News & Events

03-10-10

Congratulations to Robbie Paolini, Long Nguyen, and Paul Suffoletta of Team Up who won this year's ME 72 Contest which was held on Tuesday, March 9, 2010. Teams of three to four competed to deploy their airships and robots and navigate them through a course that involved releasing, gathering, and shooting ping-pong balls and passing through a hoop 15 feet above the ground. Team Up won by outlasting their peers through eight rollicking rounds. [Watch Fox 11 News story (27 seconds, QuickTime plugin required)] [View slide show] [Pasadena Star News article] [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: MCE

03-05-10

Christopher E. Brennen, Richard L. and Dorothy M. Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, ends his ME19 class with a big splash! He has been a Caltech faculty member for more than 40 years and has published numerous papers and books in a wide variety of topics involving fluid mechanics. Professor Brennen will be retiring on April 1st, 2010.

Tags: MCE Christopher Brennen

02-25-10

Timothy E. Colonius, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is among a group of Caltech researchers who have received more than $33 Million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Professor Colonius received $987,032 in ARRA funds from the National Science Foundation for research into better understanding how noise is created by turbulence in the exhaust of turbofan aircraft engines and what might be done to mitigate it. Jet noise is an environmental problem subject to increasingly severe regulation throughout the world. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: MCE Tim Colonius

02-09-10

Julia Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering, and Dongchan Jang, Postdoctoral Scholar, have developed a way to make some notoriously brittle materials ductile—yet stronger than ever—simply by reducing their size. Professor Greer describes, "We are entering a new era in materials science, where structural materials can be created not only by utilizing monolith structures, like ceramics and metals, but also by introducing 'architectural' features into them." [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: APhMS research highlights MCE Julia Greer Dongchan Jang postdocs

01-26-10

The dual master's degree program between Caltech and École Polytechnique in Aerospace Engineering or Aeronautics and Fluid Mechanics has won the Institute of International Education Andrew Heiskell Awards for Innovation in International Education, in the category of International Exchange Partnerships. The dual degree program spans two academic years; students spend a year at each institution and completed a six month internship in academic or industrial laboratories. Along with the two partnering institutions the program is also supported by the Partner University Fund. [Program Overview]

Tags: GALCIT MCE Guruswami Ravichandran École Polytechnique

01-05-10

Congratulations to Swaminathan Krishnan, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Geophysics, whose simulations of earthquakes and structural response has won the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's 2009 Annual Graphics Competition. [View the submission]

Tags: research highlights MCE Swaminathan Krishnan

01-04-10

The Los Angeles Times magazine has featured Ares Rosakis, EAS Chair; Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, as a visionary - "someone who has the perception to see past entrenched, received ideas about what is possible and conjure revolutionary concepts." In the article entitled "Information Sage" Chair Rosakis discusses the IST initiative and highlights the interconnectedness of the research being conducted in the EAS division.

Tags: GALCIT MCE Ares Rosakis

12-24-09

Congratulations to Michael Ortiz, Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, who has been awarded a Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship by the Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich (TUM). This Fellowship is named after TUM Professor Hans Fischer (1881-1945) who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1930 for his pioneering work on hemoglobin.

Tags: GALCIT MCE Michael Ortiz

11-04-09

Congratulation to Julia R. Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering, for been selected to participate in the DARPA Young Faculty Award program. She is among 33 "rising stars" from 24 U.S. universities who each will receive grants of approximately $300,000. Greer's project is aimed at understanding and subsequently mimicking the superior mechanical robustness and strength of naturally occurring protective layers—such as nacre, or mother of pearl, a composite produced by some mollusks to line their inner shell—to create strong, ductile, damage-tolerant materials that maintain a relatively low density. [Caltech Press Release]

Tags: APhMS honors MCE Julia Greer

11-04-09

Sergio Pellegrino, Professor of Aeronautics and Civil Engineering and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist, has received the NASA Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award as a member of the superpressure balloon team. The award is for sound engineering and operational development, outstanding teamwork, and perseverance in building a new scientific balloon capability for NASA.

Tags: honors research highlights GALCIT MCE Sergio Pellegrino