As the end of spring quarter approaches, I want to take a moment to reflect on this academic year, draw attention to a few noteworthy items, and direct your attention to upcoming events.
As we began the academic year last September, we were all looking forward to a return to something resembling a pre-covid experience; as we all know, those expectations were frustrated in late Fall and early Winter quarter by the Covid-19 surge. But you -faculty, staff, and students- showed your resilience and tenacity in making a rapid pivot to remote instruction, research, and work. As Covid numbers receded, you smoothly moved back into hybrid and on-campus classes, research, and work. Please allow me to express how grateful I am to everyone in the department for making this possible. With that said, it is heartening this spring quarter to see the campus returning to the active and engaging place that we all know and recognize.
Within this newsletter, you will find several noteworthy items that I would like to highlight. The MAE faculty won three early career awards, one Academic Senate Outstanding Teaching Award, multiple recognitions for senior faculty for the accumulated impact of their research work, and a number of other major new research grants. Also of note is an important change taking place at the department level in regards to graduate student researcher stipends. Recognizing the fact that living costs in our region have increased substantially, the department will increase the stipends for our graduate student researchers over the next two academic years to ensure that they can focus full-time on their Ph.D. programs.
In terms of graduation, a total of eighteen Ph.D. degrees were awarded this quarter for research that spans an extraordinary breadth of fundamental and applied topics, and over 250 undergraduates are preparing to graduate in the coming weeks. I know that I speak for all of the faculty and staff in saying that we look forward to seeing the newly minted alumni continue their work that impacts the world and our understanding of it. All of this is made possible and supported by a team of staff who have worked enthusiastically to enable the success of the faculty and students.
In the near future, we eagerly look forward to an in-person celebration for our faculty, staff, and Ph.D. students, to be held in early June. Similarly, we anticipate the excitement of an in-person commencement event for all of our graduating students. The department faculty have developed a plan for faculty recruiting that we look forward to implementing in the next academic year, which will bring added strength to our department, allow us to better serve our students, and help us increase the scope and impact of the department's research.
In Summer 2022, we will begin a major renovation of the EBU-II courtyard space to increase its attractiveness and to create a functional space that can host outdoor events, meetings, and work. In addition, we will complete a major $1.5M renovation of our undergraduate instructional laboratories and design studio spaces, which will better support these critical elements of our undergraduate programs. Finally, we anticipate an in-person Faculty and Staff retreat in September 2022 to kick off the coming academic year.
In closing, MAE is an extraordinary community that is carrying out important work which impacts thousands of people. This is only possible due to your continued diligence and hard work, and I thank each and every one of you. For the graduating students, I extend a heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for the next steps in your journey. For the faculty, students, and staff who will return in Fall, I look forward to our continued work together, and I wish you a restful and productive summer.
With gratitude,
George R. Tynan Professor & Chair Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
|
|
|
MAE Faculty Awarded National Science Foundation CAREER Award
|
The Faculty Early Career Development Program (NSF CAREER) is a distinguished award for early-career faculty who demonstrate the capacity to excel in research while also making exceptional progress towards the goals of their institution.
Three MAE faculty recently received the award, including Assistant Professor Tania Morimoto, Assistant Professor Abhishek Saha, and Assistant Professor Boris Kramer.
|
|
|
“Extending Human Dexterity Through Hand-Held Continuum Robots”
Tania's research will focus on a new class of robots that can combine the benefits of direct human operation with the precision and dexterity of robotic control. Continuum robots are long, flexible, snake-like robots that are inherently compliant and can easily navigate through highly curved and constrained environments to reach target regions, such as tumors or abscesses, deep inside the human body. The complex kinematics of these robots, along with the direct physical coupling of the human and robot in a hand-held architecture, pose challenges for how to enable precise and intuitive control for operators. The objective of this project is to determine how different human-continuum robot interaction methods affect task performance and to test these approaches in the context of a hand-held concentric tube robot and a hand-held, steerable vine robot.
|
|
|
“Dynamics of Coalescence and Mixing During Droplet Impact on Liquid Films”
Abhishek's research investigates the dynamics of droplet impact on liquid films. Droplet impact processes are everywhere in many industrial applications such as additive manufacturing, ink-jet printing, thermal sprays, and spray cooling. In nature, the impact of raindrops on ocean surfaces and subsequent mixing plays an essential role in transporting nutrients and oxygen, which are critical for marine life. This research uses advanced experimental techniques and analytical methods to define the effects of ambient conditions and liquid properties on the small- and large-scale processes that control droplet impact dynamics on liquid films. The outcome of this project will enhance our understanding and enable us to design strategies for effective industrial applications.
|
|
|
“Goal-Oriented Variable Transformations for Efficient Reduced-Order and Data-Driven Modeling”
Boris's research will enable efficient data-driven modeling of complex natural and engineering processes, including climate dynamics and rocket combustion, and in turn, will promote the progress of science and advance national prosperity and welfare. Fast and accurate computer simulation of such processes is required for real-time prediction, control intervention, and engineering design. Current techniques for developing simulation models from measurements rely on approximations that may complicate analysis and certification, without a reduction in computational cost or guarantee that underlying physical laws are respected. This project overcomes these challenges by developing a new theoretical approach for systematically uncovering optimal formulations of the system dynamics that are computationally tractable and rigorously certifiable, and that preserve key properties of the physical processes. Such formulations may enable computationally efficient and reliable modeling of chemical and thermal processes or be used to predict long-term ocean flow dynamics that can then be integrated with coupled climate models. In collaboration with industry, this research will advance the design and control of air-conditioning systems by allowing them to use faster and more accurate models of airflow in buildings.
|
|
|
Distinguished Teaching Award
|
|
|
Maziar Ghazinejad was awarded the UC San Diego 2022 Distinguished Teaching Award for Academic Senate Members. This award was created to honor exceptional teaching, and requires nominations from both colleagues and students. In recognition of the award, Maziar will receive $1,500 and will attend a ceremony in May.
|
| |
|
Abhishek Saha Wins Best Paper at ASME Turbo Expo Technical Conference
|
A collaborative work between Assistant Professor Abhishek Saha's group at UC San Diego, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India), and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany) received the Best Papers in Combustion, Fuel, and Emissions Technical track at the 2021 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Turbo Expo Technical Conference. The paper is titled “Predicting the Amplitude of Thermoacoustic Instability Using Universal Scaling Behavior”.
|
|
|
Mike Tolley, John Hwang, and Geno Pawlak Awarded ONR MURI grant
|
Associate Professor Mike Tolley, Assistant Professor John Hwang, and Professor Geno Pawlak were recently awarded an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Science and Technology Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) award. This five-year project is entitled "SERPENT: Self EneRgetic Propulsion ENTity" and will investigate the modeling, design, and fabrication of a self-sufficient, multi-functional robotic fish composed of soft materials.
|
|
|
Miroslav Krstic Wins A.V. “Bal” Balakrishnan Research Award for Scientific Excellence in Research in the Mathematics of Systems
|
Professor Miroslav Krstic was selected as the recipient of the A.V. “Bal” Balakrishnan Research Award for Scientific Excellence in Research in the Mathematics of Systems for his work in control theory and extremum seeking algorithms. The award was created by the University of Southern California (Viterbi School of Engineering) at the hand of Sophia Balakrishnan to honor her late husband. Krstic will be granted a $10,000 reward and will present a lecture at USC in the Fall of 2022.
|
|
|
Boris Kramer Awarded 3-Year Grant by MOTIE and KIAT
|
Assistant Professor Boris Kramer has been awarded a three-year grant by the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE) and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) through the International Cooperative R&D program for a project on "Prediction, Damage Analysis and Risk Assessment for a Gas Power Plant via Fast and Accurate Reduced Models".
|
|
|
Carlos Coimbra Elected as Fellow of ASME
|
Professor Carlos Coimbra was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The “Fellow” grade of membership acknowledges outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the engineering profession and to ASME.
|
|
|
George Tynan and Matt Baldwin Awarded 5-Year Agreement with DOE Office of Science
|
|
|
Professor George Tynan and Matt Baldwin (CER Research Scientist) were awarded a five-year cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy Office of Science for research on plasma-material interactions for long-pulse burning plasmas. The project will couple a high energy ion beam with a high flux plasma device to study material behavior under simultaneous plasma exposure and displacement-damage irradiation. The project will also provide a target chamber suitable for other material research needs.
|
| |
|
John Hwang Selected for DARPA Young Faculty Award
|
|
|
Assistant Professor John Hwang has been selected for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award for a project titled "Large-scale multidisciplinary design optimization of power-beaming-enabled air platforms". In this three-year project, he will develop scalable computational methods for the design of drones that are powered wirelessly by laser and RF beams.
|
|
|
Barrio Logan Science & Art Expo
|
|
|
Assistant Professor Boris Kramer's lab joined forces with the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (RPL) and Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) to host a booth themed "Space Research at UCSD" at the Barrio Logan Science & Art Expo. The event was an enormous success, with hundreds of visitors ranging from ages three to ninety-three. Displays included an eighteen-foot rocket tested by SEDS, rocket engine components, circuit boards, and space weather illustrations. Visitors played “Wheel of Fortune” and won MAE pens, RPL/SEDS shirts, UC San Diego totes, astronaut trophies, and planet-themed stress balls.
|
|
|
|
Mamadou Diagne will be joining the MAE department as an Assistant Professor in July of 2022. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2013 at the Laboratory of Automatic Control, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Engineering at the University Claude Bernard Lyon I (France).
|
|
|
Increase to GSR (Graduate Student Researcher) Stipend in Coming Years
|
|
|
To ensure that the pay of Graduate Student Researchers (GSR) is equitable with living costs in the region, the MAE Department is increasing the pay rate of its GSRs by two steps over the next two academic years.
Effective 10/1/2022: MS students who work as GSRs will be paid at the step 5 pay rate, and Ph.D. students will be paid at the step 7 (pre-candidacy) and step 8 (in-candidacy) pay rates.
Effective 10/1/2023: Ph.D. students will be paid at the step 8 (pre-candidacy) and step 9 (in-candidacy) pay rates.
Please note that MS students will benefit from one step increase over the two-year period, while Ph.D. students will receive two step increases.
|
| |
|
The MAE Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Committee exists to increase advising support for MAE graduate students in a peer mentorship capacity, to improve communication between graduate students and the MAE department, and to collaborate on pathways for improvement.
Check out the P2P website to learn more or contact us via email.
|
|
|
MAE Graduate Student Council Event
|
|
|
TEA TIME
The MAE Graduate Student Council (GSC) hosts bi-weekly "Tea Times" for students, faculty, and staff to socialize.
Location: EBU II Courtyard
May 25, 2022 from 2:00-3:00 PM
June 8, 2022 from 2:00-3:00 PM
|
|
|
2022 Interdisciplinary Research Awards
|
|
|
This year, three out of the four 2022 Interdisciplinary Research Awards were presented to MAE Ph.D. students Aditya Vasan, Chenghai Li, and James Lynch. The award is provided by the Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs and recognizes students whose research exemplifies collaborative work.
|
|
|
2022 Graduate Student Leader Award
|
|
|
Ross E. Turner, a Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. student, received the Outstanding Graduate/Professional Student Leader Award through the Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. This award recognizes individuals who lead and serve their fellow graduate students with exceptional ability, especially in relation to student advocacy.
|
| |
|
Spring 2022 Doctoral Defenses
|
Aamodh Suresh (PI: Sonia Martinez)
"Towards risk-perception-aware and intuitive algorithm design for robotic navigation"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position at a national laboratory
Miriam Bell (PI: Padmini Rangamani)
"Mechanochemical modeling of structural plasticity in synapses"
Future Plans: Scientist at Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) completing computational modeling in Translational Pharmacometrics
Nha Uyen Huynh (PI: George Youssef, Prabhakar Bandaru)
"Multiscale in-situ spatiotemporal characterization of polymers"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position at a national laboratory with a focus on polymer chemistry and/or in-situ material characterization
Arijit Mahapatra (PI: Padmini Rangamani, David Saintillan)
"Transport phenomena in lipid bilayers"
Ashish Manohar (PI: Tania Morimoto (Chair), Elliot McVeigh (Co-Chair))
"Spatio-temporal resolution of regional cardiac function assessment with four dimensional computed tomography imaging"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position at UC San Diego Bioengineering Department
Alexander Bertino (PI: Peiman Naseradinmousavi, Miroslav Krstic)
"Prescribed-time safety filters and delay-adaptive control of robot manipulators"
Joseph Strehlow (PI: Farhat Beg)
"Optimizing laser-ion acceleration with flat and structured foils"
Future Plans: Thermonuclear Plasma Physics Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Alicia Dautt-Silva (PI: Raymond de Callafon)
"Robust input shaping for models with parametric uncertainties"
Future Plans: Staff Controls Engineer at General Atomics Energy
Nicholas Aybar (PI: Farhat Beg)
"Investigation of the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of current and magnetic fields in gas-puff Z-pinches""
Future Plans: Postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Daisy Galeana (PI: Asfaw Beyene (Chair), Prabhakar Bandaru (Co-Chair))
"Computational and experimental investigation of vortex cooling of a gas turbine blade using 3-D stereo-particle image velocimetry and liquid crystals"
Stephanie Sincomb (PI: Antonio Sanchez)
"Modeling of cerebrospinal fluid flow using quantitative MRI for clinical application"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position with Professor Antonio Sanchez modeling the cerebrospinal fluid flow
Yikyung Yu (PI: Daniel M. Tartakovsky (Chair), Prabhakar Bandaru (Co-Chair))
"Efficient global sensitivity analysis of models with many inputs"
Wei Zhou (PI: Nicholas Gravish)
"Coordinated locomotion of collective robots through collisional interactions"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position with Assistant Professor Nicholas Gravish
Isaac Cabrera (PI: Marc Meyers, Albert Lin)
"Innovating technologies for affordable and accessible prosthetic healthcare"
|
|
|
Gaia Righi (PI: Marc Meyers)
"Iron under extreme conditions: Nano and microstructural effects"
Future Plans: Postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Harold Brown Postdoctoral Fellowship)
Sean Garner (PI: Andrea Tao)
"An engineering approach to biological materials and chemistry: Leveraging nature's ability to optimize toughness, mass transfer, and specific binding chemistry"
Future Plans: Interviewing in industry
Yongliang Dong (PI: Prabhakar Bandaru)
"Optimizing sensitivity of surface plasmonics sensor and electrolyte field effect transistor sensor by graphene"
Future Plans: Lam Research
Yuan Zeng (PI: Andrea Tao)
"Bottom-up total fabrication: From molecule to wafer-scale plasmonic devices"
|
|
|
Yvonne Wollmann- 10 Years of Service
|
|
|
|
Yvonne began working at UC Irvine in March of 2011 as an Academic Advisor for University Extension. She joined UC San Diego in March of 2013 as a Student Affairs Officer for the Structural Engineering Department, and was promoted to Student Affairs Manager. She also served as a Student Affairs Manager in the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute prior to transitioning into her current role as the Materials Science and Engineering Lead in the MAE Department. One thing Yvonne loves about working for UC San Diego is the opportunity to meet new people and to collaborate with the JSOE community.
|
|
|
Exemplary Staff Employee of the Year Award
|
The Exemplary Staff Employee of the Year Award at UC San Diego acknowledges the extraordinary efforts of staff. Lusia Veksler won the award in 2021, and currently serves as the Lead Faculty Administrator for the MAE Department.
|
|
|
| Her accomplishments include:
- Creating a Communication in English program for MAE graduate students with English as a Second Language (ESL).
- Helping a large research group when a faculty member was in the emergency room.
-
Identifying and obtaining a software license for iThenticate (a plagiarism tool for research-related writing) for a reduced fee to assist JSOE research groups.
- Producing training videos for students and faculty when the expense system switched to SAP Concur.
|
|
|
Rudolph Gallegos- Staff Research Associate
|
|
|
|
Join us in welcoming Rudolph Gallegos, who recently began working as a Staff Research Associate in Assistant Professor Stephanie Lindsey's lab. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, and spent time working in a clinical laboratory that focused on sequencing DNA to test for hereditary diseases. Rudolph also spent time in the food sciences as an apprentice winemaker and brewer. His long-time passion is writing songs and making music.
|
|
|
Tyler Andrews- Business Office & Chair's Assistant
|
|
|
Tyler is joining MAE as the Business Office and Chair’s Assistant. Before arriving at UC San Diego, Tyler worked as a case manager and assisted homeless individuals in securing permanent housing. Tyler loves the excitement of an academic setting where people are constantly learning. On the weekends, Tyler enjoys hiking and exploring new areas.
|
| |
|
Week 9: 05/27/22
Deadline for Graduate Students to drop with "W" grade on transcript (via EASy)
Week 11: 06/10/22
Deadline for Graduate Final Report Form (Docusign) for Spring 2022 degree completion
Finals Week: 6/04/22-6/10/22
Quarter Ends: 6/10/22
*Deadlines are as of 11:59 PM on the date posted.
|
9/16/2022
Registration fee payment deadline
|
|
|
Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails. View this email online.
|
9500 Gilman Drive | La Jolla, CA 92093 US
|
|
|
This email was sent to . To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.
|
|
|
|