ABE Ambassadors, with the help of Ben Hancock and David Wilson, demonstrated Unmanned Aircraft Systems and the Pneumatic Tennis Ball Launchers to the Juniors Exploring Engineering Program on Monday, April 9^th.  This is a program to get students thinking about engineering.  It is sponsored by the Women in Engineering Program.

Dr. Solomon and Dr. Engel were honored at the Favorite Faculty Reception by an all-student awards committee. Favorite faculty awards are nominated and selected by students living in University Residences to “recognize distinguished faculty for success in academics, research, service and teaching”. Dr. Engel was recognized as the Distinguished Faculty for Research, which is awarded to faculty members who have influenced a student’s passion for research in their field. Dr. Solomon was recognized with the Most Outstanding Faculty award, which is presented to a faculty member who demonstrates strength in all three pillars of service, research, and teaching. http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q2/residential-academic-initiatives-recognizes-award-winners.html

ABE was also well-represented  among the learning communities and residential academic initiatives.Learning communities (LCs) and learning community instructors (LCIs) provide a key method of integration into the Purdue community for first-year students. More than 3,700 Boilermakers participated in 61 LCs in Fall 2017.

We wrapped up our Spring effort at Food Finders Food Bank warehouse on Friday, April 6. Grant Pignotti, Larry Theller, and Carol Weaver joined several other teams to sort 20 bins of frozen meat for food-insecure families in our area.

What are you doing in our community? Let Carol know for future newsletters!

Professors Gitau, Lumkes, and Stwalley would like to invite all alumni and friends of ABE to join us for the final Capstone Poster event in old ABE.  Seniors will present their work as part of the building closing ceremonies on April 19^th.  The poster judging will take place between 1 and 3 pm.  Please consider joining us for this unique event and providing feedback to our students regarding their efforts.

Indiana AgrAbility and the Indiana Chapter of the Farmer Veteran Coalition exhibited at the 2018 Indiana Small Farm Conference at the Hendricks County Fairground on March 2-3, 2018.  The conference consists of full-day workshops, instructional sessions, keynote speakers, poster sessions, and exhibitor opportunities.  The display included an AgrAbility popup, AgrAbility videos, publications, News Note newsletters, AgrAbility Harvest newsletters, arthritis brochures, FSA and NRCS information, beginning/veteran information as well as Farmer Veteran Coalition information and an opportunity to sign-up to be a part of the Farmer Veteran Coalition in Indiana.

The National AgrAbility Project at Purdue University sponsored the National AgrAbility Training Workshop, which was hosted by the Maine AgrAbility Project on March 19-22, 2018 in Portland, Maine.  This is the premier training event addressing issues of disability in agriculture.  Over 240 professionals and consumers from all over the country participated in four days of plenary sessions, breakouts, tours, networking, and special events.  The Indiana AgrAbility Project participated as speakers, volunteers, and coordinators.  Life Essentials from Wolcott, Indiana was a major sponsor and supporter of the workshop.  In addition, 12 Indiana AgrAbility farmers and veteran clients were able to attend using farmer stipends provided by Farm Credit of Mid-America.

Chuck Baldwin represented AgrAbility as a speaker and exhibitor at the 27^th Annual National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) Conference November 3-4 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Roughly 200 people attended the event. Speakers included, among many others, Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, Dr. John Wesley Boyd, president and founder of the NBFA, Kara Brewer Boyd, cofounder with Dr. Boyd of the Association of American Indian Farmers and program/event coordinator for the NBFA, and Mr. Sherri Jones, award-winning civil rights activist.

Because Dr. and Mrs. Boyd lead both the NBFA and the Association of American Indian Farmers, this event was an excellent opportunity for sharing AgrAbility with both African American and Native American ag leaders and farmers. Latonna Old Elk, president of the First American’s Land Grant Consortium (FALCON) and Extension coordinator for Little Big Horn College in Montana where Paul Jones and Chuck Baldwin shared an AgrAbility workshop in September, also shared at this conference

AgrAbility was honored during Friday night’s Award Banquet when the National Black Farmers Association presented AgrAbility with their Partner of the Year 2017 award. This is a great honor for AgrAbility and speaks well of the efforts AgrAbility makes to ensure that minorities in agriculture have the same opportunities as other ag workers to access and benefit from the services and programs of the USDA. The award reads:

"27th Annual National Black Farmers Conference Partner of the Year Award

Recipient: AgrAbility

We are pleased to present AgrAbility the Partner of the Year 2017 Award at the 27th Annual National Black Farmers Association Conference.

AgrAbility has been a consistent partner in helping to provide Black Farmers with technical assistance to overcome obstacles facing their daily operations.

We look forward to continuing this meaningful partnership."

The National AgrAbility Project thanks the NBFA for their participation with AgrAbility in meeting the needs of Black Farmers, including those with disabilities, across the United States.

Elizabeth Wachs, ABE graduate student, was profiled in AIChE Women's Initiative Committee newsletter as the 2017 WIC Women Workplace Retention and Reentry (W2R2) travel grant award winner. Congratulations, Liz!

Casey Hooker, graduate student in the Solomon Lab, was awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The competitive fellowship “recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines” with full support for 3 years. You make us all look good, Casey!

Lots of participants in this year’s soy competition, both students and faculty (thanks!) –

Team TheraSoy – Kate Barker (ASM), Andrew Huang (former ABE), Caitlin Nelligan (AE) and Zifan Zhu (ASM) – Technical Advisor Richard Stroshine – Senior Design

Team Just Soy You Know – Patrick Woodson (BE) – Technical Advisor Kevin Solomon

Team I am BOBA – Evan Adams (BE), Caleb Kreis (BE), Eric Li (BE), Emmy Rawson (BE) – Advisor Martin Okos – Senior Design

Team Soy Soft –   Emily Coleman   (BE),  Emma Foster  (BE),  Trevor Sh oaf  (BE ), Ethan Titus (B E) – Advisor Abby Engelberth – Senior Design 

Team SoyAid – Yeejin Jang (BE), Ha Rim (Melody) Ku (BE) – Advisor Eduardo Ximenes

Team SoyPad – Zihan Gao (ABE), Eung Baek (Andy) Kim (BE), Mai Liu (ABE), Zonghao Zhang (BE) – Advisor Ganesan Narsimhan

Team Soy Tack – Susan Hubbard (BE), Christopher Strichter (Ag System Management)

Team SoyTron – Advisors Natalie Carroll (ABE) and Michael Ladisch (ABE)

For a full listing of students, teams and products visit the web page at - https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/academics/competitions/2018_all_teams

Maha Graduates

At the Maha Fluid Power Research Center, the past two months have been an overwhelming wave of PhD defenses, each adding a unique patch of work to the center’s already extensive research fabric. First, on February 9th, Divya Thiagarajan presented her work on modeling the tribological interfaces of external gear machines (a type of hydraulic pump/motor). Her model is able to handle the use of both high and low-viscosity fluids, and has been used in her research to simulate the effect of different gear designs on the leakage and torque loss of these machines. Dr. Thiagarajan is now headed to Westmont, IL, where she will be working as Senior Engineer at Gamma Technologies.

On February 23rd, Kyle Williams defended his research: an algorithm aimed at optimal, real time control of a hydraulic power split transmission. The use of GPS altitude information allows Williams to reduce the uncertainties in this energy management optimization problem, which he handles with a stochastic gradient descent method. Through this approach, significant fuel savings can be achieved. Having successfully defended his PhD, Williams will continue at Caterpillar in his position as Senior Engineer.

On February 26th, Hyukjoon Kwon received his doctorate for the development of a thermal model applicable to hydraulic hybrid transmissions. The novel model is equipped to capture thermal transients in the system, and has allowed for the study of a closed and an open circuit hybrid architecture; a comparison between the two shows that the open circuit system allows for a reduction in power consumption.

On the same day, Ashley Busquets received her doctorate for the development of micro-surface shapes capable of reducing the power loss incurred at the piston-cylinder lubrication interface in axial piston machines of swashplate design (hydraulic pumps/motors). Busquets investigated the effect of various surface shapes on the behavior of this interface through simulation studies conducted using a non-isothermal fluid―structure―thermal interaction model developed by the Maha Fluid Power Research Center. Four days following Busquets, Daniel Mizell defended his work on advancing this same model to include the use of an adaptive grid, which allows for grid refinement in critical regions of extremely low film thickness without increasing the overall grid size to the point of impossible computational expense.

Congratulations to all graduates and thank you for your valuable contributions to the field of hydraulics!

Maha Awards

Dr. Ivantysynova, Dr. Vacca, and Maha PhD students Nathan Keller, Ryan Jenkins, and Lizhi Shang spent late March in Aachen, Germany attending the 11th International Fluid Power Conference. There they presented on topics including thermal management for hydraulic hybrid vehicles, the dynamic stability of a pressure compensated vane pump system, and modelling heat transfer in axial piston machines of swash plate type (a type of hydraulic pump/motor).
The Maha Fluid Power Research Center is proud to announce that Shang’s submission on an “Advanced Heat Transfer Model for Piston/Cylinder Interface” earned the 2018 Global Fluid Power Society Best Paper Award. The paper describes an advanced heat transfer model Shang developed in order to simulate the thermal interaction between the pistons and the cylinder block in axial piston machines of swash plate type. This model replaces an existing version integrated into the fluid-structure-thermal interaction model developed at Maha for simulating the main lubricating interfaces of axial piston machines. Shang’s new heat transfer model improves the convergence of this fluid-structure-thermal interaction model by allowing the temperature distribution in the cylinder block and one of its pistons arising from the transfer of heat between them and the lubricating interface they form to be solved for simultaneously, instead of separately, as was previously done. His work demonstrates the importance of simultaneous solution on the stability of the solid body temperature simulation results.
 

R. Marisol Herrera-Perez, Sherry L. Voytik-Harbin, Jann N. Sarkaria, Karen E. Pollok, Melissa L. Fishel, Jenna L. Rickus. "Presence of stromal cells in a bioengineered tumor microenvironment alters glioblastoma migration and response to STAT3 inhibition”. PLOS ONE.  March 22, 2018.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194183