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Research and Faculty Accomplishments The hallmark of the college is a locally relevant and globally significant impact, demonstrated by:
 ROBERT L. BERTINI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR The automobile was king in the San Francisco suburb of Millbrae where Robert Bertini grew up. You drove to get just about anywhere. But on a family trip to Italy at age 14, Bertini was fascinated to see the ease with which people used other ways to get around. The trip sparked a lifelong interest in transportation, and today Associate Professor Bertini is actively working with industries and public agencies to improve transportation systems. Bertini is the head of the Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory. The lab collects and interprets traffic data from 500 road sensors placed throughout the Portland metropolitan area. Information from the lab can be used for everything from timing traffic signals to building roads and planning for mass transit.
WU-CHANG FENG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Online gaming is a $25-billion industry, and is expected to go beyond $40-billion by the end of the decade. A significant amount of the money comes from monthly subscriptions that players pay to gain access to game sites. Like any game, it's no fun when you lose - especially at the hands of a cheater. If it happens enough you are likely to drop your subscription. Associate Professor Wu-Chang Feng is working with Intel to develop hardware that detects cheating in much the same way that computers detect viruses and worms. It's an offshoot of other work he's done in computer security to prevent malicious network attacks, spam, and other costly irritants.
Great innovations usually start out as fuzzy "what if" concepts, barely more than a glimmer of an idea. The ideas are usually qualitative rather than quantitative, and are based on information that changes daily. So how can entrepreneurs bring their ideas into sharper focus and decide how to move forward on a project? Antonie Jetter and Charles Weber are using their research findings to help companies of all sizes navigate these treacherous waters. Jetter utilizes Cognitive Maps to elicit, document, and systematically process knowledge from various experts involved with a project - from marketers to engineers - each of whom brings his or her own interpretation of customer needs and technological possibilities. Weber, a graduate of MIT's Sloan School of Management, looks at the financial ramifications of a project, and how innovative ideas affect the bottom line.
Companies that make stainless steel aircraft gears and other components have their own way of heat treating them to make them withstand stress. But the process is often inefficient, producing unacceptable amounts of wasted metal. Chien Wern and David Turcic are helping the industry with a temperature induction process in which gears are heated to an extremely high temperature - 1,600 degrees in a half a second - by passing electrical through them. They perfected a method of measuring the temperature and controlling the process which is producing strong components with greater efficiency and far less waste than what the aircraft industry had been historically doing. "We're always trying to expose mechanical components to different conditions in an effort to improve them," Wern says. "Brakes and gears, for example, are subjected to a lot of force and repetitive motion. Being able to test those stresses is the first step in making those components stronger and safer. Please also visit our FEATURED RESEARCH OF THE MONTH webpage.  For more information regarding research at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University please contact: |
ANTONIE JETTER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DAVID TURCIC, ASSOCAITE PROFESSOR