Edmund T. Pratt Jr School of Engineering
On The Leading Edge of Engineering Education
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Professors Roni Avissar and Larry Carin (right)will
work together in CIEMAS, now under construction
The Pratt School
Campaign Total: $210,262,783
Named for Edmund T. Pratt Jr. E’47 during the campaign,
Duke’s engineering school added 13 endowed professorships,
four fellowships, and some 50 other new endowments, including
39 scholarships. Annual giving set records in each of the
eight years, totaling nearly $12 million. The 322,000-square-foot
Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied
Sciences (CIEMAS) will open in 2004, at the outset of the
school’s scheduled undergraduate expansion.
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“People will look back on this as the period when engineering
at Duke really changed,” says Larry Carin, who joined the
electrical and computer engineering faculty in 1995. “It’s
a revolution!” says Roni Avissar, who came to Duke in 2001
in response to “the challenge and opportunity to help redesign
the school.” Since the Campaign for Duke was announced, engineering
has developed a new strategic vision, and a landmark gift from the
late Edmund T. Pratt Jr. E’47 renamed the school. Increased
support has endowed professorships such as the W.H. Gardner Jr.
Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
which helped to recruit Avissar, and the William H. Younger Professorship,
to which Carin was appointed. And the new Center for Interdisciplinary
Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS) will more than
double the space in the Pratt School.
That is good news for Carin, who has had to work off campus for
three years, as well as for Avissar, who is hiring new faculty members.
But CIEMAS does more than just add square footage; it will foster
interdisciplinary scholarship in areas where Pratt is building an
international reputation: bioengineering, materials engineering,
photonics, and sensors. “The natural direction of scholarship
today is cross-disciplinary,” Carin explains, “and since
Pratt is small as engineering schools go, it’s even more important
for us to bring together critical expertise from different departments
and schools.”
Avissar and Carin work together on the sensors initiative. Carin
has led major Department of Defense projects on land mines and unexploded
ordnance. He advises the military on which sensors to use, then
interprets the data to determine where to dig. Though land mines
receive far more attention, he explains that “five to ten
percent of bombs don’t explode on impact and end up buried
up to ten feet in the ground.” This can cause “real
problems when rebuilding after military initiatives,” such
as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, or as acres of old bombing ranges
are returned to public use.
Avissar is developing new methods for measuring the global impact
of pollution and deforestation on water cycles and the climate,
and uses sensors to collect atmospheric data over large areas. He
also monitors man-made environments because “if we can monitor
a building, we may be able to sense where it is vulnerable and help
direct fire fighters.”
Carin’s research can help Avissar locate underground pollutants,
and Avissar’s ability to measure water levels in the soil
can help Carin identify underground explosives. Each project in
the sensors initiative has multiple applications and leads to the
kinds of “vibrant conversations across departments and fields”
that drew Avissar to Duke. Such “conversations” may
answer a host of 21st century questions, and place the Pratt School
on the leading edge of engineering education.
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