NASA has posted an article, entitled "The Sheer Delight of Tackling Shear Stress" in recognition of Vijay Chandrasekharan's ongoing work on shear stress sensor design. The article highlights the impressive performance of Vijay's sensor and its potential commercial viability. Congratulations, Vijay!

Israel Boniche will be defending his dissertation, entitled "Silicon Micromachined Thermoelectric Generators for Power Generation Using Hot Gas Streams" on Monday, February 22, from 9am-noon in NRF 115.

Alex Phipps will present his paper entitled "Development of MEMS-based Piezoelectric Vibration Energy Harvesters" at the International Modal Analysis Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics XXVIII (sponsored by the Society of Experimental Mechanics) in Jacksonville, Florida at 9:30am on Tuesday this week.

Professor Z. Hugh Fan won the E. T. S. Walton Award from Science Foundation Ireland in Aug. 2009. The award enables him to take a two-semester sabbatical, assuming Walton Visiting Professorship in the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute (BDI) at Dublin City University in Ireland. BDI is comprised of more than 100 scientists, developing diagnostic platforms through integration of clinical, industrial and academic expertise. Professor Fan’s work at BDI will focus on device design and testing for sorting and concentration of rare circulating tumor cells.

Dr. Vijay Chandrasekharan received a full page feature in the Fall 2009 Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Newsletter. The feature discusses Vijay's work on a capacitive wall shear stress sensor for turbulence measurements.

Tai-An Chen recently presented his work at the 48th Annual AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeeting in January 2010 in Orlando, FL. Tai-An presented a paper entitled "Optical Miniaturization of a MEMS-Based Floating Element Shear Stress Sensor with Moiré Amplification"