Faculty Cluster Hires

Cluster Areas

Click on the cluster area listed below to learn more:

Biosciences and Engineering

Energy Sciences and Technology

Engineering for Extreme Events

Information and Decision Sciences

Engineering for Sustainability

Synopsis: The merging of engineering disciplines with life sciences is critical to addressing the increasing challenges of treating an aging population and developing the tools for addressing new diseases and other health threats. This cluster will strive to transform biological sciences with the engineering perspective.

Introduction: The scale and complexity of today’s biomedical research problems increasingly demand that scientists move beyond the confines of their own discipline and explore new organizational models for team-based science. Biological sciences are being transformed by the thrust toward developing a core set of fundamental principles or laws that govern biological processes and phenomena. This effort is being supported by a significant influx of ideas and methodologies from mathematics, physics, and engineering that have a more analytical basis. In its recent roadmap, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) noted that it is necessary to stimulate new ways of combining skills and disciplines in the physical and biological sciences to continue to advance the field. By leveraging programs in fields such as molecular biology, bioinformatics, biochemistry, and veterinary medicine here at Iowa State University, there are unique opportunities for developing novel interdisciplinary programs in biosciences and engineering.

Examples of Areas of Interest:

• Biomaterials
  As noted in a recent National Academy of Sciences report, the future development of biomaterials and medical devices requires the integration of active, interactive, and functional components. Drug delivery technologies cut across all areas of the report—in wound care and tissue engineering as well as vaccine delivery against infectious diseases and functional barriers for environmental factors. To enable rapid and innovative development of biomaterials, new processes will be required to transition ideas into products. In response to this heightened complexity, producing these new materials and devices will require a systems integration approach to combine multiple functions to achieve the intended goal of better health and well-being.
  
  
• Systems biology and informatics
  The goal of modern systems biology is to understand physiology and disease from the level of molecular pathways, regulatory networks, cells, tissues, organs, and ultimately the whole organism. As now employed, "systems biology" encompasses many approaches for probing and understanding biological complexit and studies of organisms from bacteria to man. A similar paradigm exists for engineering complex systems, e.g., “atoms to airplanes.” The “omics” (the bottom-up approach) focuses on the identification and global measurement of molecular components. Modeling (the top-down approach) attempts to form integrative (across scales) models of human physiology and disease. Currently, such modeling focuses on relatively specific questions at particular scales (e.g., at the pathway or organ levels). An intermediate approach, with the potential to bridge "omics" and "modeling," is to generate profiling data from high-throughput experiments designed to incorporate biological complexity at multiple levels: multiple interacting active pathways, multiple intercommunicating cell types, and multiple different environments. A similar challenge occurs in engineering, identifying pathways of how materials, microstructure, processing variables, component design, and manufacturing “communicate” with each other to ultimately define performance.

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Synopsis: Developing a technological framework for energy security requires an interdisciplinary engineering program that addresses a broad range of issues from alternative sources of energy that are environmentally and economically viable to more efficient use of conventional sources and innovative public policies.

Introduction: Energy production, sustainable energy, and energy storage and distribution are critical engineering technologies of national and international importance to insure a high quality of life, economic prosperity, and secure societies. The College of Engineering is well poised to make major contributions to achieving such an infrastructure by the efforts of this cluster. By leveraging our collaborations with a seamless interaction with Ames Laboratory supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, we are in a unique position to further our national leadership among academic institutions in energy sciences and technologies. When coupled with other programs and centers of excellence at ISU, such as the Iowa Energy Center, the Center for Building Energy Research, the Office of Biorenewables Programs, the Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies, and the Center for Solar Energy Research, we have a strong infrastructure at ISU to serve as a foundation for advancing energy research. The broad range of faculty already participating in numerous interdisciplinary programs with a strong track record of funding and scholarship further support this activity.

Examples of Areas of Interest:

• Energy production and sustainability
  Developing alternative energy sources in areas such as biorenewables and solar energy requires a broad-based, systematic approach. ISU has the potential of further providing national and international leadership by virtue of current expertise in a diverse range of energy-related technologies. This cluster would overlap with other areas such as the Engineering for Sustainability cluster to address, for example, the technologies required to reduce the cost of building a cellulose-to-ethanol plant by 10-fold. Examining the resource life-cycle from raw materials to production in a sustainable fashion demands a highly interdisciplinary engineering program.
  
  
• Energy storage and distribution
  The development of inexpensive, potentially inexhaustible, and environmentally friendly energy sources is only a part of the solution for energy independence. Highly efficient and reliable energy storage and distribution methods will also be required. This research will address the systems required to solve these highly complex and interrelated problems, ranging from discovering new materials for energy storage to establishing a framework for having an efficient energy distribution system. We will develop collaborative programs that address these issues from a multiscale modeling and experimental perspective.

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Synopsis: A recent editorial in Nature noted that "disaster reduction has an immense social dimension–people can be protected only as part of a broader fight against poverty." It is critical that we implement an engineering science framework for preparing, responding to, remediating, and rapidly recovering our critical infrastructure systems after extreme events.

Introduction: Iowa State University will be recognized worldwide for leadership in engineering for extreme events because of the high value and impact of its research and education in the discovery and application of sciences and technologies related to disaster prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery (including rapid reconstruction). A disaster occurs when buildings, bridges, products, processes, and critical infrastructures fail with serious consequences in response to exposure to a harsh environment (e.g., tornado, earthquake, tsunami, high temperature, explosion, denial of service attacks). Every imaginable disaster, whether it actually occurs or not, is an extreme event. The primary objective of this cluster is to investigate the science and technologies required to prevent such extreme events (disasters) from occurring and to minimize their impact on society if the event does occur. The goal is to minimize loss of life and capability as well as protect property and critical infrastructures. Several research units at ISU are already addressing important aspects of engineering for extreme events. These include the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, the Center for Transportation Research and Engineering, the Wind Simulation and Testing Laboratory, the Electric Power Research Center, the Information Assurance Center, the Institute for Food Safety and Security, and the Ames Laboratory.

Examples of Areas of Interest:

• Critical infrastructure and product design and safety
  The development of critical infrastructure and products that either prevent or survive extreme events requires interdisciplinary approaches. Critical infrastructures include, for example, buildings, roads, bridges, electric power grids, the Internet, water supplies and distribution, and food production and distribution. Products include, for example, gas turbines, airplanes, and automobiles. This research will build on existing strengths that include prevention of critical product failures and life prediction (e.g., jet engines); safety, durability, and rapid construction of buildings, roads, and bridges; extreme loads such as those due to wind, earthquakes, and blast; electric power infrastructure reliability; and Internet security.
  
  
• Recovery and mitigation
  In spite of innovative prevention and protection strategies for extreme events, these events will unfortunately occur and produce disruptions in information technology and transportation systems, commerce, agriculture, and individual lives. Rapid recovery and mitigation from extreme events will therefore also unfortunately be necessary. The engineering for extreme events faculty will enhance ISU strengths in disaster mitigation, response, and recovery. These areas include rapid reconstruction of buildings, roads, and bridges; restoration of electric power grids and communication systems; re-establishment of water and food supplies; and complete environmental remediation of the disaster's effects. The research will address the administrative, physical, and information infrastructures required to assure rapid recovery.

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Synopsis: Information technology has become the prime enabler for nearly all technological transformations and innovations that impact the human condition. IT has impact beyond computing by providing interfaces to nearly inexhaustible sources of data and providing analytic means for leveraging that data. This cluster will lead efforts in cyberinfrastructure, data science and informatics, and information networks.

Introduction: New IT platforms have made processing, manipulating, storing, and transferring large data sets inexpensive and fast while advances in sensor, actuator, and wireless technologies have led to significant increases in the functionality, flexibility, mobility and ubiquity of connectivity. The convolution of these abilities has spawned new enterprises and endeavors. Examples include multidisciplinary and geographically diverse research groups producing large data sets to enable scientific discovery; informatics techniques for the design of new materials (material informatics); large sets of independent agents executing global objectives (cooperative behavior); and monitoring of critical infrastructures. New challenges include developing methods to manage large data sets to produce meaningful inferences, paradigms for dynamic data-driven applications, and methodologies for real-time distributed decision making with information constraints. This cluster will support an engineering cyberinfrastructure for research and education while leveraging interdisciplinary programs at ISU–the Virtual Reality Applications Center; the Center for Computational Intelligence, Learning and Discovery; the Information Assurance Center; and the Information Infrastructure Institute.

Examples of Areas of Interest:

• Data science and informatics for engineering
  Data science and informatics efforts will define and build paradigms to manage and utilize large data sets. This research will emphasize the discovery of meaningful patterns and inferences from the data and further guide the data acquisition and engineering process. Engineering informatics is an emerging field addressing topics such as the theoretical foundations for the representation and manipulation of advanced data types (e.g., temporal, spatial, and image data; textual data; materials data; chemical compounds; sequences), data/knowledge calibration and validation; and handling and visualization of uncertainty in the underlying data. This research will also address the analysis of science databases and information resources.
  
  
• Information networks
  Research on information networks efforts will build and analyze interconnections of large numbers of agents that share and communicate information, as well as make decisions based on the information. This effort may address sensor networks, optimal strategies for the information network architecture and related decision making, and understanding such networks in naturally occurring systems. One example is in the area of food safety and security, which will build on ISU’s world-class expertise in food safety, information science, human-computer interaction, and virtual engineering.
  
  
• Cyberinfrastructure
  Cyberinfrastructure efforts will define and build systems that allow interoperability within and between application infrastructures that ensure the integrity of data and information. This will be accomplished while providing easy access that facilitates enhanced collaboration over time, distance, and disciplines. One of its main emphases will be infrastructure for the knowledge society.

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Synopsis: Technology has enabled industrial societies to greatly improve their quality of life; however, the resulting rates of resource depletion and environmental impacts cannot be sustained in the long term. This cluster will address the engineering science and educational programs required to deploy new technologies that are far more sustainable from materials and energy standpoints.

Introduction: As human populations grow, it is increasingly challenging to provide the basic necessities (e.g., food, clean water, and clean air) to developing societies while also providing technological societies with the energy and carbon necessary to maintain high standards of living. The challenge increases as nonindustrial societies transition to more energy-intensive technological societies. This is a global challenge, with deep implications for the U.S. and Iowa. For example, one strategy in developing sustainable processes is to use renewable resources. ISU is well positioned to lead the nation in transitioning from an extractive, hydrocarbon-based industrial society into a sustainable industrial society based on renewable sources of carbon from biomass and on renewable energy from a wide variety of sources. ISU is also well positioned to address issues of improving production, conversion, and consumer product efficiencies, which are key tenants of sustainable societies. Engineering for sustainability will build upon these strengths and provide rich opportunities for interdisciplinary research and education. Achieving these goals requires contributions from across the engineering enterprise by scientists and practitioners who seriously consider the long-range impacts of their technologies on global energy and material depletion.

Examples of Areas of Interest:

• Biorenewable resources and bioeconomy
  Bioeconomy research addresses the national challenge of reducing dependence on imported petroleum and the pending global crisis of greenhouse gas emissions. Civilizations, like living organisms, are dependent on sources of both energy and carbon to grow and thrive. We have several alternatives to fossil energy; however, only biomass offers a renewable source of carbon-based building blocks, which are currently obtained from petroleum. The emerging bioeconomy will convert biologically derived resources into biobased products, including transportation fuels, commodity chemicals, high-value materials, and energy. Advances in the bioeconomy will require systems approaches, in which engineers work with plant scientists, agronomists, biological and physical scientists, and economists to devise new ways to produce and process biorenewable resources and find new ways to use the resulting products.
  
  
• Environmentally benign systems
  Motivated by both economic and ecological concerns, improving the sustainability of systems is a rapidly growing concern with industry, government, and the public. This is true for systems in a broad range of areas, including manufacturing, agriculture, and both public and private services. Achieving sustainability involves reducing material and energy consumption per unit of production. For sustainable manufacturing (i.e., green manufacturing), as well as for sustainable systems in general, this involves taking a systems view and integrating people, materials, information, equipment, and energy. Improving system sustainability poses numerous challenges this research will address: substituting information for material and/or energy, closing the loop on supply chains to include remanufacturing and recycling, and providing economic justification so that industry adopts sustainable practices from a profit motive rather than only in response to regulation.

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