Alumni Exchange 2023

EXCHANGE

ALUMNI NEWS Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

BUILDING CULTURE

As we move back into normal operations the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University, we continue to foster the advancement of new ideas in mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering, the growth and education of our students, and the vibrant culture of the individuals who call our department home.

Additionally, as an alum, I am happy to announce that I have been named the permanent chair of the department until at least 2026. In this position, I hope to continue to support the growth and mission of the department and am thrilled at the advancements I have already been able to lead in this role.

From DNA origami to automotive research, our engineers push the envelope of what can be achieved in the classroom, the lab and our everyday lives. Our student teams have excelled against international competition, our faculty has grown with the addition of eleven bright and eager new hires, and our researchers have collaborated across industries to find innovative solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems.

Two of our aerospace students have used their skills in engineering to launch their own start-ups in the drone space seeking to assist first responders out in the field (page 4). A recent graduate was accepted into the National Research Council’s prestigious Associate Research Program (page 7).

A current faculty member and an alum have collaborated to bring DNA origami to students of all ages from elementary to college (page 18).

One of our faculty has stepped into a different field funded by an NSF BRITE Pivot award with her research into the piezoelectricity of bones (page 20). Finally, the Department of Energy has awarded our researchers at the Center for Automotive Research $3.8 million to improve electric batteries.

All of this was accomplished with our talented students, who continue to be our primary focus. They are involved in every facet of our research, and we foster a spirit of collegiality among faculty, staff researchers and students.

I invite you to read on to learn about our recent cutting-edge innovations.

Rob Siston Professor and Chair Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering The Ohio State University

MAE hires a record number of new faculty

Read a spotlight on each of them in the QR code below:

Qadeer Ahmed, Assistant Professor

Matilde D’Arpino, Assistant Research Professor

Debdipta Goswami, Assistant Professor

Michael Handschuh, Assistant Research Professor

Isaac Hong, Assistant Research Professor

Praneeth Kandlakunta, Assistant Research Professor

Elevennew faculty members start their careers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the 2022-2023 academic year. This record number of hires in our department rivals the number of new faculty at other colleges across the US and includes 5 new tenure track faculty, 5 research faculty, and 1 faculty of practice.

The addition of these faculty works to bolster the initiative of University President Kristina Johnson to focus on the university’s future, pursuing an ambitious agenda to double sponsored research expenditures and hire a minimum of 350 new tenure track faculty. The faculty will contribute greatly to the growth of the department and College of Engineering as a whole.

I am thrilled to welcome this talented group of new faculty to the Department of Mechanical of Aerospace Engineering,” Rob Siston, Department Chair, said. “They will enhance our research abilities and mentor graduate students in making new discoveries in the core areas of the department: mobility, manufacturing, medicine, materials, and energy. They will teach courses in areas like additive manufacturing, product design, and controls, just to name a few, to prepare students for the in-demand jobs of the 21st century.

Matthew McCrink, Assistant Research Professor

Calvin Stewart, Associate Professor

Daniel Wisniewski, Assistant Professor of Practice

Sarah Wolff, Assistant Professor

Shang Zhai, Assistant Professor

We welcome these faculty and look forward to their contributions to the department, college and university as a whole.

“The College of Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering both prioritize building and nurturing a community and culture of humanity that reflects the values of the University,” Siston said. “We are a stronger and better department because these talented individuals joined our faculty, and I look forward to working with them to better the world around us for many years to come.”

Read More on our new faculty: go.osu.edu/elevenfaculty

(From left to right: Sarah Wolff, Calvin Stewart, Debdipta Goswami, Praneeth Kandlakunta, Isaac Hong, Matthew McCrink, Daniel Wisniewski, Michael Handschuh, and Shang Zhai. Qadeer Ahmed not photographed.)

Student start-up: Two MAE undergraduate students launch drone company

Adithya Ramaswami and Jack Murray, both undergraduate aerospace engineering students graduating in May 2023, had seen each other in classes before, but the first time they really interacted was working on the leadership board of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Ohio State student chapter in the 2020 autumn semester.

On the board, they became fast friends and began discussing their interests in the aerospace world. Ramaswami had just recently launched Ohio State’s first drone competition team, Buckeye Vertical, and would often share with Murray all the variety and opportunity that the drone industry had to offer.

Murray’s interest was piqued, he decided to pursue internships within the drone space, and with a connection from Ramaswami, he found an offer for the summer of 2021 with ResCon Technologies through the Ohio State Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship’s Wheeler and Wolstein Internship Program.

While at ResCon, Murray was able to work in a fastpaced, start-up environment where he learned about all aspects of drone tech from the design and assembly to software control. Once the internship ended, he went looking for his next opportunity in autumn 2021 but couldn’t find anything through the Keenan Center’s Wolstein program.

The leadership within the Keenan Center all kept telling Murray the same thing about a new opportunity being offered through the university, “pursue the President’s Buckeye Accelerator”. Murray looked into it and found an opportunity to launch a business with a variety of university-backed resources and a chance of winning additional funding through Ohio State.

So, one night in October 2021, Murray approached Ramaswami with a vague idea for a drone company and asked if Ramaswami had heard of the President’s Buckeye Accelerator.

“I have been following Dean Howard’s emails and I have seen this opportunity,” Ramaswami had told Murray. “We should go for it together.”

With a November proposal deadline fast approaching, Ramaswami and Murray quickly put together their video pitch for a drone company for light and flight shows and sent it in. Later that year, they were informed that they were selected for the program’s Boost Camp, which began in January 2022.

Through the first-ever cohort of the President’s Buckeye Accelerator program, Adithya Ramaswami and Jack Murray launched ParaWave, a start-up focused on creating drones for first responders to help out during emergencies, in February 2022.

“We wanted to take our passion for the drone space and find a way to help the community and do something that was meaningful with that,” Ramaswami said. “It’s thrilling, but it also feels like it’s just the perfect amalgamation of everything happening at once. We’re coming in at just the right time with just the right experience and just the right background for it.”

The President’s Buckeye Accelerator supports student founders prepare a startup for launch, their website states. The accelerator combines entrepreneurship skill building, deep mentorship, community building and funding with a structured process.

Accelerator applicants first must complete a six-week Boost Camp, and then 10 student ventures from the camp will have the chance to present at a pitch finale. Six startups are then selected for the year-long accelerator and $50,000 in funding.

The six-week Boost Camp is all about getting advice and validating the start-up idea to build into a business model that can be pitched at the pitch finale.

When Boost Camp started, Ramaswami and Murray quickly realized that light shows using drones may be hard to launch as a business, so they began to brainstorm. Knowing they had to pivot, they decided they wanted to help people most of all, so they switched their focus to helping firefighters during emergencies.

With a concrete idea and new name, FireFight Aero, the duo began to flesh out their business model, conduct customer interviews and work with local departments, all to understand the drone technology that their market most needed.”

The first time they felt their idea was validated was during a meeting with the director of Franklin County Emergency Management and Homeland Security where they left with a letter of support for their business.

“That was the first time that we had gone out and interviewed a potential customer, so we were excited to see such an immediate positive reaction,” Murray said. “We thought that it would take more time to get our first letter of support, but we got it immediately. For us, that showed that the market had a really screaming need for this kind of technology.”

After conducting more interviews with departments across Franklin County, Ramaswami and Murray, with some advice from different department leaders, expanded their business model to include all first responders and made the final name change to ParaWave.

They came to a finalized business goal: to be the onestop shop providing first responders with all their dronerelated needs to view aerial footage and gather critical information during emergencies.

At the end of Boost Camp and now with a solid pitch in place, the leaders of ParaWave presented to a panel of four judges and some leadership of the Buckeye Accelerator. With their pitch going well, they were selected as one of 10 finalists to present at the pitch finale on April 6 for the opportunity to be part of the first cohort.

Pitch finale for the President’s Buckeye Accelerator

After tying up any loose ends and polishing their pitch, Ramaswami and Murray gave their final pitch in front of hundreds at 99P Labs on West Campus, and as the event came to an end, it was announced that they were chosen as one of the final six and were admitted to Cohort 1 of the President’s Buckeye Accelerator.

“It’s just surreal and it still feels surreal.” Ramaswami said. “I’m like, wow, this is happening. It’s so exciting to be able to take my passion in the drone space and be able to have the opportunity to do this. We’re also just grateful for all the resources that [the university] has provided for us to be able to do this as well.”

Murray echoed his sentiment.

“There have been so many different key milestones that have been hit since then, and with every single one, I feel like I’ve had to take a step back and remember how real everything has suddenly become. For example, when

we got accepted into the President’s Buckeye Accelerator program, when we were announced as winners to become part of the first cohort and receive $50,000 in funding: those experiences were surreal,” Murray said. “It’s like everything is actually happening, and that feeling continues to happen more and more often.”

ParaWave has since gone on to work with multiple accelerator programs. Through the CodeLaunch Accelerator during the summer of 2022, they partnered with a local software firm to prototype a mobile app to securely share live drone video feeds with teams of first responders. Additionally, they were able to present at an event put on by CodeLaunch Ohio at the Ohio Theater in front of an audience of over 500 people.

More recently, they became part of the VentureWell E-Teams program in January of 2023, where they worked to further develop their technology commercialization strategy and received an additional $5,000 in funding. They are currently applying for phase 2 of the E-teams program for $20,000 more in funding.

As part of the cohort, the two founders of ParaWave both spent the summer continuing to build out the company and creating the structure of their business all while juggling the normal activities of an undergraduate engineering student: internships, research and clubs.

As of now, both Ramaswami and Murray are finishing up their final year of undergraduate education all while running their business and are able to keep ParaWave and Ohio State close by hosting capstone opportunities through their start-up.

With most students thinking about what their next step after college is going to be, Ramaswami and Murray find themselves in a position they are grateful for. They both hope ParaWave can continue to grow with them throughout their professional careers and possibly into graduate school.

“Once we solidify the tech and we start providing this drone technology to departments in Franklin County, we plan to expand to the rest of Ohio and then hopefully the rest of the United States as well,” Ramaswami said, “but that’ll take a few years.”

(right) Parawave (formerly Firefight Aero) accepting their prize at the Buckeye Accelerator

STUDENT SUCCESS

Nehal Jajal wins Ohio State University’s Graduate Associate Teaching Award

Nehal Jajal, Senior Graduate Teaching Associate and PhD Student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, has been selected as a recipient for one of the Ohio State University’s Graduate Associate Teaching Award (GATA).

The GATA is Ohio State’s highest recognition of the exceptional teaching provided by graduate students serving as Graduate Teaching Associates. The recipients of the GATA are awarded $2,000 for their accomplishments and honored at the Graduate School Awards Ceremony.

All recipients are nominated by faculty, staff, researchers or other graduate students. The selection committee is comprised of the Graduate School’s Award Committee (faculty representing the range of graduate programs), Council of Graduate Students representatives, and previous GATA winners.

Nehal is advised by Sandip Mazumder, a professor in MAE, and has been a GTA in some capacity dating back to Spring 2020. He now serves as the Senior GTA tasked looking after the entire GTA community in the MAE department.

Nehal, originally, joined graduate school to pursue an interest in research, but quickly found that academia may be the best career path for him. To Nehal, the GTA is vital and the link between the student and the instructor.

“In our department, GTAs have different responsibilities based on the course,” Nehal said. “So, being a GTA often means doing different things based on the assigned course and the instructor you are working with. In general, I think GTAs can serve as a bridge between the instructor and the students”

Ohio State student team shines

solar-powered cars

Nehal Jajal

Being a GTA since 2020, I had already realized that I enjoyed teaching. Interacting with students and discussing ideas always felt like a refreshing break from my research. However, I was never sure if I was really good at it. Receiving this award and recognition has given me some faith that I am on the right path, and I should keep honing my skills further to shape my teaching philosophy

Nahal Jajal Mechanical Engineering

light on

Even on the grayest of winter days, a team of students at The Ohio State University is thinking of how the sun can power a car.

The university’s newest motorsports team—Buckeye Solar Racing—started in the spring of 2021 with just a handful of students and an idea. Mechanical engineering major Moustapha Bal (’23) had watched a documentary on the 2019 World Solar Challenge and wondered why Ohio State didn’t have its own team. With help from his classmate Samantha Turner, he decided to start one

“After my time at Ohio State, I want to leave something that I can remember and something that can be a beneficial experience for future students,” said Bal, who serves as the team’s executive officer. “My main goal for this club is for it to last.”

In just two years’ time, the team has grown exponentially. Its membership has increased to more than 30 members across various majors with several subcommittees, including structural, electrical, aerodynamic, and business and media teams. But it was a chance meeting with a would-be competitor that gave the Buckeye Solar team their big break. While attending the American Solar Challenge in Topeka, Kansas, in the summer of 2021, the students connected with Western Michigan University’s team, who eventually donated their old car to the Buckeyes.

To learn more about Buckeye Solar Racing, visit buckeyesolar.org.

Written by Meggie Biss, College of Engineering Communications

Wood is selected for the NRC Research Associateship Program

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering graduate student

Nathaniel Wood has been selected for a postdoctoral fellowship with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio, through the National Research Council’s prestigious Research Associate Program.

The NRC’s Research Associateship Program provides postdoctoral scientists and engineers the opportunity to pursue research problems, largely of their own choice and that are compatible with the interests of sponsoring laboratories.

“It feels very good to be awarded this fellowship,” Wood said, “Securing proposals and associateships is a key component of doing research and it feels good to start my career on a solid foundation in this respect.”

His research will focus on a metal 3D printing technology called powder bed fusion, which uses a laser to fuse a part out of a bed of metal powder in a layerby-layer fashion. With his research collaborators at AFRL, they will research how machines that contain multiple lasers can be used to enact advanced quality control procedures.

Wood previously worked on a project with AFRL, which is how he first heard of the opportunity to apply and helped him be successful during the application process. Each year the NRC sponsors a limited number of postdocs with the AFRL.

“Since my current research project is in collaboration with AFRL I have a close relationship with several researchers there,” Wood said. “Their guidance was helpful in determining what to emphasize and what language to use when writing the proposal.”

Dr. Andrew Gillman, Research Materials Engineer at AFRL, is a part of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate’s Digital Manufacturing Research Team that worked closely with Wood.

“It’s great to see Nate be rewarded for the outstanding young researcher he is,” Gillman said, “I look forward to being able to continue to work with him on the research he proposed.”

Wood acknowledged David Hoelzle, his academic advisor, and Edwin Schwalbach and Sean Donegan, research collaborators at AFRL, as other mentors that helped him. He credited his time at Ohio State as rewarding and an experience that helped him be ready for this opportunity.

“I have written applications for several other fellowships and proposals at Ohio State before this one, while not all were accepted, the guidance provided to me by my advisors and others in the department was instrumental in developing this skill,” Wood said, “I feel that Ohio State strongly helped prepare me for this opportunity.”

(left) Buckeye Solar Racing with their secondever finished project at their launch event.

Learn more about Buckeye Solar Racing and look forward to more news to come as they compete at their upcoming competition!

The guidance provided by my advisors and others in the department was instrumental in developing this skill. I feel that Ohio State strongly helped prepare me for this opportunity.

Nathaniel Wood Mechanical Engineering

Nathaniel Wood

From professional race car driver to MAE undergrad

For most people when they watch racing, they only think of the driver and the car. Although in reality, there are many crucial factors that take place behind the scenes of motorsports that make a world of difference.

With the car set-up, preparation and business side of the sport, only a small portion of success actually takes place on the track.

For Colin Mullan, who has spent most of his life in the driver’s seat, understanding all of these aspects is vital to his continued growth in the racing industry.

Mullan, a third-year mechanical engineering student and the vehicle dynamics lead for Formula Buckeyes Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE) team at Ohio State, came to Ohio State with hopes to begin that growth and outside of school is also still a professional race car driver.

“Mechanical Engineering was the natural bridge between my automotive and motorsport interests in the classroom,” Mullan said. “There aren’t too many drivers with engineering backgrounds in the United States currently, so it gives me a unique leg-up on my competition in some ways.”

From the young age of five, he began his racing endeavors through go-kart racing which evolved into cars and quickly became a goal of his to keep moving on to bigger and faster things.

Growing up an hour east of San Francisco in Danville, California, there were opportunities to network and talk to various people in the sports racing world and race on the West Coast.

His passion for racing was established early along with his interest in data and mathematics. At 13, he began working with racing data software and wanted to pursue a major that allowed him to further enhance his racing skills.

A few years later, at 16, he began competing on a national level for the International Motor Sports Association – one of the largest sports car series in the country.

Mullan has had notable accomplishments throughout his career so far. In 2018, during his junior year of high school, he won the Team USA scholarship. With this achievement he was able to spend the month of October racing across the UK.

“It was an honor to be listed among fellow Team USA Alumni drivers I grew up watching race in the IMSA and IndyCar,” Mullan said.

From there, he began racing for Andretti Autosport, driving a McLaren 570S GT4, McLaren’s premiere trackonly race car. In 2020, he and his team even won the GT4 America Championship.

Colin Mullan

Colin Mullan with the Formula SAE car in front of Mirror Lake Read

Nuclear engineering student receives Department of Energy award

This April, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced more than $6 million in scholarships and fellowships to students pursuing nuclear energy-related degrees across the US. DOE is awarding 124 scholarships and fellowships to students at 39 colleges and universities.

Quinnan Hetrick, a third year in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s Nuclear Engineering minor program, is a recipient of the DOE’s University Nuclear Leadership Program’s $10,000 scholarship awarded to undergraduate students for the 2023-2024 academic year.

She plans to use this scholarship to help with her tuition costs and earning this scholarship affirms to her that she is on the right path.

“It makes me feel more confident in pursuing nuclear engineering after I finish my Bachelor’s,” Hetrick said.

She is currently working in Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (NRL) here at Ohio State with advisor Dr. Raymond Cao, who is additionally the nuclear engineering program director. Dr. Cao had encouraged Hetrick to apply for this scholarship.

Hetrick, having initial background in computer science and engineering, felt she was lacking from a chemistry and physics background compared to her peers in her nuclear engineering courses. However, with a strong interest and pull to learn more about nuclear power she decided to pursue a nuclear engineering minor.

After taking courses, Hetrick feels confident that nuclear engineering is a field she wants to pursue.

“Now that I’m almost finished with my minor, I found that I’m still interested in the field and want to continue learning about it,” Hetrick said, “Nuclear engineering is a field that covers many disciplines and I think I’ll fit somewhere within it.”

Student shop provides machining opportunities for MAE students

In the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department there are countless different resources and opportunities to help challenge and further engage students during their academic careers. One popular resource for students is the student machine shop in Scott Laboratory.

Led by shop supervisors Chad Bivens, Aaron Orsborn and Kevin Wolf, their guidance helps students learn and enhance their machining skills. The shop is welcome to all students, no prior machining knowledge is required.

“Our goal in the shop is to advance experimental learning in the manufacturing environment for mechanical and aerospace engineering.” Orsborn said.

Many students in MAE visit the machine shop, one being Alexandru Crisan, a fourthyear aerospace engineering student from Upper Arlington, Ohio. He discovered the shop his third year and although he had interests in machining, his only experience came from watching machinist projects on YouTube.

In high school, Crisan was heavily involved in his school’s robotics club. Many members from his club ended up attending Ohio State and they would often come back and share their experiences about classes, coursework and opportunities Ohio State offers.

“Ohio State has a great deal of resources with regards to aerospace engineering,” Crisan said. “It was the best option for me as aerospace is one of my passions.”

Another undergraduate student, Andrew Young, a fourth-year studying mechanical engineering from Delaware, Ohio, has had a history with machinery and works as a student assistant in the shop.

His experience comes from his knowledge working in his own machine shop that he created in his parent’s garage as a high schooler where he learned basic shop skills and discovered his passion for machinery.

At first, he was unsure of his academic future uncertain if he wanted to pursue higher education, but when considering college, machining was on his mind. Growing up so close to Columbus, Ohio State was an obvious option — being so close to home as well as having one of the best engineering programs in the state.

Written by Kierra Hampton

Quinnan Hetrick

Andrew Young & Alexandru Crisan

Buckeye Space Launch Initiative team travels to Huntsville for NASA Student Launch Competition

Buckeye Space Launch Initiative’s (BSLI) NASA Student Launch Initiative team travelled to Huntsville, Alabama, to compete at the University-level NASA Student Launch competition held at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on April 12-16, 2023.

The objective of this competition is for students to design, build and launch a high-powered rocket carrying a payload that supports NASA’s Artemis objectives. This year, teams were challenged to design a payload that upon landing, is capable of autonomously receiving commands and performing a series of tasks with an onboard camera system.

NASA releases the competition handbook as well as the payload objective in August. BSLI began the discussions for the initial designs and the timeline for the year and the team had to submit their proposal in September.

With many objectives needing to be met through the year, Madi Herrmann, NASA SLI Project Manager, made sure the team was well prepared to meet the competition requirements. This included the design of subscale and full-scale rockets and successfully completing several test launches.

“We also present to the NASA judges a project proposal, Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, Flight Readiness Review and Launch Readiness Review,” Herrmann said, “These are extensive technical documents and safety reviews that record our progress and plan on how we will complete their objectives.”

Over the course of the year, BSLI designed their rocket, Cosmos, which contained their Payload “CLAMP: Camera Lander Area Mapping Payload”. Mark Wolf, Deputy Project Manager, stressed how much the team prepared for the competition and the hard work put in. Additionally, the team discovered they officially qualified for the competition just six days before it began.

“It was a great feeling to just make it and experience everything in Huntsville,” Wolf said, “I was proud of the entire team and everything we had accomplished up to that point and I felt that a launch at the competition would mean a successful year.”

Ohio State-Wilberforce team places first in national electric vehicle challenge

Ateam of students from The Ohio State University and Wilberforce University earned first place in Year One of the EcoCAR EV Challenge. Coming in second were West Virginia University and the University of Alabama. The four-year competition challenges students to engineer a next-generation battery electric vehicle that deploys connected and autonomous vehicle technologies to implement energy-efficient and customer-pleasing features, while meeting the decarbonization needs of the automotive industry. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors and MathWorks.

“Year One of EcoCAR is all about generating big ideas and developing a strategy for the remainder of the competition,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alejandro Moreno. “These students are already demonstrating the capacity and drive needed to pursue careers in the EV sector and become trailblazers in the mobility industry.”

The partnership team of Ohio State and Wilberforce, one of the competition’s two HBCUs, showed consistency in excellence across all subteams throughout Year One, earning top three finishes for 12 pre-competition deliverables, 10 of which were first-place finishes. They also notched top-3 finishes for their Project Management subteam and their DEI subteam. Bringing a trophy and $10,000 in prize money back to Ohio from the awards ceremony in Orlando, the team earned a total of 850 points out of 1000.

“The team’s complex embedded system designs were impressive,” said MathWorks Global Academic Student Programs Manager Lauren Tabolinsky. “We look forward to seeing the teams continue to use MATLAB and Simulink to build and simulate their EV designs throughout the duration of the multi-year competition.”

Ohio State student teams have been participating in Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions since 1990 and have placed in the top three in 14 of the last 15 years, including winning first place eight times.

“The team has been doing great work all year and it is wonderful to see it be recognized,” said Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Clinical Professor Shawn Midlam-Mohler, the team’s faculty advisor. “We have a lot of momentum in engineering, DEI and communications for next year. And I want to give a special thanks to Kamryn Russell, our team lead this year. She truly went above and beyond to help make this all happen.”

MAE Design/Build/Fly team places sixth in 27th Annual AIAA Design/Build/Fly Competition

The Ohio State University Design/Build/Fly team placed sixth out of 99 teams in the 27th annual Design/Build/ Fly competition hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) held in Tucson, Arizona on April 13-16, 2023.

The goal of this year’s competition was to design and create an aircraft that was required to be storable in a box with all mission payloads that had a combined length, width, and height measurement of 62 inches, and needed to be quickly assembled to flight-ready condition by one person within five minutes.

“Over the past few years, and especially early in the 2022-2023 academic year, our leadership team has driven significant changes in the structure and culture of our team. We now have vastly improved member retainment and engagement, resulting in a larger and more well-connected team than before,” Andres Lu, the DBF president, said. “Placing 6th out of 99 teams in the 2023 DBF competition shows us that the changes we have made are leading us in the right direction, and that a team that feels safe, welcomed, and valued is a team that is dedicated enough to be competitive. It attests to how much our members have learned and grown as engineers. Placing so high in this competition is no easy feat, and I am incredibly proud of our team for earning our place well within the top 10 this year.”

The competition was made up of four missions, including one ground mission and three flight missions, that needed completed by the aircraft.

For the ground mission, the 7.2-pound aircraft was loaded with the heaviest payload configuration and an additional 112 pounds of weight while only being supported at the wingtips. The first flight mission served to demonstrate the airworthiness of the aircraft without any payload. Mission 2 involved flying as many laps as possible within a 10-minute time window while carrying as much weight as possible in an internally-stored electronics package. Mission 3 used a Jamming Antenna made out of ½” diameter PVC pipe as the

payload, and the antenna had to be mounted vertically above the wing at only one wingtip. The goal was to fly three laps as quickly as possible with the longest antenna possible.

Each mission was evaluated and graded by a team of judges then combined to get a final score for each team. The team placed higher than several notable schools, including the University of Michigan, MIT, Stanford University, Georgia Tech, CalPoly, Purdue, and Cornell, among many others.

“With such a large pool of teams who participate in DBF, we always face some tough competition,” Lu said.” At times, it felt daunting to go head-to-head against some of the larger and more experienced teams, but we were confident that we could hit well above our weight. Additionally, knowing that there were so many good teams there made our 6th place finish even more rewarding.”

For Lu and the rest of the DBF team, juggling an engineering student’s workload with trying to design and build the best aircraft they could was the largest challenge they faced this year, but despite the packed schedule they were proud of what they accomplished.

“It is incredibly difficult to balance your workload as an engineering student, let alone as an engineering student who is also heavily involved in a student engineering competition team,” Lu said. “This is not only true for the leadership team, but also for all of our members who dedicate so much of their time to our team and our aircraft. Timelines for these competitions are always tight, but I am proud of how our team was able to pull together and get things done during critical times in the project.”

This year’s DBF team was sponsored by GE Aviation.

“GE Aviation has supported us this year with multiple networking opportunities, social events, and funding,” Lu said. “We would also like to extend a deep note of gratitude to the College of Engineering at OSU for their support and funding for our team throughout the years.”

Written by Jake Rahe

(left) The Design/Build/Fly team’s 2023 plane taking off during a flight mission.

Learn more about Ohio State Design/Build/Fly at the AIAA 2023 Design/Build/Fly competition!

Honors and Awards Ceremony celebrates exceptional alumni and students

The annual Honors and Awards Ceremony in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering took place on April 20, 2023. Students and alumni were honored from the nuclear, aerospace and mechanical engineering programs.

Mark Bartman (BS AAE ‘82) was presented with the Stillman Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award

This award is presented to retired or emeritus alumni who have distinguished themselves over their lifetimes by contributing to the advancement of their chosen profession. Robinson joined Ohio State in 1878, and was the founding chairperson of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He was also one of the founders of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and received an Honorary Doctorate of Science degree from Ohio State in 1896.

Major General (Retired) Mark E. Bartman has excelled in his career, as a pilot and instructor pilot in the U.S. Air Force and later in the Ohio Air National Guard where he rose to the rank of Major General.

He retired in 2019 as The Adjutant General (TAG) of the Ohio National Guard. As TAG, he commanded the fourth largest state National Guard organization, leading more than 16,000 Guard personnel in the Ohio Army National Guard, Ohio Air National Guard, Ohio Military Reserve, and Ohio Naval Militia in their dual missions of serving the state of Ohio and the U.S. Government in locations across Ohio, the U.S., and around the world.

Since his retirement from the military, he founded a consulting firm, 9G Consulting LLC, and from 2019-2022 he served as a consultant for OSU’s Office of Research conducting outreach and engagement with federal and state entities.

The Marion Smith Service Award is presented to alumni who have distinguished themselves by providing a level of service to the community, the university, and/ or society above and beyond what is expected in their position as they made significant career contributions. Smith received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1947 from Ohio State. He served for more than 37 years as a faculty member and associate dean of the College of Engineering, giving generously of his time to students and alumni.

This year, Lisa McCauley (BS AAE ‘79) was awarded the Marion Smith Service Award.

Lisa has had a long career at Battelle, she has held executive, technical, and program management positions, principally focused in aerospace and defense. She was Vice President and General Manager of Battelle’s National Security Global Operations and its Cyber Innovations business unit where she led research and development teams and facilities in the US and abroad. Earlier, she led NASA-supported programs including Battelle’s spaceflight program which culminated in flights on ten Space Shuttle missions, and space exploration programs for which she and other team members were awarded a NASA Group Achievement Award

Since then, she has served on the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department external advisory board and is currently its co-chair. She is very active in Buckeye Engineering Women in Executive Leadership, supporting young women in engineering.

Stillman Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award honoring lifetime career distinction

Marion Smith Service Award recognizing service to community, university and/or society

E.G. Bailey Entrepreneurship Award celebrating successful inventions

Brian Reese (BS ME ‘98, BS ME ‘99) recieved the E.G. Bailey Entrepreneurship Award.

This award is presented to alumni who have demonstrated exceptional entrepreneurship as they invented new products, processes, or procedures that have been successfully manufactured, adapted, or utilized. This award honors E.G. Bailey, a 1903 graduate of Ohio State, and inventor of the Bailey meter. Bailey left an engineering job to develop and manufacture his meter which dramatically improved boiler efficiency and has been used world-wide.

Brian is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer at T Sportline, a pioneer and leading provider of premium-branded aftermarket parts and accessories designed specifically for Tesla vehicles.

Brian received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Ohio State University in 1998 and 1999, respectively. He has had a long career in the automotive parts industry developing premium consumer products.

Alan Gregory Loofbourrow Business Achievement Award recognizing career success

The Alan Gregory Loofbourrow Business Achievement Award was presented to Denis Garagic (PHD ME ‘01).

This award is presented to alumni who have been recognized for their significant contributions in guiding a successful product or service business, major industrial organization, or government entity.

Dr. Denis Garagić serves as Chief Technology Officer for Sarcos Robotics. In this role, Denis is responsible for technical guidance across all innovation, engineering, and technology teams. Denis has more than 25 years of experience in AI/ML and controls technology. Prior to joining Sarcos, he served as Chief Scientist at BAE Systems FAST Labs, guiding the creation of cognitive computing solutions that provided machine intelligence and anticipatory intelligence to solve challenges across the Department of Defense and intelligence community. His successful career in high tech businesses is testimony to his ability to navigate rapidly evolving technological fields within a commercial setting – a challenging task.

Rudolph Edse Award in Space Engineering honoring excellence

Carolyn Mercer (BS AAE ‘82) was presented the Rudolph Edse Award in Space Engineering

Rudolph Edse moved to Ohio State in 1950, becoming the director of the Rocket Research Laboratory. His research developed several possible propellant combinations, and determined their combustion characteristics and combustion stability limits. He was also one of the first to study cryogenic rocket propellants.

The Edse Award is presented to Aerospace Engineering Program alumni who have made significant contributions to successful engineering and/or scientific advances in space related products or programs.

Dr. Carolyn Mercer is the Chief Technologist for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. In this role she is continuing her 40-year career of championing the development of innovative technologies to dramatically improve the capabilities of aerospace systems.

She began by developing optical instrumentation for aeropropulsion ground test facilities and was awarded two patents for innovative designs. She has managed numerous projects for the development of technologies needed for aeronautics, human exploration, and science.

She is a 1982 alumna of the Ohio State University Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and a former student of Dr. Edse.

We were pleased to have all of our award winners in person this year for a group photo.

Thomas French Achievement Award celebrating educators

The Thomas French Achievement Award is presented to alumni who have distinguished themselves as scholars and educators.

French, a 1895 graduate of Ohio State, served as a professor of engineering drawing at his Alma Mater, introduced new teaching methods, and authored a popular textbook. He was awarded the Lamme Medal in 1943 for his achievements.

Sudipto Mukherjee (MS ME ‘88, PHD ME ‘92) received the 2023 Thomas French Achievement Award.

Prof. Sudipto Mukherjee is the Henry Ford Chair professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the IIT Delhi.

He did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and earned his MS and PhD from the Ohio State University in 1988 and 1992, respectively.

He has over 70 journals papers and 50+ patents. His research interests are in Biomechanics, Mechanical System Design, Computer Controlled Mechanisms, Dynamics.

Garvin L. Von Eschen Award honoring leadership in aerospace engineering

The Garvin L. Von Eschen Award was presented to Joe Manter (BS AAE ‘70). This award is presented to Aerospace Engineering Program alumni who have demonstrated technical and administrative excellence in leading successful aerospace projects and organizations.

Von Eschen joined Ohio State in 1946 as the first chairman of the newly established Department of Aeronautical Engineering. During the next three decades, he provided vision and guidance to the growing department as it established highly rated undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as laboratories for aerodynamic and rocket research.

Joe worked for the Air Force until 2002. After leaving the Air Force, Joe held many leadership positions at Universal Technology Corporation until his retirement in 2018.

A very significant and personally gratifying professional achievement of Joe’s was his leadership in the research, analysis, documentation and briefing of findings reported in an Air Force Research Lab study, “Technology Insertion for Energy Savings in the Legacy Fleet.”

Ralph Boyer Young Achiever Award celebrating early career success

The Ralph Boyer Young Achiever Award is presented to alumni who have risen rapidly in their chosen profession and made significant contributions before the age of 40. Ralph Boyer, a 1930 graduate of The Ohio State University, achieved chief engineer status and contributed significantly to his company all before turning 40.

This year, there were two awardees of the Ralph Boyer Young Achiever Award: David Hoelzle (BS ME ‘05) and Arpit Mittal (PHD ‘11).

Between Hoelzle’s PhD and current position, he completed a post-doc in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles and held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame.

His research interests lie in applied control theory and dynamics for applications in additive manufacturing robotics and microsystems for mechanobiology research.

Dr. Mittal started as a Thermal Scientist at Broadcom Corporation. He worked there until Dec. 2012. He then moved to Qualcomm Technologies and worked there as a Thermal Engineer from Dec 2012 to Dec 2015. In Dec 2015, he moved to Apple, where he was responsible for the thermal design and architecture of all mobile processors for iPhones and iPads and a variety of other products. Since November 2020, he has been at Google, where is the System on Chip (SoC) Thermal Lead, and currently responsible for the Google Tensor in Pixel 6 and 7 series.

Dr. Mittal has 4 journal papers and 3 conference papers to his credit. His 4 journal papers have been cited over 250 times, and one of his conference papers has received a best paper award from IEEE. Most importantly, he has 8 issued patents to his name and 6 others pending.

Student Awards

Recognizing students for outstanding academic achievement, leadership and contributions to the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering

Outstanding Research Award – recognizing tudents for their research contributions within the department:

Owen Shiflett, Riley Damm

Outstanding Research and Leadership Award – recognizing tudents for their research contributions and leadership within the department:

John Meaden

Outstanding Academic Awards – recognizing students in each major with the highest cumulative point-hour ratio in their respective classes:

Mechanical Engineering Recipients

• Avi Balakirsky, Bennett Brabrand, Gus Cordonnier, Rohan Deshpande, Aymane Erraki, George Hajjar, Debbie Hodson, Drew Katz, Mitch Oinonen, Joey Onderko, Robert Orr, Brandon Paul, Tommy Polakowski, Amy Sarle, Stacey Savchenko, Lara Schober, Aidan Stalker, David Szoke and Cathy Wang

Aerospace Engineering Recipients

• Cesar Aoun, Gene Harada, Jonathan Martin, Hefei Xu, Jordan Bechtol, Spenser Eason, Noah Hiler and Nick Maggs

Outstanding Senior in Aerospace Engineering Award – presented to an aerospace engineering student who has not only excelled academically, but has also demonstrated a great deal of leadership and community involvement

Victoria Murnieks

Undergraduate Teaching Associate Awards – recognizing exceptional teaching provided by an undergraduate teaching associate in mechanical or aerospace engineering.

Christopher Johnson

Graduate Teaching Associate Awards – recognizing exceptional teaching provided by a graduate teaching associate in mechanical or aerospace engineering.

Anna Lebron

Rob Wolf Outstanding Senior Award Finalists – recognizing outstanding senior mechanical engineering students.

To be considered for the award, students must have a 3.0 minimum cumulative point-hour ratio and meet at least two of the following criteria: be active in a professional or honorary society; have demonstrated leadership in a campus activity or done community service; have participated in campus-wide activities; and have worked during academic year to defray costs.

Each year a committee is formed to select finalists and one awardee Finalists: Elise Kemper, James Dobrozsi

Rob Wolf Outstanding Senior Award honoring a senior mechanical engineering student in memory of Rob Wolf

The Rob Wolf Outstanding Senior Award is presented to a mechanical engineering student in memory of Rob Wolf, a 1997 graduate. The award recognizes students who excel academically while actively participating in department, college, university and community organizations. This year’s award was presented to Trace Nguyen.

Trace is recognized for his farreaching campus and community involvement. Trace has been a member and leader for programs across the university including the Engineering Career Services, Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers, Lambda Phi Epsilon, Vietnamese Student Association, Design/Build/Fly Competition Team, BuckeyeCurrent Competition Team, Trans*Mission, Asian American Community Services, and Equitas Health.

In 2020, Trace chartered the Lambda Phi Epsilon to break the stigma of Greek Life on campus and to aid in rebuilding the bridges that were once present between APIDA organizations on campus. He is a mentor and holds workshops in his role at the Engineering Career Services and an active member of both the Design/Build/Fly and Buckeye Current competition teams.

Trace has served in executive roles for the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers since 2020. In these roles, he has hosted a Midwest Regional Conference at Ohio State and the OSU chapter of SASE was awarded the Most Influential Chapter Award as the best chapter nationally that academic year.

Trace also has held many leadership roles within the Vietnamese Student Association where he was able to celebrate, educate the community on and advocate for Vietnamese culture.

Three MAE alumni celebrated for exceptional achievements, service at College Alumni Awards

Abarrier-breaking leader in higher education and the arts, an internationally recognized nuclear engineering expert and one of the nation’s leading design justice advocates are among the 15 alumni honored during the 25th Annual Excellence in Engineering and Architecture Awards on September 30, 2022.

The celebration recognizes alumni from across the College of Engineering who have achieved distinction in their fields or through their extraordinary service contributions since graduating from The Ohio State University.

“We are proud to recognize these 15 esteemed College of Engineering alumni who have distinguished themselves as changemakers, leaders, innovators and passionate volunteers,” said Dean Ayanna Howard, the Monte Ahuja Endowed Dean’s Chair. “Their impactful efforts to improve our world are an inspiration.”

American Nuclear Society President Steven A. Arndt (BS ’81, engineering physics; MS ’84, PhD ’10, nuclear engineering) was awarded the Benjamin G. Lamme Meritorious Achievement Medal. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory distinguished scientist led the United States’ support programs to the former Soviet Union following the Chernobyl accident and as part of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s response to the Fukushima accident.

Distinguished Alumni Award for Academic Excellence

Kenneth Ray Diller (BS ’66, MS ’67, mechanical engineering) is an experienced leader, accomplished scholar and innovator. A professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, his technology for simple and safe thermal methods helps people get to sleep more effectively and drop their overnight blood pressure without medication.

Aimee T. Ulstad (BS ’84, mechanical engineering) is an award-winning associate professor of practice in Ohio State’s Department of Integrated Systems Engineering who brings her 30+ years of professional industry experience to the classroom. She was also part of the core team that developed the four-year Bachelor of Science in Engineering Technology degree program now offered on three regional campuses.

Reflections from an EcoCAR alumna

M.J. Yatsko was first exposed to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) during a high school internship as a student at Columbus School for Girls (CSG). She enjoyed her internship experience so much that she went on to receive both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio State in Mechanical Engineering. Now, she is an energy architecture lead on electric vehicles at General Motors.

Her high school internship was where Yatsko was first exposed to Ohio State’s EcoCAR team, which she was a member of from 2010 to 2016 and a team lead for two of those years, during which EcoCAR had great success. Yatsko says she wanted to go into something that was related to both engineering and caring about the environment. Being on the EcoCAR team and working on a hybrid electric vehicle was the perfect combination of those two things.

M.J. Yatsko

Following in Yatsko’s footsteps, her younger sister joined the team in 2015 and became the project manager the following year. Yatsko attributes her interest in cars to her father, who is a car salesman. This exposed her and her sister to cars from a young age.

At GM, she works with advanced programs to balance the range and performance requirements that electric vehicles need to meet. “I love working on the early advanced side of development because you really get to shape what the vehicle will be,” she says. Yatsko works with other Ohio State EcoCAR alumni, as well as EcoCAR alumni from other schools. She says, “I’m actually really good friends with people from other schools, and it’s fun to have that camaraderie between us.”

She is also a member of a leadership book club run by an Ohio State EcoCAR alumni. Yatsko explained the value of her time on the EcoCAR team and how it was helpful in her transition to GM. In addition to the obvious technical skills she learned, she also learned valuable presentation skills. At competition, EcoCAR team members are graded on technical presentations. Yatsko says, “I get comments all the time about how well I’m able to deliver technical information to different audiences and I think ‘That’s all EcoCAR.’ You figure out who your audience is and then you describe this really complicated concept.”

Front row, from left: Bonnie Hammersley, Colette Pierce Burnette, Dean Ayann Howard, Aimee Ulstad, Elizabeth Biddinger. Back row, from left: Paul Wood, Xi-Yong (Sean) Fu, Rudolph Frizzi, Christopher Meyers, Steven Arndt, Harry Kennedy and Kenneth Diller. Not pictured: Chuck Elgin, Ben Gilbert, Bryan Lee and Theodore Nicholson.

From Ohio State to Mars

Since he was an undergraduate aerospace engineering major, Isaac Bensignor has been contemplating how to fly a rotorcraft on Mars. Those dreams have taken flight — Bensignor is now a research technician at The Ohio State University Aerospace Research Center where he’s building prototype rotor blades intended for flight on the Red Planet. His work aims to propose a new correction to a well-known rotorcraft performance estimation model used across the aerospace field.

Trajectory to Mars

Soon after Bensignor began investigating Martian flight as an undergraduate, he shared his ideas with Professor Jim Gregory and then Research Scientist Matt McCrink, who guided him through an undergraduate honors thesis and ensuing master’s fellowship with the NASA/Ohio Space Grant Consortium on the topic.

Bensignor discovered that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling commonly used to estimate flight performance of airfoils, rotors and full scale vehicles was cumbersome. Typical 3D CFD methods can take days to calculate a single analysis case and are too inefficient for analyzing hundreds of cases. He surmised that there could be a better way.

Bensignor’s solution to the time-consuming 3D computational modeling is to employ the much faster blade element momentum theory (BEMT), coupled with a 2D CFD model processed through the Ohio Supercomputer Center, to generate performance metrics for flight in the Martian atmosphere. Calculation time was reduced from days to hours. BEMT had never been documented as being used to calculate Mars rotorcraft flight performance.

“This is a very unique project and complements our lab’s investigations into the entire autonomous aerial vehicle ecosystem,” he said. “Isaac’s degree covered engineering aspects from modeling to design, exposing him to many parts of the field.”

After graduating in August 2022, Bensignor began working full time at the center where he is conducting the final experiments to validate his computational and numerical modeling work.

The Aerospace Research Center’s Gas Turbine Lab, which houses a 14-by-14-foot vacuum chamber, provides a location to test the rotors in a Mars-like atmosphere. There, Bensignor will trial the model of the Mars-optimized rotor blades. The resulting data will inform the new proposed empirical correction to the BEMT model for conditions related to Mars flight.

Transferable technology

According to Bensignor, the modeling technology helpful for Mars research has relevance on Earth. He anticipates that the correction to BEMT will accelerate investigations into high-altitude Earth flights.

Isaac Bensignor Research technician

Aerospace Research Center

Those physical experiments were developed during his graduate work. He learned precision tooling techniques in the Aerospace Research Center’s machine shop in order to build a rotor test stand for comparison experiments to validate the model. Rotor blades were also made in-house using custom molds created by reverse-engineering data published by NASA.

McCrink, now an assistant professor and director of the Aerodynamic Flow Control and Advanced Diagnostics Research Group, is enthusiastic about the research.

“Flying a rotorcraft on Mars is basically like flying a helicopter near 100,000 feet on Earth,” he said. “The atmosphere is very thin and cold.”

Bensignor is also focused on documenting and validating his work to allow the model to be utilized by others. His findings were presented at the 2022 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aviation Forum and future publications aim to share more details about the approach.

“This project puts Ohio State on the radar for developing these capabilities,” he commented. “There are only a handful of Mars research facilities in the world.”

With his sights set above, step by step Bensignor is making his dream of flying helicopters on Mars a reality.

Written by Holly Henley

I coded a simple BEMT computer model for this specific project to allow for rapid rotor performance feedback. The model has been verified against results digitized from a textbook assessing the same conditions and with physical experiments of a simple rotor for a set of operational conditions.

Bensignor with a rotor blade he fabricated.

Michael Hudoba

Ohio State and Otterbein researchers collaborate to bring DNA origami to students of all grade levels

An Ohio State Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor and alum published research in September 2022 and again in March 2023 that could bring DNA origami experiments to the middle school, high school and undergraduate classroom.

Dr. Carlos E. Castro, PhD., a professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Dr. Michael W. Hudoba, PhD., an associate professor and Chair at the Otterbein University Department of Engineering and Computer Science, have taken a typical DNA nanotechnology experiment that can cost upwards of $40,000 and take anywhere from days or weeks to complete and successfully translated it to a repeatable in-classroom experiment that can be completed in less than two hours for under $300 and with readily-available lab equipment like hot plates and water baths.

Through these experiments, the pair hopes to introduce the relatively new and growing DNA origami field to students at a younger age. To do this, Castro and Hudoba created a step-by-step procedure that can be followed by students of all ages, with slight variations based on grade-level and experience in the lab.

“State-of-the-art research like DNA origami is usually limited to graduate studies,” Hudoba said. “We hope that this work will establish a basis to expose students to DNA origami nanotechnology, introducing them to DNA nanotechnology and related fields earlier in their educational careers. Ideally, this will inspire more students to grow their interest in STEM, and pursue

undergraduate degrees, graduate degrees, and careers in these emerging and exciting fields.”

Typically, DNA origami nanostructures are created through three common steps: design, fabrication and analysis.

In this educational setting, Castro and Hudoba originally decided to forgo the design process for students since it requires commonly inaccessible design software that takes time to learn. Instead, they included a previously published device that was stored in a solution that could be melted and used for fabrication and analysis along with some additional material to teach DNA origami design in a related lesson to students who complete the experiment.

The classroom fabrication is done using a typical set of lab beakers, a hot plate and some tap water. The test tube of prepared solution containing the designed DNA origami nanostructures are put in a heated beaker of water to melt the solution and then transferred to a beaker of colder water for the folding process. Once the folding process is finished, the solution is moved to an ice bucket to set the structure.

For the analysis of the fabricated structures, the class will then perform a type of agarose gel electrophoresis using a cheap kit called the MiniOne gel electrophoresis system. In this system, the set solution is mixed with a dye and then set into an agarose gel. This gel is then electrocuted at 40 volts for 42 minutes and analyzed under a blue LED light.

The publication in September of 2022 focused on the methods of an experiment using nanorod structure that is being developed as a drug delivery usually referred to as the “Horse”. The March 2023 publication focuses on analyzing the “Compliant Hinge Joint”.

Although being able to translate such a complex lab experiment to the classroom did not come without its challenges, Castro and Hudoba went through several versions of this experiment before they were able to find

Alumni Impacts: Graduates who have made great impacts on their fields in research, industry and academia.

Castro

something that worked. They even made small tweaks to some of the methods from the 2022 publication to the 2023 version.

One of the major challenges was to ensure that the results from the classroom protocol were verifiable with previous published research, Hudoba pointed out.

“Results in the laboratory can be verified with the use of an electron microscope, which can vary in cost from $100,000 to upwards of $10,000,000,” he said. “Since classrooms could obviously not be expected to use electron microscopy systems, confirmation and analysis comes through comparing gel electrophoresis images with gel images we provide that were confirmed with electron microscopy.”

This made for a unique challenge, however, because results initially were inconsistent with what was expected, according to Hudoba. In these experiments, things such as salt concentration, the limitations of the classroom electrophoresis kit, and the purity of the water used have a drastic effect on the results.

“In a sense, we had to work backwards,” Hudoba said. “Instead of performing experiments to analyze results, we had to analyze results to develop the experiments.

but it has been fun to break down barriers that allow a broader range of students to learn about and access DNA origami. I have found it is also very rewarding for researchers in my lab. They get excited about being able to teach younger students about this emerging technology and it is a fun challenge to think about how to make an experiment that we developed in the lab as simple and cost-effective as possible so it can be carried out in a classroom. It has allowed us to challenge some things we have taken for granted.”

Castro and Hudoba hope is that research labs become more accessible to younger students, both figuratively and literally. We want any student to think that they can become a research scientist if that is where their passion takes them. We want to be available to educators to help bring our work into their classroom so that students can have a hands-on experience with cutting-edge science.

Michael Hudoba Associate professor and Chair Otterbein University Department of Engineering and Computer Science

Castro and Hudoba both stressed that they would be happy to work with anyone interested in bringing this into their classroom and would love to hear from any teachers interested.

It was only once we were able to get the same electrophoresis output using both setups (classroom and laboratory equipment) — that was able to be verified using electron microscopy — that we were confident in our results and the protocol.”

As two of the leading experts in the field, Castro and Hudoba found it both humbling and exciting that an experiment that used to take weeks to complete now can be done in a classroom at such a young age.

“As someone who has worked in DNA nanotechnology research for a long time, it has been really exciting to see the progression from rigorous optimization of DNA origami folding protocols that could take up to a week, to now with this work making it possible to make and perform basic characterization DNA origami structures in just about any classroom,” Castro said. “There are still big challenges that many labs are working on to continue to drive the research field forward to societal impact,

“The published research shows that the science works, meaning you can create DNA origami nanostructures with low-cost equipment and reagents,” Hudoba said. “But the goal of the research is more than that. The goal is to actually bring this work into the classrooms, so it is not quite successful until we have educators implement these experiments in their own curricula.”

Written by Jake Rahe

Hanna Cho wins NSF BRITE Pivot Award

Hanna Cho, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has received a $548,014 Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Pivot Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her research on how bone remodels itself into an ideal structure and material in an aim to understand the piezoelectric effect of collagen.

The BRITE Pivot Award is intended to enable researchers to quickly adapt to the fast-moving pace of research and create new knowledge and research products in their field by infusing new concepts from a different discipline or sub-field. Cho, whose expertise is in micro/ nano technology, will use this award to do research in the field of biology.

Cho

experimental methodology that will investigate the effect of physical loading on biomineralization. Using her expertise in the field of micro/nano-systems, a unique experimental platform will be developed by combining advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) loading device to image and biomineralization of collagen under physiological loading to directly observe and investigate invitro mineralization correlated with various conditions.

“Thus, understanding the mechanism to control its adaptive behavior is extremely useful not only for improving clinical treatment but also for mimicking its design strategy for boundless engineering applications.”

The underlying mechanism of mineral deposition in bone is not currently known, but the NSF BRITE Pivot award will support Cho’s project, “Investigating the Role of Collagen Piezoelectricity in Biomineralization Enhanced by Force Inputs” to try and understand the process in which the location of mineral build-up in bone is determined.

Cho’s hypothesis is that the piezoelectric response of collagen to loading is the key to understanding this mineral deposition process. She believes that when the collagen experiences stress along the vertical axis of the body, the piezoelectric charges along the surface of the collagen fibers attract mineral precursors toward the collagen surface and orient this mineralization in alignment with the collagen template.

Piezoelectricity is the ability of certain materials to create an electric field in response to applied mechanical stress. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body and, in bone, acts as the scaffolding of bone cells.

Cho’s study will address this hypothesis with a state-

“Once our hypothesis is proven, the knowledge potentially obtained from this study will provide optimal strategies to design ‘smart’ materials that can respond to external environmental cues,” Cho said. “The development of such smart materials is truly transformative in that they can shift the paradigm in a broad spectrum of engineering applications, for example, bone substitutes, bio-materials, robotics, automotive industry, clinical treatment, and electronics, when it is combined with the ongoing development of 3-D printing and machine learning technology.”

Additionally, this project will support the local community, providing research opportunities for undergraduate students, and through the KoreanAmerican society, a mini conference for high school and early college students will be created as well as specific efforts in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Ohio State.

“This award has much meaning to our lab because this is the first external funding in the biology area,” Cho said. “We will apply our expertise in micro/nanotechnology to enter this new area. This research idea has been explored in my lab for the last several years, but it was tough to secure external funding because we lack expertise in the biology field. I expect this award will bring great momentum to our group so we can infuse new concepts and methods to address the fundamental biological question.”

“Bone is a ‘smart’ material adapting its material composition and properties in response to external loading to maintain mechanical integrity”

in her lab with a graduate student working in the background of-the-art

Secret Formula

The Ohio State University Formula SAE team placed third, tied for the best in the team’s history, in the annual Formula SAE Michigan competition hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers International.

Faculty recognized for outstanding teaching, graduate student support and service

Four exemplary faculty and staff recently received recognition from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s External Advisory Board. This year Richard Vasques, Clifford Whitfield, and Datta Gaitonde were honored for their teaching and support of graduate students.

Vasques recieved the Michael J. Moran Excellence in Teaching Mechanical Engineering Award. This award honors the exceptional dedication to teaching exhibited by Michael J. Moran throughout his career. It recognizes faculty who have exhibited similar dedication and excellence in undergraduate teaching of mechanical engineering.

Whitfield was awarded the Gerald M. Gregorek Excellence in Teaching Aerospace Engineering Award. This award honors the exceptional dedication to teaching exhibited by Professor Emeritus Gerald M. Gregorek, and is awarded faculty who have exhibited similar dedication and excellence in undergraduate teaching of aerospace engineering.

Gaitonde recieved the Distinguished Graduate Faculty Award recognizing exceptional support and guidance to Mechanical Engineering graduate students in classroom teaching, graduate curriculum development, thesis advising, and professional development and mentoring.

All of the awardee were selected and conferred by the MAE External Advisory Board during their spring meeting.

Top (Left to Right): Vasques, Whitfield

Bottom: Gaitonde

$3.8M Department of Energy grant to improve electric vehicle batteries

The Department of Energy recently announced that The Ohio State University has been awarded a $3,876,363 grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) Electric Vehicles for American Low-Carbon Living (EVs4ALL) program.

The university is one of 12 teams from universities, national laboratories and the private sector to address and remove key technology barriers to EV adoption by developing next-generation battery technologies.

“The U.S. Department of Energy’s grant is an exciting investment in the future of clean energy and a testament to the dedicated Ohio State researchers who are working at the forefront of more affordable, sustainable and accessible transportation,” said Melissa Gilliam, executive vice president and provost. “I am delighted to see those efforts recognized with this funding that will accelerate electric vehicle adoption.”

Most of today’s electric vehicles (EV) can achieve driving range comparable to gas-powered vehicles, while the fastest charging times are a far cry from the five minutes to fill a gas tank. The ability to produce affordable, reliable and safe EVs with the convenience created by rapid charging could alleviate barriers to EV adoption among a larger percentage of the population.

In response to the challenges in promoting mass adoption of EVs, Ohio State developed a prototype high-power battery technology that can tolerate rapid charging while exhibiting longevity far beyond the current state-of-the-art lithium-ion cells.

“Collaboration is essential for the creation of innovative technology,” said Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Anne Co, the project’s lead investigator. “It is as exciting as it is rewarding to work alongside colleagues and industry partners who are working together to find effective and affordable solutions that will advance science and preserve our environment.”

Ohio State collaborators include Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Marcello Canova and Assistant Professor Jung Hyun Kim, leveraging resources and staff at the Center for Automotive Research and the Institute for Materials Research. The technology-to-market team will be led by Materials

Science and Engineering Associate Professor

Jay Sayre, director of innovation for the Institute for Materials Research.

In partnership with the Honda and Argonne National Laboratory, Ohio State will scale the high-power battery prototype by (1) addressing manufacturing challenges in achieving large-format, commercial-quality cells, (2) allowing for drop-in compatibility with existing battery components and (3) optimizing battery performance for cold temperatures. The technology can potentially double the usable battery lifetime, reduce pack size, decrease cell and battery cost, and enable rapid charging, which will help to accelerate the introduction of affordable entry-level electric vehicles.

“The Center for Automotive Research is delighted to support this exciting and challenging project, prototyping a lithium-ion battery technology that can accelerate the deployment of affordable and safe energy storage,” said Canova. “A successful outcome of this project will have a dramatic impact in improving the sustainability of the transportation sector and bring significant economic benefits to the Midwest region, where much of the U.S. automotive industry and electric vehicle supply chain is located.”

EVs4ALL aims to expand domestic EV adoption by developing batteries that last longer, charge faster, perform efficiently in freezing temperatures and have better overall range retention. The program is managed by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects AgencyEnergy (ARPA-E). Electrifying the transportation sector is critical to rapidly decarbonizing the American economy and eliminating heavy-emitting industries.

DOE is directly supporting President Biden’s goals to develop advanced technologies in America that will power the clean energy transition globally and for EVs to make up half of all domestic vehicle sales in 2030. The Ohio State battery technology is based on abundant, inexpensive materials, which exhibit exceptional longevity under extreme fast-charging scenarios, and is essential to achieving the vision of affordable, resilient EVs for all.

This article was originally posted to car.osu.edu

Front row (l to r): Postdoctoral Researcher Jose Lorie Lopez, Prof. Co, Prof. Kim, Assoc. Prof. Jay Sayre. Back row: Prof. Canova, IMR Research Scientist Qingmin Xu, IMR Research Engineer Navni Verma, IMR Innovation Manager Kari Roth

College of Engineering Faculty Awards Ceremony

Each year, The College of Engineering honors excellence in teaching, innovation and service. Faculty, researchers and partners are recognized for distinguished contributions in several areas. Four faculty from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering were recognized.

Faculty Diversity Excellence Award

Gunjan Agarwal was recognized for making exceptional contributions towards recruitment and mentoring of underrepresented students in engineering. This award recognizes an individual or team demonstrating excellence and success in the development and implementation of models, strategies, practices and programs that foster and enhance diversity in the college.

Agarwal was encouraged by the commitment to diversity and inclusion that the College of Engineering has and was honored by the recognition.

Diversity is important to bring in different perspectives for the growth of the field. In particular for engineering, diversity can improve the demographics of our future workforce which in turn can lead to economic growth and equity.

Gunjan Agarwal Professor

Department

of

Lumley Research Awards

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Named for John H. Lumley (’27, ceramic engineering), this team award recognizes interdisciplinary research accomplishments of the college’s faculty and research staff.

The Lumley Engineering Research Awards are presented to a select group of outstanding researchers in the College of Engineering who have shown exceptional activity and success in pursuing new knowledge of a fundamental or applied nature.

Lumley Research Award - Jeremy Seidt

Jeremy Seidt is a research associate professor. He is the co-director of the Dynamic Mechanics of Materials Laboratory. Seidt’s research focuses on the mechanical behavior of material systems under dynamic impact loading. He is currently a leading global researcher in this field.

Lumley Research Award - Alok Sutradhar

Alok Sutradhar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He is the director of the Multifunctional Materials and Intelligent Design Lab. His research is in developing multifunctional multiphysics topology optimization methodologies tailored for additive manufacturing for engineering and biomedical applications.

The Hirschvogel Excellence Award

Alex Adrian’s master’s thesis wins Hirschvogel Excellence Award

The Frank Hirschvogel Foundation and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is proud to announce Alex Adrian, a former graduate student of MAE and now an engineer at GE Aerospace, the winner of the Hirschvogel Excellence Award.

The Hirschvogel Excellence Award is a $5,000 prize that is presented to one graduate student for the best master’s thesis in Mechanical Engineering.

“Being chosen for the best master’s thesis in mechanical engineering was an incredible surprise that affirms all of the hard work put into this research,” Adrian said. “I never sought out awards or academic recognition with my work, but instead focused on putting everything I could toward producing high-quality research to benefit the greater engineering community as a whole. Even though artificial intelligence is an extremely active research area, it is still difficult to access large, publicly available training datasets of engineering simulation data; I am proud to have contributed to improving the accessibility of such datasets.”

Alex’s thesis research with the Digital Design and Manufacturing Lab (dDML) was the first stage of a larger NSF-funded project, which focused on developing publicly available artificial intelligence algorithms and training datasets for mapping the design space of engineered products - specifically automotive frames.

The goal of the project is to use artificial neural networks to predict component- and assembly-level manufacturing variations using processing parameters from a sheet metal forming operation.

Alex was involved in many stages of this research including developing the automation and validation of a multi-stage simulation workflow, generating a large training dataset comprised of processing parameters and geometric measurements of formed components and welded assemblies, creating a method of analyzing the variety and balance of the resulting dataset to aid in identifying inherent biases, and finally training a fullyconnected neural network on the component forming stage data to predict spring back given the forming process inputs.

“This award is just as much a testament to the guidance of Dr. Shah and the dedication of the dDML team as it is to the work I did for my thesis - I truly could not have done it without them, Adrian said. “I would like

to thank Dr. Shah for his mentorship and support, as well as sparking my interest in research and providing the opportunity to work on this project. I also want to thank Satchit Ramnath for his advice, both in my decision to pursue graduate studies and in the technical details of this project. I would also like to express gratitude for the endless support of my fiancée Kaitlin and my parents. Another big thank you to my dDML lab mates Abhishek Bolar and Nolan LaMarche for their help running simulations, processing results, and providing laughs. I’d also like to recognize the financial support provided by the National Science Foundation through GOALI Award No. 2029905.”

This award is given by The Frank Hirschvogel Foundation, a philanthropy arm of the Hirschvogel Automotive Group. In 2018, the Foundation provided a gift to OSU to support the award of a prize of $5,000 for the best MS thesis in ME, annually for five years. The award was presented for the first time at Ohio State in 2019.

The Hirschvogel Automotive Group, headquartered in Denklingen, Germany, is among the world’s largest automotive suppliers in the area of steel and aluminum forgings and machining. The group’s customers include all major automotive manufacturers and suppliers worldwide. Hirschvogel Automotive Group’s forging plant in Columbus was established in 1988.

Alex also wanted to offer a piece of advice.

GE Aerospace

“Don’t shy away from challenges in life. The most significant growth and personal development come from putting yourself in uncomfortable situations that force you to learn new things, develop new skills, or change your mindset.”

ALEX ADRIAN Engineer

Placing students first

Putting scholars on a clear (and affordable) path to success

Each year, the best and brightest students from across the nation come to The Ohio State University to study with our faculty experts in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Those students, in turn, conduct groundbreaking research, lead prominent student organizations and develop creative solutions to better our society.

It is our aim to provide MAE students with a clear and affordable path to a top-tier education. We invite you to join us in placing students first by investing in one of the department’s priority funds listed below. You can make a gift to the department by visiting go.osu.edu/MAEgiving and finding your preffered fund using the fund numbers listed below.

Remembering Dr. Gregorek

Jerry Gregorek wanted to be an engineer since the age of six or seven. He often drew planes and was enthralled with flight. In 1951, he worked as a mechanic for the Air Force until he enrolled at Ohio State in 1954.

He graduated in 1958 from Ohio State with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering. From there, he began teaching in 1960.

He was an instructor for seven years, during which he worked to develop some of the very first hypersonic wind tunnels and worked on the Dynasoar project helping to perfect steerable hypersonic glide vehicles.

In 1967, he received his doctorate in aeronautical engineering at Ohio State and became an Assistant Professor teaching applied aerodynamics courses.

Gregorek retired from Ohio State in 2010 after serving the university for 50 years. He served as the chair of the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (1991-1999) and director of the Aeronautical and Astronautical Research Laboratory (Aerodynamic Laboratory). Even after his retirement, he continued engagement in research projects at the Aerospace Research Center and mentored younger faculty until his passing.

Gregorek’s life passion was aviation research and he was known internationally as a leader in applied aerodynamics. His most notable projects include designing a transonic laminar flow airfoil for the Piaggio Avanti, an Italian executive aircraft.

His experimental projects ranging from general aviation tests to several NASA flight test programs and he developed many courses that are still taught at Ohio State today.

Professor of Practice Clifford Whitfield was Gregorek’s final graduate student and a lifelong mentee. “Jerry, or Dr. G. as he’s remembered by most, has positively impacted the lives of countless students,” he commented.

“You would be hard-pressed to find a Buckeye aerospace engineer that graduated in the past 60 years and does not have fond memories of Dr. G. in the classroom. He continually provided support and encouragement to become impactful engineers, pilots and educators. As a mentor, Dr. G. had the rare ability to inspire the best out of you, without having to say a word.”

Dr. Gregorek passed on October 3, 2019, and we continue to celebrate his impactful accomplishments.

Jerry Gregorek

CHECK OUT THE FUNDING OPPORTUNITY HONORING DR.GREGOREK BELOW

supporting classroom success

BOLZ HALL EDUCATIONAL LAB FACILITY DEPARTMENT

OF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Experiential learning is an important aspect of preparing our students for the transition towards industry and research. The hands-on opportunities this facility will offer will give our students the chance to operate state-of-theart equipment with operational oversight to ensure safety and proper use.

Goals of the restructure

The Bolz Hall Educational-Lab Facility restructure will consolidate and provide access at a single location unique state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for student experiential learning in the department and throughout the college.

Primary objectives include:

• Provide state-of-the-art facilities and equipment testing capability for students in department and college

• Provide safe operational oversight and services and overall facility management by MAE department personnel

• Provide support for high-quality experiential-learning opportunities and student projects within the department and college.

The educational-lab facility is also conveniently located near the college-wide student shop and makerspace in Bolz Hall.

Facility Capabilities

Bolz Hall Room 102 – Testing facilities (approx. 2,600 sq-ft)

• An Aerolab 22” x 22” subsonic wind tunnel facility (shown in blue)

• Multiple small-scale subsonic wind tunnel facilities (shown in red)

• A 2” x 2” blowdown supersonic wind tunnel facility (shown in white)

• High fidelity flight simulator stations

• An 800 sq-ft by 20’ high-bay flying arena and flexible testing, and instructional space

Bolz Hall Room 103 – Model prototyping and equipment specialties (approx. 1,000 sq-ft)

• A 2-axis CNC hotwire table

• Composite vacuum curing stations and autoclave

• Flexible workstations and student project material storage

• Air compressor and air storage tanks (Rm 104)

• Lab Supervisor Office (Rm 106)

• Priority access to the college-wide student shop and makerspace

Campaign goals

The Educational Lab Facility restructure will significantly increase the efficiency in supporting projects, and managing and teaching experiential learning curriculum.

The lab will provide a centralized location for the hands-on curriculum throughout MAE, offer expanding capabilities of other engineering programs within the College, and provide the potential for outreach efforts to academic institutions where experiential learning and support activities are limited.

Student Impact

The Aerospace Engineering (AE) Program at Ohio State has its roots embedded in experiential learning with national recognition. The program provides high-quality experimental learning opportunities throughout its entire curriculum, culminating in the student’s senior year with course sequences focused on professional practice. Additionally, the department supports multiple extracurricular student organizations that compete nationally with high success rates, such as solar car, remote-controlled aircraft, autonomous drones, and high-altitude rocket launches.

The commitment the program makes to the hands-on learning opportunities impacts every student in the aerospace engineer program, on-the-order of 400 students, throughout the entire academic career. Your support in developing the new Bolz Hall Educational Lab Facility and flight sciences will provide the department the opportunity to expand and grow its student-based experiential learning legacy, impacting both aerospace engineering students and students throughout the Department and College!

BOLZ HALL EDUCATIONAL LAB FACILITY NAMING OPPORTUNITY

Gregorek Lab

The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering believes honoring Dr. Gerald Gregorek in the updated lab space to be fitting of his accomplishments and commitment to aerospace research and the education of our students.

We welcome you back to hear the memories you have from working in the lab and for you to see the updates. We plan to use the donations from the newly established Gregorek Lab Modernization fund for expenditures used in this space for research needs, equipment and creating new experiential learning opportunities for students within the lab.

If you are interested in contributing to this fund and honoring Dr. Gregorek, please reach out to Laura Doll (Doll.79@osu.edu) and Christina Patel (Patel.3770@osu.edu) to learn more.

2023 Exchange Alumni News

Exchange Alumni News is a free publication from The Ohio State University.

Rob Siston Professor and Department Chair siston.1@osu.edu

Jake Rahe Editor rahe.21@osu.edu

Letters to the editor are welcome. Permission to quote from or reproduce articles in this publication is granted with the appropriate acknowledgment. Please send a copy of the publication in which information from Exchange Alumni News is used to the editor at the address above.

Mention of trade names or commercial products in this publication does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.

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