This year’s Phononics Young Investigator Award goes to our own ME Prof. Osama Bilal. “The Phononics Young Investigator Award (YIA) is presented by the International Phononics Society to an early-career researcher who demonstrates research excellence in the field of phononics (including phononic crystals, acoustic/elastic metamaterials, nanoscale phonon transport, wave propagation in periodic structures, coupled phenomena involving phonons, topological phononics, and related areas).” As a recipient, Prof. Bilal will deliver the 2023 Phononics Young Investigator Award Lecture during the upcoming conference in Manchester, UK.
News
Three ME Faculty Members win NSF CAREER Awards in 2022
NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Program awards are highly prestigious, offered to early-career faculty members who demonstrate the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.
Three ME faculty members have received this prestigious award in 2022. Congratulations to all three recipients!
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| Hongyi Xu | Anna Tarakanova | George Matheou |
Prof. Xu’s award will support his group’s research on design of mixed stochasticity structural systems. The award received by Prof. Tarakanova will support fundamental research to understand complex changes to elastin that occur in aging and disease. Prof. Matheou’s grant will focus on large scale computational models of low could transitions in the atmosphere to support a better understanding of their impact on climate change.
With these three awards, the total number of NSF CAREER or DoD Young Investigator Awards won by ME faculty since 1996 increases to 25 with seven of these awards having been received in the last three years!
UConn ME selected by NASA to Develop Moon to Mars Mission Design Ideas
UCONN has been selected as one of six universities to participate in NASA’s 2022 Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) Challenge. NASA’s selection, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, will develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Moon to Mars exploration objectives.
This year’s winning M2M X-Hab Challenge teams will design, manufacture, assemble, test, and demonstrate functional prototype subsystems and innovations that enable increased functionality for human space exploration missions.
Profs. Vito Moreno and Jason Lee are leading the charge at UCONN in collaboration with Jorge Paricio Garcia and Ed Weingart, the Co-Directors of the UCONN Krenicki Arts and Engineering Institute, Patrick Kumavor (Biomedical Engineering), and Christopher Sancomb (Art/Industrial Design). The multidisciplinary concepts that they submitted will be developed into proof of concept 1/6-G suited prototypes to be applied in field environments. The first design will use weather balloons and drones and associated control and feedback software with a wearable harness. The weather balloon will offset the analog astronaut’s weight, while the drone and sensors will fine-tune responses to movements, produce a lifting force needed to simulate reduced gravity, and keep the balloon hovering above the astronaut. The second design, using the NASA ARGOS concept as a base, will incorporate a mobile platform that moves with the individual, and a counterweight system to simulate reduced gravity. Both projects will be an important element of the Senior Design projects for the departments of Mechanical Engineering as well as Biomedical Engineering in collaboration with the Industrial Design and Fine Arts programs. A diverse student team will also work with Aquiline Drones (Hartford) and Wallingford K-12 Public School’s Center for Innovation and Design: An Aerospace Experience to Mars.
Prof. Pierce joins the Editorial Board of the ASME Journal of Biomechanical Engineering
Dr. David M. Pierce, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, has been named Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Biomechanical Engineering. This archival journal reports research results involving the application of mechanical engineering principles to the improvement of human health. The scope of relevant topics ranges from basic biology to biomedical applications and includes theoretical, computational, experimental, and clinical studies.
The driving interest of his research is to understand and predict the mechanics of soft tissues and engineering materials. His current work employs theoretical, computational, and experimental tools to explore the interplay of form and function in cartilage, specifically the multiscale and multi-phase mechanics and how these evolve in health, damage, and disease. Dr. Pierce is a 2017 NSF CAREER awardee and a United Technologies Corporation Professor in Engineering Innovation in the College of Engineering. He also serves as a Journal Referee for over 50 peer-reviewed, academic journals.
Tianfeng Lu elected as a Combustion Institute (CI) Fellow
We are proud to announce that Mechanical Engineering Professor Tianfeng Lu has been recognized as one of the 2021 Class of Fellows for The Combustion Institute.
Prof. Lu joins a class of 32 accomplished international scholars from industry, academia, and the public sector, and was recognized for “the development of computationally efficient and accurate methods for the systematic, efficient and massive reduction of large reaction mechanisms.”
Dr. Lu received his B.S. and MS degrees in 1994 and 1997 respectively, both in Engineering Mechanics and both from Tsinghua University, followed by his Ph.D. degree in 2004 from Princeton University in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He joined UConn as an Assistant Professor in August 2008 after spending 4 years in research positions at Princeton. His research focuses on computational combustion with special interests in reduced chemical kinetics, stiff chemistry solvers, and computational diagnostics of laminar and turbulent flames.
Prof. George Matheou recognized with a University Level Teaching Excellence Award
“I Hear and I Forget, I See and I Remember, I Do and I Understand”
(attributed to Confucius, 551 BC to 479 BC)
In addition to his ability to solve significant societal and environmental problems using computational science, Prof. George Matheou is no stranger to educational innovations that explore new ways to involve students in the learning process. In fact his pedagogical innovations have been formally recognized by the University Teaching Innovation Award from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Connecticut. See also his innovative exhibit @ the Benton Museum of Art that blends art and science with innovative pedagogical activities.
Congratulations, Prof. Matheou!
SeungYeon Kang joins the ME department
We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. SeungYeon Kang as a new Assistant Professor in our Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Kang obtained her PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University.
Her current research interests include nanofabrication with ultrafast lasers, fundamental principles and application of light-matter interaction, 3D printing, additive manufacturing and energy harvesting through unconventional phenomenon such as piezoelectrochemistry.
New ARPA-E grant received by Prof. Julian Norato
Prof. Julian Norato has received a new ARPA-E grant to study Topology Optimization and Additive Manufacturing for Performance Enhancement of High Temperature and High Pressure Heat Exchangers.
High-temperature, high-pressure heat exchangers can substantially increase heat transfer efficiency and reduce the size and weight of the heat exchangers. In this project, the group will consider counterflow plate heat exchangers, in which the cold and hot fluids flow in between alternate parallel plates and in opposite directions. The plates have flow structures (such as fins) that increase turbulence in the flow and improve mixing, which in turn improves the heat transfer rate.
The computational topology optimization techniques that will be advanced by this project will find highly optimal designs of these fin structures to maximize the heat transfer efficiency while guaranteeing the structural integrity of the plates at the high operating temperatures. The designs obtained by this project will be additively manufactured and tested by Michigan State University’s (MSU) Scalable and Expeditious Additive Manufacturing (SEAM) process, which can efficiently 3D-print parts that are fully dense and free of residual stresses. These characteristics substantially increase the strength of the 3D-printed metal plates at high temperatures.
The topology optimization framework will be coupled with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis (FEA) solvers by Altair Engineering, the leading vendor in topology optimization software and one of the leading makers of simulation tools.