Iowa State's College of Engineering launches research magazine

AMES, Iowa -- Combinatorial science at Iowa State University is hardly business as usual. It can put computers to work so researchers can analyze piles of data in six hours instead of the 60 days it used to take. And there's hope it can help researchers make Iowa State a world leader in materials innovation.

Want to know more?

Pick up Innovate, the new research magazine from Iowa State's College of Engineering. The cover story is all about Iowa State's Institute for Combinatorial Discovery.

The 32-page magazine makes its campus debut this week. It will be arriving in the mailboxes of nearly 50,000 College of Engineering alumni, friends and partners in early May. The magazine will also be sent to legislators, university presidents and engineering deans.

The research magazine replaces Marston Muses, the engineering college's alumni publication.

Mark Kushner, the dean of Iowa State's College of Engineering, said the research magazine should be considered "a mirror focused on how the College of Engineering prepares its students, the state, and more broadly the nation to address the many urgent issues of our day and to compete in a dynamic global economy."

Pam Reinig, the engineering college's director of advancement and executive editor of Innovate, said that although the magazine is a research update from the college, it's not meant to be a technical journal written for scientists.

It will, for example, include features about engineering alumni and students, said Dennis Smith, a College of Engineering communications specialist and managing editor of the magazine. There will also be an essay written by faculty contributors.

The magazine will be published to coincide with Iowa State's Homecoming in the fall and its Veishea celebration in the spring. The magazine will also be available on the Internet at the engineering college's Web site (http://www.eng.iastate.edu/).

And the magazine will have a message about the engineering research at Iowa State: "Innovation is not an option; it is a necessity," wrote Kushner in an introduction to Innovate. "To remain competitive, to lead the competition, we must innovate technologies that are globally implemented."