News

Congratulations to Ben Freireich (MSME '08, Ph.D. '10), named to the 35 Under 35 list of outstanding young chemical engineers by AIChE. Ben studied particle science under Carl Wassgren, and is now technical director at Particulate Solids Research, Inc.

In 1926, the American Railway Building tested 27-ton shock absorbers for locomotives, which shook the entire campus (despite having a 12-foot concrete foundation!) This summer, Railway has been completely remodeled to host Purdue ME graduate students, whose research will be just as groundbreaking.

As a grad student, Don Ufford (MSME '89) studied acoustics and vibration at Herrick Labs. He immediately applied that work at Ford Motor Company, and today is the Director of Global Vehicle Engineering. He says that technical knowledge is important, but being able to build relationships with people globally is just as important. Don Ufford was named a Distinguished Engineering Alumni in 2017.

Researchers have created a new type of non-liquid lubricant that has been shown to reduce friction and wear significantly under the extreme conditions found in various applications, from air compressors to missile systems. The new liquid-free composite is made from a slurry of graphene, zinc oxide, and the polymer polyvinylidene difluoride. The team includes Farshid Sadeghi, Cummins Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

A Purdue team has developed a smartphone-based pathology lab that can detect cholera in 30 minutes, instead of 3 days. Developed by Purdue ME grad Katie Clayton (under the supervision of Steven Wereley), PathVis combines the fluid dynamics of Mechanical Engineering and the pathogen detection of Biomedical Engineering. After winning $300,000 from the Vodafone Americas Foundation, the team plans to field test the device in Haiti with the Emerging Pathogens Institute.

Plastic microbeads (formerly used in soaps and detergents) are toxic. So Purdue graduates are replacing them with soy. Purdue ME grad Ryan Pendergast joined forces with Pharmacy students to start a company, SoyFoliate, to market the innovation.

Congratulations to Amy Marconnet, named the 2017 ASME Electronics and Photonics Packaging Division Woman Engineer of the Year! Amy studies metrology and heat transfer of nanomaterials, such as those that make up lithium-ion batteries.

It was combustion that lit the fire of Robert Vogt (BSME '74, MSME '76) while he was at Purdue, and eventually in the oil and gas industry. But after selling specialized technical equipment, he realized that sales was his true passion. He started a company called Midwest Pressure Systems, now marking 30 years of designing and manufacturing air and gas pressure booster systems. He says becoming an entrepreneur was a calculated risk, but with his engineering expertise, he had an upper hand in selling and servicing technical equipment to his customers.

Getting "all shook up" is just part of the job for Mark Baldwin (BSME '97), who is the Occupant Protection Lead Engineer for the Orion spacecraft at Lockheed Martin. Orion will take the next generation of NASA astronauts on future manned missions.

A new technique developed by Karthik Ramani uses machine learning to create 3-D shapes from 2-D images, and is even "hallucinate" to create new, never-before-seen shapes.