IMG Seminar

Please note that this week's seminar is from 4PM (not 3PM) due to speaker's conflict.

Snacks and drinks will be served

Speaker: Cheolbok Kim

Abstract: Modern satellite communication systems often demand low-profile, wide bandwidth, high gain, and circular polarization antennas. For this applications, a high gain circular polarization antenna with metamaterial slabs has been proposed. Metamaterial slabs having periodic circular lattices have been used to focus beam while fan-shaped patches are added on the slabs to generate circular polarization. The proposed antenna has shown a good axial ratio at the resonant frequency band. It also has shown a simulated gain improvement and transmission gain improvement. In addition, the left/right handed polarization is simply controlled by turning over metamaterial slabs.

Speaker: PitFee Jao

The direction of cell growth is associated with chemical, structural and/or mechanical properties of the substrate. Structurally, electrospun nanofibers provide a suitable environment for cell attachment and proliferation due to their similar physical dimension to that of the extracellular matrix. Furthermore, by modulating the topographical features of nanofibers, which include fiber diameter and orientation, cell growth and its related functions can be modified. Here, we demonstrate a solid gradient scaffold for directional growth of spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs).

Guest speaker Prof. Kee-Keun Lee will give a brief IMG seminar. Prof. Lee is a visiting Associate Professor, Department of Electronics Engineering, Ajou University, South Korea.

This Wednesday, Jared Allen will be giving a seminar on the LabVIEW programming language. LabVIEW is a very useful tool for data acquisition, analysis, and control. This seminar will discuss different program architectures that can greatly increase performance and reliability. Some useful tips, shortcuts, and program features will be explained.

Note: Drinks and snacks will be provided.

IMG's own Dr. Z. Hugh Fan will give a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department seminar entitled Microfluidics and Enabling Components.

Microfluidics is to study fluids at the microscale. It is a field that promises to reach the holy grail of "lab-on-a-chip". In analogy to shrinking a computer from the size of a room in the 1950s to a laptop today, instruments for chemical and biological analyses may be miniaturized into microfluidic devices using modern microfabrication technology.

Energy harvesting techniques require more reliable power electronics. Conventional AC/DC converters in energy harvesting systems are normally self-powered by their load-sided energy storage elements. This feature makes the storage elements easily drained and the whole system may no longer be able to function. An input-powered AC/DC converter is proposed to eliminate the need for pre-charging the load and allows for infinitely long intervals from the energy harvester.

Note: Drinks and snacks will be served for Fall lMG seminars.

This Friday, Jessica Sockwell will be giving a seminar on micropillar shear stress sensors. Micropillar shear stress sensors have been developed in recent years with the goal of attaining full-field shear stress measurements within turbulent boundary layers. This talk will explain how the sensors work, summarize the design and fabrication of these devices, highlight their strengths and weaknesses, and discuss how these sensors might be further improved for future use.