West Haven, Conn., June 19, 2007 - Dr. Nancy Savage, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical engineering in the Tagliatela College of Engineering at the University of New Haven, and UNH student Michael Seeber '09, are spending their summer making a nose for NASA. The nose, which will be electronic, will consist of a series of chemical sensors that can detect a variety of gases-sort of a carbon monoxide detector for space.
Although such a device has a variety of uses, Savage is looking to the cosmos for its worth. "For the International Space Station or a space shuttle, or other space vehicle, you don't want to bring along equipment that requires a certain expertise to run," she says. "Devices like this that are non-specific and not very expensive can be really advantageous for that type of environment. You put electronic noses in a number of different locations and let them monitor the air. If there's a problem, the user can just look at the device to see what it's smelling."
Savage, who studied gas sensors while working on her doctorate at Ohio State University and in post-doctoral work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Seeber '09, who is majoring in chemistry and forensic science, have secured funding from the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium, a NASA-funded program. Savage won a $6,000 grant for the project, and Seeber was awarded a fellowship for $4,500.
Although Savage is something of an authority on the gas sensors, this summer she hopes to answer the question: Can types of sensors be developed that precisely identify the type of gas invading the environment? "We know electronic noses can tell us classes of gas molecules, or if it is indeed a gas molecule, and that there is a leak of some sort of gas in the atmosphere," she says. "What kind of gas, we can't tell yet." So far, Savage has focused on the internal workings of the nose, so she doesn't have an actual rendering of what it will look like. She's hoping, she says, that engineering faculty will assign students to work on the nose's form - a nose job, so to speak. "That," she says, "will be a great project."
A leader in experiential learning, the University of New Haven provides its students with a unique combination of solid liberal arts and real-world, hands-on professional training. A private University founded in 1920, UNH has a full-time undergraduate enrollment of more than 2,400 students-with 70 percent residing on its 80-acre main campus-and a graduate school enrollment that exceeds 1,700. The University offers more than 80 undergraduate degrees and more than 25 graduate degrees through its four colleges, in fields such as sports management, nutrition and dietetics, forensic science, music and sound recording, engineering, computer science, fire science and criminal justice. University of New Haven students study abroad through a variety of distinctive programs.
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