When Internet stars The Slow Mo Guys visited Purdue, we welcomed them with the World's Largest Drum... filled with confetti and ping-pong balls! In this behind-the-scenes video, Purdue ME faculty Stuart Bolton and Steven Wereley explain the acoustic properties and the fluid mechanics behind this viral video.

RoboTable, developed by Purdue ME grad Jeff Ackerman and Prehensile Technologies LLC, will assist veterans and others with disabilities, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Undergraduates: you can start your research career right now! Look at what your classmates did this summer at SURF, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.

If only there was an app to help mechanical engineering students. Hey, this is Purdue... we *made* the app! Jeffrey Alperovitch, grad student under Karthik Ramani, developed a new app called ME2Go, an easily accessible reference tool with information, formulas, and derivations to assist ME students around the world.

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.