09-12-17
Stella Brach, Postdoctoral Scholar in Mechanical and Civil Engineering, has won the 2017 Paul Germain Prize.The prize is awarded once every two years during the French National Congress on Mechanics for the best PhD thesis in Mechanics. [Read her thesis]
Tags: honors MCE Stella Brach postdocs
09-11-17
G. Ravichandran, John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering; Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, has been elected to the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea). The Academia Europaea was founded in 1988 and is an organization of eminent, individual scholars from across the continent of Europe. The 3000 members cover a wide range of academic disciplines including the humanities, social, physical and life sciences as well as mathematics, engineering and medicine. In addition to Professor Ravichandran, EAS Past Chair Ares Rosakis, Caltech's Provost Edward Stolper, the Institute's Past President David Baltimore, and Professor Alexander Varshavsky are members of the Academy.
09-09-17
Mechanical Engineering alumnus Evan Sloan (BS '17) has been chosen to attend the Infiniti Engineering Academy. Sloan will spend six months at Infiniti's European Technical Center and six months with the Renault Sport Formula One Team. "Evan was always excited about race cars," says Professor Guillaume Blanquart and faculty advisor for the Caltech's Formula SAE Electric team. "As a sophomore, he converted a gas-powered go kart into an electric vehicle. Four months later, he was the mechanical lead on a 60-person team in charge of designing a Formula One-style race car from scratch. The team would never have reached the Formula SAE competition without Evan's drive, dedication, and perseverance." [Caltech story]
08-15-17
Professor Ares Rosakis, and colleagues including Professor Nadia Lapusta and Research Scientist Vito Rubino, are studying the way friction changes along a fault during a seismic event by simulating quakes in a lab. "Our unique facility … allows us for the first time to study friction point-wise and without having to assume that sliding occurs uniformly, as is done in classical friction studies," Rosakis explains. Professor Lapusta adds, “some numerical models of earthquake rupture … have used friction laws with slip-velocity dependence… It is gratifying to see those formulations validated by the spontaneous mini-earthquake ruptures in our study. " [Caltech story]
Tags: research highlights GALCIT MCE Ares Rosakis Nadia Lapusta Vito Rubino
08-01-17
Austin Minnich, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics, is a recipient of the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The award recognizes an engineer who is under 36 years of age and is committed to pursuing research in heat transfer, and has demonstrated the potential to make significant contributions to the field.
Tags: APhMS honors MCE Austin Minnich
07-28-17
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). This honor is given to individual AGU members who have made exceptional scientific contributions and gained prominence in their respective fields of Earth and space sciences. [AGU release]
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Ares Rosakis
07-22-17
Austin Minnich, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics, is a recipient of the International Photothermal and Photoacoustics Association (IPPA) Junior Prize. He received the prize for outstanding contributions to the understanding of quasiballistic thermal transport, including the development of photothermal methods to directly probe heat conduction at length scales comparable to phonon mean free paths; for demonstrating how microscopic transport properties of thermal phonons in solids may be obtained using photothermal experimental methods along with ab-initio calculations; and for advances in the mathematical treatment of quasiballistic transport using the Boltzmann equation.
Tags: APhMS honors MCE Austin Minnich
07-21-17
Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Karman Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, has been named an honorary fellow of the International Congress on Fracture (ICF) which is the premier international body for promotion of worldwide cooperation among scientists and engineers concerned with the mechanics and mechanisms of fracture, fatigue, and strength of solids. He has also been elected as one of the group's three vice presidents.
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Ares Rosakis
07-06-17
Aaron Ames, Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems, is a recipient of a 2017 Okawa Foundation Research Grant for his research project entitled "Safety-Critical Autonomy in Robotic Locomotion". This prize honors top young researchers working in the fields of information and telecommunications.
Tags: honors MCE CMS Aaron Ames
06-21-17
MCE alumna Mary Dunlop is the recipient of the ACS Synthetic Biology 2017 Young Investigator Award. The award recognizes the contributions of a scientist who has made a major impact on the field of synthetic biology, early on in their career. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Boston University. Dr. Dunlop’s Caltech graduate advisor was Professor Richard Murray. [Read her thesis] [Dunlop Lab]
Tags: MCE alumni Richard Murray Mary Dunlop
