Spring 2019 Newsletter
VOL. 3, ISSUE 2
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Message from the Chair
We are about a month away from the end of the 2018-19 academic year. It has been an exciting year in the Department. Featured in this Newsletter are articles highlighting the accomplishments of our students and faculty since the last edition of the Newsletter in October, 2018. You will note that our students have received competitive fellowships and awards, our faculty have attracted extramural funding in support of research that impact healthcare delivery, multiscale materials development, and energy and environment. Articles on three of our many highly distinguished alumni, whose impact on society is felt in California and internationally, are also included. An important component of our undergraduate curriculum is the two-semester senior capstone design experience, with many of the projects sponsored by industry. Photos from the Fall 2018 Design Day, where students showcased twenty one projects completed in the Fall semester, are included. Brief write-ups on two of the thirty projects that will be completed in the Spring semester are featured in the Newsletter. All projects completed in Spring will be on display at the Design Day in Montezuma Hall, Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union, on Wednesday, May 8, from 1:30 – 4:00 pm. This event is open to the public and I encourage you to visit and explore the wide range of design projects that will be showcased at the event.
The Department takes great pride in its engagement with its alumni, parents, friends, and supporters. We would love to hear from you and we invite you to visit us on campus. Our contact information is given below.
Sincerely,
John Abraham, Ph.D., Professor and Chair
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BSME Student Awarded Brooke Owens Fellowship
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BSME Student Sarah Gomez was one of 38 undergraduate women from across 19 states, including the District of Colombia, to receive the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which is given every year to extraordinary undergraduate women in aerospace selected for their professional aptitude, their creativity, their leadership ability, and their commitment to serving their communities.
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JDP Student Receives Inamori Fellowship
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Luca Carmignani, who is in his fourth year of the joint doctoral program for mechanical and aerospace engineering at SDSU and UCSD, was one of 10 SDSU graduate and Ph.D. candidates to be recognized as an Inamori Fellow. Luca's research focuses on small-scale flames in normal and reduced gravity and is done within the Combustion and Computational Thermodynamics Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Subrata Bhattacharjee.
Read More...
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Ph.D. student Vi Vu receives 1st prize at the JDP Poster Session held at UCSD
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JDP student Vi Vu received the first prize at the JDP Poster Session at UCSD this past fall. Vi currently works in the Cardiovascular Bioengineering Lab, under the supervision of Dr. Karen May-Newman. The lab's goal is to improve the lives of patients with heart diseases through innovative approaches to medical device design and integration
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2019 Student Research Symposium Awards
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Nha Uyen Huynh & Richard Lee
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Nha Uyen Huynh (Ph.D.) and Richard Lee (MEng) are student researchers from the Experimental Mechanics Laboratory, supervised by Dr. George Youssef. They are currently working on the development of a novel approach to characterize nontraditional materials using terahertz radiation through funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.
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Women in Engineering Award
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Geovana Pessoa is a Ph.D. student at the Experimental Mechanics Laboratory, supervised by Dr. George Youssef, with research interest focused on fundamentally understanding the mechanical behavior of polymer matrix composites from the nano to the macro scale. The multiscale approach hybridizes EML’s strength in experimental, analytical, and numerical mechanics of nontraditional materials.
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Dean's Award: Engineering
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Edwin Gonzalez, a MSME Graduate Student in the Combustion and Solar Energy Laboratory, supervised by Dr. Fletcher Miller, received the Dean's Award for Engineering at the 2019 SDSU Student Research Symposium. His presentation, titled "Numerical Model of a Concentrated Solar Power Combined Cycle Plant with Sensible Thermal Energy Storage" addresses the imbalance of renewable energy resources and the net energy demand in the State of California.
Read More...
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Ph.D. students from the Experimental Mechanics Lab receive SDCEC 2019 Outstanding Student Engineering Project Award
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Scott Newacheck, Geovana Pessoa and Nha Uyen Huynh received the prestigious SDCEC Outstanding Student Engineering Award for 2019 for their research project titled, "Revolutionizing Mechanics of Nontraditional Materials." The students currently work under the supervision of Dr. George Youssef in the Experimental Mechanics Laboratory.
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Recent BSME Graduate, Gregory Sawvelle, awarded Rumbaugh Outstanding Student Leader Award
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Gregory Sawvelle received the 2018 Rumbaugh Outstanding Student Leader Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers fo his service and outstanding leadership while he attended SDSU. Gregory was a member of Aztec Electric Racing (AER) Formula SAE during his time at SDSU.
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ME Students Awarded Wilson Scholarship
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Mechanical Engineering students Jared Beach and Hannah Pollek (left), along with three other student from the College of Engineering, were awarded the Wilson Scholarship. The Wilson Scholarship is awarded to five seniors in the College of Engineering with GPA's of 3.5 or higher.
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208 students are expected to graduate with a BSME degree in Spring 2019, in addition to 91 graduates in Fall 2018. Featured below are two of our outstanding Spring 2019 graduates.
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Kelbi Redquest
Kelbi Redquest is a Mechanical Engineering student who will be graduating in May. She was a member of the Division I women's rowing team for two years where she was recognized as a scholar athlete for all four semesters. Kelbi has also been working with Dr. Fletcher Miller in the Combustion and Solar Energy Laboratory and in Fall 2019 will be in the Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering program with a concentration in energy and thermofluids, here at SDSU.
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Benjamin Bettencourt
Benjamin Bettencourt is a Mechanical Engineering Senior who will be graduating in May. During his years at SDSU, he has been a member of ASME and was involved with Aztec Electric Racing during his sophomore year. Currently in his ME Senior Design class, Benjamin and his team are building a custom 3D-printed quadcopter designed to house a cross-band repeater that will utilize UHF and VHF frequencies.
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Fall 2018 Senior Design Day
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Our Fall Senior Design Day was held on December 11, 2018. ME capstone design projects, completed in Fall 2018, were featured at the event. Each team displayed and presented their projects.
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Spring 2019 Senior Design Projects
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Higlighted below are two current Senior Design teams that will be showcasing their projects at the
2019 Engineering Design Day
on May 8, 2019 at the Aztec Student Union
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This Senior Design team, sponsored by Quality of Life Plus, created a surfing system for Jason Sisco, a U.S. Army veteran who lost both legs due to Improvised Explosive Device.
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The goal of the students on this Senior Design team is to redesign and fabricate the primary unit of the Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) for the Baja SAE car.
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FACULTY AWARDS & RECOGNITION
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Dr. Moon, along with SDSU colleagues, awarded $2 million grant from NIH
The purpose of this endowment is to create an infrastructure for innovative and significant translational research to achieve population-level health changes and reduce health disparities among racially/ethnically diverse populations, sexual minorities, and lower-income populations in the US.
Dr. Moon receives $65,100 grant for implementing an international engineering program for Sejong University
The project is directed towards implementing an international engineering program for Sejong University in South Korea. The students will engage in activities related to robotics, neural engineering, wireless, and 3D printing programs lead by Dr. Kee Moon and supported by other university staff and students from SDSU. Students will be immersed in a fun and interactive learning environment to improve their understanding of American culture and their English conversational skills.
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Dr. Olevsky and Dr. Xu receive $328,397 grant from NSF
Dr. Wenwu Xu and Dr. Eugene Olevsky have been awarded a grant of $328,397 from the NSF to support their research titled "A Mechanism of Flash Sintering of Ionic Ceramics". Flash sintering has become one of the most promising techniques for ceramics processing. However, the mechanisms for this rapid sintering process are unclear; this project attempts to reveal the underlying reasons. The experimental work in this study is complemented by computational modeling, enabling a more comprehensive understanding on the rapid densification mechanisms of flash sintering of ceramic powders.
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Dr. Beyene awarded $232,224 grant to support the Industrial Assessment Center at SDSU from the Department of Energy
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Dr. Asfaw Beyene received a $232,224 grant from the US Department of Energy for the Industrial Assessment Center at SDSU. The IAC's primary goals are 1) training the next generation of energy engineers by providing hands-on experience to undergraduate and graduate students, and 2) promoting energy efficiency through service to small and medium sized manufacturing plants as well as other buildings with extensive energy use.
Visit the IAC website here
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Dr. Beyene and Dr. Camacho receive research award from the Department of Energy
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Dr. Camacho gives invited talk on flame synthesis of nanomaterials at Tsinghua University, China's top-ranked engineering school
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Dr. Camacho gave a talk to Tsinghua University, China's top-ranked engineering school, on April 11. His talk, titled "Synthesis and Deposition of Nano-Materials in Premixed Stagnation Flames" showcased the research that he has been conducting in his Flames Aerosol & NanoScience (FANS) lab.
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Dr. Katira and collaborators publish article in MRS Bulletin on the impact of molecular motors on active materials discovery
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Dr. Katira, along with Dr. Henry Hess and Stanislov Tsitkov from Columbia University and Dr. Ingmar Riedel-Kruse from Stanford University published an overview on the applications of molecular motors in the design of next-gen biomimetic active materials that was included in the February Issue of the MRS Bulletin. The MRS Bulletin is a widely recognized publication in the field of advanced materials.
Read more...
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Dr. Naseradinmousavi research featured in ASME DSCD Newsletter
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Dr. Naseradinmousavi's experiment-analysis of time-delay control of a high-DOF robot was featured in the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division Winter 2018 Newsletter. The analysis and experiment were carried out in the Dynamic Systems and Control Laboratory (DSCL).
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ME Alum Robert Davis Named 2019 Top Young Professional by ENR California
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Robert Davis, current Northern California Regional Manager for the Civil/Structural division at Parsons Corporations, was named as a Top Young Professional for 2019. Robert is a registered professional engineer and a Parsons-certified project manager with 17 years of engineering experience. Robert Davis graduated from the ME Program at SDSU in 2002.
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Alex Mora, ME Class of 2004, makes $50,000 pledge for scholarship
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Alex Mora, a 2004 ME graduate, has made a $50,000 pledge to establish an endowed scholarship for engineering students who participate in the Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Achievement (MESA) program with a preference for Mechanical Engineering majors. Alex Mora is currently the CEO of Formula Plastics in Tecate.
Read more about Alex here.
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Recent ME Alum, Sulaiman Al-Tunaib, speaks at UN Climate Change Conference
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Sulaiman Al-Tunaib, one of our featured Outstanding Graduates in the Spring 2017 Newsletter, represented the State of Kuwait at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to talk about Kuwait's initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint.
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The campus was teeming with activity on Saturday, March 23 as alumni, parents, prospective students, and well-wishers participated in information fairs, information sessions on academic programs, tours and open houses. The Mechanical Engineering Department had two informational sessions, six faculty-led demos/lab tours, tours of the fabrication facility, and displays by the ASME Student Chapter, and the three auto clubs.
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SDSU ASME Student Chapter Places 5th in E-Fest
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SDSU’s own ASME members participated in the 2019 E-Fest Student Design Competition hosted at the Fairplex in Pomona on March 15-17. The team competed in the Student Design Competition and the Human-Powered Vehicle Challenge. One of the two teams that participated in the Student Design Competition, placed 5th overall.
Sonia Goetschius placed 3rd in a poster competition where she featured research she conducted in Dr. Camacho's Energy FANS lab.
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Aztec Racing Formula SAE Team
is to promote collegiate education through the design, manufacturing and marketing of a small, open wheel race car. The cars are built with a team effort in under one year and are taken to the annual Formula SAE in Lincoln, Nebraska
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Baja SAE
t
eam consists of 35+ members who are challenged every school year to design, test, and build a single seat off road buggy that will compete in 3 nation-wide events where 100 global universities are evaluated in static and dynamic events.
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The
Mechatronics Club
consists of 40 members who are developing an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for the 2019 RoboSub Competition.
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Aztec Electric Racing
, commonly referred to as AER, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, electric Formula SAE team at SDSU. They design, build, and race a small-scale, high performance race car each year.
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ASME
Club sponsors workshops, tours and guest speakers to prepare students for a career in the field of Mechanical Engineering.
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Our mission is to promote the education of our members by supporting academic and professional excellence, and innovative research.
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From the Baja Car to Senior Capstone Projects to Scholarship support, your generous giving makes a tremendous difference for our students. Please consider making a gift to support the Department of Mechanical Engineering
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Welcome | Mechanical Engineering | College of...
The Department is the vibrant home to about 1400 undergraduate and graduate students, several active and award-winning student clubs and organizations, multiple teaching and research laboratories, internationally-renowned faculty who are...
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mechanical.sdsu.edu
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San Diego State University | Mechanical Engineering |
5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1323
619-594-7050 | me@engineering.sdsu.edu
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