Inside this issue…2-3 Projects Senior Project AwardsThe WPI China ProgramHaving an Immediate ImpactDoing Projects, Right from Day OneWPI in AfricaBoldly Going Where the Wind Is Blowing

4-5Research Fischer, Hussein, Lados, Van de Ven

6-7NewsPhDs AwardedStudent, Faculty Awards People on the MoveInnovation and Entrepreneurship

8Education that Matters

Mechanical Engineering

A Newsletter from Worcester Polytechnic Institute November 2009

Professor Apelian is the first faculty member at WPI elected to theNAE. He is world renowned for his pioneering contributions tometal processing and materials science and his leadership in engi-neering research and education. He is the recipient of many otherprofessional awards and recognitions.

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Apelian Elected to National Academy of EngineeringThe big news this year is the election of Diran Apelian, Howmet Professor of Engineeting and

director of WPI’s Metal Processing Institute, to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). His

citation reads, “For contributions to solidification processing and for outstanding leadership in engi-

neering education and university/industry collaboration.” Election to the NAE is among the highest

professional distinctions accorded to engineers. Membership honors those who have made outstand-

ing contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, sig-

nificant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing

fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/

implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

WPI Team Wins Half a Million Dollars in NASA Robotics Regolith ChallengeA WPI team led by Paul Ventimiglia, an undergraduate engineering student, won first place and a

$500,000 prize in the NASA 2009 Regolith (moondust) Excavation Challenge. The competition

was held Oct. 17-18 at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The team, Paul’s

Robotics, beat 22 other teams of professional engineers and college and high school students from

across the country to earn the top honor. The second- and third-place teams also featured WPI

alumni. Paul’s team, which consisted of engineers and computer scientists from several departments

at WPI, designed, built, and programmed the robot, Moonraker 2.0,

in the mechanical engineering shops.

“This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped to do in college,” says

Paul. “The WPI community has been enormously supportive and we

were able to pull together a truly interdisciplinary team with a very di-

verse but complementary set of skills.” The motivation for the Regolith

Excavation Challenge was NASA’s quest for new ideas for excavation

techniques that do not require excessively heavy machines or large

amounts of power. The competition called for teams to design and

build robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil (regolith), a

function that, for NASA, will be an important part of any construction

projects or processing of natural resources on the Moon.

Senior Project AwardsThe Provost’s Award in Aero-space Engineering was won byJeremy Chapman and NathanielLaw for their Mech anical Autono -mous Jellyfish. The underwatervehicle looks like a jellyfish andswims like a jellyfish, movingautono mouslyusing littlepower. Theteam createdthe outer shellusing the de-partment’s newly purchased 3Dprinter and a propulsion systemutilizing a memory shape alloy.The jellyfish was tested using aphotodiode to detect an LEDsource, but ultimately the the goal is to use an ultrasonic sig-nal. Professor Michael Demetriouadvised the project.

The Provost’s Award in Mech ani -cal Engineering was presented toMarc Balboa, Ivo Dobrev, andRyan Fosset for their project,MEMS for Real-time Imaging Applications. The students investi-gated an innovative approachusing micro-electro-mechanicalsystems (MEMS)-based devicesand laser interferometric micros -copy for real-time thermal imag-

ing. Theydemon-strated thatthey couldget morethan 8-fold

increase in thermal resolutioncompared to existing high-endthermo imaging systems. Profes-sor Cosme Furlong-Vazquez wasthe project advisor.

What is it that makes a WPI education so special? For most of our students it islikely to be WPI’s innovative projects program. It’s a program that’s both oldand new. Projects have been at the core of the WPI academic program for morethan 30 years, but as the world changes and new challenges and opportunitiesemerge, the program changes to meet those needs in new and exciting ways.

The WPI China ProgramAs China becomes an economic superpower, newly graduated engineering students increasingly findthat their jobs take them there. The WPI China Program, now in its fifth year, offers students an

opportunity to do theirsenior project in collab-oration with Chinesestudents. Most projectsare done at HuazhongUniversity of Scienceand Technology (HUST)in Wuhan and the stu-dent teams usually workon projects sponsoredby American companieswith operations inChina. This past sum-mer more than 20 WPIstudents worked withstudents from HUST,

Southeast University, Nanjing University, and Beijing Jiaotong University on eight projects spon-sored by Caterpillar, Saint Gobain, CIS, Aucksun Metal, BYC and YPC, SCC, HUST, and BJTU.Pictured are several participants in the 2008 project presentation.

The final presentations drew nearly one hundred attendees from several companies and univer-sities. “The students brought different strengths to the teams,” says Professor Yiming (Kevin) Rong,who set up and runs the program. “Both the Chinese students and their professors were impressedby the initiative and leadership of the American students in getting the project started. The Chinesestudents’ strong analytical skills, however, became a real asset as the designs became more specific.”

The WPI/HUST collaboration involves other mutual exchanges, at both the undergraduateand graduate levels—a group of HUST students stay at WPI during the spring term. The exchangesare designed to give the students the opportunity to gain cross-cultural experience while working ona professional project, as well as to develop an appreciation for the host country.

Having an Immediate ImpactMany WPI senior projects are done in collaboration with industrial partners. One of the oldest andmost successful such partnership is the Gillette Project Center in Boston. Gillette (now part of Proc-ter & Gamble Co.) is the world leader in grooming products. Every year several teams of mechani-cal engineering seniors go to the South Boston Manufacturing Center where they work on projectsranging from the design of equipment for automated production systems to the analysis and model-ing of the kinematics, dynamics, and vibrations of existing equipment. These projects have often re-sulted in improvement of the highly automated production processes used at Gillette.

“It was extremely exciting to get to work on and solve real problems, and see our solution be-come part of the production line,” says mechanical engineering senior David Willens, who workedin a team redesigning a product insertion mechanism for the automatic assembly line. The goal was to reduce both scrap rate and machine downtime for mainten-ance and repair. “It is immensely gratifying to see our students contributing to the solution of real problems,” says Professor Robert Norton, who has run the Gillette Project Center for several years. “The students really get to show how amazing they are.”

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Projects… Projects…

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Doing Projects—Right from Day OneTomorrow’s engineers will face unprecedented challenges in a“flat, crowded, and hot” world and mechanical engineering will be the key to addressing those. The WPI Great Problem Seminars(GPS) is designed to introduce first year students to problem solv-ing and project work in the context of these challenges. Last yearME professors Diran Apelian and Brian Savilonis taught two ofthe Great Problem Seminars, with colleagues from the Humanities

and Arts Department. Apelian’s course

focused on buildingsustainability and Savilonis’s addressedenergy. “It was amaz-ing to see how quicklythe students got up tospeed and the enthu -siasm they put intotheir projects. Manyof them came up with

ideas we would never have imagined,” Apelian says of his experi-ence teaching the course. “This is the first time I have taught afirst year course and I am really looking forward to doing it again.”All sections of the GPS run through the fall semester and end witha poster presentation. Above, Savilonis and Apelian chat with theirstudents during the presentations.

WPI in AfricaFor the junior Interactive Qualifying Project—a unique aspect of a WPI education—students explore the effect of technology on society in diverse settings. More than half our students do theirprojects at centers around the world. Many members of themechanical engineering faculty have supervised projects atthese centers; this year Professor Holly Ault spent eightweeks in Namibia with several teams of students.

One team evaluated the livelihoods of the San people in Schoonheid, a settlement near the Botswana border. Al-though the study addressed a broad range of factors, therewas a special focus on nutrition. In Namibia’s semiarid cli-mate, agriculture and water resources are critical factors inensuring food security. The students assessed food sources,dietary habits, agricultural practices, income generation fromagriculture, livestock, and other sources, along with such resources as water and fuel. They used community participa-tion methods (group interviews and observation) while livingin tents and cooking on open fires for three weeks to developrecommendations for improving the livelihoods of the resi-dents in the settlements.

WPI now offers several project opportunities in Africa—in Namibia, Cape Town, and Morocco. These project cen-ters complement more than 20 already existing centers invarious other parts of the world. At right, the WPI projectteam “Nutrition” with children from the Skoonheid Resettle-ment Farm.

Boldly Going Where the Wind Is Blowing“Low cost renewable electricity would be the biggest game-changerthat I can think of,” muses Professor David Olinger as he describesthe WPI Kite Power Team project, which he supervises. Wind isalready emerging as the leading renewable source of electricity, butwind turbines are expensive. Kites have the potential to extractpower from the wind much more economically. They cost lessthan tower-mounted turbines and reach higher elevations, wherethe wind blows stronger and steadier. The Kite Power Team, con-sisting of several seniors, has already built a working one-kilowattprototype, shown below. In addition to serving as a prototype forlarge-scale systems and helping the students learn about the chal-lenges in harnessing energy from the wind, the prototype couldserve as a power generator for remote regions. The students built a mathematical model to examine the dynamics of the kite and the base, before building the prototype. Support was provided by Rohm and Haas Company, in Woburn, Mass.; the Heifer International Overlook Farm in Rutland, Mass.; and the EPA’s P3 (People, Prosperity, and the Planet) Award Program.

…and More Projects

Gregory S. Fischer joined the ME faculty in the summer of2008 and now heads the Automation and Interventional Medicine(AIM) Robotics Research Laboratory.

“The opportunities for robotics in health care are simply limitless,” says Professor Fischer, “and the emphasis at WPI on robotics and the life sciences makes it the right place to pursue medical robotics.” Fischer received his PhD in mechanical engi-neering from Johns Hopkins University in 2008, but has BS andMS degrees in both mechanical and electrical engineering. “In robotics you really must have an understanding of the mechanicaland electrical aspects of a system—and that is just to get started,”he says. The primary focus of Fischer’s research is the design anddevelopment of medical robotics and systems for robot-assisted sur-gery with a spotlight on enabling technologies for MRI-compatiblerobotic systems. Current projects in the AIM Laboratory includean MRI-compatible robot for precision deep-brain-stimulationprobe placement for treatment of Parkinson’s Disease symptomsbased on real-time MRI image guidance; a pneumatically operatedMRI robot for image-guided transperineal prostate cancer diagnosisand therapy; development and evaluation of various types of MRI-compatible sensors, actuators, and controllers; and augmented reality procedural guidance, training, and assessment though theuse of image overlay technique. Although just completing his firstyear at WPI, Fischer has already secured significant external fundingfor his research, including a three-year New Investigator Awardfrom the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program’s(CDMRP) Prostate Cancer Research Program. In addition to work-ing with his graduate students at WPI, Fischer has established collaborations with a number of institutions, including UMass Memorial Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Islam I. Hussein claims, “I am really interested in the way theworld works, and that means I am interested in nonlinear dynamics and control theory.”

Professor Hussein received his PhD in aerospace engineeringfrom the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2005, and spent a year at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as a post-doctoral researcher before joining the WPI faculty in 2006. At WPI he heads the Control and Navigation of Multiple Vehicles(CaN MuVe) Laboratory where he and his students are currentlyworking on several projects in the area of complex multiagent sensornetwork systems with application to space situational awareness,underwater surveillance, and multiple spacecraft design and opti-mization for high resolution interferometric imaging. Specific projects include an autonomous underwater multivehicle system,and a two-boat autonomous system (already tested in the WPIswimming pool). He also has an interest in applying his researchon network systems to individual-based evolutionary social dy -namics. “Once you start looking at networked agents,” he says, “youfind applications everywhere.”

In 2009 Hussein was selected for the highly competitive AirForce Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, where he continued todevelop his research on space situational awareness. As part of thisfellowship, he spent two months in Albuquerque, N.M., at the AirForce Research Laboratory. Hussein has established a number ofcollaborations, at WPI and at other academic institutions, at na-tional laboratories, and with industry.

“Once you start looking atnetworked agents, you findapplications everywhere.”

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Focus on Research

5

Emerging Leaders

Diana A. Lados completed her PhD in materials science atWPI in 2004. She stayed at WPI, working in the Metal ProcessingInstitute, and joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2007.Her research interests and expertise are in materials processing andmechanical behavior of materials with a focus on failure preventionand increased reliability and recyclability.

Professor Lados established and directs the Integrative Materi-als Design Center (iMdc), which is dedicated to advancing the stateof the art and practice in sustainable materials-process-componentdesign and manufacturing for high-performance, reliability, and recyclability through knowledge creation and dissemination, andthrough education. “I passionately believe that current concernsabout energy efficiency and sustainability call for a new design philosophy based on material-process-component integration,” shesays. “To establish that requires us to develop connective knowledgeand find bold new ways to work with industry. And WPI, with itsagility and dedication to real-world problems, is the ideal place todo so.” Several companies have already joined the center, each pay-ing an annual membership fee. Lados has worked in a number ofareas, including fatigue, fatigue crack growth, and fracture of engi-neering materials—light metal alloys and composites and powdermetallurgy steels, solidification processing of cast alloys, green man-ufacturing, microstructure characterization and microstructure per-formance relationships, residual stress, plasticity, and fracturemechanics. She has been recognized for her research accomplish-ments in several ways, including the 2008 Orr Early Career Awardand Orr Best Paper Award given by the Materials Division ofASME and the 2010 Robert Lansing Hardy Award given by TMSfor exceptional promise of a successful career in materials science.

James D. Van de Ven, assistant professor and head of theMechanical Energy and Power Systems (MEPS) Laboratory at WPI,says, “It is all about energy—but we treat energy very casually. Improving the efficiency of converting and storing the energy wealready have has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases and ourdependency on foreign oil significantly.”

Before joining the ME faculty in summer 2007, he receivedhis PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2006 and worked for a year at the NSF-sponsoredEngineering Research Center for Compact and Efficient FluidPower. His research interests include hybrid vehicles, energy storage,energy conversion, fluid power, a high-speed on-off valve for switch-mode hydraulic circuits, a flywheel-accumulator for compact energystorage, and asw i t c h -mod econtinuously variable transmission. Funding is provided by industry and industry consortiums, including the California EnergyCommission, the National Fluid Power Association, and Solid-Works Corporation.

Professor Van de Ven says he decided to join the WPI facultynot just for the academic quality but for the institutional emphasison moving technology to the “real world.” His entrepreneurial sidewas rewarded this year by the 2009 Kalenian Award, which he wonwith MS student Allan Katz. The Kalenian Award is given on acompetitive basis and supports innovative ideas for the developmentof commercial products. Van de Ven and Katz will receive $20,000to help develop their invention—a high-speed hydraulic valve foruse in switch-mode control in hydraulic hybrid vehicles.

“It’s all about energy.”

PhDs Awarded 2008–09

Brian Albert DewhirstCastability Control in Metal Castingvia Fluidity Measures: Application ofError Analysis to Variations inFluidity TestingAdvisor: Diran Apelian

Hamid R. GhadyaniTetrahedral Meshes in BiomedicalApplications: Generation, BoundaryRecovery, and QualityEnhancementsAdvisor: John Sullivan

Ryan Thomas MarinisDevelopment and Implementationof Automated InterferometricMicroscope for Study of MEMSInertial SensorsAdvisor: Ryszard Pryputniewicz

James Michael PartridgeDevelopment and Implementationof Diagnostics for Unsteady Small-scalePlasma PlumesAdvisor: Nikolaos Gatsonis

Radhakrishnan PurushothamanEvaluation and Implementation of Heat Treat Furnace ModelAdvisor: Yiming Rong

Murali Murugavel Magnetic Resonance ImageSegmentation Using Pulse CoupledNeural NetworksAdvisor: John Sullivan

Kimon SymeoidisThe Controlled DiffusionSolidification Process:Fundamentals and PrinciplesAdvisor: Diran Apelian

Siju ThomasMultiscale Modeling of Thin Films inDirect Numerical Simulations ofMultiphase FlowsAdvisor: Gretar Tryggvason

Virendra Sitaram WarkePredicting the Response of PowderMetallurgy Steel Components toHeat TreatmentAdvisor: Makhlouf Makhlouf

David Willens ’09 won the ASMEStudent Manufacturing Design Awardat the 2008 ASME International Con-ference on Manufacturing Science andEngineering held at Northwestern Uni-versity in Chicago. The double major(mechanical and manufacturing engi-neering) took the top prize based onhis project, “Three Cylindrical Die Forced Thru-Feed Spline RollingAdaptation.” Dave is shown receiving his award from HowardGreis, president of Kinefac Corporation and a member of the WPIDepartment of Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Board.

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Student and Faculty Awards, 2008–09Indraneel Sircar ’09, at right, was named to the Second Team in USAToday’s 2009 All-USA College Academic Team program. Studentsawarded this recognition excel in scholarship and extend their intellec-tual abilities beyond the classroom to benefit society. Sircar’s achieve-ment was nationally noted in April 29, 2009, when the publication

announced the winners. Indraneel also received WPI’s 2009 SalisburyPrize, awarded to the most meritorious seniors.

Eta Kappa Nu, the electrical and computer engineering honor society,recognized Charles “Chuck” Gammal ’09, an ME/ECE double major, with the outstanding ECEstudent achievements award in 2008.

The Heald Brothers Scholarship, created through the generosity of the Heald Foundation, providestuition grants to junior mechanical engineering majors. The scholarship identifies and supports outstanding young men and women who represent the spirit of “Yankee Ingenuity.” For the firsttime ever, all of the 2008–09 nominees and awardees were women! The newest Heald Scholars areMorgan Guardino, Kelly Johnson, Sabrina Varanelli, and Rachel Salvatori.

Professor Diran Apelian received the 2009 Chairman's Exemplary Faculty Prize “for his extraordinary achievements as a researcher and educator, his national leadership in metals process-ing, and his tireless devotion to the cause of innovation in engineering education.” Apelian alsoserved as the 2008 president of TMS, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

Professor Mark Richman received the 2009 Russell M. Searle Instructorship (Teacher) award andProfessor Nikos Gatsonis received the Morgan Distinguished Instructorship (Advisor) award.

Assistant Professor Diana Lados received the Orr Early Career Award at the ASME congress inBoston on November 4, 2008.

Assistant Professor Islam Hussein was selected as a Faculty Fellow for the 2009 Air Force SummerFaculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) at AFRL.

Professor Emeritus Raymond Hagglund ’56 received the 2009 William R. Grogan Award in recognition of his tireless efforts in support of the mission of WPI.

News…

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More News…People on the MoveProfessor Richard D. Sisson was appointed dean of graduate studies for a three-year period, effec-tive July 1, 2009. In his new position he oversees all aspects of graduate education at WPI. Sissonbrings a wealth of experience to the post. He serves as director of the Materials Science and theManufacturing Engineering programs within the ME Department and as president of the ASMHeat Treating Society. He has supervised a large number of both master’s and doctoral projects and

in 2007 received the WPI Chairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize. His duties are split evenly betweenthe ME Department and the Dean of Graduate Studies.

This summer, the Mechanical Engineering Department welcomed two new faculty members:Simon W. Evans obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in the UK in 2009. He received his BSc from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and his MS from MIT. Before movingto the UK for his doctoral work, Professor Evans worked in the aerospace industry. His research at Cambridge University involved the use of advanced actuation concepts for control of the boundarylayer on the suction surface of compressor blades, with applications in aircraft engines.

Stephen S. Nestinger received his PhD from the University of California, Davis, where he also obtained his BS and MS. His doctoral research focused on the design and control of intelligentmechatronic systems, including the development of an autonomous pseudooptimum behavior aggregation method for goal-oriented control of autonomous systems, a retrofitted agile manufac-turing workcell, and a highway-based vehicle detection system.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship WPI has always been about making new ideas work in the real world. However, new times bringnew challenges and require new approaches. More than ever before, engineers today must be creative and understand the context of their creations.

The mechanical engineering faculty have been involved in two initiatives this year. ProfessorRichard Sisson has been working with WPI Trustee Curt Carlson, CEO of SRI, on reinforcing our emphasis on innovation. Carlson, along with collaborator Bill Wilmot, conducted a two-day work-shop last summer, and a one-day follow-up during the spring. Sisson also led a faculty workinggroup integrating innovation into the curriculum.

Under funding from the Kern Family Foundation, ME department head Grétar Tryggvasonand Jerry Schaufeld (professor of practice in the Department of Management) taught a course onentrepreneurship aimed at first year students. The course was overbooked the first time it was taughtand the next offering is already oversubscribed.

“The engineer of the 21st century must appreciate that the commercialization of technology is part of the engineers job,” says Schaufeld, who put his engineering degree to use founding andrunning several companies. “Even if they don’t establish their own companies, they must under-stand the context in which they work.”

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Education that MattersUniversity faculty, like most people, have a love-hate relationship with

rankings. It all depends on how well we are ranked. At small, specialized

schools like WPI we usually feel that we are treated unfairly by rankings

such as those done the US World News and Report, where a significant

fraction of the score depends on opinion surveys. I have filled out several

of those and there is no question that you cannot help favoring large and

well-known schools. You simply do not have the time to dig into the details, examine the quality of

the programs and the faculty, or assess the success of the graduates. Thus, our outcomes-based,

project-centric curriculum, that does so much for our students,

often counts for little. Recently, however, a ranking that we love

has made the news. Last summer Payscale.com conducted a sur-

vey of how much money university graduates make. WPI ranked

number nine! Of all universities! Nationally!

This was not exactly a surprise to us. We constantly hear from our alumni and their employers

how well our students are prepared to deal with real problems in the real world. The survey is not

perfect; it excludes, for example, all alumni who have gone on to earn graduate degrees. Neverthe-

less, it seems that the idea that institutions should be ranked based on the success of their graduates

is not a bad one. At least it is more rational than a popularity contest.

Grétar TryggvasonProfessor and Head, ME Deparment

WPI ranked number nine!

ME Facts & FiguresEstablished: 1868

Tenure/tenure-track faculty: 31

Undergraduate Degrees• Mechanical Engineering• Aerospace Engineering• Robotics Engineering

Graduate Degrees• Mechanical Engineering• Manufacturing• Materials Science

Degrees Granted

Year ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 ’08 ’09

BS 130 132 174 144 178 157

MS 45 32 44 50 67 57

PhD 7 4 7 7 2 9

www.me.wpi.edu