BiSSL MS student Varuneswara Panyam was accepted to and will attend the National Science Foundation’s summer school on Decision Making in Engineering Systems at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, June 23-29, 2018. The six-day summer school will introduce graduate students to the foundations of decision-making in large systems and is hosted by Dr. Ali Abbas, Director of the Neely Center, at the University of Southern California.
Topics covered include
Characterizing uncertainty in a systems engineering and design environment
Building Preference – Value – Utility models for systems engineering and design
Introducing the basic axioms of decision-making, and methods to analyze flawed methods of decision making
Research methodologies for decision-making in systems engineering and design
Future research directions
Practical applications of decision-making in systems engineering featuring guest speakers from industry and academia
Congratulations to our students Varuneswara Panyam and Tirth Dave for their paper titled “Understanding Ecological Efficiency and Robustness for Network Design Using Thermodynamic Power Cycles” getting accepted into the International Design Engineering Technology Conferences, Design Theory and Methodology. The conference will be held in Quebec City, Canada from August 26-29, 2018.
Ecology has acted as a source for sound design principles and studies of ecosystems have examined how ecological principles can enhance sustainable human network design. Engineered systems are often designed for maximum performance, but in many cases, robustness is lost due to unwanted variations in inputs or efficiency. Taguchi’s signal to noise ratio and other quality engineering principles are well known fundamentals in the field of robust design. In this paper, we will introduce flow-based metrics from ecological network analysis (ENA) for robustness, efficiency, and redundancy. Ecosystem robustness is related to the balance between flow path diversity and system delivery efficiency. Systems with diverse flows are more resilient to a disturbance since there are redundant pathways, but are inefficient because they contain many flow paths with the same endpoints. Efficient systems are better able to transfer material and energy, but this is at the cost of fewer pathways so the system is brittle. Thus to survive a disturbance, an ecosystem system balances redundancy with efficiency. Thermodynamic power cycles are used to understand the relationship between energy efficiency, measured using first law efficiency, and ecological robustness and an ecological balance of efficiency to redundancy (as measured by ascendency vs development capacity). The result highlights the importance of understanding differences in the meaning of efficiency between two fields, and that from an engineering standpoint robustness does not have to be sacrificed to obtain energy efficiency.
“Understanding Ecological Efficiency and Robustness for Network Design Using Thermodynamic Power Cycles”
“Bio-Inspired Design of Complex Energy Systems to Achieve Robust, Efficient, and Sustainable Networks”
Proposals were assessed based on the following criteria: (a) innovative and transformative potential of proposed research work in energy; (b) quality of interdisciplinary research group; (c) potential for developing a successful proposal for government funding; and (d) potential for securing external government funding.
April 25, 2018, 11:30-12:30pm Come hear the perspective of five new female assistant professors in Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Computer Science & Engineering, about applying for faculty positions, transitioning from graduate school to faculty, faculty candidate interviews and offer letters, and more!
The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. The Goals interconnect and in order to leave no one behind, it ís important that we achieve each Goal and target by 2030. Click here to learn more about each issue…
The work being done in the BiSSL lab can be related to:
Collaborative work on “Matrix Trays: From Waste To Opportunities” between Dr. Astrid Layton, Dr. Ahmed Ali from Architecture, and Dr. Ankit Srivastava from Material Science and Engineering has resulted in tae T3 award from Texas A&M’s Presidents Excellence Fund. T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation is a multidisciplinary seed-grant program that is part of the President’s Excellence Fund designed to further Texas A&M University’s commitments to the three pillars of advancing transformational learning; enhancing discovery and innovation and expanding impact on our community, state, nation, and world.
The first initiative in the 10-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Fund—T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation—recently closed the first round and 100 innovative interdisciplinary projects were selected for funding. The fund will invest approximately $3 million annually in T3 projects. read more here…
Congratulations to two of our BiSSL graduate research students Varuneswara Panyam and Colton Brehm, for winning the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship for continuing students for the Spring 2019 semester! The highly competitive graduate scholarship awards graduate students doing excellent research in the department.
BiSSL: Bio-inspired Systems Lab 