August 3, 2023

Michigan Tech is an affiliate member of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Hub: Great Lakes Region. The NSF I-Corps program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business, or industry requirements and challenges.

The Great Lakes I-Corps Hub is excited to be offering three Pathways to Impact virtual workshops this fall:

• Ideas Worth Pursuing — Wednesday, Aug. 9
• Getting the Most From Your Ph.D. — Wednesday, Sept. 6
• Ph.D. Career Paths — Wednesday, Oct. 4

Pathways to Impact workshops help researchers adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and think about impact beyond the laboratory.

Find out more and register to take part in these workshops on the NSF I-Corps Great Lakes Hub Pathways to Impact program page.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion will be closed tomorrow (Aug. 4).

We will resume normal operations on Monday (Aug. 7). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Michigan Tech cross country team has announced its 2023 competition schedule, which includes one regular season home meet and playing host to the GLIAC Cross Country Championships, held at the Michigan Tech Trails on Oct. 21.

"I'm really excited about this year's schedule," said head coach Kristina Owen. "It's the first year in a while that we've been selected to host the GLIAC Cross Country Championships. This is going to be a great opportunity to not only showcase our city and trails to visitors, but also for our local fans to come cheer on the team!"

Michigan Tech opens its season with a preview of the conference championship course in the Yooper Skirmish, held at the Michigan Tech Trails on Sept. 2.

See the full schedule at the Michigan Tech Athletics website.

Professor Yoke Khin Yap (Physics) will present the opening plenary talk at the Global Congress on Materials Science and Nanotechnology, being held in London, U.K.

Yap's talk is titled "Boron Nitride van der Waals Heterostructures for Advanced Electronics and Biomedicine" and will be delivered today (Aug. 3).

Additionally, Research Associate Professor Dongyan Zhang (Physics) will present an invited talk titled "High Brightness Fluorophores with Controllable Brightness" today at the same conference.

Other plenary and keynote speakers at the conference are from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Canada; North Carolina State University; the University of Science and Technology, Beijing, China; and the University of Michigan.

Dave Subert (APSRC) was quoted by WLUC TV6 in a story about the charging desert created by the scarcity of electric vehicle charging stations in the Upper Peninsula.

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Aimee Marceau (BioSci) was mentioned by WLUC TV6 in a story about the Michigan Tech Genomic Sequencing Lab’s ongoing tick collection project, dubbed Tick Talk Monitoring. The project is accepting ticks through Sept. 30 and has launched a new web dashboard showing results of the tick analysis.

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Printed Circuit Design & Fab listed Michigan Tech as the recipient of an honorable mention for the 2023 Altair Enlighten Awards. The team was honored for their Steel E-Motive Side Closure Mechanism project for the Auto/Steel Partnership in the Future of Lightweighting category. The press release was picked up by more than 250 regional outlets in the U.S. 

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Professor Emerita Mary Ann Beckwith (VPA) was mentioned by Wisconsin’s Vilas County News-Review in a story about the winners of the Manito Art League’s 58th annual art show. Beckwith served as the art show’s judge. 

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PR Newswire and Yahoo! Finance mentioned Michigan Tech in a story about the new book “Demystifying IT: The Language of IT for the CEO” co-authored by Bhopi Dhall ’69 (M.S. Electrical Engineering). The story was picked up by more than 140 regional news outlets.

PhD Defense: Meenaa Chandrasekar, ChE

Department of Chemical Engineering (ChE) Ph.D. student Meenaa Chandrasekar will present her doctoral defense at 9 a.m. today (Aug. 3). The presentation is virtual only via Zoom.

Chandrasekar's defense is titled “Microscopic and laboratory scale biomass characterization methods to evaluate biomass deconstruction.”

Chandrasekar's advisor is Rebecca Ong.

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PhD Defense: Evan Lucas, ECE

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering candidate Evan Lucas will defend his doctoral dissertation today (Aug. 3) at 1 p.m. in person in GLRC 201 and virtually via Zoom.

The title of Lucas' dissertation is "Finer Details of Language Modeling: Text Segmentation, Working Within Resource Limits, and Watermarking."

Lucas is advised by Timothy Havens (CS/ICC/GLRC).

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MS Defense: Ian Gannon, GMES

M.S. in Geological Engineering candidate Ian Gannon will present his master's defense at 11 a.m. today (Aug. 3) in person in Dow 610 and virtually via Zoom.

The title of Gannon's thesis is "Integrating LiDAR, Aeromagnetic, and Geological Field Data to Identify Structural-Lithologic Elements Within the Archean Carney Lake Gneiss Complex."

Gannon is advised by James DeGraff, with Chad Deering and Aleksey Smirnov as committee members.

From the abstract:
The Archean Carney Lake Gneiss Complex (CLGC) is a suite of rocks on the southern margin of the Superior Province and within the Minnesota River Valley subprovince. It is one of many gneissic domes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota whose complex geology is poorly understood due to a previous lack of economic interest in gneissic terranes and significant challenges to their investigation. As a consequence, the CLGC and other gneissic domes in the region are represented on geologic maps as undifferentiated masses surrounded by better-defined and understood Paleoproterozoic supracrustal rocks and igneous intrusions. Within the last ten years, however, the United States has identified an urgent need to find new sources of critical minerals to sustain and grow the nation’s technology and defense industries, which has renewed interest in these very old and complex rocks. Under the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI) of the U.S. Geological Survey, the CLGC and surrounding Paleoproterozoic rocks have been remapped to update geologic interpretations and to assist in identifying potential mineral systems in the region. Mapping of the CLGC was accomplished using traditional techniques combined with satellite-based phone applications and differential GPS devices to navigate in dense vegetative cover, to obtain accurate coordinates of field sites, and to collect geologic data at outcrops. As a further aid to ground mapping, high-resolution LiDAR and aeromagnetic data were analyzed to determine topographic and magnetic patterns and textures that potentially reflect structural-lithologic domains within the CLGC.

Integration of the new geologic field data with features and patterns identified on LiDAR and aeromagnetic maps allows definition of three domains within the CLGC: (1) a poly-deformed, mostly felsic gneiss with folded and sheared banding; (2) a meta-igneous, plagioclase-dominated gneiss with poorly expressed banding; and (3) a meta-sedimentary gneiss with thin well-developed banding and local relict sedimentary textures. Outcrop mapping also reveals the widespread occurrence and great variety of younger felsic and mafic intrusions that were not fully appreciated by earlier mappers. Data integration has allowed better definition of geologic unit contacts around the margins of the CLGC and within some Paleoproterozoic metasedimentary units, which updates knowledge about the Sturgeon Quartzite to the northeast and the Vulcan Iron Formation to the south. Although some analytical work is ongoing, such as radiometric age dating, the integrated mapping effort has identified between five to eight tectonomagmatic events that have affected the region, plus a number of sedimentary cycles. The abundance of processes that have affected the area provides multiple opportunities for concentration of mineral deposits that could be attractive for future exploration efforts. The data integration approach developed for this thesis project should be useful in identifying structural-lithologic domains within enigmatic Precambrian gneiss domes elsewhere in the region and globally.

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Figure Skating School

Thursday, August 3, 8 a.m.–5 p.m. | Student Development Complex (SDC), Macinnes Student Ice Arena

Take your skating to the next level with Michigan Tech’s Summer Figure Skating School at the John MacInnes Student Ice Arena. All skaters, beginner through advanced, will...

Board of Trustees Meeting

Thursday, August 3, 9–11 a.m. | Memorial Union Building (MUB), Ballroom B

Regular meeting of Michigan Technological University Board of Trustees

PhD Defense: Meenaa Chandrasekar

Thursday, August 3, 9–10 a.m.

Chemical Engineering Advisor: Rebecca Ong MICROSCOPIC AND LABORATORY SCALE BIOMASS CHARACTERIZATION METHODS TO EVALUATE BIOMASS DECONSTRUCTION Attend Virtually:...

Master's Defense: Michelle Bollini

Thursday, August 3, 9:30–10:30 a.m. | Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building, 875

Environmental Engineering Co-advisors: Judith Perlinger and Noel Urban Bioaccumulation of Polychlorinated Biphenyl Compounds and Mercury in a Mining Impacted Aquatic...

Master's Defense: Shruti Rajiv Vaidya

Thursday, August 3, 9:30–10:30 a.m. | Electrical Energy Resources Center (EERC), 501

Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisor: Christopher Middlebrook Automatic Optical Inspection-based PCB Fault Detection using Image Processing. Attend Virtually:...

Master's Defense: Ian Gannon

Thursday, August 3, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. | Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering Building, 610

Geological Engineering Advisor: James DeGraff Integrating LiDAR, Aeromagnetic, and Geological Field Data to Identify Structural-Lithologic Elements Within the Archean Carney...

PhD Defense: Evan Lucas

Thursday, August 3, 1 p.m.–2 p.m. | Rekhi Hall, 101

Electrical Engineering Advisor: Timothy Havens Finer Details of Language Modeling: Text Segmentation, Working Within Resource Limits, and Watermarking Attend Virtually:...

Wayne Gersie Farewell Celebration

Thursday, August 3, 2 p.m.–4 p.m. | Hamar House Center for Diversity and Inclusion, Lawn

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) are delighted to host a special going-away celebration honoring the remarkable...

Alumni Reunion 2023

August 3, all day | Michigan Tech Campus

Make plans to join alumni and friends on campus for Alumni Reunion 2023, August 3-5! The featured classes will be the Golden M's (those who graduated 50 plus years ago), the...