On May 9th UCSB Mechanical Engineering hosted its inaugural ​ ME Graduate-Student-Invited Seminar with a talk by Prof. Karan Venayagamoorthy, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Monfort Professor at Colorado State University (CSU) who presented his work on Physics of Environmental Flows Using Numerical Simulations. This event was spearheaded by Prof. Megan Valentine to engage graduate students in networking and research, while promoting their management skills and showing them the 'behind the scenes' efforts of the department in our weekly seminar series. The Organizing Committee consisted of PhD students Edward Biegert, Jamie Booth, Michael Trogdon, and Jamianne Wilcox, who were nominated by their advisors and tasked with selecting one top-notch speaker whose research and experiences would be particularly interesting to the graduate students of the department. Prof. Venayagamoorthy's nomination was based on his expertise in the field of computational fluid dynamics, evidenced by his numerous awards including the 2014 APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Frenkiel Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. He was also the winner of the 2011 Best Teacher Award from the Alumni Association of CSU. In addition to selecting the speaker, the Organizing Committee scheduled numerous meetings with students and faculty, and led tours of the department's laboratories and facilities. On May 10th Karan gave a second informal talk to the UCSB ME graduate students about his career trajectory and his perspectives on engineering, science and life.