Recent MMAE Headlines

IIT Wins Big in Parker Hannifin Chainless Challenge

Five MMAE undergraduates—Bob Meyer, Dan Milewski, Sean O’Halloran, Josh Buck, and David Moreno [left to right in photo]—finished third overall in the Parker Hannifin [Corporation] Chainless Challege, held the week of April 7 in Irvine, Calif. This marks the second time IIT has participated in the invitational event, whose objective is for teams to replace the chain of a bicycle with a fluid-power-driven system.

Ten teams were invited to compete, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, and the University of Minnesota. The competition featured six design categories, three performance categories, and best paper/presentation. IIT won all six design categories, placed second in endurance, and fourth in the sprint race. The IIT students designed and built the bicycle completely on their own time and were the only team that did not use the competition as a project for their senior design course.

Assistant Professor Matthew Spenko served as IIT advisor. Congratulations to the team for an amazing performance! Full Article

MMAE Graduate Student Wins MAGS Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award

MMAE graduate student Amirhossein Arzani recently won the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS) Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award for his thesis entitled “Validation and Characterization of Turbulence in an Aortic Coarctation.” The award recognizes and rewards distinguished scholarship and research at the master’s level. To be considered, a thesis must contain original work that makes an unusually significant contribution to the discipline. Arzani won a $750 cash prize and traveled to present his work at the MAGS Annual Meeting in Minneapolis in early April 2013. Full Article

AIAA-IIT Chapter Hosts 2013 AIAA Region III Student Conference

On April 5–6, 2013, students of AIAA-IIT chapter hosted 2013 AIAA Region III Student Conference. Attendees included students from IIT, University of Michigan, Purdue University, University of Illinois at Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Dayton, and Cleveland State University. Prof. Nagib gave a keynote presentation “Flight Testing the XV-15 Tiltrotor Aircraft with IIT Students Using Active Flow Control.” The best presentations were awarded monetary prizes. The Organizing Committee thanks Dr. Gogineni (Director of AIAA Region III and President of Spectral Energies, LLC), Prof. Aggarwal (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Prof. Bowman (IIT) for guidance and help in organizing the Conference.

2013 MMAE Spring Event and Departmental Awards Ceremony

On April 29th, 2013, the Department held 2013 MMAE Spring Event and Awards Ceremony.

We are pleased to announce the following 2013 MMAE Department Awards winners:

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
Rakesh Ramachandran

MMAE Excellence in Teaching Award
Prof. Benxin Wu

MMAE Staff Award
Bennetta Garrison

2013 IIT Research Day Student Poster Competition

The Department congratulates Sahar Hendabadi (MMAE PhD student) and Christopher Stovall (MMAE undergraduate student) for winning in 2013 IIT Research Day Student Poster Competition on Wednesday, April 24. More than 50 graduate and undergraduate students from the College of Science and Letters and Armour College of Engineering participated in the Competition. Thirty-five faculty members volunteered to evaluate posters on clarity, content, and verbal and visual presentation. Judges selected three graduate-level winners and three undergraduate-level winners.

Sahar Hendabadi was awarded the first place in the graduate category for her work “A Novel Technique to Identify Transport Templates in the Human Left Ventricle Using Doppler Echocardiography and Computational Modeling”. Sahar works in research group of Prof. Shawn Shadden.

Christopher Stovall won the second place in the undergraduate category with poster “Characterizing Turbulent Gusts in an Urban Environment for Use in Micro Air Vehicle Applications.” Christopher works under scientific supervision of Prof. Candace Wark and Dr. Bruno Monnier.

2013 MMAE Research Poster Competition

The annual MMAE Research Poster Competition was held on April 5th, 2013. We were pleased to have 20 entries representing students at all degree levels – BS, MS, and PhD. All the candidates did excellent, and the winners were awarded a certificate and a monetary prize. Congratulations to the following winners:

PhD Category:

First place – Sahar Hendabadi (Prof. Shadden)

Second place – Arash Kalantari (Prof. Spenko)

MS Category:

First place – Manisha Prakash (Prof. Raman)

Second place – Martin Detrois (Prof. Tin)

BS Category:

First place – Christopher Stovall (Prof. Wark)

Second place – Dominick Caponi (Prof. Raman)