School of Engineering Embarks on First Hong Kong Student Exchange

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cuaengineer Biomedical <strong>Engineering</strong> Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Finds Success Close to Home Faculty Pr<strong>of</strong>ile Peter Lum has come full circle in his academic career. A Washington, D.C., native, he spent his formative years within the District’s boundaries: as a student at Gonzaga High <strong>School</strong> and then as an undergraduate at the George Washington University. Now an associate pr<strong>of</strong>essor <strong>of</strong> biomedical engineering, Lum left the District for postgraduate work, but returned in 2005 to become an assistant pr<strong>of</strong>essor at CUA. For Lum, academia wasn’t always the end goal. After earning his undergraduate degree from GWU and a master’s from the California Institute <strong>of</strong> Technology in mechanical engineering, Lum worked briefly in the private sector. “It was not very rewarding and there was very little imagination or creativity required to do the job,” he says <strong>of</strong> that experience. “A colleague introduced me to the idea <strong>of</strong> using my skills as an engineer to solve problems in biology and medicine. I decided to go for it and went back to school to get my Ph.D. in bio engineering at Berkeley.” Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Peter Lum Lum describes the switch as a perfect marriage <strong>of</strong> his previous training in mechanical systems with bioengineering problems in medicine. He has since focused on researching stroke rehabilitation. “There are over 750,000 new strokes in the U.S. each year and many <strong>of</strong> these people do not recover ability to move their arms and legs,” he says. “It was once thought there was no recovery <strong>of</strong> function beyond three to six months after the stroke but this has been proven to be incorrect. Use <strong>of</strong> robotics has the potential to fill this need, without greatly increasing the costs <strong>of</strong> health care.” As part <strong>of</strong> this research, Lum received a $250,000 contract from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command to work on a project to develop a new hand exoskeleton to help retrain hand function after stroke. The hand exoskeleton could also be used someday as an orthotic to assist grasping in patients who don’t recover full function. He also received a $350,000 contract from NIH to develop a telerehabilitation workstation to provide home therapy to stroke survivors who live in rural areas or cannot travel to the clinic for treatment. A Department <strong>of</strong> Veterans Affairs Merit Review Award will provide Lum more than $600,000 over the next four years to research robotic arm therapy for stroke rehabilitation. Even with this busy research schedule, Lum still finds time to share his insights with CUA’s biomedical engineering students. “I like the small school feel at CUA,” he says. “The small class size allows me to get to know all <strong>of</strong> the students, which greatly increases the satisfaction <strong>of</strong> the teaching, and motivates me to make the classes as interesting as possible. I really like what I am doing now.” 2 | cuaengineer
cuaengineer German Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Finds Constructive Career at CUA Faculty Pr<strong>of</strong>ile As a boy in Germany, Gunnar Lucko’s imagination was inspired by the stories his grandfather would tell. A civil engineer in post-war Germany’s Rhine Valley, he had a long career designing bridges and buildings. He would speak <strong>of</strong> how important engineers were to a society; how it was they who created the structures within which a civilization could flourish. And when it came time for Lucko to choose his own career path, he knew exactly what he wanted to do: follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. After obtaining a degree at Hamburg University <strong>of</strong> Technology, Lucko came to the United States to attend graduate school at Virginia Tech, earning a Ph.D. in civil engineering in 2003. He joined the CUA faculty in 2005 as an assistant pr<strong>of</strong>essor <strong>of</strong> civil engineering and oversees the Construction <strong>Engineering</strong> and Management Program. As a researcher, he specializes in mathematical analysis <strong>of</strong> schedule networks, construction operations analysis and optimization, equipment economics, and constructability analysis. The field is a relatively small one, with roughly 150 academics conducting construction management research, and they are scattered around the country. Lucko has worked diligently and successfully to cultivate strong relationships with his long-distance fellow researchers; he regularly exchanges ideas and collaborates on projects with colleagues based as far away as Israel. He even serves as an external doctoral adviser to an engineer working on the NASA shuttle in Cape Canaveral, Fla. His current research work seeks to dynamically forecast construction projects, simulating operations before they actually take place to look for possible glitches. “Planning and scheduling <strong>of</strong> construction projects have been interests <strong>of</strong> mine since I worked on engineering projects [as a student] in Germany,” Lucko says. In 2007, Lucko was awarded a two-year $67,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to perform basic research on singularity functions, which had been used in structural engineering. He discovered that these functions can help solve so-called linear schedules. At the heart <strong>of</strong> his research lies optimizing the productivity <strong>of</strong> all construction activities within a project’s time and space constraints. Case study implementations with several construction companies are validating his new method. In addition to his research, the assistant pr<strong>of</strong>essor is passionate about educating tomorrow’s engineers. He was a finalist for the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in both 2007 and 2008, and was recently awarded the Charles H. Kaman Award for Teaching Excellence, the highest award within the <strong>School</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Engineering</strong>. Working with the group Engineers Without Borders, Lucko helps direct CUA students in a field service project in Santa Clara, El Salvador, a remote village <strong>of</strong> 3,000 people accessible only by dirt roads. The project, funded in part by a threeyear, $42,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, is enabling Lucko and his students to design a new health clinic and help with providing a water distribution system for the town’s residents. He also mentors high school students at Bell Multicultural High <strong>School</strong> in Washington, D.C., introducing them to the construction field. Away from engineering, Lucko has played the clarinet with a German chamber orchestra and an American wind ensemble. Music even led him to his wife, who is a graduate <strong>of</strong> CUA’s <strong>School</strong> <strong>of</strong> Library and Information Science: They met through practicing music in the CUA music library and married during Thanksgiving <strong>of</strong> 2007. “I was looking for a university where I could grow and make a contribution in my field and work in a personable place,” Lucko says, and he has found such an environment here. “This makes for a fulfilling faculty life, and I’m proud I am carrying on my grandfather’s pr<strong>of</strong>ession.” Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Gunnar Lucko looks over blueprints in his <strong>of</strong>fice. fall2008 | 3
Page 1 and 2: cuaengineer THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
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School of Engineering Embarks on First Hong Kong Student Exchange

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