Carnegie Award toBolster Nuclear Awareness

The research newsletter of Stevens Institute of Technology Fall 2017

IMPACT

According to one NCAA survey, nearly one-quarter of student athletes experience concussions during their collegiate careers.

Supported by a $500,000 National Science Foundation award, Stevens mechanical engineering professor Mehmet Kurt wants to protect them.

Kurt and the students in his Stevens lab integrate three types of data to help researchers and manufacturers understand brain protection: neuromechanics imaging, computational modeling and instrumentation.

“The shielding presence of the skull is a major challenge for mechanically accessing the brain and measuring its mechanical properties,” Kurt explains. “We develop neuroimaging tools to measure the mechanical properties of the human brain in vivo.”

Kurt’s primary neuroimaging tool is magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), a non-invasive medical imaging technique that uses a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine to measure the stiffness of soft tissues and view microstructural components of neuronal tissues.

To complement those measurements, his team collaborates with Stanford University to deploy “amplified MRI,” a new technique that studies the motion of the brain in response to cardiac beats and extrapolates to larger impacts.

The team then creates state-of-the-art computational models of the brain, integrating data from previous medical imaging experiments.

Real-world helmet data to improve the datasetThe final component in the Stevens approach is real-world data: Kurt requested and received permission to outfit Stevens women’s soccer players with head-impact sensors that collect and measure real-time data during practices and games. That data will further refine his

team’s computational models, which could then be extremely useful in the subsequent development and refinement of helmets and other protective technologies.

“I am proud of our group’s multi-disciplinary approach in tackling this problem,” summarizes Kurt. “This is what differentiates us in the field.”

Kurt is also the recipient of separate NSF support for a collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop methodologies for characterization of the nonlinear dynamical properties of biomaterials.

Novel Imaging Techniques to Prevent Concussions, Aid Helmet DesignMRI measurements bolstered by computational models hold promise, receive NSF support

A New Oxygen-Gold Structure

Artificial Intelligence Advances

INSIDE HIGHLIGHTS: stevens.edu/research

A joint program funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded a trio of Stevens faculty researchers $500,000. The award will enable the researchers to broadly assess and redefine U.S. civil defense, studying how to communicate the latest science and technology about the threat of nuclear terrorism as well as measures to take if a nuclear event occurs.

“We sought out projects that could help reduce nuclear risk by demonstrating new approaches to existing problems, forging new and important collaborations, and producing ideas that governments and industry could act on,” said Emma Belcher, director of MacArthur’s Nuclear Challenges program.

Stevens professors Alex Wellerstein, Kristyn Karl and Julie Pullen will rely upon a diverse advisory board of defense, academic, technology and artistic professionals to seed sub-projects, including public education campaigns, virtual reality (VR) simulations, games, apps and other communications.

Improved science and increasingly detailed simulations allow for new forms of communication, which can be effective in delineating

best practices when preparing and planning for modern-day nuclear scenarios.

“A modern-day nuclear incident would very likely take place on the ground level, on a very local scale,” explains Pullen, an earth scientist and expert on nuclear and radiological effects. “And the latest science shows it is survivable — if the public knows to shelter in place.”

Major components of the project include:

• virtual reality simulations developed by Stevens faculty working in audio, VR, graphics and game development;

• detailed nuclear-winter simulators, building upon Wellerstein’s popular NUKEMAP casualty-visualization tool; and

• an examination of behavioral changes that may result from nuclear risk communications, with a particular focus on millennial-generation subjects.

A kickoff workshop is scheduled for spring of 2018, to be held at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY • stevens.edu/research

Carnegie Nuclear Awareness Grant

New Oxygen-Gold Structure Discovery

Interactions between oxygen and gold are fundamentally important in multiple and diverse areas of science and technology.

Stevens professors Fei Tian and Simon Podkolzin recently discovered that, in contrast with regular gold surfaces, oxygen interacts with gold nanoparticles differently and

forms a special structure in which two oxygen atoms are separated by a single gold atom as Au-O-Au-O-Au. The discovery will advance the development of improved catalysts with gold nanoparticles in chemical and petroleum-refining industries; improve techniques for bioimaging of living cells; lead to better understanding of spin-flip scattering processes of itinerant electrons in solid-state physics; advance optical detection methods at the single-molecule level; advance the development of better lithium batteries; and improve understanding of oxygen-gold interactions in other areas of science and technology.

Professors Tian and Podkolzin reported their discovery in the article “Observation and Identification of an Atomic Oxygen Structure on Catalytic Gold Nanoparticles” in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, the journal of the German Chemical Society, in September 2017. The study was co-authored by graduate students Kai Liu, Tao Chen, Shuyue He and Jason Robbins, and the work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund.

BUILDING RESEARCH MOMENTUMIn spring, Stevens unveiled the Hanlon Laboratory for Financial Analytics and Data Visualization, featuring Oblong Industries technologies deployed by NASA and Boeing.

As we progress through the fall semester, Stevens’ research continues to rise in profile and impact in imperative areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, data science and healthcare. We also continue to receive grants from the NSF, NIH, DoD and other key agencies for work on projects that develop real-world applications and which address pressing problems and challenges in our effort to ensure a safer, more advanced world for us all.

Here are a few recent examples:

• A Stevens team has been awarded a Carnegie-MacArthur grant to investigate and disseminate better civil defense planning and messaging, so that citizens will act safely in the event of a catastrophic incident.

• In the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, scientists in our Davidson Laboratory continue to produce key storm surge and flood modeling data and forecasts that help inform emergency preparedness in New York City, Philadelphia and New Jersey. The National Weather Service and NOAA also utilize Stevens’ forecasts in their official data streams.

• A team of our graduate students and faculty is working with Hackensack Meridian Health’s Hackensack University Medical Center to develop a new test that promises to identify dangerous bacterial and viral infections more quickly than currently available methods.

• A Stevens’ mechanical engineer is developing new ways of imaging and modeling the brain — research that may lead to the development of safer helmets.

• A Stevens physicist has created a bold new way of detecting bioterror and toxic emissions at a distance, using spectroscopy, supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

I am excited to present a sample of Stevens’ research to you, and encourage you to read about all these efforts and others in this issue and online at stevens.edu/research.

Have a wonderful autumn!

Mo Dehghani, Ph.D.Vice Provost of Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

How StevensResearch EnhancesOur Safety

STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY • stevens.edu/research

With hackers, crackers and intelligence services on the loose, building better passwords is a constant challenge for everyone from the casual social media user to national governments. Most users’ passwords suffer from a number of weaknesses, including predictability, redundant use and excessive brevity.

Now a new Stevens research project led by computer science chair Giuseppe Ateniese demonstrates how artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be harvested to both crack and test the security of passwords. The advance holds promise for intelligence and counterterrorism agencies, as well as for consumers.

Ateniese and his team trained a GAN (generative adversarial network) to rapidly learn all the most common human password strategies — dictionary words, numerical sequences and the like — from databases of tens of millions of known, leaked common and complex passwords and simple variations of them. Then the researchers advanced the project a notch higher: they freed up the network to create its own rules and patterns from that training data.

That’s precisely what the AI did.

“In some cases, our network could guess nearly half of the passwords in the test set, but even when it could not, the guesses looked remarkably like real user passwords,” said Ateniese.

The machine learning tool, which the Stevens team is calling PassGAN, is more likely than existing hacking tools to crack passwords that have not yet been leaked or broken, Ateniese notes.

“Let’s say you have a group of terrorists communicating, and you need to crack a message or get into their encrypted files in a hurry,” he explains. “This tool is going to be of great help in that sort of case.”

An AI-powered password checker is also under development.

Leveraging AI forPassword Security,Counterterrorism

Finding and identifying an infection is a tricky challenge on the best of days for doctors and hospitals, and rapid identification of the guilty bacterial or viral agents can be the difference between life and death.

Now a Stevens team, working with Hackensack University Medical Center, is working to refine a new way to do it more quickly and accurately.

“The current technology takes anywhere from one to three days to identify an infection,” explains Associate Dean Matt Libera, a materials science professor and principal investigator on the project. “We think we can help improve this process dramatically.”

Microgel tethering DNA probesThe new detection technology works like this: RNA is extracted from drops of blood sampled from a patient, and the extracted

To Quickly Detect Dangerous Infections, Stevens Tests Microgel-Based Technology

RNA solution is sprinkled onto a glass microscope slide arrayed with tiny dots of specially designed, formulated and patterned microgel.

Within each spot of gel, tiny bits of DNA known as molecular beacons — each acting as tags or probes for a specific bacterium or virus — touch the RNA solution. If the molecular beacons meet a matching piece of RNA, they glow fluorescently; the glow can be seen using a simple microscope.

While similar techniques have been around for a while, explains Libera, they haven’t worked well — chiefly because molecular beacon DNA probes don’t function optimally when attached to a microscope slide. To get around this slippery issue, the team developed and refined new types of microgels, manufactured and patterned in arrays using electron beams, that share properties of both liquids and solids: firm

and dense in the center, wispy and more liquid at the edges.

“The DNA probes we use get tethered to the softest, most liquid-like edge of the microgels,” says Libera, “where they work most effectively.”

Rapid results, new virus tests Total time for a test result, if the system being developed works, will shorten dramatically.

“We’ve measured detection events as short as 20 to 30 minutes,” Libera notes.

Next Librera’s team is working on a companion project to try to identify viruses such as H1N1 and other flu strains. With more than 100 subtypes of virus, quick detection is important, and Stevens’ NASBA — nucleic acid sequence-based amplification — approach may turn out to be key to quickly amplifying and detecting them in the hospital environment.

With an eye toward better nutritional monitoring and care, a new Stevens project hopes to unobtrusively yet accurately track nutritional intake using off-the-shelf wearable technologies.

“It’s annoying and difficult for people to monitor themselves,” explains computer science professor Samantha Kleinberg, primary investigator on the National Science Foundation-supported project. “We do a bad job of estimating our food and drink intake.”

Kleinberg, an NSF CAREER Award recipient, approaches the challenge by mining audio and motion sensor data collectedby wearable tech. Kleinberg and her students tested earbuds, smartwatches and Google Glass headsets to monitor almost 72 hours’ worth of chewing and eating sounds and motions — more than 17,000 chews in all.

The devices worked well in concert: the earbud’s microphones helped the team detect and filter out non-chewing noises, while the smartwatches tracked lifting and cutting motions and the Google Glass sensors captured mouth and head motions. Audio and motion sensor input, when combined, was able to estimate food type with 83 percent accuracy.

Kleinberg’s team was then able to accurately and automatically estimate quantities of food consumed using artificial intelligence, reducing errors in human self-reported estimation of quantities by more than 85 percent. That’s a strong start, says Kleinberg, toward an eventual goal of automated food detection.

“Once you know the food type, it’s easier to use combinations of audio and motion feedback to determine the amount of food eaten,” she explains. “We were able to estimate what and how much people ate with accuracy on par with humans.”

The next step will be determining exactly what and how much subjects eat, using AI to identify patterns in the data and creating nutrition logs over time.

Potential future applications of the technology, says Kleinberg, could include providing personalized food suggestions based on dietary goals and prior consumption, “such as pushing menu suggestions to a user’s smartphone when location data indicates he or she has entered a specific restaurant.”

Kleinberg and her team will next begin tracking volunteers’ eating habits outside the laboratory environment.

Researcher Taps Wearable Data to Improve Nutritional Monitoring

Dr. Samantha Kleinberg

RESEARCH NEWS & NOTES

THROUGH COLLABORATION…IMPACT • Fall 2017

Google research director Peter Norvig discussed the promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence (AI) during a springtime lecture at Stevens. Speaking in an auditorium filled

to capacity, Norvig touched upon a range of topics, including privacy and security concerns raised by new AI technologies.

Computer science professor Georgios Portokalidis was awarded $1.5 million by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for two projects. The ONR effort is a collaboration with Brown and Columbia universities to debloat systems and other large-scale software in an effort to make them less susceptible to cyberthreats. In the DARPA-supported project, Portokalidis will investigate the tracking, utilization and security of device data.

Computer science professor Eric Koskinen received $1.5 million from ONR to support new research into automatic software verification. Koskinen also brings ongoing work in complexity analysis supported by DARPA to Stevens from Yale University, where he served as a faculty member and research scientist.

Biomedical engineering professor Xiaojun Yu received a four-year, $1.42 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) award for his project “Biodegradable Matrices for Bone Healing.”

Chemical engineering and materials science professor Woo Lee received a $1.14 million NIH grant for his project “Ex Vivo Culture Platform Validation for Preservation of Patient-Derived Multiple Myeloma Cells.”

Center for Healthcare Innovation (CHI) director Peter Tolias received a two-year, $730,000 extension to the university’s drug-development program from Cepter Biopartners. Cepter also made a separate $85,000 gift to Stevens in support of graduate student and postdoctoral training in CHI’s Biotechnology and Drug Discovery Lab.

Music and technology professor Rob Harari and Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE) co-directors Gail Baxter and Mercedes McKay were awarded $450,000 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a high school curriculum aimed at teaching STEM concepts through audio

and video projects. The curriculum will be specifically designed to engage young women and ethnically diverse students in STEM learning and career paths.

Mechanical engineering professor Brendan Englot received additional NSF support for his work with autonomous robots (see the Spring 2017 issue of IMPACT). The three-year, $350,000 project will

apply machine learning techniques to robot mapping and exploration challenges. Chemistry professor Yong Zhang received a $395,000 NIH grant for his project

“Metal-Mediated Biological HNO Formation, Conversion, and Detection.”

Electrical and computer engineering professor Yu-Dong Yao and collaborator Yingying Chen, now at Rutgers University, were awarded approximately $200,000 by the U.S. Department of Defense

to develop secure ad hoc mobile networks with military and other applications for mobile devices, drones, vehicles and aircraft.

NSF awarded systems professor Paul Grogan $120,000 to investigate the use of game theory and collective design techniques when planning space, aerospace and defense systems.

Chemistry professor Abhishek Sharma was awarded a grant by the Susan G. Komen Foundation to perform three years of research into developing novel anti-breast cancer agents. The work will involve development of organic compounds that may be capable of effectively blocking the activity of estrogen receptors in drug-resistant forms of breast cancer.

Professor EH Yang published three patents, for “Popcorn-like Growth of Graphene-Carbon Nanotubes Multi-stack Hybrid for Energy Storage Applications,” “Direct and Pre-

patterned Synthesis of 2-Dimensional Heterostructures” and “High-Throughput Graphene Printing and Selective Transfer Using a Localized Laser Heating Technique.”

In collaboration with the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and with the support of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Stevens physics professor Svetlana Malinovskaya is developing a new theoretical model that may lead to a portable device to detect poisonous and hazardous contaminants in the air from a safe distance. The project has applications for homeland security as well as public safety — for example, detecting gas or chemical leaks before they are otherwise evident.

Malinovskaya hopes to deploy carefully timed, low-intensity laser pulses that temporarily excite molecules in the air, then reflect back to a source device, accumulating a coherent signal that can be used to identify the chemical signature of unusual or hazardous airborne substances.

Malinovskaya and her team will work with NAVAIR collaborators who will perform optical proof-of-concept experiments in a federal laboratory.

Stevens Hazmat-Detection Project Receives ONR Support

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Recent heavy flooding from hurricanes like Harvey, Sandy and Katrina has trained renewed focus on urban resilience planning to address such needs as heavy rainfall, storm surges and floods.

And Stevens Institute of Technology is leading the way in the creation of new green infrastructure that can control heavy storms and filter out some of their most deleterious components.

Hydrology professor Elizabeth Fassman-Beck joined Stevens in 2013 after ten years at the University of Auckland, where she designed and constructed five “green roofs” and authored a first-of-its-kind manual for green-roof design. That work helped spark an entire green-roof industry in New Zealand, and growing international interest.

Now she has brought the concept to the metropolitan New York City region, and urban planners from Borneo to Germany have taken notice.

Sponges and filters of natural and engineered materialsIn essence, green roofs are engineered systems that integrate plants, layers of non-soil media and drainage systems to capture rainwater before it can overflow municipal sewage systems.

“On the surface, they look like gardens, but there’s much more going on underneath,” she explains. “There are functional layers within the embedded systems, and while they all have similar objectives, they are also different from one another. They enable us to test combinations of materials, examine how different media affect water quality, and measure how water moves once it is deposited as rain.”

Fassman-Beck’s latest project puts her theory to the acid test on the Stevens campus.

Overlooking Manhattan from the high rooftop of a newly constructed modular building, her new Living Laboratory is an ambitious pilot project designed to measure and demonstrate the concept of water collection and natural filtration. The complex integrates a rain garden,

bioretention plantings and sections of green roof. Stormwater will filter through the system and a set of sensors that will measure absorption, volume and — importantly — water quality over time.

In mid-sized, dense cities like Hoboken, she notes, both runoff control and contaminant control are critical.

“The sewer pipe doesn’t have capacity to carry all the water to treatment plants; when those water treatment systems were originally conceived, no one imagined there would be such a huge population buildup here. So some runoff inevitably bypasses the treatment plant and discharges directly into the Hudson River.”

The cornerstone of the systems Fassman-Beck will test will involve the mix of materials that control the volume of water.

“From an engineering standpoint, the most important design element is how you make the plant-growing media,” notes Fassman-Beck.

Up to 20 duplicate sections of green roof will enable the simultaneous testing of various recipes for plant-growing media, including mixtures of pumice, expanded clay and compost.

ABOUT STEVENSStevens Institute of Technology is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey overlooking the Manhattan skyline. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has always been the hallmark and legacy of Stevens’ education and research. A range of academic and research programming spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other fields actively advances the frontiers of science and leverages technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. Stevens is home to three national research centers of excellence as well as interdisciplinary research programs in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity; data science and information systems; complex systems and networks; financial systems and technologies; biomedical engineering, healthcare and life sciences; and resilience and sustainability. Stevens is currently in the midst of executing a 10-year strategic plan, The Future. Ours to Create., which is growing and transforming the university, further extending the Stevens legacy to create a forward-looking, far-reaching institution with global impact.

Testing Stormwater Resilience in the FieldLeading global expert on green infrastructure debuts bold pilot project

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Dr. Elizabeth Fassman-Beck designs and tests green roofs in urban environments