School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
March/April 2018

Award funds study of big data

Amin Karbasi, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science, won the Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The $450,000 award will fund a three-year project that involves creating rigorous mathematical formulas to define, measure, and interpret big data. Part of the project will study the function of deep neural networks, which have become increasingly prominent in computer science, particularly for the use of artificial intelligence. Karbasi, a faculty member at the Yale Institute for Network Science, said there are a lot of guesses about why deep neural networks work, but no definitive answers.

Finding ways to reuse e-waste

The lab of Desiree Plata, the John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, has developed a device designed to recover the valuable rare earth metals found in advanced electronics from smartphones to plasma screen TVs. Plata, Megan O’Connor (a former grad student in Plata’s lab), and PhD candidate Riley Coulthard built an electrochemical precipitation device that uses carbon nanotube filters to separate different elements found in e-waste and electronics manufacturing streams. The device could potentially recoup a very valuable trove of useful material.

Uncovering the mysteries of cornstarch

The lab of Eric Brown, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science & physics, has gotten one step closer to figuring out the unusual properties of cornstarch-water mixtures. The material can solidify instantly upon impact and return to liquid in moments. They discovered that the way that the substance returns to liquid after solidifying is very different from conventional thinking in the field of rheology (the study of fluid properties). “It not only deviates from the theory, it deviates magnificently,” said Rijan Maharjan, a graduate student in Brown’s lab. The discovery could help researchers use the material for protective gear and other practical applications.