Author Archives: Kim Spurr

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Synergy Unleashed: Exploring the potential of interdisciplinary mashups

A sketchbook shows Jan Chambers’ early work in the interdisciplinary “Medieval ‘First in Flight'” project, which brought together faculty from both the arts and the sciences. (photo by Steve Exum)

Stephen R. Covey, the leadership guru who penned The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said: “Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals 10 or a 100 or even a thousand! It’s the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.”

In the College of Arts & Sciences, we believe that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts, which is why we are removing the barriers that prevent creative collaborations across disciplines.

In the stories that follow, you’ll discover unconventional partnerships that demonstrate how we are unleashing new ways of thinking by encouraging a diversity of perspectives as we seek to solve complex problems.

UNC linguists and computer scientists pair up to tackle password security. Artists and scientists bring to life a medieval flight experiment. Anthropologists and archivists help students on two continents explore their shared culture. And much more.

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot for the “Synergy Unleashed” feature package!

Flight of fancy

An art historian, a costume designer, a math biologist, a biomedical engineer and a team of undergraduate researchers unite to reimagine a breathtaking 9th-century flying experiment — and make a notable contribution to early aviation history.

Jan Chambers, Glaire Anderson and Laura Miller hold a facsimile of an 11th-century Arabic manuscript describing the flight of inventor Abbas ibn Firnas. “The manuscript has yet to be incorporated into scholarship on aviation history,” said Anderson. (photo by Steve Exum)

More than 1,000 years before the Wright brothers made their historic flight over Kitty Hawk, and 600 years before Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a mechanical flying machine, an Islamic inventor named Abbas ibn Firnas designed a winged device, dared to test it himself and … flew.

Glided, to be more precise. According to the earliest historical account, he rose, moved through the air, circled and landed far from his launching point, hurting his tailbone in the landing.

Glaire Anderson knew of Abbas ibn Firnas and the accounts of his flight. The associate professor of art history specializes in early/medieval Islamic art and architecture. Although Ibn Firnas is not well known in Western culture, he is a staple of Islamic history books. His achievements have been recognized by NASA; a crater on the moon bears his name.

Attending a dinner for newly tenured faculty in 2013 and describing her research to colleagues, she mused about what a 9th-century flying apparatus might look like.

“You need a costume designer,” said her tablemate, Jan Chambers, associate professor of dramatic art and resident designer for PlayMakers Repertory Company.

A collaboration began to take form, one requiring both art and science. The goal was twofold: (1) to create an artistic interpretation of Ibn Firnas’ glider wings and garment that reflected the history, culture and technology of the time, and (2) to provide a means for students to think about the problems of early human flight by testing the fanciful device’s aerodynamic capabilities in UNC’s Joint Applied Math and Marine Sciences Fluids Lab. [Read more about the fluids lab].

The team grew to include Laura Miller, associate professor of biology and mathematics, who studies flight as part of her fluid dynamics research; Julia Kimbell, a research associate professor in the School of Medicine and an adjunct in biomedical engineering, and several undergraduate research associates, including two students in the Computational Astronomy and Physics Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, or CAP/REU.

A biomedical engineering student adapted Jan Chamber’s imaginative rendering of Abbas ibn Firnas’ wings into a model that could be printed on a 3-D printer. The scale model was then tested in UNC’s Fluids Lab for its aerodynamic properties. (photo by Steve Exum)

The team received a College of Arts & Sciences Interdisciplinary Collaboration Grant for the project, dubbed “A Medieval ‘First in Flight.’”

Rediscovered manuscript sheds light

There is no known visual representation of Ibn Firnas’ wings. Others have tried to imagine the device, designing utilitarian gliders. Anderson and Chambers wanted to capture the richness of the art and the sophistication of the science of medieval Cordoba, the capital of Islamic Iberia.

Their chief source of inspiration was the earliest historical account of Ibn Firnas’ flight, contained in an 11th-century manuscript that was discovered in the 1930s, lost for several decades and rediscovered in the 1990s.

“This manuscript has yet to be incorporated into scholarship on aviation history,” said Anderson. She worked with other experts to create a new English translation.

From it, she and Chambers gleaned key details, such as the device had two distinct wings capable of a controlled, sustained glide. They didn’t flap. Ibn Firnas’ garment was made of feathers fastened to silk. Witnesses were frightened by the spectacle.

With this information, Chambers set to work. She studied 9th- and 10th-century Islamic artifacts. She watched vultures and eagles — birds mentioned in the Arabic account — glide and soar.

“Glaire and I talked about the lifestyle of the period. This man was an artist as well as a scientist,” Chambers said. “He was capable of crafting these mechanisms. He wouldn’t have settled for something functional. He had a flair for the dramatic.”

She began sketching.

Testing the wings

Costume designer Jan Chambers studied 9th- and 10th-century Islamic artifacts. She watched vultures and eagles — birds mentioned in the Arabic account — glide and soar in creating her sketches. (photo by Steve Exum)

Enter the scientists. After sketching, Chambers used computer software to create 2-D renderings. From them, Kevin Simpson, a biomedical engineering student, designed a digital model that could be created using a 3-D printer.

Miller oversaw the CAP/REU students who worked on the aerodynamic testing. Kimbell helped with using the computational software the students used to guide airways.

The prototype was necessarily small: The wings, attached to a little mannequin, spanned less than 16 inches so that the device could fit into the water tunnel in the fluids lab for testing. (Yes, the wings’ gliding ability was tested in a water tunnel, not a wind tunnel. As Miller explained, air and water flow around objects similarly if scaled appropriately; it’s simply easier to measure velocity in water.)

Meanwhile, Jesse Hall ’15, who worked with Chambers and Anderson, stitched a flying garment for the figure. Claire Drysdale, a junior majoring in studio art and biology, created an interactive timeline for the website that documented the project. “It was my introduction to how technology could be used in art history,” she said.

Anderson is working on a book about Ibn Firnas and the Cordoban court of which he was part. She would love to create a life-size (16-foot wingspan) model of Chambers’ design, estimating that it would cost about $10,000.

As she notes in her project report: “Our collaboration explores how the spheres of art and science have creatively intersected in the past and offers an example of how the visual arts and STEM sciences can fruitfully intersect in the present.”

Learn more about the project at medievalflight.web.unc.edu.

By Geneva Collins

Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot for the “Synergy Unleashed” feature package!

Read more stories about interdisciplinary mashups:

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Helping students explore being Maya

Adonis Tello-Chavez (above) of Morganton’s Patton High School pores over records in Wilson Library. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

Fourteen high school students listened attentively as UNC anthropologist Gabrielle Vail invited them to examine letters, drawings, photos, diaries, codices, newspapers and other Maya materials from the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library.

“Start thinking about these materials in terms of ‘how can I tell the story of Maya migration?’” Vail said. “Explore them from a historical perspective, but also bring it into the present and think of a personal connection.”

Students receive research instructions at Wilson Library from Maya from the Margins project coordinator Gabrielle Vail. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

Maya from the Margins is a program that fosters cultural understanding among Maya youth on both sides of the border — Morganton, N.C., and Yucatán, Mexico. Together, the students are exploring their indigenous identity through workshops, online discussions, archival research and visits to their respective countries, where they will meet face-to-face. At the capstone event this spring, both sets of students will develop research projects in English and Spanish that will be on public display.

On April 13 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., visitors to UNC’s Wilson Library Pleasants Family Assembly Room can enjoy the exchange exhibition “Revitalizing Maya History and Heritage: My View from the Archives,” curated by students from Morganton and Mexico.

The program is funded by a Museums Connect grant, an initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, administered by the American Alliance of Museums. Partners include the Southern Historical Collection, the UNC department of anthropology and Research Laboratories of Archaeology, and the State Archives of Yucatán. Vail is project coordinator of Maya from the Margins, which builds on longtime cultural heritage work by Kenan Eminent Professor of Anthropology Patricia McAnany.

Maya from the Margins builds on longtime cultural heritage work by Kenan Professor of Anthropology Patricia McAnany. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

“If you look at the changing texture of the South demographically … these students are grappling with all kinds of things, including ‘how can I embrace my past and where I find myself today?’” said Bryan Giemza, director of the SHC, which houses the papers and materials of George E. Stuart (Ph.D. anthropology ’75), a scholar of the ancient Maya whose archaeological career with the National Geographic Society spanned nearly four decades. “They are very insightful; their interpretations are really sophisticated.”

Patton High School senior Eduardo Mendoza’s parents traveled from Guatemala to Morganton, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in 1998 looking for better job opportunities. (2010 U.S. Census data indicates a Latino population of 16.4 percent in Morganton, about double the state average.)

Mendoza said he does a lot of online research in school, so he appreciates the exposure to these rare documents.

“You can tell the professors are very passionate about what they do, and I like that I have the opportunity to ask them questions,” he said.

Maya from the Margins students at Patton High School in Morganton, N.C.

It’s also been a great experience for two UNC undergraduate students who serve as mentors. Jacqueline López is a senior pursuing a double major in Latin American studies and public policy. She spent six weeks in Yucatán in 2015 and has been working with the students on learning Yucatec Maya. She will accompany them on their study abroad trip.

“I didn’t start developing the tools to explore my own culture until I arrived at UNC,” said López, a first-generation college student. “To help them do that earlier in their careers has been so rewarding.”

The program has spawned other collaborations that extend beyond the core partners and the campus, McAnany said. Other UNC faculty members have conducted workshops with the students at their high school in Morganton, such as associate professor of romance studies Emilio del Valle Escalante, who speaks K’iche’ Maya. The city of Asheville is interested because Valladolid, where the Yucatán students live, is a sister city. Connections have been made with a Maya archaeologist who teaches at UNC-Asheville. High school teachers, church groups and others have pledged their support.

“We are very happy to be working on a project that is building bridges with our neighbors to the south rather than walls,” McAnany said.

By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88

Read more stories about interdisciplinary mashups:

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Enjoy more photos from the culmination of the project and the connection between the student groups in Yucatan and Morganton!

Museums Connect mentor Raina Enrique (senior at UNC-Chapel Hill) with students from the Universidad de Oriente de Yucatan at the opening of their exhibit at the State Archives of Yucatan. (photo courtesy of Gabrielle Vail)

From left, Gabrielle Vail, Bryan Giemza and Patricia McAnany at the State Archives of Yucatan. (photo courtesy of Gabrielle Vail)

The two groups of students (from Patton High School and the Universidad de Oriente de Yucatan) had their first opportunity to share their research with each other and the community at an exhibit in Morganton. (photo courtesy of Gabrielle Vail)

‘Spork Lab’ tackles password security

From left, linguists Katya Pertsova, Elliott Moreton and Jennifer Smith and computer scientist Fabian Monrose are exploring using lexical blends like the word “spork” to create attack-resistant passwords. They’re holding titanium sporks (both flexible and strong) as a symbol of their partnership. (photo by Donn Young)

Creating passwords that are memorable, hintable and resistant to attack is an increasingly important issue, especially in the age of savvy cyber-hackers — but computer-generated passwords are often too hard for people to remember, experts say.

It turns out that the challenge of creating attack-resistant passwords is a perfect fit for two departments who at first glance might seem to have little in common: linguistics and computer science.

In 2013, the National Science Foundation awarded UNC faculty members from both disciplines a $500,000 multi-year grant to study password security.

“This is such a relatable problem that we all have to deal with. … We wondered, ‘To what extent can we have the user influence a system-generated password?’” said computer scientist Fabian Monrose. “We wanted to first understand the constraints people are under in coming up with passwords.”

The Spork Lab has recently learned that another proposal has been recommended for funding by the NSF. The new three-year grant would fund a collaboration with linguists and neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. (photo by Donn Young)

Linguists Elliott Moreton, Jennifer Smith and Katya Pertsova began to explore the idea of lexical blends, words like “brunch” (for breakfast/lunch) or “spork” (for spoon/fork). Moreton quickly dubbed the new NSF-funded partnership “The Spork Lab” and ordered titanium sporks for everyone. The utensils are both flexible and strong, just like the interdepartmental collaboration, he said.

The lexical blend “fantabulous” even made its way into one of their joint papers: “Isn’t that Fantabulous: Security, Linguistic and Usability Challenges of Pronounceable Tokens.”

The researchers had a lot of questions they wanted to explore, such as: Just how big is blend space? If you make up a blended word, how do you measure its pronounceability? What kind of choices do people make in preserving parts of a word when they make a blend; i.e., do they choose to create flamingoose or flamongoose (when blending flamingo and mongoose?)

Our new paper reveals that, in general, people “tend to preserve more of a word that better predicts overall meaning,” Pertsova said.

“With passwords, one of the things that facilitates memorability is predictability, and that of course undermines security,” Moreton added. “They are at war with each other.”

It’s been a fertile area of exploration for both the faculty members and graduate students. The grant has supported masters’ theses, journal articles, papers for international conferences and more. Several projects have extended the work beyond English into Japanese and Spanish.

Monrose said they are also examining how many different source words might be needed to create a blend that’s resistant to attack, since password length — “we think the sweet spot is probably in the 16-character range” — also matters.

The original grant ends this year, but The Spork Lab has recently learned that another proposal has been recommended for funding by the NSF. The new three-year grant would fund a collaboration with linguists and neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to investigate whether linguistic and nonlinguistic patterns are learned using the same cognitive processes.

“We hope to take all of this information into the next phase and determine how to design algorithms to generate passwords that are resistant to attack; we need more data to better understand all of the techniques available to the adversary,” said Monrose, who has woven some of the group’s initial findings into his introductory course on computer security.

By chance, it was an undergraduate student pursuing a dual major in linguistics and computer science who first brought the faculty members together in a cross-disciplinary partnership that everyone hopes will continue.

“It’s been really fun to collaborate with someone in a separate field and have him look at your work and ask questions about it,” Smith said. “We all come at the issue from different angles.”

By Kim Weaver Spurr ’88

Read more stories about interdisciplinary mashups:

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Creating a buzz about health humanities

Faculty and students discuss health humanities projects in the HHIVE lab, founded by English professors Jane Thrailkill and Jordynn Jack. One project examined the impact that writing about diabetes had on the health of patients. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

If you hear the word “lab” and picture test tubes and autoclaves, the Health and Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Venue for Exploration lab will expand your horizons.

HHIVE (hhive.unc.edu), co-founded by English faculty members Jane Thrailkill and Jordynn Jack in spring 2015, provides undergraduate, graduate and professional students interested in health humanities the opportunity to participate in research and outreach projects at the intersection of the arts and sciences.

It is one of the first research-based health humanities labs in the country.

“HHIVE is devoted to the centrality of the human story and human expression and to living a meaningful, dignified and productive life,” said Thrailkill, co-director of the lab and of the English M.A. concentration in literature, medicine and culture. She is Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Associate Professor of English.

The Falls Narrative Study and the Writing Diabetes Study are the first two HHIVE lab projects, undertaken by interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students. Professor Sue Coppola in occupational therapy helped design the former study, in which 11 older adults were invited to write reflective, first-person accounts about a fall experience. Student researchers planned, conducted and analyzed these writing experiences in Thrailkill’s intensive research class. The narratives comprise a rich archive that provides insight into how older adults make meaning from a fall that they have experienced and the complex medical and social ramifications of a fall.

“Our goal is to learn as much as we can and to tell important stories with the end game always to expand human understanding and, if possible, palliate human suffering,” Thrailkill said.

Project coordinator Jen Stockwell, a Ph.D. candidate in English who led the workshop, said, “This wasn’t just about self-expression. We were hoping that the process of writing a narrative about their diabetes would be beneficial.” To that end, the researchers tracked the subjects’ blood sugar levels and compiled biometric data.

Bowman and Gordon Gray Associate Professor of English Jane Thrailkill co-founded the HHIVE lab. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

Sophomore Maebelle Mathew worked on the qualitative analysis of the diabetes narratives, using a software tool called Atlas TI.

“I looked at the keywords that popped up a lot related to tone and subject matter to see if the writing could be correlated with blood sugar levels,” Mathew said. “We looked at words that indicate positive social support and also looked at whether the participants felt in control of their diabetes and their life.”

UNC’s health humanities program continues to expand. Starting this fall, undergraduates will be able to complete a post-baccalaureate year to earn a master’s degree.

“This B.A./M.A. program will allow our really motivated and talented undergraduates to get a rich immersive year of study in health humanities that will help to shape their values, aspirations and goals as they go into clinical training,” Thrailkill said.

In addition, UNC’s medical campus is embracing the humanities.

“The UNC School of Medicine is revising its curriculum, with one of the significant additions being a strong arts and humanities component at every level,” said Thrailkill, who is completing a book, The Agony of Empathy in U.S. Medical Education.

The strong focus on written expression and analysis is helping medical students become communicators who are thoughtful and reflective and have the ability to be analytical about their experience, she said.

“They are not just doing what it takes to become doctors, they are thinking about the nature of what they are doing.”

By Michele Lynn

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High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

High-tech fluids lab attracts waves of research partners

Physics graduate student Jeff Olander (above, left) discusses research with mathematician Roberto Camassa. (photo by Kristen Chavex)

Physics graduate student Jeff Olander (above, left) discusses research with mathematician Roberto Camassa. (photo by Kristen Chavez)

Roberto Camassa’s research is very fluid. The Kenan Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics actively engages in collaborative projects ranging from oil spills to marine sciences to human disease. His partners include UNC faculty and graduate and undergraduate students in anthropology, physics, computer science and marine sciences.

“It really helps to hear from others with different expertise and to be exposed to different research,” Camassa said. “Sometimes you’re surprised when something turns out to be more salient to what you’re doing than you initially thought.”

One of his collaborators is Pierre-Yves Passaggia, a postdoctoral fellow in marine sciences. Passaggia is studying the dynamics of ocean circulation. Another collaborator is physics graduate student Jeff Olander, the lab safety and data manager in the Joint Applied Math and Marine Sciences Fluids Lab in Chapman Hall, the nexus for many shared studies.

The three scientists work together on fluid dynamics, a field that encompasses not just ocean currents and waves but also human airways, among other areas. For some of their work, they’re using a 120-foot wave tank that allows them to conduct large-scale experiments. The tank is one of the largest in the world that is completely optically accessible from all sides and will soon have its own fully recyclable salt-water storage and filtration system.

Passaggia collaborates with Camassa on underwater wave research, studying how the ocean makes exchanges among its different layers and how circulation takes place. Ocean water has a warm surface layer and a colder, denser layer underneath; this stratification of temperature and density causes underwater currents.

The fluids lab in Chapman Hall is the nexus for collaborative projects in mathematics, anthropology, marine sciences, physics and computer science. (photo by Dan Sears)

The scientists are interested in how fluids of different densities mix, sometimes causing powerful underwater currents that can pose a threat to ships and submarines.

“Since waves are conveniently described mathematically, we carry out experiments replicating ocean conditions that we can map to accurately predict what’s happening,” Passaggia said. “We fill the wave tank with different fluids of different densities and then generate large amplitude waves. Illuminating the tank using lasers, we can measure the characteristics of the waves very accurately using particle tracking and fluorescent dyes. Our results help us understand how the ocean makes exchanges between the different layers and how circulation takes place.”

Camassa and Olander partner to study the flow of complex fluids through small structures such as pipes. Complex fluids such as mucus share properties of both solids and liquids. Understanding the properties of these fluids has the potential to advance clinical research on cystic fibrosis and pediatric airways, for instance.

Olander has additional expertise with manipulating big data sets. “Jeff’s skills with DataTank, a software tool developed by my colleague David Adalsteinsson to handle large data sets, translates immediately across all types of experiments, which is very helpful,” Camassa said.

Passaggia confirms the benefits of cross-disciplinary work.

“Collaborations comprise about 90 percent of my work. Applying tools from another discipline allows you to move forward and to do so very fast in research.”

Learn more about the fluids lab: fluidslab.web.unc.edu.

By Dianne Gooch Shaw ’71

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