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Technique for 3-D Printing Metals at the Nanoscale Reveals Surprise Benefit

09-20-23

Late last year, Caltech researchers revealed that they had developed a new fabrication technique for printing microsized metal parts containing features about as thick as three or four sheets of paper. Now, the team has reinvented the technique to allow for printing objects a thousand times smaller: 150 nanometers, which is comparable to the size of a flu virus. In doing so, the team also discovered that the atomic arrangements within these objects are disordered, which would, at large scale, make these materials unusable because they would be considered weak and "low quality." In the case of nanosized metal objects, however, this atomic-level mess has the opposite effect: these parts can be three-to-five-times stronger than similarly sized structures with more orderly atomic arrangements.

The work was conducted in the lab of Julia R. Greer, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering; and Fletcher Jones Foundation Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. It is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nano Letters. [Caltech story]

Tags: APhMS research highlights MCE Julia Greer Wenxin Zhang

2022-2023 Mechanical and Civil Engineering Award Winners Announced

06-16-23

Andrew Akerson and Maegan Tucker receive the 2023 Centennial Prize for the Best Thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering. Kaila Coimbra receives the 2023 Mechanical and Civil Engineering Award. Eric Ocegueda receives the 2022-2023 MCE Outstanding Service Award. Logan Hayes and Barry Lawlor receive the 2022-2023 Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, respectively. 

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Tags: honors MCE Maegan Tucker Kaila Coimbra Andrew Akerson Eric Ocegueda Logan Hayes Barry Lawlor

Barry Lawlor Receives the 2022-2023 Mechanical and Civil Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award

06-16-23

Barry Lawlor receives the award "in recognition of outstanding teaching assistance awarded to a graduate student" in MCE. Winners are selected by a committee appointed annually by the Executive Officer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering.

Tags: honors MCE Barry Lawlor

Logan Hayes Receives the 2022-2023 Mechanical and Civil Engineering Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award

06-16-23

Logan Hayes receives the award "in recognition of outstanding teaching assistance" in MCE. Winners are selected by a committee appointed annually by the Executive Officer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering.

Tags: honors MCE Logan Hayes

Eric Ocegueda Receives the 2022-2023 Mechanical and Civil Engineering Outstanding Service Award

06-16-23

Eric Ocegueda receives the award in recognition of his significant contributions to improving the quality of climate, culture, and scholarship in service of the department. 

Tags: honors MCE Eric Ocegueda

Kaila Coimbra Receives the 2023 Mechanical Engineering Award

06-16-23

Post graduation, Kaila will pursue a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. 

Tags: honors MCE Kaila Coimbra

Maegan Tucker Receives the 2023 Centennial Prize for Best Thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering

06-16-23

Maegan Tucker, advised by Aaron Ames, Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems, receives the award for her thesis titled "Enabling Robust and User-Customized Bipedal Locomotion on Lower-Body Assistive Devices via Hybrid System Theory and Preference-Based Learning." 

Tags: honors MCE Maegan Tucker

Andrew Akerson Receives the 2023 Centennial Prize for Best Thesis in Mechanical and Civil Engineering

06-16-23

Andrew Akerson, advised by Kaushik Bhattacharya, Howell N. Tyson, Sr., Professor of Mechanics and Materials Science; Vice Provost, receives the award for his thesis titled "Optimal Design of Soft Responsive Actuators and Impact Resistant Structures." 

Tags: honors MCE Andrew Akerson

Caltech Students and Postdoc Receive ICRA Best Paper Awards

06-13-23

At the 2023 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), three teams featuring Aaron Ames [Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems] and a Caltech EAS student/postdoc received a best paper award.

MCE postdoc Jeeseop Kim received the ICRA 2023 Outstanding Paper Award (best overall paper at the conference) for co-authoring "Distributed Data-Driven Predictive Control for Multi-Agent Collaborative Legged Locomotion." CDS graduate student Noel Csomay-Shanklin and CMS graduate student Victor Dorobantu received the Outstanding Dynamics and Control Paper for "Nonlinear Model Predictive Control of a 3D Hopping Robot: Leveraging Lie Group Integrators for Dynamically Stable Behaviors." CDS graduate student Wyatt Ubellacker received the Outstanding Student Paper Award for "Robust Locomotion on Legged Robots through Planning on Motion Primitive Graphs." 

Tags: honors MCE CMS Aaron Ames CDS Noel Csomay-Shanklin Wyatt Ubellacker Jeeseop Kim Victor Dorobantu