MechE Student News - February 2022
Student Features
Completing a co-op at Tesla
Ahmed Ashmaig is an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering co-president of the National Society of Black Engineers Boulder Chapter. He participated in a co-op at Tesla during fall 2021.
PhD student Mitchell Fulton won international medical imaging challenge
Mechanical engineering student Mitchell Fulton won 'Best Performing Method' for a paper detailing his novel approach to autonomously identify regions of the heart using MRI scan images at the M&Ms-2 Challenge.
Learn About ME Courses
ME Course Column: Design of Coffee
Those with a love for coffee can find their place in MCEN 4228/5228: Design of Coffee. The course shows junior, senior and graduate-level students how to use their training to solve problems outside the traditional engineering field by roasting and brewing coffee.
ME Course Column: Component Design
From bicycles and scooters to mock race cars and firetrucks, drill-powered vehicles built by Component Design students zoomed around Kittredge Pond in fall 2021 for the first time since the pandemic began.
ME Course Column: Design for Inclusion
The racial reckoning in summer 2020 led to an awakening in our consciousness – a need for everyone to look inward and tackle our own unconscious biases. Professor Janet Tsai is asking students to question these preconceived notions when it comes to mechanical engineering as well.
Alumni Stories
Alumni Spotlight: Elle Sandifer - Working with Sanergy to address international sanitation challenges
Elle Sandifer is a 2020 graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. After graduation, she worked as a process engineer with Sanergy to address urban sanitation challenges in Nairobi, Kenya.
Alumni Spotlight: Kevin Martin - unspun named one of TIME's Best Inventions of 2021
Kevin Martin's (MechEngr'16) startup earned the accolade for its 3D-weaving machine used to produce a seamless pair of jeans. The technology was first prototyped in the Department of Mechanical Engineering's Senior Design course.
Alumni Spotlight: Michael Lewis - From mechanical engineer to heart surgeon
Alumnus Michael Lewis (MechEngr’00) took an interdisciplinary education to the next level. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and working at Boeing for a year, he discovered another way to help people – through medicine.
Alumni Spotlight: Jeanne Barthold - TissueForm
Jeanne Barthold is a CU Boulder alumna and founder of TissueForm - a company that has developed a platform technology for the biomimicry of body tissues to repair areas of significant tissue loss or injury.
Research News
How does Marshall Fire smoke affect indoor, outdoor air quality?
Professors Michael Hannigan and Marina Vance join scientists from CIRES and NOAA to install instruments in surviving houses to understand the smoke impacts on indoor air quality.
As Los Angeles traffic slowed amid pandemic, researchers gained air pollution insights
A team of scientists led by the Department of Mechanical Engineering are using the once-in-a-lifetime event to answer an unusual question: How much do vehicles in a city like Los Angeles add to the ammonia emissions that can hang in the air and sicken residents?
Bringing space inside the lab: Researchers replicate the climates of exoplanets to help find extraterrestrial life
Professor Greg Rieker and Ryan Cole (PhDMechEngr’21) have developed an experiment that recreates the climates of planets beyond our solar system right in the lab. By reaching the same high-temperature and high-pressure conditions found on many exoplanets, the instrument can map their atmospheres, which could help humanity detect life outside our solar system.
Nuclear deformation research could advance artificial tissue engineering
Professor Corey Neu and Benjamin Seelbinder's (PhDMech’19) work, now published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, looks at how cells adapt to their environment and how a mechanical environment influences a cell. Their research has the potential to tackle major health obstacles.