research, Page 13

The Smart Bed, decked out in Mizzou sheets.

Getting to the heart of the matter

Compiled over time, the differences in peaks and valleys — called a waveform — in one’s heartbeat can tell medical professionals a lot about a person’s cardiovascular health. But what if you could measure the same thing without all of those invasive sensors attached to your body? Imagine that, instead, you could provide doctors that same data with a sensor located under a mattress or behind a couch cushion.

rcaf2019

Quintet shines at Research and Creative Activities Forum

Five Mizzou Engineering graduate students participated in the Research and Creative Activities Forum on Friday at Jesse Hall. The event was sponsored by the MU Graduate Professional Council, and the forum’s stated goal is “to showcase research and creative activities while providing valuable experience and feedback.”

Various road signs closing off a street. They read

Driver distractions in work zones can be costly

Distractions in the car are everywhere. Texting, taking a call, changing the radio, attending to passengers, picking up a dropped item — all of them can cause us to lose sight of the road for a few seconds. But mere seconds can be the difference between life and death.

On the dashboard of a car, two mobile phones are mounted in parallel holders.

Get smart: Phones collect critical road surface data

Your smartphone can already make video calls, play games with someone across the globe and track how well you sleep, how many steps you walk and how long your ride will take to get to you. What if smartphones could tell your department of transportation the quality of the roads you drive on?

Graphic showing portraits of the four featured faculty. Caption:

Four faculty receive named professorships

Last spring, faculty representatives from the College of Engineering developed a Faculty Honors Program to adhere to the campus guidelines for awarding faculty fellowships and honors. To select this year’s honorees, Dean Elizabeth Loboa sought recommendations from the College’s Dean’s Council for Teaching Excellence and Dean’s Council for Research Excellence.

Hands typing on a laptop keyboard

Defense using pretense: MU Engineering team sets new cybersecurity paradigm

Instead of simply reacting to cyberattacks after they happen, Mizzou Engineering researchers developed a new approach — cyber “defense using pretense.”

A landscape showing a narrow river shining under hazy sunlight, low mountains in the background, and trees on either side of the bank, dressed in autumn foliage.

Studying behavior could lead to sustainability solutions

At first blush, Damon Hall’s office looks somewhat out of place. Tucked in the Natural Resources Building, his shelves are lined with the kind of reading material seemingly more suited for psychology or sociology. Looks, however, can be deceiving.

Tojan Rahhal, Terrell Morton, and Johannes Schul

Assistant dean, STEM colleagues land grant to study identity expression

Identifying and understanding contextual, cultural and developmental differences among identity expression for historically underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is key in supporting and growing these populations in STEM fields.

A 3D visualization of massive sets of amino acids. It looks like a single long ribbon tangled in distinct clusters, and each cluster is further distinguished by a different color.

Mizzou team shines at computational protein prediction competition

Accurately predicting how protein sequences will fold into 3D structures is key to determining their biological function and essential in areas such as protein design, protein engineering, drug design, disease research, and precision medicine. MU Engineering William and Nancy Thompson Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Jianlin Cheng and his MULTICOM team are at the forefront of this nascent field, with the accolades to match.

A big industrial bridge arching over a canal. Power lines criss-cross over a sky that deepens from tangerine to lavender.

MU Engineering professor helps solidify new bridge inspection standards

Mizzou Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Glenn Washer has long been a proponent of more common-sense, risk-based federal bridge inspection standards, and he’s done the research to back them up. And now, those standards have become federal policy.