Faculty News

CASE Honors Two UConn Mechanical Engineers

 

Dr. Barber has served as a professor-in-residence in the Mechanical Engineering Department since joining UConn in 2000.  He enjoyed a distinguished career with Pratt & Whitney and the United Technologies Research Center prior to joining UConn.  Dr. Barber is an Associate Fellow of AIAA and a member of ASME, and he has served as an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal for Propulsion and Power.  His induction into CASE recognizes his contributions to computational fluid mechanics, his leadership in expanding and managing the professional Master of Engineering (MENG) degree program and oversight and expansion of the Mechanical Engineering senior design program.

Dr. Chiu is a professor of Mechanical Engineering who is recognized for his pioneering work in heat and mass transfer, including his development of new approaches to understanding micro- and nano-structure induced transport phenomena in energy, photonics and semiconductor materials.  Dr. Chiu’s honors include the Rutgers University School of Engineering Medal of Excellence Award for Distinguished Young Alumni, the ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer, the U.S. Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.  He is an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and the International Journal of Thermal Sciences.

Innovators Feted

 

innovate2UConn Engineering was well represented during the Second Annual Celebration of Innovation, presented by the UConn Office of Economic Development on April 10th. The gala event (see event photos here) afforded the innovation community an opportunity to network and to celebrate the achievements of some of its most outstanding members. Read a related story here. Importantly, the event underscored the vital linkages among academic innovation, commercialization and economic impacts that benefit the State of Connecticut. According to Dr. Mary Holz-Clause, UConn’s Vice President of Economic Development, in the past year, UConn researchers have developed 80 new inventions and filed 42 U.S. patents, and the university has signed 10 license deals. Commercializing university innovations is a growing resource for the university that has generated $1.2 million in patent revenue alone in the past year. “UConn, thanks to the innovative research done by our faculty and students, is re-inventing industries and driving new innovations.  The Celebration of Innovation is an opportunity to recognize the contributions the university is making in not only reshaping the state’s economy but also having a meaningful impact globally,” said Dr. Holz-Clause. Among the honorees were Dr. David “Ed” Crow, General Electric Corporation, and engineering faculty members who received U.S. patent awards in the last year.

Dr. David “Ed” Crow, professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering (2002-11) and a 36-year Pratt & Whitney employee, was honored with the Innovation Champions – University Employee Award.  An elected member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Crow has served as an outstanding role model throughout his engineering and academic careers.  In 2011, he established the D.E. Crow Innovation Prize at UConn, which helps engineering students turn their entrepreneurial inspirations into marketable products through seed funding. Dr. Crow joined Pratt & Whitney in 1966 and rose to the position of Senior Vice President of the company’s Engineering, where he oversaw 6,600 engineers responsible for the design, development, validation and certification of all Pratt & Whitney large commercial engines, military engines and rocket products.  Earlier, he served as Senior Vice President for the company’s Large Commercial Engines unit.  He is a past secretary of the SAE, a member of ASME and AIAA, and an elected member of the University of Missouri-Rolla Academy of Mechanical Engineers and the UConn Academy of Distinguished Engineers. Earning the Collaborator of the Year Award, which is presented to a partner whose collaboration is likely to have a strong and lasting impact on the State economy, was General Electric Corporation. Last fall, GE Industrial Systems expanded its partnership with UConn Engineering through a five-year, $7.5 million investment that includes an endowed professorship, undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, and $3.3 million in funding for company directed research at UConn, focused on electrical-protection technologies, including circuit breaker technologies.   The investment brings together researchers from various academic disciplines and from the energy industry to conduct R&D on core electrical-protection technologies, including circuit breakers. Paul Singer, Technology General Manager of GE Industrial Systems, accepted on behalf of GE.

New Patents In addition, a number of UConn mechanical engineering faculty members were honored for their receipt of U.S. patents during the 2012-13 year. They are listed below: Baki Cetegen and Michael Renfro (Mechanical Engineering) – Fiber Optic Based In-Situ Diagnostics for PEM Fuel Cells, U.S. Patent # 8,268,493 Bahram Javidi (Electrical & Computer Engineering) ·  Depth and Lateral Size Control of Three-Dimensional Images in Projection Integral Imaging, U.S. Patent # 8,264,722 ·  Optical Data Storage Device and Method, U.S. Patent # 8,155,312 ·  Optical Security System Using Fourier Plane Encoding, U.S. Patent # 8,150,033 ·  System and Method for Recognition of a Three-Dimensional Target, U.S. Patent # 8,150,100 Aggelos Kiayias (Computer Science & Engineering) – Systems and Methods for Key Generation in Wireless Communication Systems, U.S. Patent # 8,208,628 H. Russell Kunz (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Center for Clean Energy Engineering) andLeonard Bonville (Center for Clean Energy Engineering) – Bipolar Plate for Fuel Cell, U.S. Patent # 8,097,385 Richard Parnas (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering) and Nicholas Leadbeater (Chemistry) – Systems for Alkyl Ester Production, U.S. Patent # 8,119,832 Lei Wang (Electrical & Computer Engineering) – Error-Tolerant Multi-Treaded memory Systems with Reduced Error Accumulation, U.S. Patent # 8,190,982 Quing Zhu (Electrical & Computer Engineering) – Method and Apparatus for Medical Imaging using Near-Infrared Optical Tomography and Fluorescence Tomography Combined with Ultrasound, U.S. Patent # 8,239,006

Faculty, Robert Gao

 

A research team lead by Dr. Robert Gao has won a “Best Paper Award” at the 2012 ASME/ISCIE International Symposium on Flexible Automation, held in St. Louis, MO in June 2012.  The paper, “Viscosity Measurement in Injection Molding Using a Multivariate Sensor,” describes a sensing method that quantifies multiple parameters critical to the quality control in polymer processing and wirelessly transmits the measured data through acoustic waves for remote information retrieval.  The paper results from a collaborative effort between Dr. Gao’s group at UConn (with graduate student Navid Asadizanjani and Assistant Research Professor Zhaoyan Fan) and Prof. David Kazmer in the Polymer Engineering department at UMass Lowell.  This research has been supported by the Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) Division of the NSF.

Faculty Notes

 

Breakthrough Research Published in Science In a recent Science journal article entitled “Strong, Light, Multifunctional Fibers of Carbon Nanotubes with Ultrahigh Conductivity,” Professor Anson Ma and colleagues from Rice University detail their recent breakthrough revolutionizing the use of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are rolled cylinders of graphene sheets that have unprecedented mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties. In the past, many of the potential real-world applications of CNTs remained unfulfilled because researchers experienced great difficulties dispersing and processing CNTs into macroscopic objects while maintaining their fascinating properties. To address this problem, Dr. Ma and colleagues from Rice developed a scalable fluid-based process for spinning CNTs into lightweight and multifunctional fibers. These fibers combine the mechanical strength of carbon fibers with the specific electrical conductivity of metals, opening up the exciting possibility of using CNTs in aerospace, field-emission, and power-transmission applications. The article can be accessed at:http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6116/182 Dr. Ma, who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the UK, joined UConn in August 2011 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering with a dual appointment in the Institute of Materials Science Polymer Program.  He recently received theDistinguished Young Rheologist Award from TA Instruments, which recognizes young faculty members who show exceptional promise in the field of rheology. Prior to that, he received the National Science Foundation Early Concept Grant for Exploration Research(EAGER) award, which focuses on investigating the use of nanoparticles in the delivery of cancer drugs.  –  By Heike Brueckner   Four Faculty Receive Large Faculty Grants Drs. Daniel Burkey, Mohammad Maifi Khan, Nejat Olgac and Zhuyin Ren were among 24 faculty to receive over $19,000 each in 2012 Faculty Large Grants from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation.  The grant program was established to help faculty better position themselves to apply for, and receive, extramural funding in support of their research and scholarly activities. The competitive grants will fund activities in diverse engineering areas:

  • Dr. Daniel Burkey (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering) will apply his grant to the development of a pilot-scale osmotic heat engine for the department’s senior laboratory.
  • Dr. Mohammad Khan (Computer Science & Engineering) will apply his grant toward work aimed at leveraging the digital cloud for real-time integration and analysis of sensor data for clinical and research applications.
  • Dr. Nejat Olgac (Mechanical Engineering) will use his grant-monies for the prediction of thermo-acoustic instability (TAI) in combustion in a paradigm shift.
  • Dr. Zhuyin Ren (Mechanical Engineering) will apply his grant monies toward large eddy simulation of turbulent combustion with detailed chemistry.

 

Faculty, Lee S. Langston

  Dr. Langston Pens Guest Columns Dr. Lee S. Langston, professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, recently published columns in Global Gas Turbine News and ASME’s Mechanical Engineering on the topics of bird strikes and Pratt & Whitney’s revolutionary new geared turbofan. Before joining academia, Dr. Langston worked at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford, CT conducting research and development on jet engine gas turbines, fuel cells, and heat pipes. His research involves experimental and analytical studies of fluid flows and heat transfer, both in general and with specific application to turbomachines. Much of his research has been concentrated in the area of turbine endwall aerodynamics. He has served as Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery and Editor in Chief for the ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power. He continues to write extensively on the gas turbine industry.

Smart Robotic Drones Advance Science

 

By Colin Poitras Dr. Chengyu Cao sees a day in the not-so-distant future when intelligent robots will be working alongside humans on a wide range of important tasks from advancing science, to performing deep sea rescues, to monitoring our natural habitats. It’s a bold leap from the pre-programmed factory robots and remote-controlled drones we are most familiar with today. Cao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and his research team are creating a new generation of smart machines – devices that are fully autonomous and capable of navigating their way through our complex world unassisted. These machines will not only be able to travel untethered from one point to another in space and perform tasks; they will be able to “think” on their own using artificial intelligence to adjust to unforeseen obstacles and situations in their environment – a tree, a building, a sudden gust of wind or change in tidal current – without human interface. It is the stuff of which science fiction movies are made. Read the full story, and watch the exciting video, here.