News
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Dec 29
2020Mechanical Engineering assistant professor Yangying Zhu receives a National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award to pursue phase-change research. COVID-19 can be transmitted when an infected person talks, coughs, sneezes, or sings, expelling virus-containing respiratory droplets, which can reach the mouth, nose, or eyes of previously uninfected people. These... read more » -
Dec 1
2020Three projects with high-impact potential seeking to solve grand challenges of energy efficiency have been awarded seed funding from UC Santa Barbara’s Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE). The IEE is an interdisciplinary research institute committed to improving energy efficiency across three key themes: smart societal infrastructure, computing and... read more » -
Nov 20
2020Enoch Yeung receives Young Investigator Award to study biological networks that lead to more robust and adaptive AI. Bacteria are extremely energy-efficient organisms that thrive in the harshest of environments. At a moment’s notice, they solve complex problems in order to survive, adapting to changes in conditions and their surroundings. What if a computing... read more » -
May 30
2020Tyler Susko has received the Outstanding Mechanical Engineering Faculty Award for the fourth time in the past five years. Since joining the Mechanical Engineering Department at UCSB in March 2016, Susko has overseen the department’s capstone program, which focuses on the development of students into professionals by pairing them with industry or academic experts to create... read more » -
Apr 24
2020By Andrew Masuda Almost all living cells and tissues exert and experience physical forces that influence their biological function. Understanding how those properties, such as stiffness, affect and control cells and tissues is the driving force behind mechanobiology, a burgeoning field that incorporates biology, engineering, and physics. Mechanobiology seeks to determine... read more » -
Apr 24
2020by James Badham If you want to understand why coffee spills more frequently than beer (hint: it has to do with the physics of foam), ask Alban Sauret, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. He is also a good person to consult on more serious matters involving fluid dynamics and soft matter, for instance, if, as part of an... read more » -
Apr 9
2020The Department is excited to announce that our graduate student Charlie Xiao has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! Charlie’s work falls at the interface of thermodynamics and robotics. Specifically, his NSF GRFP fellowship will focus on harvesting energy from temperature fluctuations using vaporization for robotic applications. His... read more » -
Jan 30
2020by Andrew Masuda Picture emergency crews arriving on scene of a collapsed building. Rather than sending in a canine unit to search for survivors only from the surface, they place a small cylinder near the debris pile and flip a switch. A tube of soft material, folded inside itself, similar to an inside-out sock, extends deep into the pile of rubble, navigating tight... read more » -
Sep 11
2019It’s summertime at the Dead Sea, and for locals and visitors alike enjoying the large saltwater lake shared by Israel, Jordan and Palestine, that means sun, sand and … snow? “It’s a bit counterintuitive,” said Raphael Ouillon, a Ph.D. student in the lab of UC SantaBarbara mechanical engineering professor Eckart Meiburg. However, it is the confluence of uniqueconditions... read more » -
Jun 25
2019There was no shortage of good ideas at the College of Engineering’s 2019 CE Capstone event and Engineering Design Expo (EDx). The annual undergrad engineering showcase — which took place Friday, June 7 — was the culmination of year-long special projects undertaken by senior year students, often in collaboration with industry partners or campus research labs. Drone... read more » -
Jun 21
2019It is likely that in the not-distant future wounds will heal faster with the help of an electrical pulse that promotes rapid cell growth. The same type of pulse may be used for more efficient and effective delivery of drugs to fight disease. Such treatments rely on a process known as “electroporation,” in which an electrical field is applied to cells to increase the... read more » -
Jun 11
2019Top row, left to right, Dana Yuen, Kyle Douglas, Thomas Fork; bottom row, left to right, Sayali Kakade, Dorian Bruch, Danny Hyun-Bum Cho, all among College of Engineering's outstanding graduates for 2019 Outstanding Seniors Each year, the college... read more » -
May 23
2019The D'Vonte Johnson Rally Rig is a device that will allow the client, D’vonte Johnson, to film from his wheelchair, despite having cerebral palsy. The frame is built from extruded aluminum, and customized to fit his wheelchair. The camera is attached to a gimbal for stabilization and active pan and tilt control, and the gimbal is attached to a linear actuator which is... read more » -
Apr 24
2019In recognition of his exemplary research and outstanding service to the community, UC Santa Barbara Professor Francesco Bullo has joined the 2019 class of fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). “It’s a great honor to be elected fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics,” he said. “It’s a great recognition by my peers of... read more » -
Apr 10
2019Nicholas Naclerio, working under the supervision of Professor Elliot Hawkes, has been awarded both the 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship, and has accepted the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship. His research focuses on the mechanical design of soft robots, using flexible and compliant components to overcome the... read more » -
Apr 2
2019To solve some of the world’s top energy needs, Bolin Liao is working at the front line of efforts to better understand the behaviors and interactions of the most fundamental energy carriers in materials, such as electrons, phonons and photons. “By looking at particles on the atomic level in the smallest time and length scales, we can determine how particles collide,... read more » -
Mar 27
2019When you think of robots, it’s likely the image that pops into your head is one of a rigid, perhaps humanoid metallic machine with electro-mechanical actuators and calculated movements. Which is all the more reason why, when UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering assistant professor Elliot Hawkes’ pliable, pneumatic-powered soft robot came along, it was considered so... read more » -
Mar 26
2019For his “tremendous contributions to our understanding of the mechanics of tissue and organ formation,” the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) has honored Campàs with the 2019 Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award. According to SDB, “his work has provided seminal insights about the physical mechanisms underlying tissue morphogenesis and will allow developmental... read more » -
Feb 14
2019The Mechanical Engineering Department is pleased to announce a new professorship, the Mehrabian Interdisciplinary Endowed Chair. This Chaired Professorship was established by Robert and Victoria Mehrabian, longtime friends and benefactors of the UCSB College of Engineering, to support the scholarly activities of a faculty member jointly appointed between the Materials... read more » -
Nov 2
2018UCSB’s experiment, from the Luzzatto-Fegiz Laboratory, has been included in the first 8k video filmed in space, which showcases the broad range of research aboard the ISS. The experiment appears around the 1:30 mark. Below you can find a video and the full article from NASA or check out the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/8k-science. Experience High-Res Science... read more » -
Oct 8
2018You’ve probably seen them, perhaps on long roadtrips: wind turbines with enormous, hypnotic rolling blades, harnessing the clean power of wind for conversion into electric energy. What you may not know is that for the explosion in the number of wind turbines in use as we embrace cleaner sources of energy, these wind farms are quite possibly not as productive as they could... read more » -
Oct 4
2018The 5th annual Southern California Micro and Nanofluidics Symposium was held on Friday, August 24th, 2018 at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. This year’s symposium, generously sponsored by Amgen and UCLA California NanoSystems Institute, brought together students and faculty from UC campuses to share research ideas and progress, seek opportunities for collaboration, and... read more » -
Sep 6
2018Zebrafish embryonic tissue showing cell borders (cyan: membranes) and a magnetic droplet used to probe the tissue mechanics (yellow: magnetic droplet). Ever wondered how groups of cells managed to build your tissues and organs while you were just an embryo? Using state-of-the-art techniques he... read more » -
Jul 31
2018Below are a few videos describing the science on this mission, including UCSB’s experiment on cohesive sediment. NASA TV, What’s on board briefing : ISS National Lab SpaceX CRS-15 Research Spotlight on UCSB’s experiment:
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