In This Issue
[December 2011]
Featured MSU Engaged Scholars
MSU Priorities
In Every Issue
Featured MSU Engaged Scholars
- Laura Bix, Ph.D.
- Associate Professor
- School of Packaging
- College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Medical Packaging Design Requires Comprehensive Approach
Most of us have experienced the frustration of trying to open a package that is well sealed and well insulated. If a healthcare professional trying to open a package containing a medical device experiences that same frustration, it can mean a difference in quality of care, or even life or death for a patient.
Laura Bix, associate professor in MSU's School of Packaging, works with a wide range of practitioners, students, and medical professionals to identify the critical issues involved in healthcare packaging.
Cost considerations, ease of opening and handling, maximizing sterility and minimizing contamination, and preventing user error are some of the many factors Bix takes into account when working with industry partners ...
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- Tonghun Lee, Ph.D.
- Director, Laser Diagnostics Laboratory for Advanced Energy and Propulsion Research
- Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
- College of Engineering
Working with the Air Force to Develop Supersonic Engines
The United States Air Force has a "need for speed." Dr. Tonghun Lee, associate professor in MSU's College of Engineering, is working with researchers at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Dayton, Ohio, to develop innovative combustion systems that will allow engines to operate at incredibly high speeds.
Lee has spent three summers at Wright Patterson's Propulsion Directorate within the Aerospace Propulsion Division (Air Force Research Laboratory), funded by their Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. "I use lasers to look at the combustion process in propulsion systems," Lee explains. "I image things like temperature and chemical species in laboratory set-ups which are designed to simulate conditions that show how an engine is running." Because much of his research is on location at WPAFB, Lee travels there frequently to set up lasers and make measurements ...
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MSU Priorities
Community and Economic Development in the 21st Century
Chemistry Professor's Research Leads to Award Winning InPore Technologies
InPore Technologies is an award-winning, Michigan based, startup company created from the science discoveries of a chemistry professor at Michigan State University.
Dr. Thomas J. Pinnavaia joined MSU's Chemistry Department in 1966, and continues to have considerable enthusiasm for the challenges of chemical research with inorganic materials. He is the lead inventor on more than 80 issued and pending U.S. patents, has served as a member of the editorial boards of nine international scientific journals, and has won several national and international awards.
The current company is the evolution of a company called Claytec, Inc., that represented Pinnavaia's earlier work with inorganic materials.
InPore Technologies produces a product for applications in the plastics industry called Silapore™. The Silapore particles produced have numerous pores comparable in size to polymer molecules, and the way they are structured work synergistically with other chemical agents to improve flame retardancy while making the compounds stronger and/or lighter, and therefore less expensive for manufacturers to produce in a variety of industry capabilities ...
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In Every Issue
Upcoming Events
- The Evaluation Circle Workshops, 2011-2012
- A series of workshops on evaluation theory and practice
- East Lansing, Michigan
- January 20, 2012; February 3, 2012; April 13, 2012
- Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Institute 2012
- East Lansing, Michigan
- January 30-31, 2012
- Universities' Third Mission: Indicators and Good Practices
- Dublin, Ireland
- February 2-3, 2012
- MSU Awards Convocation
- Pasant Theatre, Wharton Center
- East Lansing, Michigan
- February 14, 2012
- Community-Campus Partnerships for Health Conference
- Houston, Texas
- April 18-21, 2012
- 2012 National Outreach Scholarship Conference
- Tuscaloosa, Alabama
- September 30-October 3, 2012
Looking for Project Partners?
Collaboration and partnership with communities are at the core of engaged scholarship. In all of its work, University Outreach and Engagement emphasizes university-community partnerships that are collaborative, participatory, empowering, systemic, transformative, and anchored in scholarship. If you are a faculty or academic staff member wanting to establish a partnership with community partners to work on a specific research issue, University Outreach and Engagement can help you. Our University-Community Partnerships (UCP) staff, specialists, and researchers have established connections across the state in a number of areas such as education, mental health, human services, business, and government. For more information, contact Bob Brown at (517) 432-1450 or brownr23@msu.edu.
Focus: HOPE, Detroit, MI
Opportunities for partnership exist around the following areas: service-learning, student internships and placements, faculty research partnerships, and development of innovative solutions to pressing social problems. For more information, contact Deborah E. Fisher at (313) 494-4306 or fisherd@focushope.edu, or visit http://ucp.msu.edu/partnerships/.
ES 360° Feedback ...
We would like to hear from you. Contact us with comments, suggestions, announcements, or "engaged scholar" project information for future e-newsletters. Send to Carla Hills: esenews@msu.edu or call (517) 353-8977.