By Danielle Sanzone
The Record

TROY — A doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has won a $30,000 prize for his work in making detection of dangerous materials easier and more efficient.

Clad in a plastic white lab coat, shoe protectors and even a hair net, doctoral student Benjamin Clough explained and demonstrated his work in utilizing terahertz technology and sound waves. The New Mexico native has researched and discovered a technique that can be used by detection equipment at several meters instead of several feet which will improve the search process — at locations like airports — for explosives, and devices that are biological, radioactive or nuclear in nature.

It’s a complex system that Clough discussed in a “Lasers in Use” room at Rensselaer Wednesday. His patent-pending method is to use two laser beams to create small bursts of plasma which in turn create terahertz pulses. Then another pair of lasers is aimed near the target of interest to create a second plasma for detecting the terahertz pulses after they have interacted with the material. This produces acoustic waves.

Clough discovered that by using a sensitive microphone to listen to the plasma, he could detect the terahertz wave information in the sound waves. The audio information can be converted into digital data and checked against a library of known terahertz fingerprints to determine the chemical composition of the mystery material.

He has been working on this for nearly two years.



“You can use terahertz for a lot of interesting things,” he said explaining that terahertz is a radiation like a frequency between microwaves and visible light.

The technology is currently utilized in airport security measures but Clough is looking to improve what is currently available.

He was honored Wednesday night, for his Terahertz Enhanced Acoustics project, as the fifth recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize which comes with $30,000. The award is given annually to Rensselaer seniors or graduate students who have created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways, officials said.

“The award means a great deal to the winner and recognizes the unique and superior innovation of one of our students, one of our very best,” said Kim Boyer, a professor and head of the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering department, as he sat in the department’s optics lab on campus. Continued...

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The technology is currently limited by the acoustics sensing equipment but the process has been enhanced, said Clough noting that the detection distance was proven at 11 meters and only limited by the lab space.

Clough, whose work has been published in Optics Letters and Physical Review E, started at Rensselaer as a doctoral student in 2007 as a member of a research group with Xi-Cheng Zhang, director of the college’s Center for Terahertz Research.

A National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship fellow, Clough said he came up with the idea while relaxing on a beach in Mexico during a winter vacation with his family.

“We live in an age of continuous innovation, where technologies come together in unexpected and serendipitous ways. This mash-up culture, where data and applications constantly are being combined to bring value in ways that exercise imagination, is where many stellar Rensselaer student researchers find their inspiration,” said Rensselaer president Shirley Ann Jackson.

Past winners of the award include Javad Rafiee’s grapheme innovation that could lead to more efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles, Yuehua “Tony” Yu’s innovation that could lead to new medical devices and drug delivery technology, Martin Schubert’s polarized LED that could improve LCD displays and save energy, and Brian Schulkin’s device that could spot cracks in space shuttle foam and detect tumors in tissue.

“It’s mind-blowing to get this award,” said Clough who plans to go back to Albuquerque to work at a national lab upon completion of his graduate work and continue in the terahertz research.

Danielle Sanzone may be reached at 270-1292, @DanielleSanzone on Twitter, or by email at dsanzone@troyrecord.com.

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By Danielle Sanzone
The Record

TROY — A doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has won a $30,000 prize for his work in making detection of dangerous materials easier and more efficient.

Clad in a plastic white lab coat, shoe protectors and even a hair net, doctoral student Benjamin Clough explained and demonstrated his work in utilizing terahertz technology and sound waves. The New Mexico native has researched and discovered a technique that can be used by detection equipment at several meters instead of several feet which will improve the search process — at locations like airports — for explosives, and devices that are biological, radioactive or nuclear in nature.

It’s a complex system that Clough discussed in a “Lasers in Use” room at Rensselaer Wednesday. His patent-pending method is to use two laser beams to create small bursts of plasma which in turn create terahertz pulses. Then another pair of lasers is aimed near the target of interest to create a second plasma for detecting the terahertz pulses after they have interacted with the material. This produces acoustic waves.

Clough discovered that by using a sensitive microphone to listen to the plasma, he could detect the terahertz wave information in the sound waves. The audio information can be converted into digital data and checked against a library of known terahertz fingerprints to determine the chemical composition of the mystery material.

He has been working on this for nearly two years.



“You can use terahertz for a lot of interesting things,” he said explaining that terahertz is a radiation like a frequency between microwaves and visible light.

The technology is currently utilized in airport security measures but Clough is looking to improve what is currently available.

He was honored Wednesday night, for his Terahertz Enhanced Acoustics project, as the fifth recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Rensselaer Student Prize which comes with $30,000. The award is given annually to Rensselaer seniors or graduate students who have created or improved a product or process, applied a technology in a new way, redesigned a system, or demonstrated remarkable inventiveness in other ways, officials said.

“The award means a great deal to the winner and recognizes the unique and superior innovation of one of our students, one of our very best,” said Kim Boyer, a professor and head of the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering department, as he sat in the department’s optics lab on campus.

The technology is currently limited by the acoustics sensing equipment but the process has been enhanced, said Clough noting that the detection distance was proven at 11 meters and only limited by the lab space.

Clough, whose work has been published in Optics Letters and Physical Review E, started at Rensselaer as a doctoral student in 2007 as a member of a research group with Xi-Cheng Zhang, director of the college’s Center for Terahertz Research.

A National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship fellow, Clough said he came up with the idea while relaxing on a beach in Mexico during a winter vacation with his family.

“We live in an age of continuous innovation, where technologies come together in unexpected and serendipitous ways. This mash-up culture, where data and applications constantly are being combined to bring value in ways that exercise imagination, is where many stellar Rensselaer student researchers find their inspiration,” said Rensselaer president Shirley Ann Jackson.

Past winners of the award include Javad Rafiee’s grapheme innovation that could lead to more efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles, Yuehua “Tony” Yu’s innovation that could lead to new medical devices and drug delivery technology, Martin Schubert’s polarized LED that could improve LCD displays and save energy, and Brian Schulkin’s device that could spot cracks in space shuttle foam and detect tumors in tissue.

“It’s mind-blowing to get this award,” said Clough who plans to go back to Albuquerque to work at a national lab upon completion of his graduate work and continue in the terahertz research.

Danielle Sanzone may be reached at 270-1292, @DanielleSanzone on Twitter, or by email at dsanzone@troyrecord.com.

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