UC Davis EcoCAR reached new milestones at this year's challenge, earning top awards for energy efficiency and design. From high-speed tests to teamwork under pressure, communications manager Riddhi Puranik shares how the team proved they're ready to accelerate into Year 4.
From department building to ceramics breakthroughs, Distinguished Professor Emeritus Subhash Risbud reflects on his decades-long UC Davis legacy in a newly released interview for the Video Records Project.
Spaceflight research and reporting have launched fourth-year aerospace science and engineering undergraduate Toby Li to different opportunities to fulfill his mission of becoming an astronaut.
The Make Box, a STEM education startup founded by electrical engineering major Kavya Khare, won the Education and Educational Tools sector award and a $5,000 residency award at the 25th annual Big Bang! Business Competition.
UC Davis engineering senior Rui Ming Yu is honored for his perseverance, purpose and impact. From mentoring in STEM to chasing his engineering dream, his journeys show how curiosity and courage can help shape California's future.
Inspired by a tough structures class and hands-on research, mechanical and aerospace engineering senior Michael Taylor is heading to Stanford for graduate school. He credits UC Davis with showing him the value in every challenge and every course.
Five UC Davis students are among the finalists in the NASA-sponsored 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition. Their project? RoboBees, a swarm of autonomous drones that mimics natural pollination to help modernize capabilities in agriculture.
A UC Davis team is combining muscle bulge and electrical signals to make prosthetic hands smarter and more natural. With 97% gesture accuracy, their EMG-FMG fusion could be a game-changer for prosthetics, robotics and virtual reality control.
UC Davis engineering researcher Cristina Davis and UC Davis Health scientists used breath analysis to uncover how smoking, vaping and marijuana affect lung inflammation. Their findings reveal unique biological markers for each substance, offering a noninvasive tool to monitor airway health.
UC Davis researchers have developed low-cost, portable sensors to help California communities detect harmful air pollutants. Their goal is to provide real-time data on toxic metals, empowering residents and regulators to identify pollution sources and push for cleaner air.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has elected Raissa M. D’Souza, associate dean of research for the College of Engineering at UC Davis, to its 2024 class of fellows for her distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.
A UC Davis student team has advanced to Phase 2 of the CITRIS Aviation Prize, developing air operations simulation software for sustainable intercampus travel.
Mohsen Habibi has developed a groundbreaking 3D printing technique that uses holographic soundwaves to create structures in seconds from behind a physical barrier. This cutting-edge technique could revolutionize bioprinting, bringing science fiction closer to reality.
UC Davis engineering students take their thermodynamics class to the perfect setting — Iceland. Through field trips to geothermal plants, waterfalls and even an aluminum smelting facility, they see firsthand how engineering harnesses energy while exploring one of the most stunning landscapes on Earth.
by Jessica Heath | Engineering Progress Magazine 2024-25
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar need a storage system capable of charging and discharging to relieve the power grid. Instead of building new infrastructure, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering imagines a system built from half-used EV batteries.
At UC Davis, undergraduate student Amelia Lipcsei tackles real-world challenges through hands-on research with aerogels. With a vision for improving public transportation, she hopes to build a future where engineering meets sustainability.
From ignition to spread, Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez is using mechanical engineering to explore the science behind wildfire behavior, helping improve wildfire prediction, management and communication, especially in multilingual communities. Now at UC Davis, she’s building collaborations and inspiring the next generation of engineers.
Urban air mobility, AI-driven aerospace design and what’s next in space exploration took center stage at the second annual Northern California Aerospace Symposium, which brought researchers, students and industry leaders to UC Davis to advance aerospace research and collaboration.
At the UC Davis College of Engineering, the concept of "engineering for all" is more than a slogan — it is a call to action, exemplified by programs like Cheng’s Center for Integrated Computing and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education.
After seeing the gaps in robotics in the automotive industry, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Iman Soltani is teaching robots to adjust their sight line using active vision and machine learning, hoping to push robotics one step closer to widespread adoption.
The University of California has awarded nearly $6 million in state funding to eight research teams co-led by a UC researcher and a state firefighter to find out why cancer rates are so high among their ranks and help design possible solutions.
This fall, UC Davis broke ground on a first-of-its-kind bird flight research center, which will allow students and researchers in the College of Engineering and School of Veterinary Medicine to study how birds fly to advance scientific understanding and aerial system design.
From capturing the cosmos through astrophotography to being boots on the ground as a NASA intern, aerospace and mechanical engineering undergraduate student Aidan Guerra is driven by exploring humanity's connection to space.
Erik Contreras, a UC Davis mechanical engineering graduate student, paused their degree to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Design. In this Q&A, Contreras discusses their interdisciplinary journey, creative hacking and their work on autonomous vehicles.
Professor Stephen Robinson’s childhood obsession with flying objects shaped a career that led him to becoming one himself as a NASA astronaut. On this week’s Face to Face hosted by Chancellor Gary S. May, hear Robinson detail lessons from his 37-year tenure at NASA.
From fire-detecting drone swarms to optimally efficient human-autonomy collaboration, the UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and a principal investigator at CITRIS uses complex technological systems to address complex challenges.
From electrifying off-road vehicles to finding a pathway to advanced decision-making in autonomous vehicles, the assistant professor is working on some serious vehicular upgrades starting with the foundation: control systems.
A visionary proposal for developing a pathway to 3D printing inside the human body using soundwaves took top prize at this year's Society of Manufacturing Engineers NSF Blue Sky Competition.
Gutta Prudhvi Reddy, an alum of the UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering master’s program, earned the IEEE Intersociety Conference on Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, or ITherm, 2024 Best Overall Poster Award for his research titled “Assessment of Bubble Pump Model for Fluid Directional Motion for Asymmetric Heated Ratchets.”
An accessible mosquito repellant device and an updated military aircraft earn the 2024 Sandia Engineering Design Award during the UC Davis College of Engineering Design Showcase.
A team of UC Davis undergraduate students took home $6,000 in awards from the CITRIS Aviation Prize for their project SMART UC Davis, which proposes using electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft as air taxis between UC campuses.
With recent $1.98 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, an interdisciplinary team of researchers aims to decarbonize the industrial sector by efficiently extracting ultra-low-grade waste heat from gas streams and using it for various applications in the food and beverage industry.
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Jonathon Schofield has been recognized with a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development, or NSF CAREER, Award for his research on engineering effective prosthetics for children born without fully formed limbs.
From playing with building blocks as a toddler to being a first-generation college student to working on a deep space habitat in the HRVIP Lab at UC Davis, Angel Daniel Rodas Garcia looks back on his engineering journey.
Aerospace science and engineering graduating senior Lovleen Kaur shoots for the stars, armed with a deep-rooted passion for spaceflight, as well as inspiration from expert professors and engineering skills she acquired as a UC Davis undergraduate.
After spending the year designing and assembling their vehicle, Formula Racing at the University of California, Davis, gets ready for the annual competition. For the first time in years, they believe they have a shot at victory.
Last month, a team of undergraduate engineering students from the University of California, Davis, pitched at the NASA Minority University Research and Education Project Innovation and Tech Transfer Idea Competition, or MITTIC. The team took second place and a prize of $10,000.
Robots. Laundry. Emergency care. At the University of California, Davis, Center for Spaceflight Research, these topics and more are investigated as they relate to human spaceflight. The multidisciplinary research center is poised to become the preeminent resource for human spaceflight engineering research in the U.S.
Mechanical engineering student Rowan Glenn has been recognized for their research with the AIAA Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award. They share how getting involved in research as an undergraduate has shaped their engineering experiences.
Graduate student Marc Corfmat uses his engineering skills and design ingenuity to bring his LEGO creation, a "working" vintage Polaroid camera, to store shelves.
The fourth-year aerospace engineering major believes there are important connections between the principles of engineering and the technology that underpins arts and crafts.
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, the University of California, Davis, College of Engineering recognizes women in engineering, their journey to and in the field, and how they promote a diverse, equitable and inclusive world.
Meet some remarkable women in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and learn how they inspire inclusion in engineering.
Three UC Davis graduates form their own company to produce 3D Organic Polymer Silk, a surgical glue modeled after spider silk to be used primarily in bone fracture surgeries.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering student Shreya Chandra, shoots for the moon and beyond by becoming the first UC Davis recipient of the prestigious award for students with a passion for space exploration.
The U.S. Department of Energy, or DOE, has selected a University of California, Davis, collaboration to receive $1.98 million in funding as one of 49 projects aimed at decarbonizing the industrial sector and moving the nation closer to a net-zero economy.
Kellen Ochi '22 cites his master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from UC Davis as the reason he now gets to shoot rockets into space as an engineer at The Aerospace Corporation, and how an early interest in planes, trains and automobiles fueled his passion for engineering.
During NASA internships, three graduates of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at UC Davis contributed their knowledge and skills to the development of a new tool that quantifies battery failure and won the organization's 2023 Commercial Invention of the Year award.
A team of researchers at the University of California, Davis, is currently working to divert textile waste from landfills and turn it into composite mycelium materials, or CMMs, for use in architecture and the construction industry.
The first-ever UC Davis branch of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space kicks off its first year by submitting innovations like an inflatable emergency habitat and fuel recovery technology to NASA challenges.
UC Davis' first wind tunnel was built in 1975 in Bainer Hall by then-new faculty member Bruce with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Today, assistant professors Camli Badrya and Christina Harvey are taking the wind tunnels to the next level.
Field hockey and aerospace engineering wouldn't seem to go hand in hand, but Shannon Lackey has managed her love for both interests seamlessly. While she finishes up her master's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering, she's also playing field hockey on UC Davis' Division I team.
Christina Harvey, a University of California, Davis, researcher studying how bird flight can be used to improve aircraft design, has been awarded a 2023 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
by Samuel A Chiu, UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies
During National Drive Electric Week, the University of California, Davis, today (Sept. 27) announced that it has begun to build a Plug-in Electric Vehicles Archive. It will be housed at the UC Davis Library’s Archives and Special Collections with support from the UC Davis Electric Vehicle Research Center.
At first glance, Orobanche ramosa looks like an interesting blossoming plant, one that could add a unique flair to flower arrangements. But it’s a parasitic weed that attaches to roots, sucks out nutrients and is threatening California’s lucrative $1.5 billion processing tomato industry.
A team of UC Davis students looked beyond convention and imagined the future to conceptualize a hybrid-electric turboprop aircraft, earning them third place in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ national design competition.
Non-invasive implant surgery? Fixing a space shuttle from the outside in? Mohsen Habibi, a recent addition to mechanical and aerospace engineering, is on the cusp of making these a reality with his breakthrough discovery — printing with soundwaves.
In a paper published last week by Physical Review Letters, Jean-Pierre Delplanque, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the dean of graduate studies at the University of California, Davis, and a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Sandia National Laboratories, have developed a scaling law to analyze the kinetics of high-pressure, rapid solidification of metastable liquids observed in national laboratory and academic experiments over the past few decades.
Nicholas Bachus, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was awarded Outstanding Presentation in the Residual Stress Technical Division from the Society for Experimental Mechanics, or SEM, Annual Conference and Exposition, for his research paper on the Cold Expansion process as it relates to residual stress in materials.
Richard Neptune's ’91, M.S. ’93, Ph.D. ’96 contributions to the field of engineering and his mentorship of future engineers have led to him receiving a 2023 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal, or DEAM.
Terry Lowe '78 credits his UC Davis education with shaping his life. His thoughtful approach to mentorship and pioneering achievements in materials science and engineering led him to receive a 2023 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal.
Typically, the primary indicator of a burgeoning wildfire in California is a plume of hazy, gray smoke wafting through the air, seen by satellites or cameras. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, is alerted, and mitigation and containment efforts ensue.
The Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering seeks candidates for a tenure-track Assistant Professor faculty position with expertise in research related to Combustion in Urban and Wildland Fires, e.g., fire prevention, fire extinguishment, material flammability, fire propagation, pollutant formation and transport, and modeling of phenomena such as fire whirls and effects of turbulence on fires.
Robert Caligiuri '73, who has been named a 2023 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal winner, would not be where he is today without the late Distinguished Professor of the University of California, Davis, Department of Materials Science and Engineering Amiya Mukherjee.
With the recent uptick in private spaceflight companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic launching commercial flights into suborbital space, and NASA's ambitious Artemis program that aims to land people on the Moon in 2024 as a first step toward voyages to Mars, new assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Rich Whittle believes we are on the cusp of a new era of human spaceflight.
Ali J. Gangeh is pioneering UC Davis to the stars by leading the team building the university’s first liquid rocket engine. Gangeh is a sophomore undergraduate student studying mechanical engineering. Arriving at Davis, Gangeh expressed an interest in a variety of campus clubs but couldn’t find the perfect fit for his passions.
Since 2010, the University of California, Davis, Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education, or C-STEM, has aimed to transform K-12 math, computer science and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education through integrated learning.
As Duha Bader, chair of the University of California, Davis, chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or AIAA, weaved her way through the roughly 160 attendees of her first-ever AIAA Student Region VI Conference, she smiled proudly.
Initial results of a unique, multi-disciplinary public scholarship partnership between UC Davis researchers and Shriners Children's Northern California to create better prosthetic options for children are "unexpected and amazing."
The Farm Robotics Challenge is a national competition for students to create automated solutions to issues farmers face during production. One UC Davis team took the top prize.
Seongkyu Lee, associate professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was recently awarded a grant-funded joint research project by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, as part of the lab’s Academic Collaboration Team, or ACT, Awards.
It is the year 2035. In a world facing climate catastrophe, the human enterprise is powered by fields of wind farms, with turbine blades made from fast-growing grasses and the roots of a million-year-old fungus.
University of California, Davis, College of Engineering students were big winners at the 23rd annual Big Bang! Business Competition on May 23, taking home $64,000 in prizes with their innovations in food and agriculture, education, energy and sustainability, health and social enterprise.
Fertilized chicken eggs can be sexed by “sniffing” volatile chemicals emitted through the shell, according to new work by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Sensit Ventures Inc., a startup company in Davis. The work is published May 22 in PLOS ONE.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduate student Angel Fernando Meza Terriquez's fascination with astronomy and the study of space began at an early age but he encountered unique challenges during his time at UC Davis. With the support and resources given at AvenueE, Terriquez was able to overcome those to pursue his passion.
Aaron Romero '23 is a fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduate student who found the College of Engineering’s diverse and growth-encouraging environment to be an eye-opening experience.
Mechanical & Aersospace Engineering graduate student Peyton Young has been admitted into the National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship Program, or GRFP.
Tichada Tantasirikorn provides a shining example of a successful balance between school and hobbies. The third-year mechanical engineering student loves her rigorous academic career but has not had to sacrifice any of her pastimes in order to succeed.
OneLoop, a student design team at UC Davis, is currently manufacturing and rigorously testing subcomponents for a hyperloop pod that might revolutionize transportation by providing a faster and cleaner mode of travel.
Student mentors from SOAR visit classrooms in-person once a month, host virtual events, coordinate field trips to the museum, and serve as role models for students throughout the academic year. They also partner with teachers from COA to reinforce their current curriculum and engage students with activities that encourage scientific problem-solving and exploration.
Third-year undergraduate Allison Riley wasn’t always sure she’d be able to find an environmental-based job as a mechanical engineering major but her work with Facilities Management changed her outlook.
Behind every student at UC Davis is an untold story of personal growth—and for many, struggle. This is where donors make the difference by funding scholarships and other student success programs offered through the Division of Student Affairs.
Second-year mechanical and aerospace engineering master's student Anna Rita Moukarzel’s love for the world of neuroengineering is rooted in her background in robotics and the performing arts.
Moukarzel graduated from UC Davis in 2020 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering with a minor in theater & dance.
A team of UC Davis students is one of six university teams that has been selected as finalists to advance to the next phase of NASA’s Formulate, Lift, Observe, And Testing; Data Recovery And Guided On-board Node (FLOATing DRAGON) Balloon Challenge. The UC Davis team, which is comprised of undergraduate students from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is called HERMES, or High-altitude Experimental Rogallo Mission to Escort Safely.
Before aircraft, birds ruled the skies and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor Christina Harvey thinks there’s still a lot to be learned from them. Harvey’s Biologically-Informed Research and Design (BIRD) Lab sits at the intersection of aerospace engineering and biology and looks to combine disciplines to make an impact in both fields.
“I have gained so much support from AvenueE, and I would not be in the academic and professional position that I am in today without them,” Arroyo Donjuan said. “AvenueE has facilitated my access to multiple resources such as tutoring, success coaching, counseling, guest speakers, internship, and, scholarship opportunities.”
Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California (UC) recently announced the 2022 CITRIS Seed Awards recipients. The eight selected proposals, submitted by multicampus teams from Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz, will receive up to $60,000 for their work, thanks in part to external philanthropic support.
Aircraft are a crucial part of a modern, connected world, but they take a heavy toll on the environment. Even short flights can release hundreds of kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere and create a massive amount of noise wherever they fly. Camli Badrya, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis, is looking to aerodynamics to help make all types of flying more efficient, sustainable and environmentally friendly.
New technologies with ambitious approaches are being developed to screen for SARS-CoV-2, including breath tests. In fact, the US FDA approved the first breath test for COVID-19 under emergency use authorization (EUA) in April 2022.
After nearly six years and the contributions of more than 300 undergraduate students in the Space and Satellite Systems (SSS) Club at UC Davis, the university’s first student-built satellite will be going to space for proof-of-concept experiments as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Xinfan Lin was recently elected a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Senior membership is the highest grade that IEEE candidates can apply for. Achieving this honor requires ten years as an engineer, scientist, educator or originator in IEEE-designated fields with five years of significant performance.
Unfold, a UC Davis podcast, interviews Assistant Professor Jonathon Schofield and his collaborators to look at how the combination of surgery and machine learning is making life easier for amputees.
On September 2, 40 Black/African American middle and high school students and 10 staff from across Northern California visited UC Davis for Ujima Day—the culmination of the first year of the Ujima Girls in Robotics Leadership (GIRL) Project.
The path from passionate second-grader to James Webb Telescope engineer wasn’t an easy one for Sarahi Granados '21, especially as a first-generation Latina woman in engineering, but she’s incredibly grateful for the education, resources and connections at UC Davis that helped her get there.
Ben Shaw has been named the next Warren and Leta Giedt Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), effective October 1.
A new study from Assistant Professor Christina Harvey uses modeling and aerodynamics to describe how gulls can change the shape of their wings to control their response to gusts or other disturbances. The lessons could one day apply to uncrewed aerial vehicles or other flying machines.
An interdisciplinary team at UC Davis led by Professor Cristina Davis has been awarded a five-year, $5.9M grant from the National Institutes of Health for its work on innovative, non-intrusive diagnostic technology that aims to shorten the time it takes to diagnose a range of conditions from asthma to autism.
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is excited to highlight the recent success of its graduate students, who have received numerous awards and fellowships in recognition of their outstanding research in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), AI and human-computer interaction and heat transfer and solar-thermal energy, respectively.
More information about each award and its recipients are below:
For her doctoral research at the University of Michigan, Assistant Professor Christina Harvey and her colleagues found that most birds can morph their wings mid-flight to flip back and forth between flying smoothly like a passenger plane and flying acrobatically like a fighter jet.
Paul Erickson, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Davis, decided to try out fencing classes when his 10-year-old son expressed interest in the sport.
Even though his son found it to be only mildly interesting, fencing turned into an entertaining hobby for Erickson. The COVID-19 pandemic and other factors have hindered the amount of time that he can dedicate to fencing, but Erickson said he continues to have a great deal of respect for the sport.
Professor Vinod Narayanan and Assistant Professor Jonathon Schofield are among nine groups of UC Davis faculty members to receive a proof-of-concept grant this year, which helps scientists advance compelling research and innovations toward commercial applications.
With a new grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office, Narayanan and his team of collaborators will develop 3D-printed high-temperature, high-pressure receivers for solar-thermal energy that can be used to generate power or produce renewable industrial process heat.
On a wet and windy Sunday in Kansasville, Wisconsin this April, the First Nations Rocketry team at UC Davis launched and recovered a high-powered rocket and won the First Nations Launch High-Powered Rocket Competition moon challenge for the second year in a row.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee has been selected as a participant in Stanford University’s Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) Summer Program . The CTR Summer Program is a biennial research program that promotes the development and evaluation of new ideas in turbulence research.
As businesses send up more space missions, build their own space stations and even think about mining the moon, they will need to find and train new types of workers. Professor Stephen K. Robinson weighs in on the first episode of Tech News Briefing’s special series about the developing space economy.
Nine mechanical and aerospace engineering students from two research teams at UC Davis experienced zero gravity this December as they successfully tested two spaceflight technologies aboard two parabolic flights.
A few miles away from West Sacramento at UC Davis, a team of engineers, scientists and designers led by MAE Professor Valeria La Saponara is researching ways to apply mycelium to other human problems.
Over the next four years, UC Davis students will be designing the car of the future as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s EcoCAR Electric Vehicle (EV) Challenge. The competition challenges students to convert a Cadillac LYRIQ EV into an autonomous, next-generation battery-electric vehicle with vehicle-to-everything connectivity so it can interact with devices and the environment.
Paje is an inaugural recipient of the Vertical Flight Society scholarship, which supports promising engineering students interested in vertical flight at U.S.-recognized minority-serving institutions and sends them to the VFS annual forum. Paje is a first-generation college student and recently participated in an internship with electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft pioneer Wisk Aero, LLC.
With a new two-year grant, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee and his team have an opportunity to make a direct industry impact with their groundbreaking rotorcraft noise prediction tools. Lee’s group will apply their expertise in predicting rotorcraft noise to help industry leader Supernal identify noise sources in their aircraft designs and recommend strategies to reduce it.
The University of California, Davis, Office of Research is pleased to announce the appointment of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Cristina Davis as the new associate vice chancellor of Interdisciplinary Research and Strategic Initiatives (IRSI) effective April 11, 2022.
One new trick a dog can learn is how to smell COVID-19. But although studies show they can accurately detect coronavirus infections, training enough canines to recognize the scent will take a long time to scale up. Cristina Davis, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and associate dean of research for the UC Davis College of Engineering, has a faster tool set to enter the industry by the end of 2022: a breathalyzer-like device to detect COVID-19 and its severity in individuals.
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has awarded a team of researchers from the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis and Merced a two-year grant to simulate urban air mobility in the San Francisco area, and to draft regulations for this highly complex form of travel.
The Main Theatre at Wright Hall this month became the unlikely site of an experiment on technology that could eventually go into space.
Students in the Center for Spaceflight Research at UC Davis are working on technologies for a class of satellites that could inspect other spacecraft, such as the International Space Station, in collaboration with NASA. But up in space, the light is harshly bright with no atmosphere to attenuate the sunshine, and the technology must be configured for that environment.
Second-year Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering M.S. student Morgan Harris wants to be on the front lines of building a healthier community. Through her research on prosthetic devices and her dream of opening her own prosthetics and orthotics clinic, she wants to improve people’s lives while offering the same type of mentorship and outreach experiences that inspired her.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee and Professor Ben Shaw were elected associate fellows by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
With a new grant from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee and his collaborators at UC Berkeley and UC Merced will develop software that will help pave the way for air taxis, also known as advanced air mobility (AAM), to fly in California. AAM promises a new method of transportation through small electric aircraft that can fly passengers and cargo over short distances.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) associate professor Barbara Linke was named a 2022 UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow. The fellowship program, now in its 22nd year, recognizes and supports outstanding early-career faculty members at UC Davis. Chancellor’s Fellows receive a one-time award to support research, teaching and service and hold the title for five years.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) professor emeritus C.P. “Case” van Dam emphasizes the importance of going with the flow. He has pursued a lifelong interest in aviation while staying open to new opportunities that have helped him become a beloved teacher, mentor and leader and an impactful researcher in aerospace engineering and wind energy.
An interdisciplinary team of UC Davis scientists and plastic and reconstructive surgeons is collaborating to help improve quality of life for patients with upper limb amputations. They are utilizing a novel amputation surgical procedure and smart prosthetics to help patients better control their residual muscles, receive sensory feedback and reduce limb pain.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor David Horsley was recently elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Fellowship is the highest level of IEEE membership, and it recognizes a high level of extraordinary accomplishment in an IEEE field. Fellowship is considered a prestigious honor and important career achievement.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) assistant professor of teaching Zahra Sadeghizadeh makes a point to be an approachable, patient and inspiring teacher by connecting with her students.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) M.S. student Emily Jonsson won the Organizing Committee Best Poster award this summer at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC). Her winning poster, “Wafer Experiments to Assess Machining Distortion in Aluminum,” outlined her research on understanding and predicting stresses in aluminum with her advisors, Barbara Linke and Mike Hill.
The best piece of advice M.S. student Daniela Barajas Ivey received as she earned her B.S. in chemical engineering at UC Davis was, “chemical engineering can be found in all disciplines.” She took this to heart and after joining the aerospace industry, she returned to UC Davis as a master’s student to study environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for human habitats in deep space.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, neurobiology, physiology and behavior (NPB) associate professor Wilsaan Joiner and their team are working to develop better and more functional prosthetic devices for children.
Mycelium, the white filament-like root structure of mushrooms, might be an important building block of a more sustainable world. By growing mycelium with a biomass—anything from coffee grounds to leftover agricultural waste—researchers at UC Davis are creating sustainable structures that can be turned into everything from biodegradable plastics and circuit boards to filters that remove harmful antibiotic and pesticide residues from water.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Professor Mike Hill was named the recipient of the 2022 G.A. Brewer Award from the Society for Experimental Mechanics.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) associate professor Seongkyu Lee will join the renewed multi-institutional Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE) at Pennsylvania State University, a $7.5M project funded by the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and NASA. This is Lee’s second time participating in VLRCOE at UC Davis.
In less than a decade, your taxi might come from the sky instead of the street. Once a hallmark of science fiction, flying taxis have become the cutting edge of aerospace engineering thanks to researchers like UC Davis’ Seongkyu Lee, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE). Lee’s group is conducting groundbreaking aeroacoustics research to lay the computational groundwork to make air taxis a reality.
Fourth-year mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) Ph.D. student Sicheng (Kevin) Li is making a major impact on aerospace engineering and in the UC Davis community through his cutting-edge research on rotorcraft noise and his leadership and mentorship on campus.
UC Davis aerospace engineering students continued their dominance in NASA’s Aeronautics University Design Challenge, with two teams tied for first and another tied for second in the 2020-21 competition.
Professor Valeria La Saponara’s lab recently received the College of Engineering Lab Safety Award from UC Davis Safety Services, naming it the best lab in the College of Engineering in terms of safety. The awards recognize labs with a strong safety emphasis who are doing their part to think safe, act safe and be safe.
The UC Davis College of Engineering is pleased to announce that mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and chair Cristina Davis has been appointed to serve as associate dean for research effective October 1.
Kat Gallardo ’18, known as katgrüvs (“cat grooves”), gained more than just a mechanical engineering degree at UC Davis. She said her time in Davis was where she spent the best and most creative years of her life, inspiring her to write music about her experiences in the university and city.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and chair Cristina Davis’ research was recently featured in the New York Times article, “A Covid Test as Easy as Breathing.” The article featured her lab’s groundbreaking work developing portable breathalyzer-like devices that rapidly diagnose COVID-19 and tell doctors how severe the case is going to be.
With a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education (C-STEM) will establish a new initiative to introduce Black/African American girls to engineering and robotics and provide them with resources to be leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in their schools, communities and careers.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) associate professor Seongkyu Lee has been named one of this year’s recipients of the UC Davis Graduate Program Advising and Mentorship Award. Recipients are nominated by their graduate programs in recognition of service to the program, commitment to advising and mentoring and the positive impact they have on their students and colleagues.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) Ph.D. students Kevin Li and Jared Sagaga were awarded Vertical Flight Foundation (VFF) Fellowships in recognition of their experience, academics and research motivation. Every year, the fellowship recognizes and supports top M.S. and Ph.D. students around the world who are working on rotorcraft and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft technology.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) professor Harry Cheng received a UC Davis Chancellor’s Award for Diversity and Community. The annual awards highlight and uplift UC Davis students, faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, community members and departments who have made significant contributions to fostering “an environment that fosters a sense of inclusiveness and community for all.”
Professor Emeritus Maury L. Hull has been named the 2021 recipient of the Robert M. Nerem Education and Mentorship Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Seongkyu Lee is part of a new three-year, $5.8 million multi-institution project funded by NASA to improve the rapid development of urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles, also known as air taxis.
Through the new UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine and projects funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) faculty members Sanjay Joshi, Jonathon Schofield and Steve Robinson are pushing the boundaries of the developing field of neuroengineering and finding new ways for humans and machines to work together.
When NASA's Perseverence rover approached Mars on February 18, 2021, UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) alumna Jessica Samuels ’99 and Sara Langberg ’16 watched particularly closely to see their hard work pay off. Perseverance, the largest and most advanced Mars rover to date, will explore the existence of water, launch history’s first extraterrestrial helicopter and serve as the first leg of a mission to collect Martian rock and soil samples and bring them to Earth.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering assistant professor Jonathon Schofield was named this year’s recipient of the UC Davis Award for Innovation and Creative Vision. The award, funded by the generosity and support of Susie and Riley Bechtel ’74, recognizes and supports the outstanding research advances of early-career faculty members.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) professor Steve Robinson, assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, and Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior (NPB) associate professor Wilsaan Joiner are teaming up in a new four-year, $1.3 million NASA-funded project to study different visual and haptic strategies to help astronauts more safely and precisely operate robotic arms in space.
UC Davis Give Day 2021, campus’ fifth annual fundraising event is this weekend, from Friday April 16 at 12 p.m. to Saturday April 17 at 5 p.m. and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) is looking for support.
Sara Langberg ’16 used the curiosity and passion for learning things she developed at UC Davis to help NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, part of the Perseverance mission, come to life.
Langberg is an aeromechanical engineer at AeroVironment, a global leader in unmanned aircraft systems with a long history of breakthrough innovation. Since joining the company in 2016, her team has been working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on the small robotic helicopter that will attempt the first powered flight on another planet.
The University of California, Davis and RePurpose Energy, a clean energy startup co-founded by professor Jae Wan Park, have executed a licensing agreement for an innovative system that repurposes batteries from electric cars to use as energy storage systems with various applications, like solar power.
The C-STEM Center continues to grow and many schools and districts nationwide are now adopting the curriculum. The center also continues to provide many free teaching resources so more schools can have access to the program.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering assistant professor Xinfan Lin has received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award. The CAREER Award recognizes young faculty members across the country who have the potential to be leaders in their fields. He is one of 500 researchers from across the country and one of eight College of Engineering faculty to receive the honor this year.
“Perseverance will get you anywhere” — and after a journey of seven months, 300 million miles and a nerve-racking seven minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed safely in Jezero Crater Feb. 18. Many scientists, engineers and facilities — especially at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena — contributed to the mission, and UC Davis played a crucial role as well.
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Ralph Aldredge has been a leader in the college for years in an effort to lift up student voices and ensure prospective and current students with disadvantaged backgrounds can find a pathway to excel at UC Davis.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) professor Cristina Davis’ group will lead one of the largest studies to-date on the health effects of e-cigarette use, or vaping. In the three-year, $1 million study funded by the UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), the team will collect samples from over 600 volunteers to understand how vaping affects the pulmonary system, especially in comparison to smoking cigarettes.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Committee of Past Presidents recently recognized the outstanding engineering achievements of mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Jean-Pierre Delplanque and promoted him to the grade of Fellow.
The National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) has honored Ralph C. Aldredge, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering and professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering, with the 2021 NSBE Golden Torch Award for Lifetime Achievement in Academia.
As the FDA approves COVID-19 vaccines for use, distribution to hospitals and vaccination sites will become the next challenge in fighting the pandemic. As part of their “Optimization-Based Control” (MAE 298) course, a group of mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) graduate students were inspired to help and developed efficient vaccine distribution plans for the Bay Area and Sacramento using three different types of delivery vehicles.
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) and the College of Engineering mourn the passing of their friend and colleague, Professor Emeritus Fidelis Eke. Eke is remembered as a brilliant researcher, gifted educator and a kind, gentle and welcoming person who leaves lasting impact on the MAE department and UC Davis.
“He was a great teacher, a gentle soul and one of the kindest people I have come across,” said Professor Francis Assadian. “This is truly a big loss.”
While drugs help patients mitigate the most extreme conditions of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or depression, they often don’t address the cognitive deficits many diseases cause, such as memory loss, low attention span and impaired decision-making.
With an increase in cognitive and neurological disorders such as dementia, stroke and Alzheimer’s, researchers worldwide are actively seeking pathways to help people restore neural function and improve their quality of life. The UC Davis College of Engineering announces the launch of the UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine (NE&M), an integrated, multi-disciplinary effort that seeks to repair, restore and augment human capacity to benefit society.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor David Horsley has been elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). NAI Fellowship highlights inventors in academia for creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made an impact on quality of life, economic development and societal welfare, as well as a “prolific spirit of innovation.”
Felipe Valdez received his master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) at UC Davis this past summer. Without skipping a beat, he’s off to his next journey as an aerospace engineer at the NASA Armstrong Research Center in Edwards, California.
As companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin launch a new era of commercial spaceflight, astronaut-turned-engineering-professor Stephen Robinson ’78 aims to make UC Davis a key player by establishing a new Center for Spaceflight Research this fall.
On September 9, Northern California residents woke up to a dark orange smoky sky that rained down ash and made it hard to breathe. Sadly, days like this are becoming our “new normal.” As climate change makes wildfires burn faster, hotter and more often, humans need to understand the effects of these disasters and how to live with them.
For mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) assistant professor Iman Soltani, automation is vital to the present and a key to the future. With experience automating everything from microscopes to assembly lines and vehicles and a desire to collaborate across campus, Soltani plans to help make UC Davis a leader in the field as the world becomes more automated.
Though automation is important, Soltani feels the field is largely misunderstood.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering and computer science professor Raissa D’Souza will bring her expertise in network science to one of the world’s most prominent peer-reviewed journals as a new member of Science magazine’s Board of Reviewing Editors.
Professor Steve Robinson has been named one of the inaugural recipients of the UC Davis Graduate Advising and Mentoring Award for his outstanding work in the mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) graduate program.
These new awards, administered by UC Davis Graduate Studies, honor outstanding excellence in advising and mentoring of graduate students. Winners are nominated by their graduate program to highlight a faculty member’s positive impact on both graduate students and colleagues.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) professors Ralph Aldredge and Vinod Narayanan are two of the newest American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fellows. Fellowship recognizes ASME members with over 10 years of experience and with significant achievements in engineering teaching, research and service in mechanical engineering or a related field.
As he approaches his 35th year on campus, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Mohamed Hafez continues to leave an indelible mark on the department and his students. He has taught and mentored undergraduate, graduate and high school students and postdoctoral scholars alike while introducing several courses and being a driving force behind aerospace engineering at UC Davis.
Engineering alumnus and Inneos CEO Brian Peters ‘88 is a successful leader, businessman and entrepreneur in the optics industry, but he wouldn’t lead with that. In his 25 years in business, Peters takes the most pride in leading companies with an inspired community of colleagues who have helped him carve out his place in Silicon Valley.
Fourth-year mechanical engineering major Midori Huapaya-Renbarger has made research a key part of her college experience. As a member of a lab that combines healthcare and robotics, she’s worked to help people using technology, while developing her technical skills and building a strong foundation for a career in industry.
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is excited to welcome Kelly Kissock, Shima Nazari and Iman Soltani to its faculty for the 2020-21 academic year. Together, they bring expertise in energy efficiency, control and automation to UC Davis and strengthen and diversify the department’s teaching and research. Kissock and Soltani start July 1 and Nazari starts November 1.
Caltrans and the UC Davis Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology (AHMCT) Research Center today released two reports highlighting ways to prevent rare but often deadly collisions involving wrong-way drivers.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Case van Dam and his team are developing new ways to generate lift in aircraft using microjets to blow air out at the trailing edge of an airfoil. With new funding from NASA Ames and interest from Boeing, the team, including recent Ph.D. graduate Seyedeh Sheida Hosseini, will prototype and refine their design and conduct wind tunnel tests at Texas A&M university to bring their technology closer to use in the field.
With the advent of autonomous vehicles, smartphones and drones, lithium-ion batteries have become the device of choice for powerful and long-lasting energy. However, to ensure that the batteries are safe and effective, researchers need to find out what’s happening on the inside to make sure they’re healthy.
With new seed grants from the UC Davis Office of Research’s COVID-19 Research Accelerator Funding Track (CRAFT), three teams of UC Davis engineers are applying their expertise toward the pandemic response to help people become safer, healthier and better-tested.
The UC Davis Energy and Efficiency Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Kelly Kissock as its new Faculty Director. Kissock’s faculty appointment is in the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, where he will serve as a professor. He will start his new positions in July. Kissock will also hold the Chevron Endowed Chair in Energy Efficiency.
Second-year mechanical and aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Leslie Simms has received a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship program recognizes and supports 2000 outstanding graduate students across the U.S. every year. The award covers three years of tuition and researcher salary.
The program, which was founded in 1951, is the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind. In almost 70 years, the fellowship has supported 42 future Nobel laureates and over 450 members of the National Academy of Sciences.
Anyone who has seen a small drone flying knows loud buzzing sound it makes as it flies. This sound—the result of air flowing around the vehicle, through the blades and between the rotors—is a barrier to wider acceptance of drones and a problem mechanical and aerospace engineering assistant professor Seongkyu Lee hopes to help solve.
Second-year mechanical and aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Leslie Allyn Simms was selected to attend the 70th annual Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting from June 27 – July 2, 2021 in Lindau, Germany.
From space to the streets of San Francisco, mechanical and aerospace engineering alumnus Matt Sorgenfrei is using his control systems engineering expertise to change the way machines interact with the world.
Second-year mechanical engineering major Ruby Zoom Houchens takes every opportunity in stride. From working in professor Stephen Robinson’s lab, to serving as a shop tech and photographer, to being involved with multiple campus organizations, she brings a unique and well-rounded approach to engineering that’s already made her a staple of the College of Engineering.
Imagine turning on your computer and moving the cursor without ever touching it.
Sanjay Joshi, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis, and his lab are working with people in the medical, engineering, and disability communities to improve the capabilities of machines to assist people with physical limitations.
The culmination of over 20 years of teaching and research, mechanical and aerospace engineering professor emeritus Wolfgang Kollmann’s new book lays out different mathematical approaches to analyzing and solving the problem of turbulent flows for graduate students in engineering and applied science. The book, Navier-Stokes Turbulence: Theory and Analysis, was published this December by Springer International Publishing.
A team of UC Davis researchers look to give humanity an extra hand—literally. A new, NSF-funded collaboration between the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) and Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior (NPB) plans to develop and test a robotic fifth limb to give humans extra capabilities in extreme environments.
The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) mourns the loss of professor emeritus Hector Baldis, who passed away on January 1. He is known for his distinguished research career in plasma physics, high-energy density science and inertial confinement fusion and his enthusiastic mentorship as a faculty member at UC Davis.
The 2020 Symposium on Integrated Computing and STEM Education is taking place on February 24, 2020 at the University of Redlands in Southern California. The C-STEM Conference is run each year by the UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education (C-STEM), a campus center led by mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Harry Cheng.
Urban air mobility (UAM), or the use of air taxis, is poised to be the next big thing in transportation. Companies are already promising fleets in traffic-congested cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas as early as 2023, and Morgan Stanley estimates that the UAM business will create a $1.5 trillion market in the coming decades.
The work of a four-member international team of scientists including UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineer Zhaodan Kong, a newly-published review paper in the Journal of Economic Entomology is one of the first of its kind to summarize scientific literature on the use of agricultural drones for pest management.
The UC Davis College of Engineering Class of 1969 was a dynamic class of tight-knit engineers and several of them have stayed in contact since graduating nearly 50 years ago.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and chair Cristina Davis was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Being named a fellow recognizes academic inventors with a “highly prolific spirit of innovation” who have created or facilitating inventions that have had a major impact on society, says the NAI website.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor and chair Cristina Davis was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She was cited for, “distinguished contributions to non-invasive chemical and biological sensing tools, algorithms, and applications for human and agriculture diagnostics and monitoring.”
AAAS fellows are recognized for outstanding achievements in advancing science through research, teaching, service, administration and/or science communication.
Third-year mechanical and aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Dane Sterbentz is a recipient of the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s Laboratory Residency Graduate Fellowship (DOE NNSA LRGF). Sterbentz, part of professor J.P. Delplanque’s research group, is one of just four doctoral students across the country to receive the fellowship.
Professor Mohamed Hafez’s latest book, Introduction to Computer Simulations for Integrated STEM College Education, was published by World Scientific Publishing Co. in October 2019.
The book, aimed at high school senior students and first-year undergraduate students, gives a background in basic physics and basic mathematics—including differential equations and numerical methods, among other areas—while showing the students how to use computers to solve problems in STEM fields.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Vinod Narayanan is co-PI on a new $2.4 million grant from The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Over the next three years, the team will work to develop a 3D-printed heat exchanger for high temperature and high pressure applications.
If space is the final frontier, UC Davis is taking giant leaps to reach it. With expertise in human-machine cooperation, control systems and materials under extreme conditions, the university aims to make itself a rising star in space engineering and play a crucial role in the next generation of space exploration.
A breakthrough by UC Davis mathematicians could help scientists get three or four times the performance from supercomputers used to model protein folding, turbulence and other complex atomic scale problems.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering professor Francis Assadian is a co-PI on a $7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study cooperative automated vehicles (CAVs) in rural and multimodal environments. Led by at Texas A&M University, the four-year project titled, “AVA: Automated Vehicles for All” involves collaborators at George Washington University, General Motors, NVIDIA and National Instruments.
Young people are adopting new nicotine products faster than they can be researched or regulated, though the health effects are still unknown. MAE distinguished Professor Tony Wexler looks to change this by studying smoke deposition in the lungs through a three-year grant from the UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP).
A test to detect opioid drugs in exhaled breath has been developed by engineers and physicians at the University of California, Davis. A breath test could be useful in caring for chronic pain patients as well as for checking for illegal drug use.
Professor Francis Assadian is working on two projects with Ford Motor Company to bring intelligent control systems design and artificial intelligence to enhance vehicle safety and performance and automating manufacturing.
Distinguished Professor Bahram Ravani and Professor Stephen Robinson received Outstanding Faculty Awards from the UC Davis College of Engineering for their outstanding work during the 2018-19 academic year. Ravani received the Outstanding Senior Faculty Research Award and Robinson received the Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award. These awards are the college's highest honors given to faculty.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Niels Grønbech-Jensen was re-appointed as faculty executive director for the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) program for another five-year term. Grønbech-Jensen is the first person to serve in the role, which was created in 2014.
Though electric cars are great for the environment, the batteries they use are not. Because recycling is extremely expensive, they end up thrown into storage at car dealerships or buried in landfills. As electric cars become an increasingly large part of the market, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Jae Wan Park and his lab have found an inexpensive and environmentally-friendly solution to this problem by giving these batteries a second life in electrical energy storage systems for renewable energy power grids.
Professor Stephen K. Robinson’s lab has received a grant from NASA to study the aerodynamics of flap-based steering system for small atmospheric entry vehicles moving at hypersonic speeds. The proposal, titled “Aerodynamic Flaps for Control of Hypersonic Atmospheric Entry Trajectories,” will receive $215,400 over two years.
Domestic cats, like many other mammals, use smelly secretions from anal sacs to mark territory and communicate with other animals. A new study from the University of California, Davis, shows that many odiferous compounds from a male cat are actually made not by the cat, but by a community of bacteria living in the anal sacs.
Hope is a powerful emotion –– it can get us through tough times, it can help us persevere trials and tribulations until we reach our goal. Third-year mechanical engineering student Martin Vega-Martinez ‘20 is the perfect embodiment of what hope, combined with hard work, looks like.
UC Davis aerospace engineering senior design teams finished first and third in NASA’s 2018-19 Aeronautics University Design Challenge. The designs are the culmination of two quarters of work through the senior design course, led by Professor Case van Dam.
Ph.D. student Peng Wei has been named the recipient of the 2019 N&M Sarigul-Klijn Flight Research/Space Engineering Award. The award is given every other year to top graduate students in the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering pursuing flight-related research.
Wei, a 3rd year Ph.D. student in Assistant Professor Zhaodan Kong’s lab, studies aerodynamic effects on multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), colloquially known as drones.
Humans and machines communicate using different languages, and like any language barrier, it can be reduced through mutual understanding and translation. New mechanical and aerospace engineering assistant professor Dr. Jonathon Schofield aims to break down this barrier by improving communication between humans and robotic rehabilitation technologies.
Destiny cannot be contained. After a decade in the College of Engineering, Destiny Garcia is now mere months away from earning her Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering. An energetic and warm young woman, she is finally taking a moment to reflect on her experiences at UC Davis.
When Dr. Ralph Aldredge begins his new position as the UC Davis College of Engineering’s Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in summer 2019, he will bring a long history of student advocacy to his latest role.
Professor Cristina Davis has been named chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, effective July 1, 2019. Davis has been at UC Davis since November 2005 and has served as vice chair for the past two years.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering and computer science professor Raissa D’Souza has been named lead editor of the American Physical Society’s new open access journal, Physical Review Research.
Making electric vehicles, autonomous fleets ubiquitous
Shail Trivedi is a third-year mechanical engineering student who hopes to work with mechatronics/robotic systems or mechanical design of devices. “I love to learn,” he says, “and I find myself curious to learn more about the types of roles mechanical engineers play in today’s world and where I can best find my fit.”
MAE and CS professor Raissa D’Souza was honored twice by the Network Science Society, being named a Fellow of the society and receiving the inaugural Euler Award for an outstanding research contribution that changed paradigms or assumptions in the field.
UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering startup, RePurpose Energy, won big at the 2019 Big Ideas contest, taking home first place in the Energy and Resources category and winning grand prize at the competition’s Pitch Day.
The UC Davis Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department congratulates Ph.D. student Henry (Zhongqi) Jia upon being named a 2019 Vertical Flight Society/Vertical Flight Foundation scholarship recipient.
A student team from the UC Davis Space and Satellite Systems Club was one of five university teams invited to present their plans for a Mars greenhouse at the NASA Langley Research Center.
The UC Davis Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department congratulates Dr. Cristina Davis upon being named a 2019 UC Davis Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award recipient.
A UC Davis Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department team has advanced to the top 20 groups of the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, making the team’s pod officially eligible to go through safety checks and, pending results, to race at the July 21 event.
In a new paper published March 8 in Science, a team led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the California Institute of Technology show how complicated and surprising behavior can emerge in a very simple experimental network.
As part of the UC Davis College of Engineering's recognition of 2019 National Engineers' Week, several engineering faculty, alumni and students shared their personal stories about how they became involved in engineering.
UC Davis MAE doctoral student Sarah O'Meara's ultimate goal is an assistive robot that a person can control by contracting a muscle or making a gesture.
The California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) is a four-week statewide program for the most talented high-school students in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Adam Davis graduated from UC Davis in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He is a Principal Engineer at Weston & Associates Mechanical Engineers, Inc., a full-service design engineering firm providing mechanical engineering services to architects and owners for projects throughout California.
As a UC Davis aerospace science and engineering major, you will learn core mechanical engineering concepts and applications, and practice computational analysis. You’ll also learn the fundamentals of design, propulsion and aerodynamics.
Professor Emeritus Ron Hess has received the de Florez Award for Flight Simulation from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for outstanding individual achievement in the application of flight simulation.
Narayanan’s project, “Additively-Manufactured Molten Salt-to-Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Heat Exchanger,” received $2.2 Million from the Department of Energy to create a high-pressure heat exchanger for concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) systems.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Barbara Linke was named "Outstanding Junior Faculty" by the UC Davis College of Engineering at the college's 2018 Celebration of Faculty Excellence event October 3.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Lecturer Jason Moore is a co-awardee for an inaugural $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to further the LibreTexts project.
Three UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering senior design teams received top honors in NASA’s 2017-18 Aeronautics University Design Challenge. One MAE team tied for first, another placed second and another tied for third. The fifteen undergraduates involved presented their designs at a symposium on September 20 at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and were treated to a private tour of the facilities and the Capitol building.
A UC Davis delegation led by Chancellor Gary S. May and including Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department Chair Stephen Robinson is in Mexico this week for talks with government, university and industry leaders.
The GIRL+ Camp is the first advanced expansion of the C-STEM GIRL Camp, a wildly successful free outreach program that introduces programming, robotics and leadership to middle-school girls, many from underserved schools or communities.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Bahram Ravani was honored with the Mechanism and Robotics Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' (ASME) Design Engineering Division.
Professor Emeritus and former Dean Bruce R. White, a pioneer in environmental wind engineering who saved the San Francisco Giants from a design disaster at AT&T Park, died April 25 after a brief illness.
TDK Corporation announced that it has reached an agreement with Professor David Hosley's Chirp Microsystems, Inc., a pioneer in high-performance ultrasonic sensing.
