Faculty News

Chang Liu Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

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by Sarah Redmond.

His research could improve the efficiency and reliability of technologies ranging from aircraft and transportation systems to electronics cooling and data centers

chang liu
Professor Chang Liu. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

Mechanical engineering assistant professor Chang Liu has received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the agency’s highest honor supporting early-career faculty who demonstrate exceptional potential as both researchers and educators.

The award recognizes Liu’s innovative work at the intersection of fluid dynamics, nonlinear systems, and control theory while supporting a research and education program that could improve the performance and efficiency of technologies ranging from aircraft to data centers.

Liu’s project, “CAREER: Nonlinear Stability, Input-Output Analysis, and Control of Time-Varying Wall-Bounded Shear Flows,” will develop new mathematical frameworks to better understand fluid flows that change over time, a longstanding challenge in engineering that affects everything from transportation and energy systems to electronics cooling.

 

 

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Anna Tarakanova Recognized by ASME For Early Career Achievements

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Her central contribution is the development of rigorous multiscale frameworks that connect molecular structure, statistical mechanics, and macroscopic behavior across complex materials.

 

Tarakanova was selected to receive the Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has recently recognized a UConn College of Engineering faculty member for her early career contributions in advancing mechanical characterization and multiscale description of biomaterials.

School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering associate professor Anna Tarakanova was selected to receive the Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Award.

The award recognizes early career research excellence in the areas of experimental, computational, and theoretical mechanics and materials. Young investigators (within 10 years after their Ph.D. degree) are honored with this award, which also has a special emphasis placed on under-represented groups.

Offered through ASME, the award was established in 2008 by their materials division.

 

 

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Seung Yeon’s NSF CAREER Award in Micro- and Nanoscale Manufacturing

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by Sarah Redmond.

SeungYeon Kang has received a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for her work on transforming how microscopic electronic devices are built.

Sally Kang
SeungYeon Kang. (Christopher LaRosa/UConn Photo)

SeungYeon Kang, an assistant professor in the UConn School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering, is working to transform how microscopic electronic devices are built. This research could help power a new generation of smaller, faster, and more efficient technologies.

Kang has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her project, “3D One-step Heterogeneous Manufacturing for Integrated Circuits (3D OHMIC).” This award will help support her research on advanced manufacturing processes that operate at the micro and nanoscale.

“At its core, this project is simple but fundamental,” says Kang. “We build most electronics in flat, two-dimensional layers, even though the world around us is three-dimensional. This makes devices harder to miniaturize, slower to produce, and more resource-intensive.”

 

 

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Farhad Imani Wins NSF CAREER Award to Build Manufacturing Systems That Think

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by Sarah Redmond.

Automation dominates modern factories, but much of it still breaks when parts vary, damage is uncertain, and expert judgement is required. Farhad Imani’s project targets this failure by developing robotic manufacturing systems that can sense change and adapt in real time.

 

Professor Imani and 3rd year Ph.D. student, Zhiling Chen, working with robotic arms in his lab. (UConn Photo/Chris LaRosa)

A critical challenge is emerging in manufacturing: how to repair and restore high-value components when current systems can’t handle deviation. Factories are full of automation systems that perform well when processes are repetitive. The moment geometry shifts, the process changes, or defects evolve, they struggle.  

NSF CAREER Award recipient Farhad Imani, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut, is tackling this challenge head-on through the development of a new class of intelligent robotic manufacturing systems that can inspect parts, interpret multimodal sensor data, and reason through uncertainty. 

 

 

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Embracing Uncertainty For Stronger Engineering Systems

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by Claire Galvin

Many real-world systems—from materials to infrastructure—contain a mix of order and randomness, a concept known as stochasticity

 

Students and faculty involved in the stochasticity research (Contributed photo).

A few years after receiving the National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award, UConn College of Engineering Assistant Professor Hongyi Xu is demonstrating how embracing uncertainty can lead to stronger, smarter engineering systems. 

Xu’s research focuses on a simple, but challenging, fact, which is that not everything in engineering is perfectly uniform. Many real-world materials contain a mix of order and randomness, a concept known as stochasticity. Rather than designing around that uncertainty, Xu has developed new computational tools that allow engineers to use it intentionally, and combine it seamlessly with ordered materials. 

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Meet Dr. Daniele Vivona, Our New Assistant Professor

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🎉 Welcome Dr. Daniele Vivona! 🎉

We are excited to welcome Dr. Daniele Vivona as an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering and the UConn Center for Clean Energy Engineering at the University of Connecticut!

Dr. Vivona’s research explores atom-level energy conversion processes to develop innovative design solutions for ion transport and interfacial phenomena in advanced energy materials. His work aims to drive forward next-generation electrochemical energy conversion devices, combining physics-based modeling, atomistic simulations, and data-driven approaches to bridge multiple time and length scales.

Dr. Vivona earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, where he was a MathWorks Mechanical Engineering Fellow, a Rohsenow Graduate Fellow, and a member of the MIT Society of Energy Fellows. He also holds B.Sc. and M.S. degrees in Energy Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UConn.

UConn Researchers Win Distinguished ASME Best Paper Award

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hongyi xu Farhad Imani
Prof. Hongyi Xu and Prof. Farhad Imani

A team of researchers from UConn has received the 2025 ASME Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle (DFMLC) Best Paper Award, a national honor given to only one paper each year. The award was presented at the ASME 2025 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE), held August 10–17 in Anaheim, California.

The winning paper introduces a new artificial intelligence framework that helps detect problems in advanced 3D printing processes, also known as additive manufacturing. By combining powerful language models with scientific data, such as images and text from research articles, the system can automatically spot and explain manufacturing defects without needing prior training on each specific case. The team successfully tested this method on several datasets from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, covering different machines, materials, and conditions.

The research was carried out by Kiarash Naghavi Khanghah, Zhiling Chen, Lela Romeo, Dr. Qian Yang, Dr. Rajiv Malhotra, Dr. Farhad Imani, and Dr. Hongyi Xu, in collaboration across the UConn School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Manufacturing Engineering, the UConn School of Computing, and the Rutgers Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

A preprint of the paper is available through this link https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13828

Tarakanova Honored with Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty

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As the body ages, a network of proteins and other molecules may structurally change, leading to a loss of elasticity and tissue strength in skin, joints, and arteries. This can lead to reduced muscle mass, stiffness, and increased susceptibility to chronic diseases like osteoarthritis.

Anna TarakanovaAnna Tarakanova, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, leads a research group in UConn’s College of Engineering (CoE) that uses advanced computer models to study the mechanical properties of proteins.

In doing so, she’s developing nature-inspired materials that can mimic the flexibility of elastin or the durability of collagen. These designs could lead to innovations in medical devices, prosthetics, or even “repurpose” molecules for resilience in aging.

“Ultimately, our goal is to understand aging and disease at a basic, molecular level and how that fits into the bigger picture of how complex biological systems function,” Tarakanova explains.

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Dr. Langston Receives Gov. Lamont’s Commendation

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UConn President Radenka Maric hands a proclamation from Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont to Lee Langston, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at UConn, during the “UConn Forum: Economic Engine of a Thriving Connecticut” event in the Rowe Commons ballroom on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)

During the recent “UConn Forum: Economic Engine of a Thriving Connecticut,” which brought together leaders, researchers, and public officials, UConn President, Dr. Radenka Maric presented Prof. Emeritus Lee Langston, an ASME Life Fellow, with the proclamation from Gov. Ned Lamont.

Dr. Langston’s career included helping to develop the fuel cells that powered Apollo 11 to the moon. He also was part of a team that helped install the first solar panels at the White House during the Carter Administration, and pioneered gas turbine technologies now used worldwide, including at UConn’s Cogeneration (CoGen) Central Utility Plant.

He joined UConn in 1977 as a mechanical engineering professor after more than a decade at Pratt & Whitney. He also served a year as the interim dean of the School of Engineering (now a college), later retiring from UConn in 2003 but remaining active as a professor emeritus.

“His contributions to science and society are immeasurable,” Maric said in presenting the proclamation, adding that she first learned of his expertise in sustainable energy when she was studying for her Ph.D. in Japan.

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