The College is implementing its Converging Technologies initiative in a variety of ways. Here are a few examples from across campus.
In the lab:
Stephen G. Romero, assistant professor of psychology, and half a dozen students-Marie Krug '04, Lesley Chuang '03, Aaron D'Addario '03, Kalyn Quintin '03, Shoma Singh '03, and Adam Taylor '04-collaborated on research during the year. Romero, also an adjunct assistant professor of neurology at Albany Medical College, has a goal of developing tools to help us find out how the brain recovers cognitive function after injury.
Says Romero, “Students have been involved in everything from designing and programming tasks, to actually conducting experimental sessions with patients, to running controls and analyzing behavioral and imaging data. One student worked on programming a computer model to simulate previous results in the literature.”
Romero is one of only two researchers in New York's Capital Region trained in the use of functional MRI, and he has been intimately involved in planning and starting up the Advanced Imaging Research Center at the medical college. This center, a partnership between GE Global Research and the Neurosciences Institute at the medical college, houses a state-of-the-art GE 3 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging facility.
For the past two years, Cherrice Traver, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been working with several students in projects at the University of Albany School of Nanosciences and Nanoengineering. Palma Catravas, visiting assistant professor in the department, has also worked with a number of students.
The joint Union and UAlbany Student Capstone Design Projects have allowed ten Union students to participate in collaborative research with UAlbany faculty. This cutting-edge research covers high-tech areas such as semiconductor chip fabrication, nanotechnology, sensors, and optical micro-electromechanical devices (MEMS). Projects also foster collaboration between scientists at UAlbany and engineers at Union.
In most cases, Union engineering students help design and implement circuits, computer programs, and other supporting elements. In some cases, the students do experimental work.
During a three-month field study in Fiji, John Thompson '03 used digital ethnography to crate a cultural learning tool and establish a continual cross-cultural dialogue between Union students on a term abroad in Fiji and anthropology students back on campus as well as high school students in Fiji and Niskayuna, N.Y. In the classroom, the list of cross-disciplinary areas that students can explore includes:
Bioengineering-Examples of courses in this area are Introduction to Bioengineering, Concepts of Vision (an introduction to the biology and physics of vision), and The Illustrated Organism (direct observation in the field, studio, and laboratory integrating biology and visual arts)
Mechatronics-Mechatronics is a design philosophy that encourages engineers to integrate precision mechanical engineering, digital and analog electronics, control theory, and computer engineering in the design of “intelligent” products, systems, and processes. Courses include Introduction to Engineering and Mechatronics, Design of Mechanical Systems, and Mechatronics Design.
Nanotechnology-the ability to work at the level of atoms, molecules, and supramolecular structures to generate larger structures with fundamentally new molecular organization-offers Frontiers of Nanotechnology; Quantum Chemistry; and Relativity, Quantum, and Their Applications, among others.
Neuroscience-The focus here is on the relationships among brain function, cognitive processing, and behavior, with courses such as has Comparative Animal Physiology, Organic Chemistry, Philosophy of Mind, Introduction to Experimental Psychology, and Psychology of Language.
Pervasive computing-Pervasive computing refers to a family of technologies that allow mobile or diffuse access to networks and especially to the Internet. The program under development at the College establishes a footing for the intelligent study of the technical, social, and cultural dimensions of these new dynamics.
Science, technology, medicine and society courses cover a range, including such special interests as Language and Culture, Medical Anthropology, The Economics of Health, Information Technology and Society, Literature and Medicine, and Mental Illness and Literature.
Comfortable in the lab
If Converging Technologies is an approach, and not a specific major, what kind of student gets involved?
Meet Desirée Plata '03, who this spring was awarded the Bailey Cup for “the greatest service to the College in any field.”
A self-styled student leader who never sought campus- wide elected office, Plata has been secretary of U-MED, the student EMS organization; manager and president of the Coffee House; general manager of WRUC; member of the U2K steering committee; president of the Chemistry Club; a chemistry tutor; and a teacher in Mad Science, an off- campus program that does science shows for children.
Plata, a native of Portland, Me., is a chemistry major with minors in math and biology. As a member of the Aerogel Research Team, a research collaboration of mechanical engineering and chemistry, she specialized in developing aerogel oxygen sensors. She also did research on fresh water fish communication and the effects of acid rain and was a co-author (with Prof. James Adrian of chemistry and former Prof. Grant Brown of biology) of a paper in the Journal of Chemical Ecology & Behavior.
Plata says she can't help noticing that when it comes to working in a lab or presenting research, Union students seem to be more at ease than their counterparts at larger institutions. “Because we're a smaller school, we have access to the faculty and we get our hands on all the equipment,” she says. “That doesn't happen at other schools. They can put us in a lab, and we know our way around. And we present our research all the time.”
Plata will enroll this fall in MIT's Ph.D. program in chemical oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She did research last summer at Woods Hole on diesel fuel contamination during a summer student fellowship from the National Science Foundation. She received an honorable mention as a finalist for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Much more CT information can be found on the web at: