2018 AAAS Engineering Section Business Meeting

 

Friday February 16, 2018

 

 

Austin, TX; Hilton Hotel, Room: Salon A

 

MINUTES

 

 

1.   Introductions: Linda Katehi, Section Chair, called the meeting to order at 9:45 AM after around 15 minutes of networking with coffee and snacks being served.  She asked those who are present to introduce themselves. The attendance list is included in Appendix A.

 

2.  AAAS CEO Remarks.  Dr. Katehi noticed that Dr. Rush Holt, AAAS CEO, was among the attendees.  She asked him to make a few remarks.  Dr. Holt said that he would like AAAS to be a “Force for Science”. He said that there is a real need for increased advocacy for the proper use of scientific evidence for decision-making. Dr. Holt added that he will be trying to use the Sections for advancing advocacy in a “cross partisan” way and that he would like AAAS to be a force for advocating for Science at the local/neighborhood level. He is also working with Science Magazine to identify landmark articles in past issues of this publication to highlight the impact and significant benefits of the science and engineering research described in the article.

 

3.   Approval of Minutes: Dr. Simaan, Section Secretary asked for comments and suggested corrections to the draft minutes of the Section Business Meeting held on February 17, 2017 at the Boston, MA meeting. He mentioned that the draft minutes were posted on the Section website http://www.eecs.ucf.edu/aaas-m shortly after the 2017 meeting.  Copies of the draft minutes were also distributed at the meeting.  There were no comments made or changes suggested.  A motion was made and seconded to approve the minutes.  The motion passed unanimously.

 

4.  Section Chair Remarks:  Dr. Katehi summarized some of the points made at the general meeting of all section officers held at 7:00am prior to our section meeting. She mentioned that our section is one of the largest within AAAS with 5,671 members as of January 2018.  She encouraged the attendees to consider being involved in the 2019 Annual Meeting, which will be held in Washington, DC, February 14-18, 2019.  The overall theme of the meeting is Science Transcending Boundaries.   This should be an excellent venue for our Section to be involved and we hope our members will submit a significant number of symposia proposals (see the AAAS Website https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2019/symp90/cfp.cgi for formats, and information required for proposals). The deadline for proposal submissions is Thursday April 19, 2018 at 11:59pm PT. 

 

5.   Announcements:  Dr. Katehi announced the results of the 2018-19 AAAS elections for Section M.  Sarah A. Rajala (Iowa State University was elected Chair-Elect; Ilona Kretzschmar (The City College of New York, CUNY) was elected Member-at-Large; Christina Chan (Michigan State University) and Eric K. Lin (National Institute of Standards and Technology) were elected as members of the Section Electorate Nominating Committee; and Sankar Basu (National Science Foundation) was elected Section M Council Delegate.  The term for all those who were elected starts on Tuesday February 20, 2018.

 

Dr. Katehi thanked all the officers whose terms will end at the last day of this Annual Meeting:  Larry McIntire as Retiring Chair, Nicholas Abbot as Member-at-Large, Stuart Cooper as Council Delegate, and Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Carol Hall as Members of the Electorate Nominating Committee.  On February 20, 2018, Dr. Katehi will become the Retiring Chair and in that capacity she will serve on the AAAS Council and he will also be a member of the Electorate Nominating Committee. 

 

Dr. Katehi also announced that this year 29 members of our section were elected Fellows of AAAS. A list of the names of the newly elected Fellows and their citation was distributed at the meeting and is attached as Appendix B.  The Newly elected Fellows were invited to attend our business meeting and 9 of the 29 were able to attend.  Dr. Katehi welcomed them, and thanked them for attending the meeting. She also asked each of them to say a few words about their research that lead to their election as AAAS Fellows. 

 

6.   Fellow Nomination Process: Dr. Katehi asked Marwan Simaan, Section Secretary, to review the AAAS Fellow nomination process.  Dr. Simaan mentioned the new rule that was implemented beginning four years ago, which mandates that a nominee for Fellow must have been a AAAS member in good standing for the four consecutive years prior to the time of nomination.  This means that for the upcoming election, a member must have been a continuous member in good standing since December 31, 2014.

 

Dr. Simaan then described the Fellow nomination process. There are three ways a AAAS member can be nominated:

 

1)      By a member of the Steering Group (method 1),

2)      By a group of three Fellows (method 2), and

3)      By the AAAS Chief Executive Officer (method 3).

 

For Fellow nominations by members of the Steering Group (method 1), he mentioned that this method is subject to a quota of no more than 0.4% of the section primary membership.  Our primary membership this year is 5,671 which results in our quota being 23 for this year.  Information on the nomination process by a group of three Fellows (method 2) and a copy of the on line nomination form can be found on the AAAS website (http://www.aaas.org/fellows)   A link to that website can also be found on our section Website (http://www.eecs.ucf.edu/aaas-m).  Dr. Simaan mentioned that the deadline for Fellow nominations by a group of three Fellows is April 11, 2018, and that there is quota for those elected through nominations by that method equal to the Steering Group Quota (23 for this year).   He concluded by saying that in both methods, a successful candidate must meet the quota and receive no less than five “Yes” votes and no more than two “No” votes.

 

7. Update on AAAS Council Issues of Interest to Section M:  Drs. Cooper and McIntire who are our representatives on council provided a report on issues that council is considering that are of interest to our section.  Dr. Cooper mentioned a collaboration between AAAS and Sigma Xi in recruiting members and Dr. McIntire mentioned that, in response to a request by council, the Fellows subcommittee, of which he is a member, is working on establishing a fellow revocation policy for unprofessional and/or unethical behavior by a AAAS Fellow.

 

8.  Planning for the 2019 Annual Meeting:  The 2019 AAAS Annual Meeting will be held in Washington, DC, February 14-198 2019. The meeting theme is “Science Transcending Boundaries” The deadline for the 2019 session proposal submissions is Thursday April 19, 2018 at 11:59pm PT.  Dr. Simaan mentioned that those who are interested in submitting proposals should check the proposal submission website: https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2019/symp90/cfp.cgi for instructions about the submission procedure and proposal requirements. He added that AAAS asked our section to brainstorm at our business meeting and arrive at three hot topics to be discussed at the 2019 Annual Meeting planning meeting, which will be held on Sunday afternoon 1:30-3:00pm.  These hot topics will form the basis for possible collaborative symposia sponsored by our section or co-sponsored with other section at the 2019 Annual meeting.   Dr. Katehi asked for ideas and suggestions.  A discussion followed with everyone present contributing ideas. A summary of these ideas is given below (including additional ideas received after the meeting but before the Sunday afternoon planning meeting):

 

8.1  How Safe Are We? How Policy can impact Our Well-being

Organizer: Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science
University of Illinois

 

Summary: The media reports catastrophic events each day.  Policy makers often respond with knee jerk reactions that lead to policy changes that may be sub-optimal and in some instances, create more harm than good.  This session looks at issues of safety and security that face everyone at some point in their lives.  These include the proliferation of mass murders, aviation security breaches, and automobile accidents and deaths, nuclear energy, water and food safety, and health care, to name just a few.  This session delves more deeply into the data to gain a better understanding of the state of such threats, and looks into the future as to what policy changes will provide the greatest societal benefits and value.

 

 

8.2  Microgravity Research in Materials Science and Engineering 

Organizer - Lynnette Madsen

Note: speakers have not been contacted

 

Discussant - Valerie Neal, National Air and Space Museum

 

Speakers

  1. Bonnie Dunbar, former NASA astronaut, and key player in the course of microgravity research in the early 1970’s
  2. International Space Station: Center for advancement of Space in Science.
  3. TBD.

 

Summary: Crossing the boundaries of past-present-future. Capabilities have changed. Areas most important for research have been refined. What have we learned? Where does the future lie?

 

 

8.3     Engineering and Science without Borders

Organizer - Lynnette Madsen, NSF

 

Discussant -Al Romig, NAE

 

Speakers (NOTE: potential speakers etc. have not been contacted)

  1. Rita Colwell, U MD, environmental biologist who studies global infectious diseases.
  2. Engineering curriculum changes due to Engineers without Borders: perhaps Ian Nettleship, U PGH, (alternative Clive Randall, PSU)
  3. World Federation of Engineerng Organization

 

Summary: How is engineering used and developed around the world to address critical problems.

 

 

8.4  Food-Water-Energy Nexus and how it relates to sustainable development and design for sustainability.

 

Organizer: Norma Alcantar, University of South Florida

 

Summary: The scope of this topic is to be able to understand the complex relationships between food production, use of fertilizers, soil erosion, and food preservation with water usage, quality, treatment and availability. Consequently, it also relates to how energy demands evolved depending on water and food production. 

 

 

8.5  Climate change impacts and engineering aspects of sustainability and resilience

Organizers:     Kalliat T. Valsaraj, Louisiana State University

                        Joyce Y. Wong, Boston University

 

Potential speakers: 

 

Rick Leuttich, Director of the Center for Resiliency (Univ of North Carolina)

Phil Bedient, Director SSPEED Center (Rice University)

Jeff Gooddell ( Scientific editor, Rolling Stones magazine and author of the NYT bestseller  “Water Will Come”)

One more person to speak on Public Health aspects.

 

Summary: Climate change can have catastrophic consequences to the sustainability and resiliency of coastal and inland cities. It is imperative that engineering solutions be envisaged so that adequate preparations are in place for handling physical infrastructures as well as public health aspects. A panel of experts will be assembled with an interactive 90 minutes session.

 

 

8.6   Food Banks to Healthcare - A Recipe for Community Wellness?

Organizers:    Gilda Barabino, The City College of New York (CCNY)

Soundar Kumara, Penn State University

 

Speakers: (Possible – to be contacted)

Professor Molly Jahn, University of Wisconsin

Speaker - International (India/Canada)

Speaker - Foodbank/USDA /Practitioner from

 

Disciplinary Sections: Effort from Engineering and Medical Sciences (presented the idea. Talked to Anice Anderson; Secretary, and John Newsam; Chair) of the Industrial Science and Technology section.

 

Relationship to the theme: Science transcending boundaries: This symposium examines science and engineering at the intersection of healthcare delivery, poverty and food insecurity. Not only is the theme along the lines of the conference theme but also the effort will be of direct benefit to humanity.

 

Summary: Poverty, wellness and healthcare are intricately intertwined. Chronically ill patients, especially in rural areas tend to be food insecure, and are dependent on foodbanks and other agencies for their daily food. Can healthcare providers work with food banks and patients to provide proper nutritionally adequate food to the patients? There is a need for new models of food selection, packaging and distribution to help such patients and improve their wellness. This symposium will examine this futuristic question from optimization, technology, community wellness, healthcare providers’ and foodbanks’ perspectives.

 

8.7  AI and Machine Learning and Manufacturing-Transcending Technological and Social Boundaries

Organizers:    Sudarsan Rachuri, NIST

                        Jim Garrett, CMU

 

Summary: This symposium will focus on AI for manufacturing, in particular the challenges and opportunities in:

1) Moving from automation to autonomy in manufacturing

2) Closing the Skills gap and creating job opportunities

3) Ethical issues, privacy, and cyber security risks.

 

 

8.8 How the OMICS revolutions are  leading to innovations in engineering and medicine

 

Organizers:     Ram Sriram; NIST

Ramesh Jain; UC Irvine          

 

Summary:   OMICS can be viewed as the study of a domain in a massive scale, at different levels of abstraction, in an integrative manner.  The past few decades have seen three major “OMICS” revolutions: genomics is transforming the way we diagnose and treat diseases; materiomics (or the Material Genomics Initiative) is helping us discover new materials, leading to novel engineered artifacts; sociomics (social networking) is accelerating change in many societies. In this symposium leading researchers will present several case studies in these three areas,  showing the impacts of “OMICS” in our everyday life.

 

 

8.9    Health Care in the 21st Century: P7 Medicine

Organizers:     Ram Sriram; NIST

Ramesh Jain; UC Irvine

Nageshwar Reddy

 

Potential Speakers: Amit Sheth, Vijay Chandru (India), Leroy Hood.

 

Summary: The IoT revolution combined with the Omics revolution (genomics and sociomics or social networks) will have significant implications on the way health care is delivered in the United States. This symbiosis will result in the P7 concept, as described below.

 

  1. Personalized. Personalized medicine involves tailoring treatment to each individual. Sometimes the term precision medicine is used to denote this.
  2. Predictive. Based on the information in the EHRs and genomic data we should be able to determine an individual susceptibility to particular diseases.
  3. Precise. Once data and information is gathered then decision analytic tools can be used to precisely determine the cause of a disease and to recommend appropriate therapeutic actions.
  4. Preventive. Instead of treating a disease when it inflicts a person, machine learning and decision analytic tools can be used to develop strategies to prevent an onset or get prepared to deal with the disease.
  5. Pervasive. The health care should be provided any time, any where and at any location.
  6. Participatory. The patient should actively participate in the diagnosis and the treatment of medical ailments.
  7. Protective. Appropriate safety measures should be taken to ensure that all patient data is securely stored and transmitted. 

 

This symposium will discuss this new paradigm and how it transcendent the boundaries of engineering, computer science, medicine and social networks.

 

 

8.10          How Blockchain Technology could enable the tracking of arms production, sales, and 

       transfers globally, and allow for an effective arms control

Organizer: Ali Khounsary, Illinois Institute of Technology

 

Summary: Transparency in the flow of arms from state and non-state actors to conflict zones could help reduce the flow enhancing parties to engage in negotiation and mediation to resolve conflicts.  This session examines techniques to encourage transparency and their potential impact to reduce human suffering.

 

 

8.11          Engineering is the backbone of our society, but has no voice in policy-making. What are the

        barriers and how to overcome them?

 

Organizer: Ali Khounsary, Illinois Institute of Technology

 

Summary: Engineering has enabled the technological societies we live in. Yet engineers, as a community, do not seem to have a voice in policy-making.  This session examines common values and views among engineers, whether and how advocating those views can benefit the society, and the potential approaches and venues to make engineers views on policy matter heard. 

 

8.12 AI and Machine learning and the Ethical Implications

 

Organizer: Linda Katehi, UC Davis

 

Summary: This discussion has been avoided and needs to happen while industries like google and facebook are developing the most advanced hardware and software in the dark.

 

 

Dr. Katehi encouraged all those who have suggested these ideas to develop them further and submit them on the AAAS proposal submission website before the deadline of April 19, 2018

 

Finally, Dr. Simaan also asked for suggestions for plenary and topical lectures speakers as well as suggestions for the 10 minutes Flash Talks. 

                                                                                                                                                                                            

9.  Adjournment:  Dr. Katehi asked the attendees if there is any new business.  In the absence of new business, the meeting was adjourned at 11:40AM.  Lunch was served.

 

 

Submitted by:

Marwan A. Simaan

Secretary, Engineering Section (M)

February 22, 2018

 

Appendix A

List of Attendees List

1)      Linda Katehi, Chair

2)      Larry McIntire, Retiring Chair

3)      Deb  Niemeier, Chair-Elect

4)      Marwan Simaan, Section Secretary

5)      Norma Alcantar, Member-at-Large

6)      Stuart Cooper, Council Delegate

7)      Ian Robertson, Council Delegate

8)      Rush Holt, AAAS CEO

9)      Sarah Rajala, Elected Chair-Elect

10)  Ilona Kretzschmar, Elected Member-at-Large

11)  Sankar Basu, Elected Council Delegate

12)  Rory A. Cooper, Newly Elected Fellow

13)  Joseph Helble Newly Elected Fellow

14)  Clifford L. Henderson, Newly Elected Fellow

15)  Petros A. Ioannou, Newly Elected Fellow

16)  Lynette D. Madsen, Newly Elected Fellow

17)  Gregory B. McKenna, Newly Elected Fellow

18)  Keshab K. Parhi, Newly Elected Fellow

19)  Sudarsan Rachuri, Newly Elected Fellow

20)  Joyce Wong, Newly Elected Fellow

21)  Joel Mobley, Acoustical Society of America

22)  Laura Albert

23)  Gilda Barabino

24)  Sumista Bose

25)  Jennifer Curtis

26)  Sheldon Jacobson

27)  James Garrett

28)  Pramod Khargonekar

29)  Ali Khounsary

30)  Soundar Kumara

31)  Stuart Rubin

32)  Ned Sauthoff

33)  Phil Sharp

34)  Ram D. Sriram

35)  Kaliat Valsaraj

 

 

 

Appendix B

 

 

Fellows affiliated with Section M (Engineering) Elected in 2017

 

Steven James Battel, Battel Engineering: For distinguished contributions to engineering, particularly in support of NASA’s space science missions, and for mentoring and training the next generation.

Kenneth T. Christensen, University of Notre Dame: For distinguished contributions to the field of experimental fluid mechanics, particularly for laser-based measurements of turbulence interactions with complex topography.

Baratunde A. "Bara" Cola, Georgia Institute of Technology: For distinguished contributions to the field of nanoscale engineering, particularly using nanotube arrays for new heat dissipation materials and the first nanotube-based optical rectenna.

Rory Alan Cooper, University of Pittsburgh/U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: For distinguished contributions to the field of bioengineering and health and rehabilitation sciences, particularly for applications for people with disabilities.

Steven M. Cramer, Rensselaer Polytechnic University: For distinguished contributions to the field of chromatographic bioprocessing, achieved through combined experimental and computational approaches.

Joseph Helble, Dartmouth College: For contributions in the areas of air pollution, aerosols, nanoscale ceramics, and air quality, and for excellence in teaching and professional service.

Clifford L. Henderson, University of South Florida: For distinguished research contributions to the fields of functional materials, microlithography and nanomanufacturing, and for leadership contributions to advance chemical and materials science and engineering.

Hanchen Huang, Northeastern University: For significant contributions to multiscale modeling, nanomechanics and nanorod growth, and for leadership in mechanical engineering.

Petros A. Ioannou, University of Southern California: For distinguished contributions to robust adaptive control and intelligent transportation systems.

Bamin Khomami, University of Tennessee, Knoxville: For insightful application of novel numerical methods, molecular modeling, and experiments toward the physical understanding of complex fluids, including discovery of thermo-elastic flow

Miroslav Krstic, University of California, San Diego: For revolutionizing control of distributed parameter systems and extremum seeking, with applications to fluid flows, nuclear fusion, particle accelerators, batteries, and semiconductor manufacturing.

John H. Linehan, Northwestern University: For contributions to lung physiology, for leadership in building the infrastructure for biomedical engineering growth and education, and in understanding the medical device innovation process.

Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma, University of Wisconsin-Madison: For distinguished contributions to the field of flexible electronics, particularly for inventing fast flexible electronics, flexible optoelectronics and nanomembrane-based photonics.

Lynnette D. Madsen, National Science Foundation: For original contributions in thin film research, effective scientific leadership, and commitment in promoting equity and inclusion.

Gregory B. McKenna, Texas Tech University: For seminal contributions to understanding the constitutive behavior in glassy polymers and highly influential experimental studies of phase transitions in confined systems.

David J. Odde, University of Minnesota: For fundamental contributions to our quantitative understanding of the self assembly and force generation of microtubles, F-actin, and associated proteins.

Keshab K. Parhi, University of Minnesota: For pioneering contributions to architectures and methodologies for VLSI design of digital signal processing systems, and physical layer communication systems that form the backbone of the Internet.

Sudarsan Rachuri, U.S. Department of Energy: For significant contributions in standards development for computer-aided design and smart manufacturing.

James J. Riley, University of Washington: For fundamental contributions in fluid mechanics, including advancements in turbulent, multi-phase flows, turbulent density-stratified flows, turbulent shear flows, and turbulent reacting flows.

Ares J. Rosakis, California Institute of Technology: For distinguished contributions in the field of aeronautics and mechanical engineering, particularly for fracture mechanics of materials ranging from thin films to eathquakes.

Stuart Harvey Rubin, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command: For distinguished contributions to the field of intelligent systems, particularly for the development of computational creativity for improving the quality of life and global economics

Mei-Ling Shyu, University of Miami: For outstanding contributions to multimedia semantics mining and retrieval.

David Allan Sinton, University of Toronto (Canada): For distinguished contributions to the field of microfluidics, particularly in pioneering the development of microfluidic methods for applications related to energy and the environment.

Dacheng Tao, University of Sydney (Australia): For distinguished contributions to the field of computer vision and machine learning, particularly for theories and algorithms of representation learning.

Thomas M. Truskett, University of Texas at Austin: For distinguished contributions to our understanding of the structure and dynamics of complex fluids and biomolecular systems through use of computational methods.

Miroslav N. Velev, Aries Design Automation: For distinguished contributions to the field of automated reasoning, particularly formal verification of microprocessors, and Boolean satisfiability. {Dr. Velev was also submitted to the Section on Information, Computing and Communication}

Robert M. Wagner, Oak Ridge National Laboratory: For distinguished contributions to the fields of combustion and fuel science, particularly for seminal research on combustion instabilities and abnormal combustion phenomena.

Joyce Y. Wong, Boston University: For innovative discoveries in biomaterials development to probe how structure, material properties and composition of cell-biomaterial interfaces modulate fundamental cellular processes, and for promoting women in STEM.

Jerry M. Woodall, University of California, Davis: For novel contributions to the science and engineering of compound semiconductor heterojunction materials and devices ubiquitous in telecommunications and information and communications systems.