learned from one another and built a friendship rooted in honesty.  

“Dr. Coley’s friendship stood out for our honest conversations on topics that are not often discussed,” said Beschorner, who is now associate professor and associate chair of graduate student professional development for the Department of Bioengineering. “We could spend part of a conversation discussing our PhD projects but also discussed racial inequities in university settings and how individual identity influences the graduate school experience. In these conversations, it always felt like we trusted each other enough to be honest and to challenge each other. Even now, I routinely think back on these conversations as this incredible gift that has provided me with an improved perspective in my career and life.”

Defining a New Type of Leader 

Coley’s work is far from over. 

As political climates become more tense, Coley fears that leaders are becoming more silent when, she believes, they need to be more vocal and vigilant than ever. 

“It’s very disheartening to be of a minoritized identity in this country,” Coley said. “The world doesn’t seem like it wants everyone to thrive. With so many supporting divisions in society, it’s becoming critical that leaders actively disrupt the status quo.”

For Coley herself, to be silent and inactive are to be complicit in these times.

“I want to be in a position that doesn’t succumb to performative change,” Coley said. “I want to be an agentic leader that makes actionable decisions which translate to more people thriving in engineering environments anchored in equity and justice – and to not lose myself in the process.” 

“Michele is a transformational and award-winning scholar and educator,” Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Joseph McCarthy wrote in the announcement. “Michele’s outstanding higher education and industry experience uniquely position her to lead the Swanson School forward.”

Manuel has served as chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Nuclear Engineering program at the University of Florida since 2017 and is the Rolf E. Hummel Professor of Electronic Materials. During her tenure as chair, she established new positions and programs, leading the recruitment of 20 faculty members and turning the department into one of the largest and most diverse of its kind in the U.S.

Manuel’s research extends beyond academia, including maintaining multiple industry partnerships and leading a medical device company, Element12 Biotechnologies LLC. She’s a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of ASM International (formerly the American Society for Metals) and received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

She has been awarded the ASM Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers, the American Vacuum Society Recognition for Excellence in Leadership and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Distinguished Mentor Award, among other honors.

Manuel earned her PhD in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida.

Interim Dean Sanjeev Shroff will step down after two years of leading the Swanson School, where he advanced collaborative, interdisciplinary research and educational programs.

“Sanjeev has done an outstanding job, leading the school through a successful ABET accreditation process, significantly increasing the production of doctoral degrees, and a nearly 50% jump in research expenditures to a school record high of over $64 million,” McCarthy said in the announcement.

Shroff will serve as special assistant to the provost and senior vice chancellor for health sciences for interdisciplinary and translational research, training and education.

The Shiao-Hung Chiang Seminar Series will be housed in the Swanson School’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering through a gift from Chiang’s children – Annette, who conducts research in Pitt’s Department of Biological Sciences; Grace; and Justin. The newly endowed fund will “provide program support to bring outstanding researchers, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the field of chemical engineering to the Swanson School of Engineering community for an exchange of ideas.”

“Our father dedicated over 40 years to teaching at Pitt, and the chemical engineering department was an integral part of his life. We sought a meaningful way to honor the significance of Pitt and the department to him,” said Justin on behalf of the family. “Our dad was always eager to engage in discussions about engineering and science, and he would be delighted to have his name associated with these seminars.”

Chiang, who also was executive chair of the Pittsburgh Coal Conference from 1973-1999, was well published for his research in clean coal processes and earned several patents. He was a generous educator, researcher, and mentor according to Department Chair Steven Little, Distinguished Professor and William Kepler Whiteford Endowed Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.

“From student and faculty mentorship to department leadership and an international presence in his field, Dr. Chiang made a tremendous impact on the history of the department and generations of alumni,” Dr. Little said. “We are incredibly thankful to Annette, Grace, and Justin for establishing this named seminar in his memory which will benefit the sharing of engineering knowledge.”

“For our family, endowing a lecture series serves as a beautiful tribute to his memory,” Justin said. “We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Gary Pollock in Philanthropic and Alumni Engagement and the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in creating this graduate seminar series.”

Obituary: Chiang led clean coal research and directed the Pittsburgh Coal Conference

— Marty Levine for the University Times (3 January 2023)

Chemical Engineering Emeritus Professor Shiao-Hung Chiang — whose influential work on clean coal processes led to their wide use and several patents, and who directed the Pittsburgh Coal Conference for decades (1973-1999) — died Dec. 14, 2022, at 94.

“He certainly brought notoriety to the school through his research work, and he was certainly very well-known not only throughout the school but the entire University,” said former departmental colleague George Klinzing, now an emeritus instructor. “He had the highest respect as a faculty member in the school. He always stood for the highest standards in the academic field.”

Klinzing assisted with Chiang’s most prominent grant-supported study on the LICADO coal-cleaning process, which uses liquid carbon dioxide as the agent. Chiang led the basic and applied research, which included building a pilot plant unit to prove the principle.

In his large, funded projects involving coal beneficiation — the filtration of fine coal — Chiang had Ph.D. and M.S. candidates, undergraduates and even high-school students in his laboratory, Klinzing said. “He had lots of good advice for everybody — not only me but the technicians. He was a senior counselor to all the junior faculty.”

Chiang was interim chair of his department for two years, traveled extensively to technical meetings all over the world and produced many scientific publications. In his work, he teamed not only with other faculty but also with government employees and those in industry concerning energy, coal and mass transfer basics.

He was active in the American Filtration Society and an officer in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and received an honorary degree from Wuhan University in China.

As executive chair of the Pittsburgh Coal Conference — a forum for exchange of technical information and policy issues among industry, government, and academic participants — he worked to internationalize it by bringing the gathering to other countries.

Shiao-Hung Chiang was born in Suzhou, China, earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the National Taiwan University (1952), his master’s degree at Kansas State (1955) and his Ph.D. at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) (1958), working there with Professor Herb Toor on basic mass transfer.

After being employed for several years at the Linde Corporation in Buffalo, N.Y., Chiang joined the Pitt faculty in 1960 and rose to the position of full professor. 

During his time at the University, he enjoyed a strong rapport with the technicians in the department, Klinzing said; they worked with him closely in the design and construction of novel and innovative experimental apparatus to study a variety of physical and chemical principles, including radioactive tracers. He served on the University Radiation Safety Committee for many years and took a sabbatical at Cambridge.

Chiang is survived by three children, Annette (Eric Hsiung), currently conducting research in Pitt’s Department of Biological Sciences; Grace; and Justin, and grandchildren Alexander Chiang, Lauren Chiang, Benjamin Hsiung and Emmy Hsiung.

A professor of Plastic Surgery with a secondary appointment in Bioengineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, Marra initially founded Swan NeuroTech, formerly known as Nerve Repair Technologies, in 2019 to treat nerve injury. 

“We developed a biodegradable tube in our lab that can promote nerve regeneration over severe injuries or large gaps,” Marra said. “When I realized this is really something that could potentially revolutionize treatment for nerve injuries, I started a company, licensed many of my patents, and had just been working toward getting the FDA to approve the first clinical trial.”

Marra’s goal with Swan NeuroTech is to commercialize their product, NeuraMAX nerve guide, a biomaterial-based drug delivery platform for peripheral nerve injuries. The nerve guide is a hollow tube made of porous, biodegradable polymers implanted by surgeons at the site of injury. Sustained release of a growth factor recruits specialized nerve regeneration cells to the nerve injury site so that the injured nerve can reconnect with the muscle for functional recovery. The nerve guide then degrades and is absorbed over a period of 18-24 months, leaving a healthy, functional nerve in its place.

“My lab has been looking at new therapies to reduce atrophy and keep muscles healthy as nerves regenerate,” Marra said. “So I kind of look at it as, okay, you have a nerve injury and we can regenerate it, but while it's regenerating, what can we do to help that muscle remain functional and healthy?”

 The name “Swan NeuroTech” is a play on Schwann cells - important cells that keep peripheral nerves alive - but it isn’t the only thing that’s new about the startup. In January 2024, Marra appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and alumnus Jeremy Kimmel (BioE PhD ‘11) as CEO, and the duo is ready to move Marra’s research from bench to bedside. 

“I'm really focused on taking all the research and transforming it into a commercial product,” Kimmel said. “From a regulatory standpoint and commercial standpoint, we’re also strategizing how to best position the science and understanding how to mitigate risk while we move the  technology forward.”

Kimmel was previously Senior Vice President at former Pitt startup ALung Technologies Inc. and worked briefly to transition the startup to global medtech company LivaNova. Kimmel decided the corporate world wasn’t for him— startups are where he thrives. 

“For me, doing something new and innovative is really important. If you're just doing something else that other people have done you're often not going to be successful,” Kimmel said. “It's not about money or prestige or being famous, it's about solving important clinical problems that don’t have any good solutions.”

Treating peripheral nerve damage is one of these clinical problems with a lack of effective solutions, and according to Kimmel, NeuraMAX could have various promising uses and make a big splash in the market.

“There's a huge opportunity here for pain management,” Kimmel said. “Nerve pain is a large market, and the ability to direct medications, whether it's pain drugs or nerve blocking agents, directly to the site of pain or injury, rather than using drugs like opiates, has a lot of different applications.” 

For Marra, with most of her work funded by the Department of Defense, her goal is to commercialize NeuraMAX to heal soldiers and veterans who suffer from nerve injuries. 

“Soldiers have body armor helmets but their arms and legs are exposed, so over half of injured soldiers end up with a nerve injury,” Marra said. “I once met a veteran who was shot through the calf muscle and it severed his nerve. He wasn't able to move his foot up and down or have any sensation, and there was nothing on the market that could help him.” 

NeuraMAX would not only be helpful for injured veterans, but would also help treat a large variety of nerve injuries that countless individuals face each year. 

“This would also help people that have nerve injuries from things like slips and falls, violence, car accidents, and machinery accidents,” Marra said. “If you have a tumor and you cut it out, you've cut nerves there as well.”

Kimmel is looking forward to getting things going with Swan NeuroTech, and as an adjunct professor, he’s optimistic about sharing his expertise with future entrepreneurs. 

“I think the Department of Bioengineering in particular is in a good position right now to help churn out really quality start ups,” Kimmel said. “I'm happy to be part of it, because I've been there and done it, so I can provide lessons of being in the trenches with FDA and fundraising, just to share my wins and losses with everyone.”

In Wagner’s 33-year career in Pittsburgh, he’s been a significant leader in developing nationally recognized multidisciplinary regenerative medicine research across the University. Now, Wagner is joining Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering as a Distinguished Professor to continue that work within the Swanson School of Engineering. 

“I've always had a foot in engineering,” Wagner said. “I am happy to have this as my home base now, but my passion remains the same, which is applying engineering and materials science to develop better solutions for patients suffering with organ or tissue failure.”

Although the department appointed him as primary faculty in 2024, Wagner’s roots in Bioengineering run deep. He has served as a PhD advisor to bioengineering graduate students since the early nineties, and has taught Bioengineering courses while consistently mentoring both undergraduate and graduate bioengineering students during his time at the University. 

Drs. Sang Ho Ye and Seungil Kim, post-doctoral researchers Drs. Taro Fujii and Keishi Kohyama, and staff members Mary Jo Dorsey, PhD and Hongbin Jiang, MD, are also joining the department with Wagner.  Prior to his appointment in Bioengineering, Wagner served as Director of Pitt’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine from 2012 to 2023 and as Distinguished Professor of Surgery. Wagner hopes that by joining the department, some obstacles to collaborative research can be reduced.

“We have excellent engineers across different departments working in the health sciences, and it is clear that interdisciplinary teams are essential to developing new solutions,” Wagner said. “The modern research university needs to actively work against the tendency to form silos. It is essential to catalyze the formation of these teams across administrative structures —I’m focused on breaking down barriers as much as possible to help form new partnerships.” 

Wagner’s research interests are in cardiovascular engineering with projects that address medical device biocompatibility and design, biomaterial development, and tissue engineering. A primary focus of his work is advancing biomaterials science to improve the lives of those suffering from heart disease. Looking ahead, Wagner has plans to create a collaborative center that emphasizes the application of materials science and bioengineering to clinical translation. 

“Pittsburgh is a place that fundamentally understands materials science, and if you look at materials science applied to medicine or biomaterials, we have a world-class collection of individuals working on this topic,” Wagner said. “We don't really brand ourselves and organize ourselves in a way that the rest of the world is aware of, so looking into the future, I want to help raise our international profile and recruit the next generation of leaders in this field.”

Since 2016, Allison Vorp couldn’t make sense of a chronic, worsening pain in her lower right abdomen.

“It was this severe, sharp shooting, pinching pain,” she said. “It started to be that it was my constant companion — it was always hurting.”

Explanations ranged everywhere from ovarian cysts and hip arthritis to irritable bowel syndrome. She dieted, eliminating and reintroducing major food groups to see if it would make a difference. 

It didn’t, and it wasn’t until her 40s that Allison, a research administrator at Pitt’s School of Medicine, thought to mention one more possibility to her gynecologist — endometriosis. 

Endometriosis is a condition where cells that line the uterus start growing outside of it, mainly on the ovaries, fallopian tubes and supporting ligaments and tissues that line the pelvis. Symptoms include painful periods, heavy bleeding, severe menstrual cramps, chronic pain in the lower back and pelvis, pain during or after sex, and infertility. 

Because of these varied symptoms, endometriosis is often the last to be considered compared to other potential causes, even though it affects roughly one in ten women worldwide. 

Allison’s doctor sent her to UPMC Magee-Womens Center for Endometriosis and Chronic Pelvic Pain (CECPP), where she met former Pitt surgeon Ted Lee, who had seen her for less than 10 minutes before he suspected she had stage 4 endometriosis. 

Around the same time Allison was searching for answers, incoming PhD student Isabelle Chickanosky was searching for a faculty mentor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering, hoping to study that same disease — something she has endured since she was 16 years old. Her search led her to David Vorp,  senior associate dean for research and facilities at the Swanson School of Engineering and director of Pitt’s Vascular Bioengineering Lab (VBL) — and by coincidence, Allison’s husband. 

“I had this huge passion for endometriosis, but at the time, Dr. Vorp didn’t do any research in the field,” Chickanosky said. “For months, I sat on this idea of, you know, do I want to go into a lab where I can focus on endometriosis? Or do I want to go to the Vorp Lab and learn something new?” 

Chickanosky decided to join the VBL, hoping to pursue endometriosis research after earning her PhD. Then, in fall 2021 when Allison was diagnosed with endometriosis, David remembered Chickanosky’s interest in the disease and her own medical history, and he immediately contacted her. 

“I eagerly went home to get all these papers I had set aside because endometriosis was still my passion project,” Chickanosky said. “Within the next few weeks, we scheduled hourly sessions to talk about this disease, about new research in the field, and build up what we wanted our own project to be.” 

Inspired by Allison and Chickanosky, David sought to learn what was being done at Pitt in endometriosis research, which led him to Nicole Donnellan and David Peters, both professors of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. By joining forces, they realized that together they could move the needle on endometriosis research and care. 

The team created the Hub for Endometriosis Research (HER), which includes about a dozen interdisciplinary researchers and clinicians across multiple Pitt schools, including the Swanson School Engineering and School of Medicine, and the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital and the Magee-Womens Research Institute. With five distinct goals — education, research, clinical care, advocacy and outreach — HER endeavors to become a comprehensive research hub that will tackle not only the science, but also the widespread lack of information about endometriosis among patients, clinicians and researchers alike. 

“The driving factor behind HER was my wife’s diagnosis and wanting to learn more about it but not being able to find much information,” David said. “That’s when I realized there’s so much more that needs to be done, and if no one else is doing it, why can’t we?”

Finding a better path to diagnosis

Endometriosis can decrease quality of life due to severe pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety and infertility. Individuals with endometriosis can experience debilitating pain that prevents them from going to work or school. Enhanced awareness could lead to earlier diagnosis, which may slow or halt the natural progression of the disease and reduce the long-term health care burden of the disease, but there is no known way to prevent endometriosis, and currently there is no cure.

According to Donnellan, the average endometriosis diagnosis period is eight to 11 years, and the only way to officially diagnose a patient is with an exploratory surgical laparoscopic procedure. The disease, she explained, is stealthy when it comes to traditional diagnostic procedures.

“There are no biomarkers for endometriosis,” said Donnellan, who is also medical director of gynecology at Magee-Womens Hospital. “There are no noninvasive diagnostic tests like a blood sample, endometrial biopsy sample or even a pap smear, and there are limitations in imaging such as CT scans or MRIs. You can have a normal ultrasound, normal blood work and a normal physical exam and still have a disease that is causing symptoms.” 

HER collaborators are studying tissue samples from these procedures, but surgery is expensive, and funding and affordability are some of the biggest challenges in studying endometriosis. To decrease the financial burden and the amount of doctor visits for patients, Chickanosky’s PhD dissertation work includes the development of EndoDx, a tool that would be compatible with gynecology offices and use machine-learning to predict a patient’s likelihood of having endometriosis. 

“It's important that we have communication between early-stage clinicians who are with patients in annual gynecology exams all the way up to our clinicians who are geared toward removing this disease,” Chickanosky said. "Patients should be under the care of those who understand their overall health early on as well as specialists who understand the disease itself.” 

Even before patients enter the doctor’s office, Chickanosky wants to make sure they are aware of endometriosis as a possibility and that their symptoms are validated. 

“A huge barrier for patients is not even knowing if they should be seeking help,” Chickanosky said. “As a patient myself, when I go online and I look for information about some of my symptoms and it’s not there, it makes me think it’s not that big of an issue and I start tearing myself down.”

Creating a community of awareness

Raising awareness about endometriosis is crucial, and knowing about it earlier would have changed the Vorps’ lives. Before even hearing about the disease, Allison went through four failed rounds of IVF trying to have children, which was best explained by “undiagnosed infertility” at the time. She remembers Lee telling her at her initial visit with him at the CECPP that if she had seen him back then, this may have been different. 

“Endometriosis is a very frustrating journey for many, many people,” Allison said. “From my journey in particular, when I look back and see that we landed in the office of a fertility clinic, unable to get pregnant, with multiple rounds of IVF that never resulted in a pregnancy, I feel like someone should have said: ‘Do you think this could be endometriosis?’”

For Allison and Chickanosky, community support has been a crucial factor in their personal journeys to diagnosis and recovery, and for managing the unpredictable chronic pain that still continues to impact their lives. Allison is hopeful that bringing a community of researchers together for HER will help individuals with endometriosis like herself and vastly improve treatment options.

“There is so much hope on many different levels for helping people who are suffering, whether it’s finding a faster path to diagnosis and treatment, a greater scientific understanding of the disease, if there’s something preventative we can do when we’re younger or finding a less invasive way to diagnose it,” she said. 

David Vorp is excited to get to work. HER collaborators have five different seed projects in various stages and are searching for starter funding from government, foundations and others, while looking forward to expanding this multidisciplinary group toward one common goal. 

“Bioengineers are very good at identifying a problem and uncovering the knowledge or therapies that would be associated with it, but the Hub for Endometriosis Research is not just me, and not just bioengineering.” David Vorp said. “Dr. Donnellan and Dr. John Harris provide critical links to patients, Dr. Peters provides a fundamental understanding of the disease process, Drs. Bryan Brown and Ioannis Zervantonakis provide additional bioengineered models and techniques, and collaborating pathologists, biostatisticians, cancer experts and more will complement our scientific approaches — the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts in this case.”

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS) are turning toward computational science, artificial intelligence (AI), and data-enabled engineering to meet the challenge by founding their own computational group. 

Computational science, AI, and data-enabled engineering combine multiple areas of research like quantum physics, applied mathematics, and high-performance computing to allow engineers to perform experiments in places where they’re not possible. 

“Much of design optimization is a computational problem,” said Hessam Babaee, MEMS associate professor and an expert in applied math. “You don’t go and try building an airfoil using different geometries and testing it in a wind tunnel. That’s obviously extremely expensive, but you can now do that in the computer.” 

This area of recent growth in the department has become one of its core pillars of research, expanding now into quantum computing. Because of the work of its leading faculty and graduate students, it’s established top research competencies for computational science and simulation in the country.

“What’s happening inside our department is very exciting,” said Department Chair Brian Gleeson. “Computational science and simulation is the future of engineering and we’re at the forefront of it.“

Bridging Computer Science and Engineering

Computational science flourishes when different strengths all take part in the process. 

The MEMS professors behind the group, including Babaee, each bring a unique speciality: 

• Distinguished Professor and James T. MacLeod Chair Peyman Givi: expertise in Computational Transport Phenomena
• Assistant Professor Juan José Mendoza Arenas: expertise in Quantum Physics
• Associate Professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow İnanç Şenocak: expertise in High Performance Computing

These different elements of scientific computing help the process flow more efficiently while opening opportunities for further research. Because of their expertise, these professors were able to expand their computational group outside the lab, offering new classes within the department to introduce students to these concepts and applications. 

“These courses are an extension of the engineering to these areas of computational science and computational methods,” Senocak explained.

Mendoza Arenas added that it’s important for students to see how the calculation is being done as well as the underlying physics of the result. 

Success in Simulation

Graduate students involved in the group have seen tremendous success upon completion of their PhD program. 

“The power of our group can easily be measured by the fact that all of our students that graduated – they are bombarded with offers,” Givi said. 

Michael Donello, a research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, was part of the computational group while he was in the PhD program in Pitt’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He credits his work within the group for his current position. 

“I was always interested in programming, even as an undergraduate student at Pitt,” Donello said. “It gives you the opportunity to solve complex engineering problems that require a multidisciplinary approach.”

When part of the group, Donello worked mostly in reduced order modeling for computational fluid dynamics. His final project ultimately ended up being funded by NASA, as well as being the center of his program and thesis. 

However, for the group, job offers aren’t the only end goal. 

“Our research, especially as it continues to grow and evolve, will help others,” Mendoza Arenas said. “And I believe that principal will encourage others to join in our goal.” 

Marc W. Tobias, J.D. earns his living designing security systems – and then breaking into them.

At the University of Pittsburgh, he has also taught students at the Swanson School of Engineering how to circumvent poor lock design – to help them learn how to build a better lock.

And now he’s written his latest book on physical security – and what he calls insecurity engineering in lock and systems design.

“Tobias on Locks and Insecurity Engineering,” published this month by Wiley, is his grand compendium on the history of lock engineering and the art of discovering and exploiting security vulnerabilities.

“From childhood, I was fascinated with taking things apart and figuring out how they worked – much to the chagrin of my parents,” Tobias says. “Eventually, my focus trained on locks and physical security systems – not how to make them, but how to break them and learn how something designed to keep things safe could so easily be defeated and therefore make them better.”

In his eighth book, Tobias writes about how locks have evolved over thousands of years. From pins and large keys to small tumblers and computer codes, lock systems have always faced one challenge – the human desire to compromise them. And as lock technology and engineering have become more advanced and complex, Tobias says this is why they have become easier to exploit.

“Engineers are brilliant individuals who create and build complex things that advance humanity. But there is also an artistic component required to anticipate how a complex thing can be broken,” he explains. “That’s why we are never captivated by the person who designs a lock, but rather by the eleven-year-old who can defeat a complex firewall in less than a minute with just their ingenuity and understanding of how to find that one failure point.”

This shortcoming in lock design, or “insecurity engineering,” as Tobias calls it, isn’t because of the companies that spend millions designing lock systems. Rather, he feels it is more of a focus on complex engineering in design and not thinking about how a professional might defeat it.

Ethical understanding of a criminal act

When he first established the Security Engineering Laboratory at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering with Visiting Assistant Professor Eric Winter, Tobias remembers the hesitancy of some students to try to defeat a lock or security mechanism.

“I would encounter students who, when I explained what an assignment would be, thought it was “unethical” to try to break into something designed for security,” Tobias says. “And that’s when I thought what we’re dealing with is “insecurity engineering” – an unrealistic fear to find fault in a design. That’s not necessarily antithetical to engineering -

“Yet that’s what I and others do to help companies design better physical security systems because I’ll tell you one thing – the safecracker or criminal doesn’t care if trying to find a vulnerability is unethical.”

A treatise on securing physical systems for future

Across 27 chapters, Tobias imparts more than 50 years of experience to explore the different types of physical security systems across history and both the high- and low-tech means to thwart them. He reviews his own basic engineering rules not to describe how these systems work, but rather how to minimize or eliminate vulnerabilities.

He also goes into detail about the legal side of physical security – how flaws in design, both human and mechanical engineering, exponentially increase a company’s liability. Here, Tobias’ education and experience in law and law enforcement shines through, especially his decades of consulting – publicly and confidentially – with the world’s top security companies.

His results are also reflected in 31 patents and numerous appearances as an expert witness in criminal cases. The 700-page book ends with a compendium of his “Design Rules, Axioms, and Guidelines” for security engineering and an epilogue that, despite advances in technology, mechanical locks will always be needed.

“No matter how complex a security system is, someone with imagination will be able to defeat it. That’s why I believe our engineering schools and STEM programs need to go beyond textbook learning and integrate programming that stimulates curiosity and imagination in the curriculum,” Tobias notes. “That’s why each semester, as part of our Security Engineering Lab course at Pitt, we sponsor projects for the School’s Design Expo. This is critical for workforce development and helping security companies reduce product vulnerability as much as possible.”

Tobias said that the book is written for design engineers: risk managers, lawyers, law enforcement agencies, crime labs, and engineering students. “In today’s environment, engineering students must be conversant with liability and intellectual property law and how it can apply to the systems they design.”

###

The program presented to Jennings was an early rendition of the now-called STRIVE (Success, Transition, Representation, Innovation, Vision, and Education) Program. It encouraged him to enroll in the Swanson School of Engineering’s PhD program in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“I was sold on the principles of the program,” Jennings, who is now a deployment robotics engineer at Covariant, said. “I also already had ties with Pitt faculty members as an undergraduate student. I knew I would have support if I chose to stay.” 

And he did, becoming one of the most successful STRIVE graduates.

The STRIVE Program was designed by Sylvanus Wosu, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Materials Science and Associate Dean for Diversity Affairs, and his team to improve the transitions of underrepresented minorities (URM). The program recruits US citizens into doctoral engineering programs at Pitt and utilizes evidence-based strategies to foster an inclusive academic climate and ensure success. 

Since establishing the program through a $1.58 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and a $731,000 matching support from Dean Emeritus Gerald Holder in 2016, Wosu and his team have seen an exceptional amount of growth for the program itself and its graduates. 

“When it comes to graduate education, we want to foster a culture of excellence,” Wosu said. “To do that, we had to establish an entirely new culture at the Swanson School that embraced students of different backgrounds to make excellence inclusive.” 

The Swanson School Had a Problem. So It Strived For a Solution. 

Wosu noticed three distinct problems when he took over his role as the associate dean for diversity affairs. 

1. Faculty felt the underrepresented students weren’t adequately prepared for graduate-level education 
2. Underrepresented students felt they didn’t belong in these programs 
3. There wasn’t leadership to represent underrepresented students 

“With the STRIVE Program, we wanted to reverse these trends,” Wosu said. “The goal was to change the climate of Pitt Engineering, not to change the students.” 

The STRIVE Program adopts evidence-based strategies such as structured mentoring to promote the transition of underrepresented students to doctoral and postdoctoral programs. Most of these strategies are backed by research and recommendations from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). To ensure the STRIVE Program is meeting the needs for each student, Wosu personally meets with every student individually each month for 45 minutes. 

“Meeting with students one-on-one not only allows me to monitor their progress individually, professionally, and personally, but to also watch them grow and adapt to Pitt over the months we meet together,” Wosu said. 

The program is working. As of 2024, retention rates for underrepresented students in the Swanson School’s graduate program have continued to grow and sits at above 89 percent. Over 70 students are scholars and fellows in the program.

Daniel Angarita, a graduate student researcher in Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering, came to the United States from Colombia almost over a decade ago to continue his career and was met with culture shock, isolation, and homesickness. Despite being well-acclimated to the United States prior to joining Pitt, he still joined the STRIVE Program once he began his program to help  

“Having others who can relate to your experience is crucial when you’re in an unfamiliar place,” Angarita said. “You don’t only come together on a personal level, but there’s a chance of leveraging each other’s scientific abilities in research later down the line.”

Striving for Student Success 

The culture change at the Swanson School, as Wosu hoped for, is starting to happen. 

More faculty members recognize the success of the program. Wosu said that some have actively sought out students enrolled in the program to join their labs as well as connect students to the program to ensure their success as a graduate student. 

Steven Abramowitch, professor of bioengineering and associate chair of culture and community, was the co-principal investigator on the original NSF grant to jumpstart the program. He said that graduate programs are a “particularly challenging” time for researchers early in their careers. 

“Graduate students need a strong social network with resources to succeed,” Abramowitch said. “A lot of graduate students, particularly those who are underrepresented, don't have that. The STRIVE Program sets out to shrink that gap.” 

One of his own students, Temitope Obisesan, was someone who’d gain from joining the STRIVE Program after Abramowitch noticed her being reserved in lab settings with her peers. 

“If I didn’t join the program, the only connections I would have made at Pitt would’ve been in my lab,” Obisesan said. “When I joined STRIVE, I started to feel less alone as I met others from similar backgrounds. It not only made me more confident, but pushed me in the right direction academically.” 

The STRIVE Program hosts a large networking retreat each year to provide a more informal setting for faculty and students to interact. Between discussions of scientific research and academics, there’s a universal feeling of connection and understanding between those that attend. 

“Based on my experience interacting with people from other backgrounds, that’s going to make you overcome any situation and problem solve – together,” Angarita said. 

NuturePA, a nonprofit organization which serves southwestern PA, centers its mission on connecting new mothers with trained mentors who offer support and guidance – all through text messaging.

“Our mentors provide valuable parenting information and activities for moms and babies, answer questions as they come up, offer guidance and advice, and provide a much needed shoulder to lean on during the critical first three years of a child's life,” explained Kate Brennan, NuturePA’s director of operations. “Nurture mentors build relationships with moms so that when needs arise, they are able to offer responsive support and, when necessary, provide referrals to our many community partners for additional services.”

With the goal of identifying participants’ potential level of desired support and matching them with appropriately trained mentors, the NurturePA team partnered with students at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering to determine a new, noninvasive tool to ensure that the program allocates resources effectively. 

Engineering Real Solutions for Real People 

When Gloria Givler, Tom Chimes, Nicole Lipa, and Andrew Polar signed up for the senior design class as part of their graduation requirement, they didn’t expect to work on a project that had such a real-world application. 

The senior design class is part of the SAINT Program through Pitt’s Department of Industrial Engineering. SAINT, or Sponsor an Industrial Engineering Team, is a vehicle through which senior industrial engineering student teams experience hands-on learning while working to find solutions to the real-life engineering and business problems of their sponsor organizations. 

“When I first learned about the partnership opportunity with NurturePA, I really wanted to be on this project,” said Givler. “Doing something important for society has always been important to me – particularly as an engineer.”

The team tested a number of classification algorithms based on data representing different demographic parameters. 

Each algorithm’s performance was evaluated across accuracy, recall (out of only high-need mothers, how many are correctly classified), and a custom “NPA Metric,” which combines the previous two while weighing recall more heavily. A logistic regression model performed the best and was incorporated into code scripts for prediction. 

When a new mother is enrolled in the program, their information can be sent to the model, and the predicted needs risk level is output to the NurturePA website. An updating script was also created. If more data is collected in the future, it can change the model based on that new data, aiming to improve performance. Additionally, a dashboard was constructed to provide visual insights into the model. It includes an interactive feature where users can select values for each parameter and the associated needs risk level prediction and probability of accuracy are displayed. 

As a result of the project, NurturePA can reach more mothers outside Allegheny County and ensure they receive the appropriate level of care and support.

Getting to the final product wasn’t without its challenges, though. The team cited their co-op program experiences in helping guide them through, but the majority of them weren’t familiar with Python, the programming language used for the machine learning model. 

“It was a great learning experience,” said Polar, one of the team members. “We really all got to pick up new skills that we wouldn’t have otherwise.” 

The other challenge was dealing with real data since it’s not easily accessible. 

“When you work with real-world data that affects real people, there are going to be bumps in the road,” Polar explained. “It’s very different from what we were used to in classroom settings where everything is mostly provided.” 

Even with the intensity of the subject material and work, the team had only minor conflicts along the way and ultimately utilized each other’s unique skill sets in designing the model. During their final presentation by NurturePA, the nonprofit organization was not only impressed with the tool the team designed, but their level of professionalism they demonstrated for such a young team. 

“This was our first experience working with a group of students and our team was blown away by what they were able to accomplish,” said Erica Cochran, director of development at NurturePA. 

Cochran continued that the nonprofit will be using the tool that Pitt students developed and that it has opened doors for the organization to extend their reach to more mothers in need – a goal that both the students and NurturePA aimed to achieve from the beginning. 

“I felt motivated from the very beginning knowing that we would help these individuals,” said team member Tom Chimes. “Now that I’ve graduated from Pitt, it’s rewarding to know that something I took part in developing is being used.” 

One novel use is poring through data to study and impact positive social change. Amin Rahimian, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, is exploring this potential in his new class, “Data for Social Good.” Their findings could benefit city and county agencies in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.

“The class not only teaches students about algorithms, but how to apply them to real-world datasets while becoming more conscious of their societal consequences,” Rahimian said. 

The class includes three modules: Essence of Data, AI in the Fabrics of Society, and Algorithms in the Wild. Every class session is paired with an outside speaker that’s influential in the region – whether that’d be through policy or data. 

As students learn about these topics in class, they work on a real-life data project that applies these principles outside of class. Early in the semester, they were introduced to the  Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center (WPRDC), a leading open data portal based at Pitt and in partnership with Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh serving Western Pennsylvania, to begin crafting an algorithm that leveraged data provided by the WPRDC.

“These algorithms that students ultimately create are supposed to be human-centered,” Rahimian explained. “That’s why using data from the WPRDC is so important for the function of this class; it’s data that affects daily lives.” 

David Walker, a developer at the WPRDC, was the bridge between the WPRDC and the students. 

When he first met with the class, he described the eight principles of open government data: complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine-processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, and license-free. Healso demonstrated the capabilities of the WPRDC’s data portal and the many interactive data visualizations tools that the WPRDC has developed to help people use the region’s civic data.

“The WPRDC’s role is to supply the data, but we like seeing the data used by other entities, which is why collaborating with Pitt faculty is such an important part of what we do,” Walker said. “When this type of data is applied, it can create real change for real people. We hope more groups leverage our data in this way in the future.” 

Students ultimately chose projects that either interested them or personally affected them as private citizens of Pittsburgh. To successfully complete their projects, they were taught how predictive models can be trained on real data and how inferences from the data can inform realistic scenarios, like how to predict the risk of a disease, the click probability of an online ad, probability of a loan repayment, or wine quality. Students were given practice problems to practice these methods before applying them to their larger project. 

“We covered canonical problem formulations in machine learning and common methods to address those using parametric and non-parametric models,” Rahimian explained. 

The fall 2023 projects were: 

Identifying Pittsburgh Neighborhoods’ Risk for Gentrification 

 By: Jessica Kneller, Maggie Kuehn, and Lauren Lenherr 

 Gentrification is considered as drastic changes to neighborhoods which increase market value and attraction while decreasing affordability and livability for current residents. Using indicators found through research, pre-existing models, and data from both 2012 and 2020, the students identified Allegheny County neighborhoods at risk for gentrification. The indicators included were age, educational attainment level, parcels to sales ratio, vacant addresses, housing choice vouchers, median housing prices. Using these indicators, the students created a random forest regressor to predict market values for neighborhoods at risk for gentrification within the next five years. 

The results:

East End neighborhoods that the group anticipated (Lawrenceville, East Liberty, and Bloomfield) experiencing gentrification were confirmed by their results. Additionally, the group found a few other neighborhoods scattered on the city’s West End, such as Brighton Heights and Windgap. Their findings will be able to help predict future neighborhoods experiencing this phenomenon. 

 Understanding Synthetic Data in the Context of Social Services 

 By: Andrew Fox, Jack Kaye, and Declan Kelly 

 This project involved comparing real aggregate count data to synthetic data (fake data generated to model real data without the privacy issues) for datasets about social services that could prevent tragedy in Allegheny County, particularly overdoses, suicides and homicides. The goal was to understand more about how resources should be allocated to areas within the county and determine what information can be obtained from the synthetic data that may be difficult to interpret from the less granular real data. In the process, the generation of synthetic data was analyzed as well as its privacy and utility for providing insights to social issues. 

The results: 

 The group concluded that synthetic data was a great method for protecting privacy and machine learning methods could be used in many cases to predict what services are needed for certain people. 

Is the City of Pittsburgh truly a Bike Friendly City? 

By: Anthony Robol, Jorge Cervantes Rodriguez, and Ruochong Zhu 

In recent years bike lanes have been built throughout the City of Pittsburgh and POGOH has installed over 50 bike rental stations throughout the city, allowing non-bike owners to be able to use said bike lanes. These two developments are part of the goal of increasing bike friendliness of the city, as well as introducing an alternative transportation option for commuters. However, how many of the bike lanes are truly bike friendly when venturing outside of the immediate area around Pitt’s Oakland campus? 

The results: 

The city of Pittsburgh has made great strides towards bike friendliness in recent years. However, there is significant heterogeneity in bike usage across different neighborhoods. Factors such as geography, slope and proximity to stations are important. Students in the project also found that people associated with Pitt are a huge fraction of all POGOH rides. 

Created through the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) program, SHREC is both a national research center and consortium dedicated to fostering university, agency, and industry R&D collaborations and workforce development. Pitt’s partner institutions include Brigham Young University, University of Florida, and Virginia Tech, under the leadership of Alan George, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair and Professor and Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. 

“Pittsburgh is gaining notice nationally for its expertise in space research, technology, and education, from Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University to the Keystone Space Collaborative among others, and SHREC is proud to be a part of that ecosystem,” George explained. “Pittsburgh has a long history of public-private partnerships creating transformation, and SHREC and its members continue to benefit from that ethos.”

Above from left: Evan Gretok, Alan George, and Seth Roffe in front of the CASPR ground station at Schenley Place on Pitt's Oakland campus.

George said that this past year established a stronger foundation for an even more successful 2024. Some of these initiatives include: 

• The Configurable and Autonomous Sensor Processing Research (CASPR) system, which was installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in January 2022, is designed to enable effective onboard processing for next-generation sensors and applications. A Department of Defense payload on the Space Test Program - Houston 7 (STP-H7) pallet, CASPR was developed, designed, and built by the students and faculty at SHREC. Its two-year journey on the ISS is coming to a close, and the team is wrapping up final experiments before the expected mission conclusion in early 2024. 
• NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas will host SHREC’s annual workshop on January 17-18, 2024, with attendees expected from all 30+ organizations in SHREC. 

With the focus of the January workshop in part to select the Center’s new projects for 2024, George says that SHREC is in a strong position entering its sixth year in Pittsburgh.  

“Today we are leveraging $2-3 million per year in research between our four universities, with major R&D projects from space and related systems to high-performance computing, AI, and more,” George explained. “Thanks to our SHREC members, we are able to recruit incredible graduate students that learn to design and build these space experiments that have performed so well on the space station. What’s more, we remotely operate research experiments from our ground station on Pitt’s campus, so that really builds pride amongst our students.” 

George said that pride extends to the member organizations as well, because of the space research and tech they are advancing, while producing the next generation of space engineers. 

“So many children have dreams of being an astronaut – like myself and many of our students – but of course it’s an elite program, and the vast majority of space missions are unmanned. So, we get to do the next best thing – imagine, design, and build systems that operate in space under our control. For us, it’s a tremendous accomplishment that drives our research.” 
 

When he came to Pitt’s Swanson School, those feelings were just compounded. He knew he wasn’t the typical engineer, but didn’t have the exact words to describe what he was feeling – yet. Despite being a 4.0 student, Curtis was considering leaving the Swanson School because of the emotional toll his isolation was taking. 

“I’m a good engineer; I know that,” Curtis said. “But, that wasn’t enough of an incentive for me to stay here.”

Then, just one day changed the trajectory of his entire life. 

It was October 11, 2022, or National Coming Out Day, and Curis noticed a booth in the lobby of Benedum Hall for handing out bracelets in support of LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff. Curtis immediately felt empowered and validated when he put his on; however, his excitement slowly faded throughout the day when he noticed none of his peers and professors with one. 

Finally, he noticed one professor wearing a bracelet. 

“I was very moved when I saw the bracelet,” Curtis said. “That professor was potentially putting a target on their back, but was unapologetic and completely unafraid.” 

Curtis decided he was no longer going to hide who he was. The weekend after National Coming Out Day, he cut his hair and began identifying as his true self: a transgender man.

Noticing Curtis’ new confidence, the same professor wearing the bracelet introduced Curtis to Pitt’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA) Committee, a group of students, faculty, and staff committed to fostering a culture that enables all to grow to their full potential.  

Curtis, who recognized the need for more representation in the department, joined on the spot. 

“I have a complicated relationship with being called a trailblazer,” Curtis said. “The term is romanticized, but I knew how much of an impact that one day in October made on my life, so I wanted to do something like that for someone else.” 

What’s the big IDEA? 

The IDEA Committee (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) was officially formed in 2021 under the direction of Radisav Vidic, the Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor and department chair of civil and environmental engineering. Melissa Bilec, the department's George M. and Eva M. Bevier Professor and co-director of the  Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation at Pitt, is IDEA’s inaugural co-chair, but she credits its members as the true pioneers of the committee’s growth.

“As civil and environmental engineers, we’re in service to our community,” Bilec said. “Co-creating the IDEA Committee was a way for us to bring together voices to discuss and hopefully positively impact the CEE community.”

The full committee meets once a month while the three subcommittees have additional meetings as needed. The three subcommittees work to address problems unique not only to the Swanson School, but the community of engineering education at large. The Learning Subcommittee is dedicated to expanding knowledge and resources rooted in diversity, equity and inclusion, both in general and relation to being a civil and environmental engineering student. The Champion Subcommittee manages the Undergraduate Champions – students who determine solutions through the IDEA Committee for student-related issues – and is working towards developing graduate student champions. The Social Committee organizes events for the CEE community to come and decompress. 

Bilec said she drew much of her inspiration from Pitt’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science’s Student Advisory Board (SAB), which was formed after the death of George Floyd sparked a need for social change in 2020.

Dr. Vidic said he saw the need for something like the committee as he recognized that students weren’t likely to approach him personally with challenges they may face. 

“Something like the IDEA Committee creates a safe environment for us not only to continue to improve our department but not lose the talent we see in so many of our young engineers,” Vidic said. 

Though still a very grassroots project, the committee has been really finding its stride this past year. Yvette Moore, director of Pitt EXCEL at the Swanson School, has been in the front row seat of its growth as someone that’s been part of it since the beginning. 

“We’re working together to understand what diversity and inclusion looks like in civil and environmental engineering,” Moore said. “And it’s not just my voice. It’s all of our voices.”

Putting the IDEA to Good IUSE

The IDEA Committee works in tandem with a grant Bilec received in 2020 from the National Science Foundation to create inclusive classrooms, which are designed to improve the learning and academic performance for underrepresented students. As part of the grant, Jessica Vaden, a PhD candidate in the department, built a website, called The IUSE-PIPE Project, to help professors in implementing these processes. The project hosts a number of resources that are supported by peer-reviewed research that guide professors before, during, and after the semester. Something as important as the syllabus can be overlooked when considering inclusivity, Vaden said. 

“In doing this research, we realized that a lot of these resources needed a home,” Vaden said. “Going forward, we also believe that these are not the final answer to creating inclusive classrooms, so part of the IDEA Committee is ensuring that we still use this website as a guide, but continue to keep it relevant as professors across the country use it.” 

April Dukes, Faculty and Future Faculty Program Director at the Engineering Education Research Center, was asked to serve on the IDEA Committee to help facilitate inclusive education practices after working on the The IUSE-PIPE Project with Bilec. She said something like the IDEA Committee and the project grants professors skills they likely didn’t receive during their graduate career. 

“Many instructors never have any training on best practices in teaching or management as a part of their graduate studies,” Dukes said. Gaining these skills after becoming a faculty member requires time, access, and unlearning, making it very challenging. Having a committee that explores ways for their department to be more inclusive and one that shares that information back to the department can be crucial for the growth of individuals and communities. It sends the message that the department is striving to create a more inclusive environment for everyone, especially since staff, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty all contribute to the committee.

Working under the committee, Curtis came to realize how broad inclusivity issues can be – and how many layers they can have. Students were coming to the committee with issues receiving disability accommodations for their classes. Curtis and members of his subcommittee began investigating further and found that professors were having difficulties navigating Pitt’s Disability Resources and Services website. The committee then hosted a training for professors to begin implementing these accommodations into their classrooms. 

“I was surprised when I joined this committee by how much of our work has a tangible outcome,” Curtis said. “Doing something like the faculty training motivated me just to work harder in solving these issues – because that change needs to happen.”

Without access to common resources for medical product design, engineers must think outside the box to create effective solutions for health problems around the world, which is why University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Kevin Bell and University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health Behavioral and Community Health Sciences Assistant Professor Cynthia Salter teamed up to teach *BIOENG 2173: Medical Design for Low Resource Environments.

Offered to both bioengineering and public health graduate students, this project-based course combines engineering concepts like human-centered design and frugal innovation with social, economic, and cultural public health perspectives to pair student groups with global partners who’ve already identified the need for these medical devices or health interventions.

Incorporating public health into this course was a necessity not only for understanding communities' cultural and economic differences when it comes to medicine, but also for instilling a diverse set of problem-solving skills into the students. 

“When you're on a problem-solving team, you might be the only engineer along with an economist, a politician, a global health expert and two clinicians,” Salter said. “It can be really challenging, and people really do work with some different fundamental problem-solving paradigms, so learning to work with the people who have a different background than you is a hugely critical skill. 

This kind of multidisciplinary problem solving is especially important for working with partners with minimal resources. Both the students and co-instructors must tackle obstacles firsthand to make things work across time zones, internet connection, and language barriers. 

“There's a lot of learning about how long everything takes, how hard it can be to communicate, or even figuring out if we’re all talking about the same problem,” Salter said. “I can tell my students, ‘Oh, you have to be flexible and ready to adapt,’ but if their partner can’t meet because they have no internet, how can we productively use our time when we can't get through to them?”

Finding the Fruit of Frugal Innovation 

This course is part of the Professional Master of Science in Medical Product Engineering program (MS-MPE) offered by Pitt’s Department of Bioengineering, which teaches students to develop new products for the clinical marketplace. Bell’s initial idea for this course stemmed from his personal passion for innovation in low-resource areas and also because of its different approach to engineering than other MS-MPE courses.

“Most of the courses are taught from a market driven perspective, and as a result, there's just not a lot of attention to problems that don't have a huge market,” Bell said. “But there is still opportunity for sustainable business models by incorporating frugal innovation.” 

Frugal innovation refers to low-cost products or services born out of necessity and lack of resources, built with locally sourced or easily available materials. Bell and Salter’s students have worked on projects in Jordan, Guatemala, Kenya, and Mexico, and also look to partner with other nations and low-resource areas in the United States in the future. 

One project a group of students worked on was a “mountain access chair,” built for individuals in Guatemala with physical disabilities. Because of mountainous terrain, parents struggle transporting their children to doctor’s appointments. The students worked to connect PVC pipes together to create a lightweight, low-cost chair to help parents or caretakers carry these individuals across the terrain to their appointments. 

Katrina Morgan, a student who worked on the chair, is currently a general surgery resident and took this course for a global health certificate. As an MD, this course has not only informed her on how to engage more creatively in finding solutions for her patients but also provided a crucial multidisciplinary background for patient care.

“There's a lot of medical voluntourism going on, and I don’t want to be one of those ignorant people that comes in and does a week of operating but ends up leaving the community in a worse-off position than when they started,” Morgan said. “It's really important to have as much background education and awareness as possible on how to approach global surgery or global health in the communities that you're working in.”

Looking ahead, Bell and Salter hope to improve the efficacy of these projects by incorporating independent studies or study-abroad programs. This semester,  one engineering student is doing an independent study with Bell  to further the Mountain Access Chair design with the goal of ultimately  implementing the device in Guatemala. 

BIOENG 2173 is a recent addition to the MS-MPE curriculum- this spring will be the third year the course is offered. Bell noted many of the ethical considerations students addressed about working on a project for just a few months. 

“The challenge in such a short class is that it's really not easy to deliver as much as you want to, so the students felt that they weren’t returning enough value to their partners.” Bell said. “Interestingly, when we met with all of the partners at the end, they were overjoyed with how much work was done, but we still struggle with the fact that we can’t solve everything.” 

Even with these challenges, Salter and Bell are enthusiastic about the future of the course and are proud to work with their students to foster medical product innovation sustainably and equitably. 

“We are deeply committed to the idea of authentic, not exploitive, collaboration, and that’s something we’ve been intentional about modeling for our students,” Salter said. “ I think this course has been wonderfully synergistic.”

*PUBHLT 2173:  Transforming Global Health Education into Action is offered concurrently for Public Health Students. This course is a part of the Global Health Certificate program in the School of Public Health.

Not many summer camps have chicken leg dissections on the program schedule – but not many summer camps are like the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering’s CampBioE. 

CampBioE introduces campers who mostly come from underrepresented communities, referred to as CampBioE “scholars,” to STEM concepts in a unique way that will hopefully engage them well after the weeklong camp ends. It explores bioengineering and regenerative medicine through new technologies, experimental strategies and ethical considerations. 

The camp enrolls elementary, middle, and high school students, but intentionally started the 2023 summer with Jumpstart CampBioE, an elementary-level program. Including students at this age is a novel initiative of Assistant Professor Katrina Knight, who aims to intrigue children with STEM at a young age. 

“When I became faculty I wanted to extend the camp – traditionally it was [for] high school students, some middle schoolers, but I wanted to extend it to elementary school, so I created Jumpstart CampBioE,” Knight said. “The vision is to get them interested early in STEM with the hope that they will go on to college or into some STEM-based career.”

The program has been offered since 2007. This summer, it was held free of cost at Pitt’s Hill District Community Engagement Center (CEC). Marlo Hall, Outreach Coordinator for the CEC, coordinated the CEC’s summer camp programming and emphasized the center’s focus on long-term engagement. 

“Our programming is across a lifespan – youth is an entry point, and as they get through to high school we have programs that are more directly involved with campus,” Hall said. “We really want to provide a way for students to excel, and I believe CampBioE is a great asset in providing students an opportunity to explore their interests and potentially take them further.” 

CampBioE is led by both Knight and founding director Steven Abramowitch, Associate Chair for Culture and Community and W.K. Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering. Abramowitch, who has run the camp for 13 years, is always excited to see how passionate the scholars are about STEM-based skills and careers. 

“It's inspiring to see young kids at this age, especially in middle school, talking about what their career plans are,” Abramowitch said. “We have one camper who wants to be a surgeon, another who wants to code, and you kind of see their future taking shape which is really inspiring to see.” 

Along with faculty, CampBioE also employs undergraduate bioengineering students at the camp- including third-year student Sofia Bear. Bear, who attended the camp when she was in middle school and returned this year as a student intern, worked on lesson plans, laid out programming, and assisted the professors in running activities.

With the elementary students, CampBioE faculty and staff built structures using spaghetti noodles and marshmallows, bridges out of popsicle sticks, solar ovens using aluminum foil, played coding games, and swabbed bathroom surfaces to watch bacteria grow.  

“For the younger kids it’s more general science related topics, and I try to make each day a theme,” Knight said. “Because they're young, you can only go so deep into certain topics, so we do mini activities to hold their attention throughout the day and keep them entertained.”  

With the middle schoolers, Abramowitch led a variety of different activities including introductions to AI software and ethics and performing the aforementioned chicken knee dissection to demonstrate ACL failure. Pairing that with a bone-building activity, Abramowitch demonstrated how many external factors can impact our bodies’ functionality. 

“We discussed the strength of bones along with the dissection to see how their own leg is essentially designed, " Abramowitch said. “We did performance-related activities with balance and jumping so the scholars can see how all of these things need to work together in order to function.”

Bear was also instrumental in this programming, and attributes her own interest in Bioengineering to her experience as a former Camp BioE scholar. 

“Camp BioE inspires campers to consider the science behind things in their everyday life, and by exposing them to many different scientific principles, the campers can find what interests them in the world of STEM,” Bear said.  “My Camp BioE experience inspired me to pursue bioengineering, and I hope it can continue to inspire students for years to come.”

CampBioE is More Than Just STEM Education

While the camp does focus on a STEM -based curriculum, it's so much more than just teaching a camper about chicken knees. For Knight, one of the most important aspects of CampBioE is emphasizing and encouraging diversity in the bioengineering field. 

“It's good for the students, especially underrepresented students, to see someone who looks like them being an engineer,” Knight said. Hall also emphasized the importance of positive role models, expressing the significance of the Pitt bioengineering students who work as CampBioE counselors. 

“I think it's great for students, no matter what age they are, to engage with college students, because when you feel so far removed from something, in an age difference way, it's really hard to conceptualize yourself in their place,” Hall said. “Seeing someone everyday, hearing about their experience and seeing them do things that you want to do one day can be really inspirational.” 

Keeping underrepresented minority students on track to college is especially important with the recent Supreme Court reversal of affirmative action, according to Abramowitch. 

“With affirmative action being essentially erased, it's really going to come down to engaging these students early and changing the culture in the K-12 system so that we can have more students matriculate from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those who don’t have the same resources as kids from affluent areas,” Abramowitch said.

The Department of Bioengineering plans to launch CampBioE 2.0 next summer for elementary, middle, and high school students, with Knight taking the lead as director. Looking toward next year, the camp’s organizers hope to expand the program with more funding, implement after-school programs, and work on securing transportation options to and from the camp each day. For Abramowitch, he hopes CampBioE can provide opportunities to explore STEM for those who otherwise wouldn’t have access. 

“It goes beyond race; programs like CampBioE are for people who don't have opportunities,” Abramowitch said. “We're seeing families with either a lot of wealth or very little wealth, and that's being felt across the board. This is all about providing opportunities for those who don't have them.”

The department would like to thank CampBioE’s generous donors and partners: The Grable Foundation, The Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Research, Hill District Community Engagement Center, and all who have contributed to CampBioE’s continual success.

The Women’s+ Plus Networking Conference is returning for its fourth year on Oct. 21 in Benedum Hall, home of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, to help women reach their full career potential. 

“The Women’s+ Networking Conference is a chance to not only network and learn from other strong women, but to empower the next generation of women to become great leaders,” said Dana Romano, director of career and industry engagement at Pitt’s Swanson School. “It is our responsibility as women, mothers, sisters, and friends to pass our knowledge forward and give back.”

This year’s event will feature a keynote speech from Stephanie Slocum, P.E., the author of “She Engineers: Unlocking Your Potential with Strategic Self-Advocacy” and founder and CEO of Engineers Rising LLC. In her interactive keynote, attendees will learn: 

• Why self-advocacy is the essential skill for women engineers who desire maximum impact and career happiness
• The biggest self-advocacy mistakes early-career women professionals make and what to do instead
• What self-advocacy behaviors look like in your first years in the workforce based on current trends in women leaders who have rapidly accelerated into leadership roles

Those in attendance will also receive a signed copy of Slocum’s book. 

Planning the Women’s+ Networking Conference is a collaborative effort between faculty, staff, and students at the Swanson School to ensure needs are met and voices are heard for a comprehensive event. 

“The Women’s+ Networking Conference is a time to uplift, educate, and fellowship,” said Yvette Moore, director of Pitt EXCEL at the Swanson School. “The participants are promoted regarding self-worth and learn strategies that will help them thrive both personally and professionally. No matter what stage you are in life, everyone needs touch points for growth. The Women’s+ Networking Conference is that touch point!”

Kristin Bindas, a student studying bioengineering at the Swanson School, attended the event last year and said the event was incredibly important for her growth as a person and professional. 

“This event gave me confidence in my abilities as a woman in a predominantly male-dominated field to advocate for myself and understand just how important I am,” she said. “I think all women should attend an event like this – even just to talk through frustrating moments in the workplace and to understand that there is always someone to turn to.” 

The event, open to all students, faculty and staff, will conclude with a networking brunch and opportunity to reflect on the day’s themes. 

Register here.

Takashi D-Y Kozai was the kind of kid who loved robots and dreamed of becoming an engineer. But a scientist? Not so much. “Biology class was just taxonomy, memorization, and labeling stuff,” says the associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering.

That changed in high school, when Kozai learned about adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase, the turbine that assembles the basic biological unit of energy that powers everything from bicep flexes to nerve impulses to the beating of your heart. WOW, he thought. Okay. Biology is the smallest and most energy efficient piece of engineering that exists in this world.

Kozai completed not one but two life sciences BAs—one in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and another in biochemistry—at University of Colorado, Boulder. There, he first dipped his toe into basic science research, in a neuroscience lab. One experiment in particular became another turning point. 

He was trying to grow neurons onto cell-culture electrodes—and it wasn’t going well, because of the way the materials were designed. Exasperated, he complained to his advisor: Why do they make these things so hard to use? His advisor’s response was, essentially: Because engineers don’t understand biology. 

That got Kozai’s gears spinning. He pivoted back to the engineering-curious kid in him, pursuing both an MA and PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan. 

Kozai came to Pitt as a bioengineering postdoc in 2011 and eventually would found his own lab, focusing his research on cellular mechanisms of the brain in the context of, among other things, brain-computer interface (BCI).

Test runs of BCI have made headlines in recent years, enabling people with paralysis to use robotic limbs controlled by their thoughts. Unfortunately, bringing BCI into reliable and sustainable everyday use has proven challenging; the body’s reaction to the electrodes implanted within the brain gradually degrades the devices’ performance over time. 

In Kozai’s most recent work, he’s showing that a non-neural cell called oligodendrocytes—which are under-researched in his subfield—could be instrumental to solving this puzzle. This spring, Kozai was awarded a $3 million R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to continue making power moves in this area.

While Kozai enjoys keeping one foot in each of his favorite disciplines, the tradeoff is he doesn’t exactly fit the mold for either. Biologists don’t really claim him as one of them, he says, “and to a hardcore engineering group, I'm not really considered an engineer.” 

As an Asian American, he’s no stranger to feeling like… well, a stranger. “If I go to Japan, they’ll say that I'm a foreigner. And if I'm in America, they'll say I’m not really white,” he says. He was also the lone economically disadvantaged student in the private school his mom struggled to put him through growing up. “I was taking classes with a bunch of rich kids, but not living that lifestyle.” A couple times, the lights went out at home. 

But the kid who grew up outside of the in-group is now the scholar confounding categories, and he has come to enjoy living between the lines. Freedom from group-think and all the hype over headlining science (“optogenetics, the brain-gut access, whatever the flavor of the year might be”), opened his eyes to new possibilities, he says—like a little-understood cell type with secrets to tell.

Kozai takes inspiration from a quote he once read in the New York Times, from Yoshinori Ohsumi, 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winner who discovered a cellular process known as autophagy: I am not very competitive, so I always look for a new subject to study, even if it is not so popular. If you start from some sort of basic, new observation, you will have plenty to work on.

“To me,” says Kozai, “it’s about: What are the problems that are being overlooked?”

In 2020, with funding from the National Science Foundation, Kozai founded eBioNIC.org, a virtual community promoting diversity in his field. He believes different perspectives—in academic discipline, ethnicity, and economic background—is a powerful igniter for discovery. That principle guides him in both his classroom and his lab.

“There are occasionally some students that come up to you, like, Why don't you just tell me what you're thinking? But I need to know the things that I'm not thinking, right? That's how we build a stronger collective of perspectives, problem-solving approaches, and solutions.”

Photography by Tom Altany/Pitt Photography

One thing however hasn’t changed until now. For the first time in Panther Racing history, the team is retiring its internal combustion engine and designing an electric motor onward. It’s been a bittersweet learning curve for Lucas Ramsey, a mechanical engineering and materials science student at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering and leader of Panther Racing, the student-run car racing club also known as Pitt FSAE. 

“I’ve been building almost the same car now for four years,” Ramsey said. “I know all the ins and outs of this specific car – like all the Panther Racing members before me. I’m going to miss the smell of fuel the morning of a race.” 

Though the last, this year’s car may be one of the club’s best – against all odds. This team is the youngest and most diverse in Panther Racing history. The club – typically dominated by male students in Pitt’s Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department – has seen skyrocketing numbers of women engineers and students studying electrical and computer engineering. 

It’s an important milestone that Ramsey has been yearning to reach since taking over, especially as they make the move toward an electric engine. 

“It really felt like we created a team of friends who pushed for the car to succeed,” Ramsey said. 

An email chain in the fast lane

Ramsey leveraged Panther Racing’s strong alumni network to help guide his young team on their first car. 

Excluding the engine, their electric car would still use the same assembly and design as former models. An FSAE car looks and performs wildly different from a car cruising down the street, and the engineers behind them must follow a significant set of rules for both compliance to the overarching organization and safety. Ramsey emphasized the need to perfect Panther Racing’s original design – especially considering industry trends centered on electric vehicles. The US Bureau for Labor Statistics found that the market for electric vehicles has been and is going to continue to grow.  

“Panther Racing isn’t just about racing,” Ramsey said. “We're also not one of the companies trying to pioneer new fuel types or sell a bunch of cars. We're just trying to set our team members up to succeed in the automotive industry or whatever they want to do after college using a fun project to build good habits while opening opportunities to practice technical and soft skills.” 

He said, from his experience, former teams could be reluctant to receive help. His team, made from mostly first- and second-year students, welcomed the guidance.

“Engineers can often get stuck in loops – arguing about different concepts or trying to make the best design instead of the best car,” Ramsey explained. “You can work on 3D modeling all day, but then you actually make the parts and they’re not so great. We were fortunate with a young group because we’ve been able to push them to the idea that you need to work with these parts to understand how the car actually works.” 

Panther Racing didn’t realize they were interacting with one of the Swanson School’s most interconnected and passionate groups of alumni. 

Jim Shaw, who earned his BS in mechanical engineering from Pitt in 2002, has always been a car enthusiast, so joining Panther Racing when he was a student was a no-brainer. 

Shaw is now managing director of Fastway Engineering, a company that creates engineering simulations. He said Panther Racing not only built his professional relationships as an entrepreneur, but the friendships he made while in and after the club have only grown since he graduated.  

Friendships in Panther Racing – like in all of engineering – can be quantified. In 2001, a core group of club members started an email chain discussing industry trends and family life and planning their eventual trip to 24 Hours of Le Mans, a historic sports car race in France. As of April 2023, the email chain has over 92,000 emails. 

“Panther Racing is an avenue to grow your network,” Shaw said. “I started my own business ten years ago, and I leveraged my connections made in Panther Racing to help it become what it is.” 

Shaw continued that all former members have incorporated what they learned in Panther Racing into their careers — from the automotive industry in Detroit to the Department of Defense. Emily Anthony – the first woman to captain Panther Racing, prominent email chain contributor, and 2016 graduate from the Swanson School – has continued to dedicate a portion of her life to Panther Racing. 

Anthony, who works as a systems engineer at FAAC Incorporated, founded and is lead event coordinator of the Pittsburgh Shootout, a one-day showcase of FSAE teams near Pittsburgh. She developed the race to provide more opportunities for students to practice for competitions in a low-key environment. 

“I saw a need for more racing opportunities in our area, so I decided to host one myself,” Anthony explained. “It’s something I would’ve wanted as a student and continuing to do FSAE in some way is personally important to me.” 

Both Shaw and Anthony are excited Panther Racing has hit the gas pedal on moving the club forward. Both credit Ramsey’s leadership – as he’s secured more sponsorships, support from Pitt’s Office of the Chancellor, and pushed for more visibility of the club at different campus events. 

Unlike other captains of the team before him, Ramsey has taken special interest in improving his team’s presentation and public speaking skills. In FSAE competition, a competitor has to answer questions about the car from the judge, which Ramsey said can be the most difficult part for younger students. To overcome these fears, he sends them to on-campus events to promote and explain the car as well as give presentations to students touring Benedum Hall. 

“Every few years, you get that one captain that takes the team to a new level,” Anthony said. “Lucas is that captain.” 

Off to the races 

It’s a cool, May morning with the smell of fuel permeating the air. 

Over 90 FSAE teams from across the country have gathered in Brooklyn, Michigan – a small town with fewer than 2,000 residents and about an hour and a half west of Detroit. Over the next four days, each team will compete to prove their car ranks supreme in design and usability. 

FSAE competitions aren’t traditional races. To even compete, the car has to complete a safety inspection after the teams’ arrival. It’s not until the second day that driving begins. Still yet, the car will go through another safety inspection, this time with a fuel, sound and tilt test. 

Raheel Farouk, a rising senior in electrical and computer engineering at the Swanson School, is one the team’s drivers and its performance and data acquisition engineer. Before coming to Pitt, Farouk worked in a garage and was a motocross driver in Sri Lanka, his home country. He said he’s more nervous crashing the car than driving it. 

“I have full faith in my team that I’m safe,” Farouk said. “I know the blood, sweat and tears that went into building it.” 

Farouk can’t even begin to describe the adrenaline rush he feels when puts his foot on the pedal. 

“You don’t realize how fast the car is,” Farouk said. “Words just really can’t describe it.” 

Then comes the justification test in front of the judges – the most intimidating portion for young engineers. 

“This part of the competition is why I emphasize the need for our team to work on their presentation skills,” Ramsey explained. "Our members' discussions during this event can leave a lasting impression on the judges, some of whom will ask our members to interview for internships or jobs at whatever company they work at based on their combination of technical knowledge and soft skills shown during the discussions."

There are different driving tests throughout the competition, including acceleration, skid pad and autocross. Panther Racing finished just outside the top 20, a feat the team was incredibly proud of. The final day has a 22 kilometer run called “Endurance.” It’s the hardest category, with only about 25% of teams finishing it. 

Panther Racing was unfortunately not one of those teams in Brooklyn; Ramsey, however, was still proud of what the team accomplished. 

“For a team so young, this is a major milestone for Panther Racing,” Ramsey said. "We all feel validated as engineers and excited for going electric next year since we saw the extremely high potential for this team."

Maybe something a little more research heavy, she thought. Definitely something to diversify my skill set. But what about my talents as a future engineer?

As her first year in engineering ended, she couldn’t find the perfect program or internship to scratch her inquisitive itch.

“I really had no real-world experience up until this point,” Hsia said. “How do you know what you want to do after leaving Pitt if you haven’t tried anything apart from your classes?”

Then, an email from Brett Say, Pitt’s Director of Honors Research Programs, landed in her inbox, proposing an interesting opportunity. It was an invitation for students to participate in a pilot interdisciplinary program, Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Experience in Electric Grid, or SHURE-Grid, supported by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). As a collaboration between Pitt’s Swanson School, David C. Frederick Honors College and Office of Research, SHURE-Grid provides students with experience solving real-world problems while engaging with one of the 17 national U.S. Department of Energy labs.

Hsia didn’t know anything about the electric grid, but she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try something so unique. So, she, along with seven other Pitt students from various disciplines, signed up.

Preventing a total blackout

The program’s first objective is to define the power grid and why it’s so critical to the country.

The energy grid represents the infrastructure to generate, transmit and distribute electricity from the utility to the consumer across the U.S. The grid makes modern human life possible, but it is getting older and buffeted by the effects of climate change. New-end technologies like EVs and smart devices need more energy; at the same time, the inexorable shift from fossil fuels to renewables requires new technologies to both meet demand and ensure national security.

SHURE-Grid faculty advisors Brandon Grainger and Paul Ohodnicki, who established the Energy GRID Institute at Pitt, are well-versed in the possible weaknesses of the electric grid.

“As the grid is being transformed with more intelligence through digital means, it is becoming more vulnerable to cyberattacks,” said Grainger. “If hackers are able to get into these digital platforms, disruption to electricity flow can occur, including the worst-case scenario — a total blackout.”

Grainger, who is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Eaton Faculty Fellow, and Ohodnicki, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, develop new grid technologies at the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District. They bring their expertise to developing the SHURE-Grid program to train the next generation in how to prevent a coming crisis.

Bridging information technology and engineering

There’s currently a debate in government, industry and utilities on how to best — and who can best — protect the electric grid. That’s where Pitt students come in.

Daniel Cole, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the Swanson School and classroom professor with Grainger for the SHURE-Grid program, explained that students were divided into two teams and given a real-life problem rooted in cyber-informed engineering (CIE) from INL to solve.

CIE, developed by the Department of Energy in June 2022, is a framework that bridges the gap between engineers and information technicians to protect the grid from cyberattacks.

Cole said the risks of cybersecurity to critical infrastructure like the grid are causing the engineering and information technology worlds to collide. But these two fields are totally different in methodologies and solutions. That’s where CIE comes in.

“CIE is intended to get engineers to think about things more cyber-related early in the process of designing,” Cole said. “Are there ways we can engineer the system to be more safe, secure and reliable?”

INL has been working with Pitt on CIE measures for more than a year. Ginger Wright, energy cybersecurity portfolio manager for INL’s cybercore division, proposed asking students to investigate and solve this growing divide between engineers and information technology.

She said it’s not just a beneficial program for the students, but an important opportunity for INL.

“When I learned about the potential of the SHURE-Grid program, it became clear students were capable of creating new methods for existing work at INL,” Wright said. “We wanted to leverage this program to teach students about CIE, but grant them the ability to interview stakeholders and make recommendations we may not have thought about.”

Two teams. One problem.

The two teams, called Team GPT and Cyber Informed Engineering Enthusiasts, are positioned to learn how companies are implementing and using CIE, whether it’s working and how to improve it.  

“It’s not a class I would normally take,” said Kameren Jouhal, a rising sophomore from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who’s studying computer science. “It’s been really helpful for me, from networking to presenting.”

The method of solving these problems is simple: ask as many stakeholders as many questions as possible. The answers, however, aren’t quite as straightforward. Students need to continuously adapt their hypotheses and solutions to the problems at hand.

Every week, students present their findings to Cole and Grainger, who are intentionally highly critical of their presentations. This is part of the program’s learning process: The students have become more composed during these sometimes-intense moments and quicker to respond with well-researched answers.

There is occasionally well-meaning tension among students as they work through their projects, which they treat as a full-time job that requires multiple meetings and constant communication with each other. Say, the director of Honors Research Programs, was also able to secure apartments for some students in Bouquet Gardens for more convenient campus housing.  Bioengineering sophomore Hsia said working with her team, made up of students from schools across campus, is one of the best learning experiences she’s had at Pitt.

“One of my teammates studies finance, so anytime I develop a solution, she has a million different questions for me that I didn’t even think of,” Hsia said. “It’s just part of the process.”

Rob Cunningham, vice chancellor for research infrastructure at Pitt, said SHURE-Grid is intentionally designed for students to interact with real industry professionals and a diverse group.

“Important results come from brilliant people with a wide range of backgrounds,” Cunningham explained. “Part of my job is working with multiple experts outside of mine and others’ realms, but all of them are working together to solve problems they find interesting and important. We wanted to have a program where Pitt undergraduates learned and experienced how true science is done, regardless of their degree and career path.”

Say also helped facilitate meetings and professional workshops between the SHURE-Grid program and the much larger Brackenridge Summer Research Fellowship Program.

Wright said although INL may not implement the solutions the students developed, these conversations will move the laboratory forward and, hopefully, be the start of many more student-led workshops and summer camps in the future.

“These solutions will be at least in our conversations,” Wright said. “They’ve built awareness for those in our industry and put these ideas out for us to consider.”

There’s no place like home. 

Growing up in a neighborhood not far from the Windy City, Noah French, a rising senior studying engineering science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, became fascinated with weather after a tornado touched down near his hometown and caused significant wreckage in 2021.  

“Many people don’t realize Chicago is close to Tornado Alley – a loose region throughout North America where tornadoes are more common – so it gets significant storms,” French explained. “I just remember waking up and all the trees were down in my neighborhood. That was the start of my storm chasing career.”

Temperature and pressure and humidity – oh my! 

French used his “Junior Design Fundamentals” class at the Swanson School to create a mobile weather station that could be used to detect severe weather events like tornados and storms in a target area. 

The class, a requirement for all electrical and computer engineering students but also open to engineering science students, has two main goals: teach students the design process in the context of electrical and computer engineering applications as well as hands-on skills that can bring ideas to life – just like French did. 

Sam Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Undergraduate Computer Engineering Program, said this is the first time a mobile weather station has been built in his class. 

“In the class, we let students design whatever they want; it’s an individual project,” Dickerson said. “We want them to pick a project that has meaning to them personally. For Noah, that’s weather, and he took that opportunity to build something that he could use for his storm chasing adventures.” The initial design started with a sketch on paper that then moved to a rough prototype. After integrating different sensors that could detect temperature, pressure, and humidity and adding a circuit board, French connected a microcontroller to communicate with those sensors to read their data. Once that data was able to be projected onto a screen, French could view weather patterns within the weather station’s proximity. “I already had bits and pieces of the weather station laying around,” French said. “I didn’t need to build it completely from scratch.” 

To make it mobile, French originally planned to strap the weather station to the top of his car. He decided that pulling his car over and setting up in one location was safer — and legal. 

“I didn’t want to be pulled over,” French joked. “I sometimes see other storm chasers’ vehicles with their weather stations on top, and I can’t help but wonder how they’re skirting around police officers.” 

Once the semester ended, he and two friends hit the road with the weather station in tow and went chasing after storms for over 5,000 miles across twelve states throughout Tornado Alley in ten days. Other than just tornados, the group of friends were hoping to see supercells in their travels. 

“Supercells are rotating thunderstorms,” French said. “These rotations make them exceptionally powerful, but they’re also really cool and pretty.” 

French, having been a storm spotter for the National Weather Service, is an experienced storm chaser. After taking classes at a local community college before coming to Pitt, French is confident in both the safety and science of storm chasing. 

“I know how to recognize the warning signs of an area becoming dangerous,” French said. “We always had an escape route planned away from the storm.”

There’s no place like Iowa 

The group felt pretty underwhelmed by the storms they were tracking – until they got to rural Iowa. 

The Hawkeye State sees a peak in tornado season between May and June. French said they were only in the state for one day, but “you can’t get much better and badder than Tornado Alley in May.” The day of the chase, the group of young storm chasers found themselves following a tornadic supercell that eventually began to die out. 

“The question was now whether we should call it a day or go back to our original target area and hope for another storm to initiate.” 

The answer to their dilemma was in the dew point – the temperature the air needs to be cooled to in order to reach relative humidity. Predictive models from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) showed a lower dew point, meaning there was low energy in the air and thus further storm development was unlikely. French measured the dew point on his own and found that it was significantly higher than what the models predicted. He and his team decided to stick around, and it turned out to be the right call. 

“The second half of the day ended up having the best storms of the whole trip,” French said. “Had we not had a method of directly measuring the dew point, we would have likely decided to leave and missed the show!” 

Dickerson said it’s gratifying for both the instructor and the student to learn something in the classroom, watch it come to life and then use it. 

“It’s just really cool to see,” Dickerson said. 

It’s a Twister…in Pittsburgh!

French may not have to travel much further than Pitt to storm chase. 

Areas of the northeastern United States, Pennsylvania included, have seen a significant rise of tornados the past five years. Connecting climate change to the increase of tornados is complicated, but as temperatures rise, intense weather events are more likely to occur in unusual areas. 

If a tornado were to touch down in Pittsburgh, French plans on being there – or anywhere for that matter. 

“I definitely plan on storm chasing again in the future,” French said. 

The agreement will contribute toward research collaborations; contributing new code to the Milsoft software; engaging graduate and PhD students and on varied projects; and building a recruitment pathway for Pitt students into Milsoft.

Robert Kerestes, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at the Swanson School, explained that industry partnerships are a cornerstone of the school and department. “ECE has developed strong, iterative collaborations with corporate partners that both advance research and provide employment opportunities for our students,” he said.

"Through collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School, we are proud to be at the forefront of cutting-edge research in the service of safe, efficient, and affordable public utilities and consumers' access to power,” noted Adam Turner, Milsoft CEO of Business Operations and President of the Board. “This partnership joins the industry-leading expertise of our team with the top-tier excellence of Pitt's academics and engineers.

"Together, we will further advance the engineering and operations of power grids and distribution with new innovations, not only addressing current challenges known to utilities but conceivably expanding the capabilities and utilization of software applications beyond for the greater good."

“Since our program’s founding in 1893, our programs have really evolved with the electric power generation, transmission, and distribution industries and many of the dynamic fields that have emerged with new technologies,” Kerestes said. “We’re excited to begin this partnership and discover new opportunities that benefit Milsoft and Pitt.”

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