MAE Professor Lasheras Named to Endowed Chair at UCSD

February 12, 2008:   UC San Diego announced that Juan C. Lasheras, a distinguished professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), has been appointed the first holder of the Stanford S. and Beverly P. Penner Endowed Chair in Engineering and Applied Science in the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering.  Lasheras, an international expert on the mechanics and computer modeling of fluid flows, including blood flow, has won numerous “Teacher of the Year” awards and also is an outspoken champion of UC San Diego and the profession of engineering.

MAE PhD Student Tammy Ma Receives Best Talk Award at 2008 UCSD All-Grads Symposium

Feb 21, 2008:   Tammy Ma, a PhD student in MAE Professor Farhat Beg's Fast Ignition and Laser-Plasma Interactions group won the best talk award at the 2008 UCSD All-Grads Symposium in the Physical and Engineering Sciences Panel for her talk entitled "Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging of Petawatt Laser-Irradiated Targets.

MAE Graduate Student Christopher Schmidt-Wetekam Sweeps Awards at the UCSD Jacobs School Research Expo

Feb 21, 2008:   Christopher Schmidt-Wetekam, a PhD student in MAE Professor Thomas Bewley's Coordinated Robotics Lab, swept up the top honors at the UCSD Jacobs School Research Expo from the Controls Center, the MAE Department, and the Jacobs School, for his work in developing the highly agile autonomous robotic systems, iHop and iLean.  For more info on this activity, see the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab web site and the PBS story on this project that aired on KPBS on Feb 22.

Jacobs School of Engineering Awards MAE Professor Lubarda "Best Teacher" Award

Winter 2007:   Jacobs School of Engineering Dean Frieder Seible presented Professor Vlado Lubarda "Teacher of the Year Award" in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department for 2006/2007.  Professor Lubarda was selected by popular vote by students completing surveys.  Professor Lubarda is an Adjunct Professor of Applied Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and has been with UCSD since 1998.

Former MAE Graduate Student, Prasad Varanasi, Shares in Nobel Prize Awarded to Gore and Climate Change Panel

Fall 2007:   Former MAE Graduate Student Professor Prasad Varanasi, now part of Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, has been recognized for their contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday along with former Vice President Al Gore for efforts to control global warming.

A Unique Way To Lower Energy Costs

05 December 2007:   UC San Diego undergraduate students have designed, built and deployed a network of five weather-monitoring stations as a key step toward helping the university use ocean breezes to cool buildings, identify the sunniest rooftops to expand its solar-electric system, and use water more efficiently in irrigation and in other ways.  The network, which will be expanded to 20 stations in 2008, is unprecedented in the United States for the density of weather data to be collected.  Project leaders are inviting San Diego-area schools and businesses to make their rooftops available for additional stations to broaden the geographic scope, scientific value, and potential energy savings of the effort.

MAE Ph.D. graduate, Carlos Pantano-Rubino, Receives a PECASE Award

01 November 2007:  Dr. Carlos Pantano-Rubino has been selected as a recepient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).  The PECASE award is the highest honor bestowed by the US government on researchers in the beginning stage of their careers.  The awards were given out by the White House in a ceremony on November 1st, 2007.  Dr. Pantano-Rubino is currently an assistant professor in the department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.  His doctoral research in MAE, advised by Professor Sutanu Sarkar, was in the area of numerical simulation of compressible, reacting flows.  After a postdoctoral stint at California Institute of Technology, he joined University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, where he is currently an assistant professor in the department of Mechanical Science and Engineering.  Read more at The Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science and in this DoE Press Release.

MAE Distinguished Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser was Honored at ASME

November 14-15 2007:  MAE Distinguished Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser was honored at ASME, November 14-15, by a symposium, "Modeling and Experiments in Nanomechanics and Nanomaterials – In Honor of Prof. Sia Nemat-Nasser and his Contributions in Constitutive Equations," as part of the 2007 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, Seattle Washington.  This was the fourth symposium in his honor.  The first was a special two-day international symposium on "Deformation Characteristics and Modeling of Materials" in Sendai, Japan, 1996, the second, a three-day symposium on "Experiments and Modeling of Failure of Modern Materials" in San Diego as part of the MechMat2001 Conference, June 2001, and the third at the Society of Engineering Science 39th Annual Technical Meeting, October 2002, for receiving the Prager Medal.

MAE Undergrads Dream with Snapdragons

18 October 2007:  In response to QUALCOMM’s Innovator Challenge, Engineering undergraduate students envisioned a portable electronic device that looks like a book and has two screens.  You could watch TV while you work scribble answers to math problems on the second screen which – at that moment – would serve as an electronic notebook.  The team won first prize and $5,000 in the QUALCOMM engineering design contest, for their ideas for what is possible with QUALCOMM’s new ultra powerful chip set for mobile devices, called Snapdragon.

What Makes Teeth Cut - MAE Research on History Channel

11 October 2007:  The research of materials science professor Marc Meyers is part of a feature to air Oct. 11 and 12 on the History Channel.  The Modern Marvels: World's Sharpest episode will focus on at the most amazing blades in the world, including some natural slicers in the animal world. Meyers is conducting detailed studies of shark and piranha teeth and other cutting surfaces found in nature as part of his research on biomimetics.

MAE Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff co-authors a paper that finally resolves a fundamental issue in metal plasticity that eluded a satisfactory solution

September 2007:  Plastic deformation of most metals occur by the motion of dislocations. A dislocation is a geometric defect in the lattice structure, and thus does not entail an inherent mass, but displays effective mass.  The quantification of this effective mass and the associated self-force on an accelerating dislocation has been an unresolved issue in crystal plasticity.  UCSD Mechanical Engineering Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff and her former graduate student, Dr. Luqun Ni, have finally managed to provide convincing solution for this problem using elegant mathematical techniques.  The paper is in-press in Journal of Mechanics and Physics of Solids and may be downloaded at this site under 'Articles in Press'.

MAE Engineering Dynamo Sol Penner Honored by National Academy Of Engineering

26 September 2007:   During its 2007 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present awards for extraordinary achievement.  NAE's Founders Award will be given to MAE Emeritus Professor Stanford S. "Sol" Penner, who made important advances in thermophysics, applied spectroscopy, combustion, propulsion, and energy.  The award will be presented at a ceremony to be held on Sunday, Sept. 30

MAE Professor Lasheras Co-authors Study on How Cells Change the Pace of Their Steps

03 August 2007:   Scientists at UCSD have discovered how cells of higher organisms change the speed at which they move, a basic biological discovery that may help researchers devise ways to prevent cancer cells from spreading throughout the body.  “For the first time, we’ve been able to make precise measurements of the repetitive nature of the forces and strain energies exerted by cells, and this has allowed us to better characterize the mechanics of the cell motility cycle,” said Juan C. Lasheras, a co-author of the study and a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.    

Operating at the Interface between Science and Society:
Mechanical Engineering

Summer 2007:  The University of California, San Diego offers a unique pre-college summer academic and residential experience called Academic Connections. The program is targeted at highly motivated, college bound high school students entering grades 10 - 12. The goal of the program is to provide hands-on college subject matter courses and the opportunity to experience life and learning at a top-ranked research university.

During the past 2007 summer session instructor Kristin Schaaf and teaching assistant Christian Nielsen (both MAE graduate students at the Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials under the direction of Dr. Sia Nemat-Nasser) taught a mechanical engineering course entitled 'Operating at the Interface between Science and Society: Mechanical Engineering'. The course was taught through a large variety of activities including lectures, group projects, tours of research labs and machine shops, field trips, guest speakers, hands-on experience in fabricating composite test specimens, as well as conducting mechanical tests. The students were exposed to the broad nature and great career flexibility associated with mechanical engineering. Most importantly the course enhanced the students' understanding and interest in the area of mechanical engineering.

Jacobs School of Engineering Establishes Department of NanoEngineering

03 July 2007:  Seeking to capitalize on the potential of a new generation of multi-functional nanoscale devices and special materials built on the scale of individual molecules, UC San Diego has established a new Department of NanoEngineering within its Jacobs School of Engineering effective July 1.  Undergraduate and graduate students will learn from an interdisciplinary team of professors who are leaders in various fields of engineering, physics and chemistry and a variety of new sub-disciplines where those fields overlap.

MAE Professor Frank Talke Wins Prestigious Humboldt Award

27 June 2007:  Frank Talke, professor of mechanical engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, has received a 2007 Humboldt Research Award. The prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is one of the most prestigious scientific honors in Germany, given to eminent foreign scholars in recognition of their lifetime academic achievements.

MAE Distinguished Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser awarded the B.J. Lazan Award

5 June 2007:  Sia Nemat-Nasser was awarded the 2007 B.J. Lazan Award from the Society of Experimental Mechanics, Inc. The award recognizes Sia for his outstanding original technical contributions to experimental-theoretical contributions to the characterization and multi-scale modeling of polymer-metal composites, geomaterials, ceramics, crystalline metals, and the creation of novel composites.

MAE Professor Cattolica leads "Wood Chips in - Biofuel out" research effort

12 June 2007:  California researchers plan to make biofuels without using any food crops or microbial fermentation and reduce the load on landfills in the process.  A new research effort involving three University of California campuses (San Diego, Davis, and Berkeley) and West Biofuels LLC, will develop a prototype research reactor that will use steam and catalysts to efficiently convert forest, urban, and agricultural “cellulosic” wastes directly into alcohol that can be used as a gasoline additive.

MAE Chair Paul Linden Elected to Royal Society

24 May 2007:  Paul Linden, a professor in UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has been elected as a fellow to the United Kingdom's National Academy of Science in recognition of his worldwide influence on the scientific field of experimental fluid dynamics.  Linden, the Blasker Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is one of 44 scientists recognized this year by the Royal Society for exceptional contributions to society in the fields of science, engineering and medicine.

MAE Professor Bandaru studies carbon nanotubes and nanofibers

17 May 2007:  Pasta tastes like pasta – with or without a spiral.  But when you jump to the nanoscale, everything changes: carbon nanotubes that look like nanoscale spiral pasta have completely different electronic properties than their non-spiraling nanotube cousins.  Engineers at UC San Diego, and Clemson University are studying these differences in the hopes of creating new kinds of components for nanoscale electronics.

MAE Professor Sonia Martinez receives National Science Foundation CAREER Award

1 May 2007:  Sonia Martinez received a NSF CAREER Award from the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, for the proposal "Efficient Multi-Vehicle Coordination for Distributed Sensing and Estimation".  The research will focus on the integration of control, communication, and computation aspects of multi-vehicle systems used in remote observation applications.  In particular the project aims to develop novel tools to analyze the complexity of these distributed mobile systems in order to design robust algorithms with predictable behavior.

MAE 156 Departmental award winners for Winter 2007 Senior Design Projects

Winter 2007:  It is our pleasure to announce the MAE Departmental award winners for senior design projects in Winter 2007.  There were numerous excellent projects, and the selection process was difficult.  Each section has been awarded a first place and second place award.

From french fries to fuel: UCSD students explore alternative fuel

04 Apr 2007:  A team of UCSD students are turning vegetable oil from the university's fast-food restaurants into usable biodiesel fuel to power any diesel engine car.  Currently, 17 UCSD students, many chemical engineers, are working to design and construct a working biodiesel reactor, at a cost of about $2,500, which will take campus waste vegetable oil supplied by the university's cafeterias and convert it into useable fuel to power diesel auto engines

Widely Used Iron Nanoparticles Exhibit Toxic Effects on Cells

28 Mar 2007:  Researchers at UC San Diego have discovered that iron-containing nanoparticles being tested in the treatment of several human diseases can be toxic to nerve cells and interfere with the formation of their signal-transmitting extensions.   “Iron is an essential nutrient for mammals and most life forms and iron oxide nanoparticles were generally assumed to be safe,” said Sungho Jin, a professor of materials science at UCSD and senior author of a paper published in the June issue of Biomaterials.   “However, there are recent reports that this type of nanoparticle can be toxic in some cell types, and our discovery of their nano-toxicity in yet another type of cell suggests that these particles may not be as safe as we had once thought.”

MAE Professor Prab Bandaru Presented National Science Foundation CAREER Award

February 2007:  Prab Bandaru was presented a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems), for his proposed work on "Nonlinear Carbon Nanotube and Nanowire Morphologies for Unique Nanoelectronics" for the years 2007-2012. This research is aimed at a detailed study of the electrical properties of nonlinear structures, such as junctions and coils, at the nanoscale, for developing new types of electronic components such as electrical switches, logic elements, frequency mixers, and nanoscale inductors. The proposed research has the potential to usher in new electronic technologies through the use of new physical principles.

Eugenio Schuster Receives National Science Foundation CAREER Award

February 2007:  Eugenio Schuster, MAE PhD (2004) advised by Miroslav Krstic and George Tynan, has received the NSF CAREER award for the proposal "Nonlinear Control of Plasmas in Nuclear Fusion". Eugenio is on the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Lehigh University.   His research group web page is http://www.lehigh.edu/~eus204/schuster.html

MAE Professor Jin to Receive TMS Society's 2007 John Bardeen Award

February 2007:  Sungho Jin, Iwama Professor and Distinguished Professor of Materials Science, will receive The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's (TMS) 2007 John Bardeen Award, which recognizes an individual who has made outstanding contributions and is a leader in the field of electronic materials.  The award will be presented at the TMS Awards Dinner on February 27, 2007 in Orlando, Florida during the 136th TMS Annual Meeting.

Researchers Farhat Beg and John Pasley collaborate on a team studying fast ignition for inertial confinement fusion energy

January/February 2007:  Ever since the development of the first optical laser in 1960, researchers have engineered ways to manipulate laser pulses. Today, with the Titan laser, scientists are investigating matter under extreme conditions in support of the Laboratory’s mission within the fields of astrophysics, materials science, and plasma physics. results from Titan laser experiments will expand the current understanding of different states of matter from stellar conditions to nuclear weapons.

Cymer-Fest hosted by Center for Control Systems and Dynamics (CCSD)

17 Jan 2007:  The largest UCSD alumni-founded company, Cymer, founded by MAE alumni Bob Akins and Rick Sandstrom, was hosted on UCSD campus on January 17 for a high profile seminar and job fair where one of the co-founders, Rick Sandstrom, introduced Cymer to graduate students in control and photonics, and the recent MAE control PhD and Cymer engineer Wayne Dunstan spoke about the working environment in Cymer and about numerous controls problems in excimer lasers.

MAE Professor Buckley Helps Launch Environmental Education Initiative to Promote Engineering to Girls

11 Jan 2007:  University of California, San Diego (UCSD) engineering faculty and students, together with San Diego Supercomputer staff, are launching an environmental education initiative they hope will keep middle school girls excited about science, and eventually, careers in engineering. The UCSD team will help San Diego county students monitor the air quality, solar radiation, and other environmental factors surrounding their own schools, and will use the environmental research concepts and techniques to create a multi-player online science challenge game designed specifically for 12-15 year-old girls. 

MAE Professor Nemat-Nasser Receives 2006 Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award

November 2006:  Sia Nemat-Nasser, Distinguished Professor of Mechanics and Materials, was recognized for distinguished contributions as a world leader in the art of experimental, theoretical and computational applied mechanics, including biomimetic multifunctional materials.  The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was established in 1925 in honor of Robert Henry Thurston, the first president of ASME, and a farseeing leader in science and engineering. The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was elevated to a Society award in 2000 to encourage stimulating thinking on a subject of broad technical interest to engineers.

MAE Professor Bandaru Named to Scientific American 50 List

November 2006:  MAE Professor Prabhakar Bandaru has been named to the 2006 Scientific American 50, a list of top scientists and innovators that is published annually by the popular-science that specializes in communicating to nonscientists.  The magazine's editor in chief John Rennie said the list pays tribute to individuals and organizations who, through their efforts in research, business, and policy-making, are driving advances in science and technology that lay groundwork for a better future.

Robin Ihnfeldt wins ICPT '06 Poster Award

Foster City, November 2006:  Professor Jan Talbot's Chemical Engineering graduate student Robin Ihnfeldt won an Outstanding Poster Award for the 2006 International Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology for her poster session submission “Copper Removal Rate Predictions Using Alumina Agglomerate Size Distribution and Copper Nanohardness Measurements”

Peak Performance Through Controls

Fall 2006:  When MAE Professor Miroslav Krstic isn't devising techniques that boost the performance of everything from fusion reactors to high speed trains that levitate above magnetic tracks, he dreams of cars.  Not just any cars.  He likes the models that are souped-up with the types of control algorithms he and his colleagues at UCSD have been developing for a decade.  Krstic is putting the Jacobs School on the fast track to industrial partnerships by leading the newly organized Center for Control Systems and Dynamics (CCSD).

Dynamic Systems and Controls Chair Awarded to Robert Skelton

October 2006:  Robert E. Skelton, a Distinguished Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering and a leading controls theorist, has been named the Daniel L. Alspach Professor of Dynamic Systems and Controls.  Skelton has been involved with the country's first space station, Skylab, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and a wide variety of down-to-Earth projects involving everything from robots to red blood cells.

MAE Welcomes New Faculty Member

October 2006:  The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recruited Assistant Professor Jan Kleissl , who will add to the department's strength in environmental engineering group. Kleissl's expertise is in atmospheric boundary layer meteorology, turbulence, integrated field measurements, numerical modeling of evaporation, and use of sensor networks. His work has applications to a range of environmental problems including air quality and land-atmosphere interactions.

Michigan, UCSD take top honors at sub races

Escondido, July 2006:- Teams from the University of Michigan and UC San Diego took top honors in the 2006 Human Powered Submarine Contest, organized by the local chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The contest drew 12 entries from across the country, along with one from Canada and one from the Netherlands.  The Michigan team took first place for speed in the two-person category, achieving an average speed of 4.576 knots in the Offshore Model Basin, located in the western part of Escondido off Mission Avenue. UCSD won for the solo-operated submarine, finishing with an average speed of 3.05 knots.

MAE Professor de Callafon Helps Find a Better Way To Quiet Noisy Environments

April 2006:  Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) report in the April 4 issue of the Journal of Sound and Vibration a new mathematical algorithm designed to dramatically improve noise-cancellation technologies that are used to quiet everything from airplane cabins to commercial air conditioning systems. The new technique improves the ability to achieve destructive interference, the generation of anti-noise signals that combine with and destroy unwanted sounds.

Strings as Structural Elements? Engineers Devise Mathematics for New Age Structures

27 Mar 2006:  Scientists at UCSD have devised two mathematical tools considered to be a major contribution to the optimal design of a new generation of deformable bridges, buildings, shape-controllable airplane wings, radio antennas, and other alternatives to current structural technologies.

Summer Science Program for High School Students Expands Enrollment

08 Mar 2006:  The COSMOS program administered by the Jacobs School will bring nearly 50 percent more talented high school students to the UCSD campus for a month this summer, with a March 16 deadline for applications.

UCSD Research on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Wins Outstanding Technical Paper Award

07 Mar 2006:  Tests at the Jacobs School of Engineering's  Department of Structural Engineering verified that the wing structure of the MQ-5B Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle  can endure a higher amount of stress.