News - Ray W. Herrick Laboratories - Purdue University

Andres Arrieta's research was featured in National Geographic. He discovered that the earwig's wings use origami-like folds to expand to 10 times their size. This bistability allows its wings to expand with very little mechanical effort. At Herrick Labs, Andres is working to convert this bio-inspired origami into products that are useful to humans.

Civil Engineering grad Iason Konstantzos (Ph.D. 2016) started as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Aug. 13, 2018. From January 2017-June 2018 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the School of Civil Engineering and in the Center for High Performance Buildings at Herrick Labs. During his Ph.D. and post-doc terms, Iason was advised by Prof. Thanos Tzempelikos.

Eckhard Groll was inducted into Purdue's Cooperative Education Hall of Fame on September 14, 2018.

Purdue MEs received recognition at the ASME Conference on Smart Structures, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS2018), in San Antonio, Texas in September 2018.

Graduate students from Purdue University (USA) collaborated with students from the Technical University of Dresden (Germany) to complete an international course in refrigeration and compressors. They spent one week at the Technical University of Dresden, collaborated long-distance over the summer, and then convened for one week at Herrick Labs to present their final projects.

Purdue students received several awards at Inter-Noise 2018, the annual conference held by the Institute of Noise Control Engineering (INCE-USA).

Is it possible to convert a 1920's bungalow into a 21st-century smart home with net zero water and energy usage? That's the goal of Purdue University's RENEWW House, in conjunction with Whirlpool Corporation.

Purdue researchers have added solar panels for heat and electricity, filtered rainwater basins for most water usage, a biowall of plants to filter the air, energy-efficient appliances, and sensors to monitor every drop of water and energy usage.

Patricia Davies has received the 2018 Faculty Mentoring Award from Purdue Engineering, "for her formative role in the development and nurturing of junior faculty members across the College, as well as serving as a model of mutual respect, community building, and sound counsel for staff and students."

Bin Yao, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was selected as one of the recipients to receive the 4th Nagamori Award through the Nagamori Foundation in Japan. The Nagamori Foundation created these awards to bring vitality to technological research of motors, and related fields, such as generators and actuators, and also to support the researchers and development engineers who have made outstanding achievements in these fields. The fundamental contributions of Bin's main research cited for the award is: "Theory and Applications of Adaptive Robust Controls to Integrated Design of Intelligent and High-Performance Mechatronic Systems".

Yutong (Tony) Xue recently the Best Paper by a Young Presenter Award in Noise for his paper "Fibrous material microstructure design for optimal structural damping." Tony presented his paper at the Spring meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Minneapolis, MN. He is currently working on his PhD with Prof. J. Stuart Bolton.