Tag: Debbie Cox

Pandemic forces unexpected route to graduation for OCAST intern

OCAST interview with Ella Luttbeg, TU from OCAST on Vimeo.

 

Editor’s note: Along with Debbie Cox, my colleague from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST), I recently interviewed Ella Luttbeg via the Zoom platform. Ella is a graduating senior at the University of Tulsa.

Ella Luttbeg was wrapping up some major projects as she prepared to graduate this spring as a mechanical engineering major from the University of Tulsa.

A senior capstone project neared its conclusion, as did an OCAST internship at Tulsa’s Triumph Aerostructures that she had held since October 2018.

A job at Boeing’s Oklahoma City operation awaited in June after her May graduation.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic threw some major roadblocks in her path. As the wave of Coronavirus infections washed over the nation in March, social distancing measures shuttered businesses, closed campuses and forced students like Luttbeg back to their homes to remotely complete the semester.

For Ella, home is Stillwater, where she graduated from high school before enrolling at TU as a freshman in 2016. Her parents are both biology professors at Oklahoma State University.

Luttbeg negotiated the roadblocks and finished out both the senior project and the OCAST internship.

“School wise, everything is remote, and our senior project kind of ended in a different fashion than we expected it to,” Ella told me in a recent interview over the Zoom platform. “So far, the pandemic hasn’t affected my job offer, which I’m grateful for.”

“I think something that really helps is seeing older college or professional women talking about their careers and getting excited about math and science and showing that it is a cool thing to be interested in. Having role models to look up to really helps people believe it’s something that they can achieve, as well.”
— Ella Luttbeg on inspiring more women to pursue STEM careers

During the OCAST internship, Luttbeg tackled a variety of engineering projects for Triumph Aerostructures related to fatigue and damage tolerance analysis in aircraft structures.

“I was lucky enough to be able to work from home for Triumph during the pandemic,” Ella said. “They were able to get me a laptop to remote in. It’s been different, but I’ve really been grateful to keep my internship.”

Luttbeg was one of two OCAST interns this academic year working at Triumph Aerostructures, a division of Triumph Group. Triumph is a publicly traded, global leader in manufacturing and overhauling aerospace structures, systems, and components.

“My time at Triumph Aerostructures has been super valuable to me, because it’s given me the opportunity to supplement my school studies with real world experience,” she said. “At Triumph, I worked with really smart engineers who taught me a lot about stress and fatigue and damage tolerance analysis. It exposed me to a whole different side of engineering.”

Ella Luttbeg

Luttbeg developed her interest in pursuing an education in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – while still in high school. She credits Larry Hesler, a high school math teacher, for stoking that interest, and college professors John Henshaw, Ph.D., and Steve Tipton, Ph.D., for mentoring her through the engineering program.

“I’ve always been interested in math,” she said. “Both my parents are scientists, so I’ve always been kind of exposed to the STEM world. Then at TU, my classes have shown me what engineering is all about.”

She learned about the OCAST intern opportunity through an email that TU’s engineering department sent to its students. TU is a long-time participant in the OCAST Intern Partnership program, which places students in real world R&D settings on a cost-share basis.

“I would definitely tell future/current college students to be on the lookout for the OCAST internships because they are a great way to be able to work part time during the school year and over the summer,” Luttbeg said. “I’m so thankful to have this opportunity to have this OCAST internship. It’s meant a lot to me and supplemented my education.”

IMMY brings new tools to state fight against Coronavirus

OCAST interview with IMMY about COVID-19 testing from OCAST on Vimeo.

 
Editor’s note: I recently was invited to a virtual meeting with Sean Bauman, Ph.D., CEO of Norman’s IMMY, and facilitated by Debbie Cox of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). This is the report I filed after the Zoom interview.

When the Coronavirus pandemic made its way to Oklahoma in March, the state’s ability to test suspected COVID-19 virus infections in Oklahomans was limited by the number of tests available to health care providers.

And when patients were tested, health care providers had to wait days for results to be returned from out-of-state laboratories.

“The turnaround time was just a big problem,” said Sean Bauman, Ph.D., president and CEO of IMMY (Immuno-Mycologics, Inc.), a diagnostic manufacturing company based in Norman. Bauman recently joined OCAST’s governing board, the Oklahoma Science and Technology Research and Development (OSTRaD) Board.

“You have a patient sitting in a hospital, and you are having to don and doff Personal Protection Equipment numerous times a day to care for that patient,” Bauman said. “And to get a COVID negative result three to five days later, you can imagine how much the wasted PPE costs.”

So, IMMY stepped up to develop a solution at its Norman laboratories. It developed and validated a nasal swab-based test known as PCR that allowed laboratories to provide results in a matter of hours.

“We dove in and literally from idea to reporting our first test result was 10 days,” Bauman said. “Crazy fast.”

But not crazy as in sloppy or low quality, Bauman clarified. IMMY was able to quickly develop its own test because it is an FDA and ISO manufacturing facility in a highly regulated industry. Its 85 employees are skilled professionals capable of overcoming challenges to develop a test to FDA standards.

“The other thing that happened, we had an incredible partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Health,” Bauman said. “They were fantastic, helped us get up-and-running as fast as we could. Just a great story of partnership.”

Gov. Stitt visits IMMY labs in Norman (photo from News9 video)

IMMY since has added a blood test for COVID-19 antibodies, which can confirm if a person has had the coronavirus and is potentially immune to further infection.

Bauman was part of Gov. Stitt’s recent press conference announcing the implementation of testing for COVID-19 antibodies. Stitt also toured IMMY’s Norman campus. 

“This is actually an important test, in my opinion, because Oklahoma is now in a unique position, with both the antibodies test and the PCR test at our disposal,” he said. “So, two tools in the tool belt.”

IMMY’s tests were part of a random sampling of 1,000 Oklahomans in early April to assess how widespread the virus is across the state. The sampling revealed that approximately 1.4 percent of the Oklahoma population had the virus at that time.

So, what does that mean?

“At that point in time, I think the conclusion from the study was that COVID-19 is just not in the general population to any large extent,” he said.

Bauman recommends random sampling across the state for COVID-19 at weekly intervals.

“Now that we have these two tools at our disposal we can start to ask different questions,” he said. “When is it safe for people to go back to work? When is it safe to relax some of the restrictions on people being out and in the community? Lots of different questions are going to be ask in the coming weeks and days.”

OSU’s New Product Development Center supports Oklahoma’s innovators with prototyping services

Editor’s Note: Along with colleague Debbie Cox from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology, I recently toured the fabrication lab at the Tulsa campus of Oklahoma State University’s New Product Development Center.  Here is my report:

By Jim Stafford

TULSA – Evan Pratt, a design engineer at the Oklahoma State University – Tulsa campus location of OSU’s New Product Development Center (NPDC), held a small plastic device in front of me for inspection and challenged me to guess its purpose.

I didn’t have a clue. New computer mouse? Fancy salt shaker? Home security device?

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Pratt was actually showcasing a “bottle grabber” assembly used by a Tulsa area manufacturer to keep the bottle filling and shipping process flowing smoothly.

“What this does is it fits on a conveyer system that is in their bottling system that helps them move and transport bottles from one conveyer system to another,” Pratt said.

The bottle grabber assembly was designed and created at the NPDC lab on a 3D printer to replace an original design and mesh perfectly with the client’s manufacturing process.

“This piece recently became unsupported by the original manufacturer,” Pratt said. “So, under a pay-for-service contract, we reverse engineered this bottle grabber assembly and created a 3D-printed prototype for them to test.”

The New Product Development Center was founded by OSU in 2002 to provide Oklahoma inventors and entrepreneurs with market research, prototype development and grant writing assistance to advance their concepts, said Jessica Stewart, assistant director.

Along with the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST), i2E Inc., the Tom Love Innovation Hub at the University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance, the NPDC is a key element in the Oklahoma Innovation Model that supports Oklahoma’s innovation economy. Robert Taylor is NPDC executive director.

As Debbie Cox from OCAST looks on, Evan Pratt displays a tray of ‘bottle grabbers’ designed and produced by OSU’s New Product Development Center

The bottle grabber assembly was created as part of a $399,000 grant awarded in 2017 to NPDC by the federal Economic Development Administration through its “i6 Challenge” program. Launched in 2014 the ongoing i6 Challenge has awarded $42 million with $54 million in matching funds that are supporting 88 projects across 36 states, according to the EDA website.

“The EDA i6 grant is basically set up to assist small businesses, inventors, startups and some manufacturers with a working first prototype to be able to get them further along in their product development,” Stewart said.

On this mid-January day, Pratt and Stewart gave me and OCAST colleague Debbie Cox a tour of their fabrication shop that features 3D printing capabilities along with tools to engineer and create just about any prototype to the specifications sought by manufacturers or inventors.

The EDA grant led to a unique collaboration between the OSU organization and OU’s Tom Love Innovation Hub, which expanded the array of services offered Oklahoma innovators through the grant.

“The Tom Love Innovation Hub has been excellent in providing services to our inventor community to create prototypes that we don’t have the capacity to do here,” Stewart said.

Added Tom Wavering, executive director of OU’s Innovation Hub: “When jobs come in, and they come to us and need some help, we figure out if we can help them or OSU can help them and send them to the right spot. Jessica and Robert do the same.”

At its Tulsa location, the NPDC provides both a mechanical and electrical engineer who provide design expertise and prototyping services like that of the bottle grabber assembly.

“We are probably Tulsa’s best kept secret,” Stewart said of the NPDC. “We invite inventors, small businesses and manufacturers to call us to see if we can provide resources and move them forward.”

Jim Stafford writes about Oklahoma innovation and research and development topics on behalf of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST).