Dear ME friends, alumnae/i, and students:
Welcome to the third all-digital version of the Mech E Force newsletter. We have an incredible list of activities and accomplishments to report, but some sad news as well.
Some of you may have read of the passing of Andrew Conn on our website and in The Baltimore Sun. Dr. Conn (BS ’57, PhD ’64) was a retired senior lecturer who played a pivotal role in creating and expanding the senior design course that is the department’s capstone undergraduate design experience. We mourn his passing and are extremely proud to continue his legacy through the great work accomplished within MechE Senior Design. Read more about his life here.
Since the last newsletter in spring 2015, our students, faculty, staff, and alumni have continued to excel. Below are just a few highlights of their achievements.
Students: Last spring, our Hopkins BAJA team placed in the top ten for both their 2015 competitions. The team, consisting of primarily underclassmen, improved immensely over last years finish and earned their highest placing yet. There were a total of 97 teams hailing from around the world competing. Baja SAE is an intercollegiate design competition run by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), where students from universities all over the world design and build small off-road cars. The cars all have engines of the same specifications. Learn more about Hopkins Baja and meet this year’s team.
IEEE Spectrum profiled efforts by a team of Hopkins undergraduates to design and build a handheld device that can rapidly and accurately diagnose medical conditions and suggest treatments. The team call themselves “Aezon,” and they are the only undergraduate team in the finals of Qualcomm’s $10 million Tricorder XPrize competition. The competition is still underway, with winners being announced in January. Learn more about the team members and follow their journey.
In December, Mechanical Engineering freshmen competed against each other in the Mousetraps and Rubber Bands Design Competition. This is the culminating assignment for the Freshmen Experience in Mechanical Engineering course and challenges students to use two mousetraps, six rubber bands, and $15 worth of materials to design and build a vehicle that can perform a certain task. Learn more about the contest and view photos by clicking here.
Interested in seeing more of our undergraduate stories? Click here.
Faculty and Staff: We’ve grown! Since the last installment, the department has added four new faculty members: Dr. Yun Chen, Dr. Chen Li, Dr. Ryan Hurley, and Dr. Soojung Claire Hur. Dr. Chen joined us from the National Institutes of Health in August 2015. Dr. Li will join us in January 2016 after completing his postdoctoral research at University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Hurley will join us in 2017 after completing his postdoctoral research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Hur will join us in 2018 after conducting translational research at the University of California, Los Angeles. We are excited to see what these new faculty members have to offer our students and to the department as a whole.
Professor Kevin Hemker has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Prof. David Kraemer is part of a team competing for the Department of Energy’s Wave Energy Prize. Noah Cowan and James Knierim received a 2015 Johns Hopkins Discovery Award, which was created to provide grant awards to cross-divisional teams, comprised of faculty and/or non-faculty members from at least two schools or affiliates of the university, who are poised to arrive at important discoveries or creative works. A ME Research Team consisting of professors Rajat Mittal, Sung Hoon Kang and postdoc Kourosh Shoele will receive a E2SHI Seed Grant to study energy harvesting. Prof. Dennice Gayme was awarded a prestigious and highly competitive 2015 Catalyst Award for her research “extending a wall-turbulence modeling framework to complex fluids.”
We’ve had some great publicity surrounding our research here in the MechE department: Prof. Rajat Mittal and his team were profiled in The New York Times for their research regarding crickets and their movements, and Professor Jeff Wang and his team were showcased in an article in The Baltimore Sun for their development of a hand-held chlamydia test.
Finally, several of our faculty and staff members have been promoted since the last installment, illustrating that we’re hard at work making sure that our department is not only a wonderful place for students, but also for employees as well.
Alumni: Students from last year’s Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Day were highlighted in an article regarding their help developing a tamper-proof prescription pill bottle. Read more here.
Have an interesting story to tell? We’d love to hear from you and feature you on our social media channels and alumni page.
Our website is constantly being updated with news and information; I encourage you to visit it often. If you’d prefer a more interactive experience, our Facebook page is a great place to learn about upcoming events, view photos, and interact with other Mechanical Engineering students, alumni/ae, and friends.
Did you notice something that’s missing, or simply want to provide commentary or feedback? Please feel free to email me at mech_eng@jhu.edu, call me at 410-516-6782, or even mail us a letter at Department of Mechanical Engineering, 223 Latrobe Hall, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. I looking forward to hearing from you and hope you’re doing well.
Best Regards,
Louis L. Whitcomb
Professor and Chair
Department of Mechanical Engineering