MAE Seminar Schedule for Academic Year 2008-09
Unless otherwise noted, MAE seminars are held in
1062 Bainer Hall from 4:10 to 5:00 pm.
(Refreshments at 4:00 - 4:15 pm.)
| Thursday, October 9, 2008 |
available |
| Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Will Provancher, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah |
| Thursday, December 11, 2008
|
Peter McMurry, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota |
| Thursday, January 8, 2009 |
Richard A. Kiehl, Professor and Chair Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering UC Davis |
Thursday, February 12, 2009
|
Arunava Majumdar, Professor & Director, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
Thursday, March 12, 2009
|
Abe Lee, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Director, Micro/Nano Fluidics Fundamentals Focus Center, The Henry Samueli School of Engineering
|
| Thursday, April 9, 2009 | Oliver O'Reily, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley- 'Stories form Rotations: Luck, Fear, & Mystery' - Mathematical descriptions of finite rotations histories. |
| Thursday, May 14, 2009 | Assimina Pelegri, Ph.D Department
of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Rutgers University, NJ |
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Utah
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Peter McMurry
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Minnesota
New Experimental Approaches to Studying the Formation and Growth of Atmospheric Particles
Atmospheric observations made by our group and others during the past decade have shown that new particles are frequently formed by nucleation from the gas phase. The number of these new particles can significantly exceed the number of preexisting particles, and freshly nucleated particles typically grow to sizes of 10-100 nm during the course of a day. New particle formation often occurs over widespread regions in locations including urban areas, the continental boundary layer, the outflows of convective clouds, and coastal zones. Therefore, nucleation may be an important global source of cloud condensation nuclei, and may play an important role in regulating climate. This lecture will focus on new measurement methods that our team has developed to understand the physical and chemical processes responsible for the formation and growth of new atmospheric particles. In particular, we are trying to understand why nucleation and growth rates are so much higher than current models predict. This work has been done in collaboration with Drs. Fred Eisele and Jim Smith and their coworkers at NCAR. To study nucleation, we have developed a cluster chemical ionization mass spectrometer (Cluster CIMS) and new aerosol instrumentation for measurements down to ~1 nm. Together, these instruments enable, for the first time, measurements of the complete spectrum of sizes down to one molecule. To study growth, we have coupled aerosol measurements of growth rates with measurements of nanoparticle composition using the thermal ionization mass spectrometer (TDCIMS). The lecture will focus on what we are learning from this work.
Biographical Sketch
Peter H. McMurry is the Kenneth T. Whitby Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He completed his Ph.D. at Caltech in 1977 and has been at Minnesota since then. His research focuses on aerosol measurement and behavior with a primary focus on atmospheric aerosols, including research on new particle formation and in situ methods for accurately measuring physical and chemical properties of complex particles. He received the Fuchs Memorial Award (2006). His recent sabbatical (2007-08) was supported by a Guggenheim fellowship.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Richard A. Kiehl
Professor and Chair
Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering
UC Davis
Molecular and Biological Routes to Future Electronics
The use of molecules as devices and building blocks in electronic circuits has aroused much excitement because of the prospects for realizing molecular-level control of electrical characteristics (by chemical synthesis) and of physical layout (by directed self-assembly). Significant progress is being made in both the systematic study of the electrical behavior of molecular junctions and in the demonstration of molecular self-assembly of prototype nanocomponents. In this talk, I will discuss our study of the electrical behavior of molecular junctions based on nitro-substituted oligo(phenlyene-ethynylene) (OPE), a system in which negative differential resistance (NDR) has been reported by numerous groups. We find that NDR in these junctions is a dynamic effect, possibly related to charge storage rather than to resonant tunneling. I will also discuss our use of DNA as a programmable scaffolding for the self-assembly of inorganic nanocomponents. We have used DNA to demonstrate in situ assembly, hierarchical assembly, and sequence-encoded assembly of 5-nm Au nanoparticles into regular arrays with spacings as small as 10 nm. Finally, a new project exploiting DNA, protein, and peptide strategies to systematically study physics in metallic nanoparticle systems will be described.
BIOGRAPHY
Richard A. Kiehl received the B.S., M.S., and Ph. D. degrees from the School of Electrical Engineering , Purdue University . From 1974 to 1980 he was a member of technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he initiated studies on optical control of microwave semiconductor devices. In 1980 he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, as a member of technical staff. He was a leading contributor to the Bell Labs research on heterostructure electronics, particularly heterostructure field-effect transistors. In 1985 he joined IBM as research staff member at the T. J. Watson Research Center and focused his work on III-V and SiGe-based heterostructure CMOS circuitry. In 1993 he became assistant director of the Quantum Electron Device Laboratory at Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. in Atsugi , Japan , where he led research on nanoelectronics. He was acting professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University from 1996 to 1999 and professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota from 1999 to 2008. He is currently professor and chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California , Davis . He served as associate editor of IEEE Electron Device Letters and was co-editor of the book “High Speed Heterostructure Devices” of the Academic Press Semiconductor and Semimetals Series . Professor Kiehl is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society and a Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Arunava Majumdar
Professor & Director, Environmental Energy Technologies Division,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Abe Lee,
Professor
Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering,
Director, Micro/Nano Fluidics Fundamentals Focus Center,
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering
University of California, Irvine
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Oliver O'Reily,
Professor, Mechanical Engineering
UC Berkeley
STORIES FROM ROTATIONS: LUCK,
FEAR, AND MYSTERY
Mathematical descriptions of finite rotations have a long history dating
to the great work by Leonhard Euler in the mid 1750s. These descriptions
find applications in many areas ranging from navigation systems to
prosthetic orthopaedic devices and planetary motions. They are also the
source of many illuminating historical anecdotes. In this talk, we explore
several such stories some of which feature well-known mathematicans such
as Gauss and Hamilton, and illuminate them with some recently developed
toys such as the Hoberman sphere, the Dynabee and Euler's disk.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Assimina Pelegri, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Rutgers University, NJ