IN MOTION
MechE news and highlights @LehighU
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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
Dear friends and colleagues:
Welcome to In Motion, a new venue for our department to engage with our dynamic community of students, alumni, colleagues, and friends. We intend to use this semi-annual newsletter to help keep you up to date on exciting developments and news from across our Department at Lehigh University. If you have news to share, please let us know!
As I complete my first semester in the chair’s role, I’d like to congratulate our outgoing chair Gary Harlow, on thirteen very productive years of leadership at MEM. Our department has seen tremendous growth in that period. Some of his great accomplishments include a bold revision of our graduate program and the recruitment of strong new faculty who have enhanced our research and teaching. You will find some of their accomplishments in this newsletter.
There are many opportunities for you to support our educational and research mission directly. As the year draws to a close, I want to take this opportunity to ask that you consider making a donation of financial support to MEM. Funds would be used to enhance educational opportunities for students, allow research experience for undergraduates in sustainability, health-care, automation, and additive manufacturing, and further assist in our efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive department. Please feel free to contact us in the MEM Department to let us know how you are doing or share ideas you are passionate about. We would love to hear from you.
On behalf of all faculty and staff at MEM, I wish you and your family a very Happy Holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
Arindam Banerjee, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, MEM
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DEPARTMENT NEWS
MEM welcomes new chair, associate chair, and tenure-track faculty member
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This fall, we thanked outgoing Department Chair, professor D. Gary Harlow, for his service to the department and welcomed incoming Department Chair, professor Arindam Banerjee. Outgoing Associate Chair and professor of practice David Angstadt turned over the reigns of our undergraduate program to professor of practice Murat Ozturk.
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We also welcomed our fourth female faculty member, Ebru Demir, who comes to Lehigh from a postdoc at Santa Clara University, California. Her research activities lie at the interface of thermo/fluids, biomedical engineering, and robotics, with a focus on biomedical applications of artificial microswimmers. Demir joins current MEM women faculty Christina Haden, Natasha Vermaak, and Hannah Dailey.
Read more about all the 2021 Rossin College new faculty hires.
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FACULTY AND RESEARCH SPOTLIGHTS
MEM faculty win funding, lead innovative research programs
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Professor Arindam Banerjee is co-PI on a DOE center grant that will support research, development, testing and public engagement to advance marine renewable energy (MRE) technologies towards commercialization and the development of “powering the blue economy” (PBE) solutions. Read More
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Professor Alparslan Oztekin directs Lehigh University's Industrial Assessment Center, which received support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to assist small- and medium-sized manufacturers in reducing their carbon emissions and lowering energy costs, while training the next generation of energy-efficiency workers. Read More
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The 'owls' have it for associate professor Justin Jaworski, new Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Read More about his quest for mechanical quiet, drawing design insights from the near-silent flight of owls, and catch Jaworski's interview on YouTube.
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“I wanted to engage researchers, designers, and artists around the topic of the optimization of materials and structures, with additive manufacturing as a shared language,” says associate professor Natasha Vermaak, who recently wrote an article with fashion designer Julia Daviy and architect Virginia San Fratello. The paper opens a special issue of The Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, with Vermaak serving as Guest Editor. Read More
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Want more MEM faculty stories? Don't miss these videos and podcasts:
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SOARING TOGETHER
MEM celebrates 50 years of gender-inclusive undergraduate education
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Lehigh’s Soaring Together events are taking place across campus all year and commemorate our 50th year of gender-inclusive undergraduate education.
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MEM celebrated the contributions of our women and non-binary engineers and scholars with an event marking our history as one of the first departments on campus to welcome female students. Read More
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Assistant Professor Hannah Dailey opened up on the Rossin Connection podcast about what Soaring Together means for the future of diversity in MEM. “I want to help broaden perceptions around what mechanical engineering is,” she says, “so that more students from more diverse backgrounds can see it as a pathway where they can fit.” Read More
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DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION
Spotlights on students, alumni, and faculty
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Throughout the year, we have been taking time to celebrate the diverse backgrounds and rich cultural traditions of our MEM family. If you missed any of our interviews, check them out here:
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On the heels of a stint as a as a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MEM graduate alum Denis Aslangil '15G '19 PhD has joined the faculty of the University of Alabama as an assistant professor in its Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. His group explores multi-physics and multi-material effects on turbulence and turbulent mixing that are observed. Read More
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Attention MEM alumni: If you have news to share for a future issue of our newsletter, email us today!
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MEM doctoral candidate Ankit Roy (right), advised by associate professor Ganesh Balasubramanian (left) was selected for the Acta Student Award for his research on high-entropy alloys that was published in Scripta Materialia. The award recognizes research that demonstrates "exceptional value to the materials community." Read More
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Bailey's internship at Align Technology (makers of Invisalign clear orthodontic aligners) included work on computational models to predict how teeth move during treatment. Read More
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Tynes is an Integrated Business and Economics (IBE - mechanical engineering and economics) student, an admissions tour guide, a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, a 2021 recipient of the Bond Memorial Prize, and president of the Beekeeping Club . Read More
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Andrea Jones '23, Arts and Engineering major (Mechanical Engineering and Product Design) found a passion for mechanical things as a middle schooler when she repaired her own sewing machine. Read More
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We are always seeking new ways to connect with alumni and friends of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics at Lehigh. If you have news to share, or ideas for creative educational programs or research collaborations, we would love to hear from you.
As the year draws to a close, we ask that you consider giving to directly support our educational and research mission. We are currently fundraising for the following strategic initiatives: summer undergraduate research experiences, doctoral student fellowships, endowed faculty chairs, and more. Thank you in advance for your support!
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