Tag: Louisiana State University

LSU Awarded International Award for Innovative Partnership

Recently, it was announced that Louisiana State University was the co-recipient of an international award that recognizes the most innovative and effective models for expanding and developing international education in practice today, according to an LSU Press news release.

LSU has been named the co-recipient of the 2022 IIE Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Educationin the category of Strategic Partnerships for the LSU AgCenter-MENDELU Partnership. The award was given on behalf of the Institute of International Education, or IIE. The bestowing of this internationally-sought after award recognized the impactful and innovative partnership between both LSU AgCenter and Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic.

The 2022 IIE Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovation in International Education in the category of Strategic Partnershipswas given to both the LSU AgCenter and Mendel University in order to officially recognize and celebrate the multidisciplinary and multidimensional partnership that was originally initiated by the Agricultural Center and primarily focused on agrisciences.

Since its initial conception in 2015, this partnership between LSU and Mendel University has reportedly “created nearly 90 new linkages for research and teaching and has expanded to include the LSU College of Art & Design, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and LSU Leadership Development Institute.” As further listed in the news release, the partnership’s goals include “ joint research, grant proposals, student exchange, faculty exchange, joint courses, a summer school, and a food symposium.”

The partnership between the LSU AgCenter and MENDELU has clearly been seen internationally as an innovative, educational model for collaboration that can be sustainable, creative, and engaging, despite challenges. For instance, even throughout the pandemic, the LSU AgCenter and MENDELU have worked in close collaboration online in order to continue engagement and to develop new programming. More information on the LSU AgCenter’s partnership with Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic can be found in the collaboration’s 2014-2020 Partnership Report.

Interim Vice President for Agriculture and Dean of the LSU College of Agriculture Dr. Luke Laborde, commented on receiving the international honor in saying, “we are excited and gratified by this recognition of our collaboration withMendel University. It is a tribute to the ingenuity and adaptability of the faculty of both universities leading to the success of this collaboration even in the face of a global pandemic. I am truly grateful to our faculty and staff and particularly Ms. Ivana Tregenza, the Director of our Global Network, for leading our efforts.”

IIE awarded LSU along with six other institutions this past year in the category of widening access to international education, student mobility, exchange, strategic partnerships, and models of international education financial support. A full list of this year’s winning initiatives and 150+ programs that have been recognized and given a Heiskell Award to date has been released by the IIE.

Senior International Officer Samba Dieng of LSU also commented on the impact of the LSU AgCenter Global Network director saying “Ms. Ivana Tregenza, LSU AgCenter Global Network director, deserves credit for nurturing this partnership to what is now a gold standard in the field. Her work with colleagues at MENDELU to deepen engagement, even during a global pandemic, is exemplary of creativity and innovation.”

Named after Andrew Heiskell, a former chairman of Time Inc. and a member of the executive committee of IIKE’s Board of Trustees, the IIE Heiskell Awards were created in 2001 in order to promote and honor the most outstanding initiatives being conducted in international higher education institutions by IIENetwork members. Specifically, the award is focused on those  IIENetwork members addressing a specific need, removing institutional barriers, and broadening the base of participation in international teaching and learning.

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LSU Student Astronomers Assisting in Development of New Lunar-Based Telescope

Student astronomers at Louisiana State University are researching and designing a new type of lunar telescope that aims to take new images of the far side of the moon by 2024, as per this article from LSU.

The collaboration is called L-CAM1, and it’s a scientific observing program that’s being worked on by faculty and student astronomers from LSU, Mississippi State University, the SETI Institute, and AstronetX PBC, a public benefit corporation that’s dedicated to enabling frontier research from space. One of the main goals of the scientific observing program collaboration is for LSU students to research and design the creation of the first lunar-based camera.

The photographic instrument, which will be called Astronet L-CAM1, will be designed to capture cosmic images from the moon for research purposes that will contribute to the areas of astrophysics, planetary defense, and planetary science.

Assistant Professors Tabetha Boyajian and Matthew Penny from LSU’s Department of Physics & Astronomy recruited a team of students to work on the Astronet L-CAM1. In speaking on the magnitude of the selection process, LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy assistant professor Tabetha Boyajian said, “giving early-career students the chance to design a frontier, space-based science program that will be operated on the lunar surface is a wonderful and unique opportunity to support the progression of tomorrow’s leading astronomers and astrophysicists.”

When starting to plan the L-CAM1, LSU students had to first develop a complex understanding of the limitations and benefits that present themselves when it comes to lunar observation. The students and faculty then decided to focus on two primary scientific cases for the observing program: to improve the characterization of previously-known exoplanets and to expand asteroid observation and characterization.

Whenever an orbiting exoplanet briefly passes in front of a star, space-based observatory instruments such as the Astronet L-CAM1 will be able to allow for high-precision measurements of parent star brightness changes. Because the L-CAM1 will be able to observe these changes without interruptions over a lunar day (which is equivalent to 14 Earth days,) this instrument will be able to have long, uninterrupted observing sequences of exoplanet transit events. Additionally, during a typical multi-lunar day mission, the L-CAM1 will be able to observe approximately 200 asteroids, which would include nearly one near-Earth asteroid per month.

Senior planetary astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center at SETI Frank Marchis said of what is needed from the student research team, “our student team first needed to create simulations of the portion of lunar sky L-CAM1 will see during the multiple lunar days of the mission as a way of determining visible astrophysical and astronomical targets. One of the unique benefits L-CAM1 will provide is the duration of uninterrupted time individual subjects can be observed.”

Funding for the scientific program’s planning comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to AstronetX along with additional support for student participation that’s been provided by the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at LSU.

AstronetX is a Delaware public benefit corporation that’s based in Boston, Massachusetts, and they were established to facilitate and enable research in the Earth and space sciences for the overall benefit of humanity by making multi-purposeful space-based observational and database services available to customers. Their customer base includes the space science community, government agencies, the private sector, and citizen scientists.

Farzaneh Zohrabi studies at LSU as a L-CAM1 graduate student science team member. In speaking on the student astronomers being selected to work on the project, Zohrabi said, “working on L-CAM has been a dream come true for me. I’ve been an astronomer since I was 13, and now I’m developing the science program for a lunar surface telescope. This is a frontier science project, starting with getting to speak with the engineers and discussing how the different camera designs being considered will influence the data we’ll capture. A unique thing that we’re planning to do with L-CAM makes really precise measurements of nearby bright stars and their exoplanets. This is something that cannot easily be done using ground-based telescopes on Earth because of the atmosphere and saturation limits.”

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LSU Professors Designing Construction Exoskeletons

Two Louisiana State University professors are partnering with Rutgers University to develop wearable exoskeletons to be used by the construction industry in an effort to decrease work site injuries, an LSU press release reported.

The professors teaming up with Rutgers University to create this integrated, multidisciplinary approach to workplace safety and efficiency are LSU Bert S. Turner Department of Construction Management Assistant Professor and Graduate Coordinator Chao Wang and LSU Professor of Industrial Engineering Fereydoun Aghazadeh. Along with Rutgers, Wang and Aghazadeh recently received a $150,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation, giving them a year to create a team of researchers ready to compete for a $3 million research grant in March.

This planning grant was awarded to the LSU professors as a part of the NSF’s 10 Big Ideas- Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) program to develop exoskeletons, and as of now LSU’s team is in good standing to be awarded the spring research grant, as there are few construction companies that have actually adopted any type of exoskeleton technology.

The FW-HTF project’s three goals are to “develop lightweight, flexible, high-performance, personalized wearable exoskeletons for construction workers; develop machine learning-based human skill modeling and training in construction; and initiate new cross-disciplinary collaboration and foster engagement with industry partners and stakeholders.”

Wang, who is serving as this project’s principal investigator has found that there are a few exoskeleton products currently available on the market, but they mainly target manufacturing and industrial settings, commenting that because of a construction site’s dynamic and complicated setting, the concept of introducing an exoskeleton is quite new.

Though, the concept is seen as heavily-needed by many wanting to mitigate work site accidents. According to OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, one in 10 construction site workers are injured each year and 21%of worker fatalities are in construction. Aghazadeh attributes construction injuries to three primary reasons: “Number one, they are tired. Number two, the task is beyond their capacity. Number three, they are not properly trained. If they don’t have the capacity to do the physical work, how can we enhance their physical capability? We can give them more power. This project is all about that.”

The LSU professors, Wang and Aghazadeh will study the individual tasks performed by each crew member on a construction project in order to develop and train a single exoskeleton to perform different construction tasks. They will also determine how much power should be given to the exoskeleton and whether to focus its support on the upper or lower area of the body.

The fact that the utilization of exoskeletons in a construction environment is a near-foreign concept is attributed to the quantity of tasks performed by your average construction worker, such as climbing stairs, walking, squatting, and reaching. These foundational tasks are a lot to teach an exoskeleton when compared to an exoskeleton used in a manufacturing facility that completes one task, albeit 1000 in a day.

Therefore, the challenge for Wang and Aghazadeh will be to design an exoskeleton intelligent enough to recognize what tasks its construction worker is engaged in, adjust its power level accordingly, and alter its control strategy to most-effectively assist with the work.

It’s not just the efficiency or safety of the work that will be benefited by the addition of construction exoskeletons but the longevity of the worker as well. The team’s motivation for their project originated from the workforce shortage in the United States, where there are an abundance of construction jobs but not enough workers with many retiring due to injury.

Wang expresses the project’s hopes- saying, “With the help of robotics, these older workers can still perform. That way, when younger workers come in, they can learn from the older, more experienced workers who have more knowledge that can be passed on. The idea down the line is that anyone can buy this in a Home Depot or Lowe’s, and they’ll come in different sizes. We want one product that can be smart enough to fit anyone with different tasks.”

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