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2018 Research Report

Stephanie Karhoff grew up on farms with broad fields of soybeans, wheat and corn.

From wind turbines to motorcycles, Virginia-based Afton Chemical Corporation produces fuel and lubricant additives to increase performance and efficiency such as fuel economy. To stay on the cutting edge of fluid performance as well as industry standards, Afton’s scientists have to create new additives and formulations.

The world of personalized medicine is rapidly expanding, with advances in DNA sampling, expanded patient charts and more creating individualized treatment plans for more diseases and conditions every day. A researcher and his team at the University of Cincinnati are currently making way for precision medicine – in the mind.

Hamed Attariani’s lab can’t look past the flaws in the materials they study – and that’s exactly the point. Attariani, assistant professor in Wright State University’s department of mechanical and material engineering, is flipping the script in the field of nanostructures by exploring how inherent defects in materials could enhance their mechanical properties rather than deteriorate them.

It’s a bit frightening but in the past, to understand how safe an airplane was, engineers had to wait for a crash. There wasn’t much physical testing that could be done, like with cars.

The 1960s Soviet/U.S. space race put men on the moon but also developed basic technologies that would result in subsequent breakthrough inventions in related fields: prosthetics, water purifiers, freeze-dried foods, satellite television, memory foam and many more. These advances were wrought from federally funded research and today serve the interests of broad swaths of the general public.

Improving the tires we drive on can go a long way in improving the overall efficiency of operating the cars we drive.

Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D., takes a gene-informed approach to personalized risk assessment and medical management of her patients and families. Her patient-focused research in genes, when altered, or mutated, associating with specific clinical features, such as cancer and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), provides the scientific evidence on which she practices precision medicine.

Weld-induced distortion is an expensive and time-consuming problem for manufacturers of heavy equipment to overcome. However, modeling and simulation can be a major tool to help manufacturers predict and understand possible distortion, avoiding repair costs and waste down the road.

While widely used for aerial photography and video, the next frontier for drones could be human transportation. The GoFly challenge, sponsored by Boeing, is culling the brainpower of the world’s most creative innovators and engineers to create personal flying devices.

If two cups sat in front of you, one blue and one purple, and someone asked you to pick up the purple one, you would know which cup to grab and how to pick it up. Have you ever thought about why? Julie Golomb, Ph.D., spends most of her days answering this question and others related to how the brain perceives, processes and memorizes sensory input.

Researchers in Sarah Hormozi, Ph.D’s lab refuse to go with the flow: instead, they study it. More specifically, Hormozi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio University, investigates complex suspensions in fluids.

Whether it’s the ability to predict and respond to natural disasters, analyze brain imaging data, or understanding social network information, scientific researchers and engineers are increasingly turning to high performance computing (HPC) to tackle design obstacles or study real-world phenomena.

The more genetics researchers learn about the building blocks of life, the more data they produce. This is a great problem to have – the more they know, and the more detail in which they know it, the better we can treat diseases at the individual level, streamline screening processes and create targeted pharmaceuticals.

The way your favorite beverage tastes, how foamy your hand sanitizer is, the way certain products smell or feel or taste or flow is based on whether molecules in a water-alcohol solution go to the surface of the mixture or stay in a group.

What if you discovered your favorite song, or your favorite work of art, came straight out of a computer? It is possible future generations will experience exactly that. 

The old adage goes, “it’s what’s inside that counts.” While most people aren’t talking about proteins when they say it, it certainly applies. Approximately half of all known proteins contain metal ions which play a crucial role in energy conversion reactions: think photosynthesis or carbon dioxide fixation.

The demand for high performance computing at Ohio’s universities has significantly grown and diversified. Jens Mueller, Ph.D., has witnessed that first hand at Miami University.

While Youngstown State University physics professor Donald J.

Pulmonary embolisms (PE) are a silent killer responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

A detailed understanding of the Earth’s land topography is critical to those in geosciences, geographical sciences and even civil engineering. The datasets associated with our land surface topography are the key ingredient to everything from urban planning to plate tectonics.

How many times a day do you turn to a search engine to answer a question? For most of us, it’s often.

When it comes to making medical decisions, sometimes even our tests need to be tested.