News

"Spidey Sense" is real! It's called "mechanosensing," and animals have it naturally. Now Andres Arrieta is giving the same capability to autonomous vehicles.

No one knows particle science like Purdue. Thanks to the Center for Particulate Products and Processes (CP3), researchers can study powders, pharmaceuticals, food particles, and other particulate substances at unprecedented levels of detail.

Nearly half of America's freshwater is used to cool thermoelectric power plants. Using wind and solar energy helps the climate AND reduces water shortages and other catastrophes. Get the facts in this blog entry from Prof. Luciano Castillo.

Congratulations to our colleagues on their promotions: Song Zhang to full professor; and Amy Marconnet, Liang Pan, and Fabio Semperlotti to associate professor!

While at Purdue, Michael Hodson (BSME '17) mentored FIRST Robotics teams for all 8 semesters -- even while studying abroad in Ireland! Today, as a software engineer for John Deere, he continues sharing his robotics experience with students.

Congratulations to Hasti Veeraraghava Raju (MSME '16), recipient of Purdue's 2019 Graduate School Mentoring Award, recognizing graduate students who are proven to be outstanding mentors in research, career, and personal guidance.

Instead of wandering through a big-box store trying to find the furniture you need, and then struggling to assemble it, imagine smart software that helps you design your own furniture, 3D print the joints, and assemble the whole structure at home. That's the idea behind Shape Structuralizer, a tool developed in the lab of Karthik Ramani.

What can fly like a bird and hover like an insect? Your friendly neighborhood hummingbird. If drones had this capability, they would be able to fly steadily through windy conditions, and get into tight spaces other drones couldn't go. Assistant professor Xinyan Deng and her team have created a bio-inspired hummingbird robot: trained by artificial intelligence, weighing only 12 grams, and utilizing unsteady aerodynamics to hover, just like the real thing.

Stan Tebbe (BSME '67) was going to be a farmer, but a math teacher told him that engineering was the way to go. He eventually also attained a management degree, and became a vice president at ExxonMobil. He supported the completion of the Tebbe TDI Laser Lab at Zucrow Labs, the largest academic propulsion lab in the world.

Good luck to two student entrepreneur teams with Purdue ME students, competing in the International Business Model Competition in Utah! FlykeART (with Juan Ramirez) reimagines the airline serving cart, and Global Sign (with Heya Kaakeh) brings sign language interpretation to educational videos.