Carnegie Mellon University | Winter 2022 BEYOND COURSEWORK LEARNING THROUGH INTERNSHIPS, OUTREACH, AND RESEARCH SIMULATING FLUID FLOW TO STUDY DISEASE ROCKET GIRL
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Lisa Kulick, Senior Manager of HannahCommunicationsDiorio-Toth, Megan Harris, Nikka Landau, Lisa Kulick, Emily Schneider, Kayla DebraValentineVieira,Senior Multimedia Designer, College of Engineering
Inside 2 12 Alumni Stories 20 An out-of-this-world scenescape sets the stage for a story about alum Maggie Scholtz’s career in planetary robotics (page 20). ON THE COVER PUBLISHEREDITORWRITERSDESIGN New Faculty Profiles 8 AccoladesStudent CourseworkBeyond By The Numbers 26
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In this issue of MechE Magazine, I’m delighted to introduce you to three new faculty members: Chris McComb, Sneha Prabha Narra, and Noelia Grande Gutiérrez. Their work spans engineering design, additive manufacturing, and blood flow dynamics. Our students are front and center in this issue of the magazine, with stories about their internships, outreach activity, and summer research to highlight their resilience and creativity. And, as always alumni stories and accolades are an important part of the magazine. Construction continues on new Scaife Hall and we are on track to open in spring 2023. The MechE offices have been temporarily relocated to Wean Hall’s fourth floor, with some faculty distributed around campus.
1 Dear Alumni, Students, Parents, and Friends, I’m so glad to have written to you from campus again! After nearly a year and a half of hybrid instruction and limited occupancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fall 2021 semester was largely back to “normal” with in-person courses and other activities. While we’re still wearing face masks and following safety protocols, the classrooms and laboratories carry the enthusiastic voices of our students, faculty, and staff once again. The fall enrollment was the largest in the department’s history, and we’re bursting at the seams with energy!
In other news, I have stepped down as the head of MechE to take on a new role as the next director of CMU-Africa, effective January 1, 2022. While this is an important initiative for CMU and an exciting new professional opportunity, it is also bittersweet. I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with such a remarkable group of alumni, donors, faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends.
An international search will take place for a new department head and Jonathan Cagan has been named the interim head. I know I can count on you to continue your engagement and support of MechE during this transition in leadership. I hope you enjoy this issue. Thank you again for your commitment to MechE.
Sincerely, Allen L. Robinson David and Susan Coulter Head and Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor, Mechanical Engineering
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL
I humbly say thank you. If you happen to be in East Africa, stop by the campus in Kigali, Rwanda. There are amazing things happening there.
COURSEWORKBEYOND
Mechanical engineering students attend classes and complete homework for courses like dynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. At Carnegie Mellon University, their education goes beyond what’s offered through the course catalog.
STUDENTS SHAPE THEIR FUTURES THROUGH INTERNSHIPS BIOMECHANICS FOR TEENS SURF RESEARCH TESTS DURABILITY OF NEW PROBES
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 3 MECH E featuring: BEYOND COURSEWORK
Many students take advantage of the rich opportunities that are available to them in a range of areas outside of the classroom. They explore professional options through internships, lead younger students through community outreach engagement, and investigate solutions to real-world challenges through scientific research with renowned faculty. These educational experiences, though out of the classroom, help them to become better mechanical engineers.
Summertime offers students the chance to take on opportunities they otherwise might not have time for during the busy school year. Many mechanical engineering students take advantage of the time off from coursework to experience internships, either on-site or remotely. “It can be incredibly helpful for your career if you have at least one summer internship before you graduate,” said Lisa Dickter, career consultant team director with Carnegie Mellon University’s Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC). She works specifically with undergraduate mechanical engineering students. “I help them to make sure that they have a strong resume, have good interviewing skills and that they know how to conduct a successful search in order to get at least one internship in industry before they graduate.”
PERSONALIZED PROSTHESIS AND EXPERIENCES
Failleexplained.alsoworked to understand the barriers to marketing the HighFidelity system, compiling a list of and contacting orthopedic surgeons across the country. Her experience was very valuable, thanks to the personalized nature of her work. “Biodesigns gets these cases that are the last resort. It’s like, ‘If this doesn’t work, I’m not going to be walking,’” she explained. “So, seeing these patients come in and then within a week be able to start walking again is really rewarding.”
MECH E featuring: BEYOND COURSEWORK Summer Faille
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 4
INTERNSHIPSTHROUGHFUTURESSHAPESTUDENTSTHEIR
Senior Summer Faille wanted an internship that fit squarely within her two majors: mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering. She interned at Biodesigns, a small, West Coast start-up that specializes in personalized prostheses developed using founder Randall Alley’s HiFidelity Interface Socket design, providing a more personalized solution to the patient. Faille spent much of her day working alongside the company’s prosthetist, observing him work with patients. Faille is debating whether to go to medical school or move into industry after graduation, and she’s cleverly chosen an internship that will help her in both. “I was trying to find something that would be both engineeringrelated and worked for pre-med. So, prosthetics is something that I thought was a mix of both things,” she
Nicole Jani Rocco Chirieleison
COMPUTATION MODELING MAKES HAIRSTYLING SAFER
TEAMWORK TAKEN TO THE SKIES
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 5
Nicole Jani is a junior studying mechanical and biomedical engineering. She spent the summer working for consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G) as a beauty care research and development intern. She worked specifically with hair treatment and styling products—as she described it, “everything that’s outside of the Jani’sshower.”project was to create a model that pulls together information from separate databases of testing and product information to allow researchers to access it more readily. “They’re missing out on a big portion of the data that they’ve been collecting, and this model will allow them to actually view and visualize the stability data like never before. Then, they can make any conclusions about patterns that they see much faster,” she Thoughexplained.sheadmits that this experience isn’t mechanical engineering in the most traditional sense, she finds that her coursework carries over, saying that, “the problem solving that I have to do in my internship stemmed from the work that I’ve done at CMU.” The time spent working in computing and coding will also help as she works to pick up a minor in computer science. Internships also provide the opportunity for students to develop and practice skills like teamwork and project management. Sometimes, the experience helps a student to realize that they are looking for a different work environment or steers them toward taking different courses in future semesters. In finding an internship, Dickter suggests that students cast a wide net and utilize their network, whether it consists of Carnegie Mellon alumni or beyond.
Another student using his internship experience as a means of career exploration is senior mechanical engineering student Rocco Chirieleison. He’s a member of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) chapter at Carnegie Mellon, which requires an internship experience through the program each summer. He expressed his interest in naval aviation to his supervisor, who was able to secure him a spot on P8 squadron VP26 in Jacksonville, Florida. He and his cohort of interns have had the chance to see every aspect of the P8’s functioning. Though the team’s primary function was to observe and learn, Chirieleison applied aspects of his educational background, such as concepts from classes including Fluid Dynamics and Dynamic Systems and Controls. Even his experience as a member of the football team came into play, as the crew’s team dynamic is essential for the squadron to function efficiently and elegantly. “It’s very much a team atmosphere, which is in a way unique to P8 squadrons because the crew is so large. From the pilots to the enlisted guys to the radar and the technicians in the back, everybody needs to be on the same page to make sure that things go to plan,” he said. After graduation, Chirieleison will serve active duty in the Navy for at least five years. Through this experience, he’s been given a clearer picture of what that time may look like.
Other notable sessions included “3D Printing Legs,” an interview-style Q&A session hosted by Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student Saul Schaffer that brought in Jerry Evans, the president and CEO of Nia Technologies. They discussed the creation of prosthetics using lowcost “Givematerials.mea(Mechatronic) Hand” taught students about the musculoskeletal system in the hand and guided them through making their own mechatronic hand with a working sensor, processing center, and effector. “Brain Computer Interfaces: Next Frontier of UI,” discussed the real-world possibilities of implanting chips in the brain that would allow people to control electrical devices.
National Biomechanics Day is a worldwide celebration that strives to bring the complex world of biomechanics to high school students. Through hands-on activities, demonstrations, and Q&A sessions with real-world professionals, Carnegie Mellon presented teens with a future career choice and new ways to see the world.
“I think that puts biomechanics in an interesting location within STEM outreach, because it is a topic that is really accessible to students who might not have thought very much about engineering or science before,” she added. Despite being virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rokhmanova and additional Ph.D. student organizers Ashlee Liao and Kathleen Gladson put together engaging activities for the participants.
Though “Cephalopods and Soft Robots” was the day’s fan-favorite, Rokhmanova expressed that “Dynamics of Drumming” was also well-loved. “We actually shipped out drum sticks to all of the students who signed up for the session, and Owen Pearl, who is one of the organizers of the event, taught Newton’s Laws using drumming. It was just a blast!”
Whether it continues virtually or in-person, one thing is for sure—Carnegie Mellon’s National Biomechanics Day introduces students to the captivating possibilities of biomechanics and engineering, and presents new lenses of integrating technology into daily life.
BIOMECHANICS FOR TEENS
The spring 2021 event virtually hosted 46 students aged 13-18, over half of whom had never previously been introduced to biomechanics. Leading the event were 18 volunteers including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. When asked about the importance of this outreach, student organizer and mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Nataliya Rokhmanova said, “I think biomechanics is one of the most interesting forms of science because everyone has a body. We’re curious about how that body works, and we can use engineering tools to answer those questions.”
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 6 MECH E featuring: BEYOND COURSEWORK
OF NEW PROBES*
The project is in collaboration with CMU’s Eric Yttri, assistant professor of biological sciences. It has received funding from the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.
The research could lead to better precision medical devices, such as brain-machine interfaces, a more precise 3D mapping of neural circuits, precision neuroprosthetic devices to better restore patients’ lost functionality, and new avenues for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
*The original version of this article ran on Carnegie Mellon University’s website.
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 7
spent the summer measuring electrical resistance and mechanical strength—how much force each probe or an array of probes can experience during insertion and the maximum pressure they can endure in the event of an obstacle. He began with agarose gel, which closely mimics the consistency of brain tissue, and moved on to small steel blocks the size of a thumbtack. With those two extremes, he can develop an expected range of withstandable force.
SURF
That testing, which is funded through a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) grant from CMU’s Office of Undergraduate Research, is a vital part of the development process, Panat said. “[Lovalekar] got the probe station up and running, wrote the operations manual for it, and has been analyzing behavior on the cellular structures and working on compression tests,” he said. “Yes, he’s part of a big team, but his individual work is critical to this entire project.”
Lovalekar read about their work and cold emailed Panat. He wanted to help. “It felt awkward, at first, but [Panat] was very accepting of my interest,” Lovalekar said. “He took time to explain it to me, how the components worked and what steps they were taking to improve the design. Now I test its Lovalekarstrength.”
Working alongside the team has shifted Lovalekar’s professional ambitions. “I always thought I’d probably go into something corporate, but I’ve been so inspired by this team and this process,” he said. “Learning about the brain to hopefully improve people’s lives —that’s the most interesting challenge I can think of.”
TESTSRESEARCHDURABILITY
Smaller, stronger, customizable devices could dramatically increase accessibility to the brain
Sophomore Mihir Lovalekar always nursed an interest in health care, particularly neurology, but until late last year, he wasn’t sure how to marry medicine to his undergraduate major, mechanical engineering. “I’d been researching my professors and their backgrounds, specialties and lab work,” he said, “because I knew I wanted to contribute to something outside the classroom. That’s how I got involved with the CMU Array.”
The CMU Array is a first-of-its-kind, fully customizable, 3D printed microelectrode array composed of ultrahigh density neural probes, which developers say have the potential to profoundly change the course of neuroscience research.
“It’s exciting work,” said co-creator Rahul Panat, associate professor of mechanical engineering. “Brain probes on the market today are made of silicon that are prohibitively fragile, expensive and difficult to customize. The limitations in design mean they aren’t always practical in some contexts, specifically when the signals need to be captured from the 3D volume of the brain at a high density for applications such as prosthetics or disease research. We think we’ve found a solution to that.”
Ph.D. student Matthew Guttenberg was named an trip-planning, fleet analysis, and charger infrastructure optimization for electric vehicles.
STUDENTACCOLADES
Incepts,Entrepreneurship.byCommercializationInnovationFellowCMU’sSwartzCenterforHissoftware,canbeusedforaccurate
MECH E STUDENTS
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 8
Juniors Miguel Brandao and Audrey Young were named Innovation Scholars by CMU’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. The program integrates networking, mentorship, and work experience at a startup with exposure to alumni entrepreneurs and investors: https://bit.ly/3j4XZ59
Seniors Ethan Husted and Allison Rojas were named 2022 Andrew Carnegie Society Scholars for embodying Carnegie Mellon’s high standards of academic excellence, volunteerism, leadership, and involvement in student organizations, athletics, or the arts.
The Carnegie Mellon Women’s Association (CMWA) awarded a 2021 scholarship to Alyssa Brown (’21) for her academic accomplishments and commitment to service and leadership. Currently pursuing a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, she plans to work in the medical devices field focusing on gynecological health: awards/2020-2021.htmlhttps://www.cmu.edu/cmwa/
Bolutito Babatunde, Morgan Chen, Regan Kubicek, Guadalupe Quirarte, and Saul Schaffer earned accolades through the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Ph.D. student Wendy Flores-Brito and MechE/EPP undergraduate alumnus Frank Andújar Lugo (’20) were featured in the National GEM Consortium’s newsletter. Flores-Brito investigates laser homogenization for signal improvement of laser desorption/ ionization single particle mass spectrometry. Lugo, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explores how smart control strategies can help inform the installation and operation of thermal storage in district and distributed heating and cooling networks.
Valerie Reiling (’21) of the women’s track and field team was honored with an Academic All-America award by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). After completing research with NASA Aeronautics Research Institute, she is now pursuing a master’s degree in engineering and public policy. Ph.D. student Saul Schaffer received a 2021 Gelfand Student Service award in recognition of his commitment to sharing their knowledge, talents, and skills to make a difference in the lives of children in the community, with a priority for STEM educational outreach activities. He designed “It’s Alive! The Science Behind Making Living Robots,” a workshop for middle school students.
Jackie Godinez (’21) won the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania (ESWP)’s George Washington Prize for 2021. She served as the president of CMU’s chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). Ph.D. students Angela Chen and Mitch Fogelson in the Artificial Intelligence in Product Engineered for X (AiPEX) Lab created The Scientific Method Podcast. Episodes feature guests from different universities who discuss their research, share insights, and more: podcastwww.mitchellfogelson.com/ Ph.D. student D. Sebastian Arias Roldan was recognized as a 2021 Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) Scholar. He is developing a nanoscale DNA strain sensor capable of measuring displacementssub-nanometerasamemberof the research team in the Microsystems and Mechanobiology Lab.
Giancarlo Seixas (’21) was among the students celebrating being the first in their families to graduate from college at CMU’s inaugural First-Gen Graduation Recognition Ceremony: https://bit.ly/3vhHlUH
. With a double major in mechanical and biomedical engineering and a minor in design, he was the founding president of FIRST Together, a student organization connected to CMU’s FIRST Together@CMU Initiative. Ph.D. student Shashank Sripad was a guest on the CellSiders Podcast episode, “Fly Like an E-gull.” He discussed electric aviation and lithium-ion batteries for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) applications: https://spoti.fi/3DGEuaT
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 9
GREEN BUILDING EARNS GOLD
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 10 MECH E STUDENTS
Nearly half of all materials used during construction were located within 500 miles of the building, reducing the project’s overall carbon footprint and boosting the local economy. Approximately 95% of construction and demolition waste was diverted from the landfill.
ANSYS Hall, the hub of the College of Engineering’s maker ecosystem, has achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for its energy efficiency and sustainability. It uses 30% less energy and 40% less water compared to buildings of similar size and occupancy. It’s state-of-the-art filtration system and green roof has decreased storm water runoff by 25%, reducing pressure on the city’s sewage system.
ANSYS Hall is home to Tech Spark’s high bay, design studio, casting room, metals room, computer cluster, simulation classroom, and other resources for hands-on projects.
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 11 Progress continues on the new Scaife Hall, scheduled to open summer 2023 with reconfigurable, high-tech classrooms, Checkspaceslaboratories,interdisciplinaryandcommonforcollaboration.itout: CMUScaifeHalloxblue.com/open/pjdick/https://app. BEAM BY BEAM A team of students in Professor Phil LeDuc’s Culinary Mechanics course created the Fire Pop, a melt-in-your mouth confection that demonstrates fluid and thermal dynamics.
SIMULATING FLUID FLOW TO STUDY DISEASE
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 12 MECH E FACULTY
“As an aerospace engineer, I had a lot of background in fluid mechanics,” said Grande Gutiérrez, a new faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “I saw how you could apply those same principles into understanding, for example, how the respiratory or the cardiovascular system Grandeworks.”
How different can the flow of air past an airplane be from the flow of blood through our body? To Noelia Grande Gutiérrez, the two are more similar than one may think. Her early education and experience in the former led her towards a path in academia in the latter.
also hopes to explore drug delivery problems, especially in precisely targeting certain destinations. Medicines such as cancer therapies are rather toxic to healthy cells, and therefore precise delivery can mitigate offtarget side effects. This fall, Grande Gutiérrez will teach a course on computational fluid dynamics and hopes to develop a new course on modeling biological systems sometime in the future. She’s long been a supporter of students, especially women, interested in careers in engineering or academia. A first-generation student herself, she hopes she can serve as a role model for others following a similar path.
Gutiérrez returned to school to study biomedical engineering, and eventually completed a Ph.D. Her work has primarily focused on using computational modeling to study the cardiovascular system and diseases related to it. One of those conditions is thrombosis, or a clot blocking blood flow. Thrombosis can lead to anything from swelling and pain in the limbs to heart attacks or strokes. Computational models can study how blood flow affects both the formation and growth of the clot. By understanding how that process is different for each patient, we can better understand who could be at risk for thrombosis and design personalized therapies. She plans to continue this work here at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as explore another large issue in cardiovascular disease. Namely, she wants to work to understand how sex differences can affect the disease or detection of it. For example, coronary artery disease is very underestimated in women because much of the research was conducted on men. She wants to use simulations to extract predictors of adverse effects in women to help diagnose the disease before it’s too Shelate.
She’s ready to bring together her first group of researchers and get started on these projects, taking advantage of the wealth of interdisciplinary knowledge offered here at Carnegie Mellon. Grande Gutiérrez earned her bachelor’s degree from Technical University of Madrid, then a master’s in both biomedical engineering from the University of Barcelona and engineering sciences and applied mechanics from the University of California, San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2019, and now comes to Carnegie Mellon to serve as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
“As an aerospace engineer, I had a lot of background in fluid mechanics. I saw how you could apply those same principles into understanding, for example, how the respiratory or the cardiovascular system works.”
NOELIA GRANDE GUTIÉRREZ
NEW FACULTY PROFILE
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 14
MECH E FACULTY
SOLVING A PROBLEM BEGINS WITH A QUESTION
Narra’s area of focus is metal additive manufacturing processes that use powder and wire as the raw material input. In powder-based processes, metal powder is distributed precisely and melted—thin layer by thin layer—by a laser or electron beam until the final piece is Thecompleted.sophisticated technology can be a game-changer for sectors like aerospace, medical, energy, and transportation. She wants to advance the knowledge in these processes to enable process qualification and develop processing knowledge to use novel, advanced Amongmaterials.the wire-based processes, Narra’s lab focuses on the wire arc additive manufacturing process. This weldingbased layer-by-layer fabrication process can make parts on the order of several meters. This technology is suitable for both repair and manufacturing and offers the potential to drastically reduce material waste and lead time. Narra is specifically interested in utilizing recent advances in in-situ materials.newmanufacturingwireadvanceofandprocessmonitoring,modeling,fundamentalsweldingtotheuseofarcadditiveforapplicationsand
When Narra was an undergraduate engineering student attending Osmania University in India, she became intrigued by the software program she was using to perform structural analysis. She was curious to know how the software performed the analysis and this curiosity sparked a conversation with her academic advisor.
The lure of Pittsburgh’s exponential growth in the additive manufacturing industry—and Carnegie Mellon’s role in it— compelled Narra to come back here. She plans to take advantage of the ample resources in manufacturing and materials characterization that the university offers, as well as work with its NextManufacturing Center, Manufacturing Futures Institute (MFI), and Mill 19 facility, a collaborative research and development hub part of Hazelwood Green’s urban redevelopment initiative. She will also utilize Lincoln Electric’s wire arc additive manufacturing machine, a new piece of equipment arriving at Mill 19 this fall.
SNEHA PRABHA NARRA (’13, ’15, ’17)
METAL 3D PRINTING ACROSS SCALES
In the classroom, she is teaching Additive Manufacturing Design and Processing this semester. The course features a project component in which students identify a product and develop designs leveraging 3D printing capability. As part of this project, students also use the polymer printers in the TechSpark maker facility to print their designs.
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing continues to transform the industry by producing parts that are stronger, lighter, and less expensive than those produced by traditional methods. At Carnegie Mellon University, the College of Engineering isn’t just keeping up with the latest technology—we’re defining it. New faculty member Sneha Prabha Narra is one of our engineers shaping this field. An assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Narra runs the Engineering Materials for Transformative Technologies (EMIT) Lab. With a zeal for practical problem-solving, she is eager to bring her experience in manufacturing and materials to both the laboratory and classroom this fall to advance additive manufacturing research and education.
“My undergraduate advisor told me, ‘These are the things you will learn if you do an advanced degree—not just how to use something, but how something works,’” she recalled. With his support and encouragement, Narra headed to the United States to pursue graduate study in computational mechanics, followed by a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. This background prepared her for her first faculty position at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where she had the opportunity to broaden her research interests to large-scale additive manufacturing processes and energy-intensive processes such as drying, widely used in the food and paper industry.
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING AND THE STEEL CITY
MENTORING FUTURE ENGINEERS
“I’m looking forward to having the NextManufacturing and MFI leadership on board to support the research that I’ll be doing in terms of creating opportunities to collaborate with industry and maintaining and running the facilities that I need to do my experimental research,” Narra said.
Narra feels that she is taking on that mantle of advisor and teacher now. Narra earned her bachelor’s degree from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, and master’s degrees in computational mechanics and mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. In 2017, she earned her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, focusing on additive manufacturing. She served as an assistant professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute before returning to Carnegie Mellon as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “I want to support students to be independent as they dig deeper into the topics that interest them, as I had been encouraged to do so by my mentors throughout my academic career.”
Moreover, Narra cites the innovative, collaborative approach to research and an incredible support network as additional reasons she is excited to be back at the College of Engineering
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Today, Narra sees herself as a mentor to students as they navigate through their education and research experiences. “I want to support students to be independent as they dig deeper into the topics that interest them, as I had been encouraged to do so by my mentors throughout my academic career,” she said.
As Narra starts her latest journey as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, her goals are not small ones. “At a broader level, I want to build on the materials and manufacturing fundamentals to do my part in addressing pressing climate needs. I plan to do this by using manufacturing as a medium to enable transformative technologies that have the potential to lower carbon footprint,” she said.
CHRISTOPHER MCCOMB (‘14,’16) MECH E FACULTY
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 17 NEW FACULTY PROFILE
“When we create new things, we put the human at the center of it, and then design the product around them—to meet their needs, to meet their desires and wants. I take a similar approach to teaching. I place the student at the center of the experience and try to design education, and design the class, around my students.”
DESIGNING FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE
Before infrastructure, machinery, technology, and inventions reach humanity, they go through a vigorous process that many of us often forget about: engineering design. Everything, at one point in time, was subject to the process of conceiving an idea and mapping out the best methods to make it real.
As a Carnegie Mellon graduate student, McComb’s thesis topic explored simulating design teams. His first project examined the hypothesis that giving teams certain instructions would help make them more adaptive to changes in their problem statements. Though not meeting his initial expectations, he used these results to compare low and high performing teams, and learned valuable information on how people work Hetogether.isexcited to return to Carnegie Mellon and take part in the interdisciplinary collaboration, for which it is well-known. As a student, he worked with KickStart, a non-profit dedicated to helping people escape poverty, while also being cost-effective and sustainable. Their goal was to optimize manual water pumps for a wider audience, creating a variety of pumps for different users, rather than a singular model, showing the importance of design and continued McCombimprovement.joins us after working at the Pennsylvania State University as an assistant professor of engineering design. In the past six years, he has received nine honors and awards for his work in design research. His research mainly focuses on better understanding collaborative work and using machine-learning to enhance designers’ abilities.
As a professor at Carnegie Mellon, McComb plans to fill the gaps in engineering design. Despite existing for the sake of fulfilling human need or desire, he feels that a missing part of the equation remains: how to comprehend, interpret, and design for each unique person. For McComb, this means understanding the user group and trying to meet users at their level. This, he believes, holds high importance, whether an engineer is designing water pumps or next-generation AI teammates.
As a Carnegie Mellon student himself, he took part in the Future Faculty Program, where he created the design practicum, which emphasizes developing a growth mindset through hands-on collaborative evaluation.
McComb earned his dual bachelor’s degree in civil and mechanical engineering from California State University, Fresno in 2012. He earned his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2014 and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering 2016, both from Carnegie Mellon University.
“Design gives us tools to be affectively generative; it gives us approaches for searching broadly through different solutions and then narrowing down to the best one,” said Christopher McComb, a Carnegie Mellon University alumnus who will be joining the faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering this fall. “It gives us a process and approach for something that seems a little intangible and pretty difficult. If you’re trying to create something that has never been created before, where do you start? Design gives you an answer to that question.”
Combining these concepts, he examines how to develop successful human-machine teams. “We are using [computational power] to give designers superpowers. And that’s the thing that is so exciting for me, because we are making them into superheroes. We are giving them these design-superpowers so they can go and do amazing things that help a lot of people,” said AboveMcComb.all, however, he looks forward to incorporating the power of design into his classroom—not only through teaching the concept, but also by applying human-centered design, and creating a student-centered learning environment.
Themodeling.National
Associate Professor Rahul Panat was named the Russell V. Trader Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering and the Associate Director of Research at CMU’s Manufacturing Futures Institute (MFI).
Assistant Professor Sneha Prabha Narra (’13, ’15, ’17) serves as an associate editor of the journal Additive Manufacturing.
Professor Alan McGaughey was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He also received the 2021 Viskanta Fellowship from Purdue University. He was named the Trustee Professor in Engineering. Professor Yongjie Jessica Zhang was elected a Fellow of the Solid Modeling Association and named editor-in-chief of the journal Engineering with Computers. She delivered the International Conference on Computational Science’s keynote lecture on material transport simulation in complex neurite
Associatenetworks.Professor Chris McComb (’14, ‘16) received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)’s Design Theory and Methodology Young Investigator ProfessorAward. Allen Robinson was named the next director of CMU-Africa, effective January 1, 2022. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
FACULTY AWARDS & HONORS
Professor Philip LeDuc was elected for Fellowship by the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE).
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 18 MECH E FACULTY
Professors Burak Kara (’00, ’04) and Conrad Tucker were recognized as Impact Scholars as part of Google’s AI for Social Good program. They aim to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve screening for oral cancers, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
Assistant Professor Eni Halilaj received a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant to develop DeepGaitLab, an opensource software that fuses computer vision algorithms with biomechanical
Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine selected Professor Jeremy Michalek (‘99) to serve on the committee, Current Methods for Life Cycle Analyses of Low-Carbon Transportation Fuels in the U.S.
CMU alumni Afzaal M. Akhtar (’84, ’86) and Sarah J. Bhutta (Chemistry ’88) generously established this professorship in 2019 to support a senior faculty member in MechE whose work involves development of innovative products or services.
Douglas Weber is the first recipient of the Akhtar and Bhutta Professorship in Mechanical Engineering. His research seeks to understand physiological mechanisms underlying sensory perception and feedback control of movement. The work has applications in new technologies and therapies for restoring sensory and motor functions after stroke, spinal cord injury, or limb loss.
Assistant Professor Victoria WebsterWood’s research focuses on creating actuators for biohybrid robots using living muscle, and controlling these actuators with neurons.
PROFESSORSHIP NSF AWARDSCAREER
Assistant Professor Ding Zhao is working on evaluation methods to ensure safety critical applications of artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles and healthcare.
Two MechE faculty members received the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awards in 2021. These awards support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
Now, Scholtz is co-founder and vice president of engineering at First Mode, a Seattle-based engineering firm focused on tackling challenging problems on Earth and throughout the solar system. First Mode was founded by Scholtz and a group of fellow engineers in 2018. The group recognized the value of using a traditional systems engineering approach to solve problems in industry. So, they created a company that always starts with the problem in mind.
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The story of former NASA engineer Homer Hickam Jr. has caught the attention of many across the world, including Maggie Scholtz (MechE ’08). Hickman’s passion for engineering as a young boy became the best-selling memoir Rocket Boys and inspired the 1999 film October Sky. For Scholtz, it was the catalyst for pursuing a career in engineering. “I became inspired to work on something off planet. I just thought that was the coolest thing that you could possibly do. Through a lot of research that I had done, I decided that I absolutely had to work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California on a Mars Rover,” says Scholtz. In high school at the time, Scholtz began figuring out what she needed to do to reach her goal. She toured the facilities at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and asked the engineers what college she should go to if she wanted to work on robotics on another planet. Their answer? Carnegie Mellon “IUniversity.wouldsay most people in high school don’t usually focus on one objective of what they’re going to do. So, I think that was a little fortunate for me because I was able to make all of my decisions based on that metric, that one goal, that one objective,” says Scholtz. The first part of Scholtz’s plan came to fruition when she was accepted to CMU’s College of Engineering. She settled into campus life and quickly became involved in robotics inside and outside of the classroom. Working with groups in the Robotics Institute, she got the opportunity to apply principles she was learning in her coursework to real-world designs and systems. She also became involved in the Robotics Club, which introduced her to the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Through a lot of planning and a little bit of luck, Scholtz’s career lined up with her dream. After graduation, she got a position at JPL developing robotics for space exploration. She spent seven years at JPL working on the Mars Curiosity Rover and the Mars Perseverance mission.
Scholtz leads a team of engineers who work on problems related to extreme conditions such as space, mobility systems, and clean energy systems. At their hardware development center in Seattle, for example, First Mode engineers are integrating an over 2-megawatt hybrid battery/hydrogen fuel cell power module to replace the diesel generator that currently powers mining company Anglo American’s 300 metric-ton capacity haul trucks.
“I became inspired to work on something off planet. I just thought that was the coolest thing that you could possibly do. Through a lot of research that I had done, I decided that I absolutely had to work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California on a Mars Rover.”
MAGGIE SCHOLTZ (‘08)
First Mode’s mobilization of this utility-scale, clean power generation method will result in one of the world’s largest zero-emission vehicles.
Despite all of her research and planning, Scholtz has found the world of engineering to be very different than what her high school-self thought she would find. “As soon as you leave the textbook, there’s no one right answer. You still draw from all of the first principles and everything that you’re taught and you learn in school. But the actual act of problem-solving in the real world is very different. And one big part of that is actually how a system works as a whole, how a team works together in order to solve, to develop new things to solve problems.”
ALUMNI STORIES
“We work from problem to prototype; we’re not just trying to make a bunch of widgets. We’re trying to help people better define the problem and then find the solution,” explains Scholtz. “And if we get to do that in a way that solves some pretty important problems in the world, then it’s very fulfilling to be able to have an impact.”
“A lot of my growth as a person occurred at Carnegie Mellon, so I have fond memories.” Steve Fulton, MechE/EPP ’81 alumnus
Alumnus Steve Fulton (MechE/EPP ’81) has always had a passion for discourse and lively debate, inspiring him to pursue a career in law. Now, he and his wife Carol are giving back to Carnegie Mellon University’s new Scaife Hall to encourage other engineering students to embrace the power of dialogue.
Fulton was interested in the law from an early age. The first in his family to go to college, he chose to begin his journey in the College of Engineering. He felt a background in engineering would differentiate him from his peers. “I thought engineering was very helpful because it gives you a structured thought process,” explains Fulton.
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Fulton’s love for the law found its way into how he approached much of his college experience. For example, during his freshman year he was less than pleased to be placed in a small double dorm room in Scobell House. His room seemed to be considerably smaller than what he saw across campus. Through some exploration, he realized that he was correct — so, he structured his argument and submitted an appeal. “I ended up winning my appeal,” smiles Fulton. “One of my main arguments was that our room was so small that we had to get out of bed in shifts because there wasn’t enough Later,space.”as a senior, Fulton challenged the price of vended soda on campus. The matter was resolved with a universitysponsored Santana concert for the student body. After Carnegie Mellon, Fulton worked as an engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation before attending Harvard Law School. Through his 25-year legal career he spent time as partner in the global law firm Reed Smith LLP and served as vice president and general counsel at Respironics, a medical device company which is now part of Philips. “Having the engineering background [at Respironics] was really helpful because when we were making devices, I could wear two hats. I understood the technology and I also understood the legal ramifications of what we were putting on the market,” says Fulton. Now retired, Fulton spends time helping small companies and volunteering as a coach for the mock trial team at Penn-Trafford High School, located southeast of Pittsburgh. He remains connected with Carnegie Mellon University as an alumnus, but also as a parent. His alma mater became a family affair with the graduation of his sons Bradley (MSE ’16 MechE ’17) and Kevin (DC ’14), Philanthropy has always been important to Fulton, and he began giving back to Carnegie Mellon in small amounts as a young alumnus. As someone who relied on a scholarship to attend college, he feels strongly about investing in education. With the construction of the new Alan Magee Scaife Hall of Engineering, he and his wife Carol were excited about the opportunities it would provide to students. They recently made a generous gift to the project, naming the Fulton Terrace. “A lot of my growth as a person occurred at Carnegie Mellon, so I have fond memories,” says Fulton. “I think education is really important. I know how important it was to me, and I think it’s important for others as well.”
The Fultons are looking forward to seeing students benefit from the large outdoor spaces of the new Scaife Hall. These areas, like the Fulton Terrace, will foster community across the university and encourage discussion outside the classroom. Fulton believes that discourse among people from different disciplines or with opposing viewpoints is a vital component of the college experience. The new Scaife Hall is set to be completed in 2023 and will be transformative for the College of Engineering. Double the size of the original building, it will create a new entrance to campus and open up into a pedestrian-only engineering and maker quad. Through the design of Scaife Hall, Carnegie Mellon hopes to organically spark innovation and inspire new ways of thinking about complex problems across the world.
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“It’s one thing to code or build something new in the lab, but something else entirely to see it being used to help critically ill patients recover from serious illnesses,” he said. “I have found it incredibly rewarding to not only create new therapeutic options but also participate in its implementation with patients in the hospital.”
When he realized the power of engineering to improve patient care, he became committed to breaking down the barriers of inequitable and inaccessible medical care.
Chang has forged his own path and cultural identity. “Growing up, I have always felt like my family has straddled the line between Eastern and Western customs. It seemed like a burden or even embarrassing at times when we did not “fit in” with the neighbors. However, I have since found it to be an advantage to forge my own traditions with my family that can uniquely reflect our identity in this crazy Heworld.”reminds
prospective graduate students that the biggest strengths they can bring are their differences. “Fresh ideas and unique perspectives are how the boundaries are pushed, and graduate school is here to give us a place to learn how to push them.”
MechE alumnus Brian Chang (’13, ’14) is a scientist, an entrepreneur, a flowchart superhero, and a soon-to-be physician. He has also earned the prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. This program invests in the graduate education of immigrants and children of immigrants who are poised to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic field. As a medical student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, Chang will receive up to $90,000 in financial support over two years. What sparks a passion for invention? For Chang, it was the childhood experience of wandering through his father’s workshops. Born to immigrants from Shanghai, China, he watched his father complete graduate studies in engineering and his mother pursue medical training in the United States. He grew up surrounded and inspired by his parents’ love of learning. Chang followed in his parents’ scientific footsteps. After pursuing undergraduate and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, he went on to earn a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His interest in biomedical device innovation led him to develop methods that make advanced cardiac technologies more accessible. He went on to cofound X-COR Therapeutics, a medical device startup developing a treatment for lung failure that has the potential to support patients with severe COVID-19 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
He is eternally grateful for his parents’ sacrifices and his mentors’ generous support.
Cason Male (’09) is the chief technology officer for RoadRunner Recycling.
Raymond Carnelly (’39) was posthumously inducted into the Carnegie Mellon University Athletics Hall of Fame. He contributed to Carnegie Tech’s football team earning the Lambert Trophy, awarded to the best team in the East, in 1938. After graduating, he was drafted by the former NFL team known as the Brooklyn Dodgers and later coached for West Virginia University.
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Lisa Drake (‘94), Ford’s chief operating officer for North America, spoke with Axios about integrating battery recycling into the electric vehicle manufacturing process: H.https://bit.ly/3o1eoL0ChristopherFrey(‘87) was nominated to be the assistant administrator of the Office of Research and Development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Thomas Healy (’14), CEO and founder of Hyliion, spoke with MechE’s graduating seniors last spring during an online chat and Q&A session.
Akshit Mishra (‘21) authored a Skynet Today editorial on artificial intelligence as a hype tool: Michaeleditorials/ai-hypehttps://www.skynettoday.com/ (’68) and Lonna (CFA ’69) Smith received Carnegie Mellon’s 2021 Alumni Service Award in recognition of their generous service to, and passion for, the university. Taylor Tabb (’18, ’19) was a contestant on Netflix’s food reality television show, Baking Impossible. The series teamed bakers with engineers, tasking them to build creations that were both delicious and able to pass engineering stress tests.
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ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 26 2020 median salaries after graduation $90K$79K$94K Ph.D.B.S.M.S. 2021 student population:270885M.S. Rankings 2021 | U.S. News & World Report Mechanical Engineering | College of Engineering UNDERGRADUATEGRADUATE 109 46 ACTIVE6,085+ALUMNI215Ph.D.400B.S. BYNUMBERSTHE
Today, Athletica Sport manufactures a state-ofthe-art system that incorporates an innovative, “best of” blend of the teams’ designs from that very first competition. The final product, now available for installation, provides up to 65% improvement in energy absorption when a player hits the boards. This means fewer injuries.
New, high tech dasher boards are the first commercially-available product to emerge from the “Rethink the Rink” make-a-thon collaboration.
The increased safety comes at no compromise to the action of the game because the play of the puck is not affected. The new boards flex and absorb the impact when a player makes contact but remain stiff when the puck does.
Covestro, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Carnegie Mellon University launched the annual student competition in 2018 to make ice hockey a safer sport for players of all levels. That first makea-thon focused on the physical barrier that surrounds the rink.
Carnegie Mellon students are solving real-world problems in sports safety with creativity and teamwork, one challenge at a time. The next Rethink the Rink make-a-thon is scheduled for May 2022.
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Professor SHAWN LITSTER was a speaker on a Materials Research Society webinar, “Materials Evolution in 3D/4D: Understanding TimeEvolved Processes Using Lab and Synchrotron X-ray https://bit.ly/3FcKxEYTomography”:
Assistant Professor AARON JOHNSON was a guest on the American Society of Mechanical Engineer (ASME)’s Dynamic Systems & Control Division Podcast Series where he discussed his work with legged robots: https://youtu.be/sKl6gEnk9n4
Professor RYAN SULLIVAN’S research on wildfires and cloud formation was featured on the National Science Foundation’s The Discovery Files, part of the CBS Radio https://bit.ly/3c9tO8ONetwork: CASE MISSEDYOUIT
Professor BURAK OZDOGANLAR discussed his hybrid microneedle array vaccine delivery system on the National Academy of Engineering’s webinar, “Engineering Innovations Empowering Recovery from the Pandemic”: https://youtu.be/W6VBKZmfav8
ENGINEERINGMECHANICAL 28 As part of Carnegie Mellon University Week on National Public Radio’s Academic Minute, Assistant Professor AMIR BARATI FARIMANI explained how artificial intelligence (AI) can outsmart SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses: https://bit.ly/3BhsACG.
Professor BURAK KARA explains how AI and machine learning can accelerate product design, simulation, and workflows in a College of Engineering Faculty Insights webinar: https://youtu.be/CZ65hFu6YRc
Bob and Marty’s relationship started at Carnegie Tech and took them around the world. Their careers (Bob in manufacturing and Marty in the medical field) and Bob’s commitment to the ROTC brought them everywhere from Ohio to the UK. After serving in the Army, Bob spent over 34 years working for The Timken Company. Marty left Carnegie Tech to earn her nursing and doctorate degrees, eventually working at the Centers for Disease Control until she retired. They generously chose to give back to their alma mater by creating a gift that pays them income now and will later create a scholarship to support students in the College of Engineering, specifically those who study robotics.
BOB (MECHE ’53) & MARTY DUSHAW (MM ’53) “
MY BUTTONS POP OFF MY SHIRT WITH PRIDE BECAUSE I SEE CARNEGIE MELLON MAKING A DIFFERENCE ACROSS THE WORLD.” -BOB DUSHAW GIVE STRATEGICALLY, SUPPORT GENEROUSLY Learn how easy it is to achieve your philanthropic vision through a planned gift by visiting giftplanning.cmu.edu Contact the Office of Gift Planning today at 412.268.5346 or mickkoster@andrew.cmu.edu 11PAGE
Pittsburgh,5000CarnegieMechanicalmeche.engineering.cmu.eduEngineeringMellonUniversityForbesAvenuePA,15213-3890CMU.MechCMU_MechCMUEngineeringCMUEngineering Non-Profit Org. U.S. PermitPittsburgh,PAIDPostagePANo.251 April 7-9, 2022 For more than 100 years, Carnival has been — and continues to be — one of CMU’s most anticipated weekends of the year with Tartans around the world coming together. http://bit.ly/cmu-spring-carnival SPRING CARNIVAL & REUNION WEEKEND
