CMU Mechanical Engineering

Alan McGaughey has received an Air Force Young Investigator Award for his proposal titled "Quantum Mechanics-Driven Prediction of Nanostructure Thermal Conductivity." His proposal was among the 37 proposals selected out of 202 submitted proposals. You can read more here.

Metin Sitti's research group was awarded "Best Paper" at this year's IEEE/RSJ Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)Conference in St. Louise, MO. It was selected out of around 1,400 submitted robotics papers. The research was done by graduate students Chytra Pawashe and Steven Floyd.

MechE Undergraduate Senior Eric Blood spent a "fantastic" summer interning at NASA as part of his American Society of Engineering Education fellowship. Read more here.

Jeremy Michalek is the award recipient of the 2009 ASME Design Automation Outstanding Young Investigator Award. The award is given to an outstanding young investigator who is making noteworthy contributions in the area of design automation, evaluation and integration. Read more here.

Fellowships have been awarded to MechE graduate students: John Thomas receives CIT's Bertucci Graduate Fellowship. Pearce Stanek-Johnson and Tushar Porwal receive the Nick G. Vlahakis Graduate Fellowship from CIT.

MechE graduate student John Thomas was awarded the "Outstanding Young Scientist Award" from the 5th International Conference on Diffusion in Solids and Liquids for his presentation out of about 75 student presentations.

Burak Kara has been granted a prestigous Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award by the National Science Foundation for his proposal "Sketch Based Construction and Interaction with Geometric Content in Creative Design Environments".

Read here how Jon Cagan is helping to rethink the way engineering design is taught.

The new gecko adhesive paper developed by Metin Sitti's research group made the cover of Applied Materials and Interfaces journal. Also, his group's research on supersticky robots is mentioned in an article in New Scientist.

Jeremy Michalek lead a study that has received wide press that demonstrates the advantages of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Read more here.

A team at Honda is using a sketching tool, developed by MechE engineers led by Burak Kara and Kenji Shimada, to design new cars. More here.

Jon Cagan is mentioned in this article for his and his student's work with Navistar in helping to design the company's top of the line Lonestar trucks.

Two MechE grad students, Michael Murphy and Burak Aksak, advised by Metin Sitti had a paper published in the journal Small. This article was also discussed in MIT's Technology Review.

Burak Kara was recently featured in an article that appeared in ASME's Mechanical Engineering magazine.

Jeremy Michalek recently wrote an article that appeared in ASME's Mechanical Engineering magazine.

Professor Ed Rubin, who has a joint appointment between EPP and MechE, is co-author of the most-cited paper in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control: "Use of experience curves to estimate the future cost of power plants with CO2 capture."

Philip LeDuc has been chosen to be a participant at the National Academies Keck Future Initiatives conference on Complexity, November 12-15. This is a selective conference sponsored by the National Academies and the Keck Foundation. He will also be giving a short introductory talk as well. More here.

Paul Steif has received the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the Mechanics Division of the American Society for Engineering Education: "For distinguished and outstanding contributions to mechanics education through synergy of web-based courseware development, widely implemented statics concept inventory, psychometric assessments, broad dissemination, and hands-on demonstrations." The award is given annually for distinguished and outstanding contributions to engineering mechanics education.

Ian Tseng, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, Jarrod Moss, who earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Carnegie Mellon, Mechanical Engineering Professor Jonathan Caganand Psychology Professor Ken Kotovsky won the Best Paper Award at the ASME's 2008 Design Theory and Methodology Conference in New York. Their paper is entitled "Overcoming Blocks In Conceptual Design: The Effects Of Open Goals And Analogical Similarity On Idea Generation." This is the second time that Cagan, Kotovsky and their students have won the award.

Professor Shelley Anna has been selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 14th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Our department has had a junior faculty member selected for three consecutive years. Burak Ozdoganlar last year, and Phil LeDuc the year before. Read the official release here.

Professor Ed Rubin is urging Congress to approve legislation designed to accelerate carbon storage technologies. He has worked on this problem as a member of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC. This organization shared the prize with former Vice-President Al Gore. Professor Rubin introduced Al Gore at CMU's Commencement. You can view the intro here, and Vice-President Gore's speech here.

MechE's Jeremy Michalek has been awarded a National Science Foundation's prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award. Read more.

Department Head, Nadine Aubry, awarded the distinction of Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). See more here.

Plus! Read this write-up of Dr. Aubry from the CMU homepage.

Three of MechE's faculty have been awarded Faculty Awards this year by CIT: Jeremy Michalek has been given the George Tallman Ladd Research Award in recognition of his research, professional accomplishments, and potential; Jon Cagan, the Outstanding Research Award for helping to make CMU the world leader in the field of engineering design grammers; and Ed Rubin, the Distinguished Professor of Engineering Award for his pioneering research in the application of engineering methods to assess the environmental impacts of energy production. More information on CIT's Faculty Awards can be found here.

Professor Ed Rubin, is among the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, as a contributor to the reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Professor Rubin's contribution was substantial, particularly as the coordinating lead author of the IPCC report on Carbon Capture and Storage. You can read more here.

According to the American Society for Engineering Education, MechE ranks among the top 40 producers of Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering graduates in the nation. Listing here.

CMU's Tartan Racing wins DARPA Urban Challenge. Our own Bill Messner is on the team. Read here an earlier article, that includes a humorous quote by him.

Distinguished alumni Edward T. Kirkpatrick passed away recently. Read more about his life here.

Carnegie Mellon is ranked 20th in the world in the London Times' "World's Top 200 Universities". Carnegie Mellon also made Sierra's 'Coolest' College List. These and other rankings can be found here. (PDF)

Professor Allen Robinson wins new awards totaling more than $1.5M to study air pollutant emissions from combustion systems. Read more here.

Professor Metin Sitti is written up in ScientificAmerican.com for another robot that imitates nature. This one "walks on water". You can read about one that climbs walls here.

Professor Jonathan Cagan was interviewed for a story for discovery.com regarding mood furniture! Not surprising considering his growing reputation in the product design field. You can read how Professor Cagan has encouraged Carnegie Mellon students to create more than 30 patentable ideas.

Members of Prof. Metin Sitti's NanoRobotics Lab, PhD students Steven Floyd and Chytra Pawashe, won the second prize in the first RoboCup 2007 Nanogram Competition in Atlanta. This competition involved designing and building a custom micro-robot less than 300 micrometers that could pass obstacles and play soccer on a flat surface precisely with computer control. Seven teams from around the world attended this competition.

Did you know? All five assistant professors hired by MechE since 2002 are winners of the National Science Foundation's prestigious Early Career Award. Read more here!

Department Head, Nadine Aubry, has been named chair of the U.S. National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Fifteen national societies are represented on the committee, with a combined membership of 475,000 engineers and scientists. Read more about USNC/TAM here.