Research

Dr. Charles Kerfoot is professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and adjunct professor in the Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences. He is director of the Lake Superior Ecosystem Research Center. He earned his PhD from the University of Michigan.

His expertise includes aquatic ecology, lake ecosystems, paleoecology, and limnology. With support from the National Science Foundation, he has studied both Lake Superior (KITES— Keweenaw Interdisciplinary Transport Experiment in Superior) and Lake Michigan (EEGLES—Episodic Events–Great Lakes Experiment). Specifically, his portion . . .

Dr. Jeffrey Allen is assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics. He received a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Dayton.

Allen is a leading researcher in the development of reliable and efficient fuel cells. With funding of $2.7 million from the US Department of Energy, he is the lead investigator in using nanotechnology, physics, materials science, and fluid dynamics to build better fuel cells. The technology is envisioned to produce zero greenhouse gas emissions and an intriguing alternative to internal combustions engines. Allen collaborates on . . .

Dr. Zhenlin Wang received a CAREER award of $400,000 from the National Science Foundation for a five-year project involving computer processes and artifacts. He is assistant professor in computer science. He earned his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Computers have been around for sixty years, and the speed of the central processing unit (CPU) has doubled every eighteen months, so that today’s laptop runs faster than a supercomputer did a couple decades ago.

Faster computing will take more-complex software and hardware. It is the nature of the field that “software always falls behind the hardware,” . . .

Dr. Chunxiao Chigan is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She earned a doctoral degree from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She is the recipient of the Michigan Tech Research Excellence Fund Award (2004) and a National Science Foundation’s CAREER award (2007).

Chigan is the principal investigator on a five-year research project, supported by a $500,000 grant from NSF, that is titled “CAREER: Research on Real-Time Robust and Secure Communications for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks” (VANET).

On average, auto accidents are a leading cause of death in the US. . . .

Dr. Ranjit Pati, associate professor of physics, has a $400,000, five-year CAREER award from National Science Foundation to conduct research in molecular electronics. He has a doctoral degree in condensed matter physics from the University of Albany, State University of New York.

When it comes to computers, Pati says, the biggest challenge facing scientists is to sustain Moore’s Law, posited in 1965, that says microprocessors would halve in size and double in speed every eighteen months. The devices, then, have been getting smaller and smaller, and faster and faster.

This phenomenon will hit a brick wall in 2020. For one, enhancing both . . .