MABE Spring 2019 Alumni Newsletter
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Spring 2019 • Alumni Newsletter Recent MABE Graduates Invent a Competitive Swimming Resistance Revolution page 2 Inside: Trail Blazers: UT Again at Forefront of EcoCAR Competition / A Clinical Approach / A Helping Paw From the Table of Contents Department Head mabe.utk.edu Department Head Matthew Mench Assistant Department Head, Undergraduate Programs Doug Aaron Assoc. Department Head, Integrated Programs and Activities Jindong Tan 14 Assoc. Department Head, Graduate Programs Kivanc Ekici TCE Director of Communications 2 Christie Kennedy Editor Kathy Williams Project Manager Thanks for reading the spring 2019 issue of our alumni generosity will be felt for generations to come, and I 18 Melissa Callahan magazine. I hope you enjoy it! want to again thank everyone who has contributed. I am continually amazed by the generosity of our 1 From the Department Head Designer The college and our department have continued to Mitchell Williamson alumni. All gifts, small and large, have made a expand their global impact and reputation. Evidence for diference in our ability to shape the education and the positive momentum is everywhere. If you have not 2 Trailblazers Writers experiences of our students and provide our faculty been back to campus in the last few years, I can tell you UT again at forefront of EcoCAR competition Randall Brown with the facilities and resources they need to be that it is nearly completely transformed and becoming internationally recognized in their feld. David Goddard more beautiful every month. Our undergraduate and 4 UT-Led Hydrogen Research Earns $2M Grant Printer graduate programs continue to expand to record In this issue, you’ll read more great stories about Mench, Zhang partner with ORNL levels, and we have been recruiting stronger faculty, how MABE is having national impact. UT was chosen University Printing and Mail students, and staf. I am excited we will have up to as one of 12 universities to compete in the 10th fve new faculty starting this summer in areas of Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition. This 6 A Clinical Approach MABE’s Alumni Newsletter national strategic importance including manufacturing, competition extends our department’s quarter-century Hanrahan brings neural experience to classroom is published biannually by the Department of aerospace engineering, and hypersonics. of participation in the competition. This iteration will Mechanical, Aerospace, and require our students to reengineer a 2019 Chevrolet As our faculty and research programs have grown 7 Hitting Close to Home Biomedical Engineering. Blazer into a hybrid electric, semi-autonomous vehicle. TerMaath ofers hope to patients at both UTSI and on the Knoxville campus, the investments we’ve made have transformed our facilities Also in this issue is a story on how MABE Professor UTMABE as well, including the addition of modern wind- Bill Hamel and graduate students J. Logan McNeil and 14 Resistance Reimagined tunnels, a high quality MABE Makerlab that includes Micah Folsom traveled to Japan to attend a conference Students make a splash for swim team training @UTKMABE industrial-quality metal and plastic large-format on nuclear decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi printers, CNC machines, and other superior subtractive nuclear power facility. 18 A Helping Paw manufacturing tooling. This lab will soon be expanding Finally, please keep sending pictures and stories Johnson, dogs, help residents fnd closure University of Tennessee and we plan to invest in an all new manufacturing Mechanical, Aerospace & training and engineering design facility in the coming of your time at Big Orange—we love to share your Biomedical Engineering year that will give our students a design-build-test memories with the entire MABE family! I look forward experience that is second to none. to hearing from you and invite you to get in touch and stay connected. Departments We are also hiring new staf to handle our continued On the cover: Mallory Beil of the Best regards, Tennessee Volunteers during the growth, and enhancing training and advising services Student Notes 8 Alumni Notes 26 meet between the Virginia Cavaliers to students. None of these eforts would be possible and the Tennessee Volunteers at without your help. The generosity of our alumni and Dean’s List Fall 2018 20 Around the Department 28 the Aquatics and Fitness Center in friends have absolutely empowered this transformation Charlottesville, VA. Photo By John and included over $10 million in direct monetary gifts Faculty Notes 23 Golliher/Tennessee Athletics. and pledges since 2016 alone. The impact of this Matthew Mench mabe.utk.edu 1 UT’s EcoCAR team. Trail Blazers: UT Again at Forefront of EcoCAR Competition Writing and photography by Whitney Brothers. A team from UT has yet again been chosen to participate “AVTCs provide our students with career opportunities static and dynamic events. Teams will follow a real-world in the EcoCAR Mobility Challenge, an Advanced and prepare them for embarking on their engineering vehicle development process to meet rigorous technical Vehicle Technology Competition (AVTC) managed by future,” said Irick. “UT has a strong background constraints throughout the four-year competition, which Argonne National Laboratory and sponsored by the US in propulsion systems development; however, the will conclude in the summer of 2022. Department of Energy, General Motors, and MathWorks. connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) technology component of this competition will be a new challenge.” “This competition gives me the opportunity to gain UT is one of twelve North American universities experience with the automotive industry while still in chosen to participate. Since 1988, UT has participated UT students beneft from a hands-on experience school,” said Dean Blanks, project manager for UT’s in ten AVTCs. with concept design, risk assessment, and technical team. “As someone pursing an interdisciplinary career work in vehicle propulsion, automated vehicle with engineering and business, EcoCAR allows me to This new challenge prompts university students to systems, and electrical systems. Using the Chevrolet apply principles learned in the classroom to a wide reengineer a 2019 Chevrolet Blazer into a hybrid Blazer donated by General Motors, the team will use range of real-world challenges.” electric, semi-autonomous vehicle. Students onboard sensors and wireless communication from will incorporate advanced propulsion systems, the vehicles’ surrounding environment to improve The challenge builds on a 30-year history of AVTCs electrifcation, and connected and automated vehicle overall operation efciency in the connected urban provided by DOE. EcoCAR aims to develop a highly- technology that will improve the energy efciency, environment of the future. skilled workforce that can meet our nation’s future safety, and consumer appeal of vehicles, specifcally for energy and mobility challenges. For more information the carsharing market. In the frst year, the team will decide on a vehicle on EcoCAR, the participating schools, or the architecture to develop through research and competition sponsors, visit avtcseries.org. Led by MABE Research Assistant Professor David simulations. In the second and third years, the students “Butch” Irick, a team of undergraduate and graduate will apply their fndings to the Blazer in a tangible students from the Tickle College of Engineering, manner to develop a hybrid electric Blazer with CAV College of Communication and Information, and capability. At the end of each year, the twelve teams Haslam College of Business will participate in the four- will compete against one another in more than a dozen year multidisciplinary competition. 2 MABE H H H H H H H H H H H UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are part of a team whose H H H H H breakthrough in fuel cell and hydrogen technology was awarded H H H $2 million in funding from the US Department of Energy. H H H H H H Hydrogen is increasingly recognized as a potential energy carrier with growing H H H applications in vehicles, grid modernization, energy storage, fuel production, H H metal refning, and other areas. H H H H Although great strides have been made in recent years in the technology of fuel UT-Led HydrogenH H H H H H cells and electrolyzers—the component that breaks water into gas—widespread H implementation of hydrogen-generating components has been limited by cost, and they remain more expensive than natural gas. That’s where the new project comes into play. “Almost all electrolyzers use catalysts to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, Research Earns with the hydrogen then serving as a fuel source for a fuel cell or other process,” said project leader Feng-Yuan Zhang, a MABE associate professor who is located at UT Space Institute. “What we are doing is using a new type of thin electrodes Matthew Mench that are much more efcient in that conversion, reducing costs.” Central to the process are proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer cells. The electrodes and cell design are key to splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen following electrolysis. The proposed work, which builds on previous $2 Million Grant research done in Zhang’s lab, will more efciently convert the water into its constituent gases. By David Goddard. This new concept will make use of advanced manufacturing technology to design specifcally chosen patterns for the layer, allowing hydrogen to be produced more efciently than through conventional electrolysis and at a purer level than through natural gas reformation. “Achieving low-cost hydrogen generation from electrolysis is a critical component to provide efcient energy storage from the growing renewable energy sources on the grid, which do not produce power in concert with demand,” said MABE Department Head Matthew Mench, co-principal investigator on the project. Adoption of energy storage via electrolysis, while ‘‘ providing hydrogen for automotive or other applications, can ofer a smarter path forward that can be scaled as Feng Zhang renewables and fuel cell use increase.”—Mench The project was one of 28 hydrogen-focused initiatives selected by the DOE with a total of $38 million in funding across all projects, highlighting the importance of the gas to the nation.