MIE FALL FACULTY NEWSLETTER
October 2001
WELCOME OUR NEW FACULTY!!!
Jonathan Rothstein grew up in Holliston Massachusetts.
He attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science
and Art in New York City where he received his Bachelors in
Mechanical Engineering in 1996. He received his Masters of Science from Harvard University and then
moved on to MIT where he earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering
in 2001. For his Ph.D.,
he studied the flow of non-Newtonian fluids.
In particular, his dissertation focused on an experimental
and theoretical investigation of the stability of viscoelastic
fluids in complex flows dominated by either a strong extensional
component to the flow or temperature gradients induced by viscous
heating. Jonathan lives
in Belchertown with his wife, Kara, and his new daughter, Emma.
His hobbies include photography, woodworking and traveling
the globe.
Steve de Bruyn Kops comes to us from Seattle, where
he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Washington in the area
of fluid dynamics. His
work involves computer simulation and modeling of chemically
reacting flows, multi-phase flows, and geophysical flows.
Prior to graduate school,
Steve was a surface line officer in the U.S. Navy, an interesting
juxtaposition with the Quaker heritage of his alma mater, Swarthmore
College. He and his
wife Julie live in Amherst, where they are finding great places
for cycling, inline skating, and walking.
CURRENT ACTIVITIES
Grants
David
Schmidt got a $142,000 grant from Caterpillar Inc. for modeling MEMS fuel
injection sprays.
Abhi Deshmukh
(PI) and Ana Muriel together
with Victor Lesser (ECS), Jin Wang (Math, Valdosta State) and
Judith Whipple (Econ, Michigan State) have been awarded a 3-year
$600,000 grant from the Scalable Enterprise Systems program
at NSF. Their research addresses fundamental issues in the coordination
and evolution of complex supply networks.
Byung
Kim has received a new three-year grant in the amount of
$259,989.00 from NSF entitled “Injection molding microfeatures.”
This project focuses on a study of the fundamental aspects
of molding micro features, and considers issues such as the
scale effects on viscosity, flow uniformity, etc.
Ana Muriel
has been awarded an internal research grant ($7000) to continue
her work on the coordination of production, inventory and transportation
decisions in the presence of economies of scale. She has also
gotten a supplement REU ($9,000) to her NSF- GOALI grant to
support the research of two undergraduate students under the
project “Capacity and Flexibility Planning in a Make-to-Order
Environment”.
Janis
Terpenny has been awarded a 1-year $60,000 grant from NSF-DMI. This award provides funding for the research
and development of a function-based representation to support
concept modeling and solution synthesis in early design.
Janis
Terpenny has received a grant from Apprentice Systems, Inc. ($11,500).
The project focuses on providing the knowledge management and
modeling system of Apprentice Systems with the capabilities
of web-based collaboration and capture of design knowledge in
a format that is platform independent and reusable.
Awards and Distinctions
Stephen
Malkin was named Honorable Professor
at National Huaqiao University in Quanzhou, China. He is only
the third person to receive this special distinction. While in Quanzhou, Steve also delivered the keynote address at the
11th Chinese Grinding and Machining Conference.
Last May, Justin Piccirillo, David Hatch and
Professor Byung Kim presented a business plan at
Mahar Auditorium for the Entreclub’s second annual Business Plan Competition. After months of preparation, research and analysis,
the three were able to put together a $10,000-winning proposal using a new injection molding technique developed
at the University. The
new process allows plastic to be molded with resolution down
to a millionth of a meter, a feat not previously possible.
Some discussion has been made about continuing further
to sub-micron scale and further research is leading towards
new production schemes, including integrated circuitry within
plastic parts. According
the their proposal, the molding technology would be used to
produce microfluidic, or “lab on a chip” devices.
Robert
Gao was a Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
in Gaithersburg, Maryland this past summer, where he worked
with researchers in the Sensor
Development and Application Group on smart sensor networking
and standard issues. His presentation on sensor integration
for machine condition monitoring, which highlighted a new technique
developed in his lab on combined time-scale-frequency domain
signal analysis for enhanced feature extraction, was found interesting
with potential applications in related NIST projects.
MIE faculty on the news…
David
Schmidt performed a calculation of the air and spray dynamics of a bathroom
shower. The results
of this calculation were circulated and discussed world-wide. Articles on this work appeared in the New York Times, the Londay
Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Discover Magazine, Scientific
American, as well as many foreign-language newspapers. TheBoston
Globe devoted the front page of their science section to this
calculation. This calculation has been one of the most successful publicity efforts
in the history of the College of Engineering. The results of the calculation are being used as a teaching tool,
as well as for further outreach to incoming students. This effort has provided beneficial, world-wide publicity for the
University of Massachusetts.
Publications
The 2nd edition of Professor Corrado Poli’s book, "Design
for Manufacturing - A Structured Approach," published by
Buttersworth-Heinemann, came on the market just after labor
day. This edition is an updated, revised, and reorganized
version of the earlier edition of the book. This edition is
accompanied by a CD with Power Point slides that include digital
photographs, video clips and quick-time movies and animations
of various processes such as injection molding, stamping, die
casting, forging, etc.
Shantikumar
Nair has had a paper accepted in the Polymer Engineering and Science
Journal on polymer nanocomposites.
Sabattical leaves
Shantikumar
Nair is on sabbatical at the United Technologies Research Center in
East
Hartford, CT, working on brittle environmental barrier coatings
on brittle ceramic substrates
His sabbatical work to date has produced some international conference
presentations: one at
the International Gas Turbine Institute Meeting in Amsterdam
next June, one at the International Conference on Composites
and Advanced Ceramics in Cocoa Beach, FL, in mid Jan 2002, and
three at the Closed Meeting of the Cocoa Beach Conference on
Advanced Composites at the end of Jan 2002. These presentations are co-authored with scientists
from UTRC.
Yossi
Chait will spend a sabbatical leave during Jan-Aug 2002 at the Technion,
Israel, supported by a Lady Davis Fellowship, and at ETH Zurich,
Switzerland, supported by a visiting professorship.
Presence at conferences
Ian Grosse
attended the ASEE 2001 conference in Albuquerque in June and the
DETC 2001
in Pittsburgh to present papers. Due to the terrorist tragedy,
though, he was not able to present his DETC paper in Pittsburgh.
Ian was able to drive back from Pittsburgh using a rental car
on Wednesday Sept 12.
Sampath,
A. and Grosse, I.R., “FEMAT: A Web based learning environment,”
presented at the ASEE 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, NM,
June 2001.
and
Shanbhag,
S., Grosse, I.R., Wileden, J.C., and Kaplan, A., (2001), “
Meta-Object Based Finite Element Analysis,” Proceedings of DETC'01
ASME
2001, Paper No. DETC2001/DAC-21062.
Automation Conference Track,
Pittsburgh, PA, September 2001.
Shantikumar
Nair is presenting a paper
on Toughening Behavior in Nanoscale Polymer
Composites at the Polymer Composites 2001 Meeting in Nov. 2001
in Montreal,
Canada.
On May 1, 2001, Professor Smith gave a poster presentation at the System-wide Umass Research
Compendium on Biotechnology, Bioengineering, and Biomedical
applications entitled: Topological
Network Design, Steiner Trees, and the Protein Folding Problem
held at UMass Boston. Based on his participation and presentation,
Professor Smith has been asked to be the chair of a session
at the next meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts in the Spring 2002
entitled:
Computational Structural Biology.
In late May, Professor Smith
visited the 3rd Aegean International Conference on
the Analysis
and Design of Manufacturing Systems in Tinos Island,
Greece, at which he gave an invited talk on Buffer
Space Allocation in General Closed Finite Queueing Networks.
Professor Smith is also a member of the Scientific Committee
for this conference and initiated the development of a Volume
in the Annals of Operations
Research that will publish papers presented and related
to the conference.
In July, Professor Smith
gave a talk at the INFORMS
Applied Probability Meeting in New York city entitled: M/G/c/K Blocking Probability Models and Systems Performance. This
research work is related to the one presented in Tinos Island,
Greece.
Robert Gao is co-author of the paper “Acoustic telemetry
in injection molding", published in the 2001 Society of Plastics
Engineers Annual Technical Conference in Dallas, TX in May, 2001.
The paper was co-authored with David Kazmer and their Ph.D. students
Charles (Burt) Theurer and Li Zhang. Another paper entitled "Design
of a wireless sensor for injection molding cavity pressure measurement"
will be presented at the ASME International Mechanical Engineering
Congress and Exhibition in New York, NY in November 2001. The
group has also submitted a paper “Fundamental aspects for the
design of a self-energized sensor for injection molding process
monitoring”, which will be published at the 2002 NSF Design, Service
and Manufacturing Grantees and Research Conference, to be held
in January, 2002, in Puerto Rico. The papers are based on research
findings from the NSF project "Self-Energized Micro Sensors for
Process Monitoring of Injection Molding''.
Janis
Terpenny has co-authored and presented several papers with colleagues and
her graduate students recently. Along with MS student Maria
Benson "A Survey of Methods and Approaches to Knowledge
Management in the Product Development Environment", was
published and presented at the 21st ASME DETC, Computers and Information in
Engineering Conference (CIE), September 9-12, 2001. Along
with MS student Akshaye Sikand "Collaborative and Distributed
Design: Current Status and Research Opportunities", was
published in the proceedings of the Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing
(FAIM) International Conference, Dublin, Ireland, July 16-18,
2001. Dr. Terpenny authored
and presented a paper "Senior Design Projects to Aid the
Disabled" at the ASEE
2001 Conference and Exposition, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
June 24-27, 2001 based on work with colleagues Robert Gao, John
Ritter, Donald Fisher, and Sundar Krishnamurty. Along with MS student Kimberly Sward and colleague
William G. Sullivan at Virginia Tech, Dr. Terpenny authored
and presented "A Virtual Classroom for Teaching the Economic
Principles of Engineering Design" also at the ASEE
2001 Conference and Exposition.
With Ph.D. candidate Jiachuan Wang "Agent-based
solution synthesis based on imprecise information during preliminary
engineering design process", was published and presented
at the 10th Annual Industrial
Engineering Research Conference IERC-2001, Dallas, Texas,
May 20-22, 2001. Dr.
Terpenny also co-lead an NSF sponsored workshop at the ASEE
Conference related to the Virtual Classroom project with William
Sullivan. She was also
an invited participant in a recent NSF Workshop held at University
of California Irvine on Decision Making in Design.
Visiting scholars
In August, Professor Laoucine
Kerbache visited for one week in August with Professor Smith.
Professor Kerbache is a professor in the HEC business school
in Paris, France. Professor Smith and Professor Kerbache are
collaborating on the development of a research project for applying
queueing networks in supply chain management and design. This
work will be presented at the Miami
INFORMS meeting in November 2001.
Finally, Professor Frederico
Cruz is visiting Professor Smith for a one-year sabbatical
from August 2001-August 2002. Professor Cruz is an Assistant
Professor in the Statistics Department at the Federal University
of Minas Gerais (UFMG) which is located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Professor Cruz is working with Professor Smith on a research project concerning ``Network Design and Stochastic Analysis of M/G/C/C
Queues'' which are most useful
in the quantitative flow analysis of pedestrian and vehicular
traffic networks. Professor Cruz is located in Marston 215,
so stop on by.
EDITORIAL COMMENTS
Please send email to muriel@ecs.umass.edu if you
have ideas on how to improve the faculty newsletter. Cheers!
