Laura Blumenschein

Laura Blumenschein is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.  She finished her PhD at Stanford, after an MS and BS from Rice University.  Her research interests involve soft robotics, from the fundamental (classification of soft actuators) to the functional (robotic construction, wearable robotics, etc.).  She has created soft growing robots that emulate plants; wearable robotics that incorporate haptic feedback; and obstacle sensing mechanisms to study how robots interact with their environment.

James Braun

James Braunis a Research Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. After a BS and MS from KU Leuven in Belgium, James got his PhD at Purdue while working at Zucrow Labs. He studies pressure gain combustion, turbomachinery and high-speed internal flows with an aero-thermal focus on the integration of experiments with computational fluid dynamics. Working under Terrence Meyer and Guillermo Paniagua, he modeled rotating detonation engines, and then tested his models experimentally; he also studied turbines in subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic conditions.

Alex Chortos

Alex Chortos is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His BS is from University of Waterloo in Canada, with an MS and PhD from Stanford.  His research interests focus on the design of materials and fabrication methods to create devices that can match the mechanical properties and 3D form factors of biological systems to enable bio-integrated systems. He has worked on artificial muscles, and bio-inspired sensors and transistors designed to integrate with biological systems.

Rebecca Ciez

Rebecca Ciez is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Environmental and Ecological Engineering. She got her BS from Columbia, and PhD from Carnegie Mellon. Her focus is on sustainability, at the intersection of energy technologies, economics, and decision-making process to minimize the cost of transitioning to new, decarbonized energy systems. She has worked on new energy storage systems, transportation alternatives, and industrial decarbonization.

Hasti Veeraraghava Raju

Hasti Veeraraghava Raju is a Research Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. After a BS from Sri Venkateswara University in India, he finished an MS and PhD at Purdue, studying under Jay Gore.  His areas of expertise are application of artificial intelligence in engineering for autonomous intelligent systems; energy, propulsion, emissions; computational fluid dynamics; and high-performance computing. His research has involved the streamlining of power plants; online health monitoring of engines; and reducing emissions from jet engines.

Tian Li

Tian Li is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.  After her BS from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, she finished her PhD at University of Maryland. Her research interests are naturally nanostructured materials; energy, water, and wearable technology; and manufacturing. She has worked with materials on the microscale, nanoscale, and sub-nanometer scale, including novel formulations of wood to perform radiative cooling and thermal insulating.

Amin Maghareh

Amin Maghareh is a Research Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. His BS is from American University in Dubai, and he finished an MS and PhD at Purdue.  He is working under Shirley Dyke in the Resilient Extra Terrestrial Habitats Institute, a NASA-funded Space Technology Research Institute to develop habitats that are resilient to the dangers posed by the Moon, Mars, and deep space.

Monique McClain

Monique McClain is a Research Scientist in Mechanical Engineering, scheduled to become Assistant Professor in 2021.  After a BS at the University of California San Diego, she finished her MS and PhD at Purdue.  Her research focuses on additive manufacturing, including quality control, dissimilar material 3D printing, and additive manufacturing of energetic materials.  She collaborated with Jeff Rhoads, George Chiu, Emre Gunduz, and Steve Son to develop a method to print extremely viscous materials, including solid rocket fuel.

Lizhi Shang

Lizhi Shang is Assistant Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. After a BS from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, and an MS from New Jersey Institute of Technology, he finished a PhD at Purdue, where he worked with the late Monika Ivantysynova. Now at the Maha Fluid Power Research Center with Andrea Vacca, Lizhi focuses on computational fluid dynamics, specifically with hydraulic pumps and pistons.

Ryan Wagner

Ryan Wagner is a Research Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His BS and PhD are both from Purdue. His focus is on nanotechnology, microscopy, metrology, spectrometry, vibrations, and dynamics in the context of interdisciplinary, multiphysics research problems.  He has worked on atomic force microscopy methods; optics; and imaging mass spectrometry.

Davide Ziviani

Davide Ziviani is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. After a BS and MS from University of Ferrara in Italy, and a PhD from Ghent University in Belgium, Davide served as a visiting scholar and postdoc at Purdue's Herrick Labs. His research interests focus on advance heat pumping/heat engine technologies and their equipment to high performance buildings, transport, military and space sectors. He has applied this technology to human-building interactions, and has served as the assistant director of Purdue's Center for High-Performance Buildings.