News | Department of Mechanical Engineering

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Photo Credit Brian Long/UCSB
Disk-shaped robots can act collectively to accomplish tasks such as lifting and manipulating objects, or supporting weight

How to get a robot collective to act like a smart material

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and TU Dresden are blurring the lines between robotics and materials, with a proof-of-concept material-like collective of robots with behaviors inspired by biology.

Akinwole Akinbolagbe Black History Month

Black Student Stories: Akinwole Akinbolagbe

Thursday, February 13, 2025

In honor of Black History Month, the COE spoke with a handful of Black students who represent the next generation of innovators and leaders in engineering. Akinwole Akinbolagbe, an undergraduate mechanical engineering student, shared with us his inspirations, his experience as the only Black male undergrad in his year, and finding his community on campus.

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Researchers who captured fluid finding its way through a maze now understand what drove the counterintuitive phenomenon.

UCSB Researchers Solve A Fluid -Mechanics Mystery

Monday, February 3, 2025

Seven years ago, UC Santa Barbara researchers caught an unexpected phenomenon on film: A pool of red dye that somehow “knew” how to solve a maze filled with milk. Propelled forward by a couple drops of soap, it unerringly found its way, avoiding dead ends and even making 90 degree turns in its path toward the exit.

A Catalyst to Discovery

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

New awards to study cancer dynamics and cardiac cells

PECASE Award for Elliot Hawkes

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

He is recognized for his “vine” robots and record-setting jumping robots

A Renovated Machine Shop for Mechanical Engineering Students

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Donors, faculty, students and staff recently celebrated the opening of the modernized space

Yangying Zhu awarded ARPA-E IGNIITE and µFIP Outstanding Early Career Awards

A Major Award to Improve Desalination

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Yangying Zhu is named one of the first 13 academics to receive a new ARPA-E IGNIITE grant

Tracy Dyson conducts experiments in space

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Astronaut Tracy Dyson conducts one of the nine experiments Dressaire sent to the ISS.

Studying Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Space

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Emilie Dressaire, an assistant professor in the UCSB Mechanical Engineering Department, had an intimate look at the International Space Station (ISS) last year, spending time inside it via Zoom as she worked with an astronaut to fix a problem with one of nine onboard experiments she had sent to the ISS.

The scanning ultrafast electron microscope in the Bolin Liao lab

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Photo Credit Matt Perko

Researchers create the first ever visualization of photoexcited charges traveling across the interface of two semiconductor materials

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

The Bolin Liao lab has achieved the first-ever “movie” of the phenomenon.

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Yangying Zhu (right), assistant professor in the UCSB Mechanical Engineering Department, receives her award certificate from ARPA-E Program Director Dr. Evelyn Wang at the National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, D.C.

Making Desalination More Efficient, By Way of Renewable Energy

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Mechanical engineer Yangying Zhu is among the first 13 academics to receive the inaugural IGNIITE grant