The School of Computing and Engineering together with the UMKC College of Arts & Sciences hosted a reception in honor of Andress Kernick, an engineer whose career spanned more than 43 years. Mr. Andress Kernick donated $1.7 million to SCE and the College of Arts & Sciences to fund The Andress Kernick Renewable Energy & Environmental Research Fund. Mr. Kernick’s generous donation will allow SCE and A&S to enhance existing and create new innovative research related to the areas of renewable energy and the environment. We extremely proud that he choose our school to administer The Andress Kernick Renewable Energy & Environmental Research Funds. See the UMKC Press Release for more details.
NIH has awarded a 2-year SBIR project to Midwest Psychiatric Research Group, to which Drs. Dinakar and Lee will serve as subcontractors. UMKC’s share of the $520K budget is $167K. The project title is “An Intelligent On-line System for Enhanced Recruitment of Patients for Clinical Research” and its start date is September 1, 2009.
UMKC civil engineering students installed a rain gauge for the stormwater project funded by USEPA. The demonstration area for rain gardens and stormwater BMPs is bounded by Troost, the Paseo, 75th Street and 79th Street in Kansas City, MO. Prof. O’Bannon is directing the project. UMKC is providing on-the-ground monitoring for the demonstration project. The group's responsibilities include flow monitoring, water quality monitoring, soil infiltration studies, lot and street assessments, rain gauging and performance measures of the green solutions. These represent real implementations in a real neighborhood. Consequently, in addition to the ongoing surveys [see photograph at right], we also attend neighborhood association meetings, and meetings focused on the project hosted by Cindy Circo, Councilwoman for the 5th District. The other participants of the USEPA project are TetraTech (project management), Mid-America Regional Council (communications and education), University of Alabama (Dr. Bob Pitt, a nationally-recognized green solutions expert) and Bergmann Associates (modeling).
Dr. Wang Yu-Ping received his second NIH grant under the Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA) program. Together with another of his recent NSF grant, the total funding for his work is nearly $1.2 million. This award is for $229,519 for the project entitled Accurate detection of chromosomal abnormalities with multi-color image processing.
SCE faculty obtained important information on P.E. licensure and had an opportunity to discuss with the 2009-2010 NSPE President Samuel W. Grossman, P.E., F.NSPE, trends in engineering and computer science related to pipeline, curriculum, research and licensure.
Later in the afternoon, a smaller goup of SCE faculty presented overviews of their research and highlighted some fun SCE faculty outreach activities which included a radio show and our involvement in the upcoming American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) national conference which will be held in Kansas City in late October 2009.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has approved $40,000 for an Early Concept Grant for EAGER: Improving Pedestrian Safety Using Pervious Concrete to Reduce Slip-Related Falls, beginning January 2010. This one-year project will provide support for one graduate student and enable the PI’s, Dr. Greg King and Dr. John Kevern, to advance their concept in an effort to seek additional, more extensive funding in the future.
Pervious concrete is becoming a widespread stormwater management tool, especially in cold climates, for its ability to reduce stormwater volume and quantity of pollutants contained therein. Some large municipalities such as Minneapolis and Chicago have begun installing entire pervious concrete roads to help manage flooding.
In the third-floor Human Motion Laboratory at the UMKC School of Computing and Engineering (SCE), a research subject adorned with reflective body markers and electromyography (EMG) sensors walks across four metal plates as cameras record his movements. Assistant Professors of Mechanical Engineering Trent Guess and Greg King watch as the subject’s movements are projected onto a computer screen.
This state-of-the-art equipment exists thanks to a $263,685 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled “Major Research Instrumentation: Acquisition of an Experimental Platform to Support Research and Educational Activities in Human Motion”. Each year, the National Science Foundation receives about 44,000 competitive requests for funding, and accepts only 11,500.
See UMKC Press Release -Balanced Among the Disiciplines: UMKC Human Motion Laboratory supports interdisciplinary research for pictures and more details.
