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2009

Sandra Troian, Professor of Applied Physics, Aeronautics, and Mechanical Engineering, and Dr. Mathias Dietzel have uncovered the physical mechanism by which arrays of nanoscale pillars can be grown on polymer films with very high precision, in potentially limitless patterns. "This is an example of how basic understanding of the principles of physics and mechanics can lead to unexpected discoveries which may have far-reaching, practical implications," said Ares Rosakis, Division Chair and Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at Caltech. "This is the real strength of the EAS division." Read More ... 10.23.09.
Julia R. Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering, has been recognized as a rising star by Advanced Functional Materials. Her latest publication is entitled Emergence of New Mechanical Functionality in Materials via Size Reduction. Read More ... 10-1-09.
Shang-Li Huang (PhD '76 Mechanical Engineering) and his wife, Betty, have pledged $1 million to endow the Shang-Li and Betty Huang Endowed Graduate Fellowship Fund in Mechanical Engineering. "S.L. was my graduate student and did an outstanding PhD thesis back in the 1970s - a thesis whose results are still widely used in the rocket-engine design business," said Chris Brennen, the Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Caltech. "He and Betty are deeply interested in education - in particular, graduate education. They have been instrumental in rallying support for mechanical engineering at Caltech. We are most grateful for their generous help and advice." Read more ... 8-04-09.
Regina Dugan, former ME graduate (PhD '93), has been named Director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense. In announcing Regina's appointment, Zachary J. Lemnios, Director for DoD Defense Research and Engineering, calls her "precisely the dynamic leader DARPA needs to open new technology frontiers and transition revolutionary technologies to serve our nation's interests. Read more... 7-13-09.
Congratulations to graduating Senior Kevin A. Noertker who was awarded the Frederic W. Hinrichs, Jr., Memorial Award for 2009. This award is given to seniors who have made the greatest undergraduate contribution to the welfare of the student body and whose qualities of leadership, character, and responsibility have been outstanding. 6-15-09.
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, and Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is among 210 new fellows elected this year. Founded in 1780, the Academy's elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs. 4-21-09.
Kevin Noertker and Marc Sells of Team Newt N' Salamander won the 25th Annual ME 72 Contest which was held on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. Teams of two students each competed to design and build an amphibious craft that would crawl into and swim across Millikan pond, clean up floating debris, and crawl out at the opposite end, depositing its cargo at the top of the bridge. Marshall Grinstead and Edmond Wong of Team Ramen and Cheesesteaks won second place this year. Congratulations to all the participants! View NBC video coverage. View CBS video coverage. L.A. Times article. 3-11-09.

Christopher Brennen, Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been elected as a Fellow of the School of Engineering at The University of Tokyo in recognition of his contribution to the research and education of the school, as well as his outstanding accomplishments in research and education in the field of engineering. 2-23-09.

Caltech's first annual campus-wide Graduate Student Poster Session was held on February 5, 2009, and highlighted 31 posters from options across campus. The posters were judged in two categories, both of which were won by ME students Roseanna Zia and Anthony Roy. Roseanna won for overall best poster and Anthony Roy won for best interdisciplinary poster. Congratulations Roseanna and Anthony! Read more... 2-17-09

The ME 72 contest will be held on Tuesday, March 10, 2009, at 1:00 p.m., at Millikan pond. This year's contest is to design, build, and deploy amphibious craft that will crawl, swim, clean up floating debris, place debris in scoring zones, and crawl out of the pond to the top of the bridge. Teams comprised of two students each will compete for the 1st place trophy. 2-4-09.
Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, with Hiroo Kanamori, John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, with their students and colleagues will be featured in the documentary How the Earth Was Made airing on the History Channel on February 10, 2009, at 6:00 p.m.
2-10-09.
Faculty, students and staff were deeply saddened to learn of the premature death of one of our most respected alumni, Edward "Ted" Gates, who died in a small plane crash in San Diego County on December 20, 2008, at the age of 58. After earning his Mechanical Engineering PhD degree at Caltech, Ted became a faculty member at the University of Alberta but spent the last 20 years as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona where he earned an outstanding reputation as a teacher and mentor. At Caltech, Ted's lasting memorial is that he was the founder of SOPS, an informal student-run organization that continues to this day to provide help and support to the graduate students in the Thomas Building and beyond. Ted is survived by his wife Kar-La, son Sean and stepdaughters Tawna and Sherry. 1-12-09

2008

E/ME 105 Presentation: Product Design for the Developing World
Product Design for the Developing World is a course focused on the design of products for people who exist on less than $2 per day. On December 8, members of the Caltech and Art Center communities are invited to see the students' projects - designs that produce clean water from the tap, low-cost refrigeration, honey separation and filtration, efficient cooking, fruit drying, next-generation wheelchairs, and packs to carry vegetables to market. Students will demonstrate their prototypes from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Beckman Institute auditorium, and a poster session will be open from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Refreshments will be served. 12-5-08
The Gates Frontiers Fund has pledged $10 million to support the establishment of the Charles C. Gates Center for Mechanical Engineering within the soon-to-be-renovated Thomas Laboratory. This gift marks the launch of a $20 million fund-raising effort for an endowment in Mechanical Engineering. With this endowment, Mechanical Engineering at Caltech will step up its efforts in energy innovation, helping the Institute address global energy and climate problems and the country develop energy-market leadership. Read more... 11-19-08
Congratulations to former ME undergrads Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, and Daniel Oliver for their work on the bikes-to-wheelchair project. They, along with Art Center student Charles Pyott, were honored with Popular Mechanics' "Breakthrough Award" that "celebrates innovations poised to change the world, and the personalities behind them." All four are among the co-founders of Intelligent Mobility International, which is a nonprofit organization established for the purpose of helping people with disabilities in developing countries. 10-16-08
Congratulations to Professor Julia Greer for being recognized by Technology Review magazine as one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 for her work with materials on a nanoscale level. She was selected from over 300 nominees. The TR35 is an elite group of accomplished young innovators who exemplify the spirit of innovation. 8-22-08
Congratulations to Roseanna Zia, one of three winners of the Student Poster Competition at the XVth International Congress on Rheology held in Monterey, California. This award is given in recognition of excellence. The title was "Force induced microdiffusivity of colloidal particles". 8-14-08
Garrett Reisman, NASA Astronaut and Caltech Mechanical Engineering alum (PhD '97), returned home on June 14, 2008, on Space Shuttle Discovery after spending three months on the space station. Welcome back Garrett! 6-16-08

Congratulations to Eric Johnsen and Michael Wolf, winners of the Centennial Prize for the Best Thesis in Mechanical Engineering! This prize is awarded each year to a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering whose doctoral thesis is judged to be the most original and significant.
6-16-08

The winners of the Harry Leiter Memorial Mechanical Engineering Prize are Marc Grossman and Cedric Jeanty. This award is given to a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering who has demonstrated extraordinary creativity. Congratulations to both Marc and Cedric! 6-16-08
Ling Zheng won the 2007-2008 Graduate Student Council Teaching Assistant Award for her work as a TA for Ae/AM/CE/ME 102, Mechanics and Structures of Solids. This award is given each year to a TA who has excelled in helping students with a class. 6-11-08
Professor Guruswami Ravichandran is the recipient of the 2008 Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award. This award is given jointly by Pi Tau Sigma and ASME to an engineering graduate who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering twenty years or more following graduation. 5-29-08

Kunihiko (Sam) Taira has been selected to receive the 2008 Chapman Award. This award is given each year to a graduate student who has distinguished himself/herself in research in the field of hydrodynamics. Sam's thesis is entitled "The Immersed Boundary Projection Method and Its Application to Simulation and Control of Flows Around Low-Aspect-Ratio Wings." 5-29-08

Dr. Liping Liu, Postdoctoral Scholar, has won the 2008 "Best Dissertation" Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering, University of Minnesota. Recipients are selected based on originality and importance of research and the potential to make an unusually significant contribution to the discipline. The title of Dr. Liu's dissertation is "Multiscale Analysis and Modeling of Magnetostrictive Composites". 5-15-08
Nathalie Vriend has been selected to receive an Outstanding Student Paper Award for her presentation at the 2007 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Her presentation, A mystery unraveled: Booming sand dunes was recognized as among the best of a strong group of student presenters. 03-17-08
Mechanical Engineering student Huaising (Cindy) Ko was named one of only 50 college seniors in the nation to receive a $25,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a year of "purposeful exploration." Originally Ko chose to major in the biological sciences due to her interest in the field of medicine. However, at Caltech she discovered that the field of mechanical engineering fascinated her and allowed her to do interdisciplinary work related to her interests in medicine. As a Watson Fellow, Ko will be able to embark on another aspect of medicine that interests her: the tension between modern and traditional medicine. Read more... 03-17-08

The famed ME 72 Contest was held on Tuesday, March 11. Teams of undergraduates competed to launch 50-gram payloads over a rope and then as far as possible across Caltech's North Athletic Field... and the winning team is: Team Savage Rabbit, composed of Jimmy Paulos and Matthew Feldman. Coming in second were Tim Curran and Kevin Watts. Congrats to all the participants!
03-12-08

A National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Center of Excellence will be established at Caltech, under the direction of Michael Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering. This center, one of five new centers to be established, will develop not only the science and engineering models and software for large-scale simulations, but also methods associated with the emerging disciplines of verification and validation and uncertainty quantification. The goal of these emerging disciplines is to enable scientists to make precise statements about the degree of confidence they have in their simulation-based predictions. The center will be funded for $17 million over a five-year period. 03-10-08

On March 11, two Caltech mechanical-engineering alumni, Garrett Reisman and Robert Behnken lift off on the Endeavor space shuttle as part of a seven-man team en route to the International Space Station. 03-10-08

For the second year in a row, Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine has ranked Caltech as the best value among private universities in the United States. Go to Kiplinger online. 03-10-08

Christopher BrennenChristopher Brennen, the Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, delivered the plenary opening lecture at the Twelfth International Symposium on Transport Phenomena and Dynamics of Rotating Machinery in February. After, he was awarded the organization's ISROMAC Award in recognition of "his outstanding research contributions in the area of cavitation and hydrodynamics in rotating machinery." 03-4-08

Joseph ShepherdJoseph E. Shepherd has been named the C. L. "Kelly" Johnson Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Shepherd is internationally recognized for his chosen specialties of combustion, fuel properties, and fluid dynamics relevant to explosion initiation and propagation. Congratulations!

Laurent Ponson, a post-doc working with Professors Bhattacharya and Ravichandran has been named a Marie-Curie International Fellow by the European Community. This highly competitive fellowship is awarded by the European Commission to enable experienced researchers to broaden their international research experience by spending time at a research centre outside the EU.

2007

Michael OrtizMichael Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has won the first Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics!

Kaushik BhattacharyaKaushik Bhattacharya, Professor of Mechanics and Materials Science, has been appointed Executive Officer for Mechanical Engineering.

Welcome to our new graduate students who have joined us this Fall: Justin Brown, Vedran Coralic, Michael Elzinga, Craig Ferguson, Sarah Lansing, Esperanza Linares, Madeline Miller, Bharat Penmecha, Andrew Richards, Christine Winiarz, Huan Xu.

Melany HuntMelany Hunt, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed as Vice Provost along with Steve Mayo, Bren Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Executive Officer for Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Melany's focus will be academic/educational functions, while Steve will focus on research functions. Congratulations!
"Materials on the Brink: Unprecedented Transforming Materials" is the title of a new MURI project headed by Professor of Mechanics and Materials Science, Kaushik Bhattacharya. With colleagues Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor and Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and Sossina Haile, Professor of Materials Science and of Chemical Engineering, their graduate students at Caltech, and colleagues at five other participating universities, they aim to develop new classes of active materials that undergo extremely low hysteresis structural transformation between phases with unusual combinations of electromagnetic, optical, and mechanical properties. Such materials provide unique opportunities to meet challenges in communications, sensors, guidance systems, antennas, reconfigurable electronics as well as biological-chemical-physical detection and response systems.
Tamer ElsayedCongratulations to Tamer Elsayed, graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, for being selected as one of the winners of the student presentation competition held by the 9th U.S. Congress on Computational Mechanics. Tamer's presentation was in the area of material modeling.
The ME Centennial Celebration took place on March 30-31, 2007. Please click here for photos of the event as well as the ME History Project.
Raquel Velez was awarded the Mabel Beckman Prize; Scott Jordan won the Campus Life and Master's Award; and Raquel Velez and Winston Jackson were awarded the Outstanding Service and Leadership Awards.
Michael OrtizMichael Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been selected as the 2007 recipient of the USACM Computational Structural Mechanics Award. The award will be presented at the 2007 U.S. National Congress of Computational Mechanics on July 25, 2007. He has also been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Vikram GaviniVikram Gavini, a Ph.D student in Mechanical Engineering, was one of the winners of the Robert J. Melosh Medal for 2007 for the Best Student Paper on Finite Element Analysis. Vikram was among six finalists to present his paper at the competition on April 27, 2007. This is a highly competitive award for the best student paper in Computational Mechanics awarded by a consortium including Duke University, ETH Zurich, Elsevier and International Association for Computational Mechanics. It is a two-part competition involving a submitted paper and a finalists talk at the Melosh Medal Symposium in Zurich. The title of Vikram's paper was "Ab-initio calculations: a non-periodic finite-element approach to density functional theory". Sharing the award with Vikram is Michael Hain from the Leibniz University, Hannover for his paper entitled "A multi-scale approach for frost heave of hardened cement paste and mortar".
Congratulations to the winners of the 22nd Annual ME 72 Engineering Design Contest! They are: 1st Place: Peter Haderlein and Elliott Pallett; 2nd Place: Michael Ikeda and Ghyrn Loveness; and 3rd Place: Bryan Hires and Cedric Jeanty. Congratulations to all the participants on a job well done! The Contest took place on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, and is an annual event.
Samantha Daly, graduate student in Mechanical Engineering, gave this year's Everhart Lecture, on Thursday, February 22, 2007. The title of her talk was "Metals with Memory: How These Amazing Materials Remember Their Shape."
Melany HuntMelany L. Hunt, Professor and Executive Officer of Mechanical Engineering, will describe the science behind the low-pitched droning that accompanies sand dune avalanching in a presentation titled "Booming Sand Dunes,? on Wednesday, January 17, 8:00 p.m., in the fourth and final program of the Fall/Winter 2006-07 Earnest C. Watson Lecture Series. The lecture will take place in Beckman Auditorium. Read more...
Richard Murray, Everhart Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems and Director of Information Science and Technology, will present a talk entitled "Project-Based Teaching: CS/EE/ME 75 and the DARPA Grand Challenge." Murray will discuss teaching outside the classroom through project-based learning and explain how he turned the DARPA Grand Challenge competition into a hands-on teaching opportunity. The talk begins at 5:00 p.m., January 18, 2007, in 101 Guggenheim Lab, Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall.

This year's winner of the E/ME 105 Best Paper Competition has been split between two teams. Congratulations to the team of Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, Mike Easler, Alejandra Antonucci, and Cindy Ko for ITM Independence Through Mobility and the team of Daniel Birt, Isaac Garcia-Munoz, Paulina Quinones, and Kevin Zhou for Bicienergía: A Rural Modular Power Supply. The competition is designed around E/ME 105 taught by Professor Ken Pickar and comprises six teams from Caltech and Landivar University in Guatamala City who joined us for the Final Presentations.

E/ME 105, "Engineering Design of Products for the Developing World", has evolved over the last three years to focus on designs for people earning less than a dollar a day, particularly in rural Guatemala. The course is built around six teams comprised of Caltech students, an Art Center student and a member of each team from Landivar University in Guatemala City. For the Final Presentation last Friday, the Guatemalans joined us, meeting their teammates for the first time. Among the events was a Best Paper Competition.

The judges to choose the Best Paper Award for E/ME 105 were Jeff Kranski, Mario Blanco (Caltech), Oscar Arce (Landivar University, Guatemala City) and Professor Ken Pickar. The task was not easy. All of the submitted Final Reports were of excellent quality. The judges agreed to split the prize of $1000 between the following teams:

  • ITM Independence Through Mobility, the team of Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, Mike Easler, Alejandra Antonucci and Cindy Ko whose Mission Statement was: "To provide alternative, inexpensive means of transportation for poor, disabled people in Guatemala and later, other developing countries." This Team created a compelling, well thought-through, inexpensive, prototype wheelchair made out of bicycle parts. They also created a unique business model of selling the conveyances using the financing of Guatemalan family members living in LA.

  • Bicienergía: A Rural Modular Power Supply, the team of Daniel Birt, Isaac Garcia-Munoz, Paulina Quinones, and Kevin Zhou whose mission statement was: "to develop an affordable and user-friendly electricity-generation and storage device to enable rural inhabitants to power portable devices."This team found the sweet-spot between the needs of rural Guatemalans who were off the power grid, and the physical limitations of human powered generators to create an extremely low cost solution which is much cheaper than solar.

2006

Guruswami Ravichandran, the John E. Goode, Jr. Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, received an honorary degree, Docteurs honoris causa (D.h.c), from the Paul Verlaine University, Metz, France, on October 10, 2006, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the mechanical behavior of materials under extreme conditions and for promoting international collaboration with researchers at that University.
Welcome to our new graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who have joined us this Fall.
Graduate Students: Pablo Abad-Manterola, Thibaud Gallet, Ha Giang, Bonnie Gurry, Daniel Hortado, John Meier, and Roseanna Zia. Postdoctoral Scholars: Sefi Givli, and Liping Liu.
Richard Murray, Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, has been awarded the Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. The Feynman Prize is given each year to a professor who demonstrates unusual ability, creativity, and innovation in teaching. Congratulations to Professor Murray! Read more...
According to U.S. News and World Report, Caltech's Mechanical Engineering Program is ranked the 3rd best program in the nation.
Nadia LapustaNadia Lapusta, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geophysics, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. This five-year grant is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of the early career-development activities.
Richard Murray, Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems, has been appointed as the new Director of IST.

2005

Professor Ares Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering and Director of GALCIT, has been selected to receive the prestigious Society of Experimental Mechanics 2005 W. M. Murray Medal and to deliver the 2005 Murray Lecture. This award recognizes sustained and distinguished technical contributions to the field of experimental mechanics. The presentation took place on June 8th, during the SEM Annual Conference and Exposition on Experimental and Applied Mechanics in Portland, Oregon.
Team Caltech will participate in the DARPA Grand Challenge set to take place on October 8, 2005. Professor Richard Murray is the sponsor and project manager for the Team which is comprised of over 30 undergraduates from Caltech, Lund University in Sweden, Princeton and VPI.
Professor Erik Antonsson, currently Chief Technologist at JPL, will give the inaugural Victor Wouk Lecture at 4:00 p.m., May 19, in Lees-Kubota Lecture Hall. Professor Antonsson will discuss "Advanced Technology for Space Exploration" and will provide an overview of the JPL Strategic Technology Plan, along with highlights of recent successes and future missions.
Professor Chris Brennen has received the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Caltech's most prestigious teaching award. This prize is given each year to a professor who demonstrates exceptional ability, creativity, and innovation in both laboratory and classroom instruction.
Caltech will honor the contributions and celebrate the life of Professor Thomas K. Caughey at a Memorial Service to be held on Thursday, May 5, 2005, at 4:00 p.m. at the Athenaeum.

 

2004

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has selected Professors Kaushik Bhattacharya and Guruswami Ravichandran as the recipients of the 2004 Best Paper Award in the area of active materials. The paper selected is "Large Electrostrictive Actuation of Barium Titanate Single Crystals".
Professors Chris Brennen and Melany Hunt were featured on PBS's Nova on Tuesday, January 25, 2005, discussing their research on the acoustical properties of avalancing sand dunes, a phenomenom that occurs when sand on the surface of a dune is disturbed.
Professor Kaushik Bhattacharya is the 2004 recipient of the Young Investigator Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES) for his contributions to engineering science. He was also presented with the 2004 Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators in Applied Mechanics from the Applied Mechanics Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Professors Melany Hunt and Christopher Brennen are featured in several articles discussing the acoustical properties of avalanching sand dunes, a phenomenom that occurs when sand on the surface of a dune is disturbed.
Professor Rob Phillips is among the first of nine recipients to receive the NIH Director's Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. The award is given to individuals with exceptionally creative abilities and diligence, for a period of five years, to allow them to develop and test far-ranging ideas in biomedical research.
The Mechanical Engineering program at Caltech has received ABET accreditation.

For the past several years, Professors Melany Hunt and Christopher Brennen, along with some of their students, have been traveling out to various sand dunes to measure the sounds that occur when the surface of the dunes are disturbed. They believe that when the sand on the surface is disturbed, the friction between the grains of sand creates a noise that reverberates back and forth between dry sand on the surface and the wet sand below. The testing of the dunes ties into their research on the flow of particulates and granular materials. To read the articles, please go to:

National Geographic
The Press-Enterprise
Weekend America Public Radio broadcast

Professor Guruswami Ravichandran has been awarded the 2005 Lazan Award by the Society for Experimental Mechanics. This award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding original technical contributions to the field of experimental mechanics.
Michael OrtizTwo Mechanical Engineering faculty have received named chairs. Professor Michael Ortiz has been named the Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, and Professor Ares Rosakis has been named the Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering.
Francesco Ciucci, Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering, is the winner of the 2003-2004 Best Teaching Assistant Award presented by the Graduate Student Council. This award is presented annually to students who demonstrate excellence in teaching.
John Van Deusen, Supervisor of the ME Shop, is one of the recipients of this year's ASCIT Service Award for his outstanding contribution to student life. This award is given to Caltech staff by the students to acknowledge those who go above and beyond the call of duty to help Caltech students. To quote one student "John displays an amazing amount of patience and really teaches students practical skills. He fosters students' creativity by encouraging them to try projects even when he is unsure of their outcome. During the last weeks of the ME 72 class, he completely rearranged his schedule to allow students to work late hours in the shop. John is the cat's pajamas."
Professor Christopher Brennen is the first non-Japanese recipient of the Fluids Science Research Award, given by the Japanese Fluid Science Foundation. Brennen, author of Cavitation and Bubble Dynamics, is an international expert in cavitation and multiphase flows. His contributions to the field of rocketry have greatly benefited the development of the U.S. and Japanese space programs.
What's Really Hot in Research? Mechanical Engineering at Caltech is ranked 4th in U.S. Each year, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Research Services Group provides an update based on their Research Performance & Evaluation Tools (also see 1999 and 2000 stats).

Division of Engineering and Applied ScienceCalifornia Institute of Technology Mechanical Engineering