Author: alayton6

Dr. Layton Awarded A&M 2024 “Open Educational Resource Award”

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Dr. Layton was selected as 1 of the 5 recipients of 2024’s Open Educational Resources Awards based on her outstanding achievements and dedication in support of free textbooks and resources in her courses, with over 70 faculty nominated this year. The 2024 Open Educational Resources Awards Ceremony was held in the Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center on March 27, 2024. Dr. Layton was introduced for the award by BiSSL Ph.D. student Hadear Hassan who nominated her for the award.

The Open Educational Resources Awards are sponsored by A&M’s Student Government Association (SGA), the Texas A&M University Libraries, and the Administration of Texas A&M University. The goal of these awards is to recognize faculty members who go above and beyond in adopting and demonstrating exemplary usage of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in their classrooms or taking active roles in the creation or dissemination of these open access resources. These awards seek to recognize faculty who promote or contribute to a culture of utilizing free academic resources and knowledge sharing in order to lessen the financial burden on students, and mitigate the overall cost of receiving an education. These awards are administered by the Academic Affairs Committee in the Executive Branch of SGA, as it is a top priority for them to reward the successful use of OERs in the most meaningful way possible. 

Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER) 2024

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BiSSL Ph.D. student Alexander Duffy will be presenting his research at the annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER) on March 25-27, 2024 in Tucson, AZ. His paper, titled “Satellite Network Architecture Performance: Setting the Stage for Bio-Inspired Network Design,” covers:

Abstract: Satellite networks, here defined as groups of artificial satellites where the satellites are interconnected by communications links, are increasing in size, number, and criticality. As humanity’s reliance on these networks grows, so too does the need for these networks to be resistant against and quickly recover from disturbances – that is, they need to be resilient. Prior work has found that human networks such as supply chains, water distribution networks, and power grids can improve their resilience by mimicking biological food webs in their design. This paper begins an investigation into whether satellite networks can also benefit from this bio-inspired system approach. The performance of five hypothetical-realistic satellite network case studies is quantified here using global instantaneous coverage, architectural accuracy, and in-network latency. These performance attributes are then compared to the architectural characteristics of biological food webs using Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) metrics, relating species and their predator-prey interactions in a food web to interactions between satellites in a satellite network. The findings suggest that the bio-inspired route holds promise for improving both the performance and resilience of these critical space networks.

Dr. Astrid Layton selected for an NSF CAREER Award

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The 5-year long award is for the grant titled “CAREER: Resilient Engineering Systems Design Via Early-Stage Bio-Inspiration.” NSF CAREER Awards, part of the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program, are the most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Read more here.

Resilience is critical for engineering systems, but comprehensive methods and widely accepted guidelines tailored specifically for incorporating resilience in the early stages of system design are lacking. This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports research which aims to address these gaps by working at the intersection of bio-inspired design, systems engineering, and engineering design to establish quantitative tools for addressing system resilience when minimal information is available. Biological ecosystem characteristics will be investigated for their ability to guide system designers in the early design stages towards better response and recovery, including situations involving targeted and/or random disturbances. Ultimately, the project will develop knowledge and methods to ensure that human systems can withstand disturbances – especially important for the critical infrastructure systems that supply our water, power, or medicines – by safeguarding against potential failures and costly downtime. Collaborative feedback from ecologists, industry, and academic experts will ensure that the interdisciplinary work maintains each domain’s critical features. Additional deliverables from this project include a “Walk Like an Engineer” program, which engages participants of all ages and abilities in engineering inspiration scavenger hunts through local parks, led by both a bio-inspired engineering design expert and a Nature Center host. The themed nature walks, which will focus on topics such as “Nature’s Systems” and “Nature’s Resilience”, will encourage participants to see themselves as design engineers learning from nature. The program will advance the United States future workforce by nurturing interdisciplinary communication skills and early interest and excitement in STEM-based design, while also teaching the public about nature and engineering in a connected manner.

This project supports the long-term goal of enhancing the early integration of resilience into the system design process, allowing designers to make proactive choices to create more sustainable and resilient systems that can withstand disruptions and recover effectively. The research objectives of this project are to provide quantitative tools for assessment of biological inspiration in engineering system design, extend the use of effective bio-inspiration into system recovery, and formulate practical design tools for achieving system resilience from biological ecosystem principles found to be effective. Ecological Network Analysis will provide a quantitative method for extracting desirable traits from resilient biological ecosystems (e.g., food webs) and applying them to human engineered systems. Of interest is how these traits can improve a system’s robustness and recovery, which will be tested using a variety of case study types and criticality levels, including supply chains, water distribution networks, power grids, and industrial resource networks. The most beneficial biological systems traits will be further investigated to generate fundamental engineering principles, such as the impact of topology versus weights on nature’s systems characteristics. A study of targeted versus random disturbances will provide additional insight into where these biological systems characteristics have the most value for engineering designers seeking system-level resilience. The project’s research objectives are integrated and enhanced by the project’s educational objectives: to create and foster engineering excitement before students typically self-exclude from STEM; teach the public about how nature and engineering can be connected; and create STEM access for and inclusion of students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Evaluation of the educational outreach activities will also provide important documentation for the use of nature to increase interest in engineering at all ages, as well as in underrepresented and underserved groups.

More information can be found here: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2340170&HistoricalAwards=false

Two New BiSSL Papers Published

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Two journal papers related to the use of bio-inspired system design approaches for cyber-physical systems from the BiSSL group have recently been accepted for publication! The 1st stems directly from a current ongoing grant with Sandia National Labs with BiSSL Ph.D. student Emily Payne as co-author and the 2nd is a culmination of multiple collaborations across mechanical and electrical engineering at Texas A&M and is led by former BiSSL Ph.D. student Abheek Chatterjee, now a post-doc at NIST.

Abstract: Cyber-physical systems have behavior that crosses domain boundaries during events such as planned operational changes and malicious disturbances. Traditionally, the cyber and physical systems are monitored separately and use very different toolsets and analysis paradigms. The security and privacy of these cyber-physical systems requires improved understanding of the combined cyber-physical system behavior and methods for holistic analysis. Therefore, we propose leveraging clustering techniques on cyber-physical data from smart grid systems to analyze differences and similarities in behavior during cyber-, physical-, and cyberphysical disturbances. Since clustering methods are commonly used in data science to examine statistical similarities in order to sort large datasets, these algorithms can assist in identifying useful relationships in cyber-physical systems. Through this analysis, deeper insights can be shared with decision-makers on what cyber and physical components are strongly or weakly linked, what cyber-physical pathways are most traversed, and the criticality of certain cyber-physical nodes or edges. This paper presents several types of clustering methods for cyber-physical graphs of smart grid systems and their application in assessing different types of disturbances for informing cyber-physical situational awareness. The collection of these clustering techniques provide a foundational basis for cyber-physical graph interdependency analysis.

Jacobs, N., S. Hossain-McKenzie, S. Sun, E. Payne, A. Summers, L. Al Homoud, A. Layton, K. Davis, and C. Goes. (2024) “Leveraging Clustering Techniques for Cyber-Physical System Analysis to Enhance Disturbance Characterization.” The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications.

Abstract: The design of resilient infrastructure is a critical engineering challenge for the smooth functioning of society. These networks are best described as Cyber-Physical Systems of Systems (CPSoS): integration of independent constituent systems, connected by physical and cyber interactions, to achieve novel capabilities. Bio-inspired design, using a framework called the Ecological Network Analysis (ENA), has been shown to be a promising solution for improving the resilience of engineering networks. However, the existing ENA framework can only account for one type of flow in a network. Thus, it is not yet applicable for the evaluation of CPSoS. The present work addresses this limitation by proposing a novel multigraph model of CPSoS, along with guidelines and modified metrics that enable ENA evaluation of the overall (cyber and physical) network organization of the CPSoS. The application of the extended framework is demonstrated using an energy infrastructure case study. This research lays the critical groundwork for investigating the design of resilient CPSoS using biological ecosystems inspiration.

Chatterjee, A., H. Huang, R. Malak, K. Davis, and A. Layton. (2024) “Extending Ecological Network Analysis to Design Resilient Cyber-Physical System of Systems.” IEEE Open Journal of Systems Engineering.

Dr. Astrid Layton selected to attend the 2023 EU-US Frontiers of Engineering (EU-US FOE) Symposium hosted by the National Academy of Engineering and Nokia Bell Labs

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BiSSL group director Dr. Astrid Layton was selected to attend the 2023 EU-US Frontiers of Engineering (EU-US FOE) Symposium hosted by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and Nokia Bell Labs. The National Academy of Engineering holds an annual US Frontiers of Engineering symposium that brings together 60 highly accomplished early-career engineers from EU and US universities, companies, and government to discuss leading-edge research and technical work across a range of engineering fields. Convening engineers from disparate fields and challenging them to think about developments and problems at the frontiers of areas different from their own can lead to a variety of desirable results. These include collaborative work, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across fields, and the establishment of contacts among the next generation of leaders in engineering. The objectives for the bilateral meetings also have the added element of facilitating international cooperation and understanding. The symposium – which covers the topics of The Quantum Era Challenge, Future Challenges in Additive Manufacturing, Clean Hydrogen, and The Computational Era of Life Sciences – will take place from October 15-18 at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

Invited Graduate Research Seminar at University of Michigan

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Dr. Layton gave an invited seminar presentation at University of Michigan titled “How Nature’s Systems Can Guide More Resilient and Sustainable Human Network Design” Sept. 26, 2023. The talk coincided with some excellent collaborative brainstorming with Dr. Sita Syal and other new contacts.

Abstract: Inspiration from nature has produced some fascinating, novel, and life-changing solutions for the human world. Most of these bio-inspired designs however have been product-based, but taking a systems perspective when we look to nature taps inspirations that can improve the critical networks we depend on. This talk focuses on biological ecosystems, in particular, complex networks of interacting species that are able to support individual needs while maintaining system-level functions during both times of abundance and unexpected disturbances. This talk will show how these networks can offer inspiration for achieving both sustainability AND resilience. Quantitative ecosystem descriptors and analysis techniques adapted from ecology enable desirable ecosystem characteristics to be used as design guides for things like industrial resource networks, water networks, supply chains, and power grids.

Graduate Awards and Fellowships for 3 BiSSL PhD Students

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Two BiSSL Ph.D. students – Hadear Hassan and Emily Payne – have been awarded 2023 J. Mike Walker ’66 Impact Awards. The award is given to two male and two female graduate students who have demonstrated academic/scholarly achievements, as well as have leadership and/or entrepreneurial focus/experience and innovative excellence. The winners each receive a $5,000 fellowship. BiSSL Ph.D. student Luis Rodriguez was awarded a Sally and Ray Bowen ’58 Fellowship for 2022/23. Congratulations Hadear, Emily, and Luis! They’ll all be recognized at the 2023 Mechanical Engineering Scholarship & Fellowship Banquet in October in the Memorial Student Center.

Luis Rodriguez (back left) and Hadear Hassan (front 2nd from left) had their awards presented at the 2023 Mechanical Engineering Scholarship & Fellowship Banquet. They are both co-advised by Dr. Cynthia Hipwell (front-center).
(L-R) Emily Payne (BiSSL), Maulik Kotecha (Product Synthesis Engineering Lab), Shantanu Vyas (Mixed-Initiative Design Lab), Wanyu Xu (Product Synthesis Engineering Lab), Qiyu Li, Luis Rodriguez (BiSSL)

Successful IDETC-CIE 2023 in Boston

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Another excellent ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) IDETC-CIE conference is in the books!

BiSSL Ph.D. students Hadear Hassan and Emily Payne from the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University each presented their first-authored papers, sharing their research that will help us achieve a more sustainable and resilient world.

Hadear’s (in collaboration with Emily) was on “Quantifying the Sustainability and Robustness of Manufacturing Systems Using Energy and Ecological Network Analysis” and Emily’s (in collaboration with former undergraduate researcher Hannah Wagner) was on “Resilience & Sustainability in Certified Green Buildings: Applying Ecosystem Concepts to Aid in More Dynamic Green Communities.”

Dr. Layton also presented the work of MS student Samuel Blair (who graduated in May 2023) on “Measuring the Health of Makerspaces During Large Disruptions such as the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

We also got to hang out with Dr. Abheek Chatterjee, who graduated from our lab last December!

(L-R) Abheek Chatterjee, Astrid Layton, Emily Payne, Hadear Hassan

Dr. Layton Invited Seminar at University of Pittsburgh

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Following the ASEE 2023 workshop on our makerspace modeling/analysis GUI use, Dr. Layton was invited to come give a research seminar at University of Pittsburgh to share the NSF funded makerspace work her and Dr. Julie Linsey at Georgia Tech have been doing. Her talk was titled: “From Makerspaces to Industries: How Bio-Inspired Network Models Can Alter Functioning Via Form”

The youngest attendee Renee was 10 years old and already a makerspace expert!