12-01-03
ENGINEERING RESEARCH EXPANDS AT BEHREND
Funded research activity in the School of Engineering and Engineering Technology (SEET) at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, has expanded over the past year to include twenty-five active projects that reflect more than $1.1 million in external funding. Twenty-four faculty members and many undergraduate and graduate students are involved in hands-on research projects, research centers, and spin-off companies.
"We have steadily increased our partnerships with industry through SEET's applied outreach centers," said Dr. Robert Simoneau, director of SEET. "We've partnered with fifty companies in transportation, health care, automotive, electrical, plastics, and defense industries over the past two years. We've also developed collaborations with other universities, such as Lehigh, Carnegie-Mellon, and with the College of Engineering at Penn State University Park. All of these relationships increase our opportunities for funded projects, and all of them provide great benefits for our faculty and students."
SEET's applied outreach centers include the Center for Navigation, Communication, and Information Systems (CNCIS), a unit of the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, which has received $378,923 for five grants this year. The center, led by Dr. Robert Gray, assistant professor of electrical engineering technology, conducts interdisciplinary applied research in wireless communications, global positioning systems, synthetic vision, and other associated projects. The center employs faculty researchers and graduate students in business, information technology, and engineering and engineering technology, and a number of undergraduate students as well.
Another outreach program, the SEET Applied Research and Design Center (SARDC), has received $171,426 in grant funds this year for seven projects. SARDC provides applied research and technology transfer in areas related to computer, electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. A third outreach center, the Plastics Computer-Aided Engineering Center (CAE), provides services for product and part design, process improvement, rapid prototyping, materials testing analysis, and advice on metal to plastic conversion. CAE, which is a unit of the Northwest Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center, received $56,750 for eight externally funded grants in 2003.
Funding for other research proposals came from the National Science Foundation (NSF), from the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance (PITA), and from the GE Foundation. NSF provided $244,595 for new dynamic testing equipment for materials research under the foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program, and the GE Foundation's grant completed a project designed to integrate Behrend's business and engineering learning environments. PITA funds support five research projects involving faculty, students, and industry partners that will result in the creation and transfer of new technologies involving, for example, the design of large scale elastomeric structural vibration mounts and industrial vision systems.
Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu