Each year, Department Head Tony Jacobi gathers the department together to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of MechSE’s junior faculty. This year’s celebration, on October 22, honored an impressive roster of recipients of young investigator grants and awards.
Alison Dunn: National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award for “Mechanics-Driven Energy Dissipation in Soft Matter Lubrication.”
Amy LaViers: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award (DARPA YFA) Director’s Award (extended funding for a third year) for “Choreography of Embodied, Platform-invariant Motion Primitives.”
Nenad Miljkovic: ASME/Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal for his highly innovative and impactful work in nanoscale phase change heat transfer; and ASME ICNMM Outstanding Early Career Award for exceptional contributions to current and future directions in his field.
Hae-Won Park: National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award for “Trajectory Planning for Highly Dynamic Legged Robots in Complex Environments.”
Sameh Tawfick: Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program award (AFOSR YIP) for “Additive Manufacturing of Polymorphic Hair Material Systems for Reconfiguration and Damage Restoration.”
Aimy Wissa: Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program award (AFOSR YIP) for “Spatially Distributed Passively Deployable Structures for Stall Mitigation.”
College of Engineering Dean Rashid Bashir was on hand to offer his congratulations. “This is great – that MechSE continues to highlight our faculty research accomplishments, especially our younger faculty. They are the future, and I think we need to celebrate the future.”
Photo, above: Dunn, Park, Miljkovic, Wissa, and Tawfick.