As activity resumes on campus and in our personal lives, I’m struck by the resilience that each of you has shown this past year. This spring we recognized an ambitious lineup of hands-on team projects during Engineering Projects Showcase Week and celebrated the accomplishments of 244 mechanical engineering graduates. We also cheered three new NSF CAREER award winners on our ME faculty (read about them below!) and toasted six graduate students earning NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. As we look forward to a more typical fall semester, I’m excited that we have a strong foundation from which to grow.
Kai Cui, Lisa Tenorio and Emily Zuetell earned their degrees this spring - and recognition for their exceptional efforts as undergraduates.
They were among dozens of mechanical engineering graduates who celebrated their achievements during Commencement on May 6, including a virtual departmental ceremony featuring keynote speaker Stephen Steg, a 1996 graduate of the department.
Since August 2020, students have been working through the design process from start to finish and have engineered solutions to real-world problems. Students completing industry-sponsored projects were presented with challenges of relevance to their clients from a variety of specialties. Those in the Engineering for Social Innovation section of Senior Design developed entrepreneurial products based on user needs.
The team, which included mechanical engineering student Hannah Livingston, were charged with building an economically feasible set of solar photovoltaics, also known as solar-PV installations, for a campus or urban district. as part of the national competition.
Valerie Welch, a mechanical engineering student and CU athlete, shares her experience as a mechanical engineering intern in the Rapid Prototyping Lab at Nike.
Pablo Argote, Bethany-Anne Calvert, Alyssa Lalko, Lea Savard, Olivia Tonti and Emily Zuetell received the coveted fellowships, which offer a $34,000 annual stipend, coverage of tuition and fees and additional support.
A first-year PhD student, Charley Thomas' research aims to understand the chemical reactions that cause lithium-ion batteries to catch fire. The fellowship, offered through the U.S. Department of Defense, promotes education in science and engineering disciplines relevant to national defense.
The student organization, which includes several mechanical engineering students, earned recognition for its efforts advancing diversity, equity and inclusion.
The PortaVax device, developed within the mechanical engineering senior design course, can keep up to 250 vaccine doses cold for several days using insulation and dry ice. The innovative concept also won CU Boulder's New Venture Challenge this spring.
Noah Gilsdorf, who's pursuing double majors in mechanical engineering and jazz studies, decided that the best way to combine his majors would be to build a bass from scratch. He created a video to chronicle his process.
As scientists continue exploring precisely how the virus is transmitted through airborne particles, Mike Scofield is among the engineers looking for ways to address public health concerns inherent in our built environment.
“The most rewarding thing in my career was getting a project from zero, from nothing, and someone saying, ‘John, we need you to design and build this,’" he said.
Professor Shelly Miller is among the group calling for a “paradigm shift” in combating airborne pathogens, demanding universal recognition that respiratory infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems.
Assistant Professor Maureen Lynch wants to see if exercise can make bones stronger and also prevent cancer from forming there after moving from another part of the body.
Outdoor air pollution and its health impacts are well studied, but in reality, many people around the world spend the majority of their time indoors. So Assistant Professor Marina Vance is studying how air pollutants created indoors might impact outdoor air quality.
Assistant Professor Nicole Labbe views her work as a much-needed bridge between high-end theoretical chemistry and its actual application. Now, her lab is exploring the kinetic behavior of post-flameout ignition events in high-altitude airplanes.
Researchers in Professor Mark Rentschler's lab are developing a robot that may one day change how millions of people across the U.S. get colonoscopies, making these common procedures easier for patients and more efficient for doctors.
Every day, machines from robots to cars lose tremendous amounts of energy simply because their parts rub together. To try to reduce that loss, Professor Yifu Ding and his colleagues took cues from nature—specifically, its most slithery members.
Researchers Mark Rentschler and Greg Rieker were inducted as senior fellows in the National Academy of Inventors, recognizing active faculty, scientists and administrators with success in patents, licensing and commercialization who have produced technologies that meaningfully benefit society.
It’s hard to imagine a teenager who could resist exploring mechanical engineering after learning about Endoculus, the small device developed by CU Boulder Professor Mark Rentschler and student researchers in his lab that can navigate the human gastrointestinal system with ease and may someday help doctors care for their patients.
Former mechanical engineering faculty member Jenifer Blacklock has returned to the College of Engineering and Applied Science as the director of the Rady Program at Western Colorado University.
Support students of color in mechanical engineering
A history of exclusionary practices shapes the educational experience of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and students of color in STEM fields. As a result, these students are especially underrepresented in engineering and science graduate programs.
To work toward dismantling institutional barriers for students who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and creating an equitable, anti-racist environment in the Rady Mechanical Engineering Department, current graduate students have set up an excellence fund to support and empower BIPOC students in the graduate program.
The fund will support initiatives conceived by BIPOC students, such as mentorship programs, professional development opportunities, community-building efforts, and other programs to empower and amplify the voices of BIPOC students.
The goal is to raise $25,000 to meet the endowment minimum at CU, ensuring a permanent fund for this restricted purpose. Please consider supporting the BIPOC graduate mechanical engineering students to make a lasting impact in the department and CU Boulder.
