2020 was a year of challenges, successes and achievements

While 2020 was a challenging year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Engineering had a year of success stories and major milestones – including our faculty and staff responding to community needs during the pandemic, pioneering research in numerous fields, student successes and accolades, and continuing construction of the new “Link” in the first year of the college’s facilities project.

Here is a look at some of the big 2020 stories from the college:

MILESTONES AND CORNERSTONES

• The College of Engineering celebrated the Topping Out of the new Link on City Campus Aug. 26 (photo above) as the final steel beam was raised and put into place, ending the framing work of this $75 million Phase 1 facilities project. 

• Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty Bing Chen and Jerry Varner were each honored for 55 years of service during the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s annual Service Awards ceremony, which was held virtually. In all, 77 engineering employees were recognized for employment anniversaries.

• Eight faculty with a combined 236 years of service retired after spring semester 2020, leaving a lasting legacy within the college. 

• Thirteen new faculty were added in 2020-21, increasing total faculty hires to 58 over the past four years. 

• The first cohort of Software Engineering students graduated in Spring 2020. 

COVID-19 RESPONSE

• Engineering faculty and staff were part of a unique partnership with the Nebraska Ethanol Board, the Food Processing Center and Nebraska Innovation Campus to manufacture hand sanitizer for the State of Nebraska and frontline workers. By the time production shut down, the team had generated about 200,000 gallons of sanitizer distributed throughout the state. 

• Benjamin Terry (mechanical and materials engineering) is part of a team that developed a strategy for stacking two patients on the same ventilator, addressing an equipment need during the pandemic. 

• The Biological Process Development Facility (BPDF) was part of projects to develop pharmaceutical products that would combat the coronavirus: helping to develop a recombinant protein or use as a treatment to provide compassionate care for infected patients and working with an emerging biotechnology company on a therapeutic vaccine that could treat patients with the virus.  

• Engineering faculty led efforts to track the spread of COVID-19, including (photo above) Shannon Bartelt-Hunt’s team (civil and environmental engineering) studying wastewater on City Campus and in parts of Nebraska and Fadi Alsaleem (Durham School) using Bluetooth-connected thermometers to gather data that could predict hotspots before outbreaks are officially reported. 

• The COVID-19 pandemic caused faculty to change their teaching practices immediately with little research available about teaching in a crisis. Faculty in the Engineering Education Research program conducted a study about faculty responses to the crisis. 

INNOVATIONS IN RESEARCH

• A new $1 million tomography machine, similar to the magnetic resonance imaging devices used in medicine but with greater power, will provide College of Engineering researchers and Nebraska businesses a deeper, 3D look at materials and printed products. 

• Engineering researchers led by Yuris Dzenis (mechanical and materials engineering) have discovered a process for analyzing high-performance fibers when stretched to their breaking point, which could lead to development of more durable fibers. 

• A team (photo above) led by Nicole Iverson (biological systems engineering) earned a $1.77 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to make nitric oxide sensors easy to use and to utilize them to study both healthy and diseased cells. 

• Siemak Nejati (chemical and biomolecular engineering) was part of a team that discovered a way to synthesize a special type of organic solids that are lightweight, intrinsically porous and can be assembled like LEGO bricks to form larger structures. 

• Yufeng Ge (biological systems engineering) received a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to lead a team of researchers from three universities in expanding and standardizing plant phenotyping. 

FACULTY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Three faculty (photo above) - Rajib Saha (chemical and biomolecular engineering), Ryan Pedrigi (mechanical and materials engineering), and Vitaly Alexandrov (chemical and biomolecular engineering) - were awarded NSF Early CAREER Awards

• Four engineering faculty were chosen to join the inaugural cohort of Faculty Fellows in the new Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, which studies the ever-changing relationship between law and technology. 

• Ronald Faller, director of the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, received the 2020 Kenneth A. Stonex Roadside Safety Award for lifetime contributions to roadside safety, leading a harvest of awards for Nebraska transportation researchers. 

• Virtual Incision, co-founded by Shane Farritor (mechanical and materials engineering), has reached another milestone on its road to transforming abdominal surgeries by way of a miniaturized, first-of-its kind surgical robot platform. 

• Michael Sealy (mechanical and materials engineering) received the Society of Manufacturing Engineers' 2020 Outstanding Young Manufacturer Award, given to engineers age 35 or younger. 

STUDENT SUCCESSES

• A team of architectural engineering students became national champions with first-place honors at the American Society of Civil Engineers' (ASCE) Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) International Student Design Competition (ISDC) in April. 

• Justin Humphrey, a senior civil engineering major (third from right in photo above), received the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) ROTC Award of Merit as one of the top engineering students/ROTC cadets in the nation. 

• Three students in mechanical and materials engineering are among six from UNL awarded graduate fellowships from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), one of the most prestigious graduate fellowships in the U.S. 

• Jami Turnquist and Jessica Harms are the first two Nebraska Engineering students to complete the Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP); both look forward to tackling some of the world's big issues. 

• Ricardo Jacome, a graduate student in mechanical and materials engineering and a researcher at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility (MwRSF), has been chosen as a Doctoral Research Fellow by the Society of Automotive Engineers for 2020-21. 

• Madison Miller, a senior in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Agustin Olivo, a graduate student in biological systems engineering, are among 10 University of Nebraska-Lincoln students chosen to receive the 2020 Student Luminary Awards. 

• Mechanical engineering major Jon Haag is using his experience to give back as one of the founding members of the Collegiate Recovery Community, a new organization designed to support Huskers healing from addiction. 

• Luz Sotelo, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, was recognized as one of the nation’s top engineering graduate students. 

• Two Durham School Master of Architectural Engineering (MAE) students were selected by the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Research Institute’s College of Fellows Scholarship Committee to receive 2020 scholarships.