Gary Ybarra: Electrifying a New Generation of Engineers

October 15, 2008

Like many of his colleagues at Pratt, Gary Ybarra's interest in engineering began early on. He loved to take apart all manner of electronic devices from radios to televisions and was fascinated by the way that small components could be assembled together to perform such useful--or at least entertaining--functions.

In his more than two decades as a professional engineer, Ybarra has continued to nurture that passion. His research has spanned a wide range of topics from speech compression and radar work to microwave imaging for breast cancer screening, a current interest. But today, his main research endeavor is less traditional, and more focused on nurturing engineering passion in others, namely students of all ages from kindergarten to graduate school. Ybarra's goal for this work is not to create new engineered devices, at least not directly, but rather to get as many kids as possible as excited about engineering, science, and math as he was growing up. And there's no telling what that generation of excited students will go on to create thanks to his efforts.

Ybarra's K-12 education efforts began informally in 1993 while he was a newly arrived professor at Duke, toting lasers and other captivating bits of engineering equipment to local schools to drum up excitement for science and engineering and an array of programs grew from there.

"I was disturbed by the fact that children were turning away from science and math at a very young age. Through observation I determined that many kids are bored in early elementary grades with the way math and science are taught," says Ybarra. "Through my own personal experience in teaching children I found that hands-on project-based learning engages children in a way that makes learning fun, fascinating, gratifying and useful."

Based on his growing awareness of the value of hands-on learning, Ybarra was longing for a way to help get more hands-on learning into the classroom. A few years later, in 1999, he was able to secure his first significant grant in the area. With support from the National Science Foundation Ybarra formalized his interactions with local schools by establishing a fellowship program that would put Duke engineering students in the classrooms to vastly expand the number of schools impacted.

Since that time, Ybarra's education programs, and interest in pursuing them, has continued to grow. Besides the fellowship program, he has spearheaded the development of various curricular and hands-on learning tools now being distributed to schools and he has developed an after-school science and engineering program spreading throughout North Carolina and scheduled for national use by 2013, among other successes.

Naturally, Ybarra's interest in education also extends to students at Duke. Along with other professors, Ybarra received an NSF grant in 2004 to support a complete redesign of Duke's undergraduate electrical and computer engineering program. The changes are apparent from day one in the program. Nationally, the traditional first course for electrical and computer engineering students is electrical circuits. Duke's program now begins instead with a broad first course that introduces students to every subfield in electrical and computer engineering, including electromagnetics, digital systems, microelectronics, photonics, and control systems. "We're hoping to play a major leadership role in shaping undergraduate electrical and computer engineering courses across the country," says Ybarra.

Overall, Ybarra says he has found strong support for his somewhat unorthodox program at Duke. "I think the department recognizes that I am preparing future engineers and increasing the number of children who pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers ultimately results in better students at engineering programs," says Ybarra, "Plus, lots of people here appreciate having these opportunities for their own children in engineering."

To date, Ybarra's programs have impacted more than 150,000 kids, and with so many programs now in place and spreading, that number increases by about 50,000 students per year. But personal stories, rather than numbers, are what Ybarra finds most gratifying. "When students contact me years later to tell me that the experiences they had in my programs inspired them to pursue a career in engineering or one of the sciences, it gives me a very deep sense of satisfaction."

Breast Cancer Screening: The Right Picture is Worth a Life
Breast cancer is one of the top ten causes of death for women in the United States, having claimed over 40,000 lives in 2004. Research has clearly shown that effective early detection of breast cancer dramatically increases chances of survival, meaning better detection methods could have saved at least some of those lives. Cheaper detection methods might have as well because the expense of conventional mammograms limits their use. On the flipside, conventional mammograms at times give false positive results that can lead to needless anguish and unnecessary mastectomies.

So, there is clearly room for improved breast cancer screening techniques, and developing one is Ybarra's main laboratory research endeavor. For years now he has been working alongside colleagues from Duke to develop the equipment and methods needed to eliminate the need for conventional X-ray mammograms and instead turn to cheaper, more accurate microwave screening techniques.

Besides their potentially harmful radiation, X-rays are a less than ideal breast cancer screening tool because they are only minimally affected when they penetrate from healthy into tumor tissue. That means only slight, often difficult or impossible to spot changes in X-ray mammogram readouts to indicate if a tumor is present and to delineate it.

In contrast, the slowing of microwaves as they enter tumor tissue is much more pronounced because tumors have high concentrations of water that increase electrical permittivity, which affects microwaves more significantly.

Ybarra and his colleagues have already developed an experimental microwave imaging chamber as a prototype breast scanning device that includes an array of over 100 antennas for emitting and receiving microwaves that pass through breast tissue. Now the team is fine tuning this device and the algorithms needed to process the microwave signals received by the antennas to generate a 3-D image of the breast and any tumors that might be present.

An operational version of the scanner would likely conform roughly to the shape of a breast using emerging flexible circuit board technologies. A patient would lay face down with a breast in the chamber and filled with liquid warmed to body temperature. This would allow microwaves to penetrate easily into the tissue because the liquid would create electrical continuity between it and the antennas. Though the group has not yet explored the possibility, the same basic technology could likely also be applied to scanning other parts of the body.

Besides offering better detection capabilities, such a system would also be far preferable to conventional mammograms that require uncomfortable breast compression to work. An even more important advantage of using microwaves is that the cost of scanners could be dramatically reduced because most of the components needed for a system are already available cheaply because they are used in microwave ovens.

"We're still several years away from clinical trials," says Ybarra, "but we're hoping within the next 5 years to be able to work with the Duke Medical Center to test a microwave breast imaging prototype system." Ybarra's group is also exploring other alternative breast scanning technologies, such as impedance tomography, a technique that uses electric currents to image tissue, but believes the microwave technique is the most promising under development.

K-8th In-class Education: Out of the Books and Into the Science

The benefits of hand-on learning first became clear to Ybarra in a high school physics class taught by a teacher with a contagious passion for science that he passed on through hand-on experiments. These activities held the students' attention, and helped them see that science was both interesting and, under the right conditions, completely understandable.

The lesson stuck with Ybarra as he made his way through the rest of high school and into college, on his way to becoming an engineer. Ybarra's early efforts doing experiments and projects with kids in local schools were aimed at getting students as excited about science and engineering as he was back in high school physics.

Ybarra's initial grant from the National Science Foundation, which supported undergraduate and graduate students willing to work in classrooms doing projects similar to what Ybarra had been doing on his own, was just a start. Ybarra also joined forces with other researchers, and later received sponsorship from GlaxoSmithKline to fund the development of elaborate science kits teachers could use on their own to teach science using engaging projects. These kits were designed to reveal to the students the excitement that comes with working, probing and then discovering. That excitement is, of course, intended not just to hold their interest, but specifically to build a desire to do more science in school and to inspire some to go on to careers in science, engineering, and math.

There are four or more kits per grade level from kindergarten through 8th that include nine weeks worth of activities.� The kits cover a wide range of topics under the science and engineering headings ranging from motion and design to astronomy to the life cycle of butterflies. Some even include hands on work with organisms such as termites, which 1st grade students release onto circles of varying inks. Some inks the termites follow, and others they ignore. The students then work to explain what might lead to the different behaviors.

The termite experiment, like many of the projects in the kits, follows the principles of inquiry-based learning. This places students in a situation where they have to grapple with and reason through some phenomenon that they observe. The teacher's role with such an approach is to point out discrepancies between the students' explanations of the phenomenon and what they are seeing. There are no set correct answers to the questions asked. Students just have to formulate an answer that is consistent with all their observations.

Rather than simply giving the kits to schools where they would typically become depleted and unusable in just a few years, schools return the kits each year for refurbishment. The kits are stored in 10,000 square feet of warehouse space donated by GlaxoSmithKline and the company also provides space for annual workshops where about 5,000 teachers are trained in how to make the most of the kits.

When Ybarra first got funding for the program, there were just three North Carolina school districts participating. Now there are ten districts involved and the number is still growing. "So, the inquiry-based learning approach is being adopted at an accelerating rate in North Carolina," says Ybarra.

While there has been overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, teachers, and parents for the kits and related programs, quantifying their success has been challenging, but that is changing. In the past, North Carolina students only took standardized math and reading tests, but more recently districts have begun science testing as well, which should aid in gauging the success of Ybarra's programs. "We expect to be able to show a major impact on understanding of science for students who have participated in the program," he says.

Reaching Older Students in the Classrooms
Ybarra's efforts to increase engagement don't end with the K-8th kits. Ybarra was also the leader in bringing Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a national program, to North Carolina schools in 2003. This national program, now used in 50 schools in the state, is a fitting extension of hands-on work for upper grades. PLTW provides a curriculum for these upper grades that follows a project-based philosophy similar to Ybarra's kit program for younger students, with a strong emphasis on providing activities students will find relevant to their daily lives. North Carolina PLTW projects currently focus on engineering, but additional components focused on biomedical sciences and aerospace technology are in development.� Duke's support for the program includes a summer training institute for teachers using the curriculum.

Ybarra is developing, in collaboration with Pratt professor Paul Klenk still more K-12 educational materials through a new program called Green Life Engineering, which is, of course, project based. The emphasis is on the roles engineering can play in solving environmental problems with topics such as alternative energy sources and designing devices without using toxic materials. Besides use in normal classrooms, components of the program have also been tailored for use in summer camps.

Many of the materials Ybarra and his colleagues produce for classroom use are available or will be soon through a program called Teach Engineering. In collaboration with the University of Colorado, Boulder, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Oregon State University, and the Colorado School of Mines, and with funding from the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library, Ybarra is building a repository of engineering-based lessons and activities available to the public.

Inspiration and Learning Beyond the Classroom
Even as the in-school programs continue to grow, Ybarra recently secured new National Science Foundation funding along with fellow Pratt research scientist Paul Klenk, to move beyond the classrooms to after-school programs. In collaboration with 4-H Clubs, which include Boys and Girls Clubs, Junior Achievement, and the YMCA, Ybarra and Klenk have launched a middle school-aimed program called TechXcite.

The main component of TechXcite is a curriculum called Discover Engineering! that will be available via the program's website. This curriculum uses a range of engaging hands-on activities, many focused on helping kids explore and understand technologies familiar to them such as TV remote controls. All activities are grouped under seven established themes from alternative energy sources to wireless communication.

Once again, the experiential learning that is the foundation of the program will involve specialized project kits made available to after-school program. The plan calls for 4-H to use the curriculum in North Carolina after-school programs for the first 2 years, and expand to select other states for the next three years. At the end of these five years, 4-H plans to begin using the curriculum throughout the country.

"Frequently students don't find the way science and math are traditionally taught to be either gratifying or useful," says Ybarra, "but when they use math and science as tools to build something it gives an immediate relevance to what the students are doing and their level of engagement goes way up."

Ybarra is also involved in a variety of other programs focused on inspiring kids through activities outside the classroom, such as Duke's 2-week biosciences and engineering residential summer camp offered on campus each year for middle school students.

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