MEM Assistant Professor, MinJun Kim, has been selected as a Symposium Chair for Microfluidics 2009: Fluid Engineering in Micro- and Nanosystems at the 2009 ASME IMECE meeting. The microfluidics symposium will cover the latest developments in uses of fluid mechanics for the design and optimization of micro-devices for mechanical, chemical and biological applications and devices in research and industry. The conference is sponsored by the ASME Fluid Engineering Division and is being held jointly with the MEMS subdivision.

Dal Hyung Kim and Dave Casale (MEM undergraduates), under their advisor Dr. MinJun Kim (MEM) recently traveled to Semmelweis University in Hungary to initiate international collaboration research activities, in which they studied the motion of Tetrahymena pyriformis under chemotactic environments.

Methods for the in-depth study of the physics of microscale actuation of microfluidics environments by flagellated bacteria have been demonstrated in the Journal of Microscopy by MEM undergraduate Hess Honors Scholar William Hesse and his advisor MEM Assistant Professor MinJun Kim. The paper, entitled "Visualization of Flagellar Interactions on Bacterial Carpets" explains the interaction and coordination of flagellar filaments of neighboring bacteria on densely packed monolayers of bacteria to actuate local fluid flow motions. One of their cited research figures (Figure 4) was selected as the cover image!

Dr. Wei Sun, Albert Soffa Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was invited to conduct a keynote presentation on Biomanufacturing for Tissue Science and Engineering” at the Second International Conference on Biomanufacturing in Beijing, November 7, 2008. He was also invited to conduct a seminar at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri-Columbia, October 28, 2008.

Bryan Kobe (ECE, undergraduate) and RJ Gross (MEM, undergraduate), both advised by Dr. Paul Oh (Associate Professor, MEM), are currently in their third month of a 6-month co-op in the Humanoid Lab at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Their co-op is being supported by the 5-year NSF PIRE (Partnership for International Research and Education) grant led by Drexel University.

MEM Professor Dr. Sorin Siegler presented the keynote lecture entitled “Advances in Image-Based Biomechanics of the Human Foot and Ankle” at the First International Conference of the Foot and Ankle Biomechanics Society in Bologna, Italy, September 4 to 6, 2008. Also at this conference, he was elected Chairman of the International Standards Committee on the Kinematics of the Human Foot and Ankle and led a one hour discussion on Kinematic Standards. At this conference he also presented a tutorial entitled “Biomechanics of the Developing Human Foot”. He was one of the conference organizers and served as a member of the Conference Scientific Committee.

MEM Assistant Professor Dr. James Tangorra was selected to deliver the plenary talk at the German Science Foundation Priority Program Conference on Bio-Inspired Fluid Mechanics in February, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Currently, his research project on biorobotic fish fins is being used by the German Research Foundation to investigate how well Harbor Seals are able to detect the vortex structures created by fish in the open ocean. The created fin models produce accurately the vortex structure of different fish fins. The biorobotic fins made by Jonah Gottlieb (MEM grad student) and Christopher Esposito (MEM undergrad) were presented by George Lauder (Harvard University) at the annual Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Boston in January.

Dr. Bakhtier Farouk, J. Harland Billings professor of mechanical engineering presented a paper at the 2008 ASME IMECE held in Boston, MA: “Heat AND MASS transfer in a differentially heated enclosure filled with supercritical carbon dioxide” co-authored with Messrs. Uthai Prasopchingchana and Zhiheng Lei, both graduate students at the MEM Department.

Dr. Jack Zhou, associate professor of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics, served as Chairman and organized a symposium on new developments in Nanofabrication, Nanometrology and Applications in the 2008 International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference MSEC2008 October 7-10, 2008, Evanston, Illinois. He presented and published a conference paper “Modeling and Simulation of Focused Ion Beam Based Single Digital Nano Hole Fabrication for DNA and Macromolecule Characterization”. Dr. Zhou also presented and published: Study of structured porogen method for bone scaffold fabrication, and A Smart Actuator Design for Multiple Bio-reagent Mixing in a High Pressure Optical Cell for Bio-Physical Research Applications.

Dr. Bakhtier Farouk, J. Harland Billings professor of mechanical engineering was the Mechanical Engineering program evaluator for the ABET/EAC team that evaluated the various engineering programs at the Texas A&M University Qatar at Doha, Qatar during October 10-13, 2008. Dr. Farouk also visited the Engineering College at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar and gave a seminar on his current research.

Mr. Zhiheng Lei, graduate student, mechanical engineering and mechanics Department presented a paper at the 2008 ASME IMECE held in Boston, MA: “Convection and Transport in a Differentially Heated Enclosure Filled with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide: Short- and Long-Time Solutions” co-authored with Dr. Bakhtier Farouk.

Dr. Bakhtier Farouk, J. Harland Billings professor of mechanical engineering presented a paper (coauthored with Mr. Zhiheng Lei, Ph. D. candidate, MEM Department), ‘Prediction of Thermoacoustic Waves in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide’ at the 2008 American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting in San Antonio, TX. Professor Farouk also chaired a session on “Acoustics” in the above meeting.

In collaboration with the GRASP laboratory @ Penn, Ed Steager and U Kei Cheang (MEM grad students), along with their advisor Dr. MinJun Kim (MEM), have published a paper in the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The paper is entitled "Harnessing Bacterial Power for Microscale Manipulation and Locomotion," in which a stochastic model is proposed to predict the movement of microbiorobots powered by flagellated bacteria.