Fall 2021
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Chair's Message
With the fall quarter, after a year and a half of remote teaching, our students have returned to the campus safely and in good health. I am most proud of all the efforts from faculty and staff who have contributed to the success of our return. 

The MAE department has been busy as usual with many successful accomplishments and milestones this quarter, which you can read about in this newsletter. We welcomed Associate Professor SungWoo Nam this past summer and will add Assistant Professor Xian Shi to our faculty in January. Shi's research seeks to enable next generation energy conversion and propulsion technologies through studying the fundamental physics and chemistry of reacting flows and materials.

Our 2021 Fall Design Review took place last week with great enthusiasm from students who were happy to present their projects in person. 

I look forward to engaging with you on campus again soon. 

Best regards,
Roger Rangel
Professor and Chair
INNOVATION
SPACEX SATELLITE SIGNALS USED LIKE GPS TO PINPOINT LOCATION ON EARTH

Engineering researchers have developed a method to use signals broadcast by Starlink internet service satellites to accurately locate a position here on Earth, much like GPS does.
RESEARCH
BIG DATA FROM LITTLE DROPLETS: UNLOCKING CONDENSATION INSIGHTS WITH AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

Tiny droplets hold big data. Researchers from UCI and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform information from condensation droplets exponentially faster and more accurately than before.
NEWS
TWO NEW FACULTY JOIN MAE

The UCI Samueli School of Engineering is welcoming seven faculty members during the 2021-22 academic year, including MAE researchers SungWoo Nam and Xian Shi.
HIGHLIGHT
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP ADVANCES SMART CITIES AND CONNECTED AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

The UCI HORIBA Institute in the Samueli School has been awarded a $6 million grant to establish a Public Road Network Platform for the development, evaluation and deployment of emerging and future connected and autonomous vehicle technologies. 
FEATURE
NASA FUNDS E-FIELDS FLAMES SIMULATION PROJECT

UCI mechanical and aerospace engineers accomplished a major feat in 2018, when after more than 20 years of preparation, their electric-field-and-flame-interaction experiment was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) and then conducted in real-time remotely from Earth by associate project scientist Yu-Chien (Alice) Chien.
ACCOLADE
MAE GRAD STUDENT NAMED BEALL APPLIED INNOVATION FELLOW

Donipolo Ghimire, graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been awarded a 2021 UCI Beall Applied Innovation Graduate Innovation Fellowship in the New Ventures – Develop and Implement Entrepreneurship Programs.
FUNDING
NSF FUNDS UCI PROJECT TO BOOST STEM DEGREE SUCCESS FOR UNDERREPRESENTED STUDENTS

The National Science Foundation has awarded almost $3 million over a five-year period to The Institute for Meaningful Engagement at UCI.
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