Click here to complete Spring 2010 TA/Reader/Tutor Evaluations
Professor Vlado A. Lubarda Awarded 2009-2010 Tau Beta Pi Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award.
This is Prof. Lubarda's 5th teaching award at UCSD.
"The Tau Beta Pi Award is particularly dear to me,
because it comes from our engineering students honor society,
which attracts some of our brightest and most talented
young students of engineering," said Professor Lubarda.
"Mighty Machines" of the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab make lead story in San Diego Union-Tribune.
Vehicles developed by MAE PhD students Nick Morozovsky, Chris Schmidt-Wetekam, Andrew Cavender, David Zhang,
and co-workers in the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab
were featured as the
lead story in the May 25, 2010 issue
of the Union-Tribune. Meticulously designed and enhanced with advanced feedback control algorithms, the
diminutive treaded vehicles spotlighted in the article can indeed outrun and outmaneuver the unmanned ground
vehicles currently fielded by the US military (they can even pop wheelies and stoppies, and use the tread
pivots as an active suspension system to stabilize video sensor systems). A dozen such vehicles, laden with
wind/smoke/GPS sensor packs and coordinated with advanced adaptive observation algorithms to route them where
they are needed most, will be used in upcoming tests to validate remarkable new plume estimation/forecasting
algorithms developed by the UCSD Flow Control Lab.
Read all about it at:
http://robotics.ucsd.edu/MightyMachines.jpg
Faculty Receives 2010 JOM Best Paper Award. Marc Meyers,
Sirirat Traiviratana, V. Lubarda, D. Benson, and E. Bringa received
the 2010 JOM Best Paper Award (Structural Materials Division) for "The Role of
Dislocations in the Growth of Nanosized Voids in Ductile Failure of Metals"
published in Vol. 61, PP 35-41. Picture shows V. Lubarda, E. Bringa, M. Meyers,
and D. Benson.
Click here to read the paper
Change of Major into an Impacted Major
May 19, 2010: Continuing students at UCSD who wish to be
considered for the impacted majors (mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering)
may apply to the major until June 4, 2010. 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.
Professor Frank Talke is a Recipient of the Mayo D. Hersey Award.
Congratulations to Professor Frank Talke, recipient of the Mayo D. Hersey Award for,
distinguished and continued fundamental contributions in research on the tribological
and mechanical limits of magnetic recording storage technology. The Mayo D. Hersey
Award is bestowed on an individual in recognition of distinguished and continued
contributions over a substantial period of time to the advancement of the science
and engineering of tribology. Distinguished contributions may result from significant
original research in one or more of the many scientific disciplines related to
lubrication, from excellence and creativity in lubrication engineering practice,
or from sustained and forthright efforts and dissemination of information on the theory
and practice of lubrication. This award was established in 1965 by the joint bequest
of the ASME Lubrication Division and the ASME Research Committee on Lubrication.
Penner Distinguished Lectures: The Third Generation of Control Systems,
was held on Monday, May 17, 2010. The first generation of control systems in the
modern era was analog control. It was based on the operational amplifier. It required a
theoretical framework for its utilization, which was supplied by Black, Bode, Nyquist
and others. The second generation, circa 1960, was digital control. It was based on the
digital computer. It required a new state-space based theory, which was supplied by Kalman,
Pontryagin and others. Over the past fifty years there has however been a revolution in
software and hardware, and the emergence of wireline and wireless networking. This is leading
to a third revolution in the platform for control - networked control systems. It opens up the
possibility of deploying large scale systems controlling cars on a highway, or the smart
electric grid, as examples, and is just in time for the system building era of the twenty
first century as we begin to confront problems of efficient resource utilization, and
development of large scale technological systems. This new platform requires us to study anew
both the mechanisms as well as policies for networked control. This talk will examine the
abstractions, architecture, theory and design that are necessary for the realization and
proliferation of networked control systems.
Click here to view photos from the lecture
Click here to watch a video of the lecture (RealPlayer)
MAE Students Compete in AIAA Design/Build/Fly
April 15-16, 2010: MAE students recently competed in the 14th annual American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Design/Build/Fly Competition. The primary design objective
was to accommodate random payloads of mixed-size softballs and bats. Sixty-nine teams from
around the world participated in the competition and the UCSD "TLAR Velox" team
placed twentieth overall. From top left: Matt Aralis, Steve Manganelli (advisor), Jonathan
Montague, Julia Stadler, Thomas Hong (pilot), Miles Abarr, and Matt Smallcomb. The UCSD team
was supported in part by the California Space Grant Consortium.
Professor Forman Williams has been elected into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). Professor Williams is an internationally renowned expert in the field of combustion. He pioneered the use of asymptotic analysis in the theory of combustion and contributed to advances in the theory of turbulent combustion. He identified mechanisms of fire spread and helped to improve understanding of fire phenomenology. He also helped to clarify processes of droplet and spray combustion and combustion instabilities, including cellular flames, with applications to rockets, gas turbines and hydrogen safety. Professor Williams currently holds a Presidential Chair in Energy and Combustion Research at UCSD and he served as the Director of the Center for Energy Research.
Research
Expo 2010, to be held on Thursday, April 15, 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. - March 2, 2010
Newly appointed MAE and Bioengineering Professor Ratnesh Lal's recent
collaborative work provides new avenue for Alzheimer's disease therapy
April 1, 2010: Using complementary approaches including 3D structure modeling,
nanoimaging, electrical measurements and cellular studies, their recently published
PNAS paper supports the idea that Alzheimer's disease abnormalities could result directly
from misfolded amyloid peptide forming ion channels in cell membrane. These ion channels
help disrupt cellular ionic homeostasis and change cell stability and dynamics. Their
findings caution against the potential hype of drugs that are currently being developed.
The results also provide new hope for an alternative approach: instead of designing
strategies to reduce amyloid load by making truncated smaller fragments, it is possible
to control the function of ion channels that these amyloids, both full length and
truncated ones, make when inserted in the membrane.
For details, see the PNAS paper...
Clouds and the Alternative Energy Grid
March 11, 2010: On March 11th, the CPUC approved funding for projects
designed to resolve impediments to integrating photovoltaics into the grid. One of
the awards was for a $548,000 project led by UC San Diego researcher Jan Kleissl,
assistant professor of environmental engineering in the Department of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Kleissl has used 16 weather stations
on the 1,200-acre campus to measure solar radiation every second and map
clouds continuously. The data will be used to improve solar resources maps
locally and statewide. Moreover, satellite data will be used to predict how
moving clouds will affect the power output of 6,000 photovoltaic panels on
the campus.
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
See previous news items
