Scientist makes concrete career choice

Imagine a concrete so sensitive to vibrations that it can detect an intruder, weigh a truck or give an early warning of a potentially deadly building collapse.

This seemingly futuristic product already exists. It’s the invention of UUPer Deborah Chung, a professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at SUNY Buffalo and director of the composite materials research lab there.

Chung developed “smart concrete” in the early 1990s, received a patent for it in 1998, and is now steering it through the field testing and development that will make it commercially viable. Carbon fiber mixed into the concrete boosts its sensitivity to vibrations.

Chung got hooked on the idea of engineering as a teenager. First, though, she had to make a decision: Would she pursue a life of science or music? A classically trained pianist, she could have just as easily followed a performance career.

“I think it might have been even more difficult to be a performer,” said Chung, reflecting on the extraordinarily competitive demands of that choice. She still gives recitals at churches and community events, and last Septem-ber traveled to China on a lecture tour in which she talked about successfully combining music and science.

“The universities in China view that as a good thing, that a scientist can be so broad,” said Chung, who communicated with her tour audiences in Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. Chung has been the Niagara Mohawk endowed chair of materials research at SUNY Buffalo since 1991. She holds 15 patents, two of which have been licensed, and says creative minds can flourish at her campus.

“SUNY has been nice in the sense that they just let us go in whatever direction we want for our research,” she said. “I think that free rein is appreciated.”

— Darryl McGrath