technizzel

In the year 2020, Jerry the average American worker, yawns and wakes up to a dark room as his alarm goes off.  Sitting up in bed, he hits a switch on the wall by his bed adjusting the opacity of his windows, to let in more light.  As he walks to the bathroom, he taps the wall causing it to start to glow and light up the room as he gets ready to go to work.

     As Jerry tries to prepare his morning breakfast before he leaves, he opens the refrigerator to find the label on the milk carton flashing, signaling that it has expired. He sits eating his milk-less breakfast, watching the character on his cereal box wave to him, and decides to check the morning news.  Jerry unfolds his newspaper, a large transparent display folded into quarters much like an old-fashioned paper newspaper. The morning news streams across the display, and an article catches his interest. He taps the headline and the article quickly expands to full size. Five minutes later, it’s time to go, so he quickly powers down the display and folds it back up, tossing it casually into his briefcase.

     As Jerry is driving to work, a small message pops up in his windshield-display, warning him about a traffic jam and offering a possible alternate route. Jerry accepts, and his gps reroutes him by changing the lit path he is following on his windshield. Jerry follows the route suggested by the map and successfully avoids the traffic jam arriving to work on time.  At work, Jerry goes into his office and turns on his desk displays.  His virtual inbox is full, but it’s time for a meeting, so with a flick of his wrist he slides his mail program aside onto a wall display to deal with later.  During a meeting, Jerry finds his attention wandering, so he takes out a pen and unravels a transparent display from the side of it, and checks his e-mail under the pretense of taking a few notes.

     Later that day, when work is finally over and Jerry heads home.  Upon arrival, he goes to his living room, and taps a panel on the wall, turning the living room windows opaque once again so he can enjoy a movie on his TV wall.

So what’s all this? A work of science fiction, a flight of fancy? Not quite. All the technological wonders utilized by Jerry are within the realm of possibility. The key? OLEDs.

What’s an OLED?                                                                       
OLED stands for organic light emitting diodes. A diode is a solid state device, which is simple a piece of hardware that contains no moving parts and is largely made up of circuitry. A diode is a semi-conductor device that only allows electricity to flow in one direction. Thus, as the name OLED implies, OLEDs are diodes that utilize a thin film of organic molecules to create light. The intensity of the light depends on the amount of electricity supplied, and the color of the light depends on the type of organic molecule used in the film.

OLEDs and Displays
The most publicized application of OLED technology is in displays. OLED displays have many advantages over LCD displays. The displays have higher contrast, lower power consumption (up to 40% right now), and, when the manufacturing technology has been fully developed, will be easier to produce than LCD displays. Using OLEDs in displays will enable the production of thinner and even flexible displays in the near future.

Thin Displays
Unlike LCD displays, OLED displays do not need a backlight, which is why they can be made much thinner. Thin OLED displays in production today are small compared to the LCD displays available. When OLED display technology becomes mature and cost-effective, it will not be difficult to imagine a home where walls can be used as interactive displays.

The 2008 Pi Mile Run generated more than $4,000, which will benefit a clean-water project in three communities in El Salvador. (large image)

As 255 Madison students and community members thundered down the Lakeshore Path on the first warm Saturday morning in April, they dodged muddy puddles and happy pedestrians out for a weekend walk along Lake Mendota.

The runners’ motivation? A worthy cause, and several hundred slices of pie waiting at the finish line.

April 5, 2008, was the 8th annual Pi Mile Run, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. This year boasted double the attendance of last year’s event, with participants running in either a 5K (3.14 miles) or 10K race.

All race proceeds go toward a clean water project in El Salvador.

Mechanical engineering student Ted Durkee, who coordinated the 2007 run, connected the honor society with the El Salvador project. Two summers ago, Durkee traveled to El Salvador to work with ENLACE, a non-profit organization that develops sustainable initiatives in El Salvador.

Currently, families in the communities of Las Delicias, Las Animas and El Rosario spend a third of their meager income trucking in water—yet, the water comes from one of the most polluted rivers in El Salvador.

During his stay in El Salvador, Durkee learned that community residents have been trying to get clean water for more than 50 years. The three communities, which combined have a population of 6,100, now are working together on their attempts to build a well water system. They finally developed formal plans in 2002.

Although the communities have the will to implement the project and ENLACE provides organizational support, they lack the finances to get the wells and pipes in place.

Biomedical engineering student Jessica Hause organized the 2008 Pi Mile Run, with help from Durkee and biomedical engineering student Sarah Steenblock. As in 2007, they again chose the Las Delicias water project as the charity to benefit from race sponsors and registration fees. “We volunteered for this because we were really excited about the opportunity to organize a community event and help fulfill a need that will directly change people’s lives,” Durkee says.

The strong turnout means Tau Beta Pi will donate about $4,000—an amount that will make a significant difference. Every $20 equals 8 feet of pipe for the well system, according to Hause.

A variety of sponsors, including URS Washington Division; Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc.; Polygon Engineering Council; Saris Cycling Group; Rudolph & Sletten Inc; Underground Printing; Fontana Sports; Montgomery Associates; and Hey and Associates Inc., also helped make the Pi Mile Run a success, says Durkee.

“We were really excited and pleasantly surprised by the generosity of our sponsors this year. That definitely had a tremendous effect on the event and enabled us to make a much bigger impact on our chosen charity,” he says.

The event drew participants at a variety of running levels. Sam Keepman, a UW-Madison sophomore, was the top male winner of the 5K at a time of 18:05. A member of the UW-Madison track team, Keepman says he participated in the race because it benefited charity and was conveniently located. “It’s my first time running this race,” he says. “I didn’t think it would be this big.”

Two other race participants were also first-time Pi Mile runners. Jessica, age 8, and Jocelyn, age 5, traveled from Fredonia, Wisconsin, to tackle the 5K along with their mother, who frequently runs races. “This is the first race they’ve run without strollers,” she says.

Jessica was all smiles about her successful day. Jocelyn was a bit tired.

Kae Yoshikawa was the top 5K female runner with a time of 22:43. Chris Dresser was the top 10K male runner at 34:28 and Jaime Kulbel was the top 10K female at 44:57.

Tokyo sits on a tectonic plate boundary, making it particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. So, for the capital and largest city of Japan, a seismic monitoring system to predict earthquakes is critical.

However, current technology can give residents only a few tens of seconds of warning that an earthquake is about to strike.

More than 6,000 miles away from Tokyo, University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering students are discussing technologies for better prediction systems—and how engineers from different disciplines could collaborate to find a solution.

The Tokyo case study is only one example of the humanitarian applications of engineering that students are investigating in the inaugural semester of the course, Introduction to Society’s Engineering Grand Challenges.

Based on challenges outlined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the UW-Madison class aims to inspire students to become engineers to improve the quality of life around the world. This semester, 98 first-year students are tackling five themes that encompass a variety of challenges facing society today.

Susan C. Hagness

Donald C. Woolston

Susan Hagness, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, conceived of the course as a way to show students the bigger picture of what engineers do for society. “The course is a combination of the NAE project and an inclination I’ve had for awhile that there are students out there who would make wonderful engineers who need to know more about the important impact engineering has in the world,” says Hagness. “It’s not about making cool high-tech gadgets. It’s more than that.”

The course reaches out to students early in their engineering education because studies suggest that students who see the role of engineering in society are more likely to stay with the field, Hagness says.

Mike Lucas is one of the first-year students in Grand Challenges. Lucas says he entered UW-Madison confident he would be an engineer, but partway through the first semester of classes, he was unsure he wanted to continue. “I was just not exposed to much engineering,” he says.

His adviser, College of Engineering Assistant Dean for Engineering General Resources Donald Woolston, encouraged Lucas to try the Grand Challenges course.

The class helped. “It gives you a good idea of what engineers do and the specifics of what the different disciplines do,” Lucas says. He says studying engineering now feels like a concrete decision and plans to pursue a degree in engineering mechanics.

The course also makes an effort to reach out to women—and nearly a quarter of the enrolled students are female. Samantha Kamin is one of them. A first-year student, Kamin was interested in engineering before taking the course, but Grand Challenges helped her pinpoint biomedical engineering as the discipline she plans to study.

The course structure offers students a taste of different engineering disciplines while enabling them to examine broad engineering issues, says Hagness. “Instead of structuring the themes based on specific NAE grand challenges, we came up with societal themes based on scale, starting with engineering challenges at the personal level and getting larger and larger,” she says.

Course sections rely on a team of faculty members who each present a theme and case studies to students, who work with two of the themes over the course of the semester.

Nicola J. Ferrier

Katherine (Trina) McMahon

Jeffrey S. Russell

Mechanical Engineering Professor Nicola Ferrier teaches students about engineering challenges that impact individuals, such as privacy, biometrics, rehabilitation engineering and assistive technologies. Civil and Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Trina McMahon and Professor Jeffrey Russell discuss sustainable engineering solutions for challenges facing the developing world, including clean water, housing and health care.

Hagness teaches the third theme, which is engineering for the “megacity” and tackles challenges such as pollution, transportation, security, energy, and natural disasters in cities with populations above 10 million; Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Daniel Klingenberg at global engineering challenges focused on environmental issues like climate change and conservation.

And finally, Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Kristyn Masters expands the course horizons beyond Earth to investigate space travel, inhabiting space and deflecting near-Earth objects like asteroids.

Daniel J. Klingenberg

Kristyn S. Masters

Within each course section, students work in teams to develop oral and poster presentations. In the “megacity” group, for example, current projects include underground high-speed transportation to reduce congestion in cities and turning megacities into self-sufficient “eco-cities.”

“This course helped me decide to get the additional Technical Communication Certificate (in engineering) because it helped me realize that I really enjoy the presentation and communication aspect of this field,” says first-year student Kamin.

Class activities also challenge students to consider more than just technical issues when developing solutions to engineering problems. “Engineering is fundamentally a design process with both technical and nontechnical constraints,” says Hagness. “We’re trying to emphasize the importance of a broad perspective: Engineering solutions are influenced by political, environmental, ethical, legal and social constraints.”

“That perspective will help students in all of their future coursework here as well as wherever their career takes them.”

The course is funded by the College of Engineering 2010 Initiative, which seeks to increase cross-disciplinary research and education on campus to respond to changes in the engineering field, such as technological advancements and global competition.

“The long-term vision is to expand the offering of this course to students from all over campus,” says Hagness. “Having a more diverse environment in the classroom would help the engineering students because ultimately, they are going to be working on technologies that have to be embraced by the public.”

That message resonates with Kamin. “The most valuable thing I learned in this course is that the communication of information is just as important as obtaining that information in the first place,” she says.

“Without being able to communicate your research or the effect it will have on society, it is impossible to get people excited about your work.”