WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Advancing research and education to reduce the devastation and loss of human life from earthquakes and tsunamis is the goal of a new center at Purdue University.

HUBzero is a new way for scientists and engineers to publish and share information. The latest hub will be used to study the causes and effects of earthquakes for the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES. This hub joins others focused on topics such as nanotechnology, microelectromechanical systems, pharmaceutical products, cancer care, assistive technologies for people with disabilities, heat-transfer issues in engineering, and several others. New hubs are being created at a rate of about one per month. (Purdue University image/Michele Rund and Steve Tally)

The National Science Foundation awarded $105 million to a Purdue-led team to spearhead a center that will serve as headquarters for the operations of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES. Submitted through the Cyber Center in Purdue’s Discovery Park, the grant spans five years and is the largest in the university’s history.

Purdue will connect 14 NEES research equipment sites and the earthquake engineering community through groundbreaking cyberinfrastructure, education and outreach efforts. Purdue’s center is expected to begin operations on Oct. 1, and will be housed in the university’s Discovery Learning Research Center in Discovery Park.

“I was delighted to learn that Purdue has the opportunity to lead this consortium of first-rate research universities,” said Purdue President France A. Córdova, who serves on the National Science Board, the governing board for the NSF, but was excused from deliberations on the award. “I’ve seen firsthand how devastating an earthquake can be not only to buildings, highways and the infrastructure of a city, but also to families, the community and people’s sense of security.

“Purdue’s depth of knowledge in earthquake engineering, innovative high-performance computing experts, education professionals and outstanding interdisciplinary research abilities allow the university to make great contributions to this area. The universities and institutions participating have had great individual successes, and we hope to bring them together to create a whole that is even greater than the sum of its parts.”

In the past decade, 124 major earthquakes have occurred throughout the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Major earthquakes are generally accepted to register a magnitude in excess of 7 on the Richter scale and inflict serious damage, including the collapse of buildings and bridges, over a large area.

The organization estimates that earthquakes were responsible for 463,959 deaths in the past decade.

The Purdue-led NEEScomm Center, which stands for NEES Community and Communications, includes partners from the University of Washington at Seattle, University of Texas at Austin, University of Kansas at Lawrence, San Jose State University, the University of Florida at Gainsville, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The center will help researchers share information and equipment to enable research and innovation in earthquake and tsunami loss reduction, create an educated work force in hazard mitigation, and conduct broader outreach and lifelong learning activities, said Julio Ramirez, the project’s principal investigator and a professor of civil engineering.

“Recent events have highlighted the importance of earthquake engineering for the United States and the world,” said Ramirez, who also will serve as the center’s director. “In China last year, tens of thousands of people perished as entire cities came down. The earthquake caused a tremendous financial burden in terms of rebuilding the civil infrastructure, but more than that, a high percentage of those who died were children – the future of a nation.”

Building codes and earthquake preparedness have improved in recent years, but even cities that lead in incorporating the latest safety features are at risk for serious damage, he said.

“Even in Los Angeles, a relatively young city in the global perspective, the building inventory includes structures that were built before buildings were engineered to mitigate earthquake hazard,” Ramirez said. “Earthquake design provisions have changed rapidly and substantially since 1980.”

Older cities and those in developing countries are likely to have the most buildings vulnerable to earthquakes and face the highest risk for damage and loss of lives, he said.

Forbes magazine cited a 2001 study by GeoHazards International that estimated the number of lives that would be lost if different cities experienced a magnitude 6 or higher earthquake. The study evaluated cities in Asia and the Americas. Kathmandu, Nepal, topped the list, followed by Istanbul, Turkey; Delhi, India; Quito, Ecuador; Manila, Philippines; and Islambad, Pakistan. All of the cities were estimated to face tens of thousands of fatalities if an earthquake struck.

The Purdue-based center will lead, manage, operate and maintain NEES. Through the NEES network, researchers from the United States and abroad conduct experiments and simulations of the ways buildings, bridges, utility systems and different materials perform during seismic events. Earthquake engineers will use this information to develop better and more cost-effective ways of reducing earthquake damage through improved materials, construction techniques and monitoring tools, Ramirez said.

The center’s education, outreach and training initiatives will use engineering education research to construct next-generation learning experiences that can be disseminated globally, he said. A team of engineering educators and technology specialists will develop the NEES Academy, a state-of-the-art virtual institution for cyber-enabled learning. The academy will help preK-12 teachers develop student interest in, and awareness of, science, mathematics, engineering and technology and will support undergraduate and graduate students engaging in research.

“The center will bring world-class education to any place in the world that has access to broadband Internet,” Ramirez said. “It will enable colleges and universities that don’t have the educational resources of Purdue to access the facilities, equipment, simulations and teaching tools of the participating institutions.”

Joy M. Pauschke, NEES program director at the National Science Foundation, said NEES is an integral part of the U.S. National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program to support basic research to discover new knowledge, innovation and technologies for earthquake and tsunami loss reduction for the nation.

“During the first five years of operations, the unique NEES experimental capabilities and the extraordinarily strong user support from facility staff have enabled landmark testing and comprehensive experimental data capture for modeling seismic performance that was not possible before NEES,” Pauschke said. “Through Purdue’s leadership, the NEES experimental facilities, NEEShub and NEES Academy will provide world-class resources for earthquake engineering researchers, educators, students and practitioners not only in the United States, but globally.”

A cornerstone of the center is the development of information technology components that allow for new forms of collaboration and cooperation, said Rudolf Eigenmann, co-principal investigator and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The NEEScomm Center will be a collaborative space and science hub where scientists and engineers can run scientific models and “what if?” scenarios. Hubs, which were first developed at Purdue, allow researchers to run models using a simple Web interface. The hub connects with supercomputing resources on the NSF’s TeraGrid and the national DiaGrid, which allow researchers to run their experiments without having to request time on a supercomputer.

Rudolf Eigenmann, professor of electrical and computer engineering, stands in front of screens displaying the prototype cyberinfrastructure for NEEScomm. The National Science Foundation awarded $105 million to a Purdue-led team to spearhead a center that will serve as headquarters for the operations of the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. Eigenmann is a co-principal investigator on the project. (Purdue News Service photo/Andrew Hancock)

“A critical and often difficult component of sharing data to advance research is making the findings of others easy to access and use,” Eigenmann said. “The HUBzero technology will allow for someone to simply go to a Web site and instantly be able to view data or run a simulation. It will eliminate the need to first download and install an application to view the data and then spend time downloading a large volume of data before beginning work.”

The cyberinfrastructure to be deployed by the NEEScomm Center is powered using HUBzero technology, which was originally created by researchers at Purdue University to support nanoHUB.org, a site for researchers studying nanotechnology. Currently there are nine other hubs online in science, engineering and medicine, and 12 more are expected to be online within a year, including the new NEEShub.

Ellen Rathje, professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and co-principal investigator of the project, said another key advantage of NEEShub is its data presentation capabilities.

“The new information technology created will enable research to take place that couldn’t be done before,” Rathje said. “Data will be presented in an easily searchable and usable format, like a virtual lab notebook, that will give experiments a longer life as researchers reuse existing data to run their own analysis and find new insights. It’s sort of like Facebook for scientists, but instead of posting vacation photos we’re posting research results.”

In addition to Ramirez and Eigenmann, Purdue University project co-principal investigators include Thomas Hacker, assistant professor of computer and information technology; Sean Brophy, assistant professor of engineering education; and Saurabh Bagchi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

In addition, assistant professors of civil engineering Santiago Pujol and Ayhan Irfanoglu provide the team with earthquake engineering expertise in information technology matters of tele-operation and data management.

Project co-principal investigator Barbara Fossum, former managing director of Purdue’s Cyber Center, will serve as the center’s deputy director, and Dawn Weisman, former managing director of Purdue’s PRISM: National Nuclear Security Administration Center for Prediction of Reliability, Integrity and Survivability of Microsystems, will serve as information technology director.

Co-principal investigators Brophy and Thalia Anagnos from San Jose State University will co-lead the center’s education, outreach and training initiatives.

Fossum said the center will manage the operations of the network and engage the equipment sites to effectively carry out program initiatives.

“The United States has invested close to $300 million to commission and enable the equipment sites, and there are over 100 projects currently under way,” she said. “It is a resource for the nation and we want to help realize its full potential by sharing the unique resources and programs at each site across the network and with those interested in mitigating earthquake hazards throughout the world.”

The center will create more than 20 full-time positions and five graduate student positions at Purdue for Web application developers, software engineers, and research scientists and engineers.

The NEES equipment sites include Oregon State University; University of Nevada, Reno; University of California, Davis; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California at Los Angeles; University of California at San Diego; University of Texas, Austin; University of Minnesota; University of Illinois, Urbana; University at Buffalo-SUNY; Cornell University; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Lehigh University.

NEES began development in 2000 and is a shared national network of 14 state-of-the-art earthquake engineering and tsunami experimental facilities at universities across the United States. It includes collaborative tools, a centralized data repository and earthquake simulation software.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University will use a Hewlett-Packard grant to develop and test a new teaching approach designed to boost the academic success of underrepresented minorities in engineering programs.

Photo from Orientation Seminar for Multiethnic Students in Engineering (ENGR 180) Fall 2008 Homecoming Celebration.

The teaching method represents a potential new model for retaining more underrepresented minorities and others who aren’t thriving in conventional engineering courses, said Jan Allebach, the Hewlett-Packard Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering who led a team of nine faculty members to secure the HP award.

Purdue is among 10 recipients selected from 200 applicants to receive an HP Innovations in Education grant.

The grant will be a catalyst for a new Purdue program called REACH – Reaching Excellence in Academic Achievement – that will help students learn in a cooperative and collaborative environment, Allebach said.

A major component of REACH focuses on the use of group-based learning and modularized coursework to assist and mentor students. The new “cohort” approach targets sophomores and juniors and focuses on collaborative learning and students mentoring each other in small groups.

“They come into this massive place, Purdue, and they just don’t thrive because they don’t see the connection to things they care about in real life,” Allebach said. “We are proposing something very radical. Usually the students take classes that meet two or three times a week during a 15-week semester, and we are going to completely alter that.”

The teaching approach has students taking fewer classes that are more concentrated. The courses – like summer sessions – are taught in half the time of ordinary courses. Students take three classes per session and two sessions in a semester. In each class, the students will work in groups of four to six.

“Many studies have shown that group-based learning improves acquisition and retention of information, higher-level thinking skills, interpersonal and communication skills, and self-confidence,” Allebach said. “Developing students’ ability to work effectively on teams is also vital because team-based work structures are prevalent in U.S. companies. Group-based learning is also effective in retaining underrepresented minorities and women, and it can be expected to benefit all students – underrepresented minorities, women and non-minority men.”

The HP grants are designed to address the national need for more students to pursue and complete high-quality, high-tech undergraduate degree programs in engineering, computer science, information systems and information technology.

Purdue will receive $280,000, primarily in equipment such as wireless tablet PCs, wide-format printers and high-power “Blade” workstations accessible from anywhere on campus.

The project has four major elements:

• A digital classroom. HP will provide 30 tablet PCs needed for the classroom. The computers, which have swiveling monitors, enable users to draw sketches using a penlike stylus and are well-suited for interactive, collaborative learning.
• A design laboratory for student collaborations that has 16 large-screen monitors. Students will hook up to their laptops for homework, projects and lab exercises.
• A dedicated server containing 16 Blade computers to be used by students for classwork.
• Resources to improve the project’s effectiveness, including tablet PCs, a digital projector and a large-format printer for posters.

“Innovation is key to expanding education opportunity, and HP is privileged to collaborate with educators around the world who are committed to exploring the exciting possibilities that exist at the intersection of teaching, learning and technology,” said Jim Vanides, worldwide program manager for HP Global Social Investments.

The teaching approach is consistent with the collaborative aspects of EPICS, or Engineering Projects in Community Service, co-founded by Leah Jamieson, Purdue’s John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering.

The EPICS program creates teams of undergraduates who earn academic credit for multiyear, multidisciplinary projects that solve engineering- and technology-based challenges for community service and educational organizations.

“I would imagine the success of EPICS was a factor in Purdue being chosen for this highly competitive grant,” Allebach said.

A major goal of the HP-funded work is to develop concepts that can be adopted by other institutions, he said.

The first classes under the new cohort model will be taught in spring or fall of 2010. Nine faculty members from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering are involved in REACH: Allebach, Mireille Boutin, Cordelia Brown, Cheng-Kok Koh, James Krogmeier, George Lee, David Love, Yung-Hsiang Lu and David Meyer.

The project includes a precollege outreach component, making the digital classroom available to participating high school students. The REACH program works closely with Purdue’s Minority in Engineering Program and the Women in Engineering Program in their summer camp activities.

Worldwide, HP is investing more than $17 million in mobile technology, cash and professional development as part of the global 2009 HP Innovations in Education grant initiative. This initiative follows HP’s five-year, $60 million investment in HP Technology for Teaching grants to more than 1,000 schools and universities in 41 countries.

More information about the 2009 HP Innovations in Education initiative and other global social investments is available at http://www.hp.com/go/grants

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University ranked 22nd among the nation’s public universities and 61st among all universities, according to U.S. News & World Report magazine rankings released Thursday (Aug. 20).

Purdue University ranked 22nd (up from 26th in 2008) among the nation's public universities and 61st (up from 66th in 2008) among all universities.

The ranking is a move up from Purdue’s ranking of 26th last year. Purdue ranked 61st among all universities, tied with Clemson University, Fordham University, Texas A&M University and University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. This also is an improvement for Purdue, which ranked 66th last year.

“These rankings reflect our continued commitment to the student experience. It has been a year since we adopted our New Synergies strategic plan, and these rankings show that it is working,” President France A. Córdova said. “We are focusing our efforts on student success, and it is paying off. Students from across the nation and around the world know that when they come to Purdue, they will receive a high quality education due to the outstanding work of our faculty and staff.”

Factors that helped Purdue move up in the rankings are higher graduation rates and more classes with fewer students, Córdova said. She also noted that the alumni giving rate increased from 16 percent to 18 percent.

In the “Programs to Look For” category, Purdue is among 14 public and private universities cited for the quality of its internship programs, 24 cited for their first-year experience, and 22 cited for writing in the disciplines.

“It’s exciting and rewarding to see that the plans we have put in place to improve the academic experience of our students is being recognized,” said Randy Woodson, executive vice president for academic affairs and provost.

“The improved rankings, while gratifying, are not the goal. The goal is to make a difference for students, and the rankings are just a reflection of the fact that we are making strides on that front.”

Purdue’s College of Engineering tied for ninth nationally among doctoral-granting universities, sharing the spot with Cornell University and University of Texas-Austin. The college also ranked ninth last year.

The Krannert School of Management shared the 21st position with Georgetown University, Pennsylvania State University and University of Washington among doctoral-granting universities. Krannert has consistently been included in the top 25, ranking 17th last year and 21st in 2007.

Specialty programs in both management and engineering also ranked among the top five in several categories.

Among engineering specialties, four Purdue schools placed in the top five nationally: biological/agricultural, No. 2; industrial/manufacturing, No. 3; aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical, No. 4; and civil, tied at No. 5 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Purdue’s Krannert School had two top five specialty rankings: No. 4 in productions/operations management, and No. 4 in quantitative analysis and methods, tied with University of California-Berkeley.

The data for determining the nation’s best institutions of higher education come from questionnaires U.S. News sends to all accredited four-year colleges and universities. The magazine then determines its rankings based on measures that fall into seven broad categories: assessment by administrators at peer institutions; retention of students; faculty resources; student selectivity; financial resources; alumni giving; and “graduation rate performance,” the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do.

The magazine bases its specialty rankings on a spring 2009 survey of deans and department heads at peer institutions. The schools receiving the most votes are listed.

Information on the rankings can be found at the U.S.News & World Report Web site at http://www.usnews.com/. The magazine’s college guidebook, “America’s Best Colleges,” contains a directory of the more than 1,400 institutions.

More on Purdue’s past U.S. News and other rankings is available online at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/ranking.html.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University on Wednesday (Feb. 25) announced that 10 students face disciplinary action stemming from cheating allegations.

Steve Akers, the university’s executive associate dean of students, said an investigation was launched after university officials became aware that some students enrolled in a sophomore-level engineering class may have cheated on a test. There are 184 students in the class.

“Following a weeklong investigation, 10 students enrolled in the ECE 270 engineering course have been cited for academic dishonesty,” Akers said. “A letter has been sent to those students notifying them of the potential penalties, which will be consistent with the university’s code of conduct.”

Akers said that there are a variety of possible disciplinary measures the university could impose. The professor could give them a score of zero on the exam or a failing grade for the course. The Office of the Dean of Students also may impose sanctions, including probation, suspension or expulsion.

On Wednesday (Feb. 25) it was announced during the class that the investigation was concluded, he said.

“This incident has cast a cloud over hardworking students who are here to earn a Purdue degree with honesty and integrity,” Akers said. “Cheating is not tolerated and will be punished because to do anything less would be a disservice to all our students.”