Mechanical Engineering's Centennial Celebration

Please join our department in celebrating 100 Years of Mechanical Engineering on Saturday, April 20, 2013 from 8:30am - 5:00pm; the day will kick-off with our 30th Annual Alexander Graham Christie Lecture, to be presented by Mr. Norman Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO of the Board of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Please visit our Centennial Celebration webpage for more information and to register for this exciting event!

30th Annual Alexander Graham Christie Lecture

Saturday, April 20, 2013, 9:00a.m. – 10:00a.m., 110 Hodson Hall; Presented by Mr. Norman Augustine, “100 Years of Engineering: Looking Forward and Looking Back”

Full-time Tenure-track Faculty Positions and Full-time Lecturer Position

The Department of Mechanical Engineering is seeking qualified applicants; visit here for positions and application info.

Congratulations to Professor Vicky Nguyen!

2013: Professor Vicky Nguyen is the recipient of a 2013 NSF CAREER Award, one of the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research in their organizations.  Professor Nguyen’s award supports her project, “Understanding the Micromechanisms of Growth and Remodeling Collagenous Tissues.”  This research has the potential to add significantly to our understanding of how mechanical loading influences the growth and remodeling of collagen tissue—knowledge that can be applied to the study and treatment of a range of diseases and conditions, including tendon injuries, cardiac fibrosis and glaucoma.

In addition, Professor Nguyen is also the recipient of the 2012 Eshelby Mechanics Award for Young Faculty. This award is given annually to rapidly emerging junior faculty who exemplify the creative use and development of mechanics. The intent of the award is to promote the field of mechanics, especially among young researchers.

Former summer student: Rhodes Scholar

11/2012: Summer researcher Daniel Price was recently awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford in the UK. Mr. Price, a student at UC Berkeley, worked this summer in the ME department with Professor Noah Cowan on adaptive tracking behavior in the weakly electric glass knifefish. Mr. Price also won "Best Presentation" among 12 other summer research projects at Hopkins. 

AIAA Region I Young Professional, Student, and Education Conference Winners

On November 2, 2012, at the AIAA Region I Young Professional, Student, and Education Conference graduate student Pranav Joshi won the Best Graduate Student Paper Award for his presentation, "Effects of Mean and Fluctuating Pressure Gradients on Boundary Layer Turbulence," co-authored with Xiaofeng Liu and Joseph Katz.

Graduate student Chao Zhang won third-place for his presentation, "Flight Stabilization with Flapping Wings in Gusty Environments" co-authored with Lingxiao Zheng, Tyson Hedrick and Rajat Mittal.

Air Force Center of Excellence in Integrated Materials Modeling seeks students

10/18/2012 The Air Force Center of Excellence in Integrated Materials Modeling, headed by Prof. Somnath Ghosh is seeking graduate students to begin studies in the Spring 2013 semester. Visit here for details and application information.

Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response

11/2012: Two JHU students, Sarah Stamper (Psych) and Manu Madhav (MechE) had their interdisciplinary paper selected as the Editor's Choice in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Their paper, which investigates how special interference patterns called "envelopes" drive the behavior of electric fish, was ranked as the third best paper in 2012 in the journal. The student's work was co-advised by ME Professor Noah J. Cowan and visiting ME Professor Eric S. Fortune (Professor of Biology at NJIT). Their paper is freely available until December 5, 2012 and can be found here.

NSF awards $4.3M to ME and E2SHI faculty for a USA/Europe Partnership on Wind Energy

11/2012: The project will fund an International Partnership for Integrated Research and Education (PIRE) in wind energy intermittency, spanning topics from wind farm turbulence to economic management. Professor Meneveau will lead the team involving ME Professors Dennice Gayme and Rajat Mittal and other colleagues in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, as well as at the Texas Tech University, Smith College and the University of Puerto Rico. European partners include DTU and Risoe Laboratory in Denmark, the ERC of the Netherlands, EPFL in Switzerland, Leuven University in Belgium, and Comillas Pontifical University in Spain. For more information, click here.

ME and E2SHI professors win $1.7M NSF grant to develop sustainable power networks

Professor Dennice Gayme is leading a team of researchers at JHU, North Carolina State University, and Smith College in a new $1.7M National Science Foundation project that studies ways to increase the percentage of our electricity that comes from renewable energy sources. Power from wind and solar power is uneven because it depends on when the wind is blowing or sun is shining. The project examines methods to maintain the flow of electricity in a power grid that is connected to these cleaner but intermittent power sources along with the government and market policy necessary for the changes to be adopted. The JHU project team includes Professor Charles Meneveau and Professor Ben Hobbs, the director of the Environment, Energy, Sustainability and Health Institute. For more information, click here.

Baptiste Coudrillier wins first place in the PhD Student Paper Competition

6/12: The Student Paper Competition took place during the Tissue and Cell Solid Mechanics at the ASME Summer Bioengineering Conference, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, June 22, 2012.  The winning paper/presentation, an outcome of research in Professor Vicky Nguyen's laboratory was titled "Scleral anisotropy and its effects on the deformation response of the optic nerve head" and developed a computational model that investigated the effect of the anisotropic and heterogeneous collagen structure of the posterior sclera.

Professor Mittal elucidates long-standing argument about about best swimming stroke

7/4/12: In a ground-breaking application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) that uses boundary conditions from underwater videos and scans of actual swimmers, Professor Rajat Mittal and his team have found that  a deep catch (drag-based) stroke is more efficient and effective than the so-called sculling (lift-based) stroke. The results will appear in a paper recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Biomechanical Engineering and have been shared with the USA Olympic Swimming Team. The New York Times and Inside Science also has featured this work.


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