MAE Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser is selected
to receive the 2008 American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME) Stephen P. Timoshenko
Medal
May 2008: Sia Nemat-Nasser, distinguished professor
of mechanics and materials, will receive the 2008
Timoshenko Medal of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers. It recognizes Sia for 'fundamental
theoretical and experimental contributions in dynamic
stability; deformation and failure modes of materials;
nano-electro-chemo-mechanical characterization and modeling
of ionic polymer metal composites; and composites with
tuned electromagnetic functionality, self-healing and
self-sensing.' The medal will be presented during the ASME
2008 International Mechanical Congress and Exposition
(IMECE), Oct 31-Nov 06, 2008, in Boston, MA.
MAE Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser receives the
2008 Sacramento State University Distinguished Alumni
Service Award
April 2008: The Alumni Association of Sacramento
State University awards Sia Nemat-Nasser, distinguished
professor of mechanics and materials, with the 2008
Distinguished Alumni Service Award. The award
recognizes Sia for exceptional, distinguished and sustained
contributions to engineering research and teaching.
The award was presented to Sia at the honors banquet
hosted by Sacramento State University's President,
Alexander Gonzalez (above photo, right), Dean of
Engineering, Emir Macari, and the Alumni Association, April
17, 2008.
MAE Professor Sia Nemat-Nasser is awarded
the 2008 American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE)
Theodore von Karman Medal
Spring 2008: The Engineering Mechanics Division of
ASCE awards Sia Nemat-Nasser, distinguished professor of
mechanics and materials, with the 2008 Theodore von Karman
Medal. The award recognizes Sia for 'exceptional,
distinguished and sustained contributions in the fields of
micromechanics, granular materials, constitutive relations
of materials, stability and dynamic behavior of solids and
structures, and experimental and analytical methods in
broad areas of engineering mechanics'. The medal will
be presented during the Engineering Mechanics Institute's
inaugural International Conference, May 18-21, 2008 in
Minneapolis, NM.
MAE Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff Named a
Russell Severance Springer Distinguished Visiting
Professor
May, 2008: MAE Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff has
been named a Russell Severance Springer Distinguished
Visiting Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department
at UC Berkeley, for the academic year 2008-2009. As
part of her duties she will give a Departmental Lecture and
teach a short graduate course on Dislocation Dynamics, her
area of expertise. Previous Springer Professors in
the Solid Mechanics/Continuum Mechanics areas include L.B.
Freund, G.A.Maugin and K.Rajagopal.
Creating Faster Integrated Circuits by
Slowing Light
April 22, 2008: Two UCSD research groups have merged
two previously unrelated areas of cutting-edge research in
optics – slow light and Anderson localization –
and have shown in a paper published in the journal Nature
Photonics that structures being considered as prime
building blocks for nanophotonic integrated circuits are
very susceptible to the effects of disorder, including
Anderson localization. The new findings were led by
UCSD electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Shayan
Mookherjea in collaboration with UCSD Mechanical
Engineering Professor Prabhakar Bandaru.
MAE Professor Miroslav Krstic elected Fellow of
IFAC
Spring 2008: Miroslav Krstic has been elected Fellow
of International Federation of Automatic Control for
"pioneering contributions to adaptive nonlinear control,
extremum seeking, boundary control of distributed parameter
systems, and control of turbulent fluid flows." Krstic is
the the second professor at UCSD to receive this honor and
only third IFAC Fellow in the UC system (Bob Bitmead and
Petar Kokotovic were elected in 2005). Krstic will be
officially introduced as Fellow of IFAC at this year's IFAC
World Congress in Seoul, Korea, in July.
Sia Nemat-Nasser Early Career Medal
Established
Spring 2008: The Materials Division of ASME is
pleased to announce the creation of The Sia Nemat-Nasser
Early Career Medal in honor of Dr. Sia Nemat- Nasser,
Director of the Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials
at UC San Diego and Distinguished Professor of Mechanics
and Materials. This award is given to recognize research
excellence in the areas of experimental, computational, and
theoretical mechanics and materials by young investigators
who are within 10 years after their Ph.D. degree, with
special emphasis placed on under-represented minorities and
women. Information about the award may be found on
the ASME Materials Division, Honors &
Awards website.
MAE Professor Beg Wins 2008 IEEE/NPSS Early
Achievement Award
March 31, 2008: MAE Professor Farhat Beg has been
selected as the winner of the 2008 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma
Sciences Society (NPSS) Early Achievement Award. The
Early Achievement Award recognizes outstanding
contributions to any of the fields making up Nuclear and
Plasma Sciences, within the first ten years of an
individual's career. Professor Beg's citation reads: "For
contributions to the understanding of electron transport in
short pulse high intensity laser matter interactions and
the physics of pulsed power driven z-pinches.
MAE Professor Eric Lauga receives National
Science Foundation CAREER Award
Mar 7, 2008: Eric Lauga received a NSF CAREER Award
from the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering,
Environmental, and Transport Systems. Professor
Lauga's group will develop a general framework for
biological and synthetic locomotion in complex fluids;
provide theoretical evidence that swimming
microorganisms interacting hydrodynamically form a chaotic
dynamical system; propose hydrodynamics mechanisms
contributing to symmetry-breaking in the beat patterns of
oscillating biological filaments; and lead an
ambitious, integrated research and educational initiative
in biological and complex fluids.
MAE Distinguished Professor Sungho Jin is
selected as MRS Fellow
March 2008: Sungho Jin, Distinguished Professor of
Materials Science, has been selected as Fellow of the MRS
(Materials Research Society) for pioneering research on
magnetic, superconducting, environmental, nano and bio
materials, and for significant publications, patents and
industrial applications. The title of MRS Fellow honors
scientists who are notable for their distinguished research
accomplishments and their outstanding contributions to the
advancement of materials research, world-wide. The
inaugural class of Fellows will be recognized at the 2008
MRS Spring Meeting, March 24-28, in San
Francisco.
MAE Professor Meyers Receives the 2008
Distinguished Service Award from the Structural Materials
Division of TMS
March 2008: MAE Professor Marc Meyers has received
the 2008 Distinguished Service Award from the Structural
Materials Division of TMS (The Minerals, Metals &
Materials Society). The award will be presented at
the Annual TMS meeting in New Orleans in March 2008.
This award recognizes an individual who has made a
long lasting contribution to the fundamental understanding
of microstructure, properties and performance of structural
materials for industrial applications.
MAE Professor Lasheras Named to Endowed
Chair at UCSD
February 12, 2008: UC San Diego announced that Juan
C. Lasheras, a distinguished professor of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering (MAE), has been appointed the first
holder of the Stanford S. and Beverly P. Penner Endowed
Chair in Engineering and Applied Science in the
university’s Jacobs School of Engineering.
Lasheras, an international expert on the mechanics
and computer modeling of fluid flows, including blood flow,
has won numerous “Teacher of the Year” awards
and also is an outspoken champion of UC San Diego and the
profession of engineering.
MAE PhD
Student Tammy Ma Receives Best Talk Award at 2008 UCSD
All-Grads Symposium
Feb 21, 2008: Tammy Ma, a PhD student in MAE
Professor Farhat Beg's Fast Ignition and Laser-Plasma
Interactions group won the best talk award at the 2008 UCSD
All-Grads Symposium in the Physical and Engineering
Sciences Panel for her talk entitled "Extreme Ultraviolet
Imaging of Petawatt Laser-Irradiated Targets.
MAE Graduate Student Christopher
Schmidt-Wetekam Sweeps Awards at the UCSD Jacobs School
Research Expo
Feb 21, 2008: Christopher Schmidt-Wetekam, a PhD
student in MAE Professor Thomas Bewley's Coordinated
Robotics Lab, swept up the top honors at the UCSD Jacobs
School Research Expo from the Controls Center, the MAE
Department, and the Jacobs School, for his work in
developing the highly agile autonomous robotic systems,
iHop and iLean. For more info on this activity, see
the UCSD
Coordinated Robotics Lab web site and the PBS story on this project that aired on KPBS
on Feb 22.
Jacobs School of Engineering Awards MAE Professor
Lubarda "Best Teacher" Award
Winter 2007: Jacobs School of Engineering Dean
Frieder Seible presented Professor Vlado Lubarda "Teacher
of the Year Award" in the Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering Department for 2006/2007. Professor
Lubarda was selected by popular vote by students completing
surveys. Professor Lubarda is an Adjunct Professor of
Applied Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering, and has been with UCSD since
1998.
Former MAE Graduate Student, Prasad
Varanasi, Shares in Nobel Prize Awarded to Gore and Climate
Change Panel
Fall 2007: Former MAE Graduate Student Professor
Prasad Varanasi, now part of Stony Brook University's
School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, has been
recognized for their contributions to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize last Friday along with former Vice President Al
Gore for efforts to control global warming.
A Unique Way To Lower Energy
Costs
05 December 2007: UC San Diego undergraduate
students have designed, built and deployed a network of
five weather-monitoring stations as a key step toward
helping the university use ocean breezes to cool buildings,
identify the sunniest rooftops to expand its solar-electric
system, and use water more efficiently in irrigation and in
other ways. The network, which will be expanded to 20
stations in 2008, is unprecedented in the United States for
the density of weather data to be collected. Project
leaders are inviting San Diego-area schools and businesses
to make their rooftops available for additional stations to
broaden the geographic scope, scientific value, and
potential energy savings of the effort.
MAE Ph.D. graduate, Carlos Pantano-Rubino,
Receives a PECASE Award
01 November 2007: Dr. Carlos Pantano-Rubino has been
selected as a recepient of the Presidential Early Career
Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The
PECASE award is the highest honor bestowed by the US
government on researchers in the beginning stage of their
careers. The awards were given out by the White House
in a ceremony on November 1st, 2007. Dr.
Pantano-Rubino is currently an assistant professor in the
department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. His
doctoral research in MAE, advised by Professor Sutanu
Sarkar, was in the area of numerical simulation of
compressible, reacting flows. After a postdoctoral
stint at California Institute of Technology, he joined
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, where he is
currently an assistant professor in the department of
Mechanical Science and Engineering. Read more at
The
Department of Energy (DoE) Office of Science and in
this DoE Press Release.
MAE Distinguished Professor Sia
Nemat-Nasser was Honored at ASME
November 14-15 2007: MAE Distinguished Professor Sia
Nemat-Nasser was honored at ASME, November 14-15, by a
symposium, "Modeling and Experiments in Nanomechanics and
Nanomaterials – In Honor of Prof. Sia Nemat-Nasser
and his Contributions in Constitutive Equations," as part
of the 2007 International Mechanical Engineering Congress
& Exposition, Seattle Washington. This was the
fourth symposium in his honor. The first was a
special two-day international symposium on "Deformation
Characteristics and Modeling of Materials" in Sendai,
Japan, 1996, the second, a three-day symposium on
"Experiments and Modeling of Failure of Modern Materials"
in San Diego as part of the MechMat2001 Conference, June
2001, and the third at the Society of Engineering Science
39th Annual Technical Meeting, October 2002, for receiving
the Prager Medal.
MAE Undergrads Dream with
Snapdragons
18 October 2007: In response to QUALCOMM’s
Innovator Challenge, Engineering undergraduate students
envisioned a portable electronic device that looks like a
book and has two screens. You could watch TV while
you work scribble answers to math problems on the second
screen which – at that moment – would serve as
an electronic notebook. The team won first prize and
$5,000 in the QUALCOMM engineering design contest, for
their ideas for what is possible with QUALCOMM’s new
ultra powerful chip set for mobile devices, called
Snapdragon.
What Makes Teeth Cut - MAE Research on
History Channel
11 October 2007: The research of materials science
professor Marc Meyers is part of a feature to air Oct. 11
and 12 on the History Channel. The Modern Marvels:
World's Sharpest episode will focus on at the most amazing
blades in the world, including some natural slicers in the
animal world. Meyers is conducting detailed studies of
shark and piranha teeth and other cutting surfaces found in
nature as part of his research on biomimetics.
MAE Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff
co-authors a paper that finally resolves a fundamental
issue in metal plasticity that eluded a satisfactory
solution
September 2007: Plastic deformation of most metals
occur by the motion of dislocations. A dislocation is a
geometric defect in the lattice structure, and thus does
not entail an inherent mass, but displays effective mass.
The quantification of this effective mass and the
associated self-force on an accelerating dislocation has
been an unresolved issue in crystal plasticity. UCSD
Mechanical Engineering Professor Xanthippi Markenscoff and
her former graduate student, Dr. Luqun Ni, have finally
managed to provide convincing solution for this problem
using elegant mathematical techniques. The paper is
in-press in Journal of Mechanics and Physics of Solids and
may be downloaded at this site under 'Articles in
Press'.
MAE Engineering Dynamo Sol Penner Honored
by National Academy Of Engineering
26 September 2007: During its 2007 annual meeting,
the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present
awards for extraordinary achievement. NAE's Founders
Award will be given to MAE Emeritus Professor Stanford S.
"Sol" Penner, who made important advances in thermophysics,
applied spectroscopy, combustion, propulsion, and energy.
The award will be presented at a ceremony to be held
on Sunday, Sept. 30
MAE Professor Lasheras Co-authors Study on
How Cells Change the Pace of Their Steps
03 August 2007: Scientists at UCSD have discovered
how cells of higher organisms change the speed at which
they move, a basic biological discovery that may help
researchers devise ways to prevent cancer cells from
spreading throughout the body. “For the first
time, we’ve been able to make precise measurements of
the repetitive nature of the forces and strain energies
exerted by cells, and this has allowed us to better
characterize the mechanics of the cell motility
cycle,” said Juan C. Lasheras, a co-author of the
study and a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering.
Operating at the Interface between Science and
Society:
Mechanical Engineering
Summer 2007: The University of California, San Diego
offers a unique pre-college summer academic and residential
experience called Academic Connections. The program is
targeted at highly motivated, college bound high school
students entering grades 10 - 12. The goal of the program
is to provide hands-on college subject matter courses and
the opportunity to experience life and learning at a
top-ranked research university.
During the past 2007 summer session instructor Kristin
Schaaf and teaching assistant Christian Nielsen (both MAE
graduate students at the Center of Excellence for Advanced
Materials under the direction of Dr. Sia Nemat-Nasser)
taught a mechanical engineering course entitled 'Operating
at the Interface between Science and Society: Mechanical
Engineering'. The course was taught through a large variety
of activities including lectures, group projects, tours of
research labs and machine shops, field trips, guest
speakers, hands-on experience in fabricating composite test
specimens, as well as conducting mechanical tests. The
students were exposed to the broad nature and great career
flexibility associated with mechanical engineering. Most
importantly the course enhanced the students' understanding
and interest in the area of mechanical
engineering.
Jacobs School of Engineering Establishes
Department of NanoEngineering
03 July 2007: Seeking to capitalize on the potential
of a new generation of multi-functional nanoscale devices
and special materials built on the scale of individual
molecules, UC San Diego has established a new Department of
NanoEngineering within its Jacobs School of Engineering
effective July 1. Undergraduate and graduate students
will learn from an interdisciplinary team of professors who
are leaders in various fields of engineering, physics and
chemistry and a variety of new sub-disciplines where those
fields overlap.
MAE Professor Frank Talke Wins Prestigious
Humboldt Award
27 June 2007: Frank Talke, professor of mechanical
engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San
Diego, has received a 2007 Humboldt Research Award. The
prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is one of
the most prestigious scientific honors in Germany, given to
eminent foreign scholars in recognition of their lifetime
academic achievements.
MAE Distinguished Professor Sia
Nemat-Nasser awarded the B.J. Lazan
Award
5 June 2007: Sia Nemat-Nasser was awarded the 2007
B.J. Lazan Award from the Society of Experimental
Mechanics, Inc. The award recognizes Sia for his
outstanding original technical contributions to
experimental-theoretical contributions to the
characterization and multi-scale modeling of polymer-metal
composites, geomaterials, ceramics, crystalline metals, and
the creation of novel composites.
MAE Professor Cattolica leads "Wood Chips
in - Biofuel out" research effort
12 June 2007: California researchers plan to make
biofuels without using any food crops or microbial
fermentation and reduce the load on landfills in the
process. A new research effort involving three
University of California campuses (San Diego, Davis, and
Berkeley) and West Biofuels LLC, will develop a prototype
research reactor that will use steam and catalysts to
efficiently convert forest, urban, and agricultural
“cellulosic” wastes directly into alcohol that
can be used as a gasoline additive.
MAE Chair Paul Linden Elected to Royal
Society
24 May 2007: Paul Linden, a professor in UC San
Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering, has been
elected as a fellow to the United Kingdom's National
Academy of Science in recognition of his worldwide
influence on the scientific field of experimental fluid
dynamics. Linden, the Blasker Professor of
Environmental Science and Engineering and chair of the
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is one
of 44 scientists recognized this year by the Royal Society
for exceptional contributions to society in the fields of
science, engineering and medicine.
MAE Professor Bandaru studies carbon
nanotubes and nanofibers
17 May 2007: Pasta tastes like pasta – with or
without a spiral. But when you jump to the nanoscale,
everything changes: carbon nanotubes that look like
nanoscale spiral pasta have completely different electronic
properties than their non-spiraling nanotube cousins.
Engineers at UC San Diego, and Clemson University are
studying these differences in the hopes of creating new
kinds of components for nanoscale
electronics.
MAE Professor Sonia Martinez receives
National Science Foundation CAREER Award
1 May 2007: Sonia Martinez received a NSF CAREER
Award from the Division of Civil, Mechanical and
Manufacturing Innovation, for the proposal "Efficient
Multi-Vehicle Coordination for Distributed Sensing and
Estimation". The research will focus on the
integration of control, communication, and computation
aspects of multi-vehicle systems used in remote observation
applications. In particular the project aims to
develop novel tools to analyze the complexity of these
distributed mobile systems in order to design robust
algorithms with predictable behavior.
MAE 156 Departmental award winners for
Winter 2007 Senior Design Projects
Winter 2007: It is our pleasure to announce the MAE
Departmental award winners for senior design projects in
Winter 2007. There were numerous excellent projects,
and the selection process was difficult. Each section
has been awarded a first place and second place
award.
From french fries to fuel: UCSD students
explore alternative fuel
04 Apr 2007: A team of UCSD students are turning
vegetable oil from the university's fast-food restaurants
into usable biodiesel fuel to power any diesel engine car.
Currently, 17 UCSD students, many chemical engineers,
are working to design and construct a working biodiesel
reactor, at a cost of about $2,500, which will take campus
waste vegetable oil supplied by the university's cafeterias
and convert it into useable fuel to power diesel auto
engines
Widely Used Iron Nanoparticles Exhibit
Toxic Effects on Cells
28 Mar 2007: Researchers at UC San Diego have
discovered that iron-containing nanoparticles being tested
in the treatment of several human diseases can be toxic to
nerve cells and interfere with the formation of their
signal-transmitting extensions. “Iron is
an essential nutrient for mammals and most life forms and
iron oxide nanoparticles were generally assumed to be
safe,” said Sungho Jin, a professor of materials
science at UCSD and senior author of a paper published in
the June issue of Biomaterials. “However,
there are recent reports that this type of nanoparticle can
be toxic in some cell types, and our discovery of their
nano-toxicity in yet another type of cell suggests that
these particles may not be as safe as we had once
thought.”
MAE Professor Prab Bandaru Presented
National Science Foundation CAREER Award
February 2007: Prab Bandaru was presented a CAREER
Award from the National Science Foundation (Division of
Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems), for his
proposed work on "Nonlinear Carbon Nanotube and Nanowire
Morphologies for Unique Nanoelectronics" for the years
2007-2012. This research is aimed at a detailed study of
the electrical properties of nonlinear structures, such as
junctions and coils, at the nanoscale, for developing new
types of electronic components such as electrical switches,
logic elements, frequency mixers, and nanoscale inductors.
The proposed research has the potential to usher in new
electronic technologies through the use of new physical
principles.
Eugenio Schuster Receives National Science
Foundation CAREER Award
February 2007: Eugenio Schuster, MAE PhD (2004)
advised by Miroslav Krstic and George Tynan, has received
the NSF CAREER award for the proposal "Nonlinear Control of
Plasmas in Nuclear Fusion". Eugenio is on the faculty of
the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at
Lehigh University. His research group web page is
http://www.lehigh.edu/~eus204/schuster.html
MAE Professor Jin to Receive TMS Society's
2007 John Bardeen Award
February 2007: Sungho Jin, Iwama Professor and
Distinguished Professor of Materials Science, will receive
The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's (TMS) 2007
John Bardeen Award, which recognizes an individual who has
made outstanding contributions and is a leader in the field
of electronic materials. The award will be presented
at the TMS Awards Dinner on February 27, 2007 in Orlando,
Florida during the 136th TMS Annual Meeting.
Researchers
Farhat Beg and John Pasley collaborate on a team studying
fast ignition for inertial confinement fusion
energy
January/February 2007: Ever since the development of
the first optical laser in 1960, researchers have
engineered ways to manipulate laser pulses. Today, with the
Titan laser, scientists are investigating matter under
extreme conditions in support of the Laboratory’s
mission within the fields of astrophysics, materials
science, and plasma physics. results from Titan laser
experiments will expand the current understanding of
different states of matter from stellar conditions to
nuclear weapons.
Cymer-Fest hosted by Center for Control Systems
and Dynamics (CCSD)
17 Jan 2007: The largest UCSD alumni-founded company,
Cymer, founded by MAE alumni Bob Akins and Rick Sandstrom,
was hosted on UCSD campus on January 17 for a high profile
seminar and job fair where one of the co-founders, Rick
Sandstrom, introduced Cymer to graduate students in control
and photonics, and the recent MAE control PhD and Cymer
engineer Wayne Dunstan spoke about the working environment
in Cymer and about numerous controls problems in excimer
lasers.
MAE Professor Buckley Helps Launch
Environmental Education Initiative to Promote Engineering
to Girls
11 Jan 2007: University of California, San Diego
(UCSD) engineering faculty and students, together with San
Diego Supercomputer staff, are launching an environmental
education initiative they hope will keep middle school
girls excited about science, and eventually, careers in
engineering. The UCSD team will help San Diego county
students monitor the air quality, solar radiation, and
other environmental factors surrounding their own schools,
and will use the environmental research concepts and
techniques to create a multi-player online science
challenge game designed specifically for 12-15 year-old
girls.
MAE Professor Nemat-Nasser Receives 2006
Robert Henry Thurston Lecture Award
November 2006: Sia Nemat-Nasser, Distinguished
Professor of Mechanics and Materials, was recognized for
distinguished contributions as a world leader in the art of
experimental, theoretical and computational applied
mechanics, including biomimetic multifunctional materials.
The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was established in
1925 in honor of Robert Henry Thurston, the first president
of ASME, and a farseeing leader in science and engineering.
The Robert Henry Thurston Lecture was elevated to a Society
award in 2000 to encourage stimulating thinking on a
subject of broad technical interest to engineers.
MAE Professor Bandaru Named to Scientific
American 50 List
November 2006: MAE Professor Prabhakar Bandaru has
been named to the 2006 Scientific American 50, a
list of top scientists and innovators that is published
annually by the popular-science that specializes in
communicating to nonscientists. The magazine's editor
in chief John Rennie said the list pays tribute to
individuals and organizations who, through their efforts in
research, business, and policy-making, are driving advances
in science and technology that lay groundwork for a better
future.
Robin Ihnfeldt wins ICPT '06 Poster
Award
Foster City, November 2006: Professor Jan Talbot's
Chemical Engineering graduate student Robin Ihnfeldt won an
Outstanding Poster Award for the 2006 International
Conference on Planarization/CMP Technology for her poster
session submission “Copper Removal Rate Predictions
Using Alumina Agglomerate Size Distribution and Copper
Nanohardness Measurements”
Peak Performance Through
Controls
Fall 2006: When MAE Professor Miroslav Krstic isn't
devising techniques that boost the performance of
everything from fusion reactors to high speed trains that
levitate above magnetic tracks, he dreams of cars.
Not just any cars. He likes the models that are
souped-up with the types of control algorithms he and his
colleagues at UCSD have been developing for a decade.
Krstic is putting the Jacobs School on the fast track
to industrial partnerships by leading the newly organized
Center for Control Systems and Dynamics (CCSD).
Dynamic Systems and Controls Chair Awarded
to Robert Skelton
October 2006: Robert E. Skelton, a Distinguished
Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San
Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering and a leading
controls theorist, has been named the Daniel L. Alspach
Professor of Dynamic Systems and Controls. Skelton
has been involved with the country's first space station,
Skylab, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and a wide
variety of down-to-Earth projects involving everything from
robots to red blood cells.
MAE Welcomes New Faculty
Member
October 2006: The Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering recruited Assistant Professor Jan
Kleissl , who will add to the department's strength in
environmental engineering group. Kleissl's expertise is in
atmospheric boundary layer meteorology, turbulence,
integrated field measurements, numerical modeling of
evaporation, and use of sensor networks. His work has
applications to a range of environmental problems including
air quality and land-atmosphere interactions.
Michigan, UCSD take top honors at sub
races
Escondido, July 2006:- Teams from the University of
Michigan and UC San Diego took top honors in the 2006 Human
Powered Submarine Contest, organized by the local chapter
of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The
contest drew 12 entries from across the country, along with
one from Canada and one from the Netherlands. The
Michigan team took first place for speed in the two-person
category, achieving an average speed of 4.576 knots in the
Offshore Model Basin, located in the western part of
Escondido off Mission Avenue. UCSD won for the
solo-operated submarine, finishing with an average speed of
3.05 knots.
MAE Professor de Callafon Helps Find a
Better Way To Quiet Noisy Environments
April 2006: Researchers at the University of
California, San Diego (UCSD) report in the April 4 issue of
the Journal of Sound and Vibration a new
mathematical algorithm designed to dramatically improve
noise-cancellation technologies that are used to quiet
everything from airplane cabins to commercial air
conditioning systems. The new technique improves the
ability to achieve destructive interference, the generation
of anti-noise signals that combine with and destroy
unwanted sounds.
Strings as Structural Elements? Engineers
Devise Mathematics for New Age
Structures
27 Mar 2006: Scientists at UCSD have devised two
mathematical tools considered to be a major
contribution to the optimal design of a new generation of
deformable bridges, buildings, shape-controllable airplane
wings, radio antennas, and other alternatives to current
structural technologies.
Summer Science Program for High School
Students Expands Enrollment
08 Mar 2006: The COSMOS program administered by the
Jacobs School will bring nearly 50 percent more talented
high school students to the UCSD campus for a month this
summer, with a March 16 deadline for
applications.
UCSD Research on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Wins Outstanding Technical Paper Award
07 Mar 2006: Tests at the Jacobs School of
Engineering's Department of Structural Engineering
verified that the wing structure of the MQ-5B Hunter
unmanned aerial vehicle can endure a higher amount of
stress.
