News Release
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November 10, 2005
Dedication Planned Wednesday for New FAA Center of Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research
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Boise State electrical and computer
engineering professor Sin Ming Loo holds |
Senior officials from the Federal
Aviation Administration will join Boise State University President Bob
Kustra, university administrators and faculty, and state dignitaries at a
dedication at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, for a new FAA Center of Excellence
for Airliner Cabin Environment Research at Boise State.
The dedication will be held in the lobby of the Micron Engineering Center.
Featured guests include FAA Federal Air Surgeon Jon Jordan, FAA Centers of
Excellence Program Director Patricia Watts, the center’s executive director
William Gale of Auburn University, and a number of other officials. The
public is invited, although seating is limited.
Boise State is partnering with Harvard University, Auburn University, the
University of California-Berkeley, two other universities and a national
laboratory on the FAA research center to study cabin air quality and conduct
an assessment of chemical and biological threats in airliners. The U.S.
Department of Transportation established the center last year, with Auburn
University as the lead institution.
The FAA expects to invest more than $5 million in the first three years of
the multi-university center, according to John Owens, associate dean for
research in the College of Engineering.
“This is a great opportunity for Boise State to join with some of the top
universities in the nation on research that has the potential to have a
direct and positive impact on everyone who flies aboard commercial
airliners.” Owens said. “Our graduate and undergraduate students will also
benefit from working with faculty on funded research as part of the new
center.”
Boise State’s part of the project involves the development of sensors and
instrumentation to monitor air quality and detect contaminants. The research
has applications for both health and security issues, said Sin Ming Loo, a
Boise State electrical and computer engineering professor, who received a
three-year, $500,000 grant from the FAA for his studies.
Loo is working to design a wireless sensor network that could be used to
detect and measure contaminants in airliner cabins. The system would include
flexible circuitry that would allow an interchangeable number and type of
sensors to be placed in the airliner cabins to measure contaminants such as
smoke, ozone, bacteria, fungi and carbon monoxide.
Data collected by the sensors would then be transmitted to an onboard base
station for processing and later retrieval. Further phases of the project
would involve refining the network to provide real-time information about
contaminants to the flight crew or to a ground station.
“Commercial airline passengers and crews breathe a mixture of outside and
recirculated air, similar to the air in many homes and offices,” Loo said.
“But the cabin environment is unique, due to the proximity of passengers,
the need for cabin pressurization, the low humidity and the potential for
exposure to common chemical and biological contaminants, all in an enclosed
structure.”
Loo is taking those variables and many others into account to design the
system. Several graduate students are assisting Loo on the project. He hopes
to conduct tests of prototypes aboard a grounded airliner at the Boise
Airport during 2006.
This is the second FAA center involving Boise State as a research partner.
In September 2003, Boise State joined MIT, Stanford and five other
universities as partners in the FAA Center of Excellence for Aircraft Noise
and Aviation Emissions Mitigation.
The FAA has established six other Centers of Excellence, focusing on
computational modeling of aircraft structures, airport pavement technology,
operations research, airworthiness assurance, general aviation, and advanced
materials.
The Center of Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research at Boise
State was established under the leadership of Joe Hartman, a Boise State
professor of electrical and computer engineering who died last December
following a short illness.
“Joe Hartman would have been thrilled to see the dedication of this new
Center of Excellence at Boise State,” said Loo, who worked with Hartman and
considered him a mentor. “Dr. Hartman’s dedication and vision are the reason
Boise State is part of this world-class partnership, and we owe him our
thanks.”
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Contact: John Owens, College of Engineering, (208) 426-5770,
jowens@boisestate.edu, and
Sin Ming Loo, College of Engineering, (208) 426-5679,
smloo@boisestate.edu
Media Contact: Janelle Brown, University Communications, (208) 426-1790,
jbrown2@boisestate.edu
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Last reviewed on Thursday, December 22, 2005