News

Purdue ME senior Reshma Sudhesh spent her summer in Bogota, Colombia, doing research at Universidad de los Andes. Her adventures included flying drones at high altitude, and a broken wrist while mountain biking!

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels took the driver's seat of two student-designed electric race cars, at a demonstration Thursday at the Purdue Grand Prix Track. He drove 10 laps in a battery-powered go kart, and 10 laps in a mini-Formula electric race car, powered by a 300-volt battery.

Not many people can claim that they programmed the first humanoid robot in space. Julia Badger (BSME '03) saw her hard work pay off with Robonaut, a sleek feat of humanoid technology that flew on the International Space Station. Today, as the Project Manager for the Robotics and Intelligence for Human Spacecraft Team at NASA's Johnson Space Center, she is designing the next generation of autonomous robots that will help humans explore the solar system.

What does the Factory of the Future look like? Does it include autonomous robots? Drones? Virtual reality? Professor Karthik Ramani is joining forces with manufacturers to build virtual factories using augmented reality -- so they can test new labor-saving technologies in the virtual world, before installing them in the real world.

Space exploration isn't just about astronauts (though we have those too!) Purdue grads are flight directors, spacesuit engineers, CEOs, and more! Check out all the Purdue grads that make the space industry work.

Adranos Inc., started by Brandon Terry at Zucrow Labs, is a Purdue University-affiliated company developing a novel high-performance, solid propellant for long-range missile and space launch systems. They recently raised $800,000 to further advance the technology.

Professor David DeWitt (1934-2005) came to Purdue University as a graduate student in the early 1960s. He became a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue, teaching for more than 25 years. He is best known for co-authoring (with colleague Frank Incropera) Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, the definitive undergraduate textbook on the subject, now in its 8th edition and utilized worldwide. This weekend, his family returned to campus to pay tribute to Prof. DeWitt, establishing the Professor David P. DeWitt Heat Transfer Research Endowment.

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

Dr. Rahul Mittal (MSME '93, Ph.D. '96) has been named a GM Technical Fellow for Diesel Aftertreatment Hardware. The Technical Fellow designation recognizes employees who have a high level of functional expertise critical to the business and have achieved global recognition for their knowledge, publications, patents, and awards.

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