USU aerospace engineering graduate student Christine Case has received a fellowship from the Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium. This funding will support Case's research to improve the sensing applications for drones. "I'm very pleased to represent USU under the Utah NASA Space Grant Consortium and am honored to have received the fellowship," Case said. The consortium was founded in 1989 with a variety of goals including increasing diversity in NASA's workforce and financially supporting space-related research. Case's research will focus on developing a technology called the Flush Airdata Sensing application to measure airmass properties for drones. This will be a less intrusive method that will allow drones to measure airspeed, altitude, angle-of-attack and sideslip without changing the flight dynamics of low-speed vehicles.

Earlier this year at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington D.C., Utah State University Civil and Environmental Engineering master's student Joshua Ward received an Eisenhower Transportation Graduate Fellowship. Award amounts for the fellowship vary. Ward will receive $31,500 from the Federal Highway Administration, which will provide him a full year of funding to do transportation research. This prestigious award is only given to a select number of students from U.S. universities each year. "I've always had a goal to get a master's degree," Ward said. "And this fellowship has really helped make that possible." Ward is slated to complete his thesis later this year. His fellowship funding will support his thesis research, and he will submit a copy of his final project report to the Federal Highway Administration. Currently, he is working on two projects with the ASPIRE Engineering Research Center on campus - one looking at the electrification of transportation networking services like Uber or Lyft and one looking at electric vehicle owners and recreational road trips. He is still finalizing his thesis topic, which will build on this research. "This fellowship is a great opportunity to showcase a lot of the work that is going on at ASPIRE and at USU as well," Ward said. "It's a very great thing for our program."

Marium Rasheed, an electrical engineering Ph.D. candidate at Utah State University, was awarded a 2022 fellowship from Clean Energy Leadership Institute. The award letter indicated that Rasheed was awarded the fellowship based on her leadership and dedication to an equitable energy transition. In addition to being named a fellow, Rasheed received a scholarship to cover her program participation costs. The eight-month fellowship began in March and has multiple cohorts. Rasheed is part of the national cohort that meets virtually every week to discuss a wide variety of topics related to energy, such as markets, new technologies, policy and civic action, and deep decarbonization. There will also be monthly skills training and opportunities to build connections with the hundreds of other participants. "There is a need for an energy policy shift that focuses on justice, diversity inclusion and also equity," Rasheed said. "I think that engineers, scientists and researchers, they all need to be a part of these discussions." As an international student and a woman of color, Rasheed's intersecting identities inform the way she views issues of climate change in the world and efforts to advance carbon-neutral energy in the United States. "I work hands-on to develop clean and sustainable technology," Rasheed said. "But at the same time, I always try to think how my work is going to benefit different kinds of people around me. My adviser Dr. Regan Zane encourages students to think about the social implications of their research." Rasheed said she's excited about the opportunity the fellowship will provide her to learn more about topics like energy markets and sustainable infrastructure finance. She hopes to use what she learns from this experience to add to her Ph.D. research at Utah State University. She also wants to be exposed to new technology ideas that may play an important role in the future of clean energy. "I feel this fellowship experience will help me understand how to transform the technology prototypes that I develop into scalable and profitable products that can benefit society," she said. "My participation will also expose people throughout the United States to the research being conducted at Utah State University in the field of sustainable electrified transportation." Rasheed was previously awarded the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center's 2021-2022 Women in Energy and Climate Change Fellowship. She is the first student from Utah State University to receive the two fellowship awards.

Biological engineering student Kristine Peterson had her first peer-reviewed article published last month. Peterson is one of the co-authors for the paper "Development of Transient Recombinant Expression and Affinity Chromatography Systems for Human Fibrinogen" that was published by the International Journal of Molecular Science. The study explores how the blood protein fibrinogen, which gives blood clots structure, can be isolated and used in other applications. "This biomaterial can be used to create structures for healing, and it's compatible with our body already," Peterson said. "So if we can use it, we can create scaffolds for creating tissue on. It can be used in healing processes as well as parts of drug delivery." Peterson participated in this research project at East Carolina University as part of an Undergraduate Research Experience funded by the National Science Foundation. She worked on creating the purification system required to separate fibrinogen from the blood. For her, the most exciting part of this research is the fact that when the protein is separated, it is still viable. Participating in this project took Peterson out of her comfort zone. She encourages other students to take the leap and do the things that scare them as well. "A big part of engineering is application," she said. "The more opportunities I get to apply the things that I've learned, the more I'll be able to actually understand. While I have all this background from my undergraduate classes, the thing that's really going to move me forward is trying it out."

Researchers at Utah State University were awarded a patent this month for a control algorithm they developed to improve the process of wirelessly charging vehicles in motion. Matthew Hansen, a Ph.D. student in the College of Engineering, and his mentors Regan Zane, the director of the ASPIRE research center at USU, and Abhilash Kamineni, a USU assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, are listed as the inventors for the control algorithm on the patent application. Hansen began this research in 2019 as a senior thanks to the support of an undergraduate research grant from the College of Engineering. The work took place through the ASPIRE research center, which stands for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification. The idea to develop this control algorithm, which regulates how the active switching of power occurs while vehicles are driving, came from Kamineni. Charging vehicles in motion requires wireless power transfer. To reduce power losses and allow the vehicle, which receives the power, to regulate power transfer, active switching can be used. For active switching to be effective, there needs to be synchronization between the coil in the road that provides power and the vehicle. There also needs to be a way for the coil in the road to recognize when a vehicle is present. The system Hansen and his team developed addressed both of these issues without requiring additional, fragile hardware. "The first breakthrough was realizing that I could control switching on the roadway side with current induced by the vehicle," Hansen said. "That could also be the signal to turn on the roadway coil and synchronize the roadway coil." The new control algorithm developed from Hansen's research uses existing devices but provides a new way to address the challenges of wireless charging. Hansen said he is excited to have his efforts recognized with a patent. "It is validating that it's real," he said. "The U.S. Patent Office looked at it and decided, yes, this is a real contribution." Hansen is now a Ph.D. student and said beginning this research project as an undergraduate played an important role in helping him decide to continue his education and to remain at Utah State. "Working on this project was a lot of fun," he said. "It was really exciting to just be trying new things." The work he has done with electric transportation and wireless charging will shape a significant part of Hansen's dissertation as well as guide his next career steps after graduation.

A Utah State University College of Engineering Ph.D. student is helping research the effects of long-term space travel on the human brain, thanks to funds from NASA. Bailey McFarland is a biological engineering student working in the Brain Micro-Engineering Lab of Yu Huang, a USU assistant professor of biological engineering. McFarland and Huang are working to understand the impacts that microgravity and radiation in space have on the human brain. Their work is supported by a grant and fellowship award from NASA, which they received last summer. The money provides support to McFarland as a student and funds the research he is doing with Huang. "The brain is very sensitive and the most unique and special organ in our body and the most important by far," McFarland said. "And the uniqueness of it lends itself to some interesting problems. The award covers supplies for the lab and McFarland's stipend, student fees, and travel expenses so the researchers can travel to conferences and NASA facilities to conduct research. "We're very honored to receive this because this is a very prestigious grant and fellowship from NASA," Huang said. The team will also be able to directly work with NASA researchers, which McFarland said is one of the most valuable parts of the grant and fellowship. "I can talk to people who have spent years doing that exact thing, and through these connections, it allows for my research and the research of the lab and the research at USU to be very sharp and applicable," he said. The researchers will use brain organoids, small tissue models of human brains, to study how radiation and microgravity affect the brain as well as ways to treat damage that occurs. While space is the central focus of the project, McFarland said some of what they learn may be applicable a little closer to home in treating things like Alzheimer's and other neurological degeneration. "What's interesting about this work is that trying to prevent some of this damage to astronauts can actually help potentially answer some other questions about the brain," McFarland said. McFarland applied for the award while working on his senior design project with NASA. Now that he has received the grant to support him and his Ph.D. research, he feels like working for NASA once he graduates could be a reality. "That is something that is entirely possible now, which is amazing," McFarland said. "I would love to be able to continue to work on these questions and continue to try to develop ways to help prevent some of the damage that happens to the brain."