Santa Clara University

Faculty Grants

Following is a partial list of recent grants received by the faculty of the School of Engineering:

August, 2008

Jorge Gonzalez Cruz, Timothy Hight (Mechanical Engineering), Mark Aschheim (Civil Engineering), Kathrina Simonen (California College of the Arts), and Robert Bornstein (San Jose State University): The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $30,000 to Santa Clara University for support of the project entitled "Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) on sustainable engineering systems."

July, 2008

Edwin Maurer (Civil Engineering) has received a one-year subcontract award from the University of California, San Diego providing $50,000 to support "Use of Other Statistical Downscaling Techniques and Hydrological Modeling."  The UCSD award was received from the California State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission. The goal of this project is to assist the project team at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography with the generation of climate change scenarios using the statistical downscaling technique used for the 2006 Scenarios Project and the use of the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model to translate these climatic scenarios into hydrologic outputs over the California region.

Solar Decathlon Team: The team has been awarded $30,000 in funding for this year, and a commitment for a minimum of $20,000 next year from the Michael Lee Environmental Foundation, a private non-profit foundation that strives to provide examples of environmental integrity and public awareness through action and education. This year’s $30,000 grant will be matched by Fr. Locatelli’s initial challenge grant of $50,000 to match, dollar for dollar, the next $50,000 raised for the project.

June, 2008

Ruth Davis (Computer Engineering) received a TSC grant in the amount of $3101 to purchase 94 copies of Inspiration concept map software to support work on NSF CCLI grant project, Pathways to Meaningful Learning.  The software will be installed on 42 laptops in engineering, 32 systems in the multimedia lab in the Learning Commons, and on 20 systems in the computer lab in the biology department.

Tim Healy and Samiha Mourad (Electrical Engineering) have received a grant for $15,000 from the Technology Steering Committee in support of the ongoing development of a new laboratory in energy and instrumentation.  The laboratory, to be housed in the Bannan Engineering Laboratories, will be called the Latimer Electrical Energy Laboratory, in honor of Lewis Howard Latimer, Nineteenth Century African-American inventor who made major improvements in the incandescent light bulb.

May, 2008

Jorge González (Mechanical Engineering) and Mark Aschheim (Civil Engineering) will lead SCU efforts after a proposal led by SCU and Solar-Tech to develop installation standards for the PV industry was awarded by the California Energy Commission (CEC).  The CEC grant is for $750K, of which approximately $250K will be commissioned to SCU’s Center for Sustainable Engineering Studies.  The installation standards will be tested in 2009 Solar Decathlon house.

Solar Decathlon Team: Father Locatelli, President of Santa Clara University, has approved an initial challenge grant of $50,000 to support the 2009 Solar Decathlon team project and will match, dollar for dollar, the next $50,000 raised for the SCU team project.

April, 2008

Ruth Davis (Computer Engineering and Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies) and Shoba Krishnan (Electrical Engineering) received a National Science Foundation grant of $150,000 in support of their project entitled "Pathways to Meaningful Learning."

March, 2008:

Darren Atkinson (Computer Engineering) has received an IBM Research Grant in the amount of $3,025 for his project on “Smarter Inlining: Improving the Quality of Compiler Inlining Heuristics.”

John Jameson (Center for Nanostructures) received an IBM Research Grant in the amount of $10,276 for his project on “Low-current measurement capability for collaborative Physics/Engineering development of low-noise Josephson junctions.”

Jorge Gonzalez-Cruz and Drazen Fabris (Mechanical Engineering) received an IBM Research Grant in the amount of $10,400 for their project on “On Demand Spray Cooling Using Nano-Fluids.”

Sukhmander Singh and Rachel He (Civil Engineering) received a $10,500 Technology Grant for their project on “Total Station Instruments” for a surveying course. The Technology Steering Committee noted that the project is a good example of enhancing student learning and assisting multiple units on campus.

Tokunbo Ogunfunmi (Electrical Engineering) received an IBM Research Grant in the amount of $4,000 for "Xilinx FPGA Rapid Prototyping of Algorithms."

Weijia Shang (Computer Engineering) received an IBM Research Grant in the amount of $6,000 for her project on “Stack Reduction of Recursive Functions.”

February, 2008:

Christopher Kitts (Mechanical Engineering) has received second year funding of $55,000 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to support "The OBSIDIAN Nanosatellite Project." The award with this amendment now totals $110,000.

Jorge González (Mechanical Engineering) and Dr. Sergio Zarantonello (term lecturer in Applied Mathematics, and also Vice President of Engineering at 3DGeo Inc.) received a nine-months grant of $150,000 from the National Science Foundation for ground water mapping techniques using ground penetrating radar data and advanced imaging algorithms. The work is in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez and 3DGeo Inc.

October, 2007:

Sally Wood (Electrical Engineering) received an external grant for $108,139 to support super-resolution image reconstruction algorithm development and implementation for a flat camera with a micromirror array.

September, 2007:

Christopher Kitts (Mechanical Engineering) has received a three year award from NASA providing $2,747,336 to support "Development of Small Spacecraft and Payload Design, Test and Operations."

Nam Ling (Computer Engineering) has received a $70,000 award from Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. to support "A Statistical Motion Vector Coding Model."
 
The objective of this project is to conduct research on an efficient statistical model for coding motion vectors for Advanced Video Codecs.  It is hoped that the results will be incorporated into a future video coding international standard.
 
Funding is included to support a graduate student research assistant. 

May, 2007:

Ruth E. Davis has received an HP Technology for Teaching Grant to encourage the transformation of learning and teaching. The award package valued at over $68,000 included HP Tablet PC’s that will be used to support Technology Integration for Diverse Excellence (TIDE), a School of Engineering project that will extend learning gains to first-year engineering undergraduates and high school students in outreach programs.

Using HP mobile technology, participants will work in small teams on inquiry-based learning activities to explore issues related to sustainability. The goal of the project is to positively affect participants’ engagement and increase their understanding of the engineering disciplines to enable them to make informed and timely decisions regarding their choice of college major. Learn More >>

February, 2007:

Christopher Kitts was recently awarded approximately $500,000 in external grants, with the main projects including the following:  Multi-Robot Control, National Science Foundation; Development of the ONYX Microsatellite, Department of Defense (increment in funding); Test and Mission Operations for the GeneSat-1 Satellite, NASA (increment in funding); and  Advanced Automobile Diagnostics, BMW.

The SCU Solar Decathlon project was awarded a $35,000 internal grant from the Technology Steering Committee. These funds will be used to instrument the house as a laboratory for sustainability upon its return to the Santa Clara campus following the Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, DC in fall 2007. A monitoring system of sensors will be implemented to gauge the sustainability of the house over time.

Dan Lewis (Computer Engineering) has received a 3-year award from the National Science Foundation that provides $102,209 to support "An Innovative Approach for Attracting Students to Computing: A Comprehensive Proposal."
 
SCU, St. Joseph's University, the Colorado School of Mines, Ithaca College and Duke University have received NSF awards to support this collaborative project, which addresses the issues of attracting and retaining more students in computing(especially women and underrepresented minorities) by helping high school teachers learn innovative and effective ways of introducing computing and computer programming.
 
The proposed approach will take advantage of students' high level of interest in media and animation.  Using innovative technology to introduce high school students to programming (an important component of virtually every computing-related major, and generally a major part of first year computing classes), the project will not only attract students to computing, but also improve retention by providing the "previous programming experience" that is so important as a predictor for student success in computing in college. The new technology used to teach students is Alice. This technology has been proven successful with college students, in summer technology camps, and in the Girl Scouts with middle school students. The Project Directors believe it will be even more successful with high school students.

Cary Yang: Initial funding of $1.7 million for the first two years of the Thermal and Electrical Nanoscale Transport (TENT) Project by the U.S. Army.

November, 2006:

The School of Engineering’s Solar Decathlon team has received a challenge grant of up to $50,000 from University President Paul Locatelli, S.J., in support of the SCU 2007 Solar Decathlon entry. The grant, which comes from the President’s Fund for Strategic Initiatives, will match funds raised by the Solar Decathlon team.