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News
2008
 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. 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
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
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 specialities
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
Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics
and Mechanical Engineering, has won the first Rodney Hill
Prize in Solid Mechanics! |
 Kaushik 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
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. |
 Congratulations
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
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
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
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
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. |
| Two
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). |
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