Building bonds across the ocean


Professor strives to give others opportunity to succeed

by Sara Peters and Peter Page

There has never been an engineering dream more ambitious than reconnecting Africa with the Americas, as it was in the days of Pangaea. Yet Professor Wolé Soboyejo, in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), is moving the oceans out of the way and bringing the two worlds closer together once more.

 

Photo by Frank Wojciechowski Pictured, from left, are Victor Odunsi, Christopher Milburn, Marie-Ange Arsene, Tim Baker, Professor Antoine Kahn, Professor Wolé Soboyejo, Joseph Michels, Seyed Allameh, Betty Adam, J. Darnell Thompson '04, Professor Daniel Nosenchuck, and Steve Mwenifumbo.

A set of grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is allowing Professor Soboyejo, a native of Nigeria, to build strong bonds between scientists and engineers in the United States and Africa.

The theme of the NSF-funded projects is to contribute to the positive economic and social development of Africa through research and educational efforts in materials science and engineering.

The main goals are:

* To build relationships between African and American professionals;

* To develop a manufacturing base in Africa that will allow the continent to participate in more lucrative trade in the global market;

* To get Africa involved in a nascent, promising field; and

* To make an immediate and lasting impact on the quality of life for African citizens.

Although the focus is on Africa, people from other developing nations are getting involved as well.

"In many ways, engineering has only transformed part of the world," Professor Soboyejo said. "In my mind, engineering isn't just the development of knowledge for its own sake. It's the use of science for innovation to benefit society."

The advent of this project stems back to when President Bill Clinton became the first acting U.S. president to visit Africa. President Clinton's visit inspired the U.S.-Africa Materials Workshop, held August 2000 in Pretoria, South Africa.

Taking the lead

Professor Soboyejo attended this workshop, at which the possibility of American-African collaborative research was a hot topic. On the plane trip back to America, he decided he would take the lead in implementing the idea.

He organized two follow-up workshops, one in California in June 2001, and one in Puerto Rico in January 2002.

From these workshops, Professor Soboyejo met many talented people and became more devoted to helping them and their countries.

One piece of the puzzle is building the relationships between people, through collaborative research efforts and educational opportunities. The NSF funding will bring 18 international scientists and two students to the United States to work with colleagues at American universities.

The scientists will visit for nine-week periods of time and work collaboratively with American faculty at Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Northwestern, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Ohio State, where Professor Soboyejo's father, Alfred Soboyejo, is the host professor.

"These are all places that have good materials programs," Professor Soboyejo said. "But even more importantly, they have local champions who want to take care of our scientists and make sure they have a good experience."

Currently, Ismail Bashir, from the Federal Institute of Industrial Research in Nigeria, is visiting Princeton.

They will come

Others who will come to campus are: Joseph Tesha from the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania; Olusegun Adewoye from the Engineering Materials Development Institute in Nigeria; Josephat Zimba from the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Center of Zimbabwe; Bantikassegn Workalemahu from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia; Stephen Sathiaraj from the University of Botswana; Bernard Odhiambo Aduda from the University of Nairobi in Kenya; Holmer Savastano from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil; Rabeeh Bakr of King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia; Aboubaker Chedikh Beye from the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in Senegal; and Said Kenai from the University of Blida in Algeria.

Professor Soboyejo identified these talented people during his workshops and his travels in Africa.

The Graduate School is establishing a graduate fellowship to bring two African students to Princeton to conduct research. No official offers have yet been made, but Professor Soboyejo has two candidates in mind.

He also is planning to host more workshops about engineering and materials science and invite more scientists into the fold.

"One nice thing about our framework is that we have scientists from lots of different countries," Professor Soboyejo said. "Each of them can take back whatever we do to their own country. So the idea is, we can disseminate the information. Each one of them gets a piece of what we come up with."

Another major thrust of the project is laying the groundwork for manufacturing centers in Africa. One way of improving the economies of African nations, and thereby the quality of life for their citizens, is by getting them involved in the global market.

Right now, almost all of Africa's exports are raw materials. They do very little processing or manufacturing, and they only participate in a narrow sliver of the marketplace, which means they have a very small, inflexible earning potential.

Foreign investors from the United States and other highly industrialized nations, look mainly to Asia, not Africa, when choosing locations to set up manufacturing plants.

Expert advice

At the Puerto Rico conference, Professor Soboyejo decided to invite an expert on this topic: Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Daniel M. Nosenchuck.

Professor Nosenchuck has many years experience with manufacturing in Southeast Asia. He gave the conference attendees a peek inside the mind of a potential investor.

"Everybody loved him," Professor Soboyejo said. "They loved what he had to say. Right now a lot of U.S. investors look to Asia as the place to do manufacturing. I wanted someone like Dan to look at Africa critically and identify which countries in Africa could be the kind of places that could do export-based manufacturing.

"So, the idea is not just to go there because they have gold and dig it out of the ground, but to actually go there because the conditions are right to do globally competitive manufacturing of something that could be sold on the world market."

Professors Soboyejo and Nosenchuck and Dele Popoola, an engineer formerly with Ford Motor Co., who holds more than 50 patents, are making trips around the African continent.

They study the conditions in different nations and assess the possibilities of setting up successful manufacturing bases there.

On these excursions the trio studies the nations' economic policies, the professional training and education of the potential labor force, and a mathematical feasibility assessment that considers the costs of labor, shipping, and transportation.

Eyeing Tanzania

At the moment, Tanzania, on Africa's central eastern coast, seems to be the best bet. In addition to scoring well on the previously mentioned points, Tanzania also is promising as a tourist location, which would make it more attractive to foreign investors.

In addition to enticing foreign investors to step foot on African soil, Professor Soboyejo wants African scientists to venture into the world as well. One way to make a mark on the entire globe is to be at the forefront of a new and promising field.

"Traditionally, Africa has not been a part of emerging technologies," he said. "If we can get African scientists involved at the cutting edge, they could develop the human resources needed to lead the way in the global market down the road."

They've identified three fields to focus on: biological micro-electro-mechanical systems (bioMEMs), organic semiconductors, and nano-fabrication. The visiting scientists will be working on these topics.

Although nanotechnology can be an expensive field to compete in, it has been a focus of some African labs for up to 30 years now. The research, however, has been largely academic and disparate.

Professor Soboyejo is hoping to pull the various researchers together, create a common focus, and aim to use findings to create commercial products.

"At the moment, there is a lot of investment in nanotechnology, and there is no dominant force in the developing world that has emerged as a producer," Professor Soboyejo said. "The question should not be, 'Can Africa afford to do nanotech? But instead it should be, can Africa afford not to do nanotech? And I think the answer is 'No.'"

The final task in Professor Soboyejo's list of goals is to make an immediate positive impact upon the lives of African citizens. Improving a nation's economy takes time, and even more time is required for the money to translate into a better life for the average citizen. Professor Soboyejo and the researchers hope to make a more direct impact.

"I want people to do good research. I want people to be good scholars. But we need to think about more than that," Professor Soboyejo said. "It's not enough to end up with a good published paper. We want to go beyond that. To actually do something. To make an impact."

One of the NSF grants supports a project that will espouse all these goals. It is a collaborative effort between Professors Wolé and Alfred Soboyejo and Professor Said Kenai from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Blida, in Blida, Algeria.

The research will study the properties of limestone cements and their possible use as a building material for housing and infrastructure.

According to the NSF grant abstract, "This project deals with a problem of significant value to most developing countries and also of significance to the United States. Limestone cements are considerably less expensive and more environmentally friendly to produce than existing cements. Limestone is readily available in Algeria, and if it can be used in cements, it would help increase housing availability to the growing populations. In the United States, such materials would help reduce the environmental impact of producing cement."

Housing design

In addition to this study of the materials that would be used for infrastructure and housing, there is another arm of the project that studies housing design.

Jameelah Muhammad '04, a civil and environmental engineering (CEE) major with a focus on architecture, is working on a housing design. This design will take into account cost, materials, structure, light, ventilation, and aesthetics while ensuring that it is culturally acceptable.

The combination of Professor Kenai and Ms. Muhammad's work will create a prototype for buildings using locally available products that are culturally acceptable and environmentally sound and provide high-quality, affordable housing for Africans.

As a bonus, the limestone cements could be suitable for export.

Although Professor Soboyejo is spearheading the effort, there is a long list of other Princeton people who are involved in the project.

"This has been a big Princeton-wide effort," he said. "People have been marvelous. There is a great will to do something."

In addition to Professors Soboyejo and Nosenchuck, MAE professors Zhigang Suo and David Srolovitz, CEE Professor George Scherer, Electrical Engineering Professor Antoine Kahn, and Physics Professor Phuan Ong are opening their labs to the international scientists.

People at the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) who are deeply involved in the research are MAE research staff member Seyed Allameh; undergraduates J. Darnell Thompson '04, Ms. Muhammad, and Anthony Turner '05, a major in chemical engineering; and MAE graduate students Christopher Milburn, Steve Mwenifumbo, Jun Lou, Jikou Zhou, and Zong Zong.

"Our students are getting to know real people from Africa and the Middle East, areas where they otherwise would probably have very little exposure," Professor Soboyejo said. "It's very important for American students to have a better understanding of the international world. Especially Princeton students, since they are all going to leave school and take a leadership role in their fields."

Also on the list of those involved in the cross-continent exchange are MAE Department Manager Maureen Hickey, technical staff member Victor Odunsi, and administrative assistant Betty Adam.

"Betty's now a well-known figure across the whole of Africa," Professor Soboyejo said.

Outside of SEAS, there are more Princetonians contributing to the project and to the experience of the scientists when they arrive.

The Graduate School established fellowships. The Office of the Dean of the Faculty arranged for the scientists to be named visiting fellows while they are here. The housing office set aside living space on campus for them. And the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding invites the visitors to all its social events.

The project as a whole is far-reaching, ambitious, and surely even overwhelming at times. Yet, Professor Soboyejo is a leader who clearly feels deeply devoted to the African scientists he's met.

At an introspective moment, he slowly, softly said, "The only difference between me and these people is that they went back, and I didn't. They're talented. They have the capabilities. They just haven't had certain opportunities that I have had. So, I want to help them. I want to give them opportunities similar to my own so that they can really make their mark."