Recent Faculty and Staff Awards
Ted Heindel Named ASME Fellow
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has named ME Interim Department Chair Ted Heindel as a 2011 Fellow. The ASME Board of Governors bestows the fellowship grade to worthy candidates to recognize their outstanding engineering achievements. Ted is receiving this honor for “his accomplishments in advancing the field of complex multiphase flow systems, particularly with respect to novel x-ray imaging methods and applications to biorenewable technologies, and in serving the profession in leadership roles.” Full Story
Abhijit Chandra Receives D. R. Boylan Eminent Faculty Research Award
The Boylan Award recognizes engineering faculty of national and international acclaim for their dedication to academic excellence through research and exemplary contributions to understanding in their field of specialization. Abhijit is recognized for his research activity and scholarship in the area of the mechanics of manufacturing processes. He is a professor in the ME department.
Amy Carver Receives Dean’s Staff Excellence Award
Amy received the College of Engineering Dean’s Staff Excellence Award for her outstanding work as graduate programs assistant in the ME Department. ME Director of Graduate Education Pranav Shrotriya said, “Amy Carver has demonstrated an extremely high level of enthusiasm, professional responsibility and ambassadorship for the Mechanical Engineering Department and the College of Engineering. Over the past 3 years, she has been instrumental in: developing new recruitment initiatives; deployment of professional master’s degree and enhancing the graduate student experience through development of orientation programs, social activities, and improved systematic communications.”
Scott Bowman Receives Professional Achievement Citation in Engineering Award
This award recognizes the outstanding achievement by an alumnus of the College in the professional practice of engineering. Scott is known in the profession for his creativity at KJWW Engineering Consultants, where he has risen through the firm to be one of eight principals, as well as for his commitment to the engineering profession through sustainability efforts and supporting women in engineering. Scott is a member of the ME Industry Advisory Council, and he received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from ISU in 1982.
Jessica Van Winkle Elected to Professional & Scientific Council
Jessica Van Winkle, ME academic advisor, was elected to the ISU Professional & Scientific Council as an Academic & Research representative. The P&S Council is a representative body elected by, and responsible to, Professional & Scientific employees at Iowa State. The council studies issues affecting the P&S employee base, presents proposals to the ISU Administration, arranges open forums, and coordinates the P&S awards. The ME department will be well represented by Jessica.
25 Year Club Honorees
The 25 Year Club honors the loyal service of ISU faculty and staff. Greg Maxwell, associate professor, and Jim Dautremont, lab mechanical technologist, became members in 2011 after serving the university for 25 years.
Robert Brown was named one the “Top 100 People in Bioenergy” in 2010 by Biofuels Digest. He chaired the first Symposium on Thermal and Catalytic Sciences for Biofuels and Biobased Products this past fall, which attracted almost 300 biofuels researchers from around the world to ISU.
In 2010 Mark Bryden and his research team won an R&D 100 award for his work in developing the software package OSG – Bullet. This is the third R&D 100 award received by Professor Bryden and his research in the past five years. The goal of this research is to enable the creation of integrated computational environments that support interactive real-time engineering decision making and design.Referred to as the “Oscars of Invention” the R&D 100 awards recognize the 100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace over the past year.
Abhijit Chandra’s research focused on multi-physics modeling of Chemical Mechanical Planarization. It was also applied to biomedical research such as life prediction of orthopedic implants.
Baskar Ganapathysubramanian developed a mathematical framework for interrogating and designing photovoltaic devices and SETDiR (Scalable Extensible Toolkit for Dimensionality Reduction), a computational framework for non-linear dimensionality and model reduction, which is funded by aprestigious NSF grant.
Ted Heindel was a PI on a grant to create energy education initiatives for the college of engineering. He also mentored undergraduate student Tim Morgan who won the ASME Fluids Engineering Division 2010Young Engineering Paper Contest, beating out graduate students from Purdue and Virginia Tech.
The ME Capstone Design Program under the direction of Jim Heise arranged for 23 projects for senior design courses. Sponsorship 17 industrial projects were acquired for ME415 and ENGR466 students. Of those projects, 16 were co-sponsored by ISU Extension CIRAS and one was sponsored by a national corporation; the CIRAS sponsored projects provide service outreach to Iowa industry. 4 additional projects were sponsored by student club organizations allowing students to obtain class credit for design activities that typically go unaccounted on their academic records. An additional project was worked by a team of ME seniors as a service outreach project for an extended care patient in northeast Iowa. Two ME senior designs were submitted for patent disclosure by the sponsoring company.
Atul Kelkar is working with an Ames, Iowa startup company on the development of new processes
and equipment which can be used to recover energy from waste streams such as waste plastics, used oil, and used tires in the form of useful fuels. Dr. Kelkar is also a member of a NASA team engaged indeveloping methods and tools for early-stage control-relevant design of next generation of Hypersonicvehicles. His entrepreneurial efforts are engaging ISU faculty from other engineering departments in new research projects through STTR grant.
Gap-Yong Kim received a grant from National Science Foundation titled, “Novel Manufacturing of Bio-inspired Metal Matrix Composites by Semisolid Forming-Joining”. His research group will establish a novel metal composite manufacturing process that can create a hierarchical structure, bio-inspired by an abalone seashell.
Song-Charng Kong performed innovative research in exploring alternative engine fuels such as ammonia, mixtures of biodiesel and waste plastics, and mixtures of bio-oil and ethanol. His research also included the combustion of synthesis gas produced from biomass gasification. He was named William and Virginia Binger Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering in recognition of his excellence in research and education.
Greg Luecke recently began research and development for mobile satellite TV antenna and two-wayInternet antenna that involves the use of a six-degree-of-freedom vehicle simulation motion base.
Erin MacDonald co-organized the first ever Mechanical Engineering Design Expo, featuring over 50 student design projects. She received a patent for a compliant umbrella frame. She presented on her research in conferences in the Engineering Design and Marketing. She gave one talk on Sustainable Design at 3M and two at John Deere, including one to their Enterprise Technology Council. She received two separate nominations for 3M’s Non-tenured Faculty Grant Program.
The Nuclear Engineering Minor continued to grow under the leadership of Greg Maxwell. This year had seen the development of two new nuclear engineering courses – NUC E 441 (Probabilistic Risk Assessment) taught by Dr. Heising (IMSE) and NUC E 461 (Radiation Detection, Measurement and Simulation) taught by Dr. Maxwell (ME). The nuclear engineering minor is attracting students from EE, AeroE, MatE, ChemE as well as ME.
Terry Meyer’s work in laser diagnostics for combustion and alternative fuels received new awards from the Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Iowa Power Fund. A proposal he wrote in 2010 for a National Science Foundation CAREER award was also selected for funding starting in 2011. Dr. Meyer accepted the Young Researcher Award and a position as Guest Professor at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, visiting for a month in the Summer of 2010. He serves as Chair of two conferences for the Optical Society of America, and in addition to publishing a book chapter in the Handbook of Combustion, he worked as guest co-editor for a special issue of Applied Optics, a peer-reviewed journal of the Optical Society of America.
Pal Molian had one of the top 10 articles in 2010 by ASME Journal of Medical Devices.
A report on transportation policy co-authored by W. Ross Morrow was covered by several major media sources including the New York Times, Bloomberg News, and Iowa Public Radio. Dr. Morrow also continued development of models, numerical methods, and software for simulating large-scale complex engineering-economic systems with the next generation of system models based on economic equilibrium principles.
Jim Oliver continued to lead ISU’s Virtual Reality Applications Center and its graduate program in Human Computer Interaction. His research, teaching, and economic development activities focus on human computer interaction technologies, encompassing computer graphics, geometric modeling, virtual reality, and collaborative networks for applications in product development and complex system operation. His research is supported by a variety of industry partners and federal agencies, and theVRAC supports a broad interdisciplinary constituency that spans the entire university.
Michael Olsen’s archival journal papers were cited 143 times in 2010 according to Web of Science.
Pranav Shrotriya served as Technical Program Chair for Bioengineering Materials, Mechanics and Structures and Student Symposia track at 47th Annual Technical Meeting of Society of Engineering Science at Ames, Iowa October 2010. In collaboration with Prof. Sundararajan, he has established a NSF REUsite on microscale sensing, imaging and actuation (MoSAIc) in the department. He is currently serving as theDirector of Graduate Education (DOGE) and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and Research.
Gloria Starns studied how linguists, psychologists, physicists and engineers are working together to better understand how students go through the process of setting up and solving problems; the ultimate objective of this work is to develop systems that will help students successfully complete complex problems.
Shankar Subramaniam conducted research at the University of Florida, Gainesville as part of his FPDA (sabbatical) to develop a new mathematical formulation for multiphase flows that relaxes the assumption of separation of scales by accounting for fluctuations in the number and associated volumefraction of particles. He delivered lectures on this topic at the National Energy Technology Laboratoryin Morgantown, WV to developers of the popular MFIX code for multiphase flow simulation. Results were presented at the 2010 International Conference on Multiphase Flow at Tampa, FL, and Professor Subramaniam’s paper was selected from 400 other papers for the Best Paper Award. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation award in collaboration with Professor M. G. Olsen (ME, ISU) to develop better multiphase models for CO2 cleanup through studying heat and mass Transfer in fluid-particle suspensions through direct numerical simulation and laser-based measurements.
Sriram Sundararajan, together with Prof. Shrotriya established an NSF-sponsored summer research program on Microscale Sensing, Actuation and Imaging (MoSAIc) to engage undergraduate studentsfrom across the nation in the department’s research programs. Dr. Sundararajan, in working with the Undergraduate Education Committee, has developed a sustainable assessment model to support the department’s continuous improvement and accreditation efforts. He was appointed as Assistant Editor to the Wear Special Issue with articles from the 2011 International Conference on Wear of Materials.
Judy Vance has been appointed the Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Professor of Engineering. Her research involves international collaborations with universities in The Netherlands and France on the use of virtual reality for product design and manufacturing. Research focuses on methods to support human interaction with CAD models in an immersive virtual environment.
In 2010, Xinwei Wang had 7 journal papers published or accepted for publication in highly visible technical journals, like Journal of Physical Chemistry, Carbon, and Acta Materialia. He gave 5 invited talks at conferences or universities, and two other normal conference presentations. Two new grants were awarded from National Science Foundation and Army Research Office.
Research in Eliot Winer’s lab focusing on allowing enhanced exploration of digital medical data has been transitioned into a commercial product. It is currently being used at a major US hospital for planning radiation oncology treatments and organ transplant procedures. Dr. Winer was on research teams that attracted more than $1.5M in new funding to ISU.
Song Zhang received research grant with a total of $494,557.30, delivered 5 invited talks in university and conferences, and published 7 journal papers including two being featured on the journal covers. He was invited by CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group LLC, to edit a book entitled “Handbook of 3-D machine vision: optical metrology and imaging”, which is anticipated to be release in May 2012. His research was covered by public media and press release many times.
