MMAE Seminar - Engineering, Science and Technology: Personal Perspective, Present Challenges, Future Trends

Armour College of Engineering's Mechanical, Materials & Aerospace Engineering Department will welcome Dr. Constantine Megaridis, Professor and Director of Micro/Nanoscale Fluid Transport Laboratory at University of Illinois at Chicago, on Wednesday, January 27th to present his lecture, Engineering, Science and Technology: Personal Perspective, Present Challenges, Future Trends.

Abstract

An overview of the fundamental and applied research pursued at the UIC Micro/Nanoscale Fluid Transport Laboratory is presented. Three subject areas of recent concentration are described, all in the general fields of interface science and wettability engineering. In the first subject area, surfaces with spatially-patterned chemical composition and texture are employed to induce rapid fluid transport in lab-on-chip applications and point-of-care medical diagnostic devices that operate pumplessly. In the second area, wettability-patterned surfaces are demonstrated as effective tools in heat transfer applications requiring enhanced condensation, anti-icing properties or microelectronic cooling. In the third subject area, the design and fabrication of environmentally-friendly, polymer/nanoparticle composite, multifunctional coatings with extremely low wettabilities (superhydrophobic) are described. The escalating challenges in education and research faced by today's engineering departments are also discussed, with focus on the Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering concentrations. Some thoughts are offered on future trends in these areas, and opportunities are discussed in light of the strategic plans of IIT and ACE, in particular.

Biography

Professor Megaridis received his Ph.D. in Fluid/Thermal Sciences from Brown University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He was named UIC Inventor of the Year in 2015 and University of Illinois Scholar in 2012. He was awarded the 1997 Kenneth T. Whitby Award of the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR). He has published over 100 journal papers, 180 conference papers and several patents. He serves in the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports, published by the Nature Publishing Group. His current research interests focus on fluid/particle transport, multifunctional coatings and interfacial phenomena relevant to micro and nanotechnologies.