Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics

Seminar + Event Speaker Archive

Spring 2019

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/3/2019 Luis Guerrero Bonilla Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Resiliant Formations of Robots
1/15/2019 Pierre E. Dupont Edward P. Marram Chair and Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Surgery, Harvard School of Medicine Stretching the Boundaries of Medical Robotics
1/22/2019 Douglas J. Jerolmack Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Penn Viewing Earth’s Surface as a Soft Matter Landscape
1/25/2019 Howie Choset Kavcic-Moura Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Geometric Biologically Inspired Robots that Span Industries from Medical to Manufacturing
1/29/2019 Robert Shepherd Assistant Professor, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University Elastomeric Materials for Autonomic Force Transmission, Optoelectronic Sensing, and 3D Printing Soft Robots
2/5/2019 Anette Peko Hosoi Neil and Jane Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hairy Hydrodynamics
2/12/2019 Charles Meneveau Louis M. Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Fluid Mechanics and Turbulence in Extended Wind Farms
2/15/2019 Monroe D. Kennedy III Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Modeling and Control for Robotic Assistants: Single and Multi-Robot Manipulation
2/26/2019 Pedro Saenz Instructor in Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Interfacial Soft Matter
3/19/2019 John C. Bischof Carl and Janet Kuhrmeyer Chair, and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota Nanoparticle Heating for Therapeutics, Regenerative Medicine and Diagnostics
3/26/2019 Jacob Notbohm Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin at Madison Force, Shape, and Motion in Collective Cell Migration
4/2/2019 Christopher M. Spadaccini Director, Center for Engineered Materials and Manufacturing, Engineering Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Additive Manufacturing and Architected Materials
4/8/2019 John Cortes Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Light-Driven Levitation of Ultralight Macroscopic Plates
4/9/2019 James K. Guest Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Integrating Manufacturing and Topology Optimization for the Design of Architected Materials and Components
4/16/2019 Jorn Dunkel Associate Professor of Physical Applied Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Wrinkles, Spaghetti & Knots
4/17/2019 Harish Bhaskaran Professor of Applied Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford, UK. Co-founder of Bodle Technologies Scalable Functional Phase Change Materials for Displays and Photonic Non-von Neumann Computing
4/23/2019 J. Nathan Kutz Robert Bolles and Yasuko Endo Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Washington Data-driven Discovery of Governing Physical Laws in Engineering, Physics and Biology
4/30/2019 Farhan Gandhi Rosalind and John J. Redfern Jr Chair in Engineering, Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Fault-Tolerant Control on VTOL Aircraft
5/15/2019 Martin N. Webster Lubricants Technology, ExxonMobile Research and Engineering Tribofilms at the Asperity Scale
5/23/2019 Xiaoguai Li Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Coarse-graining of Atomistic Models to the Continuum Scale with Applications to Elastodynamics and Diffusive Processes

Fall 2018

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/11/2018 Tamer Zaki Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Harbingers of Turbulence in Boundary Layers
9/13/2018 Tarik Tosun Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Reconfigurable Robots: Systems that Transform Themselves and Their Environments
9/18/2018 Nanshu Lu Associate Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin Mechanics, Manufacture, and Validation of Soft Bioelectronics
9/25/2018 Lian-Ping Wang Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware Boltzmann Equation-based Computational Fluid Dynamics
10/5/2018 Yuejun Yan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Combustion Irreversibility Analysis and Reduction
10/8/2018 Sikang Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Motion Planning for Micro Aerial Vehicles
10/9/2018 James Hilbert Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Understanding and Improving the Environmental Dependent Tribology and Thermal Stability of Hydrogenated Amorphous Carbon by Using Silicon and Oxygen as Dopants
10/9/2018 Ralph Izzo Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Public Service Enterprise Group, Inc. The Future of Energy
10/10/2018 J. Brandon McClimon Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Tribological Response of Silicon Oxide-containing Hydrogenated Amorphous Carbon, Probed Across Lengthscale
10/16/2018 Yong Zhu Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University From Single Nanowire to Nanowire Network: Mechanics and Application in Stretchable Electronics
10/23/2018 Richard D. James Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota Atomistically Inspired Origami
10/26/2018 Roger T. Howe William E. Ayer Professor of Engineering, Stanford University Broad-Spectrum Electronic Biomolecular Sensing
10/29/2018 Lisa Mariani Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanical Characterization of Printed Cellulose Nanofibril Thin Films
10/30/2018 Nicholas Zabaras Viola D. Hank Professor of Computational Science and Engineering, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Notre Dame University Bayesian Deep Learning for Predictive Scientific Computing
11/5/2018 Sarah Tang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Control, Planning, and Coordination for Dynamic Aerial Manipulation with Robot Teams
11/6/2018 Yu Sun Canada Research Chair in Micro and Nano Engineering Systems and Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto Medical Robotics: Manipulation of Cells and Intracellular Structures
11/7/2018 Ruiyuan Ma Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Examination of Callaway-Holland-Based Thermal Conductivity Calculation for Nano-Phononic Crystals
11/13/2018 Thomas Cassel Practice Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania What Employers Really Want To Learn From Your Interview
11/19/2018 Paul Barclay Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Condensation and Mobility Studies of Fluid Interfaces
11/20/2018 Chris Fang-Yen Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania Aging and Automation in a Model Roundworm
12/4/2018 Portonovo S. Ayyaswamy Asa Whitney Professor of Dynamical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Multiscale Modeling of Nanoparticle Transport: Applications to Targeted Drug Delivery
12/20/2018 Zac Milne Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The Role of Sliding Contact in Nanoscale Tribochemistry
12/20/2018 Masahiro Narasaki Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Thermal Transport in Structurally-Modified Nanocarbon Materials: Studies on Carbon Nanotube, Carbon Nanofiber, and Graphene

Summer 2018

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
6/6/2018 Zac Milne Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Sliding and Stress Modulate Nanoscale Adhesion of Silicon-Silicon and Silicon-Diamond Contacts
6/27/2018 Boyang Qin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Flow Behavior and Instabilities in Viscoelastic Fluids: Physical and Biological Systems
7/9/2018 Mohammed Asaduzzaman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Interfacial Wave Dynamics of Core-annular Flow of Two Fluids
7/17/2018 Chenchen Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dynamic Behavior of Elastic Metamaterials: Multiscale modeling, Simulation, and Design
7/24/2018 Gavin Kenneally Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Actuator Transparency and Legged Robot Design
8/2/2018 John Cortes Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Knudsen Pump Powered Micro-Hovercrafts
8/14/2018 Teboho Nchaba Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Synoptic Drivers of Wind Speeds Over Southern Africa

Spring 2018

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/16/2018 Joel D. Boerckel Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania “Reverse-Engineering Skeletal Development
1/18/2018 Boyang Qin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Elastic Turbulence & Ciliary Kinematics in Viscoelastic Fluids: Nonlinearity at Low Reynolds Number
1/23/2018 Aaswath Raman Assistant Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Thermal Nanophotonics: Controlling the heat and light that surrounds us
1/30/2018 Gretar Tryggvason Charles A. Miller, Jr. Distinguished Professor and Department Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Direct Numerical Simulations of Complex Multiphase Flows
2/1/2018 Justin W. Wilkerson Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Texas at Austin, and Assistant Professor & James J. Cain Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University The Role of Crystallographic Defects in Impact Failure
2/20/2019 Hadi T. Nia Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Solid Stress and Elastic Energy as New Measures of Tumor Mechanopathology
2/21/2018 Ismail Hameduddin Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University The Theoretical Approach in Viscoelastic Turbulence
2/27/2018 Michael Ortiz Frank and Ora-Lee Marble Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology The Anomalous Yield Behavior of Fused Silica Glass
3/20/2018 Mahesh M. Bandi Assistant Professor, Collective Interactions Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University Applying Higher-order Turbulence Spectra from Energy to UAV
3/27/2018 David L. McDowell Carter N. Paden Jr. Distinguished Chair in Metals Processing and Regents’ Professor of Mechanics of Materials, Georgia Institute of Technology Microstructure-sensitive Multiscale Crystal Plasticity Modeling
3/29/2018 Marc Miskin Kavli Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Nanoscale Science, Cornell University Making Machines the Size of Cells
4/3/2018 Tim Rupert Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California at Irvine Promoting Beneficial Grain Boundary Phase Transitions with Segregation Engineering
4/5/2018 Yufeng (Kevin) Chen Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory Multimodal and Multiphase Locomotion in Biologically Inspired, Insect-scale Robots
4/9/2018 Chen Lin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microstructures and Mechanical Metamaterials for Energy Conversion and Other Applications
4/10/2018 Evelyn Wang Gail E. Kendall Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nanoengineered Structures for Advanced Energy and Water Technologies
4/12/2018 Yu Sun Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto Robotic Manipulation of Cells, Molecules, and Nanomaterials
4/17/2018 Nikolas Martelaro Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Design Research, Stanford University The Needfinding Machine: Understanding Users with Interactive Devices and Designers in the Loop
4/23/2018 Cunjiang Yu Bill D. Cook Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston Manufacturing, Materials, and Device Innovations for Soft and Curvy Electronics
4/24/2018 Mark Alan Fogel Professor of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia “3D Printing, Surgical Planning and 4D Imaging in Congenital Heart Disease
4/25/2018 Angela Pitenis Postdoctoral Associate, The Tribology Laboratory and Soft Matter Engineering Center, University of Florida Soft Matter Engineering: Cells, Gels, and Shear
4/27/2018 Zdenek P. Bazant McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science and Engineering, Northwestern University Design of New Materials and Structures to Maximize Strength at Probability Tail: A Neglected Challenge for Quasibrittle and Biomimetic Materials
5/17/2019 Joel Lefever Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Atomic Force Microscopy-based Investigation of Plastic Deformation Mechanisms in Disordered Nanoparticle Packings
5/30/2018 Maziar Raissi Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics, Brown University Hidden Physics Models: Machine Learning of Non-linear Partial Differential Equations

Fall 2017

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/12/2017 Larry L. Howell Associate Dean and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Brigham Young University Origami Art and Engineering? Surprising Opportunities for Systems with Unprecedented Performance
9/19/2017 Guy Genin Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, Washington University in St. Louis Unification Through Disarray at the Attachment of Tendon to Bone
9/26/2017 Changchun Liu Research Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania Towards Instrument-Free Inexpensive Point of Care Molecular Diagnostics
10/3/2017 Gang Chen Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering & Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Innovations in Materials and Devices for Efficient Solar and Thermal Energy Utilization
10/10/2017 Katia Bertoldi Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mechanics, Harvard University Architected Materials: From Reconfigurability to Nonlinear Waves
10/13/2017 Dawei Song Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Constitutive Modeling of Viscoplastic Porous Single Crystals and Polycrystals
10/17/2017 Sarah Bergbreiter Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland at College Park Microsystems-Inspired Robotics
10/19/2017 Stephan Wulfinghoff Engineer-in-Chief, Institute of Applied Mechanics, RWTH Aachen University Challenges in Material Modeling on Different Scales
10/24/2017 Daniel Steingart Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University Exploring and Exploiting Often Unwanted Coupling in Closed Electrochemical Energy Cells
10/31/2017 David Issadore Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania Diagnosing Disease on a Microchip: Scaling Up Micro- and Nano-Scale Diagnostics
11/6/2017 Jimmy Paulos Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Rotorcraft Blade Pitch Control Through Torque Modulation
11/14/2017 Satwindar S. Sadhal Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California Singular Perturbation Analysis of Drops in Acoustic Levitation Fields
11/28/2017 Jay D. Humphrey John C. Malone Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University Mechanics of Arteries in Health and Disease
12/1/2017 R. Andrew Goodwin Research Environmental Engineer, Cognitive Ecology & Ecohydraulics Team, Environmental Laboratory, US Army Research and Development Center (ERDC) Reverse Engineering 4-D Fish Movement Behavior in Rivers to Aid Underwater Autonomy for Inland Waterways: Takeaways from 10,000 hours analyzing 50 data sets of trajectories with coincident hydraulics
12/5/2017 Randy H. Ewoldt Associate Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagn Sticky Droplets and Sinking Bubbles: Curious Physics of Yield-stress Fluids

Summer 2017

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
6/6/2017 Seok Kim Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Transfer Printing for LEGO-like Microassembly and Nanomaterial Integration
6/13/2017 Paul Barclay Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Molecular Dynamic Study on Fluid Flow and the Fluid-Fluid Interfacial Mobility
6/15/2017 Ting Yue Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Thermodynamic Analysis for Improving Uunderstanding and Performance of Hybrid Power Cycles Using Multiple Heat Sources of Different Temperatures
6/20/2017 James Hilbert Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Carbon coatings under extreme conditions: Understanding and addressing the thermal instability and humidity-dependent tribology of hydrogenated amorphous carbon films by using silicon and oxygen as dopants
6/27/2017 Chenchen Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Multiscale Modeling and Design of Acoustic Metamaterials
6/28/2017 Thomas C. Hull Associate Professor of Mathematics, Western New England University Self-foldability and Rigid Origami
7/11/2017 Ruiyuan Ma Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Thermal Conductivity Calculation in Nano Phononic Crystals
7/18/2017 Mohammed Asaduzzaman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Interfacial Wave Dynamics of Core-Annular Flow of Two Fluids
7/20/2017 Sarah Tang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Trajectory Generation for Agile Aerial Robot Teams
7/25/2017 Monroe D. Kennedy III Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Human-Robot Cooperative Carrying
7/28/2017 Sikang Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Search-based Motion Planning for Micro Aerial Vehicles
8/1/2017 Mickey Whitzer Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Formation Control and Coordination for Teams of Nonholonomic Robots
8/15/2017 Yuejun Yan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Gaseous Fuel Combustion Irreversibility Analysis and Reduction
8/22/2017 Xiaoguai Li Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Non-equilibrium Material Behavior: From Particles to Continuum Description
8/28/2017 Chen Lin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microstructures and Mechanical Metamaterials for Energy Conversion and Other Applications
8/29/2017 Dawei Song Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Homogenized Response of Porous Single Crystals and Polycrystals

Spring 2017

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/10/2017 Xiang I. A. Yang Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University The Fluctuating Wall Stress in Wall-Bounded Turbulence
1/13/2017 Nathan Ip Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Experimental Investigation of Polymer Adhesion Mechanics Using a Blister Contact Test
1/31/2017 Celia Reina William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Multiscale Modeling and Simulation: Some Challenges and New Perspectives
2/7/2017 George I. Park Engineering Research Associate, Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University Wall Modeling in Large-Eddy Simulation
2/14/2017 Paris Perdikaris Post-doctoral Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Data-driven Probabilistic Modeling and High-Performance Computing: Algorithms and Applications to Physical and Biological Systems
2/17/2017 Christian Linder Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University Beyond inf-sup: Stability Estimates for Multi-field Variational Principles
2/21/2017 Abtin Rahimian Postdoctoral Research Associate, Courant Institute of Mathematics, New York University Fast Algorithms for Fluid-Structure Interation in Stokes Flow
2/22/2017 Helen Minsky Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Composite Posts for Enhanced and Tunable Adhesion
2/28/2017 Michael Posa Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Optimization for Control and Planning of Multi-Contact Dynamic Motion
3/21/2017 Francis D. Lagor Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland Guidance, Navigation, and Control for Robotic Fish and Ocean Sampling Vehicles in Uncertain Flow Fields
3/24/2017 Carmel Majidi Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University Soft-Matter Machines & Electronics with Liquid Metal
4/6/2017 Xiaojun Liang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanics of Fluctuating Elastic Plates and Fiber Networks
4/18/2017 Howard A. Stone Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University Seeking Simplicity in the Flows of Complex Fluids
4/25/2017 Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara Entrainment Models for Wind Farms and Other Arrays of Obstacles, Enabling an Ideal Limit for Wind Farm Performance
4/28/2017 James R. Rice Mallinkrodt Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Processes Stabilizing Antarctic Ice Stream Shear Margins
5/12/2017 Naomi Fitter Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Design and Evaluation of Interactive Hand-Clapping Robots

Fall 2016

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/13/2016 Kenneth Kamrin Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mechanics with Two Temperatures?
9/15/2016 Alison E. Patteson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Particle, Polymer, and Phase Dynamics in Living Fluids
9/20/2016 Roseanna Zia Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University Phase Mechanics’ of Arrested Colloidal Gels: A New Paradigm for Yielding and Phase Transitions in Soft Matter
9/22/2016 M. Ani Hsieh Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, Drexel University The Human-Ocean Interface: Autonomous Systems for Marine Earth Sciences
9/27/2016 Christian Franck Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Brown University High Resolution, Large Deformation 3D Traction Force Microscopy
10/4/2016 Jayathi Y. Murthy Dean and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles Topology Optimization for Thermal-Fluid Problems Using Unstructured Finite Volume Schemes
10/10/2016 Joel D. Boerckel Assistant Professor, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame Developmental Mechanobiology and Regeneration
10/11/2016 Igor Bargatin Class of 1965 Term Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Plate Mechanical Metamaterials
10/18/2016 George Gogos Professor, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Femtosecond Laser Formation of Self-Organized Micro/Nanostructures on Metallic Surfaces and their Thermal/Fluids Applications
10/25/2016 Aaron Wemhoff Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Villanova University Quantifying Nano-Enhancement in Organic Phase Change Materials
11/1/2016 Yale Goldman Professor, Department of Physiology, University of Pennsylvania Mechanics and Material Properties of Dynein, the Cell’s Spindly, Multi-Functional Cargo Carrier
11/15/2016 John Pollard Associate Professor of Practice, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arizona Why Do We Gather Students Together? An Interactive Story of Curricular and Instructional Transformation in STEM
11/15/2016 Matthew Picolli Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Passive Stability and Actuation of Micro Aerial Vehicles
11/29/2016 Andreas Polycarpou Meinhard H. Kotzebue ’14 Professor and James J. Cain Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas A&M Nanomechanical Behavior of Polymer Nanocomposites
12/6/2016 Eric Loth Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia Morphing Rotor for Extreme Scale Wind Turbines
12/15/2016 Yijie Jiang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Adhesion and Wear of Nanoscale Polymer Contacts
12/19/2016 Denise Wong Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Actuation, Sensing and Control for Micro Bio Robots
12/21/2016 Justin Thomas Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Grasping, Perching, and Visual Servoing for Micro Aerial Vehicles

Summer 2016

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
6/13/2016 James Keller Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Path Planning for Persistent Surveilance Applications Using Fixed-Wing Uninhabited Aerial Systems: A Constructive Solution Using B-spline Parametric Polynomials
6/15/2016 Denise Wong Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Actuation, Sensing, and Control for Micro Bio Robots
7/19/2016 Yijie Jiang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Characterization of Nanoscale Adhesion and Wear at UNCD–PMMA Interfaces
7/28/2016 Justin Thomas Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Autonomous Grasping and Perching for Micro Aerial Vehicles
8/2/2016 Liang Xiaojun Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A Fluctuating Elastic Plate Model for Lipid Membranes and Graphene
8/4/2016 Tolga Ozaslan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Micro Aerial Vehicles for Safe Autonomous Inspection of Critical Infrastructure
9/9/2016 Naomi Fitter Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Physical Human-Robot Interaction for Social Motor Coordination
8/16/2016 Tarik Tosun Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Accomplishing Tasks with Modular Robots

Spring 2016

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/11/2016 James Pikul Post-Doctoral Associate, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University Design and Fabrication of High Power Microbatteries and High Specific Strength Cellular Solids from Mesostructured Hierarchical Materials
1/26/2016 Cynthia Sung PhD Candidate, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computational Tools for Robot Design: A Composition Approach
1/28/2016 Arthur W. Mahoney Postdoctoral Fellow in the Medical Engineering and Discovery Laboratory at Vanderbilt University Wireless Magnetic Devices and Needle-sized Tentacles Inside the Body: Robots That Help Surgeons Save Lives
2/2/2016 Rodrigo A. Bernal Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Mechanical and Electromechanical Properties of Nanowires for Sensors and Electronics
2/8/2016 Jordan R. Raney Postdoctoral Fellow,Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University Mechanics By Design: 3D Printing Architected Engineering Materials With Unprecedented Control of Mechanical Properties
2/16/2016 Jeremy D. Brown Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Smart Haptic Displays for Dextrous Manipulation of Telerobots
2/18/2016 Christopher Boyce Post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University in the Multiphase Flow Group in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Tomographic Imaging and Computational Modeling of Fluid-Particle Flow Systems
2/25/2016 Hunter Gilbert research assistant and PhD candidate, Medical Engineering and Discovery Lab, Vanderbilt University Tentacle Robots for Minimally Invasive Surgery: Model-based Analysis and Design
3/3/2016 Luigi Perotti Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Modeling Cardiac Mechanics and Electrophysiology
3/10/2016 Daniel Chenet Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University Van der Waals Heterostructures of 2D Materials: Synthesis, Characterization, & Applications
3/24/2016 Anirudha Majumdar Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Control of Agile Robots in Complex Environments with Formal Safety Guarantees
4/4/2016 Sheng Mao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Continuum and Computational Modeling of Flexoelectricity
4/12/2016 David L. Burris Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware New Insights into Joint Lubrication, Health, and Replacement
4/14/2016 Qingze Zhao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Phase Boundary Propagation in Mass Spring Chains and Long Molecules
4/19/2016 Albert P. Pisano NAE, Walter J. Zable Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Dean, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego Dry Nanoprinting
4/26/2016 John Hart Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Scalability and Flexibility: Key Principles for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education
4/28/2016 David M. Warsinger Post Doctoral Researcher, Lienhard Research Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Saving Lives with Thermodynamics: Thermofluids and Nanoengineering for the Water-Food-Energy Nexus
5/13/2016 Reza Malek-Madan Program Officer, Code 31, ONR and Department of Mathematics, US Naval Academy Mathematical Modeling of Sea Ice

Fall 2015

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/1/2015 Jaydev Desai Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland at College Park Flexible Meso-scale Robotic Systems for Image-Guided Neurosurgery
9/14/2015 Rebecca Pierce Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Increasing Transparency and Presence in Teleoperation Through Human-Centered Design
9/15/2015 Ron Schoff Technology Innovation Program, Electric Power Research Institute Power System Transformation in an Era of Increasing Distributed Generation, Dynamic Power Delivery, and Interactive Use of Electricity
9/22/2015 David L. Goldsby Associate Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania Experimental Constraints on the Flow of Ice: Evidence from Greenland and Ganymede
9/29/2015 Piotr Marszalek Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University The Nanomechanics of Polysaccharides, Nucleic Acids, and Proteins Beyond the Entropic Elasticity Regime
10/6/2015 Guruswami Ravichandran John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Director, Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, California Institute of Technology Adhesion: Elasticity, Heterogeneity, and Peeling
10/13/2015 Jamal Yagoobi George I. Alden Professor and Department Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Electrohydrodynamically Driven Two-Phase Heat Transport Devices for Space and Ground Applications
10/20/2015 Patrick Phelan Emerging Technologies Program Manager, Building Technologies Office, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, United States Department of Energy DOE’s Building Technologies Office:  R&D Directions and Opportunities
10/27/2015 David Hu Associate Professor, Department of Fluid Mechanics, Georgia Institute of Technology Ants That Can Flow Like A Fluid, or Spring Back Like A Solid
10/30/2015 John Martin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Nanofibrous Disc-Like Angle Ply Structures for Total Disc Replacement in a Small Animal Model
11/3/2015 Jeffrey Kysar Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University Two-Dimensional Materials: Mechanical Stiffness, Strength, and Reliability
11/19/2015 Josue Sznitman Assistant Professor, Department of Biofluids, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Unravelling the Mysteries of Respiratory Flows in Deep Pulmonary Airways
12/8/2015 Robert J. Webster III Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University Can Needle-Sized Robot Tentacles Help Surgeons Save Lives?

Summer 2015

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
6/1/2015 Philip Dames Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Multi-Robot Active Information Gathering Using Random Finite Sets
6/2/2015 John Martin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Nanofibrous Disc-like Angle Ply Structures (DAPS) for Total Disc Replacement in a Small Animal Model
6/8/2015 Philip Dames Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Multi-Robot Active Information Gathering Using Random Finite Sets
6/16/2015 Heather Culbertson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Data-Driven Haptic Modeling and Rendering of Realistic Virtual Textured Surfaces
7/7/2015 Alison Koser Patteson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Living fluids and their interactions with particles and polymers
7/14/2015 David Gagnon Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Propulsion in Complex Fluids: Living & Artificial Swimmers
7/16/2015 Michael Norton Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dynamics and Statics of Liquid-Liquid and Gas-Liquid Interfaces on Non-Uniform Substrates at the Micron and Sub-Micron Scales
7/17/2015 Yi Yang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Quantitative Modeling of Oxygen Precipitation in Silicon
7/28/2015 James Paulos Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Underactuated Attitude Control for Rotocraft Micro Aerial Vehicles
8/4/2015 Sheng Mao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Continuum Modeling of Flexoelectricity
8/11/2015 Nathan Ip Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Characterization of the Adhesion and Separation Behaviors of Elastomers Using a Blister Contact Test
8/18/2015 Helen Minsky Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Composite Posts to Achieve Tunable and Enhanced Adhesion

Spring 2015

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/20/2015 Yanfei Gao Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee Convoluted Thermal/Spatial Statistics and Scale Effects in Nanoindentation Plasticity
2/10/2015 Nikolaos Aravas Professor of Computational Mechanics, Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Thessaly, Greece and Visiting Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Strain-gradient elasticity: Constitutive Modeling and Numerical Techniques
2/17/2015 Steven Schmid Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Notre Dame Selected Topics in Orthopedic Implant Design
3/3/2015 Denis Cormier Earl W. Brinkman Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology Multifunctional 3D Printing
3/5/2015 Mahmut Selman Sakar Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich Microrobotic Platforms in Bioengineering and Translational Medicine
3/17/2015 Ellen Kuhl Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering (courtesy), and Cardiothoracic Surgery (courtesy), Stanford University Neuromechanics of Human Brain Development
3/17/2015 Hiroyuki Fujita Professor, Institute of Industrial Science and Director, Center for International Research on Micronano Mechatronics (CIRMM), University of Tokyo In situ TEM Observation Using Active MEMS Devices
3/24/2015 Eric Shaqfeh Lester Levi Carter Professor and Department Chair of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, NAE How the Dynamics of Vesicle and Capsule Suspensions in Flow May Affect Your Bleeding Time
3/31/2015 George Adams College of Engineering Distinguished Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University Adhesion and Pull-Off Force of an Elastic Indenter from an Elastic Half Space
4/7/2015 Saverio Spagniole Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison Entrapment, escape, and diffusion of microswimmers in complex environments
4/16/2015 Na Zhang Research Professor, The Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Visiting Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Perspectives on Sustainable Energy Development in China
4/17/2015 Jinzhou Yuan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Understanding and Manipulating the Locomotion of Undulatory Microswimmers
4/23/2015 Sean Anderson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Carbon Nanopipettes for Advanced Cellular Probing and Microinjection
4/24/2015 Xin Z. Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanisms Controlling Friction and Adhesion at the Atomic Length-Scale
5/20/2015 Nicholas M. Schneider Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Liquid Cell Electron Microscopy with the Nanoaquarium: Radiation and Electrochemistry

Fall 2014

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/11/2014 Bradley Nelson Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH-Zürich MicroRobotics and NanoMedicine
9/16/2014 Eric Dufresne Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Materials, Yale University Surface Tension and the Mechanics of Soft Solids
9/23/2014 Cullen R. Buie Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Microfluidic Bacterial Electrophenotyping for Biotechnology
9/30/2014 David Lentink Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University Unraveling the Biofluidynamics of Flight as an Inspiration for Design
10/7/2014 Charles Matson Chief Scientist, Air Force Office of Scientific Research Space, the Cluttered Frontier
10/14/2014 John Leonard Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, MIT A Long-term View of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping for Mobile Robots
10/23/2014 Taher Saif Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign From synchrony to swimming through long range cell-cell interactions
10/28/2014 Kenneth Liechti Zarrow Centennial Professorship in Engineering, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Texas, Austin Selective Mechanical Transfer of Graphene
11/4/2014 Nadine Aubry Dean, College of Engineering and University Distinguished Professor, Northeastern University Moving Particles in Microfludics
11/11/2014 Mehdi Bakhshi Zanjani
11/18/2014 Meyya Meyyappan Chief Scientist for Exploration Technology, NASA Nanotechnology: Development of  Practical Systems and Nano-Micro-Macro Integration
12/9/2014 James W. Baish Professor of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, Bucknell University Vascular Architecture: Relating Form to Function
12/16/2014 Michael Wald

Summer 2014

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/27/2014 Armin Knoll Researcher, IBM Research, Zurich Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland Thermal Probe Nanolithography: What You See is What You Get
5/29/2014 David Argudo Ph.D. Candidate, Penn DNA conformational changes and phase transitions induced by tension and twist
5/30/2014 Mahmut Selman Sakar Senior Research Scientist, Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems Microrobotic Platforms in Biotechnology: From Minimally Invasive Biomanipulation to Biological Robots
6/3/2014 Barukyah Shaparenko Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Thermal Dielectrophoretic Force on a Dielectric Particle
6/10/2014 Michael Norton Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Capillary Surfaces on Non-Uniform Substrates at the Micro- and Nano- Scale
6/17/2014 Nicholas Schneider Ph.D. Candidate, Penn In Situ Liquid Cell Electron Microscopy with the NanoAquarium: A Study in Electrochemistry and Radiation Chemistry
6/20/2014 Jun Seo Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Grasping and Assembling with Modular Robots
6/23/2014 Matthew Turpin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Safe, Scalable, and Complete Motion Planning of Large Teams of Interchangeable Robots
6/24/2014 Jinzhou Yuan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microswimmers and Microfluidics: Understanding and Manipulating the Motion of Nematodes such as Caenorhabditis (C.) elegans
7/8/2014 Xin Liu Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanisms Controlling Atomic-Scale Friction and Adhesion of Single-Asperity Contacts on Ideal Materials
7/15/2014 Heather Culbertson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Modeling and Rendering of Virtual Haptic Textured Surfaces
7/22/2014 Sean Anderson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Carbon Nanopipettes for Advanced Cellular Probing and Microinjection
7/29/2014 Rebecca Pierce Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Human-Centered Control Interfaces for Teleoperation
8/1/2014 Jun Seo Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Grasping and Assembling with Modular Robots
8/5/2014 Michael Wald Ph.D. Candidate, Penn TIndentation-Based Characterization of the Mechanical Properties of Soft Materials
8/11/2014 Moeketsi Mpholo National University of Lesotho and Teboho Nchaba, University of Cape Town Solar and Wind Resource Assessment in Lesotho
8/12/2014 Mehdi Bakhshi Zanjani Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Computational Modeling of Nanocrystal Superlattices
8/19/2014 Nick Eckenstein Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Concepts and Approaches in Modular Robotic Connector Mechanism Design
8/22/2014 Matthew Piccoli Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Passive Stabilization and Simplification of Micro Aerial Vehicles
8/28/2014 Reza Avazmohammadi Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Overall Mechanical Response of Soft Composite Materials with Particulate Microstructure at Finite Strains
8/29/2014 Morteza Hakimi Siboni Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dielectric Elastomer Composites: Macroscopic Behavior and Instabilities
8/29/2014 Yi Yang Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Modeling of Defect Evolution in Silicon Substrates for Microelectronics and Photovoltaics

Spring 2014

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/28/2014 Jonathon Yoder Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Human Intervertebral Disc Mechanical Function Under Physiological Compression Loading Quantified Non-invasively Utilizing MRI and Image Registration
1/28/2014 Frances Ross Research Staff Member, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Visualising crystal growth in the transmission electron microscope
2/4/2014 Ladislav Kavan Assistant Professor, Computer and Information Sciences Department, University of Pennsylvania Direct Methods for Skeletal Shape Deformation
2/11/2014 Ellad B. Tadmor Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota Mapping the Stochastic Response of Nanostructures
2/19/2014 Matthew Turpin University of Pennsylvania Scalable Trajectory Computation for Large Teams of Interchangeable Robots Applied to Quadrotor MAVs
2/20/2014 James Hone Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University Putting things on top of other things: Fabrication and applications of van der Waals heterostructures
2/25/2014 Ching-Long Lin Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of Iowa A Multi-scale Imaging-based Statistics-guided Predictive Lung Model
3/17/2014 Hod Lipson Associate Professor, Creative Machines Lab, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University The future of 3D printing: From analog to digital materials
3/18/2014 Fernando Muzzio Professor and Chair, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Rutgers University Continuous Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: The late revolution
3/27/2014 Sarah Bergbreiter Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland Tiny leaps for robot kind: combining microfabrication and robotics
4/1/2014 Mark Allen Alfred Fitler Moore Professor, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering. University of Pennsylvania An Electroplating-Based Approach to Volumetric Nanomanufacturing And Its Application to Energy Conversion and Storage
4/15/2014 Pradeep Sharma M.D. Anderson Chair Professor & Department Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston Flexoelectricity
4/22/2014 Hod Lipson Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Computing & Information Science, Cornell University The Robotic Scientist: Distilling Natural Laws from Experimental Data, from cognitive robotics to computational biology
4/25/2014 Chia-Hsing Pi Master’s Student, University of Pennsylvania Design, analysis, and applications of stress-engineered 3D microstructures
4/29/2014 Thomas Degnan Manager, Breakthrough and Leads Generation for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040

Fall 2013

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/9/2013 Drew Cheney Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Computational Modeling of Geometry Dependent Phonon Transport in Silicon Nanostructures
9/10/2013 Juan C. Lasheras Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Bioengineering, University of California, San Diego The Role of Myosin II Motors and F-actin Dynamics in the Mechanics of Cell Migration and Invasion
9/17/2013 Alberto Cuitino Professor and Executive Officer, Rutgers University Multi-scale modeling and simulation of powder compaction processes
9/24/2013 Radhakrishnan “Suresh” Sureshkumar Department Chair, Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, Syracuse University Plasmonic Fluids: Structure, Rheology and Applications
10/1/2013 Julia Greer Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics, California Institute of Technology Nanostructured 3-D Architectures: Mechanics and Physics of Deformation and Fracture in Nanomaterials for Biomimetics, Batteries, and Lightweight Structural Materials
10/8/2013 Sulin Zhang Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Bioengineering, Pennsylvania State University Virus-Inspired Design Principles of Nanosized Targets for Cellular Delivery
10/15/2013 Heather Knight Ph.D. candidate, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon Charismatic Machines
10/22/2013 Nathan Jacobs Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Validation and Application of an Intervertebral Disc Finite Element Model Utilizing Independently Constructed Tissue-Level Constitutive Formulations that are Nonlinear, Anisotropic, and Time-Dependent
10/29/2013 Michelle Johnson Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Pennsylvania Bilateral and Unilateral Task-Oriented, Robot Therapy Environments for Patients with Upper Limb Motor Impairment
11/12/2013 Mary C. Boyce Dean, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor, Columbia University Mechanics of Wavy Interfacial Layers in Hybrid Material Architectures: Nature-inspired Design to 3D-printed Prototypes
11/14/2013 H. Tom Soh Ruth Garland Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials, University of California, Santa Barbara Cell Sorting and Directed Evolution in Microfluidic Systems
11/19/2013 Andrew Alleyne Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dynamical Modeling and Control for Building Systems
11/21/2013 Na Zhang Research Professor, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Solar hybrid power system integration with low CO2 emissions
12/3/2013 Irina Marinov Lecturer, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania The Southern Ocean and its critical role in the global carbon and heat cycles: now and under future climate change

Summer 2013

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/24/2013 Steven Gray Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Motion primitives and planning for robots with closed chain systems and changing topologies
6/18/2013 Drew Cheney Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Computational modeling of geometry dependent phonon transport in nanostructures
6/21/2013 Kush Prasad MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Optimal Control of Traffic Signals at a Single Intersection
6/21/2013 Soonkyum Kim Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A Topological Approach to Using Cables to Separate and Manipulate Sets of Objects
6/21/2013 Mengying Li MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Energy and Exergy Analysis and Thermodynamic Optimization of Deep Engineered Geothermal System Energy Extraction and Power Generation
6/24/2013 David Kim MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Critical Review of Quantitative Sustainability Analysis with sample case for Reverse Osmosis Desalination
7/1/2013 Steven Gray Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Motion primitives and planning for robots with closed chain systems and changing topologies
7/9/2013 Nathan Jacobs Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Finite Element Predictions of Human Intervertebral Disc Mechanics
7/12/2013 Graham Wabiszewksi Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Interrogation of Single Asperity Electrical Contacts using Atomic Force Microscopy with Application to NEMS Logic Switches
7/30/2013 Jonathon Yoder Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Intervertebral Disc Mechanical Function Under Physiological Loading Quantified Non-invasively Utilizing MRI and Image Registration
8/6/2013 David Argudo Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The mechanical response of DNA: twisting the molecule
8/16/2013 Soonykum Kim Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Robot Motion Planning Under Topological Constraints
8/20/2013 Morteza Hakimi Siboni Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Electro-active polymer composites: effective response and stability analysis
8/21/2013 Ian Cosden Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A Hybrid Atomistic-Continuum Model for Liquid-Vapor Phase Change
8/27/2013 Reza Avazmohammadi Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Homogenization of Fiber-Reinforced Elastomeric Composites

Spring 2013

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/10/2013 Sherry Liu Assistant Professor Bioengineering and Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania Micro-imaging and the mechanical modeling of bone – from bench side to bed side
1/15/2013 Vivek Shenoy Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Mechanotranduction in 3D microtissues: Modeling the role of geometry and stiffness
1/22/2013 Leo Donner Lecturer, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program, Princeton University Aerosols, Clouds, and Climate: The Global Modeling Challenge
1/29/2013 Amos Avidan Bechtel Corporation Nuclear Power Technology and Construction Trends
2/5/2013 Chang-Hwan Choi Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology Nature-Inspired Nano-Textured Surfaces: Design, Fabrications, and Applications
2/12/2013 Li Shi Professor, Myron L. Begeman Fellow in Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Texas at Austin Thermal Transport in Graphene and Other Two-Dimensional Layered Materials
2/13/2013 Xiaoning Shen Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Locomotion of live organisms in complex fluids at low Reynolds number
2/14/2013 Lichao Pan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Complex Fluids In Microchanne Flows at Low Reynods Number: Elastic Instabilities and Rheology
2/21/2013 J. Scott Bunch Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder Graphene Mechanical Wonders
2/22/2013 Vijay Kumar UPS Foundation Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Aerial Robot Swarms
2/25/2013 Roland Bennewitz Senior Group Leader, Nanotribology Group, INM – Leibniz-Institute for New Materials and Experimental Physics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany Nanoscale friction on gold – from the basics to electrochemical modification
2/26/2013 Harry Swinney Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chairman and Professor of Physics, University of Texas at Austin How competing bacterial colonies can survive by killing siblings
3/19/2013 Maria Yang Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Influence of informal representation in early stage design
3/21/2013 Hugh Fan Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry, University of Florida Microscale Components for Flow Control and Particle Isolation
3/22/2013 Gary Fedder Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES), Howard M. Wilkoff Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Advanced Manufacturing Institutes – A $2B National Experiment in Government-Industry-University Private-Public Partnerships
3/26/2013 Chang-Jin Kim Professor, Micro- and Nano-Manufacturing Lab; California NanoSystems Institute Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCLA Surface Tension Is Fair Game in Micro-Engineering: Let’s Play
4/2/2013 Nicholas Ouellette Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Yale University Emergent Dynamics of Laboratory Insect Swarms
4/9/2013 John Sader Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne Nanomechanical Systems in Fluid with Applications to Atomic and Molecular Sensing
4/11/2013 William McMahan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Providing Haptic Perception to Telerobotic Systems via Tactile Acceleration Signals
4/11/2013 Horacio Espinosa James N. and Nancy J. Farley Professor in Manufacturing & Entrepreneurship; Director; Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Program, Northwestern University Atomistic Investigation of Nanomaterials – Seeing the Invisible and Bridging Theory and Experiments
4/16/2013 Lallit Anand Warren and Towneley Rohsenow Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology A thermo-mechanically coupled theory for fluid permeation in elastomeric materials: application to thermally-responsive gels
4/17/2013 Vahid Vahdat Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanics of Interactions and Atomic-Scale Wear of Tips in Amplitude Modulation Atomic Force Microscopy Probes
4/18/2013 Wilson Poon Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh Bacteria as active colloids
4/25/2013 Emily Carter Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering & Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University Quantum Mechanics and the Future of the Planet

Fall 2012

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
8/28/2012 Lichao Pan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A subcritical elastic instability in channel flows at low Reynolds number
9/6/2012 Roger Howe William E. Ayer Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University; Faculty Director, Stanford Nanofabrication Facility; Director of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) Nano ElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS) Applications in Information Technology and Energy Conversion
9/11/2012 Douglas Durian Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania Mechanics of Granular Impact
9/18/2012 Alexander Smits Chairman and Eugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Director, Gasdynamics Laboratory, Princeton University Hydrodynamics of Manta Ray Swimming
9/21/2012 Qiwei Shi Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Diffusional Aggregation in Binary Solids
9/25/2012 Shailendra Joshi Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore Fortifying Magnesium for Structural Applications
10/2/2012 Robert Howe Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Robot Hands for the Real World
10/8/2012 Sefi Givli Senior Lecturer, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology A theorectical study of lamellipodia dynamics
10/9/2012 Marino Arroyo Associate Professor, School of Civil Engineering of Barcelona, University of Catalunya, Barcelona Reverse engineering the euglenoid movement
10/16/2012 Dan Negrut Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison From the Dynamics of Sand to the Dynamics of Tanks: Using High Performance Computing to Advance the Pace of Innovation and Improve Designs in Mechanical Engineering
10/25/2012 Evan Galipeau Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Non-linear homogenization of magnetorheological elastomers at finite strain
10/30/2012 S. “Bala” Balachandar Chairman and William F. Powers Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida On the Propagation, Instability and Turbulence of Advancing Material Fronts
11/6/2012 Ronald Larson George Granger Brown Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Macromolecular Science and Engineering, University of Michigan From Rheology to Biology: the Application of Polymer Hydrodynamics to Problems in Biology
11/19/2012 Evan Galipeau Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Non-linear homogenization of magnetorheological elastomers at finite strain
11/20/2012 Sergio Pellegrino Joyce and Kent Kresa Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Civil Engineering, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory Senior Research Scientist, California Institute of Technology Ultra-thin composite deployable shell structures
11/27/2012 Darryll Pines Dean and Nariman Farvardin Professor of Engineering, Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland Evolving to a New Normal in Engineering Education
12/4/2012 Thomas Powers Professor of Engineering and Professor of Physics, Brown University Swimming in Viscoelastic Fluids
12/11/2012 Chelsey Simmons Ph.D. Candidate, Stanford University Dynamic Cell Culture Systems for Stimulation and Assessment of Cardiovascular Cells
12/12/2012 Na Zhang Research Professor, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences High-efficiency low emissions hybrid power generation systems integrated with solar thermo- chemical conversion

Summer 2012

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/29/2012 Tong Gao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dynamics of soft elastic particles in viscous flows
6/5/2012 Qiwei Shi Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Diffusional Aggregation with Material Anisotropy
6/8/2012 Tong Gao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dynamics of soft elastic particles in viscous flows
6/22/2012 Quentin Lindsey Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Robotic Consrtuctuion of Truss-Like Structures
7/17/2012 Vahid Vahdat Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechanics of Interactions and Atomic-Scale War of Tips in Amplitude Modulation Atomic Force Microscopy Probes
7/24/2012 William McMahan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Providing Haptic Perception to Telerobotic Systems via Tactile Acceleration Signals
7/31/2012 Tianxiang Su Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University Enhancing stability of a rod by friction and elastic confinement
8/7/2012 Ian Cosden Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A Hybrid Atomistic-Continuum Model for Non-Isothermal Fluid Flow
8/14/2012 Graham Wabiszewski Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Understanding the Degradation of Nanoelectromechanical Contacts: Gigacycle Interrogation of Platinum Interfaces Using Atomic Force Microscopy
8/21/2012 Xiaoning Shen Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Undulatory Swimming in Complex Fluids
8/28/2012 Lichao Pan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn A subcritical elastic instability in channel flows at low Reynolds number

Spring 2012

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/17/2012 Sumita Pennathur Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara Electrokinetic characterization of micro- and nano-fluidic channels for bioanalytical applications
1/20/2012 Daniel Mellinger Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Trajectory Generation and Control for Quadrotors
1/23/2012 Subhrajit Bhattacharya Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Topological and Geometric Techniques in Graph-Search Based Robot Planning
1/24/2012 Pradeep Guduru James R. Rice Associate Professor of Engineering, Division of Engineering, Brown University On the Role of Mechanics in the Design and Performance of Electrode Materials for Energy Storage
1/26/2012 Cary Pint Research Scientist, Extreme Technologies Research Group Intel Corporation Nanocarbon Scaffolds for Efficient Energy Conversion and Storage
1/31/2012 David Erickson Director, Integrated Nanofluidic Systems Lab, Associate Professor, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University Handling the very big and very small: Optofluidics for Nanomanipulation and Energy Application
2/2/2012 Zlatan Aksamija NSF CI TraCS Fellow, Nanoelectronics Theory Group, University of Wisconsin-Madison Semiconductor Nanostructures for Efficient Thermo-electric Energy Conversion
2/6/2012 Mona Zebarjadi Postdoctoral Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Thermoelectric transport in nanostructures
2/7/2012 John Hart Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan Manufacturing of 3D Carbon Nanotube Surfaces
2/9/2012 Igor Bargatin Engineering Research Associate, Department of Electrical Engineering Stanford University Hard-boiled Electrons: Using Thermionic Emission for Solar Electricity Generation
2/21/2012 Nicholas Boechler Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Granular Crystals: Controlling Mechanical Energy with Nonlinearity and Discreteness
2/24/2012 Alan Needleman Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, University of North Texas; Florence Pirce Grant University Professor Emeritus, Brown University Porosity Evolution in Ni-based Single Crystals under Creep Loading Conditions
3/20/2012 Douglas Jerolmack Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania The science of scenery: how dynamics at the fluid-granular interface creates landscapes
3/22/2012 Subra Suresh Director, National Science Foundation Nanoscience as a Pathway to Innovation in Engineering and Biology
3/27/2012 Michael Graham Harvey D. Spangler Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison Segregation phenomena in flowing suspensions of deformable particles: toward an understanding of cell and particle dynamics in blood flow
4/3/2012 Arvind Raman Professor of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Purdue University Probing the mechanobiology of cells and viruses at small forces and lengthscales using multi-harmonic Atomic Force Microscopy methods
4/17/2012 Michael Shelley Lilian and George Lyttle Professor of Applied Mathematics; Professor of Mathematics and Neural Science; Co-Director, Applied Mathematical Laboratory, Department of Mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, New York University Biological Flows and Mechanics
4/24/2012 Michael McAlpine Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University Biointerfaced Nanodevices

Fall 2011

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/13/2011 Gregory S. Chirikjian Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Stochastic Models in Robotics and Structural Biology
9/20/2011 Robert E. Ecke Director, Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory Energy Futures: From carbon sequestration to the smart grid of tomorrow
9/27/2011 John J. McGrath Division Director – Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems Directorate for Engineering, National Science Foundation Overview of NSF, the Engineering Directorate & the CBET Division
10/7/2011 Gal deBotton Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, Israel Electroactive polymer composites – Mechanical response, stability, wave propagation and Band-gaps
10/18/2011 Kaushik Dayal Assistant Professor of Mechanics, Materials and Computing, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University Multiscale methods for Complex Crystals and Nano-/Bio-structures
10/25/2011 Paris R. von Lockette Associate Professor, Rowan University Investigating symmetry classes in magneto-rheological elastomers (MREs)
11/1/2011 Noel Perkins Donald T. Greenwood Collegiate Professor, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan Wireless Technology for Analyzing Human Motion and Athletic Skill
11/8/2011 Seungmoon Choi Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Director, Haptics and Virtual Reality Laboratory, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea; Visiting Associate Professor, Dept of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Haptic Augmented Reality – Concept and Research Progress
11/22/2011 Julio M. Fernandez Professor of Biological Sciences, Columbia University Mechanical Biochemistry
11/29/2011 Andrea Liu Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania Vibrations and Flow defects in Jammed Packings
12/6/2011 Celia Reina Romo Lawrence Fellow, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Modeling and simulation of damage by nucleation and void growth: a multiscale approach
12/20/2011 Changchun Liu Research Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Point of Care Diagnostic Devices for Pathogen Detection

Summer 2011

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/17/2011 Tianxiang Su Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Entropic Elasticity of Biopolymers and their Networks
5/31/2011 Paul White Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Miniaturization Methods for Modular Robotics
7/5/2011 Neil Zuckerman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Propagation and Scattering of Mechanical Vibrations in Semiconductor Materials
7/18/2011 Michael Shomin MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Penetration-based Grasping for Aerial Robot Perching and Manipulation
7/22/2011 Alan Rosenwinkel Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Understanding Stress at the Atomic Scale Through the Principle of Equivalence of Virtual Work
8/2/2011 Daniel Mellinger Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Control Methods for Quadrotor Helicopters
8/16/2011 Quentin Lindsey Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Robotic Construction of Truss-like Structures
8/23/2011 Subhrajit Bhattacharya Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Topological and Geometric Techniques in Graph-search Based Robot Planning and Exploration Problems
8/30/2011 Joseph Romano Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Enhancing Autonomous Robotic Manipulation via Haptic Perception

Spring 2011

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/18/2011 Chris Thorne Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Toward the Design and Analysis of a Gyroscopically Controlled Micro Air Vehicle
1/25/2011 Daeyeon Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Improving Mechanical Properties of Nanoparticle Thin Films and Bubble Shells
2/1/2011 Mathew Mate Hitachi San Jose Research Center, San Jose, CA How new disk drive technologies are pushing the nanoscale limits of materials and mechanics
2/15/2011 Xiulin Ruan Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University Nanoscale Control of Photon and Phonon Transport for Enhanced Solar Energy Harvesting
2/22/2011 Lance R. Collins Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University Role of Turbulence in the Atmospheric Processing of Clouds
3/1/2011 Kyung-Suk Kim Professor of Engineering, Brown University Unusual nanostructural instabilities caused by compressive stresses; graphene fracture operated in CNTs cut by sonication and dislocation motions during ion irradiation
3/22/2011 Timothy J. Healey Professor, Departments of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics, Cornell University Stable equilibria of some 2-phase problems of nonlinear elasticity via global bifurcation
3/28/2011 Jason A. Thompson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microbead-Based Biosensing in Microfluidic Devices
3/29/2011 Pedro Reis Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The wonders of thin objects: From torn tape and sinking flowers to graphene ribbons and grabbing water
4/5/2011 Silvia Salinas Blemker Assistant Professor, Departments of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Virginia Meso-scale computational models of skeletal muscle provide insights into muscle injuries
4/19/2011 Jun Zhang Associate Professor, Department of Physics and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University Reversed flapping flight and inverted hydrodynamical drafting
4/26/2011 Shizhi Qian Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Old Dominion University Electrokinetic Particle Transport in Micro/Nano-fluidics
3/3/2011 Manu Prakash Harvard University Hydraulic constraints on feeding and metamorphosis: the case of a hungry fly
5/6/2011 Nora Ayanian Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Coordination of Multirobot Teams and Groups in COntrained Environments: Modeling, Abstractions and Synthesis of Control Policies
5/17/2011 Tianxiang Su Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Entropic Elasticity of Biopolymers and their Networks

Fall 2010

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/16/2010 Ju Li Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Plumber’s Wonderland Found on Graphene
9/23/2010 Katherine Kuchenbecker Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Creating Realistic Virtual Textures from Contact Acceleration Data
9/30/2010 Victor Steinberg Professor of Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel Single vesicle dynamics in various flows: Experiment versus theory
10/5/2010 Mian Qin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microfluidic pumping with surface tension force and magnetohydrodynamic drive
10/7/2010 T. Sundararajan Professor, Thermodynamics Combustion Engineering Lab and Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras Micro- and nano- scale phenomena in heat transfer and fluid flow
10/13/2010 G. Paul Neitzel Professor of Fluid Mechanics and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Permanent Noncoalescence and Nonwetting:Science and Applications
10/14/2010 William Klug Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles The Solid Mechanics of Fluid Shells: Understanding Structure and Organization in Cell Membranes
10/28/2010 Eric Laug Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, San Diego Synchrony and optimality in cellular hydrodynamics
11/11/2010 Bong Jae Lee Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh Tailoring Radiative Properties using Nanostructures
11/17/2010 Alexander Morozov EPSRC CAF Research Fellow, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh Instabilities in viscoelastic shear layers and their relation to elastic turbulence
11/18/2010 James Feng Professor and Canada  Research Chair, Departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Mathematics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada Interfacial Dynamics in Complex Fluids
11/19/2010 Jack Franklin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Patterning of Alloy Precipitation Through External Pressure
12/2/2010 Lev Truskinovsky Laboratoire de Mécanique des Solides, Ecole Polytechnique, France; William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow and Wyss Visiting Fellow, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Harvard University Criticality in plasticity
12/9/2010 Hao Lin Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University Electric Field Mediated Transport in Lab-on-a-chip and Biological Systems
12/16/2010 Jimmy Sastra Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Using Modular Reconfigurable Robots as a Platform for Dynamic Locomotion Experiments

Summer 2010

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/13/2010 Mihalis Agora Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Homogenization methods for multi-scale viscoplastic composites and applications to semi-crystalline polymers
6/10/2010 Joe Grogan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The Nanoaquarium: a nanofluidic platform for in situ electron microscopy in liquid media
6/17/2010 Mian Qin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Utilizing Surface Tension Force and Magneto-Hydrodynamic Drive to Pump Fluid in Microfluidic Devices
6/21/2010 Kevin C. Galloway Ph.D. Candidate, Penn
7/8/2010 Ritwik Raj Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Moving Interfaces as Agents for Conformational Change in Rod-like Macromolecules
7/15/2010 Nora Ayanian Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Automated synthesis of feedback policies for multi-robot teams and groups from high-level specifications
7/22/2010 Jack Franklin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The Patterning of Surface Precipitation of Al-Cu Alloys via Localized External Loading
8/12/2010 Jason Thompson Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Microbead-Based Systems for Biosensing in Lab-On-Chip Devices
8/19/2010 Nipun Sinha Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Aluminum Nitride (AlN) Based Piezoelectric MEMS/NEMS Switches for Mechanical Logic
8/26/2010 Neil Zuckerman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Vibrations in Silicon:  Wave scattering and heat propagation, from the nanometer to the micrometer scale

Spring 2010

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/21/2010 Martin I. Idiart Area Departmental Aeronáutica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina A realizable constitutive model for viscoplastic porous media
1/28/2010 Timothy Fisher Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University Exploiting the collective behavior of carbon nanotubes
2/4/2010 Howard A. Stone Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University Surprises in viscous flows:  from charged drops to bacteria in curved channel flows
2/8/2010 Sheri D. Sheppard Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Co-Director, Center for Design Research Stanford University What we have learned about educating engineers: A field report from the Carnegie Study
2/15/2010 Qiang Lin California Institute of Technology Manipulating motion with light: Cavity optomechanics in nanophotonic structures
2/18/2010 Richard D. James Russell J. Penrose Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor, University of Minnesota Viscometry of bulk materials and atomic structures
2/25/2010 Cameron Riviere Associate Research Professor, The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University Micron:  An active handheld micromanipulator
3/2/2010 Kevin T. Turner Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison Ultracompliant single-crystalline silicon substrates: Mechanics and manufacturing
3/4/2010 Yonggang Huang Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University Mechanics of stretchable electronics
3/11/2010 Sanjay Govindjee Professor of Civil Engineering and Chancellor’s Professor, University of California at Berkeley Macroscopic models for transforming systems and mathematical relaxation
3/18/2010 Mo Li Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Electrical Engineering, Yale University Nanomechanics meets nanophotonics: harnessing optical forces on a silicon chip
3/25/2010 Gang Bao Professor and Robert A. Milton Chair in Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering Distinguished Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology Engineering nano-probes for living-cell imaging of biomolecules
4/1/2010 Udo D. Schwarz Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Yale University A focus on friction: From atomically resolved static forces to scaling laws for superlubric sliding
4/8/2010 Ying Sun Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Drexel University Transport Phenomena Associated with Inkjet Printing of Colloidal Drops for Printable Electronics Fabrication
4/12/2010 Nandan Nerurkar Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Integrating theoretical and experimental methods for multi-scale tissue engineering of the annulus fibrosus of the intervertebral disc
4/16/2010 Spring Berman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Abstractions, Analysis Techniques, and Synthesis of Scalable Control Strategies for Robot Swarms

Fall 2009

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/10/2009 Andrew Jackson Senior Scientific Advisor, Corporate Strategic Research Laboratory, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company Automotive and industrial tribology challenges
9/17/2009 Petia Vlahovska Assistant Professor of Engineering, Dartmouth College Lipid membranes in electric fields
9/23/2009 Shaochen Chen Program Director for Nanomanufacturing, US National Science Foundation; Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, The University of Texas at Austin Nanomanufacturing for medicine and energy
10/1/2009 Robert Mauck Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pennsylvania Rational design of load bearing tissues
10/8/2009 Adrian J. Lew Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University Discontinuous Galerkin methods in solid mechanics
10/15/2009 Sean Sun Associate Professor, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Mechanics of actomyosin interaction and the role of substrate stiffness on actin network dynamics
10/22/2009 Kenneth Breuer Professor, Division of Engineering, Brown University Two problems in micron-scale fluid mechanics
10/29/2009 Daniel S. Gianola Skirkanich Assistant Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania Deformation mechanisms and size-dependent mechanical response at the nanoscale
11/5/2009 Joachim L. Grenestedt Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics, Lehigh University Lightness and speed:  The future of boats, airplanes and land vehicles
11/5/2009 Spring Berman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Abstractions, analysis techniques, and synthesis of scalable control strategies for robot swarms
11/12/2009 Kaushik Bhattacharya Professor of Mechanics and Materials Science, California Institute of Technology Polydomain liquid crystal elastomers
11/19/2009 Bradley Nelson Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich Micro and nano robotics
12/1/2009 James Hone Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and NSEC, Columbia University Nanomechanics of nano-carbon
12/3/2009 Qiao Lin Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University Microelectromechanical systems for biomolecular sensing and manipulation

Summer 2009

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
5/14/2009 Anuj Chaudhri Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dissipative particle dynamics for mesoscopic particle-based thermal-fluid simulations
7/8/2009 Mustafa-Ali Arat MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania Brushless DC motor position controller for modular robotics applications
8/6/2009 Kevin C. Galloway Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Developments toward passive variable compliance for dynamic legged robots
8/7/2009 Ethan Stump Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Control for localization and visibility maintenance of an independent agent using robotic teams
8/24/2009 Anuj Chaudhri Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dissipative particle dynamics for mesoscopic particle-based thermal-fluid simulations

Spring 2009

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/16/2009 Harish Bhaskaran Postdoctoral Fellow, IBM Zurich Enablers for probe-based nanoscale technologies
1/22/2009 Kathleen J. Stebe Chair, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Goodwin Professor of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania Oriented assembly of anisotropic particles by capillary interactions
1/29/2009 Huajian Gao Walter H. Annnenberg University Professor, Brown University Nanomechanics of biological systems: What can we learn from nature about the principles of hierarchical materials?
1/30/2009 Yucun Lou Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Guided assembly of nanostructures
2/5/2009 Neelesh A. Patankar Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University Fully resolved simulation of immersed bodies: Macro­ to micro­ scales
2/12/2009 George G. Adams College of Engineering Distinguished Professor, Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University Contact and adhesion in a microswitch: Ductile and brittle separation
2/19/2009 Zdenek P. Bazant McCormick Institute Professor, W.P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Materials Science, Northwestern University Size and risk: Scaling of quasibrittle structure strength and lifetime based on atomistic fracture mechanics
2/24/2009 Michael G. Schrlau Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Carbon-based nanoprobes for cell nanosurgery and biological applications
2/26/2009 Benjamin Yellen Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Department, Duke University Field directed assembly for nanomanufacturing and nanoscale device integration
3/3/2009 Jonathan A. Malen Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Berkeley Energy transport and conversion in organic-inorganic hybrid materials
3/5/2009 Jaydev P. Desai Director, Robotics, Automation, Manipulation, and Sensing (RAMS) Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park Image-guided surgical robotics: From macro-scale to meso-scale
3/6/2009 Haizhen Pan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Problems of orthotropic plastic constitutive models: Non-associated flow and evolution of anisotropy
3/26/2009 Kamil L. Ekinci Mechanical Engineering Department, Boston University; Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, NIST Progress towards a functional NEMS sensor: Understanding NEMS dissipation in fluids
4/2/2009 Kevin T. Turner Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison Interface mechanics of microtransfer printing and direct bonding processes
4/16/2009 Luis Dorfmann Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University Modeling soft multifunctional materials
4/23/2009 L. B. Freund Division of Engineering, Brown University Characterizing the resistance generated by a molecular bond as it is forcibly separated
4/30/2009 Arne J. Pearlstein Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Steady shapes, speeds, and internal circulation of small water drops falling through air

Fall 2008

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/18/2008 Howard Brenner Willard H. Dow Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bi-velocity hydrodynamics
9/24/2008 Santi Swaroop Adavani Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Numerical methods for inverse problems constrained by elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations on regular domains
9/25/2008 Michael D. Graham Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison Transport and collective dynamics in suspensions of swimming microorganisms
10/2/2008 Hui Zhao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Modeling electrokinetics with applications to micro and nano fluidic systems
10/9/2008 Andrea Prosperetti Charles A. Miller, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University; The Berkhoff Professor of Fluid Dynamics, Department of Applied Sciences and Burgerscentrum, University of Twente, The Netherlands Some flows with bubbles and particles
10/27/2008 Nathan Michael Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Planning and control for teams of robots in complex environments
10/30/2008 Howard H. Hu Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Simulations of particulate flows
11/13/2008 Roderic Lakes Department  of Engineering Physics, Engineering Mechanics Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison Extreme materials: creation of materials with negative or very large values of material properties
11/14/2008 David Saintillan Assistant Professor, Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dynamics, pattern formation and mixing in active particle suspensions
11/20/2008 Ting Zhu Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Nanomechanics of plasticity
12/4/2008 MinJun Kim Department of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, Drexel University Finding nano: Cellular mechanics & molecular dynamics
12/5/2008 J. Christian Gerdes Design Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University Lanekeeping assistance at the vehicle handling limits
12/11/2008 Mark R. VanLandingham U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Weapons & Materials Research Directorate – Materials Division, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland Experimental nanomechanics and micromechanics: Opportunities in polymer science

Summer 2008

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
6/12/2008 David Cappelleri Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Flexible automation for micro- and meso-scale manipulation tasks with applications to manufacturing and biotechnology
6/19/2008 Rahul Sampath Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Dendro: A parallel geometric multigrid method for finite element calculations on octree meshes with billions of unknowns
6/26/2008 Hui Zhao Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Modeling electrokinetics with applications to micro and nano fluidic systems
7/3/2008 Santi Swaroop Adavani Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Fast algorithms for inverse problems with elliptic and parabolic PDE constraints: applications to cardiac electrophysiology
7/10/2008 Haizhen Pan Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Plastic flow rules with microstructural evolution and effects on strain localization
7/17/2008 Alan Rosenwinkel Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Understanding stress at the atomic scale
7/24/2008 Richard M. Springman Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Mechano-chemical coupling in the adhesion of thin structures to surfaces with topography
7/28/2008 Andy Perrin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Explicit finite difference schemes for particulate flows
7/31/2008 Michael Park Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Configuration recognition, self-reassembly, and distributed fault tolerance studies with CKBot, a modular robotic system
8/1/2008 David Cappelleri Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Flexible automation for micro- and meso-scale manipulation tasks with applications to manufacturing and biotechnology
8/7/2008 Mark Arselault Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The manipulation and mechanical studies of nano filaments and nano motors
8/12/2008 M.A. Alves Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal Extensional rheometry on a chip
8/12/2008 Yucun Lou Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Guided assembly of nanostructures
8/14/2008 Nathan Michael Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Planning and control for teams of robots in complex environments
8/21/2008 Michael G. Schrlau Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Carbon-based nanoprobes and their applications to cell physiology
8/21/2008 Adam P. Hitchcock Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Chemical imaging at 30 nm spatial resolution in 2-d and 3-d with scanning transmission x-ray microscopy

Spring 2008

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/17/2008 Per-Gunnar J Martinsson Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado at Boulder Fast methods for solving partial differential equations
1/31/2008 Krishna Garikipati Mechanical Engineering and Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan A theoretical study of the thermodynamic driving forces and kinetics of focal adhesion dynamics
2/7/2008 Baskar Ganapathysubramanian PhD candidate, Materials Process Design and Control Laboratory, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University Flow through heterogeneous porous media: A stochastic variational multiscale framework
2/25/2008 Per-Olof Persson Instructor of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology High-order discontinuous galerkin methods for fluid and solid mechanics
2/28/2008 Amy Shen Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis Complex fluids under confinement and flow
3/4/2008 Katia Bertoldi Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Microstructures in solids: Their critical role in governing material mechanical behavior
3/6/2008 Patrick Le Tallec Professor of Computational Mechanics and Vice President for Academic Research, École Polytechnique From homogeneisation to domain decomposition in the numerical modeling of materials
3/7/2008 Kostas Danas Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Homogenization-based constitutive models for viscoplastic porous media with evolving microstructure
3/20/2008 Martin H. Müser Associate Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, Canada Simulations of extreme conditions: From tribology to optoelectronic materials
3/27/2008 James R. Rice Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University Thermo-hydro-mechanics of earthquake rupture
3/28/2008 Andy Perrin Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Explicit finite difference schemes for particulate flows
4/3/2008 Gareth H. McKinley Director, Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, M.I.T. Elasto-capillary thinning and the breakup of complex fluids (or why some things are stickier than others!)
4/9/2008 Tully Foote MSE Candidate, University of Pennsylvania 3D ladar-based sensing for autonomous ground vehicles
4/10/2008 William M. Gelbart Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles Making viruses and virus-like particles
4/17/2008 Mandayam A. Srinivasan Director, The Touch Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Haptics: Science, technology and applications
4/21/2008 Alberto Peisach President, Phoenix Capital, Ltd. Engineers as entrepreneurs
4/24/2008 Pradeep R. Guduru Division of Engineering, Brown University Mechanics of biologically inspired adhesion, friction and engineered surfaces
5/1/2008 Charbel Farhat Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University Recent advances in high-fidelity and reduced order modeling of a class of multidisciplinary flow problems: Towards near real-time computational mechanics
5/9/2008 William Paul King Kritzer Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Thermomechanical probes at the nanometer scale
5/27/2008 Shravan Veerapaneni Ph.D. Candidate, Penn High-order fast integral equation methods for PDEs with moving interfaces

Fall 2007

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
9/6/2007 Francois Willot Postdoctoral Researcher, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Strain localization and effective medium propertiesin 2D perfectly-plastic porous materials: the ‘dilute’ limit
9/20/2007 Kostas Danas Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Homogenization-based constitutive models for viscoplastic porous media with evolving microstructure
9/27/2007 Doyoung Byun Visiting Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania (Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea) Development of electrostatic field induced inkjet head: Microscale and nanoscale patterning
10/3/2007 Johsua W. Lampe Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Interfacial characteristics of a gas bubble immersed in a surfactant and protein lade fluid: Experimentation and modeling
10/4/2007 David G. Cahill Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois Extremes in heat conduction: Pushing the boundaries of the thermal conductivity of materials
10/8/2007 William Schultz Director, Fluid Dynamics Program, National Science Foundation; Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Michigan Viscoelastic effects in glass fiber spinning
10/25/2007 Dimos Poulikakos Professor and Director, Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies, Institute of Energy Technology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Thermofluidics with nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes: On their physics and related novel technologies
11/8/2007 Nikolaos Aravas Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Thessaly, GREECE Constitutive modeling and finite element methods for trip steels
11/15/2007 W. Gregory Sawyer Professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida Thermally activated friction
11/29/2007 Shravan Veerapaneni Ph.D. Candidate, Penn High-order fast integral equation methods for PDEs with moving interfaces
12/6/2007 Eliot Fried Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Washington University A conjectured hierarchy of length scales in a generalization of the Navier–Stokes-α equation for turbulent fluid flow
12/7/2007 N. Sukumar Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Davis Partition of unity finite elements for electronic-structure calculations in molecules and crystalline solids

Spring 2007

Date Speaker Institution Talk Title
1/18/2007 Jianmin Qu Professor, G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology An electrochemomechanical theory of point defects in ionic solids
1/25/2007 Chuan-Hua Chen Teledyne Scientific Company; Assistant Professor, Duke University Physicochemical hydrodynamics in micro and nano-systems
1/29/2007 John Hutchinson Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering, Harvard University Recent developments in thin film mechanics
2/8/2007 Jianping Fu PhD Candidate, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nanofluidic devices for rapid biomolecule analysis
2/15/2007 Paulo E. Arratia Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania Complex fluids in microfluidic systems
2/22/2007 Ongi Englander University of California, Berkeley Localized synthesis, assembly and integration of one-dimensional nanostructures
2/26/2007 Mark O. Robbins Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University Contact and friction: Connecting atomic interactions to macroscopic behavior
3/1/2007 Thomas Cubaud Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles Dynamics of viscous threads in microfluidics
3/15/2007 Pramod Sangi Reddy PhD Candidate, University of California, Berkeley Thermoelectric effects in metal-molecule junctions: Application to energy conversion
3/22/2007 Jennifer R. Lukes William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania Thermal transport at nanostructure interfaces
3/26/2007 Youssef Marzouk Sandia National Laboratories Uncertainty and Bayesian inference in inverse problems
4/5/2007 Igor Pivkin Division of Applied Mathematics, Brown University Multiscale modeling of biological flows
4/10/2007 Vikranth Racherla Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Non-associated plastic flow and effects on macroscopic failure mechanisms
4/16/2007 Ulrich Hetmaniuk Post-Doctoral Researcher, Sandia National Laboratories Eigenspace computations in linear structural dynamics
4/19/2007 Joshua Lampe Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Interfacial characteristics of a gas bubble immersed in a surfactant and protein laden fluid: Experimentation and modeling
5/3/2007 Ani (Mong-ying) Hsieh Ph.D. Candidate, Penn Towards the development of robotic swarms for real world applications
5/4/2007 Itzhak Green Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, Georgia Institute of Technology On the contact mechanics of rough surfaces
6/6/2007 Shamik Sen Ph.D. Candidate, Penn The interplay of cell tension, elasticity, and adhesion:  From the simple red cell membrane to differentiation and signaling muscle cells