College of Engineering and Computing

Computer science graduate turns internship experience into a full-time position

Colleen Rich — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:47:21 +0000

Computer science graduate turns internship experience into a full-time position Colleen Rich Wed, 12/11/2024 - 13:47

When Dhyeya “Dee” Padhya transferred to ��AV from Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) in fall 2022, he was struck by the vibrant campus life, which was far different than his first two years in college during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dhyeya “Dee” Padhya

“Coming to George Mason there were so many things happening like fairs and club events. That was definitely a very welcomed change for me,” Padhya said. “I felt like a new person and George Mason was a huge part of these last few formative years of my life.”

He is set to graduate in December 2024 with a BS in computer science and a minor in computational and data science.

During his time at George Mason, Padhya worked in the University Career Services office as the senior front desk student assistant, where he greeted students and gave them career assistance, as well as managing the career advisors’ appointments and calendars.

He also helped administer career assessments and did set-up work and guided students at George Mason’s well-attended career fairs.

For his commitment to career services at George Mason, Padhya was featured on the cover of this year’s Career Readiness Guide.

This summer, Padhya also got professional experience in his field as a data analyst intern at Capital One.

“With a computer science major, an internship is very important. I definitely felt prepared for it with the help of my [CS 450 Database Concepts] course with Professor Ping Deng and my [CS 484 Data Mining] course with Jessica Lin. Those courses were definitely the most helpful for my internship,” said Padhya.

What’s your best memory of George Mason?

Getting the call that I got the internship at Capital One was definitely one of the best experiences of my life. Part of my responsibilities were what we call “productionizing” a data set. There was a whole process of getting data from the right sources, cleaning it, and then automating that process to automatically update the data on a weekly basis.

How have you grown while at George Mason?

Throughout high school I was a straight-A student, but my very first class here was a challenge for me and I ended up getting a B minus. It took some getting used to, but just coming to terms with the fact that it’s not the end of the world if I’m not perfect was really impactful.

Best piece of advice for incoming students?

Don’t have the mindset that you’re underqualified for something. The job market is very difficult right now, but I think it’s important to understand that your GPA, while important, isn’t ALL that matters in the professional world. During job interviews for me it was more about what my personal and professional experiences were. Employers want to know who you are as a person and what experiences have you had that led you to become that person. I also think it’s important to engage with all the resources George Mason has to offer, like the Career Services office.

What’s next for you?

I will be returning to Capital One for a full-time data analyst position after graduation.

Discover what University Career Services can do for you

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Tech Talent Investment Program (TTIP)

The world of MLB is no longer ‘inside baseball’ for this statistics student

Colleen Rich — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 17:44:01 +0000

The world of MLB is no longer ‘inside baseball’ for this statistics student Colleen Rich Mon, 12/09/2024 - 12:44

For Abby Finch, baseball is more than just a game. Growing up, she spent hours watching baseball with her dad. While her early years were spent playing soccer, a hip injury in high school redirected her passion for sports into career aspirations in baseball scouting.

George Mason statistics major Abby Finch took her ambitions to the next level by participating in Major League Baseball's Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program in Glendale, Arizona. Photo provided

"I needed something team-related but couldn't be athletic anymore," Finch said. "That's when I began working as a student manager with my high school's baseball team."

This early experience provided a pathway for a career combining her love for sports and her analytical skills.

Out of high school, Finch chose to go to the University of Charleston in West Virginia, where she worked as the baseball team's director of analytics. However, when the head coach left, she decided to transfer to ��AV, a move the statistics major describes as one of her best decisions.

"I'm happy that I made the move to George Mason," said Finch. "I really wanted more, and [Patriots’ Head Baseball] Coach [Shawn] Camp has all this knowledge from playing at a high level that has helped me."

Finch's future in baseball analytics is bright as she approaches her graduation in May with a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing.

This October, Finch took her ambitions to the next level by participating in Major League Baseball's Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program in Glendale, Arizona. Hearing about the MLB program just as the deadline was passing, Finch quickly jumped on the opportunity and applied to the program the same day. Soon after, Finch was accepted into the program, and less than a month later, she was in the air, flying to Glendale.

"I was nervous," Finch admitted, reflecting on hearing about the program's late application submission. "I didn't think I had a shot, but I guess they liked my resume." When she got the acceptance email, she immediately called her parents, Coach Camp, and her professors to coordinate missing classes for the program. Everyone supported her without hesitation, understanding the incredible opportunity the program represented.

The MLB Diversity Pipeline Scout Development Program was designed to provide women and people of color with the tools and knowledge to thrive in the male-dominated world of baseball scouting. For Finch, the experience was transformative. "It taught me that I'm not the only one trying to do this. It's not crazy or a pipe dream—it's achievable."

During the week-long program, Fitch participated in classroom sessions that covered the intricacies of scouting and writing professional scouting reports. She also put what she learned in the classroom into action, analyzing players at the Arizona Fall League games.

"We would scout two pitchers and a position player during the game and write scouting reports that included pitch velocity, swing path, and overall performance," she explained.

These scouting exercises culminated in a mock draft on the final day of the program, where participants selected players based on the quality of their scouting reports. This gave participants an opportunity to get a feel for a draft night situation and a real-life example of how impactful a scout's work is in a player's overall career success.

Finch came away from the program with a deeper understanding of the game and said that her view of the game has completely shifted. "Before, I could see things happening on the field but didn't always know what they meant. Now I can watch a swing or a pitch and understand its significance, good or bad, and how it impacts a player's development."

Entering her second season as director of analytics for the George Mason baseball program, Finch is already making a difference. Coach Camp credits her insights with giving the team a competitive edge, both offensively and defensively. "Abby's commitment to our program and her ability to provide analytics-based insights have been pivotal to the development of our players," Camp said. "Mason has provided her with a front-row seat to the game. She travels with us, and she's made the most of that opportunity by playing a critical role in helping our team grow and compete at a higher level."

Looking ahead, Finch has her sights set on working in a MLB player development department. Through the MLB scout development program, she built connections with women who hold roles she aspires to and even submitted her resume to all 30 MLB teams. "The program gave me invaluable experience," she said. "I'd encourage anyone with the opportunity to participate to go for it."

For Finch, the journey from high school student manager to MLB diversity program alumna proves that passion, persistence, and a willingness to learn can open doors in even the most competitive fields. Finch is ready to take a big swing with her eyes set on a career in professional baseball.

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Honors College alum spearheads professional development program

Sarah Holland — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 16:11:36 +0000

Honors College alum spearheads professional development program Sarah Holland Mon, 12/09/2024 - 11:11

When preparing for college, prospective students and parents often ask about career readiness. How is the university preparing its students for the workforce? What’s the rate of job placement? Do the students succeed in their respective careers?

��AV has a strong track record of preparing students for careers. And the Honors College is working to make sure Honors students are ready to shine in a competitive job market.

Jeff Shen provides opening remarks at the roundtable. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

“These are incredibly motivated students. I am beyond impressed with their enthusiasm and intellect. And they’re ready. They have all the tools to succeed in the workforce, they just need the knowledge of how to find the right opportunity,” said Jeff Shen.

Shen, who graduated from what was then known as the Presidential Scholars Program in 1996 with a degree in decision sciences, is president of Red Team Consulting and a member of the Honors College Advisory Board. Last year, he came to Dean Zofia Burr with an idea for how to prepare Honors College students for their careers: a roundtable for students to meet with professionals in government contracting, supported by the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting.

“I spoke with some students during graduation,” Shen said, “and in asking them about their post-graduation plans and job opportunities, I realized that these really bright and promising students were missing some of the foundations for approaching the job market: how to network, where to look for opportunities, and so on. So I thought, there must be some way we can address that gap.”

The idea for the roundtable coincided with plans to develop the Honors College Professional Development Fellows program. As part of the program, the roundtable was one of a series of workshops that help students in the program craft their resumes, build their LinkedIn profiles, practice interviewing, and otherwise prepare for internship and career opportunities.

The first roundtable event in Spring 2024 featured 12 George Mason alumni, all of whom are major executives at government contracting companies. The first was such a success that Shen and the Honors College decided to host a second event in Fall 2024.

“In government contracting, you can be a writer, a clinical researcher, a health care professional, you can be in sales: It does not matter the background, there’s going to be a position in government contracting for that person,” Shen said. “I wanted students to see the world of possibilities in terms of what they could do with their degrees.”

Students had the opportunity to speak with each executive in small groups, gaining valuable insights and advice on how to prepare for their career.

Jessica Taylor, studying music technology with a minor in computer science, was one of the fellows in the spring. “As a music major who wants to go into software engineering, I have an untraditional background that needs to be particularly explained and presented when I’m introducing myself to potential employers,” she said. “The fellows program taught me that my variety of creative experience is actually one of the things that makes me stand out.”

Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

“We received [the mentors’] personal emails, offering the opportunity to follow up on potential career opportunities and further discussions,” said Monica Amaya, a management information systems major with a minor in computational and data sciences. Amaya attended the roundtable in Fall 2024. “The entirety of the Professional Development Fellows program has given us valuable networking opportunities to build meaningful relationships with successful government contracting leaders in the area.”

“I learned a lot about what it takes to build a business,” said cyber security engineering student Cameron Portis. “Hearing some of the stories about how these leaders overcame difficulties and changed their plans really inspired me to keep pushing toward my goals no matter what.”

The program continues to grow. In Spring 2025, the roundtable opportunities will expand to two new fields: Health administration and leadership, organized by Inova Health System’s Loren Rufino, BS Health Services ’12, and arts/performing arts nonprofit leadership, organized by Deb Gandy. Both are members of the Honors College Advisory Board.

And for Shen, opening doors for students is only part of the mission. “This is a great way for alumni and community members to get involved with George Mason,” he said. “I’m hoping this opens the door for them as well."

Discover the Honors College's inspiring learning community

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Zofia Burr

Stanley and Rosemary Hayes Jones invest $1.4M in George Mason for STEM education and research

Colleen Rich — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 16:19:45 +0000

Stanley and Rosemary Hayes Jones invest $1.4M in George Mason for STEM education and research Colleen Rich Wed, 12/04/2024 - 11:19

Stanley and Rosemary Hayes Jones continue their legacy of philanthropy at ��AV with a transformative $1 million gift to establish the Stanley and Rosemary Hayes Jones Networking Testbed Lab within the Fuse at Mason Square building.

Photo by William Gallagher

The Stanley and Rosemary Hayes Jones Networking Testbed Lab will be dedicated to network applications including secure communications, advanced antennae systems, next-G and O-RAN innovations, with applications in air transportation, high-speed and autonomous vehicles, smart power grids, intelligent buildings, manufacturing, technology and national defense. Expected to open by June 2025, the lab will support both faculty and student research efforts.

"��AV is deeply grateful for the Jones family's generous investment in our students and faculty and in empowering innovators from across our region," George Mason President Gregory Washington said. "Their support of the testbed lab reflects a commitment to advancing critical research in rapidly developing technologies and fostering a diverse, well-prepared workforce that will serve Northern Virginia employers for decades to come."

The investment qualifies as part of George Mason’s contribution to the commonwealth’s Tech Talent Investment Program (TTIP), a statewide initiative aimed at increasing degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and software engineering in the College of Engineering and Computing by 2039. The gift also activates a match from the commonwealth through TTIP, increasing the impact to bolster Northern Virginia’s tech talent pipeline. Through TTIP, higher education institutions, private donors, and corporate partners will collectively contribute more than $2 billion to expand Virginia’s tech workforce, starting from early education and extending through college, internships, and employment.

Stanley Jones, a former a surveillance and communications engineer and first-generation college graduate, is dedicated to providing opportunities for future generations.

“Throughout my career in engineering, I saw the power of access to advanced research and technology. I’m excited about the possibilities this new testbed lab will bring, providing George Mason students with hands-on experiences in a cutting-edge field,” he said. Rosemary Hayes Jones, who served the Northern Virginia community as a real estate agent for more than 35 years, shares this commitment to advancing education and community impact. “We believe that investing in education and innovation is essential to fostering a thriving community and a strong workforce.”

This gift follows a $400,000 commitment to the Early Identification Program (EIP) given to George Mason in 2023. The EIP funding supports two program initiatives: the EIP STEM Fusion Expansion, a K-12 program to increase the number of first-generation students pursuing STEM fields, and the Stanley and Rosemary Jones STEM Scholars Program, which provides direct support to EIP students pursuing STEM majors.

“Stanley Jones exemplifies the potential of first-generation students. When given opportunities, these students excel,” said Rose Pascarell, vice president of University Life for George Mason. “This investment in EIP will expand access to STEM fields, and the impact will extend beyond ��AV to benefit the Northern Virginia community."

Established in 1987, EIP provides critical resources to first-generation middle and high school students in partnership with seven Virginia school districts. The program serves more than 900 students annually, providing them and their families with the resources and guidance needed to navigate postsecondary education.

The Joneses’ gift to EIP accelerates George Mason’s efforts to close the achievement gap for first-generation college students in STEM and supports the STEM Fusion program, which offers students supplemental STEM coursework and expands the program’s reach to serve more students in neighboring counties.

Additionally, the Stanley and Rosemary Jones STEM Scholars initiative will support a cohort of 10 EIP graduates attending George Mason as STEM majors. With professional mentoring, cultural and career programming, and internship opportunities—including placements at MITRE, Jones's former employer—the program is designed to strengthen retention and career readiness for these students.

“As a first-generation student, I worked my way through undergraduate school and then received a fellowship to attend graduate school. The fellowship made all the difference—it allowed me to pursue a successful career as an engineer,” said Stanley Jones. “Through our support for the ��AV Early Identification Program and the internship and mentorship support from MITRE, we are hoping to give a similar opportunity to other deserving students.”

The Joneses' gifts are part of Mason Now: Power the Possible, George Mason’s historic billion-dollar campaign to advance student success, research, innovation, stewardship, and community engagement—laying the foundation for a transformative legacy that will shape the future of the university and uplift the entire region for generations.

Learn more about Fuse at Mason Square

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Early Identification Program (EIP)

College of Engineering and Computing

Graduating systems engineering student is flying high

Shayla Brown — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 15:52:13 +0000

Graduating systems engineering student is flying high Shayla Brown Wed, 12/04/2024 - 10:52

Darius Jack came to ��AV with a passion for systems engineering and for flying. He’s been able to maintain his flight hours while earning a bachelor of science in systems engineering this May and an accelerated master's in systems engineering, his second degree from George Mason, in December.

Darius Jack. Photo by Virginia Department of Aviation.

Jack, who grew up in Virginia, got his private pilot’s license at just 17 years old, his instrument rating at 19, his commercial pilot’s license at 20, and continues to fly himself and his family members across the state.

One of his favorite airports to fly from is Falwell Airport in Lynchburg, Virginia.

“This airport is really exciting because it's on a slope, so you have to take off going downhill and then land going uphill. If you go in person, or even look at it on Google Maps, you'll immediately see what I'm talking about,” he said.

He’s also a fan of flying on Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay.

“They have basically no cars there; it's golf carts,” said Jack. “Their economy is based on fishing and things like that, so it’s a small-town kind of vibe. I was lucky enough to be able to fly there with my mom. We spent the day there visiting some nice little mom and pop restaurants which was really exciting.”

Jack recently completed the Virginia Aviation Ambassador Program, traveling to all of Virginia’s 65 public use airports.

“The program was challenging but rewarding. I was able to meet new people, build experience flying different kinds of aircraft, and got to travel to the different corners of the state allowing me to explore and appreciate the hidden gems,” said Jack.

“Systems engineering gave me a holistic mindset, which is crucial in the cockpit. Instead of jumping to conclusions, systems engineering taught me to think [deeply] and ask underlying questions, like what factors are driving a certain output. I am very appreciative to have been in both systems engineering programs for undergraduate and graduate,” said Jack.

Darius Jack. Photo provided.

What’s your best memory of George Mason?

My master's degree experience is kind of flying by. In undergrad, I started with a lot of different people from different majors, and it’s been nice getting to see how everyone else has finished their degrees as well. I was able to go to their final capstones and senior design project presentations. Seeing how successful everyone turned out is really amazing.

How have you grown while at George Mason?

Starting off, I didn't know exactly where I was going. I had the mindset that I go to class, get my degree, and work a job in that field for the rest of my life. But systems engineering is a very big field and I didn’t know what opportunities were out there. I think just evolving in that mindset.

I know now that getting a degree in one thing doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be doing that work for the rest of your life. Being at George Mason opened my eyes to that. Now, it's more about actually learning the content from my classes and thinking about ways that knowledge could positively impact the world on a granular scale.

Best piece of advice for incoming students? 

I am a strong believer that the job market is all about supply and demand. So, if there's a lot of [graduates from] one type of major, it's going to be somewhat challenging to get a job. Give new and challenging things like systems engineering a chance because companies want systems engineers. If you have that demand, it is very easy to get something going for you.

What’s next for you?

I have accepted a job offer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, and I'll be starting there after graduating in December. In this lab, they research things like prosthetic limbs, nanotechnology and all kinds of cutting-edge technology. What's in demand with my major specifically is model-based systems engineering, which is a sort of subset of systems engineering. I’m so excited to start there and be a part of that community because it will be my first real full-time job.

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Winter Commencement

George Mason REACHes for regional health policy solutions

Nathan Kahl — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 15:53:52 +0000

George Mason REACHes for regional health policy solutions Nathan Kahl Fri, 11/01/2024 - 11:53

As the planet’s climate shifts, so too does the health of its inhabitants. Rising temperatures, wildfires, and worsening air quality are environmental and public health concerns.

With a new $3.69 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Research and Engagement for Action in Climate and Health (REACH) Center is set to tackle the urgent intersection of climate change and public health in the nation’s capital. ��AV is part of a team of institutions working on environmental health innovation that includes George Washington University (GWU), Howard University (HU), and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The REACH Center will be directed by Susan Anenberg, professor and chair of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at GWU.

Jim Kinter, director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies and the Virginia Climate Center (VCC) at George Mason, sits on the REACH internal advisory board. VCC's interdisciplinary team of Mason experts conduct research on Virginia’s vulnerability and risks to the impacts of climate change in order to provide local decision makers with actionable climate information.

“Climate change is having negative impacts on public health, and projected future climate changes will only exacerbate those effects, most acutely felt in underserved communities," said Kinter. "The REACH Center serves a vital role in making data and information more accessible, more effective, and more useful for conducting research and co-producing equitable solutions to advance public health resilience. With George Mason experts working across several disciplines, the center has a unique and powerful capability to transform research and applications in public health, and the emphasis on community engagement will help translate findings into practical solutions.”

Lucas Henneman, an assistant professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason, is leading a research project within the center studying climate policy in Washington, D.C. He’ll look at congestion pricing—charging a toll for vehicles traveling into a central part of the city—and the impacts on air pollution and local health. The D.C. government previously showed interest in such policies, and Henneman is working with researchers at George Mason and GWU along with a transportation advocacy group called Greater Greater Washington, who have deep ties in the D.C. government and interested community groups.

“The big thrust is that there's all this useful data out there that can be used to better protect public health from impacts of climate change," said Henneman, "but how do we make that data useful to stakeholders like researchers, community groups, and local governments?”

The co-location of these entities in the Washington, D.C., region allows them to work with the federal and regional governments, as well as other experts in public health and big data. The REACH Center will also look broadly at the implication of health and climate data.

“How do you process air pollution and public health information in a way that can be useful for different stakeholders,” said Henneman. “In D.C., for example, you have wards, neighborhoods, and census tracts, and you might have different amounts of data in each of those geographies and different stakeholders would want to see information about their locations. So, how do we interpret the outcome of a policy on these different geographic boundaries?”

Daniel Tong, director of George Mason's Cooperative Institute of Satellite and Earth System Studies, is co-directing REACH’s Exposure Assessment Core. He gave an example of how even far-flung incidents can affect local populations, and why it’s important to understand this impact. “Rising temperature and droughts bring more wildfire smoke and every-day air pollution to cities like Washington, D.C.," said Tong, who is also an an associate professor in the College of Science. "It is critical to measure how these changes harm people’s health. The exposure core will leverage George Mason’s world-renowned expertise in atmospheric and climate sciences to support health researchers and practitioners to understand these impacts.”

Jenna Krall, an associate professor in George Mason's College of Public Health, also brings expertise to the project, further emphasizing the interdisciplinary aspects.

The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative (CCHI) funded 16 new exploratory research centers in September, including the REACH Center. These centers will support the development of innovative transdisciplinary research into the complex impacts of climate change on health.

Henneman noted that, in the long-run, this could mean more opportunities for George Mason researchers to study how regulations can consider the intersection of climate change and health.

In This Story

Lucas Henneman

Jenna Krall, PhD

Learn more about the Virginia Climate Center

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College of Public Health

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CEIE Success Stories

George Mason expands partnership with GDIT to build a skilled and diverse technology workforce

Colleen Rich — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:02:19 +0000

George Mason expands partnership with GDIT to build a skilled and diverse technology workforce Colleen Rich Wed, 10/30/2024 - 13:02

��AV announced this week an expanded partnership with General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a business unit of General Dynamics, to enhance career development opportunities for university students and GDIT’s workforce. The focus areas include cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and government contracting.

The partnership strengthens George Mason’s role as a key economic driver in Northern Virginia and a critical source of tech talent, while broadening GDIT’s efforts to cultivate a skilled and diversified talent pipeline.

“George Mason has been recognized over the years in numerous college rankings as Virginia’s top public university for diversity, innovation, cybersecurity, homeland security, service to military veterans, and service to students outside the traditional college ages," said George Mason President Gregory Washington. “We are committed to partnering in the region to meet the pace of change in the today’s workforce, providing opportunities for students of all ages and backgrounds to pursue a rigorous education and lead successful careers, and attracting and keeping talent in Virginia.”

This collaboration also aligns with GDIT’s technology investment strategy, which emphasizes employee growth and upskilling. It also enhances government contracting capabilities by leveraging George Mason’s Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting, located within the Costello College of Business. The center is the nation’s first dedicated to addressing business, policy, and regulatory issues in government contracting.

“Expanding our partnership with George Mason demonstrates our commitment to investing in the future workforce,” said Amy Gilliland, GDIT’s president. “As the largest and most diverse educational institution in Northern Virginia, George Mason has played a pivotal role in shaping our talent pipeline for more than a decade. We look forward to further strengthening our relationship so GDIT will continue to be a top employer of choice for George Mason students.”

U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal, and Washington Monthly all rank George Mason as a top public university for the upward mobility of its graduates.

As part of the expanded partnership, GDIT will collaborate with George Mason on several programs, including:

Partnering with the College of Engineering and Computing, as well as Costello College of Business, to expand recruitment opportunities, career mentorship programs, networking sessions, technology open houses, and capstone projects.
Offering students, faculty, and staff opportunities to participate in various GDIT events and initiatives, such as cyber hackathons, career development seminars, and technology showcases at the GDIT Emerge Innovation Center.
Providing industry expertise for George Mason’s Clearance Readiness Program to prepare students interested in a career in the cleared space.
Hosting leadership insight sessions focused on mental health, career pathways, work-based communication skills, and resiliency.

This partnership is part of GDIT’s workforce initiative, which collaborates with high schools, colleges, and universities across the country. GDIT has formed similar partnerships with institutions in Louisiana, Colorado, Texas, and Missouri to foster the next generation of technology innovators and make a positive impact in these communities.

George Mason, one of the largest universities to receive state funding through the Tech Talent Investment Program, has committed to increasing its computing graduates, in both undergraduate and graduate computing programs, to almost 16,000 students over the next two decades. With flourishing partnerships with leading companies like General Dynamics and initiatives supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship across the state, George Mason is building on the more than 15,000 paid or stipend-supported internships available to students annually.

��AV has committed to increasing graduates in both undergraduate and graduate computing programs to almost 16,000 students as part of the state's Tech Talent Investment Program.

Discover George Mason's TTIP goals >>

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Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water?

Sarah Holland — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:07:52 +0000

Podcast - EP 61: Can dirty coffee grounds be the key to clean water? Sarah Holland Mon, 10/21/2024 - 11:07

Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

Every day at ��AV, faculty like assistant professor Jeffrey Moran develop innovative solutions to the world’s grand challenges. And sometimes those grand challenges can have small solutions that come from the most unlikely of places.

In this episode of Access to Excellence, join Moran and President Gregory Washington as they discuss the water-cleaning powers of spent coffee grounds, aerosol experiments on the International Space Station, and finding inspiration for innovation in jazz.

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^{The challenge is not necessarily lack of water per se, it's lack of access to methods to decontaminate the water that is already there, in ways that don't require extensive infrastructure... to basically use the materials they have available to them. Coffee is discarded by the millions of tons every year. It is hydrophobic so it can pick up other hydrophobic things. And if you look at a microscope image of a coffee ground, it has this very irregular, very dense surface where there's a lot of active surface area given the size of the coffee ground, which means it can pick up a large quantity of pollutants relative to its size…You could implement [CoffeeBots] in just a cup of water that you want to decontaminate. You could envision this being implemented on a small boat where there's a magnet on the back end of the boat. And so if you wanna clean up an oil spill in a small river, you can deploy it that way, deploy a large quantity of these coffee bots, and then move the boat along."}

Read the Transcript

Intro (00:04):
Trailblazers in research, innovators in technology, and those who simply have a good story: all make up the fabric that is ��AV. We're taking on the grand challenges that face our students, graduates, and higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by Mason President Gregory Washington, this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

President Gregory Washington (00:27):
Every day at ��AV, our faculty are developing innovative solutions to the world's grand challenges. And the great thing about innovation is that sometimes those grand challenges can have small solutions that come from the most unlikely of places. Joining me today is someone who knows quite a bit about finding big solutions in small, unlikely places: like the bottom of his coffee cup. Jeffrey Moran is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and is an affiliate faculty member in bioengineering. His research lies in understanding and using microscale thermofluid transport phenomena to enable new solutions to fundamental challenges facing humanity. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeffrey Moran (01:22):
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here.

President Gregory Washington (01:27):
What some of you may not know is that Professor Moran and I have a connection, a really, really strong one. Uh, your postdoc advisor?

Jeffrey Moran (01:39):
That's correct.

President Gregory Washington (01:40):
His postdoc advisor at MIT was a former student of mine back at Ohio State, and so we have a very, very close connection in terms of the work that he's actually doing.

Jeffrey Moran (01:55):
I think we actually met before I came to Mason at one of the cookouts that he had.

President Gregory Washington (02:01):
Oh, that, that could very well, could very well.

Jeffrey Moran (02:03):
I think you were visiting Boston and he had occasional get-togethers, Professor Cullen Buie is his name. And he actually just made full professor at MIT, you may have seen.

President Gregory Washington (02:13):
Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. And I, I actually have not congratulated him. Yeah. So I need to go back and make sure he knows how proud of him I am. So let's talk a little bit about your work.

Jeffrey Moran (02:24):
Sure.

President Gregory Washington (02:25):
So your work is in the field of microscale transport phenomena.

Jeffrey Moran (02:29):
Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (02:29):
And for those listeners who are out in the audience, who could be just in other fields or students, can you explain a little bit of what that actually is?

Jeffrey Moran (02:40):
Sure. So transport phenomena is a, a somewhat wonky term that basically means the science of how stuff goes from one place to another. And that sounds broad because it is, the stuff could be literal stuff like matter. Think about a drop of food coloring spreading in a glass of water. And if you don't stir the water, then the food coloring spreads smoothly and radially outward in a process called diffusion. It could be something like that, but the stuff could also be something like heat or something like electrical charge, or even fluid motion, a little vortex or an eddy. So transport phenomena, you could argue, underlie just about everything that happens in the universe. But usually when people use that term, they're referring to artificial, engineered systems. And I'm really fascinated by this topic because there are a lot of parallels in the way that different types of things are transported from place to place.

Jeffrey Moran (03:46):
I mentioned the example of food coloring spreading in a glass of water. There's also heat, right?

So you could imagine, like, your stove top in the morning after you make coffee in the morning, you turn the heat on and the temperature is hot right in the center of the burner. And then it spreads radially outward after you turn the heat off. And it turns out the math that describes that process is essentially identical to the math describing the food coloring: diffusing. And so it's fascinating from a fundamental perspective, but it's got lots of applications, especially in things like the chemical industry or in, uh, microfluidics: the science of fluid flow through small passageway. And the microscale is just referring to the fact that I like studying these phenomena at the microscopic level. And my fascination really derives from the fact that we can see some really bizarre consequences of those transport phenomena that you would never see at the macroscopic scale. And we'll get into this, but these include things like a tiny piece of platinum connected to a tiny piece of gold actually propelling itself at the microscale in hydrogen peroxide. Something you would never see at the macroscopic level. So that's a bit of a flavor of what transport phenomena refers to.

President Gregory Washington (05:06):
Well, that's interesting. So what do these phenomena look like?

Jeffrey Moran (05:10):
Yeah. So some of them are visible to the naked eye, like I was saying, with the dye spreading in water. Some of them are invisible or they're only visible under a microscope. Something like molecules moving from place to place. Some of them are completely invisible. Like for example, my PhD work was studying these self-propelled particles, right? We're, and we'll talk a lot about these, but these are tiny rods, small enough that you need a microscope to be able to see them. And what's fascinating about them is that they actually propel themselves by pushing an electrical current through the solution. So ions are generated on the front end and consumed on the back end. And as a consequence of that, ion motion propulsion is generated. So that's invisible, right? Because if you were to just look at it under a microscope, you would just see the rods zipping around in the fluid in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. So some of them are visible like the dye spreading in the glass of water. Some of them are invisible, like the charges moving their way through the solution and ultimately causing a variety of different forces to be generated that lead to propulsion. So it really depends on the type of transport you're talking about.

President Gregory Washington (06:30):
So as a young person who's gotten into this field and developing a passion for it, how did that develop? What connected you to start looking at the micro and nano scale?

Jeffrey Moran (06:44):
Yeah. So I got into research late in my undergraduate days. I was participating in a program where undergraduates could be paid to do research in a professor's lab. We have an analogous program at Mason called the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, through which I've mentored about nine undergraduate students. And part of the reason for that is that I, it was such a valuable experience for me, and I just had the chance to work for a professor whose lab focused on microfluidics. As far as how I got into the self-propelled particles specifically, that was by accident. It happened when I went to a master's thesis defense early in my graduate school days. And there was a student who was defending his master's thesis. And the thesis topic was how to manufacture the platinum gold rods I was talking about. And the focus of his work was on more efficient ways to manufacture them.

Jeffrey Moran (07:44):
But he just happened to mention offhand that they happened to propel themselves in water, if you add hydrogen peroxide as a fuel, and that intrigued me. So I raised my hand and I said, how did they do that exactly? And it wasn't really his main focus, but he, his explanation, so he can be forgiven for giving a somewhat arm wavy explanation, but he basically said, well, we don't really know, but it's, it has something to do with the flow being induced in the fluid near the rod's surface. And you know, the flow goes backward and the rod goes forward. And I sat back and I thought, Hmm. So I had the fortune of having a three year fellowship that allowed me the freedom to pursue whatever I wanted for my thesis work. So I approached my advisor and told him I was interested in really getting to the bottom of this.

Jeffrey Moran (08:41):
And that eventually became my thesis. And you know, this is a very young field. It just started in 2004, and so it's just passing the 20 year mark. And I've just never been able to shake off this fascination with how we can make these seemingly inanimate objects that are not living in any way move and do things that mimic biological systems at the microscale. And as an engineer, I'm especially interested in what practical applications these sorts of devices could have. So my fascination with this really arose from that chance encounter at that thesis defense. But people have been thinking about this for a while. You know, there are classic films like Fantastic Voyage from the 1960s where a team of scientists shrink their submarine down small enough to enter the bloodstream of a colleague and treat a blood clot in his brain. So people have been thinking about this and what applications it could have, ways it could revolutionize medicine for, for quite a while.

Jeffrey Moran (09:45):
And at Mason, I'm really trying to marry that fascination that I still have from my graduate school days with a sort of utilitarian outlook and thinking about ways that we can start to realize the vision articulated in things like the Fantastic Voyage film. So that's a little bit about how my fascination came about. You know, when I worked for Professor Buie at MIT, we were doing different things. We were working on some different areas. And it was still in the general field of transport phenomena, but it was much more focused on like batteries and energy devices. So this is a really multidisciplinary field. Transport phenomena cover a lot of different application areas.

President Gregory Washington (10:25):
Well, let's talk about that. Because that is what is so incredibly fascinating. Mm-Hmm. So earlier this year, members of your lab made the news with the invention of what's being called the CoffeeBot. And this is spent coffee grounds coated in iron oxide that can absorb pollutants and water.

Jeffrey Moran (10:49):
That's right.

President Gregory Washington (10:49):
So tell me about how it works.

Jeffrey Moran (10:51):
Sure.

President Gregory Washington (10:52):
How do they move through the water? And then let's, let's get into it a little bit.

Jeffrey Moran (10:56):
Yeah. So on that topic, I actually brought some visual aids here. So the, the listeners can't see this, but I'm holding a vial of what are just ordinary coffee grounds, right? And these are coffee grounds I literally brought from home.

President Gregory Washington (11:13):
Now spent coffee grounds, which means...

Jeffrey Moran (11:15):
Spent coffee grounds.

President Gregory Washington (11:15):
Which means they've been used.

Jeffrey Moran (11:16):
That's correct.

President Gregory Washington (11:17):
That's even better.

Jeffrey Moran (11:18):
That's correct. Yeah. And by one estimate, we throw away about 23 million tons of spent coffee waste per year. Much of that is being sent to landfills. Although increasingly I'm heartened to see that places like Starbucks are making just bags of the stuff available for folks to use for compost. So I've got a vial of spent coffee grounds here, and in my other hand I have a magnet. Now, if I hold the magnet up to the vial, nothing interesting happens. Coffee is not magnetic. However, if I have another vial here, these also look like spent coffee grounds. They are. But they've been coated in, as you said, iron oxide, which is the main chemical constituent of rust. So we sometimes call these rusty coffee grounds because in a real sense, they are rusty. And if I hold the magnet up, I don't know if you can see, uh, and for the listeners, the coffee grounds, once they've been coated in the iron oxide particles, they will actually follow the magnet.

Jeffrey Moran (12:19):
So I can make them go wherever I want to by holding up a magnet to it. So the essence of what we did was develop a safe and eco-friendly approach to coating the coffee grounds with these little tiny bits of rust. So what does that do for us? Well, it does two important things. First, it allows us to use magnetic fields. You asked how they move. It allows us to use a magnetic field to drive them through the water. So for now, we're just propelling them with the external magnetic field. We can come back to that in a second. We're looking at ways to improve upon that. And one of the things we demonstrated was that moving coffee grounds will actually remove pollutants from water more efficiently than stationary ones do. And this makes intuitive sense because, in a sense, the moving coffee grounds encounter more pollutants per unit time than stationary ones do. So we demonstrated three different pollutant types: methylene blue, which is kind of a stand-in for a chemical pollutant. But methylene blue itself is a textile dye that has some negative health effects, that is itself a pollutant of concern in some areas of the world, particularly where textile production is common. Oil spills and microplastics: those are additional pollutants of concern.

President Gregory Washington (13:41):
So both of those are problematic...

Jeffrey Moran (13:43):
Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (13:43):
Today.

President Gregory Washington (13:44):
Oil spills and microplastics. So much so fish today have an incredibly large amount of digested microplastics in their systems.

Jeffrey Moran (13:56):
And potentially we do too, potentially. And because there are so many consumer products that contain plastic, they make their ways into waterways, right? And eventually in some areas, uh, it probably varies significantly. I haven't seen the statistics, but definitely lots of different forms of life are consuming these microplastics. And I wanna say, this is not my area, but I think we're still, as a community, figuring out exactly what the health effects are. But they're definitely something to be concerned about for sure. So we demonstrated that we can remove each of those three types.

President Gregory Washington (14:30):
So microplastics...

Jeffrey Moran (14:32):
Mm-Hmm. Oil and methylene blue as a model for a dye—methylene blue is, is a textile dye. And it's blue, as the name suggests. And that was convenient because then it's very straightforward to monitor how much of the methylene blue we've removed at any given time. Because you can use an instrument that essentially looks at how much blue light is being absorbed. You can use essentially the intensity at a certain wavelength to determine how much of the dye is left. So it was, it was partially out of convenience that we chose that.

President Gregory Washington (15:06):
Hmm. So reuse of these coffee grounds was mentioned.

Jeffrey Moran (15:13):
Yeah. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (15:14):
So how often can you use them?

Jeffrey Moran (15:15):
Yeah. So that brings me to the second major thing that the magnetism enables. So just to recap, the first thing the magnetism does is it allows us to drive them through the water. And that speeds up the pollutant removal process. The second thing it does is it allows us to take the magnet and pluck the coffee grounds out of the water after the treatment is complete. What we do next is rinse it off. We can rinse the pollutants off, and we do still have to dispose of the pollutants elsewhere. That is a separate issue that is, for now, tangential to the work that we're doing. We're mainly focusing on removing them from the water. But that is something that you do still have to do something with—the oil or with the microplastics. And that's something that other researchers are working on.

Jeffrey Moran (16:00):
So then after you rinse them, we typically rinse them with an organic solvent like acetone. Acetone works pretty well. And then you can actually drop them back into the water. And we showed in the journal paper we published on this that you can reuse them at least four times with a minimal reduction in pollutant removal efficiency. So we haven't gone beyond that. But based on how well the first five trials went, and this is true, by the way, with each pollutant class: with dyes, oils, and microplastics, we have reason to believe that you could go further.

President Gregory Washington (16:34): So let me get this straight 'cause I want to make sure that the folk out there see the depth and the profoundness of what you are stating. Spent coffee grounds coated and iron oxide can be dropped into, say, an oil spill.

Jeffrey Moran (16:56):

Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (16:56):

And the coffee grounds will attach themselves to the oil.

Jeffrey Moran (17:00):

That's right.

President Gregory Washington (17:01):

You have a process for then pulling those grounds, separating those grounds with the oil on them from the water. The oil is rinsed off where it can be disposed. You throw the grounds back out to repeat the process. And you can do it up to four times.

Jeffrey Moran (17:18):

Five times total. Right. So four reuses.

President Gregory Washington (17:21):

Four reuses.

Jeffrey Moran (17:22):

So five times total. So five total uses.

President Gregory Washington (17:23):

That's amazing.

Jeffrey Moran (17:24): You nailed it. That's exactly right.

President Gregory Washington (17:26): And so when you talk about the coffee grounds attaching themselves to a pollutant like oil, or microplastic, how long does that take? Is it an immediate attachment or...

Jeffrey Moran (17:36):

So that's a good question. And it's one that we are really working on answering more systematically, to really be able to say, if you have, say, a section of a river that has a certain area, say, an acre, and you have a rough estimate of how much oil has spilled, there's been an oil spill and some X number of liters. We don't really currently have a number to say definitively, this is how much coffee you would need for that section of the river. But much of the testing we've done so far has been mainly on the size scale of, you know, a small beaker, a small container. That's maybe, maybe a quarter of a liter of water. And we can get away with about 50 milligrams of coffee. So just enough to sprinkle the coffee bots in a, a layer that will approximately sparsely coat that top layer.

Jeffrey Moran (18:33):

And then as you say, the pollutants attach themselves to the coffee grounds.

President Gregory Washington (18:37): Does that happen immediately?

Jeffrey Moran (18:39):

It's not immediate. So it depends actually on how, whether the coffee grounds are moving, first of all. So if they're stationary by themselves, the testing we did was on the timescale of about 40 minutes. And after 40 minutes with stationary coffee grounds, some of the pollutant has been removed. Right? But if you drive them through the water, it increases from about 50, 60% to about 90 to 95% in the case of methylene blue. In the case of oil spills and microplastics, it's on a similar order.

President Gregory Washington (19:12):

Wow. That's amazing. So...go ahead.

Jeffrey Moran (19:15):

Oh, I was just gonna say, because another question that I've gotten a lot, and that is a good question, is what is it that attaches the pollutants to the coffee grounds?

Jeffrey Moran (19:24):

Right. That's a fair question. And in the case of oil spills, it has to do with a property called hydrophobicity. And it means basically, as the name suggests, hydrophobic, it turns out that the coffee grounds are what we call hydrophobic. So for folks listening out there, if you've ever waxed your car, right? And you put some droplets of water on afterward, it kind of beads up. Because the wax has rendered the surface hydrophobic. It doesn't like water. So when water comes in contact with it, it tries to avoid touching the surface as much as possible. So that's why it forms that bead. And we have some pictures from the paper where if you take a bed of spent coffee grounds, it does the same thing. So why does that matter? It matters because things that don't like water tend to like oil. So the same interactions that cause oil droplets to coalesce together in say, salad dressing are also the forces we believe, and we have good reason to believe, that cause oil to glom onto the coffee bots. And there's some nice videos that are included with the paper, and also in the news segment that was featured on Channel 9 news in March of this process actually happening. So it looks kind of like the coffee grounds are kind of soaking up the oil.

President Gregory Washington (20:50):

Huh. Amazing.

Jeffrey Moran (20:51):

Yeah. And a similar thing we think is happening with microplastics, because microplastics are also hydrophobic in general. So it's a good rule of thumb that hydrophobic things tend to like to congregate with other hydrophobic things.

President Gregory Washington (21:05):

Okay. So you know, this is amazing. So the question that I always have when confronted with, you know, this is an everyday product.

Jeffrey Moran (21:17):

Sure.

President Gregory Washington (21:18):

You know, we toss the coffee grounds all the time.

Jeffrey Moran (21:22):

That's right.

President Gregory Washington (21:23):

How did you discover such a use out of something that most of us consider trash?

Jeffrey Moran (21:28):

Yeah. This is where I have to give credit to my group members. So I had two awesome members of my group who have since gone on to other things. It was a postdoc in my group named Amit Kumar Singh. And at the time, a high school senior named Tarini Basireddy. Amit is now a professor himself at a university back in India. And Tarini is just beginning her sophomore year at Johns Hopkins. We were trying to figure out a project for Tarini to work on, because she was doing a year long internship in my lab as part of a, she was a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School. And they had this program where, um, their seniors can do research internships, and Mason, quite understandably, has restrictions on things that minors can do in the lab.

Jeffrey Moran (22:18):

Uh, so what happened was, you know, we were thinking about a project that would involve the things that I was interested in on using particles that move in liquids that would not involve any particular hazards. And it was one of those, Hey, what if we tried this kind of conversations that I've come to love, I've come to treasure those conversations because they can lead to interesting things like this. And I should say, we are not the first people to use self-propelled or magnetically propelled nanoparticles or microparticles to clean up water. There have been a variety of different studies in that direction already. The problem is a lot of those are just proof of concept demonstrations, that if you have a particle that's made of maybe a metal or some other toxic substance, but if it moves and it's able to break down pollutants, you know, people will publish that and they'll say, look, we can use propelled particles to clean up water. But one of the major focus areas of my lab in general is trying to engineer these kinds of particles from safe materials. And we were brainstorming one day and one of us said, I'm not sure that it was me. I don't think it was me. One of us said, what about coffee as a way to demonstrate water treatment with active particles?

President Gregory Washington (23:40):

Yeah. But why would they say coffee? You know what I'm saying? It makes, absolutely, that's not what you would think of when...

Jeffrey Moran (23:47):

Yeah. Well I have, uh...

President Gregory Washington (23:50):

I mean, I would think of sand before I would think of coffee.

Jeffrey Moran (23:52):

Yeah, absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (23:53):

You know what I'm saying?

Jeffrey Moran (23:54):

Well, sand is another material that we work with or silicon dioxide. And we'll, we will get to that in a separate project. But, you know, my postdoc, particularly Amit, I used to say, you give him any three materials, he would figure out a way to make, make a self-propelled particle out of it. And so he had a previous paper on using tea buds, like bits of tea, to make nanoparticle antibiofilm treatments. So things to treat bacterial biofilms, for example, which are part of how antibiotic resistance comes about.

Jeffrey Moran (24:28):

So it was just one of those random sort of suggestions that once somebody said it, we all kind of sat back for a minute and thought about it. And it started to make more sense. Because first of all, as we've already said, coffee is discarded by the millions of tons every year. It is hydrophobic. So it, it can pick up other hydrophobic things. And if you look at a microscope image of a coffee ground, it has this very irregular, very dense surface where what I mean is that there's a lot of active surface area given the size of the coffee ground, which means it can pick up a large quantity of pollutants relative to its size. So the answer to the question "why coffee?" is really three-pronged: it's hydrophobicity, it's common and it's relatively safe to work with, and it has a high surface area to volume ratio, which turns out to be important.

President Gregory Washington (25:25):

Hmm. That is amazing. So what do you think a discovery like this could have on protecting and preserving water systems around

Jeffrey Moran (25:35):

Yeah, I mean, we certainly hope that this has far-reaching impacts across the world. In many regions, two things are true at the same time: one, there is an urgent lack of clean, accessible water, and two, coffee is produced and consumed in large quantities. Take Ethiopia, for example. It's currently facing a water crisis, and they also grow and consume more coffee than any other African country, to my knowledge. Brazil, Vietnam, Peru, and other coffee-producing countries face similar challenges. The issue often isn't a lack of water, but rather a lack of access to methods to decontaminate it without needing complex infrastructure, which isn't always available.

Jeffrey Moran (26:42):

So our goal is to eventually disseminate this method, allowing people with little scientific training and without access to advanced equipment—like the nano-fabrication tools many in my field still use—to make use of materials they already have. For instance, it could be implemented in the home to decontaminate a simple cup of water. You could even imagine it being deployed in small boats, where a magnet on the boat could drag a bed of "coffee bots" to clean up an oil spill in a river. News segments have animated this process. In sewage treatment plants, where sewage is left to sit and decompose, you might just need to place coffee grounds on top. We believe this will absorb pollutants more efficiently than just leaving the sewage to decompose naturally.

President Gregory Washington (28:12):

Huh. Interesting.

Jeffrey Moran (28:13):

Yeah, there are a lot of potential uses. We’ve applied for a patent on this.

President Gregory Washington (28:21):

Yeah, you should.

Jeffrey Moran (28:22):

We published this work in a scientific journal a few months ago. Tarini, now a sophomore in college, is a joint first author on the paper.

President Gregory Washington (28:31):

Wow.

Jeffrey Moran (28:31):

And I have to say, at her age, I didn’t even know what research was.

President Gregory Washington (28:35):

Let’s be clear—most high school seniors don’t get a publication.

Jeffrey Moran (28:42):

Oh yeah.

President Gregory Washington (28:43):

A first-author publication, no less. That’s really cool. Your previous advisor at MIT, when he was my student, came to me after his freshman year to start working in my lab.

Jeffrey Moran (28:57):

I remember that.

President Gregory Washington (28:58):

So you're keeping that tradition alive.

Jeffrey Moran (29:02):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (29:02):

That’s phenomenal.

Jeffrey Moran (29:03):

Getting started early.

President Gregory Washington (29:05):

Exactly. You see where it can lead. I hope you stay in contact with her and guide her toward grad school.

Jeffrey Moran (29:16):

She definitely has a bright future ahead.

President Gregory Washington (29:18):

Outstanding. Now, shifting gears a little. In August, it was announced that you and a colleague from Purdue University received NSF funding for a study to be conducted on the International Space Station. The goal is to better understand thermophoresis, or the migration of particles in response to temperature gradients, which can happen with or without gravity. Since your work typically focuses on particles moving through water, how did you realize there was a gap in knowledge about how aerosols migrate in response to temperature without gravity?

Jeffrey Moran (30:02):

Mm-hmm . Yeah, so this is another example of a project that came from a casual “what if we tried this” conversation. The impetus was the National Science Foundation’s program called Transport Phenomena Research on the ISS to Benefit Life on Earth. Transport phenomena came up again. I should also mention that I’ve been obsessed with space since I was a kid. My childhood home is still filled with drawings of space shuttles and models of fighter jets. That passion for space was one of the reasons I got into engineering.

President Gregory Washington (30:45): I can relate to that.

Jeffrey Moran (30:48):

I’ve wanted to be an astronaut for a long time. I applied in 2016 but wasn’t selected. Still, sending an experiment to space is the next best thing.

President Gregory Washington (31:09):

Exactly.

Jeffrey Moran (31:10):

So I was talking to my friend and collaborator David Warsinger—we’re going through the junior faculty process together. We met at MIT when he was a grad student, and I was a postdoc. I mentioned this project, and he asked, “Has anyone made a micro-swimmer that moves in air?” A micro-swimmer refers to self-propelled particles, also known as micro-motors or active colloids. Initially, it seemed like an odd question since my field is mostly concerned with propulsion through liquids and gels, not air.

President Gregory Washington (31:52):

But air is a fluid in some sense.

Jeffrey Moran (31:55):

Absolutely, yes. That got me thinking. It was a bit like the time in 2008 during my master’s defense when someone mentioned that particles could swim. I sat back and thought, "Huh, how might that work?" I began considering mechanisms active in both liquids and gases. One of those mechanisms is thermophoresis, a transport phenomenon where particles in a temperature gradient—where one side is cold, and the other is hot—experience a force that pushes them either toward the hot or cold side.

President Gregory Washington (32:59):

Oh. So the force works both ways?

Jeffrey Moran (33:02):

It depends.

President Gregory Washington: (33:02):

So it's not always hot. Usually, it's cold to hot, right?

Jeffrey Moran (33:05):

In liquids, it can be in either direction.

President Gregory Washington (33:08):

I see.

Jeffrey Moran (33:08):

It depends on the liquid and it depends on what you add to the liquid. And I should mention in liquids, it's not really fully understood exactly what causes it to move towards hot or towards cold. In gases, however, it's more straightforward. In gases, motion by thermophoresis pretty much always occurs from hot to cold. So if you have a particle that's in air, and the air is hot on one side and cold on the other, then the nitrogen and oxygen molecules on the hot side are by definition zipping around with more velocity, right? When they collide with the surface of the particle, they impart a force to it. On the cold side, they're zipping around with less energy. So the force that they impart from the cold face is less. And so the end result is that there's a net force owing to the more forceful collisions on the hot side that pushes the particle towards cold.

Jeffrey Moran (34:02):

So this is known to happen in gases, but then I got to thinking, okay, could we then quantify it somehow? And it's difficult to do on earth because of things like gravity, which will cause the particles to fall out of the air. And there's an additional problem with thermophoresis because hot air rises, right? So if you were to try to have a sample of particles and air, and you somehow kept them from falling to the ground and you heated the air on one side, it would rise. And that would cause the particles to move. And it would be hard to discern how much of the particle motion is really due to thermophoresis in that case.

President Gregory Washington (34:41):

I see. I see.

Jeffrey Moran (34:42):

So what we realized was that in microgravity on the international Space Station, you don't have those confounding factors, right? And it would be possible, we think, to isolate just the component of thermophoresis that drives different types of particles through air.

Jeffrey Moran (35:03):

So why would anybody care about this? Right. That was kind of the next question that we had while we were thinking about this. And it turns out that aerosols, small particles suspended in air, are very important to our understanding of the global climate. And they pose a pretty large amount of uncertainty actually, in terms of what their net effect is on the global climate. Some aerosols actually can exert an overall cooling effect. Some aerosols warm the planet. Aerosols are produced by volcanic eruptions, dust storms, other natural events like that. Human activity like burning fossil fuels also injects a bunch of aerosol into the atmosphere. And so it's a very active area of research in climate science right now. And so what we're intending to do is take measurements of how efficiently different aerosols move by thermophoresis. And the hope is to help climate scientists understand how important this mechanism is in the atmosphere, because the problem of aerosols in the atmosphere is only gonna increase. Rocket launches are another major source of, uh, space junk that can sometimes be in the aerosol range. Um, and it turns out that this phenomenon, thermophoresis, is most important at very high altitudes.

President Gregory Washington (36:27):

Hmm. Interesting.

Jeffrey Moran (36:28)

So that's one part of the project. And the, the swimming part, the self propulsion part is to look at whether, instead of say applying heat on one side and cold on the other side, looking at just a single particle with half of its surface coated in a metal, something that absorbs light really efficiently shining a light on it, and then seeing if the metal side absorbs the light more efficiently than thus heating up faster, that will then heat the air surrounding the, the metal side leading to propulsion. This is something that's been demonstrated on earth but has never been seen in air before. So we call this self-thermophoresis because here the particle doesn't require an external temperature gradient, but it generates it itself and then moves. So we're gonna also see whether that happens and we call those micro flyers instead of micro swimmers

President Gregory Washington (37:18):

. That is a great way to describe them. Hey, so there's a healthcare, uh, spin on this as well, right? I mean aren't the vectors for carrying disease, especially Covid, for example, as carried like an aerosol.

Jeffrey Moran (37:35):

Yep, absolutely.

New Speaker (37:36):

And so, so you have, if you can deliver something harmful using this mechanism, you can actually deliver something helpful.

Jeffrey Moran (37:47):

That's right. That's right. So I think NASA would probably balk at the idea of us sending virus-laden aerosols to the space station. They might have one or two issues with that.

President Gregory Washington (37:58):

I understand.

Jeffrey Moran (37:58):

But it's a very good point. And that is an additional application we're interested in because if we find that thermophoresis indeed is an efficient way to move aerosols around, this could suggest another method to collect virus laden aerosols from say, the HVAC systems of hospitals, right? Which is obviously a big problem there. And we're still figuring out exactly which aerosol materials we're going to send. So we launch sometime likely in the second half of 2025. And most of the materials we're interested in are things like, I mentioned sand earlier, sulfate aerosols. These are aerosols that come from volcanic eruptions. They're also geoengineering proposals to intentionally inject aerosol to cool the planet.

Jeffrey Moran (38:53):

Obviously controversial. Lots of research going on into them. So we're looking at that: sodium chloride, believe it or not, table salt. Comes from sea spray. And that can actually drift to different parts of the globe. And that can affect the climate in ways that we don't fully understand. But we're also looking at something that could act as a stand-in for an aerosol that is produced by say, somebody coughing or somebody sneezing, and we'll see what we see. But you could easily envision, and this has somewhat been explored before, but you could envision, say, having a stream of air where you have the stream going in one direction, and then a temperature gradient perpendicular to the stream of air so that the particles, the aerosols, if they migrate thermophoretically, they would bend toward the cold side. And just be collected on the cold plate. So the viability of that, you know, that is something you could in principle test on the ground, you could test

President Gregory Washington (39:49):

On the ground and you can test that at scale.

Jeffrey Moran (39:51)

Yeah, that's right. So what's gonna happen is on the space station, there's actually a microscope on the space station already. And so what we're doing is designing and building a, an apparatus to apply the temperature difference to a series of different cuvettes--tiny transparent containers--that each of which contains a different particle sample. And so the ISS crew is going to then look at those different samples, apply the hot and the cold as needed. We're gonna be able to watch in real-time as the astronauts perform the experiments and measure the migration speeds of these different aerosol particles as a function of say, what type of particle they are, you know, the temperature difference, things like that.

President Gregory Washington (40:39):

As we start to wrap up here. So what drives you to, towards this sort of innovative research?

Jeffrey Moran (40:46):

I could sum it up in one word, which is curiosity.

President Gregory Washington (40:51):

Hmm. Interesting.

Jeffrey Moran (40:52):

I have in this job as a, one of my favorite parts of this job is that I have the privilege to pursue ideas that pique my interest without much more of an imperative than that. Actually, Professor Buie, my mentor, your protege, he once described it as being an idea entrepreneur. And, you know, it sounds like him, right? He's, he, he's, he's got a way with words, with he is a way of coining those kinds of phrases. But I think it captures a lot of what I love about this job, along with, of course, working with and teaching and mentoring students. That's definitely another favorite portion. But like I said, you know, both coffee bots and this ISS project both grew out of just conversations I was having. That piqued my curiosity. And because I have this role, I was able to follow up on that curiosity.

Jeffrey Moran (41:46):

And in the case of the ISS project, write a grant proposal about it that just so happened to be funded. And so I really think curiosity-driven research is a buzzword you hear sometimes. And I think it's certainly good for doing research that is just kind of on the pure science side that is just, you know, to kind of satisfy our, our curiosity. But I think it's also a good way to unexpectedly discover new roots for applied research, like in the example of coffee. So I'm a big fan of curiosity. I think I've been able to work on a really eclectic mix of different problems as a faculty member from making more insulating wetsuits to the projects that we've been talking about today to other projects and collaborations I have that are more on the medical side where we're trying to, say, penetrate a bacterial biofilm with active particles.

Jeffrey Moran (42:44)

A lot of these really, the impetus for me, really stems from my curiosity. That's what got me into this self-propelled particles field in the first place. Just that I wasn't really satisfied with the answer that I got in that master's thesis defense. And, you know, I was able to just follow up on it and make it my thesis. So if there's one driving force, it, it would definitely be that just, I'm just a curious person by nature, and I have a hard time shaking off questions that really get under my skin and that I really wanna know more about.

President Gregory Washington (43:13):

No, that's cool. Well, Jeff, there's plenty of room at the bottom.

Jeffrey Moran (43:17)

. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I often invoke that speech that, uh, there's plenty,

President Gregory Washington (43:25):

Plenty of room at the bottom.

Jeffrey Moran (43:26):

There is, uh, the, the speech by Richard Feinman in 1959

President Gregory Washington (43:30):

Fineman. That's exactly right.

Jeffrey Moran (43:31)

And in that speech, he talks about swallowing the surgeon. He said, there's a friend of his that said it, it, it would be very interesting in medicine if you could swallow the surgeon that it goes inside the body and, you know, goes to an organ and looks around. And actually later in that speech, he challenged the community to build a tiny motor that fits inside a cube, 1/64th of an inch on its side. And a lot of what we're doing is, is exactly that, is we're really trying. In fact, we could probably fit much smaller than 1/64th of an inch. Some of the particles we work on are too small to even be seen on an optical microscope. So, well, yeah. There's plenty more to do. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (44:09):

That is really cool. Yeah. Um, that's cool for drug delivery. That's cool. For all types of treatments for disease. So really, really cool stuff.

Jeffrey Moran (44:21):

And I should mention, you know, this has really grown in the last 20 years to a, a robust field in its own right. The first ever startup company that I'm aware of was founded recently by a guy in Spain named Samuel Sanchez, who's kind of one of the superstars of the field. They're looking to develop a better treatment for bladder cancer. Part of it has to do with making particles that use enzymes, nature's catalysts, as the engines, basically. And we have some other projects in the lab that use those very same enzymes partly for, for biofilm eradication or other sorts of applications like that. So it is growing, and I don't know if we're gonna see it, we're not gonna see it in clinics in a year or in five years, or probably not even in 10 years, but maybe in 15 years, right? There are some fundamental challenges that we still have to address. And on the medical side, we haven't really talked about that today, but on the medical side, we're really trying to address, uh, some of those, particularly making them from safe materials.

President Gregory Washington (45:21):

That is cool. As a wrap up here, one of the things that I really, really like about you is that your passion is not just in engineering. It's not just in the sciences. You know, I was happy to see, uh, one day when we had our jazz musician quartet at the house playing music for one of our events to say, wait a minute, that guy looks familiar.

Jeffrey Moran (45:49):

Yep. Yep. That's me.

President Gregory Washington (45:49):

And so you, and so you moonlight as a freelance jazz musician. Specializing in the double bass.

Jeffrey Moran (45:55):

That is correct.

President Gregory Washington (45:56)

So talk a little bit about that, how long you've been playing the double bass and what excites you about jazz.

Jeffrey Moran (46:02):

Yeah. Well, I've been playing the bass since I was in sixth grade. So, quite a while, quite a while. But I've been entranced by the double base for as long as I can remember since I was about four, I think I was about four when I started begging my parents to get me an upright bass. And my mom still has some embarrassing photos of me as like a 4-year-old wearing a tuxedo for Halloween. I was a conductor trying to conduct the orchestra, and I can't really say what drew me to the bass. I still can't really fully explain it. And maybe that's part of a, a testament to how powerful it is. I just love the way it sounds. I love the depth, I love the character of a well-struck double bass string, a well-plucked double bass string, you could say. And so I did piano lessons as a kid, like many kids do. Didn't really enjoy them that much, but it really, it, it was useful though because I learned how to read music that way. And, you know, also having a pretty robust interest in math. I, I saw pretty quickly the parallels between music theory and mathematics.

President Gregory Washington (47:14):

Okay. So that was gonna be one of my next questions.

Jeffrey Moran (47:16):

Yeah. Yeah. So , but then in the sixth grade, I had the chance to take a music appreciation elective, and there was one day where they just turned us loose to try out different instruments and I made a beeline for the double bass and just haven't really set it down since. In college, in undergrad, I was briefly for about two years, a double major in jazz performance and mechanical engineering. I ended up just sticking with the engineering major. But during that time, I had the chance to study with a jazz bass instructor who really was a fantastic mentor to me, not just as a musician, but just as a, as a young adult. So I think I got what I needed because I realized that you don't need a music degree to play music. But the same is not exactly true for doing engineering work professionally.

Jeffrey Moran (48:08):

So college was when I really started to freelance on the bass. And it ever since has been a creative outlet and it's been something I've been able to continue to do, which I'm really, really happy about. Um, so, so you asked about jazz. You know, we, we had jazz records playing in the house growing up. I was in, you know, classical orchestra in high school. And I still enjoy classical music as well. But I think part of what drew me to jazz was it can be very mathematical, it can be very complex in terms of the harmonies. So I think the mathematical side of me gets really, you know, intellectually stimulated by that. There are a lot of parallels actually between, and that's, this is the great thing about jazz is that it's such a mix of different rhythms, different traditions.

Jeffrey Moran (48:59):

And so there's the, the left brain and the right brain side, right? I think both of those things appeal to me. Of course, the improvisation aspect. Improvisation is a very important part of jazz. So being able to play the same tune night after night after night, but differently each time is another thing that I really enjoy about jazz. So it's really, I think it marries the cerebral with the visceral, you know, because there's a lot of intellectual stuff to appreciate about it, but there's also a lot of rhythm and a lot of groove. And just having that complicated soup-- jazz is such a soup. It's a rich soup together. And I think it, that's

President Gregory Washington (49:42):

Exactly right. That's why I love it. So, last question. So what would you say is the value of the arts in arts education and producing advancements in STEM? Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Jeffrey Moran (49:57):

Yeah. It's really, I think, undervalued. I think I, I kind of like the acronym STEAM you know? science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. There's a colleague down the hall from me who has a quote on their door. It's from, uh, Theo Jansen, the Dutch artist. You may be familiar with the Strandbeest. Those mechanisms that look like these big creatures that walk. And he has a quote. It's something like, the walls between art and engineering only exist in our minds, right?

President Gregory Washington (50:27):

I agree with that.

Jeffrey Moran (50:28):

That engineering, I mean, you know this as an engineer yourself, that engineering at its best is a very creative pursuit. Even the pure sciences and mathematics can be creative pursuits as well. And so I would say, I mean, I can speak from my own experience. My main creative artistic outlet has been jazz bass. I think I'm absolutely a more effective and creative engineer for being a musician. It's certainly made me better at giving lectures because that's a performance, right? And so a lot of the same skills from playing jazz bass, like thinking on your feet and reading the crowd and reading their response. That comes in handy when you're giving a lecture too. I'm also a better musician for being a scientist and an, and an engineer because it made me appreciate the complex theory. And when I listen to a Charlie Parker solo, I can appreciate the genius that is on display there.

Jeffrey Moran (51:25):

Right? In a very deep and richly satisfying way that I would not necessarily have if I didn't study jazz theory. Right.

President Gregory Washington (51:33):

Understood.

Jeffrey Moran (51:53):

So for me, I guess maybe the value is in realizing how similar they are, how they're almost two sides of the same coin, you know, and they're just two different ways that I can be myself and be creative and produce things, right? So I think I would exhort everybody listening to this, particularly those who have a bent towards either the arts or towards science to try to explore the other thing too, right? And to start to see kind of the commonalities between them.

President Gregory Washington (52:06):

Outstanding. Outstanding. Well, we're gonna have to leave it there. Jeff Moran, thank you for working towards a cleaner, healthier future for us and for the planet.

Jeffrey Moran (52:20):

Thank you again for the invitation. And uh, it's really a pleasure to be here. And it's a pleasure to be working at Mason and I love it here. So hope to keep doing, hope to keep doing this for a, a very long time. Keep doing good stuff.

President Gregory Washington (52:34):

Alright. I am ��AV President Gregory Washington. Thanks for listening. And tune in next time for more conversations that show why we are All Together, Different.

Outro (52:52):

If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu for more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students, graduates, and higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.

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Engineering professors research impacts of Baltimore Key Bridge collapse

Shayla Brown — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 18:08:14 +0000

Engineering professors research impacts of Baltimore Key Bridge collapse Shayla Brown Wed, 10/16/2024 - 14:08

In This Story

Elise Miller-Hooks

Shanjiang Zhu

Alireza Ermagun

It was a day that residents in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore metropolitan areas won’t soon forget: March 26, 2024, when the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, killing six and leaving many more forever impacted.

Since then, ��AV professors Elise Miller-Hooks, Alireza Ermagun, and Shanjiang Zhu have received two National Science Foundation RAPID grants to study the cause and impact of the collapse, and potential preventative methods for the future.

The Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge after it collapsed. Photo from Getty Images.

Miller-Hooks and Ermagun are working together on their project, “Understanding Freight Flow Adaptations and Supply Chain Logistics Impacts of the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse.”

“The incident took out an important link in the roadway and maritime freight and cargo shipping networks. It also took out roadways that serve local traffic, so it affects are so much more than the blocked maritime passageway,” explained Miller-Hooks, a professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computing.

The Port of Baltimore is one of two main ports in the region, along with the Port of Virginia, which are critical for transportation, businesses, and network optimization.

“We're trying to understand how the disruption percolates through the links and connections of the intermodal system,” said Miller-Hooks, who is the principal investigator on the project.

Elise D. Miller-Hooks. Photo by Office of University Branding.

“For example, are goods that were destined for the port sitting on a side rail? And how is that backing up other operations in rail and trucking modes in geographically near and far locations?” she explained.

The disruption has enormous impact on local businesses and beyond—even globally, she said. The team is looking at maritime data to determine how far the disruption spread, as it could potentially affect shipments out of China, Europe, and other ports.

Miller-Hooks and Ermagun are collaborating with the Transportation Research Board’s Urban Freight Transportation Committee, where Ermagun serves as a secretary and member.

Ermagun’s interest in urban freight transportation has deepened through his active involvement with the Urban Freight Transportation Committee, where he has successfully led National Cooperative Highway Research Program problem statements, contributing insights and solutions to enhance urban logistics.

“Robyn Bancroft, a long-time member of the committee, helped us connect with the right people within the Baltimore Industrial Group,” said Ermagun, an assistant professor of Geography and Geoinformation Science in the College of Science. “We are gaining valuable insights into how trucking companies and truck drivers have been impacted by the Key Bridge collapse.”

“We’ve heard their stories and gathered important information. By advocating for them, we’re bringing to light insights that wouldn’t be readily available to the public,” he said.

Alireza Ermagun. Photo provided.

Zhu’s RAPID project, “Multifaceted Data Collection on the Aftermath of the March 26, 2024, Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse in the DC-Maryland-Virginia Area,” is a collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland and Morgan State University.

Zhu studied a similar incident, the 2007 I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse. For this project, Zhu expanded on his previous research, which focused primarily on passenger cars and commuting behavior.

“I spent a few years collecting various data and then developing some models that would help us to better understand the impact of events such as this one,” said Zhu, an associate professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering.

“The major difference is the traffic here actually is lighter. This location is unique because it serves the harbor as a major logistic hub along the East Coast. So, we’re focusing on the impact on commuters as well as the truck companies who may rely on the port,” said Zhu.

The team, including transportation engineering PhD student Adriana Valentina Farias, are looking at maritime data, which shows how different vessels are rerouted, some as far as different ports in New York or South Carolina, and they want correlate that data with the change of tracking traffic.

Shanjiang Zhu. Photo by Office of University Branding.

“A lot of my work is data management,” Farias said. “We use the website, Marine Traffic, which shows all the vessel traffic in all the ports of the world. It allows you to download data on all the vessels that came in and out of a port for 30 days.”

A main objective of the RAPID grants is to archive data that is at risk of perishing if not collected in time. The data collected from these projects will support future research on traffic, travel behavior, logistics, and supply chain from different perspectives.

“I think our research will be helpful in understanding how the port authority was able to manage the collapse and everything that came with it. It's not something that happens very often, so this could serve as a case study for other port authorities to become more resilient and have lessons learned,” said Farias.

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Civil engineering student builds a solid foundation with summer internship

Shayla Brown — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 14:29:57 +0000

Civil engineering student builds a solid foundation with summer internship Shayla Brown Mon, 10/07/2024 - 10:29

More than 250 people are working on the construction of the Fuse at Mason Square building, including ��AV senior Leslie Hernandez.

“It’s my way of giving back to my school and community,” said Hernandez, who is majoring in civil and infrastructure engineering in the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC).

Hernandez has had four internships with Clark Construction since her senior year of high school and has previously worked on projects such as the Amazon headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

“The Amazon headquarters project was really special to me because it was the first project that I got to see full circle from when it was just a pile of concrete up to the final product,” said Hernandez.

At Fuse, Hernandez is focused on field operations. “I’m like the middleman between the architect and the general contractor, working with inspectors, owners, and trade partners,” the Honors College student said.

For Hernandez, the highlight of the summer was working and bonding with her colleagues. “The labor force on a construction site is composed of a good percentage of Hispanic or Latino individuals, and I identify as both of those. Because of this, I was able to create meaningful bonds with individuals as we engaged in day-to-day conversations about the work we do,” she said.

Hernandez says engineering professor Catalina González-Dueñas is also a huge source of inspiration. She shared her background with the CEC professor during office hours, where they bonded over their respective experiences.

“I feel like I'm able to see myself in her,” said Hernandez, first generation college student originally from El Salvador. “She’s a representation of what’s possible for me. She told me that one of the reasons why she does what she does is to be that representation for Hispanic and Latina women.

This admiration is a two-way street, said González-Dueñas. “I aim for my students to learn and feel inspired, but I am often inspired by and learning from their questions and perspectives as well,” she said.

“What stands out the most about Leslie is that she always relates the concepts taught in class to her own internship experience,” said González-Dueñas. “This not only allows her to put concepts into action, but also helps her classmates by providing real-world examples that illustrate abstract ideas.”

Leslie Hernandez at her Clark Construction Internship outside the Fuse at Mason Square building. Photo by Cristian Torres/Office of University Branding

Alongside her internship position, Hernandez has also been working part-time for Clark Construction for the past two years. During the summer, the internship and part-time position responsibilities merge.

“They offered me the position, which is great because it allows me to gain experience in my field while I’m going to school. They’ve been very flexible with my class schedule as well,” said Hernandez.

“When I first started working at Clark Construction, everyone would encourage me even though they didn’t even really know me yet,” said Hernandez. “I’m so glad to have this background and experience in the construction industry because I do see myself in this industry later on.”

Hernandez says the only thing she’s more dedicated to than construction is family. “I have two little sisters and a little brother and I'm trying to not only set a good example but open doors for them so they see that anything is possible,” she said.

“I feel such a sense of pride because I’m leaving a little piece of myself in every project. Once the Fuse building is done, I'm forever going to be part of that project and my school.”

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