{"425561":{"#nid":"425561","#data":{"type":"news","title":"NSF taps Dr. Massimo Ruzzene for year-long assignment","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EStudents aren\u2019t the only ones who left Georgia Tech for new adventures this spring.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOn May 5, longtime Aerospace Engineering professor and researcher\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/ae.gatech.edu\/community\/staff\/bio\/ruzzene-m\u0022\u003EDr. Massimo Ruzzene\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;began a year-long stint in Washington, DC as a program director for the National Science Foundation (NSF).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI will be splitting my time between D.C. and Tech, where I will still work with [seven] PhD students and I am still involved in some research,\u201d said the director of Georgia Tech\u2019s Vibration and Wave Propagation Lab, also an ASME Fellow.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cBut this is a huge departure for me. I will no longer be looking only at what my personal research interests are. I will be taking a broader look at the field, at where it is going and what it is capable of doing in the future.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor the next year, Ruzzene and colleagues from Cal Poly and Texas Tech will be jointly coordinating NSF\u2019s $20 million Sensors\/Controls\/Dynamical Systems research program -- an area that includes about 100 foundational research grants across the country. The newly formed team will develop program descriptions, review submissions, and recommend as many as 20-25 proposals for funding annually.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ECheck out one of the\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/news\/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131501\u0026amp;org=NSF\u0026amp;from=newsField\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003Efirst grantees\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u0026nbsp;to make it through Ruzzene\u0027s review.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAE Chair Dr. Vigor Yang hailed Ruzzene\u2019s temporary absence as a testimony to larger goals.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis is good for Dr. Ruzzene, good for AE, and good for the entire community,\u201d he said. \u201cI always encourage our faculty to position themselves as contributors to the larger ideals of our field. We know Dr. Ruzzene will bring a wealth of knowledge to this assignment, and we look forward to gaining wisdom from his efforts.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis is not Ruzzene\u2019s first stint with the NSF. For much of the past year, he moonlighted one day a week as an NSF program reviewer in the areas of sensors and sensor systems. Though sometimes hectic, that assignment energized Ruzzene.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI am glad that I work for a school that recognizes the need for researchers to renew their perspective,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGoing forward, Ruzzene and his two NSF co-directors will create program descriptions that encourage researchers to look at the synergistic connection between sensors, controls, and dynamical systems.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;It\u2019s a combination that makes a great deal of sense to him.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf you look at airplanes, for instance, sensing tells you how the plane is flying \u2013 its speed, location, things like that. And controls tells you how to steer it, to land it. Dynamical systems looks at the systems that develop,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cStudying all of them will open up new opportunities to design better vehicles, more efficient and safe airplanes.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERuzzene said innovation has been stymied, somewhat, by the tendency to apply technology from one area to one that has vastly different conditions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSensors that were put on airplanes to do structural monitoring in the early 2000\u2019s turned out to be too expensive, too much weight. The problem was that they were legacy sensors \u2013 ones that were already available,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we need to see is research on sensors that don\u2019t already exist, sensor technology that is new. You can\u2019t use the same sensors to monitor a bridge as you do an airplane.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERuzzene is quick to add that his perspective on future innovations will be contrasted and challenged by his NSF colleagues, who bring complementary perspectives to their roles.Ruzzene is ready to expand beyond his past research areas, which include\u0026nbsp;structural dynamics, structural acoustics, and wave propagation (with a focus on high frequency vibrations and multi-scale modeling of complex structural components).\u0026nbsp;As a reviewer, he will look for\u0026nbsp;proposals that are innovative, not formulaic.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhat we are looking for are good research ideas, and we are excited to see what comes to us,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019d rather see a proposal that focused on one area that was new than a proposal that forced all three topics into a boring soup, with no innovation.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Dr. Massimo Ruzzene began a year-long stint in Washington, DC as a program director for the National Science Foundation (NSF)."}],"uid":"27456","created_gmt":"2015-07-16 11:45:47","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:08","author":"Britanny Grace","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-05-21T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-05-21T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"1239","name":"School of Aerospace Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"2082","name":"aerospace engineering"},{"id":"134521","name":"Massimo Ruzzene"},{"id":"363","name":"NSF"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":["communications@ae.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}