Featured News
Penn4C Announces Awardees for Community-led Partnership Grant
The Penn Community Collaboratory for Co-Creation (Penn4C), an initiative led jointly by the Welcome to Penn Nursing (Penn Nursing) and the School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering), has awarded funding to five new research projects that address social justice through designing and implementing solutions to improve health, well-being and safety. In addition to the involvement of Penn faculty and students, the projects are required to have active and equitable representation of the community in which the project will be completed. “Penn4C gets engineers actively involved in ways that make a real impact as projects are driven by the community,” adds Mark Yim, Asa Whitney Professor of Mechanical Engineering in Penn Engineering, Director of the GRASP Lab and Co-Director of Penn4C. READ MORE
Behind the Scenes: A PhD in MEAM
Meet Julia Radzio, a third year PhD student in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) Department. Radzio is co-advised between MEAM Professor Paulo Arratia and Professor David Issadore in Bioengineering with a focus on designing continuous flow and droplet-based microfluidic devices for the design and development of therapeutic drugs. In this quick interview, Radzio walks us through her PhD experience, from what initially drew her to pursue a PhD, balancing work and other commitments, and advice for prospective students.
Prior to Penn, Radzio graduated with her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and worked as a researcher in the Kirby Microfluidics Lab. She was also a NSF Graduate Research Fellow, 2021-2023. WATCH VIDEO
The Future of Farming
Over the next 25 years, the world’s population, currently hovering around 7.8 billion, is expected to grow by nearly 25% to 9.7 billion people. This means that existing global problems such as food, energy and water security are only going to become more acute.
“Just consider water alone. Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water usage,” says Cherie Kagan, Stephen J. Angello Professor in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE) and Director of the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag) Center at Penn. “When we were looking at opportunities to unite research excellence across disciplines in Penn Engineering and to tackle a societal grand challenge, agriculture and its importance to global food, energy and water security came to the forefront.”
On its face, a university located on nearly 300 acres within a major East Coast city isn’t where you’d expect to find a center focused on agriculture. But when you dig beneath the surface, Penn Engineering’s expertise in areas like sensors, robotics, materials, manufacturing and data science, together with a proven track record of collaboration, make it the ideal institution to lead such an effort. READ MORE
Introducing Ari Bortman
MEAM welcomes back one of its own, Ari Bortman, as the newest Educational Lab Coordinator. In a recent interview, Ari shared his journey from student to educator and his vision for fostering hands-on learning experiences.
Ari’s connection to MEAM runs deep, having completed both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the department in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Reflecting on his time as a student, Ari fondly reminisces about the transformative experiences that have shaped his trajectory. “The things I worked on and learned here at Penn have taken me all around the world,” said Ari. “From being a machinist, carpenter, and fabricator crafting precision parts for industry, to designing and creating interactive experiences for children’s museums, teaching mathematics in the Swiss Alps, installing solar panels worldwide, to hiking as a professional backcountry backpacking guide in Yosemite National Park.” READ MORE
Penn Receives $2 Million NASA Grant for TRUSSES Project to Study Lunar Robotics
The University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a $2 million NASA grant for the TRUSSES Project, led by Gabel Family Term Assistant Professor, Cynthia Sung, aiming to advance lunar robotics.
“Future lunar exploration demands the ability to navigate challenging terrains, including steep slopes, loose regolith and potentially ice,” says Sung. “Our research will focus on developing new algorithms that allow robots to estimate ground properties through locomotion, enabling them to autonomously assess traversal risk and recover from any navigation failures.” READ MORE
The Alchemy Behind the Diamond: Unearthing Baseball’s Beloved Mud
Douglas Jerolmack, Professor in Earth and Environmental Science and Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), is working with other researchers at Penn to reverse-engineer the mud used on baseballs and offer a mechanistic understanding of its inner workings. “Before every game, baseballs are massaged with this mud which gives it a grip-friendly veneer to the otherwise slippery sphere,” he says. READ MORE
Oren Minsk: A 2024 Matthew Isakowitz Fellow
Oren Minsk, a junior in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) is a recipient of the 2024 Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program. The program, designed to honor the legacy of Matthew Isakowitz, aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the aerospace industry through mentorship and career training.
As one of thirty-one fellows, Oren eagerly anticipates being assigned an executive mentor from Mandala Space Ventures, with whom he will meet regularly over the course of the year. He looks forward to the diverse backgrounds of the mentors, ranging from engineers and astronauts to management-level executives and investors in aerospace companies. READ MORE
A Centimeter-Scale Quadruped Leverages Curved-Crease Origami
Centimeter-scale walking and crawling robots are in demand both for their ability to explore tight or cluttered environments and for their low fabrication costs. Now, pulling from origami-inspired construction, researchers led by Cynthia Sung, Gabel Family Term Assistant Professor in MEAM, have crafted a more simplified approach to the design and fabrication of these robots. READ MORE
Penn Engineering’s GRASP Lab Helps Lead $5M Effort to Accelerate Robotics Research
Mark Yim, Asa Whitney Professor of Mechanical Engineering in MEAM, will help lead a $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) effort to accelerate human-robotic-interface by designing a humanoid robot to distribute to the scientific community. In collaboration with investigators at Oregon State University (OSU) and Semio, the goal for the program is to drive discovery and learning in computing and communication foundations, computer and network systems, and information and intelligent systems.
Penn Engineering’s primary contribution to the project will be the design of the new robot, Quori Version 2, while OSU will lead the forming of the human-robot-interaction research community. READ MORE
MEAM Events
MEAM Seminar: “Designing Heart Valves from First Principles: Model Generation, Congenital Disease and Surgical Treatment”
Rigorous and Glamorous in 100 Words or Less: An Abstract Workshop
MEAM Seminar: “Surfactants, Colloids, and Electrolytes: Engineering Transport Phenomena for Energy and the Environment”
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Welcome!
Welcome to Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at Penn! We are a vibrant, dynamic, diverse, and interactive community. We focus on our high-caliber undergraduate and graduate programs, which combine rigorous education in the fundamentals with hands-on projects and research into novel problems and advanced applications.
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