Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Letetia “Letty” Tedori-Callinan (BSE, MEAM, 1983), with her husband Jim, endowed the Tedori-Callinan Lecture Series in MEAM in honor of her late father Fred Tedori, Sr., “who always placed such an emphasis on education and strongly encouraged his daughters to become engineers.”
Letty worked on many projects during her undergraduate studies at Penn, exhibiting great curiosity, creativity, diligence, responsibility, and attention to detail,all while maintaining one of the highest academic records in the department.
While at Penn Enigneering, Letty took part in developing and running “SolaRow,” the first solar heated retrofitted house in Philadelphia (see photo).
She also participated in the design and construction of a sophisticated experimental facility for studying the effects of wind on thermo-solutal behavior of salt-gradient solar ponds in the MEAM wind tunnel.
Joel W. Burdick
Many autonomous systems (e.g, driverless cars and drones) must make decisions based on predictions of the future actions of other nearby agents, whose dynamics and intentions are unknown. E.g., autonomous cars must predict the motions of surrounding vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles. Autonomous racing drones must avoid crashing into other drones on the race course. Unfortunately, only partial and noisy data on the motions of these potential hazards are available. This talk will introduce a novel method to approximate, in real-time, a predictive Koopman operator for each potential hazard from noisy data, quantify the uncertainty of the future predictions, and use the quantified predictions to provide probabilistic collision avoidance guarantees within a real-time model predictive control framework. Experiments with ground robots, a drone, and a semi-autonomous crane on an ocean going vessel will illustrate the ideas.
Joel Burdick is the Richard and Dorothy Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He received his undergraduate degrees in mechanical engineering and chemistry from Duke University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He has been with the department of Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology since May 1988, where he has been the recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award, and the Feynman fellowship. Prof. Burdick has also received the ASCIT award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and the GSA award for excellence in graduate student education. He was a coauthor on the best paper award for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in 2020, and a finalist for this award in 1993, 1999, 2000, and 2005, 2016. He received the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award in 2011. In addition to his position in Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Burdick has also appointments the Dept. of Control and Dynamical Systems and Medical Engineering.
Gareth H. McKinley Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor of Teaching Innovation and Interim Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Title: “Novel Passive and Active Approaches to Fluid Friction Reduction using Polymers & Plastrons”
Melany L. Hunt California Institute of Technology Dotty and Dick Hayman Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Title: “Mixing of Granular Materials, Inertial Suspensions, and Cement”
Cristina H. Amon University of Toronto Alumni Distinguished Professor in Bioengineering, and Dean Emerita, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
Title: “Multiscale Hierarchical Modeling and Thermal Management of Electrification Technologies”
Zhigang Suo Harvard University Allen E. and Marilyn M. Puckett Professor of Mechanics and Materials
Title: “Resist Fatigue by De-concentrating Stress”
Thomas J.R. Hughes University of Texas at Austin Peter O’Donnell Jr. Chair in Computational and Applied Mathematics; and Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
Title: “Isogeometric Analysis”
Richard D. James University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
Title: “Atomistically Inspired Origami”
Gang Chen Massachusetts Institute of Technology Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering & Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Title: “Innovations in Materials and Devices for Efficient Solar and Thermal Energy Utilization”
Jayathi Y. Murthy University of California, Los Angeles Dean, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
Title: “Topology Optimization for Thermal-Fluid Problems Using Unstructured Finite Volume Schemes”
Albert (Al) Pisano University of California, San Diego Dean, College of Engineering Dean, Jacobs School of Engineering, Walter J. Zable Chair in Engineering, Member, US National Academy of Engineering, Distinguished Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Title: “Dry Nanoprinting”
Nadine Aubry Northeastern University Dean, College of Engineering University Distinguished Professor
Title: “Moving Particles in Microfluidics”
Mary C. Boyce Columbia University Dean, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor
Title: “Mechanics of Wavy Interfacial Layers in Hybrid Material Architectures: Nature-inspired Design to 3D-printed Prototypes”
Emily A. Carter Princeton University Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Applied and Computational Mathematics
Title: “Quantum Mechanics and the Future of the Planet”
Subra Suresh, ScD Director, National Science Foundation
Title: “Nanoscience as a Pathway to Innovation in Engineering and Biology”
Lance R. Collins, Ph.D. Cornell University Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Title: “Role of Turbulence in the Atmospheric Processing of Clouds”
Bradley Nelson, Ph.D. ETH Zurich Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems
Title: “Micro and Nano Robotics”
James R. Rice Harvard University Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences School of Engineering and Applied Science
Title: “Thermo-hydro-mechanics of earthquake rupture”
John Hutchinson Harvard University Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering
Title: “Recent Developments in Thin Film Mechanics”
Friedrich Prinz, Ph.D. Stanford University Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Title: “High-Performance Solid Oxide Fuel Cells For Low Temperature Operation”
