News | Department of Mechanical Engineering

COE Faculty Awards and Recognitions, 2021-2022

Wednesday, June 8, 2022

UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering faculty receive many of the most prestigious awards and honors bestowed by academic and professional societies in recognition of their leading-edge research and contributions to their fields. Here is a snapshot of the ME faculty recognized by their peers between June 2021 and May 2022, based on a list provided by the individual departments.

Elliot Hawkes standing in front of a white board

Hitting New Heights

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

A mechanical jumper developed by UC Santa Barbara engineering professor Elliot Hawkes and collaborators is capable of achieving the tallest height — roughly 100 feet (30 meters) — of any jumper to date, engineered or biological. The feat represents a fresh approach to the design of jumping devices and advances the understanding of jumping as a form of locomotion.

A Granular Understanding

Thursday, April 7, 2022

A Granular Understanding Engineers describe how fluid suspensions exhibit different behaviors at different scales

A Winning Dance of Liquids

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

A postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Alban Sauret, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has won the prestigious Milton van Dyke award for best video in the Annual Gallery of Fluid Motion, presented by the Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) at the 74th annual meeting of the American Physical Society.

Bio-Inspired Autonomous Materials

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Megan Valentine, a professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UC Santa Barbara, has been awarded a $1.8 million collaborative grant by the National Science Foundation to design and create next-generation materials inspired and empowered by biological cells. Valentine will be working alongside a team of physicists, biologists and engineers, four of whom are women

Investing in Innovation

Thursday, September 23, 2021

Three projects that take innovative approaches to solving critical energy-efficiency challenges have been awarded seed funding from UC Santa Barbara’s Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE), an interdisciplinary research institute committed to improving energy efficiency. The selected projects align with at least one of the institute’s three key interdisciplinary thrusts: smart societal infrastructure, computing and communications, and the food-energy-water nexus. Each proposal will receive up to $50,000 in critical seed funding, which is intended to produce preliminary results that the scientists can use to apply for major external funding to expand their research.

A Leap in Understanding Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

A paper published June 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and co-authored by Beth Pruitt, UC Santa Barbara professor of mechanical engineering and director of the UCSB Institute for BioEngineering, describes the results of a complex long-term collaboration that has included researchers at Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of Kentucky. The study has led to new understanding of how genetic mutations play out at the cellular level to cause HCM, and new perspectives on how to prevent it

Decade of Contributions

Thursday, June 24, 2021

In recognition of her outstanding research accomplishments, Yangying Zhu, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received the 2021 Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

The Science of Tsunamis

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

When we hear the word “tsunami,” we think immediately of the widespread devastation that can result from these uniquely powerful waves. The tsunamis we hear about most often are caused by undersea earthquakes, and the waves they generate can travel at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour and reach heights of tens of meters when they make landfall and break, causing massive flooding and rapid widespread devastation in coastal areas, as happened in Southeast Asia in 2004 and in Japan in 2011.

Sumita Pennathur Wins 2021 CoE Outstanding Faculty Award

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Graduating seniors in the Mechanical Engineering Department selected Professor Sumita Pennathur as their Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award winner. A pioneer in nanofluidics, interfacial science, and biological engineering, Pennathur’s work has revealed unique physics at the nanoscale, making it possible to model, predict, and control fluids and the molecules they contain.