The documentary film Wings of Angels” will be Shown During Alumni Reunion.
The public can view “Wings of Angels,” a documentary film featuring Michigan Tech mechanical engineering students, in the lobby of the MEEM building during Alumni Reunion. The movie will be shown on the hour, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursday-Saturday, Aug. 7-9.
News from Tech Today — July 23, 2014 —
The Michigan Tech Mobile Lab traveled to several college campuses in southern Michigan recently. Instead of a single person providing a lecture, the Mobile Lab team provided a hands-on seminar for the Wayne County Community College Districts ongoing Global Conversations Speaker Series in Detroit and Taylor, Michigan. Attendees included students from both Wayne State University and Wayne County Community College.
Tolou Shokuhfar will be investigating the inner workings of a protein that plays a key role in human health with funding from a five-year, $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award.
Shokuhfar, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering-engineering mechanics at Michigan Technological University, will study the biomolecule ferritin, which stores iron in the body in a non-toxic, mineralized form and releases it safely. In humans, ferritin serves as a buffer between iron deficiency and iron overload, and when it malfunctions, it may be involved in a number of degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
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t its last meeting, Michigan Technological University’s Board of Control bestowed the Melvin Calvin Medal of Distinction on two distinguished alumni and longtime supporters of Michigan Tech: David House, Electrical Engineering ’65 and Richard Henes, Mechanical Engineering ’48. The Melvin Calvin Medal of Distinction is awarded to individuals associated with the University who have exhibited especially distinguished professional and personal accomplishments.
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by Marcia Goodrich
Effervescent enthusiasm for students and the classroom marks both winners of Michigan Technological University’s 2014 Distinguished Teaching Award. Tess Ahlborn, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, received the award in the associate professor, professor category. Scott Miers, newly promoted to associate professor of mechanical engineering–engineering mechanics, was honored in the assistant professor, professor of practice and lecturer category.
The news was not good. An underwater drone armed with the best technology on the planet had descended repeatedly to the bottom of the Indian Ocean, trying to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Time after time, it turned up nothing.
If Nina Mahmoudian has her way, the next generation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) will have a much better chance of getting it right.
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The ME-EM Order of the Engineer, Senior Awards Banquet and Capstone Design Day was April 22, 2013 at the Rozsa Center Lobby.
The keynote speaker for the banquet was Ms. Lee Ann Rouse, President and CEO Omni Tech International Ltd. Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech in 1987.
The ME-EM Graduate Seminar speaker on Thursday, April 24 at 4:00 in 103 EERC will be Dr. Antonio Gauchia from MTU.
The title of his presentation will be ‘Finite Element Modeling of a Real Bus Structure: Effect of Electrified Powertrain’.
Environmental sustainability is driving powertrain design and development towards electrified vehicles. Bus powertrain has evolved from conventional internal combustion engine to hybrid powertrain. However, in terms of lateral vehicle dynamics, this type of vehicle is particularly sensitive to the height of the center of gravity. One of the most severe accidents that involve buses is rollover. Buses are especially prone to rollover due to their high ratio between centre of gravity height and wheel track. Therefore, bus safety must be re-assessed to verify that it still complies with current vehicle standards and regulations, in particular, those related to vehicle lateral dynamics. Bus manufacturers have to overcome these challenges to match standards and provide a reliable, safe and comfortable vehicle. This seminar will present the impact of powertrain design in bus rollover. It will deeply describe how to evaluate this effect from the initial finite element modeling stage of a real bus structure to the final one consisting in the evaluation of powertrain design influence in bus rollover. Two scenarios will be analyzed: a bus structure with conventional internal combustion engine components and a bus structure with hybrid powertrain components. The rollover threshold will be used to evaluate the lateral performance of each powertrain layout.
Dr. Antonio Gauchia finished his studies of General Engineering Degree in 2003 and obtained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 at the University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). He teaches Vehicle Dynamics and Components, Transportation Engineering and Technical Drawing. During his 10 year experience at UC3M Mechanical Engineering Department, he has also collaborated in projects with industry and administration. His
research interests are vehicle experimental testing, vehicle dynamic simulation and bus safety rollover. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Birmingham (U.K.) in collaboration with Ford. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at the ME-EM Department at Michigan Tech.
by Jenn Donovan, director of news and media relations
Three graduate students have received Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Gregory Hardy and David Diesenroth in mechanical engineering and Christa Meingast in environmental engineering won the competitive fellowships. Benjamin Winter in civil engineering received an honorable mention.
Department of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics Graduate Seminar: Dr. Partha Mukherjee, Texas A&M University; Thursday, Apr. 17, 2014 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Room 103 EERC Bldg.
Title: Mesoscale Perspective of Electrode Physics in Energy Storage
Recent years have witnessed an enormous interest in energy storage (battery) to enable vehicle electrification, renewable energy utilization as well as accommodating an ever-increasing demand in powering myriad portable electronic devices. In particular, a critical imperative is to accelerate innovation toward improved performance, life and safety of lithium-ion batteries, the primary candidate for electric drive vehicles. Lithium-ion batteries are complex, dynamical systems which include a multitude of coupled physicochemical processes encompassing electronic/ionic/diffusive transport
in solid/electrolyte phases, electrochemical and phase change reactions and diffusion induced stress generation in hierarchical, multi-scale porous electrodes. While innovations in nanomaterials and nanoarchitectures have spurred the recent advancements, fundamental understanding of the underlying thermo-mechano-electrochemical interactions is of paramount interest. In this presentation, a
mesoscale perspective of electrode physics for lithium-ion batteries will be elucidated.
Partha P. Mukherjee is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Before joining TAMU in 2012, he worked for 4 years in the U.S. Department of Energy Labs, as a Staff Scientist (2009-2011) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and as a Director’s research fellow (2008-2009) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to PhD studies, he worked as a Consulting Engineer for 4 years at Fluent India Pvt. Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Fluent Inc., currently Ansys Inc. His research interests include mesoscale physics and stochastics of transport, materials and manufacturing aspects in energy storage and conversion (batteries and fuel cells).