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Spring 2013 |
IN THIS ISSUE: Life Beyond Football | Message From the Chair |
Board Establishes Faculty Awards |
"Smoothing" Membrane Operation |
Alumni Classnotes |
Be a Sponsor or Mentor! | Faculty News & Awards | Student News | Events
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Life Beyond Football: Former NFL Player Donald Strickland Parlays CU ME Degree Into an Entrepreneur's Dream
When Donald Strickland was testing vehicle performance for his senior design project at CU, he did not fully envision the heights to which his NFL career would take him in the future. But he did know that having a mechanical engineering degree would help him pursue those dreams - and ensure a solid foundation for his ambitions beyond his football career.
A key player in the Buffs' 2001 run to the Big 12 Conference Championship, the CU cornerback was drafted by the Indianapolis Colts after he completed his mechanical engineering degree in 2003. Over the course of an outstanding nine-year NFL career, Strickland served stints playing for the Indianapolis Colts, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, New York Jets (twice), and San Diego Chargers. Not bad considering the average career of an NFL player spans just three and a half years.
Strickland knew his football days were numbered and began preparing for a career as an entrepreneur even before his days on the field came to an end. In 2007, he founded Visionary Moments, a San Francisco-based business that makes multi-media display cases, and timed the company's nationwide launch with the Super Bowl. He continued his education through the NFL's Business Management and Entrepreneurial program, where the rigors of his undergraduate experience served him well in the intensive courses at Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and Northwestern.
Strickland says that his mechanical engineering degree, and specifically ME senior design program at CU, were instrumental in providing him with the hands-on experience needed to conceive, design and bring his products to life. Teamwork, accountability, multi-tasking and striving for high standards became useful tools in his NFL career and gave him the confidence to start an entrepreneurial venture as well as initiate the Donald Strickland Foundation. The non-profit organization is dedicated to steering young people towards a successful future through education and sports.
Strickland says his family always placed a high importance on education. That emphasis, combined with his dedicated pursuit of athletics alongside one of the most difficult and time-demanding majors at CU, led him to success on the field and beyond. Today, the former cornerback is living the entrepreneurial dream and giving back to society.
(Photos courtesy Donald Strickland.)
Keep up with your fellow CU alums and let us know what's going on in your life! Please take a moment to update your contact information and share your news using our online form.
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 Message From the Chair
Dear Friends,
As our academic year winds down, I'd like to share a few highlights about our progress. Over the past few years, the ME department has seen tremendous growth in resources ranging from new faculty and staff positions to additional research and instructional space, to private donations and growth in national reputation.
I am happy to report that our department's reputation is continuously improving. In the recently-released 2014 U.S. News & World Report rankings, CU's graduate program in mechanical engineering was ranked 19th among public institutions and 30th out of all 163 mechanical engineering programs surveyed. We remain the highest-ranked program in the Rocky Mountain Region!
The department also received generous donations that established three new faculty fellowships, which will help us recruit and retain top junior faculty. You can find details about these new fellowships in this newsletter. We are considering several highly-qualified candidates for tenure-track faculty in the areas of design and manufacturing and anticipate an additional tenure-track faculty search in the coming academic year. Moreover, we have added a second advisor and are poised to hire several additional instructors to help us meet the demands of our expanding undergraduate student population. We currently serve more than 800 undergraduate students and are projected to grow another 30 percent in the next few years.
Lastly, it is with mixed feelings that I announce the retirement of Professor Jack Zable. Dr. Zable received his PhD in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 1969. Following a successful career at IBM from 1964 to 1997, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at CU-Boulder, where he has had a profound impact connecting education with industry. Dr. Zable founded the department's Industry/University Cooperative Projects Center (I/UCPC) and served as the director from 1998 to 2008. He also chaired the department's Industry Relations Committee for more than a decade. Since Fall 2007, he has been a part-time senior instructor. We sincerely appreciate all his teaching and service contributions to the ME department over the years and will miss him greatly. We wish Jack all the very best in his second retirement!
I invite you to continue reading this spring edition of the ME Times to learn more about the exciting developments in our department and in the lives of our alumni.
Victor M. Bright
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STEP Board Members Establish Junior Faculty Fellowship Awards
Through the generous support of several members of the Mechanical Engineering Strategic Evaluation and Planning (STEP) Board, two junior faculty fellowships recently were awarded to professors Mark Borden and Ronggui Yang. Both fellowships are targeted toward the retention and recruitment of the very best junior-level tenured or tenure-track faculty members. The S.P. Chip and Lori Johnson Faculty Fellowship is slated for a four-year term, and the McLagan Faculty Fellowship spans a three-year term. Both fellowships are renewable and are designed to reward ME junior faculty who have made a consistent impact on the department through their research and education efforts.
Another gift has been made by Herbert and Karen Vogel but the faculty member has not yet been selected. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Johnson, Vogel, and McLagan families for their consistent and enthusiastic support of our department. Congratulations to professors Borden and Yang for their outstanding achievements!
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Professors Yifu Ding and John Pellegrino discussing membrane research
Patterned Roughness Can "Smooth"
Membrane Operation
Replicating textures found in nature, CU researchers have discovered a new method of applying nanoscale ridges to the surface of membranes. This new technique could greatly enhance membrane performance in a wide variety of applications, including water desalination, industrial gas separations, renal dialysis, membrane lung oxygenators, and controlled-release drug delivery devices.
By applying regular, nanometer-sized ridges onto commercial, water filtration membranes, the researchers have created a patterned roughness akin to the textures found on a lotus leaf or shark's skin. As with these biological counterparts, the ridges enhance performance of the membranes, reducing flux decline due to "fouling," a natural result of selective membrane-based separations that greatly limits performance in many applications. Fouling occurs when retained particles, macromolecules, and biological materials get trapped on the membrane surface or inside of its pores. Chemical treatment can partially remove these substances, but causes energy consumption, loss of productivity, and shortened lifetime of the membrane.
Experiments conducted by ME professors Yifu Ding, John Pellegrino, and Alan Greenberg indicated that adding textured patterns causes membranes to resist fouling significantly better than their un-patterned counterparts. The researchers have called these new membranes "NIL-membranes," for nanoimprint lithography (NIL), a manufacturing approach used in a range of industrial applications. Their work was recently published in the Journal of Membrane Science.
Ding, Pellegrino, and Greenberg suggest that this strategy is particularly enticing because it is a physical modification that may be applied to any polymeric membrane, including those that are currently commercially available, without the need for new chemistry. The National Science Foundation has awarded the researchers a three-year grant to develop the fundamental knowledge that will enable development of this technology, which is still in its early stage.
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Alumni Classnotes: Where Are They Now?
If you want to be featured in this newsletter, or just want us to know what you are up to now, visit our online form to update your info.
John Brennand (MechEngr/ElEngr '57) is currently retired and living in Santa Barbara, California.
Stephen C. Fearn (MechEngr/Bus '68) is the owner and principal engineer at Fearn Engineering Services in Silverton, Colorado. He is active in re-establishing a viable metal mining industry in Southwestern Colorado, preservation of historical structures, and environmental remediation of abandoned mine sites.
William A. Turnipseed (MechEngr/Bus '79) is director of proposal engineering at SNC-Lavalin Constructors, Inc. in Seattle, WA.
Mark Tysdal (MechEngr '81) is working toward a senior fellowship position at ConAgra Foods as a packaging subject matter expert. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his two children, who he hopes are future CU engineers!
Mark Lewis (MechEngr '84) was appointed to serve as a senior advisor of Silver Lake Partners, a technology investing firm. Mark has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry focused primarily in the software and storage technology sectors and holds eight U.S. patents in storage technology. Prior to his new appointment, Mark was a senior executive for EMC, serving in a number of roles that included CTO, chief strategy officer, and chief development officer.
Mohamed El-Sayed Ali (MS MechEngr '84, PhD '88) is a professor at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. Mohamed recently won the King Saud University Gold Medal and appreciation certificate for inventing and discovering a new insulating material. He has also received a Gold Medal from the 40th Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions in 2012 for "manufacturing a new natural insulating material extracted from a plant that grows in Saudi Arabia" in Geneva, Switzerland.
After working as an engineer for four years, Dan Gryboski (MS MechEngr '95) changed careers and for the past 11 years has taught courses at the high school and college level. He currently works for StraighterLine, where he is a math teacher and subject matter expert. He recently married a fellow CU alum. They have three children and say life is good!
Sam Mukdadi (PhD MechEngr '02), former student of Prof. Emeritus Subhendu Datta, is an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at West Virginia University and recently received tenure.
Elliot Goldman (BS/MS MechEngr '04) was selected as the first winner of the College of Engineering and Applied Science's new Recent Alumni Award. Elliot is a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. He founded the Engineers Without Borders – South Denver Professional Chapter in 2009 and has remained highly involved with the CU student chapter of EWB, leading a 2011 trip to Rwanda for an irrigation project at an orphanage.
Joey Padden (MechEngr '04) has transitioned to the electrical engineering field and is currently working as an architect at Cable Television Laboratories in Louisville, Colorado and nearing completion of his MS in electrical engineering at CU-Boulder. He praises CU for its high quality professors, ethics, and rigor, and the flexibility his CU degree has giving him in his career.
Chris Bonilha (MechEngr '06, MS '09) is lead engineer and OEM programs manager at Creative Power Solutions, a small power generation consulting firm just outside of Phoenix. He also serves on the Arizona MESA (Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement) Industry Board of Advisors. Chris reports that he and his wife have recently become avid cross-fitters.
Kevin McCoy (MechEngr '09) is currently an associate in the Orange County office of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear in Irvine, California. Knobbe Martens is one of the largest intellectual property law firms in the country. Kevin's practice focuses on patent prosecution and client practice in various industries including the medical device and automotive fields.
Mohammed Alteraiki (MechEngr '09) works for Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Saudi Aramco. He currently works as a project engineer in one of the refineries in Saudi Arabia. He reports being one of three CU engineering graduates on this project, and says, GO BUFFS!
Matt Zolnick (MechEngr '11) landed his first engineering job since graduating in 2011 and has been working for six months as a standards engineer at the Hydraulic Institute in Parsippany, New Jersey. The institute is the largest association of pump manufacturers in North America. Matt is part of a technical team that reviews and aids in the creation of global pump standards.
Chris Oshman (PhD MechEngr '12) will be participating in the 2013 Las Alamos National Laboratory Science of Signatures Advanced Studies Scholars Program. The program is a professional development opportunity for advanced PhD students and post docs interested in learning skills needed for research program development at national laboratories and in academia.
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Faculty News & Awards
Mechanical Engineering faculty and staff have received more than $8.1 million in new contracts and grants since July 2012!
Assistant Professor Mark Borden's symposium on "Emulsions, Bubbles and Foams - Fundamentals and Applications" was highlighted by the American Chemical Society in its video blog. The highlights start one minute, 46 seconds into the video.
A paper titled "NASA Ozone Study May Benefit Air Standards, Climate" by Assistant Professor Daven Henze was published in Science Daily and featured on the Denver radio station KGNU's Science Show. The study looks at how location matters in combatting global warming caused by emissions of ozone-forming chemicals.
 Associate Professor Shelly Miller and her team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kansas State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, McGill University, Mitre Corporation, University of Colorado, University of Denver, and University of Florida received funding for their project "Role of HVAC Systems in the Transmission of Infectious Agents in Buildings and Intermodal Transportation." The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers awarded the group $500,000 over two years to study the role of HVAC systems in transmitting airborne pathogens in building and transportation environments.
> Learn more
 Associate Professor Jerry Qi received a $420,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study 3D Printed Composites for Topology - Transforming Multifunctional Devices. The project is slated to begin this month.
Senior Instructor Derek Reamon received the 2013 John and Mercedes Peebles Innovation in Education Award for innovation in teaching. He was nominated by students in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.
Student News
Narasimha Boddeti and Xinghui Liu received a $5,820 Dean's Graduate Student Research Grant for their proposal "Wrinkling in Pressurized Graphene Membranes."
Callie DeMay, a first-year PhD student, received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Esperanza Arab and Nathan Eigenfeld received honorable mentions for the same fellowship.
Jose Ordonez, a visiting PhD student, was awarded the Mexican National Prize for best doctoral thesis in natural science. Associate professor Ronggui Yang was instrumental in developing Ordonez's thesis, which is based on four journal papers the two published together.
Undergraduate ME student Fiona Pigott (double major with applied math) was on one of the two CU teams designated as "Outstanding" in the 2013 International Mathematical Contest in Modeling. The contest involves a mini-research project completed in just 96 hours. 5,656 teams from around the world participated; 11 papers were designated as "Outstanding", with CU receiving two of these designations.
Levin Sliker, a third-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow advised by Professor Mark Rentschler, has been awarded a year-long Whitaker International Fellowship to study biorobotics at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy. The fellowship is a biomedical engineering equivalent of a Fulbright.
Charles Wheeler, a senior ME student in Professor Mark Rentschler's lab, has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Zheng Zhang received a $2,000 Beverly Sears Graduate Student Research Grant, sponsored by the CU Graduate School to support the research, scholarship, and creative work of graduate students from all departments.
Jun Lui and Xiaokun Gu, current PhD students, received NSF CBET/CMMI travel awards to attend the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, a conference that focuses on technical challenges, research updates, and innovations that are shaping the future of engineering. Lui and Gu were among 40 students selected out of 345 applicants.
PhD student Kang-Ho Song received the Outstanding Paper Award at the ASME Global Congress on Nano Engineering for Medicine and Biology in Boston.
PhD student Ryan King received the Dwight E. and Jessie D. Ryland Graduate Fellowship from the College of Engineering and Applied Science, a one-year fellowship of $3,000.
Seniors Kelsi Middleton (CMU/CU Partnership Program) and Charles Wheeler will be recognized as Outstanding Graduates for Academic Achievement (highest GPA) at the Engineering Recognition Ceremony on May 9.
The Design Center Colorado NREL Senior Design team (Faith Batrack, Eli Kuhlmann, Adam Lokar, Thomas Pohlman, and Charles Wheeler) competed in the CU Energy Club Energy Frontiers 2013 competition. The team, advised by Paul Ibanez, took home the "Best Undergraduate" category award and "Best Overall" award. The team is featured on the cover of the 2013 CUEngineering magazine.
Events
ME Design Expo
April 26 - UMC
This year's ME senior projects will be on display. Free and open to the public.
Recent Alumni Bike Clinic and Happy Hour
April 27 - Various campus and Boulder-area venues.
Open to alumni, current students, faculty, and staff. Please RSVP.
Engineering Recognition Ceremony
May 9 - Coors Events Center
Congratulations to all of our ME graduates!
Bay Area Alumni Event
May 18 - Walnut Creek, CA
All members of the CU Engineering community who will be in the Bay Area are invited to attend! Visit with Dean Robert H. Davis and hear from Prof. Keith Molenaar on controlling costs of large infrastructure projects such as the Bay Bridge.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering
College of Engineering and Applied Science
MEnews@colorado.edu | P: 303-492-7151 | F: 303-492-3498
427 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0427
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