03-27-08
In a Watson Lecture entitled The Next-Generation Neural Implant: Let's Start with Retinal Implants, Professor of Electrical Engineering Yu-Chong Tai discusses the technology of retinal implants and recent progress in their development.
Tags: EE MedE health Yu-Chong Tai
03-25-08
Using a flight simulator, Michael Dickinson, the Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, and postdoctoral students Gaby Maimon and Andrew Straw, have come closer to understanding what guides the decision making of the common fruit fly as it zips through space. Their experiments were conducted on both free-flying flies and on flies tethered within a virtual-reality flight simulator. In the flight simulator, flies could steer toward or away from images displayed on an electronic panorama. "We can present the fly with different scenes and the fly reacts to them, like a 12-year-old boy playing a video game," says Dickinson. [Caltech Press Release]
03-17-08
Mechanical engineering graduate student Nathalie Vriend has been selected to receive an Outstanding Student Paper Award for her presentation at the 2007 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Her presentation, A Mystery Unraveled: Booming Sand Dunes was recognized as among the best of a strong group of student presenters.
03-17-08
Two EAS faculty have won ONR Young Investigator Awards: John Dabiri, Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, and Joel Tropp, Assistant Professor of Appliedand Computational Mathematics. The objectives of the Young Investigator Program are to attract to naval research outstanding new faculty members, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers. Tropp's award is for his research into "Compressive Signal Processing - Theory and Algorithms"; and Dabiri's award is for work in "Optimal Propulsion Methodologies for Hybrid Screw-based, Bio-inspired Systems". ONR announced 27 new awards for 2008.
Tags: honors GALCIT John Dabiri CMS Joel Tropp
03-17-08
Mechanical Engineering student Huaising (Cindy) Ko was named one of only 50 college seniors in the nation to receive a $25,000 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for a year of "purposeful exploration." Originally Ko chose to major in the biological sciences due to her interest in the field of medicine. However, at Caltech she discovered that the field of mechanical engineering fascinated her and allowed her to do interdisciplinary work related to her interests in medicine. As a Watson Fellow, Ko will be able to embark on another aspect of medicine that interests her: the tension between modern and traditional medicine. [Caltech Press Release]
03-14-08
Christopher Somerville, one of the world's leading authorities on converting plant cellulose to energy, will speak on March 18 at 8 p.m. in Beckman Auditorium. He will discuss the technical issues involved with the U.S. Secretary of Energy's call to replace 30 percent of the liquid fuels used in the U.S. with cellulosic biofuels by 2030. The event is free and open to the public.
Tags: energy
03-12-08
The NSF has announced three NSF CAREER Awards to Caltech faculty so far this year; they have been awarded to: Azita Emami, Assistant Professor of Electrial Engineering, Julia Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science, and Beverley McKeon, Assistant Professor of Aeronautics. Emami's award is for her research on "Hybrid Data Communication in Advanced Integrated Systems"; Greer's awared is for "Experimental Investigation of Plasticity at Nano-scale via in-situ Mechanical Deformation"; and McKeon's award is for her research on "Morphing Surfaces for Flow Control". The CAREER program offers NSF's most prestigious awards for junior faculty members. The level and 5-year duration of the awards are designed to enable awardees to develop careers as outstanding teacher-scholars. The minimum CAREER award is $400,000.
Tags: APhMS EE honors GALCIT Julia Greer Beverley McKeon Azita Emami-Neyestanak
03-11-08
On March 11, two Caltech mechanical-engineering alumni, Garrett Reisman (MS '92, PhD '97) and Robert Behnken (MS '93, PhD '97) lifted off on the Endeavor Space Shuttle as part of a seven-man team enroute to the International Space Station. The mission was directed from Houston by a third alumnus, Philip Engelauf (BS '78).
Tags: research highlights alumni
03-11-08
The famed ME 72 Contest was held on Tuesday, March 11. Teams of undergraduates competed to launch 50-gram payloads over a rope and then as far as possible across Caltech's North Athletic Field... and the winning team is: Team Savage Rabbit, composed of Jimmy Paulos and Matthew Feldman. Coming in second were Tim Curran and Kevin Watts. Congrats to all the participants!
Tags: MCE
03-10-08
Can we transform the industrialized world from one powered by fossil fuels to one that is powered by sunlight? Watch Sossina Haile: Fuel to Electricity via Solid Electrolyte Fuel Cells.
