"Mid-infrared fiber sensors"

Abstract: There is a need for real-time in situ monitoring for many applications. For industrial applications, the ability to monitor a reaction or a process, can significantly improve efficiency and reproducibility. Conventional monitoring is typically carried out off-line by methods comprising several steps. Moreover, off-line analytical methods are time-consuming and do not provide real-time information.

In this work we fabricate and test a silver halide (AgBrCl) mid-infrared optical fiber probe for evanescent-field in situ monitoring. We demonstrate its applicability for fermentation bioprocess monitoring of sophorolipid production with the aim of monitoring product concentrations over time, and also distinguishing between the main two structurally different types of biosurfactants produced - lactonic and acidic sophorolipids. Secondly, we present sensitive gas-phase detection of volatile organics by coating the fiber probe with nanoporous silica particles, which improve the sensitivity by increasing the number of analyte molecules that interact with the infrared light. We show that this approach exhibits higher sensitivity for the three measured analytes – isopropyl alcohol, ethanol and acetone. We also demonstrate the simultaneous measurement of acetone and ethanol.

Bio: Dr. Tanya Hutter is an Assistant Professor at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests lie in the fields of emerging molecular sensing technologies, nanomaterials, microfabrication and nanophotonics with applications in environmental and industrial sensing, homeland security and medical diagnostics.

Dr. Hutter has a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering (Ben-Gurion University), M.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering (Tel-Aviv University) and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (University of Cambridge). After completing her Ph.D., she worked at the University of Cambridge and received several prestigious awards to develop her independent research. She moved to Austin in 2019. Dr. Hutter also has a strong interest in technology transfer and entrepreneurship - she co-founded two start-ups in the field of chemical sensing.

"Multiscale Chirality Towards Light-Assisted Asymmetric Synthesis"

Abstract: The discovery of new material or technology typically designates a new era, such as the Bronze age and the Iron age. At the turn of this century, a new technology emerged to design materials by artificially arranging structures at a subwavelength scale. Such materials named metamaterials have extended materials space beyond the scope of natural materials. Exploring these areas is instrumental for fundamental physics and practical applications such as augmented reality. Although metamaterials are very general, we limit ourselves herein to discuss this exciting frontier in optics and photonics. We will focus on optical chirality that discerns asymmetric properties of an object and its mirror image. We will show more than three orders of magnitude increase in chirality using optical metamaterials. We also find an excitonic magneto-chiral anisotropy in twisted van der Waals atomic crystals. The magneto-chiral effect is promising to induce asymmetric synthesis for biological, chemical, and pharmaceutical applications.

Bio: Dr. Shoufeng Lan is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering (primary) and Materials Science and Engineering (affiliated) at Texas A&M University, working on the fundamental study and applications of light-matter interactions at a small (micro, nano, molecular, atomic) scale. Before joining A&M, he was a postdoc fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a Physics minor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His doctoral thesis works on engineered nanostructures for developing devices that simultaneously support optical and electrical functionalities. In recognition of his multidisciplinary accomplishments, he has received many prestigious awards, including but not limited to the graduate student medal from MRS (2015), D.J. Lovell scholarship from SPIE (2016), and the best Ph.D. thesis award from Sigma Xi Honor Society (2018).

Moderator: David Mitlin

David Allen Cockrell Professorship in Engineering

University of Texas at Austin

Bio: David Mitlin is a Cockrell Endowed Professor at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he was a Professor and General Electric Chair at Clarkson University, and an Assistant, Associate and full Professor at the University of Alberta, Alberta Canada. Dr. Mitlin is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher, having published over 150 journal articles on various aspects of energy storage materials, on metallurgy and corrosion. He also holds 15 granted U.S. patents and 18 more pending full applications, with all of them licensed currently or in the past. He has presented around 125 invited, keynote and plenary talks at various international conferences. Dr. Mitlin is an Associate Editor for Sustainable Energy and Fuels, a Royal Society of Chemistry Journal focused on renewables. He received a Doctorate in Materials Science from U.C. Berkeley in 2000, a M.S. from Penn State in 1996, and a B.S. from RPI in 1995. Dave grew up in upstate NY and in southern CT.

"Radiative heat transfer: advanced experimentation & emerging phenomena"

Abstract: Thermal radiation is a ubiquitous physical phenomenon that was central to the development of quantum mechanics over a century ago and today remains essential to a host of important fields ranging from electricity generation to climate modelling to thermal imaging. Despite its importance to our daily lives and rich history of scientific research, thermal radiation is not well understood at the nanoscale – a length scale that is increasingly relevant due to the rapid development of nano- and micro-technologies. In this talk I will describe the tools and techniques that I use to experimentally probe radiative heat transfer between nanostructures, and will discuss my recent findings that radiative heat transfer in select nanoscale systems can be greatly enhanced and actively tuned in ways that are not expected based on the ‘classical’ radiation theory developed by Max Planck. The ability to control heat transfer by leveraging such effects could potentially unlock advances in thermal management, infrared spectroscopy, and thermal-to-electric energy conversion. I will end the talk with a discussion of the open questions that continue to drive research in this field, followed by a brief introduction to the projects I hope to pursue in the future.

Bio: Dakotah Thompson is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at UW-Madison. His research program leverages expertise in calorimetry and nanofabrication to study thermal energy transport and conversion phenomena. Dakotah is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2013 and the NSF CAREER award in 2021. His research program is also currently funded by the Office of Naval Research. Dakotah received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2012 and his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 2018. In addition to research, Dakotah teaches Elementary Heat Transfer for undergraduates, as well as a graduate course called Fundamentals of Precision Measurements.

"Redesign Natural Materials for Energy, Water, Environment and Devices (RENEWED)"

Abstract: Exiting the fossil fuel era towards a sustainable future will require the identification of the high-performing sustainable materials. Cellulose is nature’s building blocks, featuring a multiscale alignment to the ångström scale, providing a transformational framework of highly-tunable material across length scales. Recognizing this potential, we have evaluated cellulose as a sustainable technological material (Nature 2021) and demonstrated new phenomenon in multiscale transport (Sci. Adv. 2019; Nat. Mat. 2019), as well as advanced functionalities in energy, water and sustainability (Nano Lett. 2022; Sci. Adv. 2018; Science 2019). In addition, the synergy of our research with the wood, paper and textile industry can open up unprecedented commercialization opportunities and speed up contribution to carbon drawdown to fulfill 2050 climate targets.

Bio: Dr. Tian Li is an Assistant Professor in School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. in Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Maryland and carried her postdoc research in Department of Materials Science in the same institute. Her group at Purdue University focuses on material innovation towards energy, water, environment and devices. She was awarded the ASME Haythornthwaite Foundation (2020), R&D 100 Finalist (2020), MRS Postdoctoral Award (2020) and Forbes 30 under 30 (2018), Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship (2015) and Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award in University of Maryland (2015).

Moderator: Matthew T. McDowell

Associate Professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow

G. W. W. School of Mechanical Engineering

School of Materials Science and Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Bio: Matthew McDowell is an associate professor at Georgia Tech with appointments in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2013 and was a postdoc at Caltech from 2013 until 2015. McDowell has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the NASA Early Career Faculty Award. For more information, see https://mtmcdowell.gatech.edu.

"Low-Energy and Fast Additive Manufacturing of Polymer Composites via Reactive Extrusion"

Abstract: Reactive extrusion additive manufacturing (REAM) is a newly developed additive manufacturing (AM) method in which layers of a thermoset resin/linker system are deposited and cured in-situ, without external energy. As successive layers are deposited, crosslinking occurs within and between the layers resulting in strong inter-layer bonding. To improve printability and properties, the rheology of the thermoset resin/linker can be tuned using different fillers, including rheology modifiers and fiber reinforcements. Carbon fibers improve polymer properties, reduce the time required to manufacture functional AM parts, and lower warping to lead to a larger build envelope. This talk will discuss the effects of carbon fiber reinforcement on REAM composite's processability, structure, and properties. In particular, the effects of fiber length and orientation distribution on thermo-mechanical, curing kinetics, and rheology of a reactive resin/linker system will be explained. The use of numerical simulations for guiding the REAM process will be demonstrated for a polymer composite part. This talk will also discuss future directions for composites REAM.

Bio: Dr. Mehran Tehrani obtained his Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2012. He was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico from 2014-2019 and at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin since 2019. Dr. Tehrani’s research focuses on advanced multifunctional composites and lies at the intersection of additive manufacturing, materials science, and mechanics. He has published in some of the highest-ranked journals in the field, including Additive Manufacturing, Composites Science and Technology, Composites Part A, and Composites Part B. Dr. Tehrani is a member of the organizing committees of the Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) Symposium and the American Society for Composites (ASC) Annual Technical Conference. He is currently the Technical Division Chair for Design & Manufacturing at ASC and served for five years as the Organizer and co-Organizer for the Congress-Wide Symposium on Additive Manufacturing Topic at ASME's International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE). Dr. Tehrani's recent research and teaching awards include the NASA Early Stage Technology Innovation Award, 2021, CABLE Conductor Manufacturing Prize - American-Made Challenge by the Department of Energy, 2021, National Science Foundation CAREER award, 2019, Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, 2018, and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Summer Faculty Fellowship, 2016.

"Enabling patient-specific biomimetic implants through Additive Manufacturing"

Abstract: Recent interests in patient-specific medical implants and biomaterials is largely due to the maturation of additive manufacturing (AM) which has enabled the realization of complex geometries at different length scales. Advancements in digitally driven design and manufacturing is driving a new generation of medical implants and meta-biomaterials with to address some of the critical clinical challenges, particularly in orthopaedics. For instance, limited design and manufacturing freedom of existing implants and biomaterials has led to increasing rates of implants failure and postoperative complications. Currently available implants have led to increasing rate of revision surgeries following aseptic loosening and other failure modes. This talk presents advancements in porous metallic biomaterials fabricated via AM with the goal to improve bone tissue regeneration and tissue-implant interface stability. This new class of biomimetic design offers multiple advantages, including: (1) greater control over tailoring the mechanical properties, (2) larger pore space that promotes bone ingrowth and vascularization, and (3) greater effective surface area which could be leveraged for bio-functionalization and infection prevention. Bio-mechanical responses of novel designs in AM porous biomaterials that exhibit nature-inspired geometries will be presented. Finally, morphological, and topological responses of these AM biomimetic porous biomaterials are presented to evaluate their structure–function relationships as well as success in mimicking different bio-mechanical properties of human bone.

Bio: Dr. Guha Manogharan is the Emmert H. Bashore Faculty Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University – University Park. He heads the Systems for Hybrid – Additive Processing Engineering - The SHAPE Lab which focuses on additive and hybrid manufacturing with an emphasis on biomedical, defense and aerospace applications. Dr. Manogharan received his Ph.D. (2014) and M.S. (2009) from North Carolina State University. He was awarded the 2021 ASTM Emerging Young Professional Award, 2020 NSF CAREER Award, 2018 International Outstanding Young Researcher in Freeform and Additive Manufacturing Award (FAME Jr), 2017 Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Yoram Koren Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award and the 2016 Outstanding Young Investigator by Manufacturing and Design Division of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His work is supported by NSF, DoE, ONR, AFRL and Manufacturing PA.

Bio: Tim Simpson is the Paul Morrow Professor of Engineering Design & Manufacturing, Co-founder of the world’s first Additive Manufacturing & Design Graduate Program, and Co-Director of the Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition (CIMP-3D) at Penn State. He specializes in Design for Additive Manufacturing, and he has helped educate and train nearly 1000 industry practitioners to use metal additive manufacturing while advising more than a dozen start-ups in the industry. He contributes a monthly column on “Additive Insights” to Modern Machine Shop, and he is an Educational Advisor for The Barnes Group Advisors, a team of experts helping industrialize additive manufacturing. He received his BS from Cornell University and his MS and PhD degrees from Georgia Tech.

"Advancing the Versatility of Legged Robots and Assistive Devices"

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed tremendous growth in the capabilities of legged robots, with humanoids and quadrupeds demonstrating athletic behaviors that even five years ago were out of reach. These advances have offered synergy with progress on assistive robotics, with capable hardware such as the UM Open-Source Leg broadening access to push forward technologies for restoring mobility following injury.

Despite this progress, the variability of real-world environments and users remains a pressing challenge to practical applications. As steps toward addressing this challenge, the talk will first discuss recent work on the control of quadruped robots in complex environments by considering new formulations of model-predictive control. The second part of the talk will then discuss ongoing research on improving the user interface for lower-extremity exoskeletons and bringing users in the loop for the control of prosthetic limbs. Collectively, this work expands the ability of these systems to tailor their motions to their environments and users, paving the way for broader adoption in the wild.

Bio: Patrick Wensing is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the Robotics, Optimization, and Assistive Mobility (ROAM) lab. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The Ohio State University in 2014, and completed Postdoctoral training at MIT in 2017 where he worked on control system design for the MIT Cheetah robots. His current research focuses on aspects of dynamics, optimization, and control toward advancing the mobility of legged robots and assistive devices. Dr. Wensing received the NSF CAREER award (2020) and has been recognized with multiple best paper awards for his work. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and as a Co-Chair for the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Model-Based Optimization for Robotics.

"Task Focused Design of Soft Robots"

Abstract: Soft robots have incredible adaptability and robustness when interacting with their environments due to their morphology and compliance. As soft robots see increasing areas of application, many scenarios have arisen where it is necessary to design the form and movements of the robot to match a target task, including manipulation, navigation, and interaction with human users. To address these challenges, we investigate geometry-based design tools adapted for specific soft robot technologies. In this talk I'll present two recent developments in soft robot design. I'll discuss a design method for full shape actuation of growing continuum robots to hit target waypoints in an environment, showing how these designs can achieve shapes not reachable through other means. And I'll show how single degree of freedom actuators can be combined systematically into multi degree of freedom compliant systems.

Bio: Dr. Laura Blumenschein is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Allison Okamura. Her research focuses on creating more robust and adaptable soft robots including soft robots inspired by plants, which grow in order to explore their environments and build structures, and soft haptic devices which allow for more seamless human-robot interaction. Laura is an NSF graduate research fellow and her work on plant-inspired growing robots has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Popular Science, Wired, and on CBS’s Innovation Nation.

Bio: Karthik Ramani is the Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of School of Mechanical Engineering, Professor School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holds a courtesy appointment in the College of Education. His research interests are in augmenting humans with virtual tools that extend their capabilities in the physical world. To enable this his team designs, develops and makes new human augmentation technologies through authoring tools for extended reality and internet of things easy to create and access. They include authoring in mixed reality, symbiotic design, collaborative intelligence platforms, human-machine interactions, spatial interfaces, deep geometric learning, and scaling workforce skills. In summer 2016 he was a Visiting Professor at Oxford University Institute of Mathematical Sciences. In 2008, he was a Visiting Professor at Stanford University (computer sciences) and a research fellow at PARC (formerly Xerox PARC). He has served on the editorial board of Elsevier Journal of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD). He also served on the engineering advisory board for SBIR/STTR for the NSF. He has advised over 35 Ph.D. students and currently advises 12. He has published recently in ACM [CHI & UIST], IEEE [CVPR, ECCV, ICCV], ICLR, ICRA, Scientific Reports, and CAD. He is a co-inventor of over 25 patents many of which have been licensed. He earned his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1985, an MS from Ohio State University, in 1987, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1991, all in Mechanical Engineering. He loves to play with ideas and he developed the award winning “Toy Design” and product-process-business model design courses. He was the co-founder of the world’s first commercial shape-based parts search engine (VizSeek) and an educational robotics platform (ZeroUI - best of consumer electronics show 2016). He publishes in ACM and IEEE: computer human interaction, user interfaces, computer vision, internet of things, and design.

"Additive Manufacturing and Scalable Nanomanufacturing of Sustainable Energy and Sensor Systems"

Abstract: Nanoscale materials are attractive and promising building blocks for a broad range of emerging technologies due to their unique and superior properties compared to the bulk form. However, converting nanoscale materials into high-performing functional systems while translating their unique properties from nanoscale to macroscale remain a major challenge due to many scientific and technological barriers.

This talk will focus on our research on developing innovative and synergistic additive manufacturing and nanomanufacturing methods to manufacture and transform a broad range of emerging functional nanomaterials into sustainable energy and sensor systems in a highly scalable, controllable, and affordable manner. I will present our recent research progresses on scalable printing and photonic sintering of flexible thermoelectric generators for energy harvesting. Our printed p-type and n-type flexible films demonstrate ultrahigh thermoelectric figure of merit ZT greater than unity near room temperature, among the highest in flexible thermoelectric materials. In addition, this talk will present our recent work on printed wearable sensors for health monitoring of both humans and industrial structures.

Bio: Yanliang Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2011, and his M.S. and B.S. from Southeast University in 2008 and 2005. His research focuses on additive manufacturing and scalable nanomanufacturing for sustainable energy and sensor systems, and flexible electronics and sensors for health monitoring. He has received honors including NSF Career Award, Young Investigator Award from International Thermoelectric Society, an IBM Fellowship award, and multiple best paper awards at international conferences.

Bio: Dr. Suresh K. Sitaraman is a Regents’ Professor and a Morris M. Bryan, Jr Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Dr. Sitaraman is the Lead Faculty for NextFlex at Georgia Tech, and also directs the Computer-Aided Simulation of Packaging Reliability (CASPaR) Lab. His expertise is in the areas of micro- and nano-scale structure fabrication, testing and characterization, and physics-based modeling and reliable design, as applied to flexible and rigid microsystems. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 1995, Dr. Sitaraman was with IBM Corp. Dr. Sitaraman has co-authored more than 320 journal and conference publications. He has managed several research and development projects funded by US federal agencies, industry, and other sources totaling millions of dollars, and has mentored a vast array of post-doctoral fellows as well as doctoral, master’s, bachelor’s, and high-school students.

Dr. Sitaraman’s work has been recognized through several awards and honors. Among them, he has received the Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award from Georgia Tech/Mechanical Engineering in 2019, the NextFlex Fellow recognition in 2018, the Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award (Team Leader) from Georgia Tech in 2017, the ASME/EPPD (Electronic and Photonic Packaging Division) Applied Mechanics Award in 2012 and the Thomas French Achievement Award from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University in 2012. Dr. Sitaraman has received the Sustained Research Award from Georgia Tech – Sigma Xi in 2008 and the Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award for the Development of Graduate Research Assistants, Georgia Tech in 2006. His co-authored papers have won the Commendable Paper Award from IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging and the Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies. Dr. Sitaraman has also received the Metro-Atlanta Engineer of the Year in Education Award in 1999 and the NSF-CAREER Award in 1997. Dr. Sitaraman serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology. Dr. Sitaraman is an ASME Fellow and a NextFlex Fellow.

"Shape-morphing and energy-absorbing metamaterials"

Abstract: Mechanical metamaterials are materials with micro-architectures, which give rise to unusual mechanical properties that are difficult or impossible to achieve in homogeneous materials. This presentation will showcase three examples of such mechanical metamaterials. In the first example, a metasurface composed of viscoelastic shells can achieve spatiotemporally programmable textural morphing when subjected to simple pressure control. A viscoelastic shell can snap to an inverted state under a pressure load, and recover the un-deformed shape after a delay time when the pressure load is removed. Spatially arranging such shells with different delay times allows us to program sequential pattern transformation and temporal friction variation of the metasurfaces. In the second example, we take advantage of the newly discovered snapping-back buckling instability of wide hyperelastic columns to design metamaterials for reusable and rate-independent energy absorption. Such metamaterials are fabricated through additive manufacturing and sacrificial molding. Static and dynamic impact tests show that the metamaterial can dissipate energy with a low peak force and a long working distance. In the third example, a metamaterial composed of a compliant elastomer and rigid granular particles is designed for reusable energy absorption. When the metamaterial is subjected to an external load, the granules move relative to each other to dissipate energy by friction, while the elastomer maintains the integrity of the structure, forming hysteresis between the loading and unloading force–displacement curves. In all the three cases, using a combined method of analytical modeling, finite element simulations, and experiments, we show a vast design space can be achieved to program the mechanical behavior of metamaterials by varying their geometry and materials.

Bio: Lihua Jin is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Before joining UCLA in 2016, she was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. In 2014, she obtained her PhD degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University. Prior to that, she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Fudan University in 2006 and 2009. Jin’s group conducts research on mechanics of soft materials, stimuli-responsive materials, instability and fracture, soft robotics, and biomechanics. Lihua was the winner of Haythornthwaite Research Initiative Grant from American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2016, Extreme Mechanics Letters Young Investigator Award in 2018, Hellman Fellowship in 2019, UCLA Faculty Career Development Award in 2020, and NSF CAREER Award in 2021.

"Mechanochemical phenomena in biological membranes – modeling instabilities using Kirchhoff-Love shell kinematics "

Abstract: Biomembranes play a central role in various phenomena like locomotion of cells, cell-cell interactions, packaging and transport of nutrients, transmission of nerve impulses, and in maintaining organelle morphology and functionality. During these processes, the membranes undergo significant morphological changes through deformation, scission, and fusion. Modeling the underlying mechanics of such morphological changes has traditionally relied on reduced order axisymmetric representations of membrane geometry and deformation. Axisymmetric representations, while robust and extensively deployed, suffer from their inability to model symmetry breaking deformations and structural bifurcations, there-by eliminating the possibility of capturing lower symmetry (and potentially lower energy) kinematic modes. To address this limitation, a three-dimensional computational mechanics framework for high fidelity modeling of biomembrane deformation is presented. The proposed framework brings together Kirchhoff-Love thin-shell kinematics, Helfrich-energy based mechanics, and state-of-the-art numerical techniques for modeling deformation of surface geometries.

The mathematical basis of the framework and its numerical machinery are presented, and their utility is demonstrated by modeling three classical, yet non-trivial, membrane deformation problems: formation of tubular shapes and their lateral constriction, Piezo1-induced membrane footprint generation and gating response, and the budding of membranes by protein coats during Endocytosis. For each problem, the full 3D membrane deformation is captured, potential symmetry-breaking deformation paths identified, and various case studies of boundary conditions are presented. Further, recent extensions of this framework to model mechano-chemo-electrostatic processes underlying neuronal injury will be briefly discussed.

Bio: Shiva Rudraraju is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a fellow of the Grainger Institute for Engineering. He heads the Computational Mechanics and Multiphysics Group at UW-Madison, and his research interests are broadly in computational modeling of mechanics and multiphysics driven microstructural and morphological processes in materials (structural, functional and biological). His current research projects are supported by ONR, ARO and NSF. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Bio: Dr. Hipwell has been working in the area of technology development based upon nanoscale phenomena for over 20 years. She received her B.S.M.E. from Rice University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation, she went to work at Seagate Technology’s Recording Head Division in Bloomington, Minnesota to develop test equipment to characterize the interface between the head and the disk in hard disk drives. During her time at Seagate, Dr. Hipwell held various individual and leadership positions in the areas of reliability, product development, and advanced mechanical and electrical technology development. In these various roles, she established new business processes and an organizational culture that focused on developing innovative solutions from root cause understanding, improved pace of learning, and discipline in experimentation and configuration management. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for her leadership in the development of technologies to enable areal density and reliability increases in hard disk drives and was recently elected a National Academy of Inventors Fellow. Dr. Hipwell is currently an Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. '45 Chair II Professor at Texas A&M University, teaching classes on innovation and technology development as well as leading the INVENT Lab (INnoVation tools and Entrepreneurial Nano Technology).

"Liquid Breakup at High-Pressure and High-Speeds: Toward Understanding Mixing and Combustion at Extreme Conditions"

Abstract: Design of current and future energy conversion systems are shifting toward supercritical pressures and higher speeds to enable performance gain, lighter, more reliable, and cleaner systems for space, aviation, ground transportation, and power generation. Two complex phenomena occur in a spectrum of high-speed propulsion systems involving liquid fuel injection that significantly affect the fuel/air mixing: (1) droplets resulted from liquid atomization interact with shockwaves and (2) as the combustion chamber pressure nears the critical pressure of the fuel/air mixture, transcritical behavior involving a complex transition from a liquid-like to gas-like state is anticipated. Our understanding of multiphase-shock interactions involving liquid and solid particles is significantly less developed than its gas-phase counterpart. The state of the knowledge is particularly very limited at transcritical conditions due to the dearth of detailed experimental data and shortcomings of the existing numerical modeling approaches at such high pressure (temperature) and high speeds. In this talk, I present a novel computational framework augmented with novel and robust strategies and techniques to capture the liquid break up at high-pressure and high-speed conditions in combustion chambers. I will then delineate the unprecedented disintegration behavior of a transcritical droplet impacted by a shockwave compared to the classical droplet-shock and bubble-shock interaction phenomena and reveal the transcritical droplet breakup regime map for a wide range of injection conditions. The results will pave the way toward an enhanced understanding of the fuel/air mixing process in combustion chambers in various propulsion systems to enable achieving more efficient engine performance and cleaner combustion.

Bio: Dorrin Jarrahbashi is an Assistant Professor at the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. She completed her post-doctoral studies at Georgia Institute of Technology and received her PhD in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. Her areas of research involve computational modeling of energy systems, reacting and non-reacting multiphase flow, hydraulic behavior of supercritical fluids, along with experimental analysis of particulate sprays for bottom-up fabrication of functional nanostructures. Her research has appeared in many leading academic journals including Nature, Physics of Fluids and Journal of Fluid Mechanics, featuring in the journal cover. Her research is supported by the leading spray technology and engine manufacturing industries and National Science Foundation. She has won several awards and recognition including the Gallery of Fluid Motion in American Physical Society-Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS-DFD), International Symposium of Supercritical CO2 Power Cycles, and Society of Women Engineers.

"Imaging Diagnostics for Metalized Combustion Systems"

Abstract: Imaging diagnostics are powerful tools that can be used to study and understand combustion in complex systems. In this talk, we discuss the development and application of several advanced imaging diagnostic methods, from distortion-cancelling digital holography to imaging pyrometry methods, for gathering quantitative statistics in metalized combustion systems. The talk will begin with a discussion of digital holography, which is a powerful tool for quantitative, three-dimensional imaging that can be used to estimate the size, morphology, 3D position, and 3D velocity of particles in a variety of multiphase flows. When this technique is applied to reacting flows, however, shock-waves and thermal gradients impart severe phase distortions that obscure objects, making it difficult to make quantitative estimates. To overcome these challenges, we developed new techniques for cancelling phase distortions using both in-camera phase conjugate mirror methods and numerical electric field techniques. Then, we demonstrate how both of these techniques can be used to remove distortions and drastically improve quantitative estimates in environments ranging from explosively generated hypersonic fragments to metalized combustion systems. Finally, we discuss the development of complementary imaging pyrometry methods for estimating particle surface temperatures and how these methods can be applied to study aluminized solid rocket propellants and pyrotechnic ignitors.

Bio: Dr. Ellen Mazumdar started at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2019 and has a courtesy appointment with the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. She graduated with her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and completed a postdoctoral appointment in the Diagnostic Science and Engineering group at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She currently leads the Sensing Technologies Laboratory, which focuses on developing new techniques for studying energetic materials, combustion phenomena, hypersonic systems, and multiphase flows. Her group utilizes new optical diagnostics, magnetostatic methods, composite sensing materials, and system identification techniques to study these complex physical phenomena.

Bio: Dr. Jay P. Gore is the Reilly University Chair Professor of Engineering in the School of Mechanical Engineering. He received his B.E. from the University of Poona in 1978, his M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State in 1982 and 1986, and his Post Doctoral Certificate from the University of Michigan in 1987. Dr. Gore joined Purdue University in 1991 as an Associate Professor, became a full Professor in 1994, and was named the Reilly Chair Professor in 2001. His research focuses on combustion and radiation heat transfer with applications to pollutant reduction, efficiency enhancements, food science, optical biopsy, fire safety, and improved fundamental understanding. He has authored or coauthored over 150 peer-reviewed papers, including a paper that earned the Best Paper of the Year award from ASME; 4 book chapters; and over 200 conference papers. Dr. Gore has developed and revised three courses (Thermodynamics, Combustion, and Advanced Combustion) at Purdue University and three courses in heat transfer and thermodynamics at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Gore previously served as the first Director of Purdue’s Energy Center in Discovery Park (2005-2010) and Associate Dean for Research and Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering (2002-2007). Between 2002 and 2007, he founded and led the College of Engineering’s award-winning Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, which now attracts over 150 students each year. Outside of Purdue, Dr. Gore served as a Jefferson Science and Technology Fellow in the U.S. State Department (2010-2011), where he worked with U.S. and international governors and mayors on cooperatively addressing energy and climate issues. He has been the Chairman of the Central States Section of the International Combustion Institute and the Chairman of the ASME K11 Committee on Heat Transfer in Fire and Combustion. Dr. Gore also served previously as Associate Editor of both the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and the AIAA Journal.

"Synchrotron Characterization of Buried Interfaces in Solid State Batteries"

Abstract: Transportation accounts for 23% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and electrification is a pathway toward ameliorating these growing challenges. All solid state batteries could potentially address the safety and driving range requirements necessary for widespread adoption of electric vehicles. However, the power densities of all-solid state batteries are limited because of ineffective ion transport at solid|solid interfaces. New insight into the governing physics that occur at intrinsic and extrinsic interfaces are critical for developing engineering strategies for the next generation of energy dense batteries. However, buried solid|solid interfaces are notoriously difficult to observe with traditional bench-top and lab-scale experiments. In this talk I discuss opportunities for tracking phenomena and mechanisms in all solid state batteries in-situ using advanced synchrotron techniques. Synchrotron techniques that combine reciprocal and real space techniques are capable of tracking multi-scale structural phenomena from the nano- to meso-scale. This talk will discuss the role microstructure plays on transport and interfacial properties that govern adhesion. Quantification of salient descriptors of structure in solid state batteries is critical for understanding the mechanochemical nature of all solid state batteries.

Bio: Dr. Hatzell is an assistant professor at Princeton university in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment and department of Mechanical and aerospace engineering. Hatzell’s group primarily work on energy storage and is particularly interested at using non-equilibrium x-ray techniques to probe batteries during operando experimentation.

Dr. Hatzell earned her Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering at Drexel University, her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and her B.S./B.A. in Engineering/Economics from Swarthmore College. Hatzell’s research group works on understanding phenomena at solid|liquid and solid|solid interfaces and works broadly i9n energy storage and conversion. Hatzell is the recipient of several awards including the ORAU Powe Junior Faculty Award (2017), NSF CAREER Award (2019), ECS Toyota Young Investigator Award (2019), finalist for the BASF/Volkswagen Science in Electrochemistry Award (2019), the Ralph “Buck” Robinson award from MRS (2019), Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry (2020), and POLiS Award of Excellence for Female Researchers (2021).

"How Desalination can Enable Renewable Energy"

Abstract: Water and energy are tightly linked, with both resources requiring large amounts of the other. As water resources are overexploited worldwide, desalination has grown rapidly to fill the void. However, current desalination technologies are not adapted to wide daily electricity price fluctuations and are especially challenged by the intermittency of renewable energy sources. This increases desalination prices substantially, causes temporary shutdowns, increases reliance on fossil fuels, and limits applicable locations. However, recent research from the Warsinger Water lab has developed cost-competitive ways for desalination to not only aid renewable grids by becoming demand response, but also even produce power. First, for demand response capabilities, we propose to store energy via reservoirs of different salinities: salinity gradient energy storage via “Split recovery” of water. Simply put, the energy required by reverse osmosis desalination is a strong function of the energy demand, so be having an intermediate salinity reservoir, the pumps can desalinate part way when energy is expensive, and the rest of the way when it is available and cheap. This approach has >4x the effective energy density of pumped hydro-storage (the gold standard), and can actually increase efficiency by up to 25%! The second approach to make desalination amenable to renewables is to run reverse osmosis in reverse, in a mode called and pressure retarded osmosis (PRO). Here, with small process changes, RO systems can provide emergency power to support renewable grids during times of high demand. We calculate that such an unexplored approach can in fact be viable when electric prices are high, and jump to several times the usual price, such as during the recent outages in Texas.

Bio: Dr. David Warsinger is a Professor at Purdue in Mechanical Engineering. David’s research focuses on the water-energy nexus, with approaches from thermofluids and nanoengineering. His research includes thermal and pressure-driven desalination processes, water-energy systems integration, membrane nanomaterials, nanoscale membrane physics, and gas separations membranes. David completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT, and his B.S. and M.Eng at Cornell, and completed both graduate degrees in a combined 3 years. David did Postdoctoral research at MIT and Yale. David is also actively involved in advising, fundraising, and consulting for several startup companies. David is a coauthor of over 60 scientific contributions, comprising journal papers, conference papers, patents, and book chapters. Notable awards David has earned include MIT technology review’s 35 Innovators under 35, a national dissertation award from UCOWR, and several teaching or mentoring accolades.

Bio: Partha P. Mukherjee is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Before moving to Purdue as an Associate Professor in 2017, he was an Assistant Professor and Morris E. Foster Faculty Fellow of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Prior to starting his academic career at TAMU in 2012, he worked for four years at the U.S. Department of Energy Labs; a staff scientist (2009-2011) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and 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 in 2007. Prior to PhD studies, he worked as an engineer for four years at Fluent India Pvt. Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of Fluent Inc., currently Ansys Inc. He received the Scialog Fellow recognition for advanced energy storage, College of Engineering Faculty Excellence award for Early Career Research and University Faculty Scholar award from Purdue University, TMS Young Leaders award, emerging investigator distinction from the Institute of Physics, invited lectureship at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (Trieste, Italy), to name a few. His research interests are focused on mesoscale physics and stochastics of transport, chemistry, and microstructure interactions, including a broad emphasis in energy storage and conversion.

"Fluid Dynamics in the Wake of Bio-Inspired Flows"

Abstract: Swimming and flying animals rely on the fluid around them to provide lift or thrust forces, leaving behind a distinct vortex wake in the fluid. The structure and size of the vortex wake is a blueprint of the animal’s kinematic trajectory, holding information about the forces and also the size, speed and direction of motion. This talk will introduce two bio-inspired flows, and work towards linking the fluid dynamic wake signature to the underlying dynamics or topography causing the wake. The first example is an oscillating hydrofoil, which can be operated to generate energy through lift generation, in the same manner as flapping birds or bats. The second example is flow over a seal whisker, a surprisingly complex undulated geometry thought to provide seals with exceptional tracking abilities in water. For both projects the unsteady fluid dynamic mechanisms are explored through numerical simulations, proving insight for future engineering design and control of bio-mimetic systems.

Bio: Jennifer Franck is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She leads the Computational Flow Physics and Modeling Lab, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques to explore the flow physics of unsteady and turbulent flows. Ongoing research projects are in the areas of bio-inspired flows and the fluid dynamics of renewable energy systems. Prior to joining the UW-Madison faculty in 2018, she was faculty at Brown University where she was recognized with numerous teaching and mentoring awards. She received her undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from University of Virginia, followed by a M.S. and Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology. Following her PhD, she was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship hosted at Brown University to computationally explore fluid dynamics mechanics of flapping flight. Her research is currently funded by NSF and ARPA-E.

"Using Discrete Element Simulations to Bridge Particle and Continuum Flow Scales"

Abstract: Particle flows are ubiquitous in nature (e.g., avalanches, volcanic eruptions, and planetary rings) and are common in processes used by a wide range of industries, such as energy, agriculture, and chemical processing. Despite the prevalence of processes involving particle transport, the behavior of flowing particles is often poorly understood, and improved predictive capabilities are needed. Particle flows tend to be chaotic, and subtleties that occur at small length scales (e.g., a single particle) can significantly impact large-scale flow behavior. As such, empirical tools can be unreliable when extrapolated to new systems, and fundamental modeling approaches will play a key role in developing better design tools that do not rely solely on costly experimentation. The discrete element method is a powerful modeling tool that tracks all individual particles in a system. However, the method is limited to relatively small-scale systems consisting of several million particles. For perspective, one cup of sand contains approximately 10 million particles. Despite the computational limitations of the discrete element method, it can be used to gain insight and develop constitutive relations for continuum scales. This presentation will discuss two applications where discrete element simulations are upscaled. In the first application, discrete element simulations are used to elucidate heat transfer mechanisms to flowing particles and develop continuum closures suitable for modeling large scale systems. In the second application, discrete element simulations are used to help develop a kinetic theory for complex granular flows with non-spherical particles.

Bio: Dr. Morris joined Purdue University as an assistant professor in January 2017 and his research group develops models to better understand and predict gas-solid and granular flows. His research group uses a variety of simulation techniques, but focuses on discrete element modeling, direct simulation Monte Carlo methods, and continuum modeling. The theme of his research is to bridge the understanding of how physics that occur at particle scales affect macroscale behavior. His past research projects involve using the discrete element method to simulate the heat transfer to flowing particles, Monte Carlo methods to simulate gas-solid flows in industrially relevant systems, fluidized systems with homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions, spray drying, and rarefied gas dynamics and dust dispersal. Prior to joining Purdue University, Dr. Morris was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory from 2015 to 2016 and was a postdoc in the Hrenya Research Group at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Morris earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, examining the interactions between rocket exhaust plumes and the dusty lunar surface.

Bio: Krishnan Mahesh is Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on algorithm development, theoretical analysis and modeling of multi-physics turbulent flows. Mahesh is a 2018 Fulbright-Nehru Specialist, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Fellow of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. He is a recipient of the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and the Francois N. Frenkiel award from the American Physical Society. He has received the Taylor award for Distinguished Research, McKnight Presidential Fellowship, Guillermo E. Borja award and McKnight Land-Grant Professorship from the University of Minnesota. Mahesh has over 150 publications in journals and refereed conferences, and has advised 20 PhD students. He is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow.

"Chemo-Mechanics of Active Materials and Interfaces in Batteries"

Abstract: Many next-generation battery technologies require the use of materials that undergo substantial structural changes during charge and discharge, and the links between chemical evolution and mechanical stresses often play an outsized role in determining behavior. In this talk, I will first present my group’s recent work on understanding chemo-mechanical evolution of interfaces in solid-state batteries. Operando X-ray tomography experiments of operating solid-state batteries enable real-time quantification of interfacial contact loss during cycling, which is found to directly lead to cell failure. Furthermore, chemical transformations at the interface lead to the growth of an “interphase”, which can induce large stresses and mechanical fracture of the solid electrolyte. Next, I will briefly discuss our efforts on understanding how mechanics can control nanoscale transformation pathways in high-capacity battery electrode materials using in situ transmission electron microscopy. Together, these findings show the importance of controlling chemo-mechanics in next-generation battery materials, with in situ experiments being critical for understanding these processes.

Bio: Matthew McDowell is an assistant professor at Georgia Tech with appointments in the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2013 and was a postdoc at Caltech from 2013 until 2015. McDowell has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the NASA Early Career Faculty Award. For more information, see http://mtmcdowell.gatech.edu.

"Mechanics of Materials for High-Capacity Rechargeable Batteries"

Abstract: Despite their prevalence, rechargeable batteries currently utilize materials with relatively low energy densities that add substantial weight and volume to vehicles and portable electronics. Recently, several high-capacity electrodes have been identified, but these materials suffer from severe issues of cyclability and safety that have precluded their practical use. While the electrochemistry of these systems has received extensive study, at the heart of many issues lies a mechanics of materials problem: as atoms rearrange under electrochemical driving forces, the material deforms, thereby generating stresses under constraint. These stresses can result in fracture, detachment, and/or unstable deformation of the electrodes, diminishing their capacity. In this talk, I will discuss our recent experimental research aimed at basic understanding of mechanical behavior of several high-capacity battery electrodes.

Bio: Matt Pharr is an Assistant Professor and J. Mike Walker ’66 Faculty Fellow in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University with a courtesy appointment in Materials Science & Engineering. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and performed postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on mechanics of materials in areas including energy storage and conversion, soft materials, irradiated materials, stretchable electronics, coupled electro-chemo-mechanics, and materials for neuromorphic computing. He has received the NSF CAREER Award, the Kaneka Junior Faculty Award, the Peggy L. & Charles Brittan ’65 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar Award.

Bio: Prof. Sarbajit Banerjee is the Davidson Chair Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Chancellor EDGES Fellow at Texas A&M University. Dr. Banerjee holds degrees in chemistry from St. Stephen’s College (B.Sc.) and the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Ph.D.). He was a post-doctoral research scientist at Columbia University prior to starting his independent career at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2007 where he founded and served as the Co-Director of the New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics. In 2012, MIT Technology Review named Sarbajit to its global list of “Top 35 innovators under the age of 35” for the discovery of “smart windows” that are allowing for large reductions in the energy utilization of buildings. He was named by the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining (IOM3) as the recipient of the Rosenhain Medal and Prize in 2015 and was awarded the Beilby Medal and Prize by IOM3, Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society for Chemistry & Industry in 2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Institute of Physics. He serves as Senior Editor of ACS Omega. His research interests are focused on electron correlated solids, metastable materials, energy conversion and storage, energy efficient computation, extraction and handling of liquid fuels, and the development of synchrotron spectroscopy and imaging methods.

"Cartilage fracture: mechanics and mechanobiology"

Abstract: Articular cartilage is a remarkable material. Lining the ends of long bones, it provides decades of pain free ambulation, a consequence of complex, poroviscoelastic material behavior. However, when cartilage is structurally damaged, osteoarthritis can occur, negatively impacting overall quality of life by reducing mobility. This is in part due to the sparse cell population and low metabolic activity in cartilage, which leads to relatively little native repair in cartilage. Developing effective preventive and reparative strategies for osteoarthritis requires a deeper understanding of both the mechanical and biological responses to traumatic loading. This talk will cover our recent research in both of these areas. Using a microindentation experimental set-up, we induced cartilage fracture across a range of loading rates with altered matrix integrity. This provided insight into the role of poroviscoelastic relaxations in cartilage failure, and allowed us to identify a pre-relaxed regime from which we estimated fracture toughness. To evaluate cartilage mechanobiology, we adapted a technique to evaluate relative glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation activity over time. Our results are the first to evaluate the immediate pathway-specific metabolic mechanobiological response of cartilage, providing insight into the different responses to physiological versus injurious loading. Together, these basic science studies lay foundations for leveraging mechanics to reduce the burden of osteoarthritis.

Bio: Dr. Corinne Henak is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with affiliate appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopedics and Rehabilitation. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Denver in 2008, and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah in 2013. Dr. Henak trained as a post-doc in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. Research in the Henak Lab focuses on mechanically-mediated diseases, with an emphasis on microscale mechanics to predict mechanical and biological tissue responses.

"Investigating Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Heterogeneity Using AI-based Label-free Microscopy"

Abstract: Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) are multipotent cells that have great potential for regenerative medicine, tissue repair, and immunotherapy. However, the outcome of these MSC-based therapeutics and basic research can be highly inconsistent and difficult to reproduce, largely due to the inherently significant heterogeneity in MSCs, which has not been well investigated. To quantify such a cell heterogeneity, a standard approach is to measure their marker expression on the protein level via immunochemistry. Unfortunately, performing such measurements non-invasively and at scale has remained challenging as conventional methods such as flow cytometry and immunofluorescence microscopy typically require sacrificing the cells with laborious sample preparations. Here, we developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based method that converts transmitted light microscopy images of MSCs into quantitative measurements of protein expression levels. By training a generative adversarial neural network that predicted expression of 8 MSC-specific markers, we showed that expression of surface markers provides a heterogeneity characterization that is complementary to the conventional cell-level morphological analysis. Using this label-free imaging method, we also observed a multi-marker temporal-spatial fluctuation of protein distributions in live MSCs. These demonstrations suggested that our AI-based microscopy can be utilized to perform quantitative, non-invasive, single-cell, and multi-marker characterizations of heterogeneous live MSC culture. Overall, our method provides a foundational step toward the instant integrative assessment of MSC property, differentiation ability, and immunomodulation potency, an ability critical for high-content screening, cell function engineering, and quality control in cell therapy.

Bio: Neil Lin is Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University in 2016 and conducted his postdoc training at Harvard University under Dr. Jennifer Lewis. Dr. Lin is originally from Taiwan and received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the National Tsinghua University, Taiwan. He is a recipient of NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein F-32 Fellowship (2018) and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Postdoc Fellowship (2016).

Bio: Professor Ellen M Arruda is the Tim Manganello/ Borg Warner Department Chair and Maria Comninou Collegiate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She also holds appointments in Biomedical Engineering and in Macromolecular Science and Engineering. She joined the UM faculty in 1992.

Professor Arruda teaches and conducts research in the areas of theoretical and experimental mechanics of macromolecular materials, including polymers, elastomers, composites, soft tissues and proteins. Her research programs include experimental characterization and analytical and computational modeling of soft materials, including native and engineered tissues. Her polymer mechanics work has focused on the mechanics of these highly strain rate and temperature dependent materials with emphasis on the relationships among the structures at various length scales to the deformation mechanisms of those structures to predict the mechanical responses. More recently she has pioneered efforts to characterize the complex mechanical responses of soft tissues such as ligaments and tendons via full-volumetric-field methods. Professor Arruda has over 100 papers in scientific journals. Her H-index is 35 (ISI).

"Exploring the intersection between risk assessment and prognostics for complex engineering systems"

Abstract: Engineering is intricately connected to broad advances in environment, health, and quality of life, yet when complex engineering systems fail the consequences can be catastrophic, as illustrated by the Deepwater Horizon, San Bruno pipeline, and Fukushima Daiichi accidents, and myriad lesser-known events. Preventing these failures without eliminating the systems and their associated societal value is a challenging reliability engineering problem with global implications. In an era of unprecedented challenges, technology revolution, and changing social attitudes toward risk, all engineers are called to make fundamental changes to the technologies we have depended on for years. Reliability engineers must contemplate ways to harness new techniques alongside the specialized knowledge of engineers to continually advance safety, security, and reliability of systems.

Within reliability engineering, two lines of study have played a key role for decades. The probabilistic system modeling techniques of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA or QRA) have enabled powerful decision making for complex systems under uncertainty. The data-driven Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) have enabled rich, rapid diagnostics and predictive insights into why and when things fail. In this talk, Dr. Groth will explore the connection between PRA and PHM to provide a pathway to transform risk assessment of complex engineering systems.

Bio: Katrina M. Groth is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and the associate director for research for the Center for Risk and Reliability at the University of Maryland. She joined UMD in 2017 as core faculty in the department’s Reliability Engineering program. Groth’s research focuses on the development of models for risk analysis of complex engineering systems. Her research blends reliability engineering, probability theory, causality, Bayesian methods, machine learning and cognitive science to support risk-informed decision making for energy and transportation systems. Groth’s research has enhanced system safety, U.S. policy, and international regulations for applications including hydrogen fueling stations, oil and gas pipelines, aviation, and nuclear power.

From 2010-2017 she was an R&D Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories, where she led multiple projects in probabilistic risk assessment, human reliability analysis and hydrogen safety. She has a PhD. in Reliability Engineering (2009), and B.S. in Nuclear Engineering (2004), both from the University of Maryland. Groth is also a trustee at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History.

"Enabling human-aware automation: a dynamical systems perspective on human cognition"

Abstract: Across many sectors, ranging from manufacturing to healthcare to the military theater, there is growing interest in the potential impact of automation that is truly collaborative with humans. Realizing this impact, though, rests on first addressing the fundamental challenge of designing automation to be aware of, and responsive to, the human with whom it is interacting. While a significant body of work exists in intent inference based on human motion, a human’s physical actions alone are not necessarily a predictor of their decision-making. Indeed, cognitive factors, such as trust and workload, play a substantial role in their decision making as it relates to interactions with autonomous systems. In this talk, I will introduce our techniques and results for real-time estimation and calibration of human trust and workload, including experimental validation of our algorithms through human-subjects experiments. I will highlight how our approach is able to mitigate the negative consequences of problems such as “over trust” that can occur in such interactions. I will also discuss our more recent efforts to extend this research to human interaction with higher levels of automation.

Bio: Dr. Neera Jain is an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and a faculty member in the Ray W. Herrick Laboratories at Purdue University. She directs the Jain Research Laboratory whose vision is to advance technologies that will have a lasting impact on society through a systems-based approach grounded in dynamic modeling and control theory. A major thrust of her research is the design of human-aware automation through control-oriented modeling of human cognition. A second major research thrust is control co-design, with applications to complex energy systems. Dr. Jain earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009 and 2013, respectively. She earned her S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006. Upon completing her Ph.D., Dr. Jain was a visiting member of the research staff in the Mechatronics Group at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, MA where she designed model predictive control algorithms for HVAC systems. In 2015 she was a visiting summer researcher at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Dr. Jain and her research have been featured in NPR and Axios. As a contributor for Forbes.com, she writes on the topic of human interaction with automation and its importance in society. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, as well as private industry.

Bio: Professor Mark Costello serves as the William R.T. Oakes Professor and School Chair of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech where he is responsible for leadership of the school as well as all administration and financial management of the department. Previously, he was posted at the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA where he served as a program manager. Prior to joining DARPA, Dr. Costello served as the David Lewis Professor of Autonomy in Georgia Tech's schools of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, where he taught and mentored students in the areas of dynamics, controls, and design. His research team is noted for creating innovative new technologies such as, for example, robotic landing gear for rotorcraft, bleed air control of parafoils, and direct impact control of smart projectiles. This research has led to the formation of start-up companies including Earthly Dynamics and Persimia Corporations. Dr. Costello holds degrees in aerospace engineering from Penn State (B.S.) and Georgia Tech (M.S. and Ph.D.). He is an ASME Fellow and AIAA Associate Fellow.

"Scale-dependent complexity in locomotion: swimming across scales "

Abstract: Animals regularly navigate complex terrain. But “complex” is relative: a surface that feels smooth to a human might be mountainous to a flea! Turbulent fluid flows present a uniquely complex environment for swimming organisms, with ephemeral eddies spanning a wide range of length and time scales. Very large animals experience turbulence only as enhanced mixing. Very small animals behave as passive mostly as passive drifters. However, many intermediate-size organisms survive and thrive in the midst of these chaotic surroundings. How do animals navigate a land(water)scape of constantly-shifting flow features that are alternately both larger and smaller than themselves? How do they exist in a physical regime in which inertia and viscosity are both important in determining the fluid forces that shape propulsion, feeding, and other critical behaviors? We will discuss these questions and their implications for both fundamental science as well as bioinspired devices, sensors, and vehicles.

Bio: Margaret L. Byron is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and the director of the Environmental and Biological Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Penn State University. She earned her M.S. (2012) and PhD (2015) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, preceded by a B.S.E. (2010) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. From 2015 – 2017, she was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology at the University of California, Irvine before beginning at Penn State in Fall 2017. Her interests include turbulence, particle-laden flows, environmental fluid dynamics, and the biomechanics of swimming. Her current research focuses on intermediate-Reynolds number phenomena, including two main areas: 1) the transport of large nonspherical particles in turbulence and 2) the propulsion, navigation, and control strategies used by millimeter-to-centimeter scale aquatic invertebrates.

"Mollitia Ex Machina: 3D Micro/Nanoprinting Soft Robots with Integrated Fluidic Circuitry"

Abstract: Over the past decade, the field of “soft robotics” has established itself as uniquely suited for applications that would be difficult or impossible to realize using traditional, rigid-bodied robots. The reliance on compliant materials – which are typically actuated by fluidic (e.g., hydraulic and/or pneumatic) means – presents a number of inherent benefits for soft robots, particularly in terms of safety for human-robot interactions and adaptability in geometry for manipulating delicate objects. Unfortunately, continued progress is impeded by broad challenges associated with controlling the underlying fluidic routines of such systems. In this research seminar, Prof. Ryan D. Sochol will discuss how his Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing (BAM) Laboratory is leveraging the capabilities of two alternative additive micro/nanomanufacturing (or colloquially, “three-dimensional (3D) micro/nanoprinting) technologies to address these barriers. Specifically, Prof. Sochol will describe his group’s recent strategies for using the 3D nanoprinting approach, “Two-Photon Direct Laser Writing”, and the multi-material 3D microprinting technique, “PolyJet 3D Printing”, to engineer soft robotic systems that comprise integrated fluidic circuitry.

Bio: Prof. Ryan D. Sochol is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering within the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining the faculty at UMD, Prof. Sochol served two primary academic roles: (i) as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and (ii) as the Director of the Micro Mechanical Methods for Biology (M3B) Laboratory Program within the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center at UC Berkeley. Prof. Sochol also served as a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tokyo. Prof. Sochol received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2006, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2009 and 2011, respectively, with Doctoral Minors in Bioengineering and Public Health. In 2019, Prof. Sochol was elected to a two-year term as Co-President of the “Mid-Atlantic Micro/Nano Alliance (MAMNA)”. In 2020, Prof. Sochol received the NSF CAREER Award.

Bio: Malshe joined the Purdue faculty from the University of Arkansas, where he served as Distinguished Professor and 21st Century Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He has gained a national and international reputation in advanced manufacturing, bio-inspired designing, material surface engineering and system integration. Malshe has received numerous honors, including fellowships to the International Academy of Production Engineering, American Society of Materials, American Society of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute of Physics. In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineers “for innovations in nanomanufacturing with impact in multiple industry sectors.” Malshe has trained more than 60 graduate and post-doctoral students; published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and received over 20 patents, resulting in award-winning engineered products applied in energy, aerospace, transportation and EV, high-performance racing and other industrial sectors; and delivered over 100 keynote and invited presentations. He serves multiple professional organizations through his leadership roles on various national and international committees.

"Towards Durable and Efficient Condensation Heat Transfer"

Abstract: Phase-change phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and in man-made energy conversion systems and technologies. Over the last decade or two, advances in nano/microscale materials/surface engineering have been leveraged to enhance and tune the performance of phase-change processes. For condensation (vapor-to-liquid phase change) of water, low surface energy coatings are widely accepted to enhance heat transfer performance, however, these coatings must be thin (generally, ≈1 μm or less). Unfortunately, thin coatings fail rapidly during active condensation, and the Holy Grail in condensation heat transfer research is developing robust and long-term durable coatings or enhancement mechanisms.

In this talk, we will present two research thrusts within the Thermal Engineering Group at Texas A&M that are focused on developing robust condensation heat transfer enhancement mechanisms/technologies. We will mainly focus on our work related to a fluid-agnostic condensation heat transfer enhancement technology, and briefly introduce some recent work on elucidating condensation-mediated degradation mechanisms of low surface energy coatings. Finally, we will also briefly introduce a novel optical diagnostic technique that we are developing to detect species and estimate spatially discretized vapor temperatures in phase-change processes.

Bio: Dion Antao is an Assistant Professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University where he leads the Thermal Engineering Group. Prior to joining Texas A&M, he completed his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Device Research Laboratory. Dion received his B.Tech. (Hons.) degree from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Drexel University, all in Mechanical Engineering. He was recently awarded the ACS-PRF Doctoral New Investigator award, and research in the Thermal Engineering Group is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the ACS Petroleum Research Fund. His research interests are in the areas of two-phase flow and heat transfer, solid-liquid-vapor interfacial phenomena, and plasma physics and engineering.

"Multifractality and Universality of Thermal Fluctuations in Pool Boiling"

Abstract: Boiling is a highly effective heat transfer mechanism, finding application in thermal power plants, industrial heat exchangers, and electronics cooling. Boiling is marked by the `boiling crisis' in which the nucleate boiling regime characterized by bubble nucleation and departure from the surface, is abruptly replaced by a regime with a thin vapor film next to the surface, at some system-specific value of heat flux (the Critical Heat Flux, CHF). The drop in thermal conductivity of the near-wall fluid leads to a sharp rise in surface temperature and even melting. Despite the wide range of industrial applications and the apparent simplicity of the system, no unified theory exists that can predict the value of CHF as a function of solid/liquid properties, operating parameters (pressure, subcooling) and surface conditions. As a result, heat transfer is plotted in dimensional terms (typically heat flux vs wall superheat), with each surface/pressure/fluid displaying a different curve. Our group takes the view that CHF cannot be modeled separately from the boiling heat transfer curve, and is the result of a sequence of events that begin far from the boiling condition. Long-range temporal correlations may develop as a result of nonlinear interactions between nucleating cavities, and these nonlinear behavior leads to intermittency in thermal fluctuations (heat flux or temperature, depending on boundary condition). As a result, thermal fluctuations are intermittent, non-stationary quantities, and a multifractal analysis of time-series leads to the development of chaos quantifiers that display universal behavior along the boiling curve for multiple operating pressures, gravity level, surface roughness and thermal boundary condition. Such a universal curve, if completely verified, will enable real-time estimation of safety margin during operation, even as the surface changes its chemistry or morphology due to corrosion and deposition, and therefore its CHF value. The results are expected to pave the way for new approaches to modeling the boiling phenomenon.

Bio: Dr. Vinod Srinivasan is the Richard and Barbara Nelson Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He graduated from IIT-Bombay, India with a B. Tech and a Ph.D from the University of Minnesota in 2007. His post-doctoral research at the Nano-Energy Laboratory, UC Berkeley directed by Dr. Arun Majumdar focused on the use of nanostructures in enhancing transport in pool boiling and evaporative cooling for thermal management of electronics. He was Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore before starting at UMN in 2012.

Dr. Srinivasan’s interests lie in the broad areas of multiphase fluid flow and heat transfer. Current areas of research include: probing the dynamics of interaction between cavities in nucleate pool boiling; high heat flux dissipation in evaporative systems using spray cooling; determination of thermal properties of sheared granular materials, and shear instabilities. Most work is primarily experimental, aided by reduced order modeling such as linear stability theory. His recent work on generating flow instabilities for efficient atomization of viscous biofuels is funded by the American Chemical Societ and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Srinivasan is currently the vice-chair of the ASME K-13 Committee on Multiphase Heat Transfer and a member of the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer.

Bio: G.P. "Bud" Peterson came to Georgia Tech on April 1, 2009, as the Institute's 11th president and retired from that role August 31, 2019. On Spetember 10, 2019 the Board of Regents (BOR) of the University System of Georgia voted to name Peterson President Emeritus as well as Regents Professor of Mechanical Engineering for the standard three-year term.

Throughout his career, Professor Peterson has played an active role in helping to establish the national education and research agendas, serving on numerous industry, government, and academic task forces and committees. He also has served as a member of a number of congressional task forces, research councils, and advisory boards, including the Office of Naval Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, the National Research Council, and the National Academy of Engineering. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors and vice president for Education for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He is currently serving on a number of national boards and committees, including serving as a member of the National Science Board, Co-Chair of the Government Relations Committee of the Association of Public and Land-grant universities, and member of the US Council on Competitiveness.

Professor Peterson's research interests have focused on the fundamental aspects of phase change heat transfer, including the heat transfer in reduced gravity environments, boiling from enhanced surfaces, and some of the earliest work in the area of flow and phase change heat transfer in microchannels. Early investigations focused on applications involving the thermal control of manned and unmanned spacecraft and progressed through applications of phase change heat transfer to the thermal control of electronic components and devices. This work resulted in several innovative concepts and a number of patents.

Current research interests involve theoretical investigations of the surface chemistry of micro and nano fabricated devices, using molecular dynamic simulation, which have pushed the boundaries that could bring revolutions in both thermal management and the energy sectors.

"Data-driven Reduced-order Modeling for Fluid-solid Interactions and Soft Matter"

Abstract: In this talk, two data-driven reduced-order modeling approaches will be discussed. The first one draws on the proper orthogonal decomposition, Gaussian process regression, and moving least squares interpolation. It combines several attributes that are not simultaneously satisfied in the existing model order reduction methods for dynamical systems with moving boundaries. The second approach is based on the generalized Langevin equation, deep neural network, and Bayesian optimization and can be used to build reduced-order models for high-dimensional Hamiltonian systems. As a proof of concept, the first approach was applied to modeling fluid-solid interactions and the second to modeling polymeric solutions.

Bio: Prof. Pan received her PhD in applied mathematics at Brown University, and before joining UW-Madison in 2016, she worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a postdoc and a staff scientist. Her research group at UW-Madison focuses on multiscale modeling of soft matter and fluids-related multiphysical systems through accurate, robust, and scalable numerical methods and data-driven approaches. Her current projects are supported by NSF and DOD.

"Managing the Nitrogen Cycle with Electrochemistry"

Abstract: Within the chemical commodity industry, transforming a thermocatalytic process into an electrocatalytic process is one way to increase electrification. Thermodynamically, transforming a thermocatalytic process can occur on any heterogeneous catalyst, through simply altering the surface potential of a catalyst. In practice there are many other system and catalyst related challenges which prevent electrocatalytic processes from achieving performance targets which mirror thermocatalytic systems. This inability to achieve desired performance has slowed the introduction of electrocatalytic processes in industry.

The primary aim of this talk is to detail the system and materials related challenges and opportunities for electrochemical ammonia synthesis and nitrate remediation. We aim to highlight the critical targets and performance metrics which must be achieved to enable direct competition with thermocatalytic systems, and will highlight the role materials design may have in accelerating these clean technologies. Both of these reactions are critical for the growing fertilizer market place, and historically have only occurred through thermocatalytic (Haber-Bosch and Ostwald processes) or biocatalytic processes [3]. If these processes could be accomplished electrocatalytically, this could allow for a circular nitrogen economy, which would mitigate waste and maximize food production.

Bio: Dr. Marta C. Hatzell joined the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in August of 2015. Dr. Hatzell obtained a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, and a Masters in Environmental Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow and a Philanthropic Educational Organization Scholar during her PhD. Dr. Hatzell also received the NSF CAREER award from (2019), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (ONR-YIP) award (2020), and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in Chemistry (2020) during her assistant professorship. Dr. Hatzell’s lab mission is to innovate next generation sustainable separations and catalytic technologies to augment food, energy, and water systems. Dr. Hatzell's primary contributions have focused on demonstrating the prospects for electrochemical separations and catalysis, and in unraveling interface mechanisms.

Bio: Ravi is the Associate Lab Director of the Energy Technologies Area and Interim Division Director of Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ravi joined Berkeley Lab in June, 2015. Previously, he was vice president of product development of Sheetak Inc., a startup developing solid state thermoelectric energy converters. He relocated to India for a while to develop these technologies for the rural Indian market. Ravi earlier worked as one of the first program directors at the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). While there, he created the Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices (BEET-IT) and the High Energy Advanced Thermal Storage (HEATS) programs. Prior to joining ARPA-E, Ravi was the technology development manager of the thermal management group at Intel. He was also an adjunct professor in the school of engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) from 2005-2013, where his research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

Ravi has published more 90 archival journal papers in top science and engineering journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Physical Review Letters and Journal of Heat Transfer. He holds more than 35 patents in the area of thermoelectrics, microchannels, heat pipes, thermal interface materials, nanostructured materials and devices. He has served on the Ph.D. committee of students at Stanford and ASU. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He was the recipient of an Intel achievement award (the highest award for technical achievement in Intel). He is also a recipient of the outstanding young engineer award from the components and packaging society of IEEE. He has served on the editorial committee of Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, Nano and Microscale Thermophysical Engineering, the IEEE Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Society and ASME Journal of Heat Transfer. He has given multiple invited talks all over the world on nano to macroscale thermal energy process and systems. More information about Ravi's research can be found on his group website, prasherlab.lbl.gov

Ravi obtained his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and Ph.D. from Arizona State University.

"Robotics tools for sensing and perturbing single cells in intact tissue"

Abstract: Computations in the brain that mediate behavior occur at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Information is integrated in the brain within single cells, which are interconnected in dense local circuits, which are in turn, incorporated in larger networks spanning many brain regions. A critical challenge for modern neuroscience is to study the brain across these multiple spatial scales. Traditionally, the modalities used to observe or perturb activities at the level of single cells do not scale to the circuit or whole brain level without loss of signal fidelity or information. In this presentation, I am going describe technologies we have been developing to bridge some of these experimental scales. First, I am going to talk about robotic tools we have developed that enable us automatically perform patch clamping, a high-fidelity neuronal recording technique that enables comprehensive electrophysiological and morphological characterization of single cells in awake and anesthetized animals. Building upon this basic technology, we have now extended the automation algorithms to scale up the number of electrodes to perform patch clamp recordings from intact circuits in vivo, and have also incorporated computer vision algorithms to target specific genetically tagged populations of cells within them. Moreover, these robots can be programmed to deliver femto-liter payloads via microinjection for cellular resolution genetic manipulation in intact tissue.

Bio: Dr. Kodandaramaiah obtained a Bachelor in Engineering degree in mechanical engineering from Visveswaraya Technological University in India. He obtained a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, also in Mechanical Engineering. He then completed post-doctoral training in Dr. Edward Boyden’s laboratory in the Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is at the intersection of robotics, precision engineering and neuroscience. During his graduate studies and post-doctoral training, Dr. Kodandaramaiah developed robotic tools for observing and analyzing neuronal circuit computations in intact living brains. In 2010, the work was awarded the R. V. Jones Memorial Award by the American Society for Precision Engineering. In 2012, Dr. Kodandaramaiah was recognized by Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 list of rising researchers in science and healthcare.

"Reverse Engineering Biological Control of Locomotion"

Abstract: According to the National Academy of Engineering, one the Grand Challenges for Engineering for the 21st century is to reverse engineer brain function. In this talk, I will present a framework to quantify how the brain controls movement by integrating experimental and theoretical approaches at the interface of biomechanics, neuroscience and control theory. Emphasizing the senses of touch and vision, I will draw on control tasks in running and flying insects and describe how animals implement feedback control. I will discuss novel tools that my lab is developing to study animal behavior in virtual reality and techniques that permit unprecedented access to brain circuits. Throughout, I will highlight the interdisciplinary nature of my research program that is inspiring the development of more agile insect-scale robots. By applying principles from biology, these robots can permit tasks such as industrial monitoring in confined spaces, exploration on complex terrain, and search and rescue missions in disaster areas.

Bio: Jean-Michel Mongeau is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University. He directs the Bio-Motion Systems lab which studies the neuro-mechanics and control of aerial and terrestrial locomotion in animals and machines. He is the recipient of the 2019 AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) award. Dr. Mongeau received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2013 in Biophysics and his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2007. Dr. Mongeau was a NSF IGERT and NSF Graduate Research fellow. Prior to joining Penn State, he was a post-doctoral scholar at UCLA funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Army Research Office. Dr. Mongeau and his research have been featured in several popular media outlets including The New York Times, Discover Magazine, NPR, and The Economist.

Bio: Professor Kristi A. Morgansen received a BS and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University, respectively in 1993 and 1994, an S.M. in Applied Mathematics in 1996 from Harvard University and a PhD in Engineering Sciences in 1999 from Harvard University. She is currently Professor and Chair of the William E. Boeing Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics. Her research interests focus on nonlinear systems where sensing and actuation are integrated, stability in switched systems with delay, and incorporation of operational constraints such as communication delays in control of multi-vehicle systems. Applications include both traditional autonomous vehicle systems such as fixed-wing aircraft and underwater gliders as well as novel systems such as bio-inspired underwater propulsion, bio-inspired agile flight, human decision making, and neural engineering.

"Advancements in high-bandwidth laser-absorption diagnostics for combustion of energetic materials"

Abstract: Understanding the complex combustion physics governing post-detonation fireballs of energetic materials is paramount to national security. The ability to predict the thermochemical evolution of such fireballs is key to not only understanding their efficacy at neutralizing threats (e.g., biological weapons of mass destruction), but also to predicting their radiative signature for remote detection technologies. This quest for accurate, predictive fireball models has motivated the development of a variety of laser diagnostics capable of quantifying temperature and chemical species in harsh combustion environments. Recently, our lab has developed several laser-absorption-spectroscopy diagnostics for temperature and species measurements on extremely short timescales (picoseconds to microseconds) and with improved sensitivity. This talk will compare and contrast two such diagnostics. The first utilizes telecommunication-grade diode lasers with a novel near-GHz wavelength-modulation-spectroscopy technique to provide sensitive measurements of temperature, H₂O, and atomic iodine at up to 1 MHz via a field-deployable sensor package. The second utilizes broadband, ultrashort pulses of mid-infrared radiation to provide simultaneous measurements of temperature, CO, NO, and H₂O with picosecond time resolution. The application of these diagnostics to characterizing aluminized fireballs of HMX is also presented.

Bio: Dr. Goldenstein is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University and an editorial board member for IOP’s Measurement Science and Technology. He received his BSE from the University of Michigan in 2009 and his PhD from Stanford University in 2014. He was a Postdoctoral Scholar in Stanford University’s High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory from 2014 to 2016 where he studied laser spectroscopy, nonequilibrium gases, and propulsion. Since joining Purdue in 2016, Dr. Goldenstein has received Young Investigator Awards from DTRA and AFOSR, the NSF CAREER Award, and a NASA Early Career Faculty Award. His research group focuses on the development and application of laser diagnostics for studying combustion, nonequilibrium gases, and propulsion and defense systems.

"Quantitative thermochemical imaging of combustion flows: rockets to wildfires"

Abstract: The conversion of chemical to thermal energy often involves a spatially-heterogenous domain governed by competing physics of fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and chemical kinetics. To improve understanding and predictive capability of complex combustion flow fields, quantitative imaging techniques for temperature and species are needed. This talk examines the potential for laser absorption spectroscopy to be used as a quantitative thermochemical imaging diagnostic with application to multi-physical experiments relevant to hybrid rocket propulsion, gas turbines, and toxicant formation in fires at the wildland-urban interface. Application-oriented case studies highlight the benefits and shortcomings of using tomographic methods to discern optical pathlength non-uniformity and motivate further advancement. The latter part of the talk presents a novel mid-infrared laser absorption imaging (LAI) technique and the prospects for deep learning methods in enabling quantitative, high-resolution 3D imaging of thermochemical flow structure with limited optical access.

Bio: Dr. Spearrin is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where he directs the Laser Spectroscopy and Gas Dynamics Laboratory as well as the Mojave Propulsion Test Facility. His research spans fundamental spectroscopic studies of collisional and radiative processes, optical diagnostic methods development, and experimental investigations of non-equilibrium flow physics and advanced propulsion technology. Dr. Spearrin has received early-career awards from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, American Chemical Society, and NASA. Dr. Spearrin completed his Ph.D. in 2015 at Stanford University, working in the High Temperature Gas Dynamics Laboratory. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Spearrin worked for Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne as a combustion devices development engineer.

Bio: Dr. Tim Lieuwen holds the David S. Lewis, Jr. Chair and is the executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech. His interests lie in the areas of acoustics, fluid mechanics, and combustion. He works closely with industry and government, particularly focusing on fundamental problems that arise out of development of clean combustion systems or utilization of alternative fuels. If you like making fire, making noise, and saving the planet all at the same time, these are all great problems to work on.

A 2018 inductee into the National Academy of Engineering, Dr. Lieuwen has authored or edited four combustion books, including the textbook Unsteady Combustor Physics. He has also received five patents, and authored eight book chapters, 110 journal articles, and more than 200 other papers. He is a member of the National Petroleum Counsel and is editor-in-chief of an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics book series. He has served on the board of the ASME International Gas Turbine Institute, and is past chair of the Combustion, Fuels, and Emissions technical committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is also an associate editor of the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and has served as associate editor for the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power, and Combustion Science and Technology. Prof. Lieuwen is a Fellow of the ASME and AIAA, and has been a recipient of the AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award and the ASME Westinghouse Silver Medal.

"Lost in Space: Design Manifolds Can Accelerate Design and Optimization Iterations Several Fold"

Abstract: When designing complex geometry like the surface of a turbine blade, engineers face a choice. They can use many surface control points (equivalently, design variables) to achieve subtle changes that can lead to potentially important performance improvements — at the risk of themselves (or their optimizers) getting lost in the (often exponentially) larger design space that results. Or they can play it safe, using a lower-dimensional, standard design representation that they can tractably explore and optimize — at the risk of settling with lower performance designs. In this talk, I advocate for a different path; one that seemingly gets the best of both worlds. I propose learning a Design Manifold — a non-linear, low-dimensional subspace via Machine Learned Generative Models — that captures the key ways in which a design space varies by leveraging past examples of successful designs. I will describe this idea and then demonstrate how it aids gradient-free optimization via an example of airfoil design, where using Design Manifolds reduces the required design iteration time by 10x compared to traditional representations and 2-3x compared to State of the Art techniques. Importantly, these approaches do not require access to performance gradients (e.g., via adjoint solvers) and thus apply to any simulation code and assemblies with multiple parts.

Bio: Mark Fuge is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is also an affiliate faculty in the Institute for Systems Research and a member of the Maryland Robotics Center and Human-Computer Interaction Lab. His staff and students study fundamental scientific and mathematical questions behind how humans and computers can work together to design better complex engineered systems, from the molecular scale all the way to systems as large as aircraft and ships using tools from Applied Mathematics (such as graph theory, category theory, and statistics) and Computer Science (such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, complexity theory, and submodular optimization). He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and has received an NSF CAREER Award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. He gratefully acknowledges prior and current support from NSF, DARPA, ARPA-E, NIH, ONR, and Lockheed Martin, as well as the tireless efforts of his current and former graduate students and postdocs, upon whose coattails he has been graciously riding since 2015. You can learn more about his research at his lab’s website: http://ideal.umd.edu.

"A Discrete Geometric Approach to Simulation of Soft Robots"

Abstract: Soft limbed robots are primarily composed of soft and deformable materials that can allow for navigating through unstructured terrain and confined spaces. However, their design and control require a painstaking trial and error process owing to the absence of an accurate and efficient modeling tool. Here, we present a discrete differential geometry based numerical algorithm for predicting soft robot locomotion and employ this tool to study two different soft robots. First, to validate the simulation, we use a shape memory alloy driven soft robot that can cyclically change shape through electrical Joule heating and passive cooling. Our experiments and simulations show reasonable quantitative agreement and indicate the potential role of this discrete geometric approach as a computational framework in predictive simulations for soft robot design and control. Next, wee then employ this simulation tool to understand the locomotion of bacteria and bio-inspired soft robots in low Reynolds fluid. We consider locomotion by a flexible helical flagellum that is attached to a spherical head. When the angular velocity of the flexible flagellum exceeds a threshold value, the hydrodynamic force by the fluid can cause buckling, characterized by a dramatic change in shape. Using the simulation tool, we demonstrate that the flagellated system can follow a prescribed path in three-dimensional space by exploiting buckling of the flagellum. The control scheme involves only a single scalar input - the angular velocity of the flagellum. Our study underscores the potential role of buckling in the locomotion of natural bacteria.

Bio: M. Khalid Jawed is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He directs the Structures-Computer Interaction Lab. His group’s research lies at the intersection of mechanics, robotics, and computer graphics. Ongoing projects include real-time simulation of soft robots, physics-based methods for robotic manipulation of flexible objects, soft deployable structures, and robotics for precision agriculture. Prior to joining UCLA in 2017, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD and Master’s degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016 and 2014, respectively. He attained his undergraduate degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Physics from the University of Michigan in 2012. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Bio: Dr. Bronkhorst has been involved for nearly 30 years in the micromechanical study of metallic and fibrous composite materials with positions in industry (Weyerhaeuser Co.), national laboratory (Los Alamos), and academic institutions. Most recently in capacity as Professor of Applied Mechanics at University of Wisconsin – Madison. He contributed to the development of the Crystal Plasticity Finite Element Method which has now become a commonly used numerical technique for the computational evaluation of microstructural evolution of metallic materials. He has been actively involved in the development of single crystal theory for the dynamic deformation response of metals, including structural evolution and phase transformation. He has for many years actively pursued strongly balanced studies combining theory development, computational advancement, together with creative experiments. He has also been involved with many studies of the formation of damage and failure in several metallic materials including as PI for a series of classified dynamic damage experiments on a Pu alloy in the underground U1a complex at the Nevada Test Site. He served as project leader of the Material Modeling effort for the NNSA ASC Program for six years and as the project leader for the Computational Mechanics of Materials project within the DoD/DOE Joint Munitions Program. During his tenure at LANL he was awarded two LANL distinguished performance awards, three Defense Program Award of Excellence, and one DoE Office of Science Outstanding Mentor Award.

The Theoretical and Computational Mechanics of Materials research group of Dr. Bronkhorst is focused upon developing advanced computational techniques for predicting porosity and shear band ductile damage, structural phase transformation, dynamic recrystallization, an broad representing large deformation dislocation and twin mediated plasticity from sub-granular to macroscopic length scales in broad classes of metallic materials.

He is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Plasticity and the ASME Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology. He is Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

"Materials, Mechanics, and Manufacturing of Multifunctional Yarns and Textiles"

Abstract: Multifunctional yarns and textiles incorporate active material fibers in their structures to create fabrics capable of actuation, sensing, energy harvesting, or communication. These fabrics have the potential to revolutionize medical devices, rehabilitation equipment, and wearable technologies to provide life-saving and life-enhancing interventions. Shape memory alloys are a particularly promising material system for multifunctional fabrics because they directly afford actuation through the shape memory effect and energy absorption through the superelastic effect. The integration of this unique material into yarn and textile structures creates multifunctional fabrics that produce large forces and deformations with complex, distributed, three-dimensional behaviors. In this talk, I will highlight recent advancements in the mechanics, manufacturing, and design of yarns and textiles fabricated from shape memory alloys. The integration of smart material fibers directly into yarns and textiles during manufacturing is an essential step toward creating truly multifunctional fabrics that enable advancements in current applications and open the door to applications not yet imagined.

Bio: Dr. Julianna Abel is a Benjamin Mayhugh Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Abel earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan and her B.S. from the University of Cincinnati. She is a NSF CAREER Award recipient, Toyota Programmable Systems Innovation Fellow, Glenn Research Center Faculty Fellow, and recently earned the 2020 ASME Ephrahim Garcia Best Paper Award. Her research combines innovative design processes and advanced manufacturing techniques with material and structural modeling to lay the scientific foundation necessary for the design of multifunctional yarns and textiles.

"Microballistics: Dynamic creation of nanostructures in Metals to Engineering Energy Dissipation in Nanostructured Materials"

Abstract: Impact and shock compression have long been used to modify the mechanical properties of metals, for example, in shot peening and laser shock peening processes. We demonstrate using defect-free single-crystal silver microcubes as a model system and by using an advanced laser-induced projectile impact testing (LIPIT) technique that an extreme gradient-nano-grained structure with favourable martensitic phase transformation can be created in metals via high speed (400 m/s) impacts. The gradient-nano-grained structure with favourable phase transformations show promising pathways to developing ultra-strong metals that are also tough enough to resist failure.

Creating lightweight materials with superior specific properties is critical for protective applications in extreme environments. Using LIPIT, we study the distinct deformation mechanisms that emerge in polymer thin films when they are subjected to high speed (100 m/s to 1 km/s) microprojectile impacts. We demonstrate that these polymers exhibit superior specific energy dissipation characteristics because of the geometric-confinement-induced morphological changes when their thickness is reduced to nanoscale. Understanding and exploiting the fundamental dynamic deformation mechanisms in nanostructured materials will enable the development of next generation protective systems.

Bio: Ramathasan Thevamaran is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Physics of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He obtained his B.Sc.Eng.(Hons.) in Civil Engineering from the University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka) in 2008, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (USA) in 2010 and 2015. Before joining the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) as an Assistant Professor in 2017, he has been a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering of Rice University (USA). His research focuses on the process-structure-property relations of structured materials such as carbon nanotube foams, gradient-nano-grained metals, polymer nanocomposites, and non-Hermitian metamaterials.

Bio: Dr. J. N. Reddy is known worldwide for his significant contributions to the field of applied mechanics through his pioneering works on the development of shear deformation theories (that bear his name in the literature as the Reddy third-order plate theory and the Reddy layerwise theory) and the authorship of widely used textbooks on the linear and nonlinear finite element analysis, variational methods, composite materials and structures, applied functional analysis, and continuum mechanics. His writings have had a major impact on engineering education and technological advances around the world.

Dr. Reddy’s research over the years has involved the development of dual-complementary variational principles in theoretical mechanics, mathematical theory of finite elements (especially mixed finite element formulations), refined mathematical models of laminated composite plates and shells, penalty formulations of the flows of viscous incompressible fluids, least-squares formulations of solid and fluid continua, and extensions and applications of the finite element method to a broad range problems, including: composite structures, numerical heat transfer, computational fluid dynamics, and biology and medicine. His shear deformation plate and shell theories and their finite element models and the penalty finite element models of non-Newtonian fluids have been implemented into commercial finite element computer programs like ABAQUS, NISA, and HyperXtrude.

The current research of Dr. Reddy and his group deals with 7- and 12-parameter shell theories and non-local and non-classical mechanics theories using the ideas of Eringen, Mindlin, Koiter, and others. Dr. Reddy and Dr. Srinivasa have conceived a transformative non-parametric network based methodology (called GraFEA) to study damage and fracture in elastic and viscoelastic solids, including composite structures.

Among many other honors, Reddy is a member of the NAE, and a foreign fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, Canadian Academy of Engineering, and Brazilian Academy of Engineering.

"Partitive solid geometry and other adventures in digital design ideation"

Abstract: The synthesis of new ideas is fundamental to the product design process, particularly in its early phase. Early design ideation helps designers understand the design problem and the design space. This exploratory nature of ideation demands an uninhibited flow between what a designer is thinking and how the designer is communicating the thought. The challenge in enabling computer-supported ideation is to create a digital environment that augments one’s cognitive capability to search, organize, and synthesize ideas. In this talk, I will share three short stories each of which attempts to address this challenge in a different manner. First, I will describe how a simple discovery about the shapes of animal skin cells led to the development of a new geometric modeling paradigm that I call Partitive Solid Geometry. Following this, I will present a broad overview of my on-going work that explores how the tacit human understanding of real-world interactions can be embedded within spatial interactions for 3D shape modeling and design. Finally, I will give a brief demonstration of humans-computer collaboration in open-ended tasks through a simple digital mind-mapping game. We will discuss how vast online knowledge graphs could be instrumental in enabling cognitive support for design ideation.

Bio: Vinayak Krishnamurthy is an Assistant Professor in the J. Mike Walker’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. His works at the intersection of four fields of research, namely, geometric modeling, human computer interactions (HCI), product design, and artificial intelligence. He directs the Mixed-initiative Design Lab to create and investigate advanced tools, methodologies, and theories for engineering, industrial, and architectural design. He studies the role of spatial user interfaces in creative design ideation, new workflows for humans-computer collaboration for information-based ideation, and new geometric modeling techniques for generative design of shapes. Dr. Krishnamurthy’s dissertation research led to the commercial deployment of zPots, a virtual pottery app using Leap Motion controller. Through the NSF-AIR program, we collaborated with zeroUI, a startup located in California. The technology was showcased at TechCrunch Disrupt, San Fransisco (2012) and MakerFaire - Bay Area (2013).

"Opening the blackbox: Towards a deeper understanding of design cognition"

Abstract: Research within prototyping and engineering design treats the designer as a black box. It is not known how the cognitive effort invested by the designer mediates the relationship between prototyping efforts and design outcomes. This is problematic, because without this information it is impossible to understand the cognitive factors that support or hinder design success during complex design tasks, such as prototyping. Further, recent technologies within engineering design are shifting the way designers and design researchers work. This talk will present findings from a variety of studies aimed at investigating the relationship between prototypes, designers, and technology. Dr. Menold’s long-term research goal is to improve engineering design by building fundamental knowledge about for whom and under what conditions design methods are most effective.

Bio: Jessica Menold is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Design and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She is the director of the Technology and Human Research in Engineering Design lab and conducts research at the intersection of engineering design, manufacturing, and new product development. Her current work focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of new product development processes, integrating design thinking into engineering education, and Design for Inspection in advanced manufacturing environments. Her work is dedicated to improving the design of engineered products and systems through evidence-based design methods, rapid prototyping, and performance analysis. Dr. Menold is also the inaugural Associate Director for Outreach and Inclusion at the Bernard M. Gordon Learning Factory, Penn State’s Makerspace.

Bio: Dr. Kristin L. Wood is currently the Senior Associate Design of Innovation and Engagement, College of Engineering, Design, & Computing (CEDC), Executive Director of the Comcast Media and Technology Center, and Director of Inworks, University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus (CU Denver | AMC). Dr. Wood completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He also served as an endowed professor and distinguished teaching professor at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, Founding Head of Pillar, and Director of the SUTD-MIT International Design Center, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). Dr. Wood has published more than 550 refereed articles and books (~20,000 citations; h-Index – 64); has received more than 110 awards in design, research, and education; consulted with more than 100 companies (MNCs and SMEs) worldwide; led or mentored over 25 startup companies; and is currently a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

"Reverse engineering the human neuromotor system: the role of joint dynamics and user-preference in the design and control of wearable robot "

Abstract: To date, wearable robotic systems have not yet realized their full potential, and their impact on the lives of people with disabilities has been more limited than we had hoped. One potential cause for these challenges is that the blueprint used to guide development of these technologies is flawed. Technologies today are based on replication of the kinetics and kinematics of human gait—however, this approach does not account for two important factors, namely, joint impedance that underlies the mechanics of human locomotion, and the implications of user-preference in the development of assistive technologies that people want to use. In this talk, I will introduce our techniques and results for quantifying joint impedance during locomotion, and how this information has led to the development of our novel variable-stiffness ankle-foot prosthesis. Subsequently, we build on this insight to develop new, user-preference based methods for design and control of wearable robots. Finally, I will briefly highlight our open source robotic leg system developed to foster the study of novel control strategies, which is currently being used by eight institutions around the world.

Bio: Elliott Rouse is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and a Core Faculty Member in the Robotics Institute at the University of Michigan. He directs the Neurobionics Lab, whose vision is to reverse engineer how the nervous system regulates the mechanics of locomotion, and use this information to develop transformative wearable robotic technologies. He is the recipient of the 2018 NSF CAREER award, and is a member of the IEEE EMBS Technical Committee on Biorobotics. In addition, he is on the Editorial Boards for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, as well as IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. Elliott received the BS degree in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University and the PhD degree in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University. Subsequently, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Media Lab. In 2019 – 2020, Elliott was a visiting faculty member at (Google) X in California. Elliott and his research have been featured at TED, on the Discovery Channel, CNN, National Public Radio, Wired Magazine UK, and Business Insider.

“Personalizing control of robotic prostheses and exoskeletons through new advances to intent recognition systems ”

Abstract: New advanced robotic prostheses and orthoses are helping to restore function to individuals with lower limb disability by reducing the metabolic cost of walking and restoring normal biomechanics. These devices can aid community mobility by providing powered assistance for a number of tasks such as standing up, walking, climbing stairs, and traversing sloped or uneven terrain. An important function of these devices is to timely and accurately recognize user intent and optimize the control to provide biomechanically appropriate assistance across task paradigms. Our research has focused on developing intuitive and smart intent recognition systems for these devices to predict user intent to provide timely power assistance to users. This talk will examine approaches for both optimizing intent recognition systems as well as new methods for applying such systems to wearable devices and strategies to personalize the system to individual users.

Bio: Dr. Aaron Young is an Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and has directed the Exoskeleton and Prosthetic Intelligent Controls (EPIC) lab since 2016. Dr. Young received his MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on neural and rehabilitation engineering from Northwestern University in 2011 and 2014 respectively. He received a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University in 2009. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan in the Human Neuromechanics Lab working with lower limb exoskeletons and powered orthoses to augment human performance. His research area is in advanced control systems for robotic prosthetic and exoskeleton systems for humans with movement impairment. He combines machine learning, robotics, human biomechanics, and control systems to design wearable robots to improve the community mobility of individuals with walking disability. He has recently received an NIH New Investigator award and IEEE New Faces of Engineering award, and his EPIC lab group recently won the International VIP Consortium Innovation Competition.

Bio: Marcia O’Malley is the Thomas Michael Panos Family Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University, and her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. Her research is in the areas of haptics and robotic rehabilitation, with a focus on the design and control of wearable robotic devices for training and rehabilitation. She is a Fellow of both the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Her editorial roles include senior associate editor for both the ACM Transactions on Human Robot Interaction and the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, co-Editor in Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, and Program Chair for the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

"Simulation and modeling of turbulent particle-laden flows: COVID19 and Mars2020"

Abstract: A challenging aspect in modeling particle-laden flows is their ability to give rise to complex phenomena with significant interaction between scales. In this talk, we will examine two contemporary examples: (i) transmission of infectious aerosols related to COVID19 and (ii) fluidization of regolith from a rocket exhaust plume during planetary/lunar landing, which share similar flow physics. We will examine the fundamental processes of turbulent particle-laden flows, including state-of-the-art phenomenology from experimental observations, existing theories, and simulation techniques. New numerical methods uniquely designed to address this class of flows will be presented, in addition to high-resolution simulations that allow us to probe turbulence from the sub-particle scale to scales that encompass millions of particles.

“Multiphysics problems at low Reynolds number: From deformable channels to spinning droplets”

Abstract: I will discuss two research directions on theory and computation of low Reynolds number flow phenomena being pursued by my research group, the Transport: Modeling, Numerics & Theory Laboratory (TMNT-Lab) at Purdue. The first problem involves fluid--structure interaction between viscous internal flow and a compliant conduit. A common example is channels in PDMS-based microfluidic devices. The second problem involves the multiphysics interaction between an imposed magnetic field and a confined viscous ferrofluid droplet. We show that applying the external field in a specific manner leads to flow within the droplet and the formation of coherent periodic interfacial waves. This work is supported by the NSF under grants CBET-1705637 and CMMI-2029540.

Bio: Katepalli Sreenivasan was the Dean of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering from 2013–2018, past President of the Brooklyn Polytechnic and the former director of the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. At NYU he is a University Professor and holds professorships in the Department of Physics and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Prof. Sreenivasan is an international leader on the nature of turbulent flows, including experiment, theory, and simulations; his expertise crosses the boundaries of physics, engineering, and mathematics. Sreenivasan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.