Day: April 16, 2012

MEEM Seminar April 19th: Ida Ngambeki, School of Engineering Education, Purdue University
Thursday, April 19, 2012 Room 302, ME-EM Bldg. 2:00 – 3:00 p.m

Title: Exploring the relationship between person and thing orientations and technical aptitudes

One of the most prominent problems in engineering today is the low level of retention of engineering students and persistence into engineering careers. Technical aptitudes are believed to be a contributing factor to engineering students’ success and therefore, persistence. While in other professional fields a number of studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between
student interests and abilities and professional entrance and retention, little is understood about how interest affects career preferences in engineering. This seminar will examine the interaction between technical aptitudes, specifically spatial and mechanical aptitudes, and interest operationalized as a differential orientation to persons called Person Orientation (PO), distinguished by an interest in interpersonal interactions, and an orientation to things called
Thing Orientation (TO), distinguished by a desire for mastery over objects. The implications of the interactions between aptitudes and interests for persistence in engineering will be discussed.

Ida Ngambeki is a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering Education
at Purdue University with a concentration in Ecological Sciences and Engineering. Originally from Uganda, she got her B.S. in Engineering from Smith College in Northampton MA in 2007. She is Vice Chair of the Graduate Engineering Education Consortium for Students and an associate member of
the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society. Her research interests include motivation and interest in engineering, engineering and public policy, the
use of artifacts in engineering, and the development of engineering cognition.

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MEEM Graduate Seminar April 19th:
Jing Wang Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Florida

Thursday, Apr. 19, 2012 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Room 112, ME-EM Bldg.

Dr. Jing Wang received the dual B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and from Tshinghua University in 1999. He received two M.S. degrees from the University of Michigan, one in electrical engineering (2000), the other in mechanical engineering (2002), and a Ph.D. degree from University of Michigan in 2006. Dr. Wang joined University of South Florida as an Assistant Professor and started the RF MEMS Transducers Laboratory in 2006. His research interests include micro/nanofabrication technologies, functional nanomaterials, micromachined sensors and actuators, RF/Microwave/THz devices. His research has been funded by grants from federal agencies (NSF, DTRA, US Army) and contracts from industries. He serves as the faculty advisor for Florida IMAPS and AVS student chapters and the
chairperson for IEEE joint MTT/AP/ED Florida West Coast Section. Recently, he has joined the prestigious IEEE MTT Technical Coordinating Committee 21 (TCC-21) on RF MEMS.

Abstract

Title: Functional Nanocomposite Materials for RF/MW Device Applications

A wide variety of fuctional nanomaterials have attracted considerable attention from both academia and industries for their application in chemical, biomedical and microelectronic devices; however the successful implementation of such type of materials in RF and microwave device applications is relatively limited. In this talk, magneto-dielectric polymer nanocomposites will be introduced as a new class of functional materials well suited for RF device applications. Magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles, with sub-8nm diameters and tight size distribution, are synthesized and homogeneously dispersed in Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to enhance the microwave properties of the engineered RF substrate by increasing the relative permeability and relative permittivity. Moreover, these properties can be further improved by a dc magnetic field with strength achievable with regular permanent magnets. This work not only presents the first experimental implementation of magneto-dielectric nanocomposite engineered substrates
for RF antennas with 3-5 GHz operational frequencies, but also correlates the unique magneto-dielectric properties to the key antenna performance metrics (e.g. bandwidth, efficiency and dimensions). Aside from RF antenna applications, a new type of injection-moldable polymer nanocomposites with tailored thermal, mechanical and electrical properties have also been explored to enable a unique approach for heterogeneous integration of multichip modules on a single silicon platform. The talk will be concluded with brief discussion of several other ongoing activities within the RF MEMS Transducers group at USF which focus on implementation of a variety of nanostructured materials in form of nanolaminated ultra-thin films or nanorod array in RF/MW/THz devices

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