Events

Mechanical Engineering MS Project Presentation by Mr. Raymond B. Lawton DATE: April 23, 2019 TIME: 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. LOCATION: Textile Building, Room 101E TOPIC: Direct Part Marking for Improved Corrosion Resistance and Durability of Stainless Steel Medical Devices ABSTRACT: The medical device industry is challenged to provide high quality permanent markings on its devices. In the past this industry has been limited to the use of direct part marking systems that anneal the surface of the material to create dark marks. These types of marks have an increased susceptibility to corrosion and fading which creates problems with the traceability of these devices. Unlike the current direct part marking systems newer systems have the ability to avoid this localized heating. The aim of this project is to investigate and optimize these newer systems using statistical optimization techniques. ADVISOR: -Dr. Wenzhen Huang, Professor Mechanical Engineering Department, UMass Dartmouth COMMITTEE MEMBERS: -Dr. Sheikh Fahad Ferdous, Full Time Lecturer Mechanical Engineering Department, UMass Dartmouth -Dr. Jun Li, Assistant Professor Mechanical Engineering Department, UMass Dartmouth Open to the public. All MNE students are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact Dr. Wenzhen Huang (whuang@umassd.edu, 508-910-6568). Thank you, Sue Cunha, Administrative Assistant Mechanical Engineering Department UMass Dartmouth 285 Old Westport Road Dartmouth, MA 02747 scunha@umassd.edu 508-999-8492

CYBER SECURITY EDUCATION CLUB (CSEC) JOINT WITH ECE SEMINAR* Topic: FIVE THINGS HACKERS DO Speaker: Mr. Scott Chase, Chief Technology Officer, Analyze Corporation Location: DION Building, Room 116 Abstract: This talk introduces five methods hackers employ to gain access to a corporate network and explains common vulnerabilities that lead to compromise. Topics covered include open source information gathering, network survey, access, privilege escalation and data collection. Examples of format-type attacks, web-based vulnerabilities, mobile computing exploits, cloud computing exploits and social engineering are used to illustrate the relevant processes. Context is provided from recent high-profile global cyber-attacks. The session concludes with interactive demonstrations and supported student hands-ons. 1.5 hours. Biography: Scott Chase is an information security educator and researcher with over 20 years' experience. He has developed technology and learning solutions for the US State Department, US Army, White House, State of California and the governments of the UK, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Previously, he was technical director for cybersecurity programs with the Raytheon Company. He is the co-author of The Software Vulnerability Guide (2005, Cengage Learning). His work has been featured in the Boston Globe, New York Times and other publications Please Note: This workshop consists of 45-minute talk followed with hands-on experiments. Participants, please bring your own laptop to this workshop. This workshop will count towards your ECE599 seminar credit. Professors, if you are planning to provide extra-credit for this workshop, please contact CSEC President, Ms. Prinkle Sharma (PSharma1@UMassD.edu) for participant sheets. Pizzas, cookies, and drinks will be served! The Seminars is open to the public free of charge. *For further information, please contact Dr. Hong Liu (508.999.8514 or hliu@umassd.edu) or Dr. Honggang Wang (508.999.8469 or hwang1@umassd.edu).

TOPIC: A PRACTICAL AND EFFICIENT SECURITY SCHEME FOR WIRELESS BODY AREA NETWORKS LOCATION: College of Engineering Conference Room, Textiles Building (TXT), Room 101E ABSTRACT: A Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a wireless network of wearable computing devices. WBAN's application domains include healthcare, sports, entertainment, military, etc... However, due to the broadcast nature of wireless medium, WBANs are vulnerable to multiple types of security attacks, which may limit their wide deployment. To address the security issues, developing a practical and efficient security scheme with the consideration of the balance among security, efficiency, and practicality is essential. Unlike traditional approaches (e.g., biometric-based approaches), we proposed physical layer Received Signal Strength (RSS) based security methods that deal with several critical challenges in the deployment of secure WBAN systems. These challenges include: (1) The inaccuracy of determining nodes’ location using RSS measurement for node authentication; (2) The instability and variation of security key generation rates during key generation process based on RSS reciprocity; (3) The WBAN performance degradation due to removing differences in symmetric keys (key agreement); (4) The complicated security operations. In this work, I proposed integrated security solutions, which include cooperative node authentication, group-based cooperative key generation, efficient key agreement and simplified security operations. Both simulation and experimental results show that the proposed solutions will significantly improve the security performance, efficiency and practicability of a WBAN system. NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. Co-Advisors: Dr. Honggang Wang and Dr. Hua Fang Committee Members: Dr. Paul J. Fortier and Dr. Liudong Xing, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth; Dr. Shaoen Wu, Computer Science Dept., Ball State University

The Mechanical Engineering Department is proud to announce 2019 Senior Design Capstone Presentations on May 1, 2019 at Woodland Commons (final schedule is below). All are welcome! 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. Poster session (view projects, ask questions, interact with teams) 9:00 a.m. - 9:05 a.m. Opening remarks by Dean Jean VanderGheynst 9:05 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. Introductions 9:15 a.m. - 9:35 a.m. MBTA Red Line Track Vibration Analysis MBTA 9:35 a.m. - 9:55 a.m. Stand-alone Vacuum Test Station Lockheed Martin Sippican Inc. 9:55 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. Can Assembly Optimization Project CPS Technologies 10:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Break (15 minutes) 10:30 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. Vibration Isolation Pad Dynamic Force Sensor Fabreeka International Inc. 10:50 a.m. - 11:10 a.m. Fruit Firmness Study Ocean Spray 11:10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Mountain Bike Stepper Seat Post Goddard Technologies 11:30 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. Upgrade of Mechanical Response Testing Equipment KVH Industries 11:50 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch (provided) and Career Panel Discussion (100 minutes) 1:30 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. Accelerometer Survivability Testing BTech Acoustics 1:50 p.m. - 2:10 p.m. Modular Algae Removal Device Mr. Catlow & Son 2:10 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. HPCU-Vibration Failure Reduction MBTA 2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m. Break (15 minutes) 2:45 p.m. - 3:05 p.m. Sprinkler Activation Detection FM Global 3:05 p.m. - 3:25 p.m. Ultra-High Vacuum Angular Contact Bearing Test Rig Nye Lubricants 3:25 p.m. - 3:45 p.m Process Optimization of Hot Tub Testing Softub Inc. 3:45 p.m. - 4:25 p.m. Judges deliberate 4:25 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. Closing remarks by Associate Dean Raymond Laoulache 4:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Awards Presentation A special thank you to our sponsors, faculty advisors and judges! For more information, please contact: Dr. Sheikh Fahad Ferdous, Senior Design Instructor sferdous@umassd.edu or Sue Cunha, Administrative Assistant scunha@umassd.edu Thank you.

Spring classes end today.

Today is study day.

TITLE: CHARACTERIZATION AND APPLICATION OF CATECHOL MICROCINS TOWARDS FIGHTING ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT ENTERIC BACTERIA Abstract: Complications arising from antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming a major issue in modern medicine. Members of drug-resistant Enterobacteriaceae spp. include opportunistic pathogens (e.g., Salmonella spp.) that are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and outgrowth of these bacteria is considered a strong indicator of intestinal dysbiosis. Microcins (small antimicrobial peptides) produced by some gut commensals can potentially cure these conditions by inhibiting select enteric bacteria and have been proposed as a viable alternative to antibiotic treatment. To explore the applicability of microcins as clinically relevant molecules, I developed a genetically engineered proof-of-concept probiotic to inhibit Salmonella spp. via microcin H47 production, when in an environment with tetrathionate, a molecule produced in the mammalian inflamed gut during the course of a Salmonella infection. This plasmid-based E. coli probiotic revealed interesting contradictions within the microcin literature, leading to the necessity to purify and characterize microcin H47, which was done for the first time as a part of this work. Purified microcin H47 was utilized in minimum inhibitory concentration assays, demonstrating an unrealized broad spectrum of activity. The pipeline utilized for this overproduction was done in a modular fashion, allowing for the subsequent purification of a microcin only speculated to exist, known as microcin I47. Finally, these two microcins, both characterized as catechol microcins, were produced from an array of vectors towards the purpose of optimization for in vivo experimentation in mouse models of gastrointestinal colonization by antibiotic resistant enteric bacteria. Committee members: Dr. Mark Silby, UMassD Biology Dept. and Dr. Christopher Brigham from Wentworth Institute of Technology. All BMEBT students are encouraged to attend and all interested parties invited. For further information, please contact Dr. Vanni Bucci at 508-999-8219 or by email vanni.bucci@umassd.edu

Examinations begin today.

TITLE: BIOLOGICAL EXTRACTION OF CHITIN + PROCESSING OF THE BIOMATERIAL FOR POTENTIAL BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS Abstract: The seafood processing industries generate tons of waste crab, shrimp and lobster shells globally every year. Shellfish waste management is a huge problem faced by these industries. Approximately 50-60% of the total weight of the shells in lobster, shrimp, crab, is the non-edible exoskeleton, which is very rich in chitin, along with other components like calcium, proteins, and pigments. In this study, lobster shell wastes were used as the source of chitin raw material. Effectiveness and impact of chemical and biological treatments of lobster shell waste for chitin recovery were performed and compared. It was shown that treatment using successive cocultures with a combination of Serratia marcescens and Lactobacillus plantarum resulted in effective removal of proteins and minerals from lobster shells. The biological chitin extraction method is preferable to the chemical method, which requires strong acids and bases like HCl and NaOH. For fabrication of chitin membranes, ioni c liquid s (IL) 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([C2mim][OAc]) was used as a solvent media for the chitin. The resulting materials were thoroughly characterized, revealing that freeze-drying produced membranes that were highly porous. The drying methods and the concentration of chitin used defined the membrane properties. The use of ionic liquids (ILs) is a promising alternative strategy to enhance their solubility and processability, without the use of harsh chemicals and solvent systems. An empirical model was generated to correlate the different membrane properties. This allowed for prediction of the properties (e.g., tensile strength) of the chitin membrane made with different wt% of chitin-IL solutions and gives the ability to tune the properties of the biomaterial. These chitin membranes were shown to be suitable as a substrate for growth of mammalian cells. Chitin membranes were also used as a matrix for loading and prolonged in vitro release of bioactive compounds. Blendi ng of ot her polymers like poly-lactide (PLA) and hydroxyapatite with chitin altered the material properties. The polymers were mixed at different concentrations and the effect of variation of the polymer concentrations on the behavior of the resulting composite was investigated. These composite materials also supported the growth of osteocytes, which makes them promising candidates for scaffolds for use in bone regeneration that are not exposed to excessive forces. The utilization of shellfish wastes can potentially solve environmental problems, as well as providing economic benefits. The direct processing of chitin out of nonhazardous, nontoxic solvents could give us access to a sustainable material that has the potential to be used in many biomedical applications. Committee members: Dr. Tracie Ferreira, Bioengineering; Dr. Mark Silby, Biology; Dr. Chen-Lu Yang, Research Engineer at CIE: and Dr. Christopher Brigham from WIT.

TITLE: Effects of Hyperglycemia and Advanced Glycation End Products on Novel Ocy454 Osteocytes Date: May 7, 2019 Time: 12:00 pm Place: Textiles 101E Advisor: Dr. Lamya Karim, Bioengineering Abstract: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) is a condition that currently effects over 360 million people worldwide. Among these patients, there is a 3-fold increase in skeletal fragility compared to healthy adults. One of the factors thought to be associated with this increase in T2D skeletal fragility is an accelerated accumulation of protein crosslinks known as Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGEs) in bone. AGEs disrupt bone's collagen network and can deteriorate its mechanical properties, ultimately leading to the increase in skeletal fragility. However, the processes that occur between AGE accumulation and skeletal fragility are not fully understood. It is likely that one of the many contributing mechanisms is that AGEs in T2D affect bone cell behavior, which impacts bone tissue quality and consequent mechanical behavior. Osteocyte bone cells may respond to AGEs and hyperglycemic conditions by releasing extracellular signaling proteins such as sclerostin and receptor activator of nuclear factor-кB ligand (RANKL). An alteration in their expression by osteocytes grown in high glucose and AGE environments is suggested to support low bone turnover and an alteration in bone remodeling through their effects on bone forming and bone degrading cells. With an imbalance in bone formation and or resorption, the overall health of skeletal tissue is compromised. As a result, osteocytes become an essential research candidate for solving the poorly understood links between T2D and skeletal fragility. Our goal was to identify the behaviors of Ocy454 in high sugar conditions as well as on glycation-induced AGE substrates, such as glycated collagen and human cadaver bone, to better understand the links between T2D and skeletal fragility. We used a novel osteocyte cell line (Ocy454) that has a mature phenotype and is an appropriate model for measuring gene and protein expression in response to external environments. We hypothesized that osteocytes cultured in hyperglycemic and naturally induced AGE environments would have an increase in the expression of factors that disrupt bone remodeling and turnover as well as an increase in osteocyte apoptosis. Bioengineering Committee Members: Dr. Lamya Karim, Dr. Tracie Ferreira, and Dr. Milana Vasudev All BMEBT students are encouraged to attend and all interested parties invited. For further information, please contact Dr. Lamya Karim at lkarim@umassd.edu

TITLE: STRONG STABILITY PRESERVING INTEGRATING FACTOR ONE-STEP AND TWO STEP RUNGE--KUTTA METHODS Abstract: Strong stability preserving (SSP) Runge--Kutta methods are often desirable when evolving in time problems with components that have very different time scales. In situations where the SSP property is needed, it has been shown that implicit and implicit-explicit Runge--Kutta methods have very restrictive time steps and are therefore not efficient. For this reason, SSP integrating factor methods may offer an attractive alternative to traditional time stepping methods for problems with a stiff linear component and a non-stiff nonlinear component. This work defines strong stability properties of integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods. It shows that it is possible to define explicit integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods that preserve the desired strong stability properties satisfied by each of the components when coupled with forward Euler time stepping, or even given weaker conditions. Sufficient conditions are defined for explicit integrating factor one-step and two-step Runge--Kutta methods to be SSP, namely that they are based on explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods with non-decreasing abscissas or with operators replaced by the downwinded operator when the abscissas decrease. We find such one-step methods of up to fourth order and two-step methods up to eighth order, analyze their SSP coefficients, prove their optimality in a few cases, and investigate downwinding approaches to preserve strong stability. These methods are tested to demonstrate their convergence, to show that the SSP time step predicted by the theory is generally sharp, and that the non-decreasing abscissa condition or downwinded modification is needed in our test cases. Finally, this research shows that on typical total variation diminishing linear and nonlinear test cases our new SSP integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods out-perform the corresponding explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods, implicit-explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods, and some well-known exponential time differencing methods. Advisors: Drs. Sigal Gottlieb and Alfa Heryudono, Mathematics Department Committee members: Dr. Yanlai Chen, Mathematics; Dr. Gaurav Khanna, Physics All EAS students are encouraged to attend and all interested parties invited. For further information, please contact Dr. Sigal Gottlieb by email sgottlieb@umassd.edu or Dr. Alfa Heryudono by email aheryudono@umassd.edu.

TITLE: POLYDOPAMINE-GOLD NANOPARTICLE COMPOSITE MATERIAL SYNTHESIS BIA ENGINEERING CELLS Abstract: Increasingly, metallic nanoparticles are being used for biomedical, environmental, and industrial applications. Metallic nanoparticles, such as gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) feature prominently in plasmonics, biosensing, photoacoustic and photothermal imaging. Polydopamine, which can lead to the formation of eumelanin is a biomolecule that has also gained lot of interest due to its broad absorption spectrum and has potential for optical, photo-acoustic, and biosensing applications. Formation of a biocomposite material combining such optically-active materials could lead to a tunable absorption spectrum, based on polydopamine thickness. As the complexity of composite materials increases, the development of simple design rules become essential, and using biological building blocks is one method to achieve this. Bacterial synthesis routes offer immense potential for an efficient synthesis process, ease of functionalization, modification and repeatability. Genetically modified E. coli strains can synthesize extracellular curli nanofibers, which is an amyloid fibrous structural components present in biofilms. We have designed and assembled DNA constructs to produce curli fibers with the ability to reduce gold nanoparticles and a polydopamine-binding fusion protein. Two E. coli strains were transformed with the constructs to produce the melanin coated well-organized gold nanoparticles. Curli fibers were assembled with alternating structural curli CsgA (protein repeat unit) segments, where one of the CsgA units was conjugated to spy tag protein, and the other was conjugated to the peptide fragment (FlgA3), which has been shown to modulate gold nanoparticle reduction from auric chloride solution. A fusion protein comprised of the spycatcher protein conjugated to the repeat unit of the Pmel17 amyloid fiber was created, and the fusion lead to the formation of the gold nanoparticle-polydopamine conjugate. In this study we designed and produced novel polydopamine-bound gold nanoparticles using synthetic biology approaches, to generate a preliminary model for future investigation of the feasibility and advantages of bacterially-produced tunable biocomposite materials, which could find applications in plasmonics and catalysis. Committee Members: Drs. Tracie Ferreira and Vanni Bucci, UMassD Bioengineering and Dr. Chia Suei-Hung, Director of RXAS Dept. at Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). All BMEBT students are encouraged to attend and all interested parties invited. For further information, please contact Dr. Milana Vasudev by email mvasudev@umassd.edu.