News
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| Vest Receives Top Technology Honor 07/30/2007, More . . . | | |
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| Former MAE Student comments on the Department Jason Gross, former Student Government Association President and 2007 AE Graduate comments on the department. 02/16/2008, More . . . | | WVU Students help build greenhouse in Mexico While many West Virginia University students enjoyed their March spring break by sleeping in, catching up with friends or tanning on beaches, a dedicated group of seven students spent the week in the hot Mexican sun in a different way - by doing hard labor. Two graduating seniors - Steve Martin, a mechanical engineering major from Naugatuck in Mingo County, and Laura Palimeno, a landscape architecture major from New Jersey - will have special memories of their final college spring break, which they spent building a greenhouse with the WVU chapter of Engineers Without Borders, a volunteer group based in the University’s College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. WVU students formed the chapter this academic year to use their engineering and other talents to make a difference in the world. Despite the “engineers” part of the group’s name, students from a variety of majors are involved. The spring break project took place two hours from Mexico City in a rural area called Queretaro, where WVU students built a greenhouse for a family. The greenhouse project was started four years ago, but the family ran out of money for supplies and water. The WVU group was able to help get the greenhouse building process going again. Other WVU students who participated in the greenhouse-building trip included Emily Calandrelli of Morgantown; Jackie Grimes of Sewickley, Pa.; Mehran Mohebbi of Iran; Kyle Phillips of Warren, Ohio; and Emily Rengers of Morgantown. Victor Mucino, a WVU professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who has organized engineering service trips to Mexico for several years, accompanied the group. “We put a lot of time and effort into planning this trip,” said Calandrelli, the group’s publicity chair who was recently named a Truman Scholar. “Finally going down there and meeting the family we were trying to help was very rewarding.” The WVU students were immersed in the culture of the area by living with host families and enjoying Mexican cuisine. Though a few of the trip’s participants were able to speak fluent Spanish, Calendrelli said that the language barrier was one of the biggest challenges they faced. Another challenge was the manual labor involved in the project. The group began working at 7 a.m. each day and worked until around 1 p.m., when the temperature reached over 80 degrees. After the temperature became too hot to work, the students spent afternoons sightseeing, including visiting Aztec pyramids and the local marketplace. The students raised their own funds for the trip and received support from the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, Mucino, WVU’s Center for Civic Engagement, WVU’s Office of International Programs and others. Members of Engineers Without Borders plan to travel to Nicaragua this August to work on a water filtration project. “Through Engineers Without Borders, I have learned the importance of environmentally sustainable design and the effect a person’s education can have on another’s global awareness,” Palimeno said. “My education here at WVU has given me the opportunity to pursue the practice of responsible and sustainable design that I hope to use in my profession.” 04/28/2008, More . . . |
| WVU' s research featured as a journal front cover Nick Wu group’s nano-fabrication research is featured as the journal front cover of Nanotechnology . This work is also highlighted by IOP Publishing . Nick Wu is Assistant Professor at Department of Mechanical Engineering and WV Nano in West Virginia University. Two-dimensional (2D) nanostructure patterns have extensive applications in photonic devices, nanoelectronics, electrochemical devices, biosensors, catalysts and high-density magnetic recording devices. Commonly used patterning techniques, such as photolithography, electron-beam lithography, focused ion beam lithography and scanning probe microscopy (SPM) lithography have limitations on the fabrication of 2D nanostructures. It remains a challenge to develop low-cost, high-throughput, high-resolution techniques for fabrication of large-area (wafer-scale) 2D nanostructure array patterns with controlled feature size, shape and pitch. Nanosphere lithography (NSL) is a simple, inexpensive, high-throughput, alternative routine for creating periodic nanostructure arrays. However, most of the sphere templates that were reported in previous literature have shown a well-ordered arrangement of nanospheres only in a small area of domain, which makes it difficult to create large-area nanoscale array patterns. Nick Wu’s group at West Virginia University recently improved the nanosphere lithography method and demonstrated a low-cost, high-throughput, high-resolution technique for fabrication of large-area (wafer-scale), high-quality nanostructure array patterns with controlled feature size, shape and pitch. They have combined the nanosphere lithography technique with electrodeposition processing to devise a facile nanopatterning approach. By utilizing this approach, they have fabricated a nanowell polypyrrole array pattern and a gold nanohemisphere array pattern. This work was recently published in Nanotechnology (Vol.19, (2008), 275301). Their nanopatterning approach can be extensively used for nanodevice fabrication. They have demonstrated that the fabricated pattern can function as a nanoelectrode array (NEA). NEAs attract a lot of attention because they bring intriguing benefits over conventional macroelectrodes, including enhanced mass transport, lowered detection limit, improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased temporal resolution and the ability to make spatially resolved chemical measurements. 07/16/2008, More . . . | | |
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| Gautam Receives Byrd Professorship 07/24/2007, More . . . | | MAE Professor & Chair publishes second book Introduction to Composite Materials Design, CRC Press (2007) 09/16/2007, More . . . |
| Barbero named to Editorial Board Ever Barbero has been named to the Editorial Board Member of The Open Materials Science Journal 02/25/2008, More . . . | | Xueyan Song, Ph.D. joins Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department MAE is very fortunate to have Dr. Xueyan Song join our department as an assistant professor with an expertise in Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Dr. Song will join the Energy Materials Science and Engineering (EMSE) Program, which is a newly recognized sub-discipline of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). Information on this program can be found on our website. 02/28/2008, More . . . |
| James E. Smith, elected ASME Fellow James E. Smith, Ph.D., PE has been elected to the ASME grade of Fellow. 04/09/2008, More . . . | | Three MAE faculty receive research awards from the college Nigel Clark, Xingbo Liu, and Marcelo Napolitano 04/09/2008, More . . . |
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| Faculty, Student to Travel to Asia 11/14/2007, More . . . | | MAE 493 to Launch Balloon Satellite 01/16/2008, More . . . |
| Aerospace Engineering PhD Student Receives Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship 02/26/2008, More . . . | | UAV Team, AIAA Sponsor Glider Competition 4/25 02/27/2008, More . . . |
| Kerri Phillips Named to USA Today Academic Team 02/27/2008, More . . . | | |
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| Two MAE students win Swiger Graduate Fellowship Aaron Keesman and Kerri Beth Phillips, both doctoral students in MAE, are 2008 Swiger Fellowship recipients. 03/19/2008, More . . . | | |
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| Biosensor Research highighted in the IOP Publishing Website Dr. Nick Wu’s biosensor research is highlighted in Nanotech Web - the nanotechnology community website from IOP Publishing Electrochemical biosensors have extensive applications in the point-of-care diagnostic devices that are used along with handheld analyzers for rapid, onsite delivery of diagnostic information. Such portable electrical devices play an increasing role in health care, homeland security and environment monitoring. The development of nanotechnology offers a great potential for improvement in the point-of-care devices. 02/15/2008, More . . . | | |
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| Five MAE Students Awarded Funding by the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium and NASA West Virginia EPSCoR The Board of Directors of the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium met on April 4, 2008 to consider proposals for their Undergraduate and Graduate Research Fellowship Programs and the following students and their research projects were awarded funding: Nicholas Morris Steven Hard Jonathan Kweder Megan Hubbell Darran Huckaby 04/17/2008, More . . . | | Design Build Fly Competition - WVU team ranks 14 Sixty University student teams from around the world built airplanes to compete in April 2008 at the Design Build Fly (DBF) competition sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). This year’s race was held in Wichita, Kansas. The winner was the Oklahoma State Team. WVU Team Blue was placed #14 and Team Gold was placed #38. The plane flown by the Gold team went down in the first race. The Blue team’s plane did better and completed the first race. Unfortunately it crashed in the second race. About half of all the entries failed in flight due the gusty winds blowing at approximately 40 mph. In design and workmanship the WVU Blue team ranked near the top of the heap. All are eagerly looking forward to the race in 2009! 05/08/2008, More . . . |
     
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