Fall 2022 Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Newsletter

MEMS

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING & MATERIALS SCIENCE

The People of MEMS

MLB, USA Softball and Kids Alike Use a Pitt Inventor’s Smart Bats and Balls

When William “Buddy” Clark coached his kids’ baseball and softball teams, other parents kept asking him what gear or training could give their players an edge. The Swanson School of Engineering professor and National Academy of Inventors inductee saw an opportunity.

“I came up with a solution that required measurements, and the more I investigated, the more I realized that the tools that work best –wearable sensors – were starting to be a thing but in a rudimentary way,” Clark said. “It dawned on

me that this was a good solution for this problem and, if applied properly, opened the door for useful information for players and others. It took off from there.”

In 2012, he and alumnus CJ Handron (KGSB ’10) launched Diamond Kinetics, a Pittsburgh-based sports company that produces mobile-based hitting and throwing technology to help coaches and players analyze performance to improve their training.

Clark and Handron met through Pitt’s nationally acclaimed Small Business Development Center, where Handron was Clark’s advisor. They quickly bonded over their love of America’s pastime and a shared desire to aid budding baseball and softball enthusiasts.

“We bring in technology that tracks how things move and focus on how to make learning the games

more fun,” Handron said. “We want to expedite learning those skills and generally introduce a digital complement to the physical playing.”

Diamond Kinetics sensors are placed inside of balls and on the end of baseball and softball bats to track batting and pitching metrics. Batting metrics include speed, exit velocity, launch angle, applied power and more. Tracked pitching data include extension and delivery timing. This information is collected, transmitted via Bluetooth to a cellphone application and translated into visual charts.

The tech quickly took off. Current Diamond Kinetics partners include Major League Baseball (MLB) and the USA Softball National Teams. But, kids still remain at the core of the Diamond Kinetics’ mission. In April 2022, the company was named the “Trusted Youth Development Platform of Major League Baseball” and it’s been mentioned in an ESPN gift guide for kids and other youth-centered initiatives.

Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering

The People of MEMS

MLB, USA Softball and Kids...

Partnering with the MLB to become the organization’s youth development platform is perhaps the team’s proudest accomplishment. “What we’re trying to do in this broad-reaching strategic partnership is connect what a kid sees on the big-league field and allow them to engage with that,” said Handron. “That’s a real positive for MLB’s audience, our kids – these digital natives who’ve grown up with technology –and enhancing what we can deliver for them.”

A Startup Fueled by Pitt

In addition to helping kids enjoy the game, Clark and Handron have made a point of hiring Pitt students alongside local talent.

“Buddy, CJ and the Diamond Kinetics’ reputation preceded them,” said Christopher D’Angelo (ENGR ’18G), Diamond Kinetics’ lead research and development (R&D) engineer and Clark and Handron’s first engineering hire.

The Pitt adjunct assistant professor was eager to work for the founders and apply the “fancy

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math you learn in graduate school” to enhance the accuracy of the sensors. But D’Angelo has most enjoyed the opportunity to encourage and help young engineers like recent Pitt graduate Solomon Fenton (ENGR ’21) and Judge Jackson, a rising senior studying mechanical engineering, minoring in material science and working towards certificates in sustainability and simulation in design.

“One of the things I’ve most enjoyed is bringing people like Solomon and Judge here, helping them develop and seeing them flourish at a University of Pittsburgh startup,” said D’Angelo. “We’re small and pushing hard to develop and improve our products. I’ve seen these two develop quickly and in great ways because they’re involved in many different engineering aspects. Working with them, that’s probably the most rewarding part.”

– Authored by Kara Henderson, originally published in Pittwire

William Clark Selected as Member of 2021 Fellow Class

William “Buddy” Clark was elected to the 2021 Fellow class of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors.

The NAI Fellows Program highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. The 164 members of the 2021 Fellow class hail from 116 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes worldwide. They collectively hold over 4,800 issued U.S. patents.

Solar Rover Created in Makerspace

Students in the Introduction to Mechanical Engineering Design course headed to the Swanson School’s makerspace to build miniature, solar-powered Mars rovers. They tested their designs for agility, durability and speed in a series of obstacle courses created by the course professors, Dr. Buddy Clark and Dr. John Whitefoot.

Chair’s Message

Dear Alumni, Students, and Colleagues, Greetings from the Fall-Term Newsletter! Classes are now entirely in-person, and the MEMS Department is engaging students and faculty at pre-Covid levels. There are challenges but at the same time the MEMS Department has much to celebrate. Students and faculty are achieving on several fronts, best exemplified by Prof. Buddy Clark who has had noteworthy successes with his company Diamond Kinetics (see cover story). This startup recently signed a partnership with Major League Baseball and inducted into the USA’s National Academy of Inventors. These notable successes complement Dr. Clark’s excellence in teaching and incorporating entrepreneurship into his courses. Indeed, student interest in entrepreneurship is significant and will undoubtedly increase; Dr. Clark and other MEMS/SSOE faculty are injecting more entrepreneurship content into classes. Stay tuned for more success during the next couple years!

Prof. Anne Robertson meanwhile was promoted to the special faculty rank of Distinguished Service Professor. According to the University

of Pittsburgh Faculty Handbook, this highest honor reflects “extraordinary, internationally recognized scholarly attainment.” Her contributions to faculty mentorship have been particularly “extraordinary” and I’m sure her significantly positive impact will continue.

Student achievements have been numerous this past year, but a standout was Asher Hancock (ME major) receiving a prestigious Barry Goldwater Scholarship, part of the Excellence in Education Foundation established by Congress in 1986 to honor the work of Senator Barry Goldwater. Award winners annually receive an amount equal to the cost of tuition, mandatory fees, books, and room and board until graduation. Congratulations Asher!

On the education front, the Department has recently increased efforts to strengthen computing skills in our undergraduate programs. Led by Prof. Hessam Babaee, a new computing skills sequence was implemented this fall in a series of three one-credit courses (Programming; Scientific Computing; and Data Science). The courses will be recorded using our recently installed Revolution LightBoard system and students will be required to take all three courses but may repeat any three during any semester to further strengthen their

Student Achievements

Pitt SOAR Named Finalist in NASA Challenge

In April, the Pitt Society of Astronautics and Rocketry (SOAR) team was named a finalist in NASA’s 2021 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Special Edition: Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge. The team traveled to the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA to compete in the finals. The team won two awards for the lightest and most innovative system.

Marion Alice Nye “Buzz” Barry Scholarship

Sarah Wielgosz, recent mechanical engineering graduate, was the 2022 winner of the Marion Alice Nye “Buzz” Barry Scholarship. Wielgosz joins fellow ME graduate, Aarti Patel, who was the inaugural winner of the scholarship last year.

skills (i.e., using an archive of lecture videos). This stackable approach to adding credits coupled with the online availability via LightBoard delivery provides an optimum education experience for our students. For more on this and other highlight, please regularly check our website (www.engineering.pitt.edu/mems) and also our recently established YouTube channel (use search words “Pitt MEMS”).

Finally, this newsletter highlights our excellent adjunct faculty, many of whom are associated with the Stephen R. Tritch Nuclear Engineering Program managed by the MEMS Department. The dedication to teaching that our adjunct faculty consistently demonstrate is truly inspiring.

There are many more highlights in this newsletter, but not enough space for me to review. I encourage you to read throughout and I am sure that you will agree that we have much to be proud of.

Best wishes and Hail to Pitt!

Dr. Brian Gleeson

Harry S. Tack Chair Professor Chairman, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Student Achievements

This scholarship is named in honor of Marion Alice Nye “Buzz” Barry, a licensed commercial pilot, certified flight and ground school instructor, a member of the Ninety-Nine Women Pilots Association, and one of the first women in the aviation industry. The scholarship can be used for tuition or sponsored academic research related to aerospace engineering.

Brooke Owens Fellowship

Aarti Patel (BSME ‘22) was named among the competitive 2021 Class of the Brooke Owens Fellowship. The organization recognizes exceptional undergraduate women and other gender minorities who are entering the aerospace industry.

Fellows are matched with an executive-level mentor to help launch their careers and will be invited to the annual Brooke Owens Summit, to be held virtually at the end of the year. This year, 44 undergraduates were chosen as “Brookies” out of more than 800 applicants.

Emily Grugan Receives Judy Simmons Memorial Scholarship, Society of Women Engineers

Emily Grugan, a MEMS junior majoring in MSE, received the Judy Simmons Memorial Scholarship given by the Society of Women Engineers. Grugan is one of nearly 289 recipients in 2021 who received part of the $1.2 million scholarship money awarded by the society. The mission of the SWE is to support those who identify as a female/woman and who are enrolled in an ABET-accredited bachelor or graduate student program in preparation for careers in engineering, engineering technology and computer science globally.

Grugan also received The Robert E. Rumcik ’68 Scholarship in Mechanical and Materials Engineering intended for two consecutive academic years and based on academic merit, an aspirational interest in metallurgy, and leadership qualities. Selection was based on an interview process conducted by the MEMS Department. and the scholarship will cover tuition costs for the school year for both recipients. Grugan joins MSE senior John Davison, who first received his scholarship as a junior in 2020.

The namesake of the scholarship, Robert Rumcik, retired as President of ELLWOOD Quality Steels at the ELLWOOD Group, Inc. in 2014. He earned a BS in Metallurgy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1968 and in 2000 received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Swanson School of Engineering in recognition of his significant career achievements. The ELLWOOD Group Inc. established this endowed scholarship in appreciation for Mr. Rumcik’s commendable service to the company.

Faculty Highlight

Paul Ohodnicki

Work led by Associate Professor Paul Ohodnicki will provide under-served rural and small electric utilities with access to new sensors and analytical tools that will give them a real-time picture of solar energy and other distributed energy resources throughout their systems. The project received $3 million from the Department of Energy through its Solar Energy Technologies Office.

The project will combine new low-cost distributed sensors with “virtual sensors,” which aggregate and analyze existing data that is already being measured by installed solar inverters at the grid interconnection.

In addition, it will integrate both existing and new data streams into advanced analytics being developed by industry (GE Global Research) and utility (through the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NRECA) partners on the project.

“Giving utilities an improved understanding of the value of solar power generation behind the meter could help them to provide their customers with clear signals and incentives to promote a shift toward increased renewable energy,” said Ohodnicki.

The researchers will also take advantage of state-of-the-art commercial microphasor measurement units (micro-PMUs) sensors. They will aggregate data collected across a large number of newly developed sensor nodes and integrate them through commercial micro-PMUs to provide additional value and reduce communication costs, perform local analysis of aggregated data, and to provide a subset of that information to the utilities.

The project was selected as a part of the SETO 2021 Systems Integration and Hardware Incubator funding program, an effort to advance projects that will improve solar

technologies on the grid. It is one of several projects that will enhance solar energy’s contribution to grid resilience and reliability by developing communications systems that integrate distributed sensor measurements into utility data systems.

The project will build on technology originally developed through the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, putting it to work in rural, traditionally underserved co-operatives with a goal of ultimately enabling widespread deployment and commercialization.

Ohodnicki will partner with researchers from North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratory, GE Global Research, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association on the project. The group is also partnering with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), which allows greater collaboration directly with rural utilities to facilitate technology adoption.

Getting AMPED Up

Led by Director Paul Ohodnicki (MEMS) and Co-Director Brandon Grainger (ECE), the AMPED Consortium was formed in 2020 with the mission to develop an innovation ecosystem and educational programs for advancing soft magnetic materials and component technologies spanning fundamental science to end-use application in collaboration with various agencies, offices and programs.

On October 7, 2021, the Advanced Magnetics for Power and Energy Development (AMPED) held its inaugural consortium meeting both remotely and in person at the Pittsburgh Energy Innovation Center.

The event had 75 attendees, comprised of 25 members from universities and 50 from industry

representing 35 unique companies. Lynn Peterson from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Andre Pereira from the Department of Energy (DOE) were the keynote speakers. The schedule also included a student poster session and time for networking with other attendees.

Engineering Science Program

The Engineering Science Program, affiliated with the University Honors College, provides students with a personally optimized scientific and engineering training experience, allowing them to reach beyond and across traditional disciplines and boundaries.

The program is directed by Associate Professor Paul Ohodnicki, a 2005 alumnus of the original Engineering Physics program, now incorporated as one of the concentration options within the broader Engineering Science program.

“My time in the Engineering Physics program provided me with a broad perspective across scientific and engineering disciplines combined with a depth of understanding within the fields of my specialization that set me apart from colleagues – even those who had graduated from

top-ranked undergraduate programs,” he said. “I am thrilled at the opportunity to give back to the program and to Pitt as the Engineering Science Program Director and am committed to seeing the program realize its full potential in terms of both impact and stature moving into the future.”

Engineering Science offers four interdisciplinary areas of concentration and ultimately aims to prepare students to think analytically across disciplines to tackle future technical challenges.

“Students who graduate from the program possess a unique combination of a top-tier rigorous technical education and an ability to tackle interdisciplinary challenges that distinguishes them from their peers,” he continued.

The inaugural consortium meeting was just the first of what is intended to be a yearly meeting, and the AMPED Consortium also plans to engage the group throughout the year with monthly technical seminars and quarterly project meetings to ensure the projects and center goals stay focused on real-world needs.

Nuclear Program

Swanson School Receives $1.6M in Advanced Nuclear Energy R&D Funding

Interdisciplinary researchers at the Swanson School of Engineering received $1.6 million in advanced nuclear energy R&D funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The investment announced this week is part of more than $61 million in funding awards for 99 advanced nuclear energy technology projects in 30 states and a U.S. territory, $58 million of which is awarded to U.S. universities.

The Swanson School’s funding is through the DOE Nuclear Energy University Program, which seeks to maintain U.S. leadership in nuclear research by providing top science and engineering faculty and their students

with opportunities to develop innovative technologies and solutions for civil nuclear capabilities.

“Pittsburgh is the global nexus of peacetime nuclear energy history and research, and we are proud to contribute to its continued success,” noted Brian Gleeson, Harry S. Tack Professor and Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Our faculty and students have a strong foundation in modeling and simulation, materials, sensing technologies, and nondestructive evaluation of critical reactor components, and so we are thankful to DOE and NEUP for supporting our research.”

The Pitt awards in the Fuel Cycle Research and Development category include: Fragmentation and Thermal Energy Transport of Chromia-doped Fuels Under Transient Conditions

PI: Heng Ban, the Richard K. Mellon Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, and Director of the Stephen R. Tritch Nuclear Engineering Program, Swanson School of Engineering

Collaborators: Jie Lian, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Liping Cao and Yun Long, Westinghouse Electric Company

This project will focus on multiple aspects of experimental testing and engineeringscale modeling in understanding thermal energy transport from high burnup, fractured/ fragmented accident tolerant fuels, establishing a strong scientific basis to fill a critical knowledge data gap for modeling and simulation of transient fuel performance and safety, such as loss of coolant accident, for future integral testing and fuel licensing.

Fusion of Distributed Fiber Optics, Acoustic NDE, and Physics-Based AI for Spent Fuel Monitoring

PI: Paul Ohodnicki, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Swanson School of Engineering

Nuclear Education

Benefitting from Regional Expertise

While our full-time faculty are often the most known faces of the MEMS Department, our adjunct professors often play an integral part in meeting the teaching needs of our classes.

MEMS currently has 41 adjunct faculty rostered, most of whom teach one evening class every semester or every other semester.

Get to know five of our all-star adjuncts:

Dr. Tom Congedo

Associate Director of the Nuclear Program

Tom Congedo joined MEMS in October of 2014, after a 35-year industry career at Babcock & Wicox and Westinghouse. As Associate Director of the Nuclear Program, Tom is the administrative and curriculum face of the program. He is also the instructor for two courses: “Introduction to Nuclear Engineering,” and “Nuclear Operations and Safety.”

Dr. Vincent Esposito

Vincent “Vinny” Esposito retired from Westinghouse in 2011 after 43 years of service, where he worked for Steven Tritch, the Nuclear Program’s namesake. He received an Executive MBA from Pitt in 1992. His engineering bachelor’s degree came from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in Chemical Engineering and he earned his Doctorate in Science in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1968. Vinny teaches two graduate level classes at Pitt: Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Nuclear Plants and Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

Dr. David Griesheimer

Dave Griesheimer began teaching at Pitt in 2007 and has taught five different engineering courses throughout the years. He also works at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, in West Mifflin, PA. He has 20 years of industry experience, primarily at national laboratories.

Dr. Stephen Ludwick

Stephen Ludwick taught his first engineering class at Pitt in 1999, shortly after graduating with his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. Aside from his adjunct appointment, Steve works at Aerotech, a manufacturer of precision motion control equipment. Steve has 22 years of industry experience. Over the years, Steve has taught Intro to Engineering Analysis, Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Design II.

Dr. Sola Talabi

Sola Talabi began his career at Westinghouse where his most notable role was a nuclear design engineer and risk manager of new plants and advanced reactor groups. He spent 14 years at Westinghouse and also earned his MBA, master’s and PhD from Carnegie Mellon University during that time. In 2014, Sola left Westinghouse and opened his own nuclear consulting practice, Pittsburgh Technical. Sola co-teaches the course Nuclear Operations and Safety with Tom Congedo every semester, and is an advisor to a MEMS PhD student.

R&D

Collaborators: Kevin Chen, the Paul E. Lego Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Swanson School of Engineering; Ryan Meyer, Kayte Denslow, and Glenn Grant, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL); and Gary Cannell, Fluor Corporation

The proposal will leverage new concepts in the fusion between fiber optic distributed acoustic sensing and advanced acoustic nondestructive evaluation techniques with artificial intelligence enhanced classification frameworks to quantitatively characterize the state of dry cask storage containers for spent fuel monitoring, externally and non-invasively, without introducing additional risks of failure.

Additionally, Daniel G. Cole, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, Swanson School of Engineering, is a collaborator with Shanbin Shi, assistant professor of mechanical aerospace and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, on a $800,000 award to investigate the thermal and electric power dispatch and required control algorithms for dynamic heat dispatch of up to 50 percent of the thermal energy from a Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) plant to a hydrogen plant.

Nuclear Academics and Research

Nuclear energy contributes as much to meeting U. S. energy demand without emissions as any other source, renewable or otherwise. Engineers with a strong background in nuclear power, safety, and advanced plant design are crucial to the future of the industry. With this in mind, Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering proudly offers both a Masters of Science (30-credits) and Graduate Certificate (15-credits) in Nuclear Engineering.

The start of our nuclear program (now formally call the Stephen R. Tritch Nuclear Engineering Program) began by leveraging the knowledge base of Western PA, home to nuclear utility generators, commercial R&D companies and government agencies. The Program has grown and provides a unique combination of nuclear academics and research, across the MEMS Department and has a breadth of experienced industry professionals knowledgeable in neutronics, safety analysis, risk analysis, plant design, plant operations and advanced plant design. The collaboration between academics and industry knowledge has resulted in a unique curriculum, which

is continually improved to meet the needs of advancing nuclear technology and is taught by experts from the nuclear power industry.

The curriculum focuses on the different facets of nuclear power including energy generation, operations, safety, environmental issues, advanced reactors, and policy. By offering this program online, we provide students from around the globe the expertise of the nuclear industry without ever setting foot on campus.

Online Offerings

Pitt’s state of the art online technology makes it possible to attend lectures alongside of our on-campus students. In combining our online and on-campus classes, we are able to create a collaborative learning environment of students with similar interests but diverse educational and professional backgrounds. The flexibility to attend an on-campus class, join a lecture online, or view a recorded lecture enables the students to select the learning style that works best for them and their schedule.

Recent Alumna Makes Her Way to MARS

Bailey Cassler earned her first bachelor’s degree in Physics & Astronomy in 2006 from the University of Maryland. After several years of working jobs unrelated to her degree, she realized she wanted to make more of an impact on both her personal life and society as a whole. This realization led Cassler to the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Pittsburgh, where she began working on a second bachelor’s degree in 2018. Cassler quickly became one of the top students in the department, earning an A in almost every class she took.

While working on her studies, Cassler joined Assistant Professor Matt Barry’s research team as a research assistant on a project in collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Barry said, “While at Pitt, [Cassler] not only learned how to be an engineer and researcher, but a member of a community.”

Cassler left a paid undergraduate research position in order to pursue a volunteer opportunity working with Drs. Michael Durka and JPL’s Miles Smith to help design a probe that would drill/melt its way through Europa’s 10 km deep ice sheet in search of extraterrestrial life in the ocean below.

Cassler describes this experience as her most valuable one during her time at Pitt. She noted, “….we conceptualized a one of a kind spacecraft designed to accomplish things that have never been done before. Pushing the limits of autonomous robotic space exploration technology requires solving complex engineering challenges in completely novel situations. The work that I did with Dr. Barry taught me how to use the fundamental principles that we learn in class and apply them to investigating how to solve the real engineering challenge of an innovative mission concept to Europa.”

Upon graduation, Cassler was hired as a Thermal Engineer at JPL where she works on mission operations for the Perseverance Rover

and thermal design and analysis for the next Mars mission. She and her team will be bringing back samples from Mars to Earth for the first time as part of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. The project is currently on the first leg of its journey, collecting rock samples from Mars. Cassler works to assess telemetry to ensure the Rover is thermally healthy and stable.

She is also a member of the MSR Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) thermal team, helping to design and build the Lander that will help bring the samples back to Earth. She says, “It’s an incredibly complex robotic choreography that requires us to develop new cutting-edge technologies to explore space in the pursuit of scientific discoveries.”

The MEMS Department is incredibly excited about Cassler’s endeavors and is proud to have played in a role in helping her achieve her career goals.

Going Heavy Metal

Tucked away in the sub-basement of Pitt’s Benedum Hall, past the racecar parts spilling into hallways, you’ll find a giant machine that looks like a cross between a car garage and the entry port of a sci-fi spaceship. It’s a state-of-the-art 3D printer for metal – the first Gefertec arc605 at any university in the U.S.

For producing big, specialized metal parts, the machine is unbeatable, said Albert To, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and an expert on 3D printing.

“Even on the order of tens of parts, this is very advantageous,” he said. “And if you want to include some complexity, then you can’t do it any other way than 3D printing.”

The printer makes use of welding, melting wire made from metals like stainless steel, titanium and aluminum alloys and depositing it layer by layer. Previous metal 3D printers in the lab using lasers and metal powder could lay down a few hundred grams an hour; this one is an order of magnitude faster.

That makes the Gefertec printer ideal for producing larger parts that would normally have to be casted and tooled, an expensive approach that’s often not practical for manufacturing small-batch, specialty pieces.

One of To’s first projects, for instance, is to make a three-foot-long bridge joint for the U.S. Army that’s no longer manufactured.

While the technology has been around for decades, only in the past several years has it become reliable enough to gain widespread notice. “All of a sudden, there’s a very high interest in industry,” including in aerospace, nuclear power and oil and gas, To said.

The machine’s advanced software and “five-axis” capabilities where pieces can be rotated and tilted during printing means it can be used to create complex metal parts. But there are still plenty of kinks to work out. For instance, metals warp as they heat and cool, a process that To is using the new printer to study with funding from the U.S. Army and the Department of Energy.

Xavier Jimenez, a third-year PhD student in To’s lab, is developing a process to 3D print using a new type of high-strength aluminum that has potential applications in aerospace but tends to crack when welded.

“You have to tune all these different parameters to figure out what will produce the best-quality weld,” Jimenez said. “Every material behaves a little differently.”

Jimenez came to Pitt in part because he wanted to work with the Gefertec arc605, but COVID-19 threw a wrench in the gears, and the printer took three years to make its way to Pitt. The machine is larger than some studio apartments, and when it did arrive it had to be dropped into the lab piece-by-piece via crane and then assembled.

The team is now in the process of testing parameters for the 3D printing of different metals. By testing the approach for different metals, then using X-rays and testing material properties, they can start to model how the process affects a part – from visible warping to changes to the microscopic structure of the material.

Further out, To is collaborating with colleagues to create smart components where fiber-optic cables are embedded in 3D-printed metal parts to sense the temperature and deformation of the part.

“It was a lot of work to get all the pieces together to get the machine working,” Jimenez said. “We’re very happy that it’s here.”

–

Authored by Patrick Monahan for Pittwire, photography by Aimee Obidzinski

HONORS AWARDS

Faculty

Hessam Babaee Receives NIH Trailblazer Award

Hessam Babaee, assistant professor is the recipient of the National Institute of Health (NIH) R21 Trailblazer award for his project titled “Enhanced Clinical Diagnosis through Imaging and Modeling: A Machine Learning Data Fusion Framework.” The R21 grant mechanism from the NIH is intended to encourage exploratory/ developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development.

Katherine Hornbostel Receives Pitt STRIVE’s Oustanding DEI Service Award

The Pitt STRIVE program selected Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor, to receive the 2021 Outstanding DEI Service Award. This accolade recognizes her efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering.

Paul Ohodnicki Part of Pitt and NETL Team to Win Prestigious R&D 100 Award

NuSense Technology – High Spatial Resolution Optical Sensors for Harsh Environments, an innovation developed through a collaboration between the Swanson School of Engineering with

the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Lab (NETL) as co-developer, was one of the recipients of the 2022 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine. Four patents are the foundation for the NuSense technology, a distributed optical fiber system designed to function in the extreme environments with extreme radiations, high temperatures, and highly reactive gas atmosphere. Ohodnicki, now at Pitt, was then an NETL research scientist on the team.

Wei Xiong Receives NSF Career Award

Wei Xiong, assistant professor, received a $526,334 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project is titled “Unraveling Fundamental Mechanisms Governing Grain Refinement in Complex Concentrated Alloys Made by Additive Manufacturing Towards Strong and Ductile Structures” and has a five-year duration.

Students

Asher Hancock Receives Churchill Scholarship

Asher Hancock, a 2022 mechanical engineering graduate with minors in computer science and mathematics, received a Churchill Scholarship, funding a year of study at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He is one of 18 awardees this year, and the fifth Pitt student to be honored with the award. Hancock also received a Goldwater Scholarship in 2021.

Zachary Egolf Receives

Prestigious Rickover Fellowship in Nuclear Engineering

Zachary Egolf, mechanical graduate student, received an NSF graduate research fellowship but instead accepted a prestigious Rickover Fellowship in Nuclear Engineering. His advisor is Jeff Vipperman.

Seth Strayer Receives NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities Award

Seth Strayer, a second year mechanical engineering PhD student, received a prestigious NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) award.

The goal of the award is to sponsor U.S. citizen and permanent resident graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration and economic future.

Steven Tsoukalas Receives Naugle Fellowship

Steven Tsoukalas, mechanical engineering sophomore, has been awarded the Naugle Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering for 2022. The fellowship comes in the form of a one-time payment that will be used to reduce tuition debt.

MEMS Promotions

Wei Xiong, PhD to associate professor

New Faculty and Staff

Ben Erichson – Assistant Professor

Dr. Erichson was hired to fill an opening in the area of data-driven modeling and artificial intelligence. He earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Hagen, master’s degree in applied statistics and datamining and PhD in statistics from the University St. Andrews. He was previously a postdoc at University of California Berkeley.

Zach Harris – Assistant Professor

Dr. Harris succeeds retired professor Gerald Meier in the area of extreme environments. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in mechanical

engineering with a minor in materials science from Boise State University and master’s and PhD in materials science and engineering from University of Virginia. He was previously a research scientist at University of Virginia.

Rick Mishler – Graduate Coordinator

Mr. Mishler earned his MBA with a specialization in Health Care Administration, a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, and an Associate’s Degree in Business Management.

Jake Eged – Financial Administrator

Mr. Eged earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2020. He began working at Pitt in the Parking & Transportation office before transferring

ANNE ROBERTSON – Distinguished Professor

Recognizing her contributions and service in support of teaching and research, as well as her development of a holistic mentorship program for new faculty, the University of Pittsburgh promoted Anne Robertson to Distinguished Service Professor, the highest honor that the University can accord a member of the professoriate.

Robertson, a William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Engineering, holds a primary appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science (MEMS) with a secondary in Bioengineering, and is nationally recognized for her research in hemodynamics, cerebral vascular disease, and the formation and treatment of intracranial aneurysms.

“I cannot be more excited for Anne and her promotion to the highest faculty rank at Pitt, joining an elite rank of individuals in our department and school,” said Brian Gleeson, the Harry S. Tack Chair Professor and MEMS Department Chair, who nominated Robertson for the position.

Robertson is also founding director of the Swanson School’s Center for Faculty Excellence, which helps newly recruited assistant professors navigate the teaching, research, scholarship, and support systems of the university environment. Young professors are mentored by a committee of interdisciplinary senior faculty from throughout Pitt as well as from Carnegie Mellon University. The Center aims to shepherd new faculty through their new tenure, improve retention and encourage self-growth.

“I am deeply appreciative of the opportunities and support I have had to pursue initiatives in research and service at Pitt, while maintaining my

to MEMS. He is also currently in his second semester of the Professional MBA program at the Katz Graduate School of Business.

Erica (Stevens) Erickson –Lab Technician

Dr. Erickson earned her bachelor’s degree in materials science engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015 and her PhD in the same subject also from Pitt in 2020. She was a member of Markus Chemielus’ AM3 lab group where she studied additive manufacturing of magnetocaloric materials. She joined the MEMS staff in January 2021 where she now manages and trains new users on lab instruments.

engagement in classroom teaching,” she said. “It has been a privilege and inspiration to work with our outstanding junior faculty at Pitt through the Center for Faculty Excellence and gratifying to see the selfless commitment of my colleagues to mentoring these faculty across department, school and even university lines.

“The University of Pittsburgh has been by academic home since I completed my postdoctoral training and so it is particularly meaningful to me to be promoted to the level of Distinguished Professor.”

Material Advantage Making an Impact

Material Advantage (MA), the premier student program for materials science and engineering (MSE) students, serves as an umbrella group for several professional societies. The professional societies include: the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), Association of Iron & Steel Technology (AIST), The Materials Information Society (ASM International) and The Minerals, Materials and Metals Society (TMS). Membership to MA gives students access to these

societies along with scholarships, internships, conferences and more that otherwise would not be available to them.

All MA memberships are sponsored by Ellwood Group. Ellwood also provides speakers on various topics during MA meetings and offers yearly facility tours to the MA group and faculty.

MA group meetings are both social and professional, but the most important aspect

is community building. MSE students do not have MSE-specific classes (without other majors) until their junior year. The MA group helps students connect with their peers. Material Advantage also serves as the contact between students and faculty members, allowing the group to advocate for the general student body.

MA aims to increase awareness about this special group, and increased the MSE program by over 20 students this past year.

The Revolution Lightboard

The newest pieces of teaching technology for the MEMS department lives in the Materials Metrology, Characterization, and Learning Lab. The Revolution Lightboard is primarily a large piece of glass facilitating the functionality of what is essentially a see-through whiteboard. The lightboard also has a video camera, microphone, speaker, lighting strips, control pad, and fluorescent markers.

Two monitors are set on top of each other behind the large glass screen with black curtains to block out reflections. The top monitor looks like a normal desktop, while the bottom monitor is used to view the presenter and board exactly as a recording would show them. Using the overlay feature, users can drag their documents from the top monitor down to a virtual monitor, showing both themselves and their presentation at once. Users can also write on the glass with markers just like a normal whiteboard. Though these hand-written notes seen through the glass would normally appear backwards in the frame, the computer automatically flips the whole frame to make the text readable to viewers.

Hessameddin Babaee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is the pioneer lightboard user for the Department.

Getting It to Stick: Grabbing CO2 Out of the Air

Direct air capture is hard to do. Pitt researchers are designing new materials that selectively catch carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Direct air capture may be key to saving Earth from the effects of climate change, but there’s a catch: It’s really hard to do.

Direct air capture (DAC) technologies are designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air, although there’s still a lot of room for improvement in DAC materials. Other molecules in the air, especially water, are in much higher concentrations than carbon dioxide, or CO2. They start competing with each other, and ultimately, carbon dioxide isn’t what’s caught – at least in high quantities.

“If materials are good at grabbing carbon dioxide, they’re usually good at grabbing multiple gasses,” explained Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. “It’s really hard to tune these materials to grab carbon dioxide but nothing else, and that’s what this research is focused on.”

Hornbostel is joined by co-investigators Nathaniel Rosi, a Pitt chemistry professor with a secondary appointment in the Swanson School and Christopher E. Wilmer, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow in the Swanson School. Janice Steckel, a research scientist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and graduate students Paul Boone, Austin Lieber and Yiwen He will also be working on the project. Together, they published a journal paper for the Royal Society of Chemistry about creating new metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, designed to capture just carbon dioxide.

MOFs, a research focus in Wilmer’s lab, are highly regarded for their ability to utilize porous membranes to capture large volumes of gasses and can be designed via computational modeling rather than traditional trial-and-error.

The MOF would have a core-shell design, meaning carbon dioxide would be trapped in the core, while the shell is able to block other gasses, specifically water. The shell and the core would be made from different MOF materials, with the shell MOF designed to slow down water and the core MOF designed to bind CO2

“If you’re trying to work with an adhesive, it can be hard to come up with something that’s sticky to one material that’s not also sticky to the other material, and that’s true all the way down to the molecular scale,” Wilmer said. “So, when we make a material that’s very sticky to carbon dioxide, inadvertently, it’s usually also sticky to water. We’re trying to find a way to shield those sticky surfaces from water.”

Currently, the group is using computational modeling to weed through candidates for the best materials for both the MOF’s core and shell.

Research into direct air capture is still early in development, but already there are multiple potential uses for these technologies. According to Hornbostel, some in the field propose massive installations in unoccupied areas, while others prefer using existing infrastructure where steam and electricity are already available. But either way, for this technology to work, there needs to be a lot of moving air – which could potentially be anywhere.

Researchers have long-term plans for direct air capture outside of reversing the effects of climate change. This technology can also aid in space exploration as well as living on other planets.

“When we’re on other planets, like Mars, direct air capture is how we get fuel to return to Earth,” Wilmer said. “Every technology we design pushes the ball forward.”

The paper, titled “Designing optimal core-shell MOFs for direct air capture,” was published in the journal Nanoscale

Swanson School of Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

636 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261

engineering.pitt.edu/mems

PPG Appoints MEMS, Katz Alumnus Tim Knavish as New President and CEO

This October Tim Knavish BSMechE ‘87 MBA ‘93 was named PPG president and chief executive officer of Pittsburgh-based PPG, effective January 1, 2023. Knavish will join the company’s Board of Directors, effective October 20, 2022.

Knavish, 57, who has served as PPG’s chief operating officer since March, will succeed Chairman and CEO Michael McGarry, 64, in the role of CEO. McGarry, who has served as CEO since September 2015, will become Executive Chairman, effective January 1, 2023.

A Pittsburgh native, Knavish earned both a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and MBA from the University of Pittsburgh. He currently serves on the board of directors of the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Knavish joined PPG in 1987 at PPG’s global headquarters in Pittsburgh. He advanced through roles of increasing responsibility in several key businesses and functions, including serving as plant manager for the East Point, Georgia, architectural coatings manufacturing facility. In 2005,

Knavish moved to Australia as managing director, Australia and New Zealand coatings, and general manager, automotive refinish. In 2007, Knavish returned to the U.S. where he assumed responsibility for automotive coatings, Americas, and in early 2010, he was named a vice president. In 2012, he was appointed global vice president, protective and marine coatings and in 2016 became senior vice president, automotive coatings.