News | Department of Mechanical Engineering

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

A Catalyst to Discovery

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

New awards to study cancer dynamics and cardiac cells

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

Bolin Liao Awarded NSF Grant on AI-Enhanced Material-Device Codesign of Boron Arsenide as the Next-Generation Semiconductor

Friday, September 20, 2024

Team led by Bolin Liao has been awarded a $1.9M NSF grant on "AI-Enhanced Material-Device Codesign of Boron Arsenide as the Next-Generation Semiconductor".

Kerem Çamsari and Francesco Bullo standing together

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Photo Credit Jeff Liang
Co-PI Kerem Çamsari, left, and MURI lead Francesco Bullo

Rhythms of Nature: Understanding Synchrony in Oscillatory Systems

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Fireflies, pendulum clocks, our heart muscles and the neurons regulating our daily internal processes: these things all have a tendency toward synchrony.

Yangying Zhu Receives Two Early Career Awards

Friday, June 28, 2024

Yangying Zhu receives ARPA-E IGNIITE Early Career Award and the Outstanding Early Faculty Award at the µFIP Conference.

Investigating the extraordinary thermoelectric properties of cadmium arsenide thin films

Thursday, June 27, 2024

If there’s one thing we humans are good at, it’s producing heat. Significant amounts, and in many cases most of the energy we generate and put into our systems we lose as heat, whether it be our appliances, our transportation, our factories, even our electrical grid.“Waste heat is everywhere,” said UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Bolin Liao, who specializes in thermal science and renewable energy. “Our power plants, our car exhaust pipes — there are so many places where we create excess heat waste.”

Daniella Walter Awarded Graduate Division Research Accelerator Award

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Scholarship & Fellowship Spotlight: Daniella Walter was awarded the Graduate Division Research Accelerator Award