Research Expo 2010
showcases Jacobs School graduate student research, and provides a forum
for industry to connect with our students and faculty. More than 500
industry leaders, venture capitalists, alumni, faculty and students are
expected to attend. All UCSD engineering graduate or Ph.D. students are
eligible to participate in the Research Expo poster session. Present your
research project, its implications, and results to-date. Post-docs are NOT
eligible to participate, unless they co-present with a graduate or Ph.D.
student who is lead on the poster.
- Thursday, April 15, 2010
MAE Professor Alison Masden named as an investigator on a recently awarded international consortium grant from the Leducq Foundation to fund "Transatlantic networks of excellence for cardiovascular research" with several other institutions. The total award is $6M and funding starts in January. - December 4, 2009
UCSD Researchers Discover That Defects in Carbon Nanotubes Could Lead to Improved Charge and Energy Storage Systems
- November 19, 2009:
Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics
quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to
carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this.
MAE Professor Alison Masden featured in Fall 2009 of Simbios: Bringing Biomedical Simulations to Your Fingertips [pdf] - November 17, 2009
Swarms of Ocean Robots will Monitor Oil Spills
- November 10, 2009:
MAE associate professor Jorge Cortes is the PI on a grant from the National Science
Foundation to develop control systems for swarms of miniature robotic ocean explorers
that could one day help predict where ocean currents will carry oil spills. Cortes is
leading the development of the control systems for swarms of small, inexpensive, underwater
robotic ocean drifters that researchers from MAE and Scripps Institution of Oceanography
at UC San Diego are designing, building and deploying.
MAE graduate students help get $155M in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds for
San Diego
- November 6, 2009:
Volunteering their time, MAE students Karl Olney, Michael
Gollner, Kevin Peng and Ihab Khayal, developed a sophisticated yet easy to
use software tool that was used across San Diego county to efficiently file
successful applications for solar photovoltaic projects on university,
school, and municipal roofs.
Former MAE Graduate Student Wins NSF Career Award
- October 29, 2009:
Congratulations to Peter Diamessis, former MAE graduate student, on
winning a NSF CAREER award! Peter is currently an Assistant
Professor in Cornell University, working in the area of
environmental fluid mechanics. He obtained his Ph.D. from MAE where
his dissertation research, advised by Professor Keiko Nomura,
utilized high-resolution simulations to examine mixing in stratified
turbulence. Read more about Peter's research at
http://www.cee.cornell.edu/people/index.cfm?netid=pjd38&showDetails=1
Change of Major into an Impacted Major
- October 28, 2009:
Continuing students at UCSD who wish to be considered for the impacted
majors (mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering) may apply to
the major until November 20, 2009. Print the
application to the major
form and return to MAE Student Affairs in EBU 2. Further instructions
and eligibility criteria are on the form.
MAE Professor Miroslav Krstic publishes a new book on control
of delay systems; presents a plenary lecture on delay systems
at ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference
- October 19, 2009:
Actuation and sensing delays are among the most critical challenges
in control engineering. Delay dynamics are infinite-dimensional and
their compensation requires tools that extend those for boundary
control of partial differential equations. Delay system applications
include combustion, machining, teleoperation over internet, HIV
treatment, and vehicle traffic. Krstic presents solutions to
feedback design problems for linear, nonlinear, finite- and infinite-
dimensional plants with input and output delays of arbitrary and
unknown length, as well as for systems with time-varying delays, in
his new 466-page single authored book
Delay Compensation for Nonlinear, Adaptive, and PDE Systems.
On October 13 he presented a plenary lecture on these new
feedback design tools at the flagship control conference in the area
of Mechanical Engineering,
ASME DSCC.
MAE Professor Jan Kleissl and UCSD Director of Strategic Energy Initiatives Byron Washom are
amongst the winners of a DOE High Penetration Solar Deployment Project
- October 9, 2009:
This project will develop advanced modeling tools and
electric power control strategies to optimize electric power value and
remove or reduce the impact of PV-sourced electricity on existing microgrids
and the SmartGrid. Factors to be modeled and evaluated include monitoring of
micro-climate effects and sky imaging systems to enable 1-hour-ahead
PV-sourced electric power output forecasting in conjunction with a utility's
dynamic price signals.
Marc Andre Meyers is the recipient of the 2009 Rinehart Award
- September 18, 2009:
Marc Andre Meyers is the recipient of the 2009 Rinehart Award,
given at the 9th Congress of the DYMAT Association on the Dynamic
Mechanical and Physical Behavior of Materials Subjected to Dynamic
Loading, held in Brussels, Belgium, from September 7 to 11. This
congress was held at the Royal Military Academy and had a
participation of 300 researchers from 29 countries. DYMAT is a
European based global association coordinating activities in the
domain of dynamic behavior of materials. The award was given at the
inaugural session of the meeting, after keynote lectures by Profs.
Field and Meyers , by General Major Harry Vindervogel, commander of
the Royal Military Academy, and by Dr. Richard Dormeval (CEA-France),
president of DYMAT.
The DYMAT award, established in 1990, is a truly global recognition,
and past recipients are from the US (4) , Russia (1), Japan (1),
Germany (1), and China (1). In 2009, the award was given to Prof.
Meyers (UCSD) and to Prof. Field (U. Cambridge, UK). The citation
in the plaque received by Prof. Meyers reads: For outstanding
achievements to the understanding and modeling of the structure/
property and damage behavior of materials subjected to
high-strain-rate and shock-wave loading.
MAE Associate Professor Jorge Cortes has received two National Science Foundation Awards
- September 8, 2009:
Jorge Cortes has received two awards from the National Science Foundation to
work on projects related to robotic sensor networks and multi-agent systems.
The award CMMI-0908508
from the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation will develop mathematical tools to analyze the
stability of distributed coordination algorithms for complex engineered systems. The project seeks to understand the
effects on stability of directed information flows (when the transmittal or acquisition of information is nonsymmetric
across the network) and switching interconnection topologies (when changing neighboring relationships induce discontinuities
in the dynamic evolution of the network). The results from the project will help engineers design autonomous and adaptive
networks in a variety of scenarios, including disaster recovery, environmental monitoring, and ocean sampling.
The award CCF-0917166
from the Division of Computer and Communication Foundations will develop efficient mechanisms for deploying and managing
wireless self-organizing networks (WSONs). These networks are able to manage themselves with little or no human intervention
and consequently can be deployed in remote, difficult-to-access areas, under adverse conditions, and/or when users have little
or no network administration skills. As such, WSONs can have significant societal and scientific impact as key enablers of
numerous applications, including emergency response, disaster relief, community networking, environmental monitoring, and
surveillance. The project will develop theoretical foundations for efficient WSON node placement and trajectory control
based on geometric computation and optimization.
UC San Diego Robots Take Center Stage at National Robotics Conference
- August 20, 2009:
Novel agile robots created by mechanical engineers at UC San Diego
recently made their way to Austin, Texas, and took center stage during a
keynote address at NI Week , the annual robotics extravaganza hosted by
National Instruments. "NI Week exposed us to 3,000 of the world's leaders
in robotics," said Tom Bewley, a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
professor at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. "As we recently
filed patent disclosures with UCSD's IP office, we finally had the
opportunity to go public on a large scale with some of our most exciting
new designs, and to begin seeking partnerships with industry for
commercialization."
Read more...
MAE Professor Jan Kleissl receives National Science Foundation CAREER Award
- August 19, 2009:
Jan Kleissl received a prestigious CAREER Award from the
National Science Foundation Environmental Sustainability Program. While
green engineering measures such as artificial turf, reflective roof
coatings, and urban
forests, have proven advantageous in conserving resources in and around
individual buildings, holistic modeling of urban meteorology and engineered
systems at the physical process level is lacking. Building upon engineering
tools from fluid mechanics, heat transfer and wireless embedded systems,
Kleissl's research will improve the description and linkage of these
processes and quantify indirect effects to catalyze smart growth and
sustainable urban engineering. Kleissl will also work with Kearny Science,
Connections & Technology High school on energy and water use audits in
school and campus buildings and developing inquiry based lesson plans on
building energy efficiency.
Surfer Magazine Takes Note of Freshman Seminar
Course - July 2009
The Physics of Surfing,
a 1 unit freshman seminar, goes beyond the classroom in more
ways than one, with the course having caught the eye of the
editors at Surfer Magazine. In its August 2009 edition, Surfer
notes the interest of Professor of Geophysics David Sandwell
and Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering Stefan Llewellyn Smith in combining traditional
academic lectures with hands (and feet) on experiments in the
fluid dynamics of surfboards and wave generation.
Read
more...
The IEEE
Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society 36th International
Conference on Plasma Science and 23rd Symposium on Fusion
Engineering were held at the Omni San Diego
Hotel - May 31 - June 5 2009
This is the first time that International Conference on
Plasma Science (ICOPS) and Symposium on Fusion Engineering
(SOFE) had joint technical and social programs. A
"theme" of the conference was "sustainability"; recyclable
and reusable items were used throughout the conference. The
combined conference was chaired by MAE Professor Farhat Beg
and Dr. Mark Tillack (Research Scientist in MAE and
Associate Director of the Center for Energy Research).
The conference was a great success, with attendance
by 700 delegates from 31 countries. In the opening
session, Professor Beg and Dr. Tillack made welcome remarks
followed by brief presentations by Dr. Art Ellis, Vice
Chancellor for Research at UC San Diego and Professor
Frieder Seible, Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering.
They gave a brief overview of the involvement of UCSD
in plasma physics and fusion energy related research.
Approximately 800 papers were presented. The
technical program included joint "super plenary" speeches,
ICOPS and SOFE plenary speeches, invited and contributed
talks, and posters. The topics that attracted the highest
number of abstracts in ICOPS were: High Energy Density
Physics, Medical, Biological and Environmental
Applications, Fast Z-Pinches and X-Ray Lasers,
Nonequilibrium Plasma Applications and High Pressure and
Thermal Plasma Processing. The most popular topics in
SOFE included ITER and Experimental Devices, Diagnostics
and Data Acquisition, Reactor Studies, Fusion Chamber
Technologies, and Plasma Support Technologies. In
addition to the technical program, many opportunities for
sightseeing and socializing were available to the
attendees. These included a lavish welcome reception,
a reception for IEEE members and women in science and
engineering, a night at the Padres baseball game, and the
traditional awards banquet. Dr. René Raffray,
also of the MAE department and CER, was awarded the 2009
IEEE/NPSS Fusion Technology Award "For his internationally
recognized expertise in fusion engineering and his
outstanding contributions to fusion technology, especially
in the area of high heat flux components for both magnetic
and inertial fusion energy." More
details...
MAE
Professor Markenscoff Lectures Abroad on Radiated Fields,
Energy-Release Rate and Evolution Equation for a Half-Space
Eshelby Inclusion - May 2009
Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff recently unified the
treatment of driving forces on moving defects: cracks,
dislocations and inclusion boundaries, by obtaining an
evolution equation for a moving inclusion boundary with
eigenstrain, which extends to dynamics the classical
Eshelby inclusion problem. The "driving force" on the
boundary is the dynamic Eshelby energy-momemtum tensor
computed for an expanding spherical inclusion, and, in the
limit, for a plane boundary moving in general motion,
analogously to dislocations and cracks. Professor
Markenscoff presented lectures on this topic at the
Mathematical Institute at Oxford
University, as well as at Northwestern University and
at the Broberg Memorial Meeting in Sweden.
Recently, she also presented lectures on the Cosserat Spectrum Theory at the
invitation of Sir
John Ball, and at the Cosserat Centennial celebration meeting in
Paris as general lecture on the contributions of the
Cosserat brothers to Solid Mechanics.
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