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2013

MAE students won first place at the 17th annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation Design/Build/Fly (DBF) competition in Tucson, Arizona in April. “We expected to place in the top 10, given our preparation and effort,” says John Wei-Han Chen, senior engineering student and DBF project manager. “It definitely felt good to see all of our hard work coming together. We are extremely happy to bring back first place to UCI.” A partnership between the AIAA Foundation, Cessna Aircraft Company, and Raytheon Missile Systems, the DBF competition provides students an opportunity to design and build a radio controlled aircraft to perform specific missions. Participants who complete a letter of intent and submit a report on time are invited to bring their plane to a central location for a fly off. Winners are determined by a combination of their report score and their flight score. This year’s design assignment was a simulation of a Joint Strike Fighter aircraft with three missions: speed/endurance, stealth (internal payloads) and strike (carrying a randomly assigned configuration of external/internal rockets). UCI’s team, comprised of 31 students from The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, spent eight months on its entry. Their report earned them a rank of 6 out of 81 teams, which meant they were sixth to fly in the competition. UCI’s aircraft achieved five laps under four minutes around a 1,000 foot long course in Mission1, carried the most internal rockets (12 rockets, 3lbs total) for Mission 2, and flew with four external rockets for Mission 3. “The DBF is a serious competition that culminates a year of airplane design fabrication and flight testing,” explains Dr. Robert Liebeck, Adjunct Professor in MAE and Senior Fellow at Boeing. “The physics of the DBF airplane are the same as that of full-scale flight vehicles (e.g. from a Cessna to a B747). For many of the students, this is their first experience building anything, let alone a competition airplane. With the popularity of drones today, DBF experience is a nugget on their resumes for employment with an aerospace company. I am extremely proud of the UCI DBF team. They did it all themselves. My role could be best described as cheerleader.”

Faculty advisor - Professor Robert Liebeck

Students - Shaun Abdelkerim, Ana Paula Arakaki, Hugo Banh, Albert Barber, Fabio Bendana, Sarah Black, Jessica Chean, John Chen, Michael Chung, Geoff Dubridge, Michaela Fleming, Michael Gamboa, Daniel Grant, Varun Jasuja, Khizer Karwa, Kevin Kho, Lawrence Ng, Ravi Patel, Paul Parcell, Joe Petrilli, Silvestre Pineda, Charles Poblete, Ruel Rabbon, Roi Rivera, Javier Ruiz, Zach Satterfield, Colin Sledge, Sothea Sok, Giuseppe Venneri, Bruno Vu, Robert Zavala.

More information available from AIAA's competition summary report.

Amine Akbarimonfared and Dave Beerer, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Ph.D students in Professor Samuelsen's group, have both won the International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI) scholarship sponsored by the American Sociery of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Links to the article news: http://igti.asme.org/Honors/IGTI_Student_Scholarship.cfm and http://www.ucicl.uci.edu/2/NEWS/News_2202013-IGTI.aspx

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized Professor Timothy Rupert with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. The award of $537,053 over five years will support Professor Rupert’s research involving the grain boundary network of nanocrystalline metals. Full announcement is here.

A team led by Professor Dunn-Rankin won an $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for deep-ocean power science lab. In this lab, researchers will explore the potential of using the deep ocean?s low-temperature and high-pressure conditions to generate carbon-free power from methane hydrates. Full announcement is here.

Professor Edriss Titi has been elected Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations. The Activity Group on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations fosters activity in the analysis of partial differential equations (PDE) and enhances communication between analysts, computational scientists and the broad PDE community. The activity group sponsors the biennial SIAM Conference on the Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, awards the SIAG/APDE Prize.

Professor Feng Liu has been elected Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Only one in a thousand members each year receives this prestigious recognition. Professor Liu has been recognized for his major research contributions in aerodynamics, turbomachinery, and computational fluid dynamics.

2012

Jordi Casoliva, MAE PhD student, advised by Professor Kenneth Mease, and also a Jet Propulsion Laboratory employee, is an Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) trajectory analyst on the Navigation Team for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission. On August 5, 2012, the MSL lander demonstrated the first guided Mars atmospheric entry and also the first use of the "sky-crane" descent and landing procedure in which the 'mothership' used thrust to hover while lowering the Curiosity rover gently to the surface on a tether and then flew off. The guided entry achieved landing accuracy sufficient to target a scientifically interesting site in the Gale Crater. Congratulations to Jordi and the rest of the MSL engineering team on the success of this tremendous technological achievement.

Congratulations to Engineering Staff Service Award Honorees, 2012.

Celebrating our PhD graduates, 2012.

Eric Trumbauer, a second year Ph.D student in Professor Benjamin Villac's group, has been awarded a phase 2 NSTRF fellowship for his work on automated trajectory design that supports NASA's vision for space exploration of small bodies and planetary moons. As part of this inaugural class of awardees in this new NASA fellowship program, Eric was also selected to meet with NASA Chief technologist, Dr. Michael Gazarik, during his visit at UCI.

The UCI AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) team mentored by Prof. Liebeck has placed second out of 57 entries in the competition at Wichita, KA, on April 13-15, 2012. Pictures of the UCI aircraft at the DBF competition are available in the DBF 2012 Competition Summary Report.

Professor Robert H. Liebeck received the 2012 Brigadier General Charles E. Yeager International Aeronautical Achievement Award. The Engineers' Council annually awards the Brigadier General Charles E. Yeager International Aeronautical Achievement Award to one who has attained outstanding achievement in the field of aeronautics. With this award, the Council honors Professor Liebeck’s leadership in advanced lifting body design, contributions to the art and science of airfoil design, and advancement of aeronauts through engineering.

2011

Remembering Professor Carl Friehe .

Professors James Bobrow and David Reinkensmeyer, and former graduate student Eric Wolbrecht. received the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems & Rehabilitation Engineering "Best Paper of the Journal Award for 2011." The paper is entitled "Optimizing Compliant, Model-Based Robotic Assistance to Promote Neurorehabilitation" The award was selected by the editorial board of IEEE-TNSRE on the basis of a combined assessment of the quality of the paper, the relevance and the number of citations it has received.

Dr. Gregory Washington is appointed Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Professor Washington most recently served as interim dean at The Ohio State University College of Engineering, where he provided visionary leadership, oversight and management for one of the nation's largest and highest ranked engineering programs. Over the years Washington has also served as the college's Associate Dean for Research and led OSU's Institute for Energy and the Environment. He has been on the faculty of OSU's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering since 1995, and received a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University. Professor Washington has been involved in multidomain research for the last 20 years. His core area of interest lies in the area of dynamic systems, with an emphasis on modeling and control of smart material systems and devices. He has been involved in the design and control of mechanically actuated antennas, advanced automotive systems incorporating smart materials, Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and structural position and vibration control with smart materials. He is the author of more than 140 technical publications in journals, edited volumes and conference proceedings. Read article on Professor Wahington's appointment.

Dr. Jack Brouwer joins the Department as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Brouwer received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. From 1993 to 1997 he served as a research assistant professor at the University of Utah and was a member of the technical staff at Reaction Engineering International. He came to UC Irvine in 1997 as Associate Director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center (NFCRC), consequtively holding appointments as Lecturer, Assistant Adjunct Professor, and then Associate Adjunct Professor in the MAE Department. His primary research focus since joining UC Irvine has been high temperature electrochemical dynamics and integrated energy systems research that includes fuel cells, gas turbines, electrolyzers, solar and wind power. Brouwer is a highly recognized researcher in the area of alternative energy and is expected to make strong contributions to UC Irvine’s stature in the field of energy and the environment and to make leading research and teaching contributions to the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Environment Institute.

Dr. Timothy J. Rupert joins the Department as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Rupert received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011, after obtaining a joint B.S./M.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2007. Dr. Rupert's expertise is combining experimental, computational, and characterization techniques to study the mechanical behavior and structural stability of nano-scale materials and structures. Dr. Rupert's research at UCI will concentrate on uncovering new structure-property relationships in advanced nanomaterials for next-generation structural, electronic, and energy components, as well as increasing the reliability and lifetime of these materials.

Major Matthew Schnoor, a Mechanical and Aerospace Ph.D student in Professor Satya Atluri's, has just been promoted to be Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force. Prior to coming to UCI, Lieutenant Colonel Schnoor was the leader of the F-16 Flight Training School at the Edwards Air Force Base, California. We wish Lt. Col. Schnoor continued advancement in the ranks of the US Air Force, and continued successes in his academic pursuits.

Eric Trumbauer, a Mechanical and Aerospace 1^st year Ph.D student in Professor Benjamin Villac’s group has been awarded one of the 2011 NASA NSTRF fellowship. Eric will work in collaboration with NASA engineers on developing automated space mission trajectory design tools to support NASA's vision for space exploration of small bodies and planetary moons.

Alexander Trusov, Ph.D, Project Scientist for Professor Andrei Shkel's group received a huge interest in the IEEE MEMS community, his work was chosen by the popular science magazine IEEE Spectrum in an article "A Foucault Pendulum on a Chip". Link to the magazine article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/a-foucault-pendulum-on-a-chip and link to the conference paper: http://www.alexandertrusov.com/uploads/pdf/2011-MEMS-Foucault-on-a-Chip.pdf.

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