2007-08 News Releases

May 2008

CEPS 2008 Distinguished Alum Announced

At a recent banquet held in his honor, professional engineer and registered architect Robert Tillotson (UNH ’77) was recognized as the 2008 College of Engineering and Physical Sciences (CEPS) Distinguished Alumnus.

Said Genise Bonacorsi, CEPS Alumni Society board member and 1994 UNH civil graduate, “Upon meeting Rob for the first time at the banquet, I knew we had made the right choice. He has given more back to the university than the knowledge he took away, and he was obviously very grateful and humbled by the award.”

UNH Students Place First in Environmental Design Contest

A team of University of New Hampshire business and engineering students won first place in their task at the 2008 Environmental Design Contest held April 6-9, 2008, at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M. This year's team, Retrolutions, retrofitted an existing commercial building to reduce its environmental footprint. The 14-member team was so impressive that they have been invited to present their project at the EPA Science Forum in Washington, DC, May 20–22, 2008.

The students developed the project EARTH (Education, Awareness, Reduction, Technology, and Holistic Approach), an integrated plan to retrofit a building in Phoenix.

NH Grammy Winner Named Entrepreneurial Venture Creation Person of the Year

The University of New Hampshire Whittemore School of Business and Economics has named Grammy winner and professor of mathematics Kevin Short the 2008 Entrepreneurial Venture Creation Person of the Year.

"Kevin has been an entrepreneurial leader at the university, from developing technology that led to the university's first spin-out company to using that technology to restore the only live recording of Woody Guthrie in concert. We are honored to have such an innovator as a colleague and to recognize him with this award," said Dan Innis, dean of the Whittemore School.

Rucinska Memorial Fund to Support UNH Students

The UNH Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the IEEE Boston Section announced May 5, that the Barbara Rucinska Memorial Fund (BRMF) will partially underwrite the participation of undergraduate ECE668, “Introduction to Computer Engineering” students, and graduate students taking ECE993 “Embedded Systems Engineering: System-on-a-Chip (PSoC) Design,” in the First IEEE Workshop on: Critical Infrastructure, Critical Embedded Systems & Design Methodology for Global Security (1st IEEE GS Workshop).

April 2008

UNH Hosts Regional Steel Bridge Competition

The UNH chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) hosted 11 engineering schools in the Whittemore Center for the New England Conference Steel Bridge competition on April 5. The UNH team was disqualified, due to what the team called, "fabrication issues" that they faced only days before the event.

"The time constraint was our biggest problem," said UNH team member Chris Palelko, a senior civil engineering major from Dover, N.H.

ECE Grad Students Among Winning Teams in the National Semiconductor Research Corporation Design Challenge

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the world’s leading university research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, named eight teams of graduate students as winners in the SRC/SIA IC Design Challenge held March 19, 2008 at Research Triangle Park, N.C. The UNH team’s winning design was for a serializer/deserializer (SERDES) that converts the low rate parallel data into high rate serial data or vice versa. More than 40 universities and 120 engineering students competed to design circuits with potential future electronic applications.

Chemical Educators Overcome Obstacles

"I wouldn't change my career for anything," says chemical education researcher Christopher F. Bauer, who is professor and chair of the chemistry department at the University of New Hampshire, Durham. "Frankly, I think I'm more productive in chemistry education than I would have been if I'd stayed in analytical."

Tech Camp 2008

Junior high and high school students interested in attending the University of New Hampshire's Tech Camp this summer have until April 30 to apply.

Tech Camp, which runs from July 28 to Aug. 8 on the UNH campus, offers opportunities to learn from professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Participants will spend two weeks working with people from industry and the university in each of the STEM areas.

March 2008

Presstek and UNH Polymer Research Group to Conduct nanotechnology Research

Presstek Inc., a leading manufacturer and marketer of digital offset printing business solutions, jointly announced today with the UNH that they were awarded a Granite State Technology Innovation Grant. The grant, funded by the New hampshire Innovation Research Center (NHIRC), will enable Presstek and UNH to conduct leading-edge nanotechnology research with the goal of advancing printing technology.

LiveWire Mobile gets into the Groove to the tune of $14M

Groove Mobile was born as Chaoticom Inc. in 2002 out of research by Kevin Short, then an associate professor of mathematics at the University of New Hampshire. Short discovered an aspect of chaos theory that could not only compress a 4Mb audio file into 600Kb but would also naturally encrypt the data. The group applied the compression technology to music in the mobile environment to create the new company.

“Opening the Arctic Seas: Envisioning Disasters and Framing Solutions.”

With the rapid melting of the Arctic Sea ice cover, there is an increasing amount of human activity in the Arctic Seas.  Accidents in Arctic marine environments present unique challenges to subsequent response, assessment and restoration activities. Limited resources, challenging conditions and the remote location of these incidents significantly impact the options available for successful response. The Coastal Response Research Center, along with NOAA’s Office of Response & Restoration, the US Coast Guard Office of Spill Management & Preparedness and the US Arctic Research Commission, will convene a workshop (UNH, March 18-20, 2008) of international experts to discuss these possible Arctic Incidents; impacts, response options, challenges and research gaps. The workshop will result in a report that will serve as a synthesis of the major marine incidents for the Arctic seas. For more information, please watch the workshop website for continuous updates (i.e., workshop presentations and final report) http://www.crrc.unh.edu/workshops/arctic_spill_summit/index.htm

Cleaner Water With a Wand (No Magic Required)

The L.C.D. screen and its messages are a good idea, said James P. Malley Jr., a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, who specializes in the use of ultraviolet light for treating drinking water. “Forty-eight seconds is a long time for some people,” Prof. Malley said of the purification process with the wand. Without a display screen to guide them, people might be inclined to do a perfunctory job of disinfection.

February 2008

Paving the Way for Green Roads

Kevin Gardner sees green roads right around the corner. “A lot of the infrastructure in this country needs to be re-built,” says Gardner, UNH Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Environmental Research Group in Durham. “We have a real opportunity to re-build the infrastructure the right way with sustainable materials and socially sensitive designs that protect air, water, land, and human resources.”

Arctic Melt Yields Hints of Bigger U.S. Seabed Claim

The warming of the Arctic has created all kinds of strange twists, as The Times has been reporting for years now. On the one hand, the dramatic shortening of the deep-frozen season on the North Slope of Alaska — when the tundra is firm enough to drive on — has made it harder for oil companies to send out their seismic survey teams to seek new petroleum deposits. (Some environmentalists have noted that this is a rare instance when global warming seems to have worried oil companies.)

Mathematics Professor, Kevin Short Wins Grammy!

Dr. Kevin Short, professor of mathematics at the University of New Hampshire, won a Grammy Award Sunday night for his role as a mastering engineer in the restoration of a 1949 wire recording of a live Woody Guthrie concert. Short and his wife, Michelle, attended the star-studded award ceremony in Los Angeles. Short was part of a team honored by The Recording Academy for their work to produce “The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949.” One of five nominees for best historical album, it is the only known recording of Guthrie performing in concert before an audience.

UNH-NOAA Ocean Mapping Expedition Yields New Insights Into Arctic Depths

New Arctic sea floor data released by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that the foot of the continental slope off Alaska is more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast than previously assumed. The data, gathered during a recent mapping expedition to the Chukchi Cap some 600 nautical miles north of Alaska, could support U.S. rights to natural resources of the sea floor beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast. "We found evidence that the foot of the slope was much farther out than we thought," said Larry Mayer, expedition chief scientist and co-director of the Joint Hydrographic Center at UNH. "That was the big discovery."

January 2008

Foreigners Keep Out! High tech mapping starts to redefine International borders

Researchers at UNH's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping (CCOM), who are working for the U.S. government, are hoping to show that the United States has sovereignty of more territory along the continental shelf than was previously realized. Redrawing the boundaries and redefining international borders under the sea could mean that the U.S. will be at least 386,000 square miles bigger than it is now — and $1.3 trillion richer, since that's the estimated worth of the oil, gas and other resources that come along with the area in question, according to the magazine.

AmberWave Systems and UNH receive Technology Innovation Grant from the New Hampshire Innovation Research Center (Nashua Telegraph story)

AmberWave Systems, a leader in the research, development and licensing of advanced technologies for semiconductor manufacturing, will be partnering with UNH, after the two institutions were named as recipients of the "Granite State Technology Innovation Grant" by the New Hampshire Innovation Research Center (NHIRC).

Research charts winter warming trend in Northeast

UNH researchers have confirmed that the snow of our childhood really was deeper. In her master's thesis, Earth sciences/geochemical systems student Elizabeth Burakowski conducted the most comprehensive analysis on changes in winter climate across the Northeast United States using data that was subjected to rigorous quality control. The study, done in collaboration with research associate professor Cameron Wake of UNH's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, found that winters have been warming over the past four decades at an average of .77 degrees F per decade, and that snow-covered days have been decreasing at a rate of 2.6 days per decade.

Building materials from UNH's DeMeritt Hall demolition recycled

Behind the bricks and mortar of what was, and soon will be again, the physics department at the University of New Hampshire, there's a whole lot of green. And it's not just because DeMeritt Hall, currently under construction, replaces an inefficient facility with outdated laboratories, or that the building's exterior has been redesigned to maximize benefits of natural daylight and cutting edge insulation details, or that florescent lighting is being used throughout, which will use one-fifth the amount of electricity as incandescent lighting. It's also how the original building's materials were disposed of when it was demolished.

How are we doing when it comes to saving energy?

University Honors students taking chemical engineering Professor Ihab Farag’s Energy and Environment course took on the challenge to go out in the community targeting buildings such as the Durham Firehouse, Christensen Hall, Hubbard Hall, Oyster River School, Stokes Hall, T-Hall, the existing UNH fleet, and the new UNH fleet, with the objective to obtain a better understanding of what energy is being used and where it might be saved.  They reported back with their findings during the last week of class in December 2007.

December 2007

UNH mathematician nominated for Grammy Award

Dr. Kevin Short was honored Dec. 6 in the 50th annual Grammy nominations for his role as a mastering engineer in the restoration of a 1949 bootleg wire recording of a live Woody Guthrie concert. It is the only known recording of Guthrie performing before an audience. Guthrie, known as the Dust Bowl Balladeer, wrote more than 1000 songs in the 1930s and ’40s, most as political commentary on poverty and social injustice.

Engineering and OT Students coming together to Make Dreams Come True

UNH Civil Engineering and Occupational Therapy (OT) students have taken their course work one step closer to their chosen professions by actually performing on the job for the grade. On Tuesday, December 11, students presented their proposed atrium design to a group of Exeter HealthCare administrators and patients, located in Exeter, New Hampshire. 

Nortel's New Data Products Focus on Secure, Simple and Flexible Solutions for the Growing Enterprise

UNH InterOperability Laboratory - Nortel is introducing five data products and several enhancements aimed at optimizing network infrastructure with simple solutions that make it a more powerful tool to support an organization's core business and its communications services and processes.

Empirix Among Primary Sponsors of the Multi-Vendor Interoperability Event

UNH InterOperability Laboratory - At this event, Empirix led the testing with User Equipment, P-CSCF, S-CSCF, HSS, and Application Server emulation, in addition to running its monitoring solution for call monitoring and analysis to aid in the successful execution and analysis of test cases and scenarios during the event. Its interoperation with all the participating vendors included Diameter Cx and Sh interfaces from both sides, which was particularly useful since the vendor implementations of the Sh interface are still fairly new.

Military and aerospace organizations must comply now with IPv6

UNH InterOperability Laboratory - The federal government is on a mission to upgrade from IPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4) to IPv6, which represents the new generation of Internet protocol, mandated by a 2005 directive from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In this equation, military and aerospace organizations, as well as defense agencies, are particularly sensitive to the potential new national and global defense advantage that IPv6 compliance offers.

OpenFabrics alliance Sees More Expansion Ahead

UNH InterOperability Laboratory - Just before SC07, we got the opportunity to ask Jim Ryan, Chairman of the OpenFabrics Alliance, about the latest happenings in the organization. The Alliance's aim is to provide a unified software platform for RDMA over Ethernet and InfiniBand. Ryan talked about some of the recent developments of the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution software, what the Alliance is up to at SC07, and what they're planning down the road.

Full Article

PoE Control ICs Handle 25-75W Power

UNH InterOperability Laboratory - Power over Ethernet (PoE), a method of supplying electrical power via an Ethernet connection, was standardized in June 2003 as IEEE802.3af, and since then has been used in a growing range of equipment. More recently, PoE control integrated circuits (IC) have been released to handle power levels higher than those covered in the standard, because new PoE-driven equipment demands more power to implement new functionality.

November 2007

Physics major and honor student spent the summer conducting research at the Space Research Center in Warsaw, Poland

Morgan O’Neill, a physics major and honors student going into her junior year at UNH, spent the summer conducting research at the Space Research Center in Warsaw, Poland. Her work on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer Star Sensor, which will launch in June 2008, began the summer after her freshman year and will culminate with her senior thesis.

Chemistry Department administrative manager wears many hats

As a woman of “many hats,” Cindi Rohwer has enjoyed a multi-faceted position as the Administrative Manager for the Chemistry Department for over 13 years. Chemistry is a growing department, with the retention for undergrad student majors increasing over the past five years. Sharing her thoughts on supporting such a diverse group, Cindi said “I think it is amazing how well we all get along. Sometimes I get to be the mom or the advisor, and then again sometimes I’m the Principal.”

UNH Physics student receives international thesis award

Bogdan Diaconescu, Ph.D., G'07, has received this year's Morton M. Traum Award at the 54th International Symposium of the American Vacuum Society in Seattle, WA. This prestigious award is given annually since 1981 by the Surface Science Division to the best student paper based on work leading to a Ph.D. thesis. Bogdan's presentation was entitled "Dynamical study of the elastic forces between dislocations in a strained metal film," in which he explored the fundamental driving forces of self-assembly and pattern formation on crystalline surfaces and interfaces by scanning tunnel microscopy and 2D elastic modeling. This is the oldest student award in the American Vacuum Society.

October 2007

Larry Mayer in NY Times: New Coast Guard Task in Arctic’s Warming Seas

A new survey by American oceanographers of the seafloor north of Alaska, completed last month aboard the Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, provides fresh evidence that the United States has much at stake in the region. The sonar studies found hints that thousands of square miles of additional seafloor could potentially be under American control. That floor might yield important deposits of oil, gas or minerals in coming decades, government studies have concluded. So far did the sea ice pull back this summer that the expedition was able to scan the bottom several hundred miles farther north than in previous surveys, said the project’s director, Larry Mayer, an oceanographer at the University of New Hampshire. The team found long sloping extensions 200 miles beyond previous estimates.

UNH celebrates renovated Kingsbury Hall

The $52 million renovation and expansion added more than 20,000 square feet for a total building size of approximately 110,000 square feet. The UNH Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Library, now 11,000 square feet, nearly doubled its size. Student project areas – previously nonexistent – now have 6,000 square feet of dedicated space. The renovation also brought bright, spacious classrooms and hallways, laboratories that look out onto hallways, and gathering places where students and faculty discuss problems and develop innovative solutions.

Right Whales in the wrong places - - no bones about it

Contrary to the World Shipping Council claims, UNH mechanical engineering professor, Igor Tsukrov says, "The results of our three years of research clearly show that in the case of a ship strike higher ship speeds result in more damage to a whale and a substantial increase in the probability of whale mortality." Tsukrov will submit the final UNH research results to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in December, 2007.  WHOI is expected to officially present their report to NOAA, including Tsukrov’s data, in January, 2008.

Reinventing shellfishing - Aquaculture studies pay off

PORTSMOUTH — A project sponsored by the University of New Hampshire has the potential to bring back to life the state's fishing industry in a completely new way, U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, said Wednesday.

"There is now a good chance this pier will once again come alive with mussels and, hopefully, cod, and this city will again become a seaport that helps feed the nation," Gregg said, standing on the Yankee Fishermen's Cooperative pier. (Photo courtesy of Rich Beauchesne, Seacoast Online)

New EPA National Center for Environmental Research Video Spotlights UNH Students and Captures the Excitement of the P3 Expo on the Mall

A new EPA video captures the energy, vitality and excitement of EPA's People Prosperity, and the Planet (P3) competition. The video was filmed during the 3rd annual National Sustainable Design Expo on the national mall. The expo showcases innovative, cutting edge technologies designed by undergraduate student teams. The teams have each won a $10,000 P3 grant and are competing for a $75,000 follow-up grant to help develop their designs and move them to the marketplace.

Cruise Cruise Baby! The video, the info, the lyrics.

Want to know what it's like to go to sea with the Center of Excellence for Coastal Ocean Observation and Analysis' research team? This video sums it up well. The song encompasses some typical and atypical events we have experienced on our oceanographic cruises. We have truly lost communication with our equipment, lost our equipment, and lost our lunch while working with equipment. Fortunately we can usually recover communications, find our equipment, and forget about lunch. The images are taken from REACH and Coastal Observing Center cruises over a several-year span.

Graduate School of Oceanography, URI Award to Larry Mayer

On Saturday October 13, 2007 the University of Rhode Island hosted it’s second annual distinguished achievement awards and the celebration of the Making a Difference Campaign.  The Graduate School of Oceanography at URI awarded Larry A. Mayer, director of the UNH Center for Coastal Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center, the 2007 URI Distinguished Achievement Award for Outstanding International Leadership in Ocean Mapping.   Larry received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institute of Oceanography and an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm, as well as receiving the Keen Medal for Marine Geology, and serving on the President’s Panel for Ocean Exploration. L-R, Larry's wife Susan, Larry, James Austin Jr., and his wife.

UNH professor of mathematics, awarded two U.S. patents

Dr. Kevin M. Short, UNH professor of mathematics, holds plaques commemorating two U.S. patents awarded for his invention of methods to use chaotic systems to compress and decompress image and audio files. With him, from left, are Dr. Taylor Eighmy, vice president for research; Robert Dalton, director of the Office for Research Partnerships and Commercialization, and Dr. Joseph Klewicki, dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. (Courtesy photo)

Water, water everywhere . . . but is it safe to drink?

The UNH Stormwater Center, which took three years to design, permit, and build, provides controlled testing of stormwater management designs and devices for industrial and land development applications. In addition, the Center offers a variety of workshops and community outreach programs to help community decision-makers identify the best low-cost strategies for removing contaminants before stormwater runoff reaches receiving streams, rivers, lakes, and municipal water reservoirs.

September 2007

Car 54 takes to the water: Marine Patrol to get test boat from UNH

The New Hampshire Marine Patrol will test new technology in Portsmouth Harbor this year that will give officers voice control of lights, radar and sirens, as well as a streamlined navigation system that will plot paths around underwater hazards. The University of New Hampshire's Project 54, a team of researchers that designed a similar system for police cruisers, will outfit a test boat with the technology in the next few weeks, according to William Lenharth, a research professor at the school.

Lenharth said that Marine Patrol officers will wear a headset that will allow them to communicate with other officers and feed voice commands into a computer. The technology will provide hands-free control over the electrical functions of the boat, as well as the ability to run background checks, get directions, and coordinate with other boats in the area.

New Programming Assistance Center

The academic experience of a first-year Computer Science student has been revamped; one could say it is now more "centered." CS 415, Introduction to Computer Science I, is many students' first foray into the nitty-gritty of programming. And for some, the challenges associated with it become overwhelming and discouraging enough to drop out of the major. Professor and former Chair Dan Bergeron knew something significant had to be done without cheating the students out of the essential programming skills they needed to learn. One solution: creating the Programming Assistance Center, AKA, the PAC.

CEPS professor collects clues to determine date of dinosaur's extinction

Researchers are moving beyond fossils and into geochemical, magnetic and other evidence to help them improve the chronology of what happend across the K/T boundary, Sam Bowring, a specialist in geochemical dating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy in Cambridge and William Clyde, a geologist from the University of New Hampshire in Durham analyses palaeomagnetic fields.

NH Teachers Thinking Nano

UNH’s creditable history of providing nanotechnology outreach activities for K-12 teachers and students just became stronger.  This idea to engage both teachers and students in “thinking nano” by giving teachers a more intensive, hands-on experience than otherwise achievable sprouted the birth of a UNH Research Experience for Teachers program (RET).  Five representatives from Derry, Durham, Manchester, and Salem have participated in an intense three week, 40 hour per week training, which will culminate with a poster session.

July 2007

Youth Going Green at UNH Biodiesel Lab

UNH visitors from the Seacoast Science Center of Rye, New Hampshire were shown the process to create golden translucent biodiesel from a black sludge of waste vegetable oil.  Impressed as they were converting something like sludge into environmental friendly alternative fuel, little did they know that UNH chemical engineering professor Ihab Farag had something more up his sleeve.  Walking to the other end of the lab eyes opened wide as a plain looking five-foot high (approximately a six foot diameter) cardboard container was opened. 

UNH Researchers Prove Existence of New Type of Electron Wave

When a small charge is placed close to a metal surface, standing electron waves are created. These are shown in the lower part of the figure. Another type of waves, called plasmons, are created when the charge is slightly jiggled. These plasmons, which need a rather high energy to be excited, have been known for a long time and are present on the surfaces of all metals. Bogdan Diaconescu and Karsten Pohl with their colleagues have now proved the existence of a new type of plasmon, called "acoustic," which can be excited with any energy (wavelength) and which can therefore be compared to water waves in a lake. The new type of wave is superimposed on the standing waves and is shown in the upper part of the figure. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of New Hampshire)

Biodiesel Researchers from Egypt Visit UNH

June 25-29, six researchers from the National Research Center (NRC) in Cairo, Egypt, met with UNH chemical engineering professor Ihab Farag in his biodiesel lab reuniting in their effort to introduce biodiesel technology into Egypt.   NRC is one of the largest and credible research centers in the Middle East.