The TA, Reader, Tutor application period for Summer 2009 is now closed
The IEEE
Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society 36th International
Conference on Plasma Science and 23rd Symposium on Fusion
Engineering were held at the Omni San Diego
Hotel - May 31 - June 5 2009
This is the first time that International Conference on
Plasma Science (ICOPS) and Symposium on Fusion Engineering
(SOFE) had joint technical and social programs. A
"theme" of the conference was "sustainability"; recyclable
and reusable items were used throughout the conference. The
combined conference was chaired by MAE Professor Farhat Beg
and Dr. Mark Tillack (Research Scientist in MAE and
Associate Director of the Center for Energy Research).
The conference was a great success, with attendance
by 700 delegates from 31 countries. In the opening
session, Professor Beg and Dr. Tillack made welcome remarks
followed by brief presentations by Dr. Art Ellis, Vice
Chancellor for Research at UC San Diego and Professor
Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering.
They gave a brief overview of the involvement of UCSD
in plasma physics and fusion energy related research.
Approximately 800 papers were presented. The
technical program included joint "super plenary" speeches,
ICOPS and SOFE plenary speeches, invited and contributed
talks, and posters. The topics that attracted the highest
number of abstracts in ICOPS were: High Energy Density
Physics, Medical, Biological and Environmental
Applications, Fast Z-Pinches and X-Ray Lasers,
Nonequilibrium Plasma Applications and High Pressure and
Thermal Plasma Processing. The most popular topics in
SOFE included ITER and Experimental Devices, Diagnostics
and Data Acquisition, Reactor Studies, Fusion Chamber
Technologies, and Plasma Support Technologies. In
addition to the technical program, many opportunities for
sightseeing and socializing were available to the
attendees. These included a lavish welcome reception,
a reception for IEEE members and women in science and
engineering, a night at the Padres baseball game, and the
traditional awards banquet. Dr. René Raffray,
also of the MAE department and CER, was awarded the 2009
IEEE/NPSS Fusion Technology Award "For his internationally
recognized expertise in fusion engineering and his
outstanding contributions to fusion technology, especially
in the area of high heat flux components for both magnetic
and inertial fusion energy." More
details...
MAE
Professor Markenscoff Lectures Abroad on Radiated Fields,
Energy-Release Rate and Evolution Equation for a Half-Space
Eshelby Inclusion - May 2009
Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff recently unified the
treatment of driving forces on moving defects: cracks,
dislocations and inclusion boundaries, by obtaining an
evolution equation for a moving inclusion boundary with
eigenstrain, which extends to dynamics the classical
Eshelby inclusion problem. The "driving force" on the
boundary is the dynamic Eshelby energy-momemtum tensor
computed for an expanding spherical inclusion, and, in the
limit, for a plane boundary moving in general motion,
analogously to dislocations and cracks. Professor
Markenscoff presented lectures on this topic at the
Mathematical Institute at Oxford
University, as well as at Northwestern University and
at the Broberg Memorial Meeting in Sweden.
Recently, she also presented lectures on the Cosserat Spectrum Theory at the
invitation of Sir
John Ball, and at the Cosserat Centennial celebration meeting in
Paris as general lecture on the contributions of the
Cosserat brothers to Solid Mechanics.
MAE Professor Frank Talke Lectures on
Nano-Technology in Present and Future Hard Disk
Drives - May 2009
Professor Frank Talke inaugurated the Department of
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Distinguished
Lecture Series on May 27th with a talk on Nano-Technology
in Present and Future Hard Disk Drives. In this talk
an overview of the present state of the art of disk drive
technology was given and nanotechnology problems occurring
in the storage of information in hard disk drives were
discussed. Requirements for future disk drives were
presented along with alternative methods of information
storage.
MAE Student Baldomero Alonso-Latorre
Receives Student Research Achievement Award in the Category
of Motility at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting
2009 - February 2009
MAE student Baldomero Alonso-Latorre was awarded the 2009
Student Research Achievement Award in the category of
Motility for the poster presentation of his work titled
"Distribution of traction forces associated with shape
changes in migrating amoeboid cells" at the 2009 annual
meeting of the Biophysical Society held in Boston, MA.
Baldomero works with Professors Juan C. Lasheras and
Juan C. del Alamo on a project aiming to obtain a more
profound understanding of the coupling between the
biochemistry and the mechanics of cell locomotion, a
process which is deeply involved in a wide range of
physiological and pathological processes, ranging from the
development of the embryo or the defense against infections
to the formation of atherosclerotic clots or the metastatic
spread of cancer.
Physics of Surfing Class Introduces
Students to Research - May 2009
UC San Diego's 1-unit freshman seminars combine
entertainment with academic rigor. The Physics of
Surfing, for example, uses accelerometers and GPS to
examine the science behind the perfect wave. The
surfing class -- co-taught by Stefan Llewellyn Smith,
associate professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
-- meets weekly, with lectures and lab experiments.
One lecture covers the fluid dynamics of the
surfboard. Another explores what makes Black's Beach
-- just down the coast from Scripps Pier -- one of the top
surf breaks in the world. Short answer: It's the
canyon on the ocean floor. The class is part of a
program started at UC campuses in 2003, 1-unit classes
exclusively for freshmen. The classes are
academically worthy but give students a break from the
grind that comes from carrying four 4-unit classes heavy
with reading lists, term papers and exams. Read more at the LA
Times...
MAE Professor Alison Marsden Develops
Method to Combat Congenital Heart Disease in
Children - February 2009
Congenital heart defects account for five times more deaths
annually than all childhood cancers combined. Alison
Marsden, an assistant Mechanical & Aerospace
Engineering Professor at UC San Diego, has developed a
unique set of computer modeling tools that are expected to
enhance pediatric surgeons’ ability to perform
critical heart surgery on children. Marsden’s
work focuses on designing and using simulation tools to
provide a way of testing new surgery designs on the
computer before trying them on patients. Certain
severe forms of congenital heart defects leave a patient
with only one functional heart pumping chamber. These
“single ventricle” defects are uniformly fatal
if left untreated, and require a patient to undergo
multiple heart surgeries, ending with a Fontan procedure.
Read more...
MAE Professor Stefan Llewellyn Smith
Lectures at Math-for-Industry Tutorial Workshop in
Japan - March 2009
Understanding the stability of flowing fluids and plasmas
is an important scientific and technological challenge.
The traditional approach of using modal expansions
turns out to be insufficient: non-orthogonal eigenfunctions
and the existence of a continuous spectrum associated with
critical layers lead to a rich variety of complicated
phenomena in space and time. A recent workshop at the
Mathematical Research Center for Industrial Technology
(MRIT) of Kyushu University, Japan, entitled
"Math-for-Industry Tutorial: Spectral theories of
non-Hermitian operators and their application" investigated
these topics. Specialists from Japan and elsewhere
gave a series of lectures on basic mathematical notions,
current status and novel techniques to handle non-Hermitian
operators. MAE Professor Stefan Llewellyn Smith gave
two hour-long lectures titled "Fluid instability, the
continuous spectrum and asymptotic models" and "Vortex
axisymmetrization".
Former MAE Student John Taylor Receives
2008 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid
Dynamics - March 2009
John Taylor, a recent Ph.D. from MAE, was awarded the 2008
Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics.
This award is annually bestowed by the American
Physical Society to an individual whose dissertation is
selected to be outstanding in the area of fluid dynamics
during that year. John's thesis titled "Numerical
Simulations of the Stratified Oceanic Bottom Boundary
Layer," was advised by Prof. Sutanu Sarkar. The
selection committee commended John's dissertation for
"insight provided into the behavior of turbulence in stable
stratification that stood out as a novel contribution to
our understanding of oceanography, with considerable
potential for long-term impact." John Taylor is
currently working at MIT with Prof. Rafael Ferrari (a
fellow UCSD graduate with a Ph.D. from SIO!) as a NSF
Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow. Read more...
MAE
Student Ilenia Battiato Receives Outstanding Student Paper
Award for her Hydrology Presentation at the 2008 Fall
Meeting of the AGU - February 2009
MAE student Ilenia Battiato has been awarded the
Outstanding Student Paper Award for her presentation at the
Hydrology Section of AGU (American Geophysical Union) 2008
Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Ilenia works with
Professor Daniel Tartakovsky on hybrid modeling of reactive
transport in porous media. In the words of the AGU
Leadership Committee, "Her presentation was recognized as
among the best of a strong group of student presenters,
which sets an example for her fellow students and the
entire AGU membership." Outstanding Student Paper
Award winners will be listed in an upcoming publication of
EoS, the weekly newspaper of AGU, and she will be receiving
a formal certificate of achievement.
See previous news items
