When the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games open in August, Dr.
Shu-Cherng Fang will have
handed off his torch to Chinese organizers while Dr.
Lian Xie will
be moving to the starting line for his Olympic challenge. The two NC
State professors have parlayed contacts and faculty appointments in
China into research efforts and consulting roles in the country's
biggest international event in decades.
While most of the Olympic events will be clustered in and around
Beijing, the sailing competition will take place in the Yellow Sea near
the city of Qingdao. Xie, a professor of meteorology in the College of
Physical and Mathematical Sciences, is developing a model to predict
wind speeds off the coast so officials know which days are best to set
sail. Sustained winds of at least 7 miles per hour for at least two
hours are needed for a sailing event, he says. Xie is working with Drs.
Sujit Ghosh and Montserrat Fuentes of the Department of Statistics to
refine a model created by Chinese forecasters in which the margin of
error is considered too great to be trusted on days with light wind.
"We don't have time to create something entirely new," Xie said. "But
we're trying to produce something better than what they have."
The project is Xie's second with the Beijing Games. While the Chinese
were putting their bid together to host the Olympics several years ago,
he was asked to serve as scientific adviser to the Chinese Academy of
Meteorological Sciences, which was developing a model to forecast
Beijing's air quality. After monitoring pollution levels across the
region for several months and analyzing meteorological and pollutant
emission factors, the panel recommended abandoning the municipal
approach to pollution abatement previously used to address the problem
and adopting a regional tack.
"Compared with cities like Raleigh, the air quality was pretty bad,"
Xie said, "but it's improving rapidly."
In a separate project, the logistical challenge of hosting thousands of
international athletes and millions of spectators over two weeks took
Fang to China. The Walter Clark Chair and Alumni Distinguished Graduate
Professor in the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
(ISE) at NC State, Fang helped coordinate two symposia for Beijing
organizers to help them get a better handle on issues ranging from
transportation to trash recycling to terrorism. ISE professors Salah
Elmaghraby and Xiuli Chao also took part in the events, which were
hosted by NC State partner Tsinghua University.
"This is a very special event for China," Fang said. "We will enhance NC State's research relationship with China by helping ensure they have a successful Olympics."
Story originally published on NCSU homepage. Click here to read the original.
The College of Engineering and the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University hosted alumnus Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.
An invitation-only reception and presentation entitled, “A Special Conversation With Dr. RK Pachauri," was held in Dr. Pachauri’s honor on February 11, 2008 where he was also presented with his 2007 Distinguished Alumnus Award. The award is the highest honor the department can bestow upon any graduate and is presented to individuals whose contributions to their profession, community and the department, college and/or university are notable and merit special recognition. In addition, the establishment of the R.K. Pachauri Fund for Global Engagement in Industrial and Systems Engineering was announced to honor Dr. Pachauri. This gift from an alumnus of the department will enable international travel, student exchange and other programs with outstanding institutions worldwide.
Dr. Pachauri spoke of his days as a student in ISE and the importance of the guidance and mentorship of the faculty including Professor Richard Bernhard, his co-advisor. He reflected on the value of his industrial engineering education in preparing himself for his current positions. Dr. Pachauri also spoke about the need to control carbon emissions and the leadership role that the United States could play.
During his visit to NC State, Dr. Pachauri was a featured speaker at The Institute for Emerging Issues Forum, a long-standing signature event in North Carolina that brings a diversity of leaders from across the nation and around the world to inform, engage and mobilize the state. The 2008 Forum is part of a larger program of work on energy and the environment. Dr. Pachauri, in his role as IPCC chair, spoke about the science of global climate change and the threat to human health and the environment.
Dr. David Kaber and ergonomics graduate students use some exciting tools for their research.
An immersive, three-screen driving simulator tests driver awareness. A walking simulator assesses visual factors in slips, trips and falls. A flying simulator tests pilot's abilities to handle unexpected course corrections in commercial aircraft with sophisticated automated systems.
The simulators in the Ergonomics Laboratory in the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering are much more than high-tech video games. Researchers use them to help explain how humans think under high workloads and time pressure while using automation in transportation systems.
“I think one of the coolest things about this research is that we get to use some pretty serious simulators in all our projects,” said Kaber, a professor in the department.
Kaber and his students received media attention a few years ago when they published research showing that drivers who talked on cell phones were distracted, even when they used adaptive cruise control technology that adjusted vehicle speed to maintain a constant distance from a lead vehicle. It’s now widely accepted that cell-phone use distracts drivers, and New York, New Jersey and other areas have banned the practice.
But few studies have linked “dialing and driving” to specific performance degradations. Kaber’s current work seeks to identify how drivers perform in hazard situations – a wreck or a fast-approaching median – when distracted by cell phones and other devices. He’s particularly interested in seeing how younger and older drivers react in these situations, as traffic incident data indicates performance differences between certain age groups.
The results of this research could provide greater insight into driver thinking and performance across age groups and help manufacturers design less distracting in-vehicle technologies. The work may also help lawmakers decide how to further regulate cell-phone use.
The ergonomics group is also conducting research for NASA. In one project, Kaber and his students are using a flight simulator to develop a pilot performance modeling tool to help aircraft manufacturers better design automated navigation control systems.
“New interfaces should allow pilots to smoothly switch between computer and manual control when dangerous situations arise,” Kaber said.
The group has also developed a simulator that puts a treadmill in front of a wall-sized virtual reality screen. Research participants walk on the virtual “sidewalk” while using a cell-phone or other handheld navigation device. An experimenter tries to trip participants, assessing their reaction abilities while using the devices. (A harness catches the participants who fall.)
The research could help the military determine multitasking workload limits for its personnel. The work could also help manufacturers design personal navigation devices that don’t distract users.
“We’ve organized our research according to taxonomy of human mobility,” Kaber said. “If you start out with aviation, we look at piloting. We look at driving. And we’re all the way down to walking.”
Original story published in NCSU's College of Engineering newsletter.