Teaching Assistant Professor/Researcher Parth Bhatt is making a mark in the Michigan Tech College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science using his expertise in and passion for Python — a powerful programming language.
Bhatt shares his take on applying Python to manage natural resources and for analyzing pressing environmental challenges in a Q&A on the Michigan Tech Global Campus News blog.
The College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (CFRES) Dean Search Committee will be holding a meeting today (Oct. 12) at 10 a.m. in Noblet (Forestry) G004 to continue discussion of the position description.
The meeting is open to Michigan Tech faculty, staff and students.
The Arctic Ranger Club at MTU welcomes you to the sixth annual Husky Autumn Mountain Run on Saturday (Oct. 14) at Mont Ripley!
We are excited to have you as a part of this event as we raise money for the Copper Country Humane Society and the Arctic Ranger Club! The 10K run begins at 9 a.m. and the 5K begins at 9:15 a.m.
Visit the Husky Autumn Mountain Run webpage for more info and to sign up!
Please join us tomorrow (Oct. 13) for the third meeting of Café Français, a biweekly French conversation hour organized by the Department of Humanities at Michigan Tech. We will meet in our usual room, Walker 120C, from 5-6 p.m. Coffee and tea will be served.
In this week's conversation, we will be discussing the role of streaming platforms such as Netflix in our lives. In the second part of the meeting, we will watch an episode of the French TV show "Lupin," whose third season was released last week. Venez nombreux!
Get your tickets to the outrageously fun five-show run of "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage," performed by Guerilla Opera. This event is part of the yearlong celebration of 50 years of computer science at Michigan Tech. The show opens tonight at 7:30 p.m.!
Based on the New York Times bestselling steampunk graphic novel by Sydney Padua, this is the first staging of the comedic new work. It centers on scientists Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, the real-life unsung inventors of the first computer, fighting crime in alternate universes with their new invention.
Lovelace was a mathematician, gambler and proto-programmer whose writings contained the first-ever appearance of general computing theory. She was the first great genius to develop a programming language, and she is still not generally known. Babbage was the eccentric inventor of the Difference Engine, an enormous clockwork calculating machine that would have been the first computer, if he had ever finished it.
Stay after tonight’s performance for a panel discussion with Alaina de la Guardia (“Ava Lovelace” and artistic director of Guerilla Opera), Elena Ruehr (the Houghton-raised composer of the opera), Libby Meyer (director of the music composition program at Michigan Tech), Linda Ott (professor of computer science), Jennifer Nish (associate professor of rhetoric and composition) and Richard Canevez (assistant professor of communication, culture, and media, and humanities).
Show Details:
Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences Institute (EPSSI) guest Ogochukwu (Ogo) Enekwizu, research associate of the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will give a talk on Monday (Oct 16) at 4 p.m. In M&M U113.
Details are available on the University Events Calendar.
Enekwizu's talk is titled "The Atmospheric Aging and Impacts of Black Carbon."
From the abstract:
Black carbon (BC) particles originating from fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning contribute substantially to climate warming both directly through the absorption of solar radiation (aerosol-radiation interactions), and indirectly by changing cloud properties such as cloud amount and lifetime (aerosol-cloud interactions). Quantifying the radiative impacts of these BC particles remains a significant challenge that ultimately stems from a poor understanding of the fundamental mechanisms governing the evolution of the structural, chemical, optical, and hygroscopic properties of these particles, and their large spatial and temporal heterogeneity during atmospheric transport. In this seminar, I will highlight some of my past work on the effects of coating distribution and evolving aggregate morphology on the optical properties of aged BC particles (from fossil fuel combustion), and my current work on quantifying the impacts of cloud processing on the size distribution of BC particles formed from biomass burning (wildfires) and the subsequent changes in optical properties resulting from these interactions. Specific results include experimentally constrained modeling simulations of BC optical properties and laboratory measurements of the cloud droplet activation of BC particles.
Do you have questions about graduate school?
Join the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE) faculty and graduate students, as well as the MTU Graduate School, for Grad Info Night on Tuesday (Oct. 17) at 5:30 p.m. in the Eighth Floor Dow Atrium.
Learn about why you should consider graduate school, the accelerated and online M.S. program, the application process, financial aid and much more.
Pizza will be provided!
This event is sponsored by CEGE and the MTU Graduate School.
The next Environmental Engineering Graduate Seminar will take place at 3 p.m. on Monday (Oct. 16) in GLRC 202.
Yousef Darestani, assistant professor, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE), Michigan Tech, will present "A Stochastic Wind-Surge-Wave Model for Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Coastal Power Infrastructures."
Read the abstract on the University Events Calendar.
No. 9 Michigan Tech hockey is hosting Alaska in their home-opening series, with games tomorrow (Oct. 13) and Saturday (Oct. 14) at the John MacInnes Student Ice Arena.
The puck drops Friday at 7:07 p.m. and Saturday at 6:07 p.m. Tech is 0-0-1 and Alaska is 0-2-0.
Fans can listen live on the radio at Mix 93.5 WKMJ-FM or online at TheMix93.com or Pasty.net. Both games will be livestreamed on FloHockey (a subscription is required — discounts are available for students).
Read the preview at Michigan Tech Athletics.
It's rivalry week for Michigan Tech football. The Huskies will travel to the Superior Dome on Saturday (Oct. 14) at 7 p.m. for the 21st installment of the Miner's Cup game against Northern Michigan.
Saturday's game will be aired locally on FOX-UP. WLUC TV6 and FOX-UP began broadcasting the Tech versus NMU rivalry during the 2013-14 season.
Fans can also listen in at Mix 93.5 WKMJ-FM or online at Pasty.net. The game will be livestreamed on FloSports (a subscription is required — discounts are available for students).
Read the preview at Michigan Tech Athletics.
Postdoctoral Scholar Jae Min Yeom (Physics) and co-authors Ian Helman (MTRI), Jesse Anderson and Raymond Shaw (both Physics), and Will Cantrell (GS/Physics) have published a research article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research article is titled “Cloud microphysical response to entrainment and mixing is locally inhomogeneous and globally homogeneous: Evidence from the lab.”
Fan Yang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Prasanth Prabhakaran of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are also co-authors.
Yang and Prabhakaran are both Michigan Tech alumni, having worked in the Pi Cloud Chamber lab as a graduate student and postdoc, respectively.
The paper is one of the first laboratory investigations of how dry air is mixed into a cloud since the pioneering work of Latham and Reed in 1977, and helps to resolve the longstanding debate about the type of mixing that occurs in natural clouds.
Michigan Tech was a track partner for the 2023 Lean Solutions Global Summit, held Oct. 2-4. Track partners are known as leaders in continuous improvement in their industry.
This year’s summit centered around the essential elements of success: people-driven leadership, a clear sense of purpose and the unwavering passion that fuels continuous improvement.
Ruth Archer, director of continuous improvement, was an invited presenter, speaking with Debra Levantrosser from the University of Michigan on “Teaching Lean to the Next Generation.”
Empowering Women to be Leaders in Science and Engineering: Leadership and Negotiation Workshop
Women scientists take on leadership roles every day — in the classroom, in their department or institution, and in their professional organizations.
This fall, Women in the Academy (WIA) and the Office of the Provost are co-sponsoring a workshop designed to give participants the basic concepts of leadership, describe recent research on leadership qualities that lead to success and failure, discuss effective leadership styles for women in different cultures, provide strategies for career advancement into leadership roles, and discuss effective negotiating techniques and developing and maintaining strong leadership networks.
The workshop is led by Pushpa Murthy, who has offered similar workshops across the world.
Event Details:
If you are interested in the workshop but cannot attend, please consider responding anonymously to help us better understand the barriers to attending such events.
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You're Invited: IPEC Membership Social
Join us for the Institute for Policy, Ethics, and Culture (IPEC) fall membership get-together!
Members and nonmembers alike are invited to the Rozsa mezzanine from 6-7:30 p.m. tonight (Oct. 12) for heavy appetizers and drinks. Then, join us afterward for "The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage," a one-hour opera in the McArdle Theatre. Free opera tickets are available by contacting IPEC Director Stefka Hristova at shristov@mtu.edu.
Add the IPEC Membership Social to your Google Calendar.
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GLRC/ICC Rapid Seedling Research Funding
Applications for the Great Lakes Research Center/Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (GLRC/ICC) 2024 Spring Semester Rapid Research Seedling Funding Opportunity are due Nov. 1.
The intent of this funding is to provide faculty and research staff funds for idea development and data collection that will quickly enable large externally sponsored funding requests.
Proposals will be accepted from Michigan Tech tenured, tenure-track and research faculty, and research scientists and engineers. Any individual researcher is eligible to receive up to one award per calendar year as a principal investigator (PI).
Awards will be announced within one month of the funding cycle deadline. Projects should have a duration of one semester with request amounts not to exceed $10,000.
Awardees must be an affiliated member of the GLRC and/or ICC and are expected to assign a Center/Institute of the GLRC or ICC to any subsequent proposals and awards generated using the data developed/enabled with the rapid seedling funding.
The application form, additional information and instructions can be found in the Member Resources section of the GLRC Institute webpage and on the ICC website. Please send questions to glrc-icc-admin-l@mtu.edu.
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Charles Wallace to Present CS Colloquium
Associate Professor Charles Wallace of the Department of Computer Science (CS) will present a Computer Science Colloquium tomorrow (Oct. 13) at 3 p.m. in Rekhi 214 and via Zoom webinar.
The title of the talk is “The role of peer dialogue as disruptor in critical ethical analysis for computing students.”
Read the talk abstract on the Computing News Blog.
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PhD Proposal Defense: Junyao Yang, CS
Ph.D. in Computer Science student Junyao Yang will present their Ph.D. dissertation proposal tomorrow (Oct. 13) from 8-9:30 a.m. in Fisher 131 and via Zoom online meeting.
The title of Yang's proposal is "Design and Modeling of Sampling-Based Caching Policies."
Read the proposal abstract on the Computing News Blog.
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CSA Dean Search Town Hall
The CSA Search Committee will hold an open town hall meeting at 11:30 a.m. today (Oct. 12) in GLRC 202 to discuss the CSA dean position description and the list of qualifications and attributes. The draft position description is available online.
Faculty, staff and students are invited to send written comments to committee members prior to the town hall meeting. See the Oct. 4 Tech Today for a list of committee members.
The next committee meeting is at 2 p.m. Wednesday (Oct. 18) in AOB 201. Any additional meetings open to faculty, staff and students will be announced by the committee through Tech Today.
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CTL Coffee Chat: 'The Michigan Tech Writing Center: Supporting Students'
You’re invited to the next CTL Coffee Chat at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday (Oct. 17). Claire Helakoski, assistant director of the MTU Writing Center, will discuss the different types of plagiarism that instructors might encounter in student work and provide practical insights on effective language to discuss citing issues with your students. We'll also review the Turnitin similarity tool, demonstrate how to enable this feature in a Canvas-based writing assignment and provide guidance for interpreting Turnitin reports.
Register for the event and join us on Tuesday. Contact the CTL at ctl@mtu.edu if you have questions or need more information.
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Peace Corps Recruiter Visiting Campus Tomorrow
Stop by to chat with Peace Corps recruiter David Abundis from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow (Oct. 13) in the MUB Commons. Learn about Peace Corps service opportunities in more than 60 countries around the world.
For more information, contact Abundis at dabundis@peacecorps.gov.
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ADVANCE Advocates and Allies Workshop
Have you noticed that different people have vastly different experiences in classes, meetings, informal and formal events and other interactions on campus? Ever notice that this is dependent upon visually identifiable identities (gender, skin color, etc.)? Would you like to learn more about becoming an ally in the moment and to help intentionally craft the culture at Michigan Tech to position every single individual for success (not just those who fit the "historically typical" mold)?
You are invited to attend one of two sessions (held concurrently) of a workshop that explores the impact of gender and race on faculty members’ experiences of the University campus climate. Through small group discussions, a review of the existing research and large group discussions, these sessions will seek to shift the dialogue from individual problems and solutions experienced by underrepresented faculty to seeking to acknowledge and identify institutional challenges and solutions related to gender and racial inequity in higher education.
If you'd simply like to learn more about these issues in a collegial environment, please attend. If you would like to practice allyship, attend and bring a friend!
This workshop will be led by Michigan Tech's own Advocate Team members (cisgender-men-only session) and by ADVANCE's PI team/Advocates and Allies Advisory Board members (women and other genders session). Details on Advocates and Allies are available on the ADVANCE webpage.
Lunch will be served at the workshop. Please RSVP no later than tomorrow (Oct. 13) so we can place our food order.
Workshop Details:
This workshop is being sponsored by the Advocates Team, the Advocates and Allies Advisory Board (A3B) and the ADVANCE Initiative at Michigan Tech.
ADVANCE at Michigan Tech is an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to improving faculty career success, retention, diversity, equity and inclusion. To learn more about our mission and programming efforts, and to check out our growing collection of resources, email us at advance-mtu@mtu.edu, visit our website or stop by our office in Library 102B.
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BioSci Seminar Series Speakers: Katy Matson and Bianca Mercado-Velez
Bianca Mercado-Velez and Katy Matson will present as part of the Department of Biological Sciences (BioSci) Seminar Series today (Oct. 12) from 3-4 p.m. in GLRC 202.
Mercado-Velez's presentation is titled "Physicochemical Characterization of Tumor-derived Exosomes using Atomic Force Microscopy."
From the abstract:
Exosomes are lipid bilayer vesicles released from cells containing cargo (e.g., DNA, RNA, and proteins) unique to their parent cell. Exosomes are found in most bodily fluids (e.g., saliva, blood, urine) and are released by many cell types, including cancer cells. Tumor-derived exosomes aid cancer progression by being one source of metastasis; thus, they are a valuable biomarker for cancer diagnosis due to their circulation in different body fluids. However, exosome heterogeneity hinders the isolation and purification needed for accurate diagnostics. Therefore, improved biophysical characterization of exosomes at the single-particle level could improve diagnostic sensitivity for cancer-derived exosomes.
Matson's presentation is titled "miR-483 deficiency induces pancreatic beta-cell dedifferentiation and oxidative stress."
From the abstract:
MicroRNA’s (miRNA) are a group of small non-coding RNAs that negatively regulate target gene expression in response to metabolic changes in pancreatic islets. Dysregulation of miRNAs plays a crucial role in controlling the pathogenesis of diabetes, specifically the function of beta-cells in response to metabolic changes. Beta-cell dedifferentiation is a pathological mechanism that contributes to the loss and dysfunction of beta-cell during the progression of type 2 diabetes (T2D). … Our data indicates that miR-483 is vital for protecting beta-cell identity, and miR-483 deficiency induces beta-cell dedifferentiation and oxidative stress.
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MSE Seminar with Mary O'Brien
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) is hosting a seminar presented by Mary O'Brien, staff scientist on the Materials Compatibility Team in the Sigma Manufacturing Sciences Division at LANL, at 1 p.m. today (Oct. 12) in M&M 610.
O'Brien's presentation is titled "Question Everything and Regret Nothing: A Story About a Decade of Trying to Understand Hydrogen Effects on Metals."
From the abstract:
Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) is a long-standing challenge in metallurgy due to unpredictable failures observed in numerous metallic systems exposed to hydrogen containing environments. Ductility loss is attributed to any combination of the following: formation of brittle hydrides upon supersaturation, decohesion along boundaries due to trapped hydrogen, or hydrogen enhanced localized plasticity (HELP) due to soluble hydrogen. I spent 7 years of my life trying to understand how hydrogen can cause internal cracks to form in oil and gas pipelines, and what we can do to prevent it. I will discuss some of what that journey looked like for me, so that I can inform you why I would have gone on to LANL to propose investigating the effect of hydrogen on uranium. Uranium, with its low symmetry crystal structure, presents a unique opportunity to observe the proposed hydrogen-induced early-onset plasticity without added complications of slip system interactions that occur in most engineering materials. Electron backscatter diffraction has revealed that hydrogen charging reduces twin growth. These results will be discussed in the context of recent advanced characterization results alongside plans for future work. But this won’t be just another boring technical talk. It’s a talk about what it has looked like for me to evolve into a scientist and what it means to ask hard questions. I will give examples of failures and successes I have had along the way in hopes of showing that behind every CV is a story of ups and downs that scientists rarely ever talk about in public. I hope to show that anyone interested in questioning everything, regardless of past choices, can learn to be a scientist.
O'Brien's research focus is understanding hydrogen embrittlement phenomena in a wide variety of metallic systems, with a current focus on actinide materials. She earned a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Washington State University, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. Her graduate research involved understanding hydrogen-induced cracking in low carbon pipeline steels for oil and gas applications. Prior to attending graduate school, she worked as a civilian nuclear engineer at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard refueling Ohio-class submarines.
O'Brien spends her free time exploring New Mexico on bikes, skis, and sometimes skates with her partner and her corgi Jesse. She is passionate about volunteering to enhance diversity both in STEM and in the outdoors and has taken on several roles both locally and nationally toward this goal.
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This Week's C3 Luncheon Menu
Menu for Thursday (Oct. 12):
Join Carved and Crafted Catering at Michigan Tech for this week's C-Cubed Luncheon today (Oct. 12) from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union Alumni Lounge (MUB 107). All faculty and staff, along with their guests, are invited.
The C-Cubed, or C3, lunch buffet menus are created and prepared by chef Luis Delgado and his culinary team. As the name suggests, the meals are meant to foster conversation, community and collegiality. Attendees may bring their lunch instead of purchasing the buffet. Fruit-infused water, coffee, tea and cookies are available free to all attendees.
The buffet lunch is $15 per person. Cash, credit cards and gift cards are accepted. Gift cards can be purchased in the Memorial Union Office (MUB 101).
To join the C-Cubed Google Group and receive weekly menus, please complete the C-Cubed Luncheon Email List form.
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ME-EM Graduate Seminar Speaker: Byung-Jun Yoon
The next Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (ME-EM) Graduate Seminar speaker will present at 4 p.m. today (Oct. 12) in MEEM 112.
Byung-Jun Yoon will present “Leveraging AI/ML in Science to Enable Optimal Design and Accelerate Novel Discoveries.”
Yoon’s main research interests lie in scientific artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), optimal experimental design and objective-based uncertainty quantification.
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CoE Dean Search Committee Meeting
The College of Engineering (CoE) Dean Search Committee will be meeting tomorrow (Oct. 13) at 8:10 a.m. in the MUB Ballroom A2.
Provost Andrew Storer will be attending and the committee will be finalizing the position description. The meeting is open to the public.
To have your event automatically appear, please submit them to the University Events Calendar.
Erin Hoffman is an artist and printmaker from Muskegon, Michigan, who deals primarily with political and social concerns. Through the presentation of mismatched ideas and...
*****Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Dr. Mary O’Brien Los Alamos National Laboratory Abstract Hydrogen embrittlement (HE) is a long-standing challenge in metallurgy...
*****Join the Center for Teaching and Learning for the following opportunity: Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 2:00PM https://mtu.libcal.com/event/11329241
*****Free MATLAB Workshop! Women in Physics is hosting a MATLAB workshop that is available to anyone who is interested. It is a 7 week course that will begin with the basic...
*****ME-EM Graduate Seminar Speaker Series proudly presents Byung-Jun Yoon, PhD Associate Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering Texas A&M University Abstract Various...
*****Adult Huskies Swim Lessons provides aquatic education for the beginner to the intermediate swimmer who is looking to become more comfortable in the water and learn the...
*****Adult Huskies Swim Training provides additional attention and competitive guidance to swimmers ages 18 and older who are looking to improve their swimming skills and fitness...
*****Join Michigan Tech's RedTeam for their weekly club meeting! Each meeting we discuss cyber news articles and give talks pertaining to the field of cybersecurity.
*****“Thrilling Adventures as much a triumph as it is a bit of wacky fun.” Aaron Keebaugh, Artfuse 2023 Based on the New York Times best-selling graphic novel by Sydney Padua,...
