Heidi Toth

Feb. 13, 2019

The College of Engineering, Informatics, and Applied Sciences hasn’t even had its first birthday yet, and it’s already making history, becoming the first college at Northern Arizona University to have a Ph.D. program in each of its departments.

The Arizona Board of Regents voted last week to approve three new programs for the college. Doctoral programs in mechanical engineering and applied physics and materials science (APMS) will begin in the fall, with the civil and environmental engineering program starting in fall 2020. This step is a testament to NAU’s commitment to cutting-edge research and technology and providing valuable, hands-on experiences to ensure students are prepared for their careers.

“In the sciences and engineering, we teach existing knowledge, so we want students to have the understanding of the discipline,” Interim Dean Diane Stearns said. “But the whole point of science is solving a problem and creating new knowledge and creating best practice. That is research. Whether it’s undergrads or grad students, if we’re not teaching them what research is so that they understand where the knowledge comes from, we haven’t given them a complete education.”

The programs will start small with the faculty and research already at NAU and admitting a small cohort of students through unofficial recruiting. Stearns’ goal as of now is hiring 23 additional faculty members in the next seven years, but that’s fluid and depends on the number of students they have, she said. NAU gets a certain number of new tenure-track faculty positions spread across all the colleges each year, and CEIAS will take turns with the other colleges as those are assigned, Stearns said.

Although universities nationwide are seeing decreases in enrollment, that trend is not in play with engineering programs. The demand throughout the country is increasing and more fields require employees with backgrounds in engineering, informatics and applied physics; as more undergraduate students choose these majors, universities need more doctoral students and faculty members to teach those students. The Ph.D. programs were a natural step in each of these departments.

“We created the College of Engineering, Informatics, and Applied Sciences to help NAU better meet the demands of these cutting-edge industries, and these new programs are the next step in doing that,” President Rita Cheng said. “Both undergraduate and graduate students will have more opportunities to engage in hands-on research and learning, which are critical preparations for success in these fields.”

CEIAS already has doctoral programs in informatics and computing and bioengineering.

“The point is to strengthen the undergrad teaching mission,” Stearns said. “We want to provide our students with the most cutting-edge experience. We have a history of our students getting hands-on experience. They’re in the lab with the faculty. That’s not going to change.”

APMS program director Gabe Montaño said this Ph.D. curriculum will be interdisciplinary and appropriate for students with backgrounds in chemistry, biology, engineering and physics. Such collaboration is necessary in the industries they’ll be entering.

“The key is to be able to do that while still creating scientists who are very good at what they do,” he said. “These students will have their expertise and will also be able to traverse a wide range of disciplines, be able to collaborate more freely, be more adaptable to how research will be done in the future. They’ll really be able to solve big, complex science.”

That leads him to another big, complex problem—the lack of diversity in STEM fields and STEM education. Four out of every five STEM professors in this country are white men, meaning women and underrepresented minority students walk into classes, don’t see people who look like them and aren’t sure there’s a path forward in this field. Montaño, who went to high school, college and graduate school in the Southwest, never had a Hispanic professor in a science or math class. He and Jen Martinez, director of the Center for Materials Interfaces in Research and Applications (abbreviated to ¡MIRA!, which means “look” in Spanish) are leading CEIAS’ efforts to build proportionate representation among gender, race and ethnicity at every level—undergraduate and graduate students along with faculty members and researchers.

“It matters,” Montaño said. “Students want to see themselves reflected in their leadership.”

More information, including how to enroll in these programs, can be found on the CEIAS Ph.D. program’s website.

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu

Feb. 13, 2019

The story unfolds like an episode of a crime-solving procedural, with scientists in white lab coats laboring over hints left in the microscopic genome of a killer. Outside, a shaken nation waits. Law enforcement is at the ready. News anchors with serious voices share the latest. People stay at home and worry, admonishing their loved ones to be careful.

It’s a compelling drama, one microbiologist Paul Keim doesn’t need to see on TV. He actually lived it, cracking the code that determined where the bacteria that caused the fall 2001 anthrax attack originated and where it did not—Iraq—which put off the start of that war for a time and eventually led police to a likely suspect in the bioterrorism incident that killed five people.

Keim, a Regents professor of biology and director of the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at Northern Arizona University, shared his experience in forensics with fellow biology professor Frank von Hippel, an ecotoxicologist who hosts the monthly Science History Podcast. The conversation covered a range of such detective work that included a Japanese doomsday cult, the Soviet bioterrorism program and a rash of anthrax deaths among Scottish heroin addicts.

“Paul’s research history is so fascinating because he’s worked on all of these cases where forensic science is needed, using genomics to solve international problems in infectious diseases,” von Hippel said. “He’s done so many things in the last few decades—important political events and news events that had a significant scientific element to them. That’s what I wanted to tackle in this episode.”

Keim notes that “in a ‘live-fire’ situation, we were applying cutting-edge technology to a real-world problem and having to create new science to meet the challenge.”

During the 90-minute episode, Keim talks about his work with the FBI and the criminal justice system in the 1990s, which made him one of their first calls when anthrax showed up and federal investigators didn’t know the source. He recalls meeting the Gulfstream at the Flagstaff airport and taking the spores, which had been extracted from the first victim, back to his NAU lab. His team determined the spores came from a laboratory strain in the United States, not from an international enemy.

While that didn’t answer all the questions around the attack, which included anthrax spores being sent through the post office to news outlets and legislators, the discovery did drastically alter the conversation. Keim was a part of the global anthrax research community and was friends with the man eventually accused of perpetrating the attack—a chilling realization he recounts on the podcast.

“I’m pretty good at keeping secrets, but this was one secret I didn’t want to tell anybody,” he told von Hippel.

Keim and von Hippel discuss the laboratory-cultivated Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis, which is named for Ames, Iowa, but is not from Ames; how he developed a test that is able to identify that strain from any other strain in the world, even though the differences are miniscule; and where the “crime scene” was in the anthrax attacks, which allowed law enforcement to determine who were victims of bioterrorist attacks and who were affected by natural outbreaks of anthrax, which happen regularly in nature. (How anthrax spreads from dead animals to humans can be unpleasant.)

The podcast, which von Hippel started more than a year ago and now has listeners in more than 70 countries, is intended both to embrace his love of science history and to encourage science literacy among listeners.

“Science plays such a powerful role in shaping events of critical importance to national security and to our personal lives, so it’s great for people to have an understanding of what’s actually happening in the labs that leads to these outcomes,” he said. “I think for most people the science is a black box.”

The next episode, which will be released March 11, takes a look at game theory and cooperation and how international cooperation is rarely a zero-sum game but instead an opportunity to benefit both sides of an agreement. It’s timely given political tensions around the world, he said. The guest, using his own research, argues for the importance of taking a cooperative stance in international relations.

While some episodes are just about fun science topics, von Hippel’s primary goal is to equip listeners with the scientific understanding they need as they consider the difficult topics facing the world today.

“There are so many things going on, including all of these things for which people need to have a good understanding of science,” he said. “Hopefully, the podcast is a fun way for people to become better informed about science and understanding the history of discoveries.”

To listen to this and other episodes, including with Nobel Laureate Peter Agre, visit the Science History Podcast website or subscribe to the podcast on any podcasting app. Follow along on Twitter @sci_history. Follow Keim on Twitter @PaulKeim.

Feb. 12, 2019

For many Americans, having 24/7 access to fast, easy, affordable Internet connectivity is a ubiquitous part of daily life. Because Internet providers are not financially motivated to invest in the infrastructure required to provide access in remote, rural regions, however—especially for thousands of Indigenous people living on tribal lands in the United States and Canada—Internet connectivity there often is slow, unreliable, poor quality or even nonexistent.

As a result, these underserved populations are still on the wrong side of the so-called digital divide—missing out on a wide range of educational, cultural and economic opportunities widely available to the rest of the country.

Assistant professor of computer science Morgan Vigil-Hayes in Northern Arizona University’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems is working on a significant project aimed at bringing more reliable Internet access to some of these areas. Using her expertise in network analysis techniques, Vigil-Hayes is designing and implementing community-centric networked systems that can operate in resource-limited environments.

“The invisible ‘digital divide’ is persistent and acute,” Vigil-Hayes said. “Fewer than 15 percent of residents in tribal areas in the U.S. and Canada have access to fixed or mobile broadband. While the digital divide in these communities has existed since the introduction of telecommunications infrastructure, the consequences and rate of disenfranchisement increases as web technology becomes more advanced.”

Extending Internet connectivity to support education in Pueblo communities in New Mexico

Collaborating with a team recently awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Smart and Connected Communities Program, Vigil-Hayes is a co-principal investigator of the “PuebloConnect: Expanding Internet Access and Content Relevance in Tribal Communities” project, led by Elizabeth Belding at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Along with Belding and co-PIs Marisa Duarte of Arizona State University and Ellen Zegura of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Vigil-Hayes is working with Pueblo communities in northern New Mexico to develop new platforms extending Internet connectivity and resources. The interdisciplinary team will address the dual goal of improving Internet access through innovative network architectures designed for underserved or technologically and economically marginalized communities, while also creating social structures to build local capacity for creating educational digital content on a regular basis.

“What’s really cool about this project is that we’re focusing on not just the technological issues identified as barriers to Internet access, but the issues related to building capacity for developing relevant content by and for these communities,” Vigil-Hayes said. “Many people who do not have consistent access to the Internet believe that it is not relevant to their lives or their communities, especially if their cultures are not well-reflected in mainstream content. By facilitating content creation that reflects these cultures, our team hopes to help these users feel like they’re represented and have control over their digital identity as a culture.”

The team will create a “smart middle mile” that serves as a technology platform for people to upload and share content seamlessly, even though the connectivity in their area may be limited. To ensure the success of the technical solutions, the team will engage community members in the planning, implementation and dissemination of their research. The team will partner with the Community Learning Network of Santa Fe and other nonprofit, Native-serving community organizations that are actively working to solve digital inequities.

Although this project addresses specific needs in targeted areas, the technologies developed as a result will serve as pilot programs for future solutions.

“Because Native American reservations share many geographical and population density characteristics with other rural regions, many aspects of our work will be applicable to extending the reach and usability of the Internet to other, non-Native communities within the U.S.,” Vigil-Hayes said.

Using augmented reality to develop a mobile health intervention

For another project targeting Native communities, Vigil-Hayes was awarded a $60,000 National Institutes of Health grant through the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative (SHERC) Pilot Project Program. This project is called “ARORA: Using Augmented Reality to Gamify a Universal Social Emotional Learning Intervention in Low-infrastructure Environments.”

Native American communities experience severe behavioral health inequities: there is limited access to behavioral health care resources; suicide is experienced 2.5 times more frequently than in other communities for people ages 15-24; and generations of historical trauma have resulted in higher rates of poverty, food insecurity, substance abuse and depression.

This project is a mobile health intervention that will incorporate mobile gaming, augmented reality, edge computing and social and emotional learning activities into a behavioral health intervention for Native American youth and adolescents.

As principal investigator for this project, Vigil-Hayes will lead this team and oversee all aspects of the project design, development, deployment, evaluation, analysis and publication. Giovanni Castillo, director of NAU’s Virtual Reality Learning Studio and lecturer in visual communication, and Ann Collier, clinical psychologist and NAU associate professor of psychology, are co-principal investigators on the project.

Social and emotional learning intervention delivered via mobile app

Because of the lack of robust telecommunications infrastructure in many communities, telehealth interventions that require high-speed, low-latency Internet access are not feasible, so the project team is developing a universal social and emotional learning intervention delivered over a mobile phone application.

“Given the promising health benefits of positive psychology-focused interventions for youth and adolescents, we will make the intervention age-relevant by using geosocial gaming mechanisms enhanced with augmented reality technology,” Vigil-Hayes said.

The team will form a community advisory board of Native American behavioral health care professionals and advocates who work with Native American youth and adolescents to ensure that the designs of the intervention and application are culturally relevant and appropriate. To make the intervention widely accessible to Native communities, the team also will design a novel network architecture that localizes telehealth services to the communities that use them.

Kerry Bennett | Office of the Vice President for Research
(928) 523-5556 | kerry.bennett@nau.edu

Feb. 11, 2019

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) has named Northern Arizona University professor of practice Bertrand Cambou one of 66 academic inventors to the inaugural class of NAI senior members. NAI is a member organization comprised of U.S. and international universities as well as governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with more than 4,000 members spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide.

Cambou joined NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems in 2015 and is the university’s most prolific inventor. He has authored or coauthored 48 patents in his career and has disclosed 32 inventions at NAU to date. These disclosures have led to 35 patent applications for NAU, six of which have been granted patents.

Cambou, who leads NAU’s cybersecurity research efforts, has been supporting his colleagues in developing disruptive power storage solutions. His main areas of research include the design of novel cryptographic primitives and protocols with Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF), True Random Generators (TRNG) and the use of nanotechnologies such as memristors and ReRAMs.

“My warm thanks to my NAU colleagues, our students as well as President Rita Cheng and the leadership team of NAU for the strategic repositioning of our university as a prime institution in research and innovation,” Cambou said. “I feel that my areas of research in nanoelectronics and cybersecurity are well-supported in the multidisciplinary School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems.”

According to the NAI, senior members are “active faculty, scientists and administrators from NAI member institutions with success in patents, licensing and commercialization. They have produced technologies that have brought, or aspire to bring, real impact on the welfare of society. Senior members also foster a spirit of innovation within their communities through enhancing an inventive atmosphere at their institutions, while educating and mentoring the next generation of inventors.”

“Dr. Cambou’s recognition as a senior member of NAI is a strong reflection of the great progress NAU has made in advancing research, scholarship and creative activity,” Vice President for Research David Schultz said. “This growth is based on our faculty, students and collaborators creating new knowledge, developing the future workforce and broadly serving Arizona and the nation. In particular, this recognition stems from NAU’s growing attraction of recognized researchers in both our traditional strengths and in new areas such as cybersecurity, where Dr. Cambou is indeed a national leader.”

This inaugural class of NAI senior members represents 37 research universities and government and nonprofit research institutes. They are named inventors on more than 1,100 issued U.S. patents. Senior members undergo a two-step selection process, including internal NAI review and consideration by the advisory committee, which is made up of elected NAI members and other professionals considered pioneers in their fields.

Kerry Bennett | Office of the Vice President for Research
(928) 523-5556 | kerry.bennett@nau.edu