Snake eyes stare out from the pages
of the
Nov. 2005 issue of National Geographic.
The “Geographica” brief
tells the story of associate professor
Dr. Michael Grace’s research
into the amazingly novel sensory
organ inside the facial pits of pythons,
boas and pit vipers. These snakes
can collect infrared photons from
distant warm objects and convert
the information into a spatial map
in the brain—much the way vision
works. The organ, said Grace, is “the
single best infrared-detecting system
on Earth.” Grace’s funded
research can lead to better artificial
infrared sensors for military and
industrial use.
A Chronicle of Higher Education
story describes a video game
developed at Carnegie Mellon
University that helps firefighters
train for terrorist attacks.
Carnegie Mellon, in fact, intends
to give the game to New York
firefighters to support their
preparedness. Game development,
however, will not be complete
without the aid of Florida Tech’s
Dr. Andrew English and his team,
who lead the Carnegie Mellon
students in making the game more
team oriented. English, a psychology
professor, conducts research
on the use of technology to teach
teamwork. “Video games,” he
said, “are a good way to
develop team-building exercises.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
also invited Florida Tech to
contribute to a story about
new antiterrorism regulations
that make the United States
a less welcoming place for
foreign aviation students.
Dean Dr. Michael Karim, College
of Aeronautics; Paul Davis,
professor of aeronautics; and
a former Florida Tech flight
student were quoted. Karim
said that the extra layers
of government scrutiny are
insulting to many of the students,
but that “We’re
going to make this work.” Davis
said that the job market remained
strong at airports and consulting
companies for international
students with degrees in aviation.
His enlightenment about lightning
earned Dr. Joseph Dwyer, associate
professor of physics and space
sciences, appearances on the
Discovery Channel and the PBS
program, “NOVA scienceNOW.” Published
many times in print media, he
most recently was in the Ottawa
Citizen and Vancouver Sun for
his discoveries about the production
of X-rays in lightning.
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© CNN Photo
Four Florida Tech students spent
their Labor Day weekend on a rescue
mission to Louisiana. They delivered
a 16-foot flatboat, purchased in
Mississippi, to the Kenner Fire
Department for rescue use. They also
brought 11,000 pounds of supplies
to a needy Louisiana parish near
Baton Rouge.
Though discouraged
by their advisers and friends from
making
the possibly
dangerous journey, undergraduates
Manoj Srivastava, of Dayton, Ohio;
Jenny Frembling, of Atherton, Calif.;
and graduate students, Wachindra “Wachi” Bandara,
of Sri Lanka; and Keith Credo,
of Kenner, La., drove to a small
town
in Mississippi, bought the boat
and rented a U-Haul truck.
They
met up with the Mississippi
counterpart to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), which
loaded their vehicle with supplies,
provided
an armed escort and directed
them to the appropriate Louisiana
recipient.
The students then continued on
their way to Louisiana, supplies
in hand—primarily
food, water, clothes and toys—and
boat in tow.
“They
absolutely needed the supplies. The
emergency center where we dropped
off the load had just about
run out
of everything when we got there,” said
Frembling.
While graduate
student Credo, an alumnus of Tulane,
was inspired
to help his fellow Louisianans,
Sri
Lankan Bandara had a different
motivation for his humanitarian
work. Saddened
and frustrated last December
when
he could not return home
to
help during the tsunamis,
Bandara was determined to offer assistance
during this disaster.
The
students pooled their own money
to complete the
mission,
which
received national attention.
CNN covered the
story, featuring Credo
and Bandara live on “CNN
Sunday Morning.”
Sam Deriso ’05 knows that no
one enjoys long, boring waits for
a table in a restaurant. Channeling
that dislike into an invention, Deriso
won $11,500 and one of only 14 advanced
E-team grants awarded nationwide
by the National Collegiate Inventors
and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
Developer of an interactive restaurant
pager, Deriso was acknowledged
for his product idea, which could launch
a new business.
“This is the first such award
won at Florida Tech. There are hundreds
and hundreds of applications for the
grants annually and only 14 were awarded
this
year,” said Dr. Carmo D’Cruz, professor of engineering and a
team adviser. Dr. John Hadjilogiou, another College of Engineering faculty
member,
also advised.
Deriso’s product allows guests
to play games, view the menu and check
on the estimated wait time while waiting
to be seated in a
restaurant. The system
is a handheld pager with video screens and buttons wirelessly connected
to a base station. It comes equipped
with a touch screen, mouse, keyboard,
pager-charging
bay, software to update the menu and a transceiver.
Deriso, who is currently
pursuing a Master’s in Engineering
Management at Florida Tech, took
the Systems Engineering Entrepreneurship
course series,
offered through the Department of Engineering Systems. He wrote the NCIIA
proposal to fulfill a midterm requirement
in D’Cruz’s technical
marketing course.
Deriso will continue
to develop the product as he prepares
to market
it to a restaurant chain.
Florida: An Illustrated History, by
Dr. Bob Taylor, humanities and communication,
is new on the market from Hippocrene
Press. The book covers the state from
the time of the Spanish conquistadores
in the early 16th century, through
transition from territory to statehood,
to the arrival of the Space Age and
the 21st century issues that beset
the Sunshine State.
Florida Tech’s first-ever master’s
degree in elementary education begins
this fall with the origination of the
M.Ed. in Elementary Science Education.
Designed for the elementary school
teacher—whether a science specialist
or not—the program offers a one-third
discount to Florida teachers.
Beginning
Fall 2005, the 30-credit program
offers all classes on Florida
Tech’s main campus, to be held
in the late afternoons and evenings.
The curriculum provides science education
and environmental education, all
subjects germane to the
responsibilities of an elementary
teacher and the focus of national
goals.
Current teachers of grades
1-6 who would like to apply should
send a
résumé,
statement of objectives and three
letters of recommendation to: Graduate
Admissions,
Florida Tech, 150 W. University Blvd.,
Melbourne, Fla. 32901.
For more information, call (321)
674-7578, or
e-mail Dr. David Cook at dcook@fit.edu.
Research capabilities at Florida Tech
and nine other Florida universities
will burgeon like rush-hour traffic
with creation of the Florida Lambda
Rail (FLR), an extremely high speed
computer network.
The FLR connects
into the national Lambda Rail and
is the first regional
network of its kind owned and operated
by universities. The project, two
years in the making, will significantly
increase
both the types and speed of research
at Florida Tech and the other member
universities. This next generation
Internet has 100 times the capacity
of what was available previously.
“
We’re now able to double our
capacity to the Internet from 45 mbs
to more than 100 mbs,” said Dr.
Richard Newman, associate provost for
information technology. “This
new network will make Florida Tech
competitive for a wide variety of research
grants.”
The Florida Tech Crimson has undergone
significant changes over the past summer.
Florida Today now publishes The Crimson
from its facilities in Melbourne. The
new deal has enabled the student newspaper
to be printed in full color and be
distributed every Thursday throughout
campus and the Melbourne area. Subscriptions
are now available for $20 per semester,
or $30 for a year. More information
can be found at www.fit.edu/crimson.
Almost 300 scientists from over 50
countries debated, discussed and presented
at the Conference on Differential and
Difference Equations and Applications
at Florida Tech in August.
The conference
was designed to promote cooperation
among the various disciplines
in the field of mathematics encompassing
differential and difference equations.
Participants, from some of the world’s
major universities and institutes,
were invited
to attend.
The Department of Mathematical
Sciences hosted the conference,
led by Dr.
Ravi P. Agarwal, professor of mathematical
sciences. Other organizers were
faculty members, Drs. Tariel Kiguradze,
Kanishka
Perera and Gnana Bhaskar Tenali.
Peace Corps volunteers, returning from
stints in exotic locales, face the
question of how to supplement their
unique service experiences. Often that
step is a graduate program.
Since 1998,
many volunteers have chosen Florida
Tech to continue their education
in a Graduate Environmental and Teacher
Education Fellows Program. Dr. Thomas
Marcinkowski, program coordinator,
currently directs seven returned
Peace Corps volunteers.
A Peace Corps
Fellow at the university since 2003,
Carole McCauley is currently
completing a master’s degree
in environmental education before
she moves on to oversee development
of
the master plan for the first national
park on the Caribbean island of
Montserrat. The new park, representing
approximately
20 percent of Montserrat’s
total area, will protect endangered
species,
some of which are found only on
the teardrop-shaped island. Located
in the Centre Hills Forest Reserve,
the projected date for the
park to
be legally
established is Spring 2007.
McCauley
was a Peace Corps volunteer in
Antigua, West Indies, for
almost three years, then
served as interim
executive director of the
Environmental Awareness Group. She
currently
works for the St. Johns River
Water Management
District as an educator and
volunteer coordinator.
Four have
graduated from the fellows program.
Katrina
(Babulski) Morrell
works at the Environmental
Learning Center in Wabasso,
Fla. Michelle
(Reznicek) Machalka is
a forensic scientist, working
for the FBI in Quantico,
Va. Other graduates are Matt
Culver
and Steven
MacLeod.
Simply, very few hydrogen-powered boats
exist. “They’re mostly
military or large commercial craft
and well-funded,” said Greg Peebles,
research engineer at Florida Tech’s
Center for Hydrogen Research. Despite
the lack of models, four Florida Tech
students challenged themselves to build
a hydrogen-powered boat for their senior
design project.
Their seven-foot boat,
small and not well-funded, impressed
advisers and
other faculty when the boat raced
a gasoline-powered boat to a draw in
Melbourne Harbor.
The young men, Michael
Card, Chris Cawood, Steve Martyr
and John Whitehead,
are now seniors in the Department
of Marine and Environmental Systems.
They
worked most of Summer 2005 in Card’s
garage to finish the boat. Graduate
student Adam Cherwinsky donated
many hours to the project.
First
they built the boat to run on
propane, got out the bugs and
then
converted the engine to hydrogen.
The hydrogen passed through a
propane-style regulator into a small
internal
combustion engine that powered
a water jet.
Exhibiting good planning skills,
they finished their boat a week
before the
planned race, leaving time for
testing and “extra tweaking,” according
to Frank Leslie, an adjunct faculty
member who teaches a renewable energy
course.
“The boat has such potential,
especially in view of the current energy
crisis.
It’s not outside our
current technology, and it’s
not that expensive to make
the conversion,” said
Peebles.
Florida Tech’s
Center for Hydrogen Research
donated the fuel. “It’s
always a pleasure to work with
students who demonstrate such
creativity and
enthusiasm. They are the ones
who will ensure the success
of alternative fuels,” said
Dr. Mary Helen McCay, center
director.
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New
Faculty Book Explores Florida History 
Creative Team Impresses with Hydrogen
Boat