UCLA Engineering | 2008 Technology Forum

CHIH MING HO | Professor, Ben Rich Lockheed Martin Chair and Director, Center for Cell Control
Director, Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Rapid Search for Optimized Drug Cocktails

The best known use of drug cocktails has been in the fight against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Two years after first applying combinatory drug treatment, the death rate dropped 60% in 1997. Drugs that have resistance in combating diseases individually do much better in conjunction with each other. It always has been extremely challenging for clinical researchers to determine the optimal dose of drugs to use when combined with each other. If a researcher were to test ten different concentrations of six drugs in every possible arrangement, he/she would have one million experimental conditions. With the use of the closed-loop feedback control scheme, an approach that guided by a stochastic search algorithm (Wang et al, PNAS 2008) needs only tens of searches instead of performing millions of trials. In addition, We have found that the total inhibition of the virus occurred at much lower drug doses than would be needed if drugs were used singly. In fact, the concentrations of the drugs were only about 10% of that required of individual drugs.

Dr. Chih-Ming Ho received his Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and holds the Ben Rich-Lockheed Martin Chair Professor in the UCLA School of Engineering. He is the Director of Center for Cell Control (http://CenterForCellControl.org) and the Director of the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration (http://www.cmise.org). Dr. Ho is known for his work in micro/nano fluidics, bio-nano technologies and turbulence. He was ranked by ISI as one of the top 250 most cited researchers worldwide in the entire engineering category. In 1997, Dr. Ho was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In the next year, he was elected as an Academician of Academia Sinica. Dr. Ho holds six honorary professorships. Dr. Ho was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society as well as American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for his contributions in a wide spectrum of technical areas.

TSU-CHIN TSAO | Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Precision Engineering and Control for NanoManufacturing

A nano-precision positioning system is being developed for nanoimprinting lithography by a multidisciplinary team. The research on mechanical design, thermo-mechanical analysis, and control are critical to the nano-precision requirement for the imprinting process. These research issues and their contribution toward the system design and integration will be presented.

Tsu-Chin Tsao received the B.S. degree in engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1981, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from The University of California at Berkeley, in 1984 and 1988, respectively. In 1999 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he is currently a Professor with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. He served 11 years on the faculty of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include control systems and mechatronics. Dr. Tsao was a recipient of the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control Best Paper Award for papers published in the journal in 1994, the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division in 1997, and the Hugo S. Shuck Best Paper Award from American Automatic Control Council in 2002.

ADRIENNE LAVINE | Professor and Chair
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Educational Outreach in the Center for Scalable and Integrated NanoManufacturing

The Center for Scalable and Integrated Nanomanufacturing (SINAM) is an NSF-sponsored research center with a strong educational outreach program, integrated over the educational levels of middle- and high-school, community college, undergraduate, and graduate education. The talk will focus on middle- and high-school outreach aimed at attracting a diverse population of students into the study of engineering. A team of SINAM faculty, staff, and students provides a hands-on experience in photolithography to middle- and high-school students. The students learn and carry out the steps of photolithography to produce their own circuit boards and then perform electrical resistance testing. They are also introduced to the excitement of nanoscale technology by graduate students and faculty who are engaged in nanomanufacturing research.

Adrienne Lavine is currently Professor and Department Chair in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA. She began her academic career there in 1984 as an Assistant Professor after obtaining her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley. Her research addresses various aspects of heat transfer, including thermal energy harvesting, temperature control for nanomanufacturing, thermal aspects of manufacturing processes (e.g. grinding, cutting, and plasma spray), and thermomechanical behavior of shape memory alloys. She has published over 80 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings. Her honors and awards include the Presidential Young Investigator Award from NSF (1988), the Taylor Medal of CIRP (1990), and the Best Superconductivity Paper Award from ASME (1989). She is presently the Associate Director for Education and Outreach for the NSF-sponsored Center for Scalable and Integrated Nano-Manufacturing.

AJIT MAL | Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Dynamics Based Defects Detection in Composite Structures

Advanced composites are being used increasingly in state-of-the-art aircraft and aerospace structures. In spite of their many advantages, composite materials are highly susceptible to hidden flaws that may occur at any time during the life cycle of a structure, and if undetected, may cause sudden and catastrophic failure of the entire structure. This paper is concerned with the detection and characterization of hidden defects in composite structures before they grow to a critical size. A methodology for automatic damage identification and localization is developed using a combination of vibration and wave propagation data. The structure is assumed to be instrumented with an array of actuators and sensors to excite and record its dynamic response, including vibration and wave propagation effects. A damage index, calculated from the measured dynamical response of the structure in a previous (reference) state and the current state, is introduced as a determinant of structural damage. The indices are used to identify low velocity impact damages in increasingly complex composite structural components. The potential application of the approach in developing health monitoring systems in defects-critical structures is indicated.

Professor Mal’s research interests are in the general area of Structural and Solid Mechanics with specializations in wave propagation, and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). He has made major research contributions in scattering and diffraction of elastic waves from inclusions, cracks and corners; strong earthquake ground motion; micromechanical theories of wave propagation in fiber-reinforced composites; quantitative (NDE) of composites, thin films and bonded joints; characterization of materials degradation due to corrosion and fatigue in structural components and autonomous health monitoring of advanced structures. Professor Mal is currently a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Academy of Mechanics (AAM), and the International Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE). He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring (JSHM) and Mechanics of Materials (MOM). Professor Mal received a senior Fulbright Fellowship to Germany, and is a Fellow of ASME, AAM and SPIE. He received the 2001 Founder's Award form the NDE Division of ASME and the 2000 NDE Lifetime Achievement Award of SPIE. Professor Mal was the principal author of two papers that received Best Paper Awards from SPIE in 2003 and 2004.

RAJIT GADH | Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

RFID Research in Manufacturing, Automotive and Aerospace

The last twenty-five years have marked the coming of the personal computing and communication industry. In the next twenty-five years, such information carrying and disseminating capability will extend from the "computing/communication devices" to real-world non-computing artifacts that are manufactured, distributed, used and recycled - examples being automobiles or airplanes. These artifacts will collectively form what are being referred to as the "Internet of Artifacts". These artifacts will need to be uniquely identified (using technologies such as RFID), will need to communicate with each other while they are moving (wirelessly) and will gradually need to have the ability to take intelligent decisions first individually and then collectively. The information system required to enable and manage this infrastructure is typically referred to as middleware. The talk will bring out the research issues in the development of this middleware in the context of manufacturing and supply chain.

Professor Rajit Gadh has a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), MS from Cornell University and Bachelors from IIT Kanpur. His research interests are Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Middleware for RFID Networks, Wireless Internet of Artifacts, RFID in Supply Chain/Logistics/Manufacturing, Reconfiguragble Wireless Network Sensors, Wireless Internet Architectures for Enterprise, Wireless Multimedia Modeling, Digital Rights Management for Multimedia, CAD/Visualization. His awards include NSF (CAREER award, Research Initiation Award, NSF-Lucent Industry Ecology Award, GOAL-I award), SAE (Ralph Teetor award), IEEE (second best paper, WTS), ASME (Kodak Best Technical Paper award), AT&T (Industrial ecology fellow award), Engineering Education Foundation (Research Initiation Award). He is on the Editorial board of ACM Computers in Entertainment Publication and the CAD Journal.

ANN KARAGOZIAN | Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Research Activities Relevant to Efficient Energy and
Propulsion Systems

This talk will provide an overview of ongoing research projects in the UCLA MAE Energy and Propulsion Research Laboratory. These studies include experimental, computational, and theoretical explorations of a variety of reactive and non-reactive flows. Projects involving experiments on actively controlled transverse jets, combustion of alternative liquid fuels during acoustic excitation, and hydrogen leak detection will be described. Computational and theoretical studies on pulse detonation engines with magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) thrust augmentation and on transverse jet shear layer instabilities will also be presented, including an explanation of the underlying physical phenomena and implications for improved energy-generation and propulsive systems.

Ann R. Karagozian has been a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA since 1982. Her research interests lie in fluid mechanics and reactive processes associated with energy and propulsion systems. Professor Karagozian is a Fellow of the AIAA and of the American Physical Society, and has been an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal and the Journal of Propulsion and Power. She is currently the Vice Chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and in the past has chaired SAB studies on Persistence at Near Space Altitudes, Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency, and Sensor Technologies for Detection of Hard and Deeply Buried Targets. She received her B.S. in Engineering, summa cum laude, from UCLA and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. More information on Prof. Karagozian’s research and scholarly work may be found at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~ark/.

CHRISTOPHER LYNCH | Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Ferroelectric Materials for Sensor and Actuator Applications

Ferroelectric oxides, like muscle, changes shape when a voltage is applied. A key difference between muscle and a ferroelectric oxide is the stiffness. Muscle undergoes large shape changes but produces only a small force. Ferroelectric oxides produce small shape changes but very large forces. Ferroelectric oxide materials were initially developed for use in sonar systems (barium titanate and later lead zirconate titanate). In recent years applications have grown to include medical ultrasound, active vibration control, nano-positioning devices, ultrasonic motors, unimorphs and bimorphs, lithotripters (for non-invasively breaking up kidney stones), fuel injectors, ultrasonic scalpels, and many others. This presentation will give a brief overview of the ferroelectric material behavior and describe novel solid state pumps and actuators developed using these materials.

Dr. Lynch served on the faculty of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering from 1995 through 2007 at which point he joined the faculty of the University of California Los Angeles as a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. While at Georgia Tech he spent nine months at Georgia Tech Lorraine where he developed research collaborations with French and German colleagues that continue to be productive. In 2002 he accepted the responsibilities as associate chair of administration of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. His service activities have included the development of a new international conference (SMASIS), serving as chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering Technical Committee on Adaptive Structures and Materials Systems, and serving as a member of the ASME Aerospace Executive Committee. He has been honored with the status of Fellow of ASME, with the receipt of an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator award, and several awards for excellence in teaching.

JAKE HUNDLEY | Ph.D. Candidate
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Mechanical Property Simulation of Titanium Graphite Fiber Metal Laminates

(Jake Hundley, Jenn-Ming Yang and H. Thomas Hahn)
Titanium graphite fiber metal laminates are a promising new class of high temperature structural materials consisting of thin titanium foil adhesively bonded to polymer matrix composite laminae. These materials represent a “best of both worlds” approach in which the resulting structure contains beneficial properties of both constituents. One potential area of application for titanium graphite laminates is in mechanically fastened hypersonic missile structures in which the high specific strength of the polymer matrix composite is complimented by the relative notch insensitivity of the titanium foil. This presentation provides a brief overview of fabrication, testing and simulation of bolted titanium graphite joints. A three-dimensional finite element constitutive model for progressive damage and failure in the composite layers is also introduced and validated with experimentally obtained bearing strength results for aluminum, carbon fiber-polyimide, and titanium graphite joints.

Jake Hundley is a PhD student in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UCLA, studying under Professors Jenn-Ming Yang and H. Thomas Hahn. Jake received his BS in mechanical engineering from UCLA (2006) and is the recipient of the US Department of Education’s GAANN fellowship. His research on fabrication and modeling of fiber metal laminates is supported by Raytheon Missile Systems and has been presented and/or published by organizations such as the American Society for Composites, the American Society for Metals, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering.

PIROUZ KAVEHPOUR | Assistant Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Detection and Quantification of Nano-films Using Fluorescence Microscopy

For wetting fluids a microscopic film, which is known as the precursor film, exists at the front of the moving contact line. The structure of this thin film has been studied theoretically, but previous experimental investigations were limited by the resolution of the measurement system (lateral or vertical) required to capture the complete scope of this feature. We studied the evolution of the profile of a spreading droplet near the moving contact line using a total internal reflection fluorescence microscope (TIR-FM). The TIR-FM system can detect nano-particles and fluorescence materials approximately 100 nm from the substrate with high spatial resolution. The dynamic characteristics of the precursor films have a good agreement with the available theoretical results.

Professor H. Pirouz Kavehpour is Assistant Professor and Director of the Complex Fluid & Interfacial Physics Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA. He received his B.S from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) in 1991, and his M.S. in 1997 at the University of Rhode Island where he investigated the heat transfer and fluid mechanics of gaseous flows in microchannels. Dr. Kavehpour performed his Ph.D. research at MIT (2003) in the Hatsopoulos Microfluids Laboratory. His thesis focused on the imaging and theoretical investigation of contact-line dynamics in spreading films. He stayed at MIT for his post-doctoral research on the lubricity and rheology of complex fluids in microfluidic devices and in high-speed fiber-coating processes. Prof. Kavehpour’s research includes spreading of polymeric fluids, drop coalescence, micro-scale fluid mechanics and tribo-rheology of complex fluids. He is a recipient of the Army Young Investigator award (YIP) for his research on interfacial properties of the ionic liquids.

SHAHRAM SHARAFAT | Adjunct Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Digital Materials: From Atoms to Advanced Materials

(Shahram Sharafat and Nasr Ghoniem): Development and qualification of new structural materials is historically a long and costly process, which requires typically between 10 – 20 years, using incrementally improved materials. For fusion-energy structural components the additional requirements of neutron radiation damage resistance, high heat flux, chemical compatibility, and thermo-mechanical stresses need to be considered. Thus, development of fusion materials constitute one of the greatest challenges every undertaken by material scientists. This emphasizes the importance of advanced material science tools in development of functional materials. Design of these advanced materials requires computational simulation models to predict relationships between atomistic–based processes and material properties for a variety of time- and length scales, and materials classes, in order to systematically explore, refine, and evaluate potential material solutions. In this presentation, the approach to accelerated material design is presented, which is based on materials physics, and nano- and micro-mechanics (Digital Materials). The goal of micromechanics is to provide predictive relations between the nano- & micro-structure of the material and its macroscopic mechanical properties by computational modeling. Dislocation Dynamics (DD) is a powerful tool to investigate the nature of structural response at an atomistic scale. Here we present some of the latest models and findings using DD. An example of using computer simulations to develop micro-engineered materials to solve complex material and component response to the challenging high heat flux plus ion-irradiation environment of an Intertial Fusion Energy (IFE) device are also presented.

Dr. Shahram Sharafat is an adjunct professor in the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching is focused on mechanical product design courses, while he is developing a new series of engineering courses with an emphasis on materials for high energy systems. His technical background includes radiation interaction with materials (neutrons, electrons, particles, laser and photons), microstructure evolution modeling, plasma and laser processing (plasma spraying, coating interface bond strength), fusion technology (transient thermo-mechanical analysis in fusion environment), and fusion reactor component design (large-scale finite element modeling). He is the technical coordinator for the U.S. ITER Test Blanket Module Structural and Failure Analysis Task. As part of the Naval Research Laboratory Inertial Confinement Fusion Energy (ICE) multi-institutional project (HAPL), he was instrumental in development of the first spatial-temporal micro-structural evolution code for modeling the ICE armor response to intense irradiation environments. In recent years, he has developed an online RDBMS-based interactive web database for material properties of fusion-relevant materials. The database is now being considered for application by the international ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) team. He has published over 150 items in technical journals, reports, and conference proceedings covering a wide range of issues in the areas of microstructure evolution, plasma spraying, fusion component design, fusion materials, modeling radiation interaction with solids, and thermo-mechanical analysis.

ERIC PEI-YU CHIOU | Assistant Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Optoelectronic Tweezers: Massively Parallel Manipulation of Droplets, Cells, and Molecules with Light

The ability to perform laboratory operation in microscale using miniaturized fluidic devices is appealing. Advantages over macroscopic reactors, such as reduced reagent cost and reaction time, improved control over mass and heat transfer in the miniaturized systems have been demonstrated. However, the capability for conducting a large scale, massively parallel, high throughput analysis is limited due to the complexity of constructing and controlling a large scale microfluidic circuit to deliver fluid, cells, and molecules. In this talk, I will present a novel tool and concept called optoelectronics tweezers (OET) that is capable to provide parallel manipulation functions on single cells, biomolecules, and fluidic delivery using light-driven microfluidic devices. Using OET, we have demonstrated 31,000 reconfigurable light-driven traps for single cell and biomolecules manipulation using an incoherent light source such as a LED and a digital micromirror display. Our recent results also showed that OET can be extended to manipulate micro- to nano-liter droplets suspended in oil with a light beam having intensity as low as 1 µW/mm^2 , which promises OET a microfluidic platform for large-scale, multiplexed microfluidic sample preparation.

Professor Eric Pei-Yu Chiou received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department in University of California at Berkeley in 2005. He received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering Department from University of California at Los Angeles and B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering Department from National Taiwan University in Taiwan. He joined UCLA Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department as an Assistant Professor in 2006. His research interests include biophotonics, single cell laser surgery, nanophotonics, and lab-on-a-chip systems. His invention of Optoelectronic Tweezers (OET) is selected by R&D Magazine and Micro/Nano Newsletter as representative of the best 25 micro- and nanotechnologies of 2006. He has received the NSF CAREER award in 2008. He is also a member of the Optofluidics topic committee for the IEEE/LEOS Summer Topicals 2008.


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