Millennium Café

Designing and building self-propelled particles (artificial microswimmers) with the capabilities of complex swimming (combined translational and rotational motion) is challenging with conventional fabrication techniques, such as lithography or electrochemical deposition. In this talk, I will present on an alternative fabrication technique, 2-photon lithography, that has enabled 3-D printing of microswimmers capable of complex swimming behavior. This research demonstrates the advantages of the 2-photon lithography for 3-D printing and rapidly optimizing microstructures.

Presenter: Remmi Baker

Multifunctional materials can act as machines for sensing, actuation, morphing, damage mitigation and limiting detrimental structural loads.  Industrial applications range from biomedical, aerospace, civil and automotive.  Shape memory alloys are a class of multifunctional materials that undergo large shape changes, and upon heating or removing external stimuli “remember” their original shape and form.  Underlying solid-state atomic and microstructure length scale phase transitions are reversible, which begets the bulk scale memory and thus smartly designing the microstructure can tailor alloy behavior.  In this talk, I will discuss our work using macro and micro-scale additive manufacturing and efforts to establish the interrelationships between novel fabrication technologies and shape memory functionality.

The “breathing”, or the vibrational motion of materials, contains rich information about the physical and chemical properties and states. Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analytical tool to see such “breathing”. In this talk, I will present some examples on how we can “see breathing” of 2D materials systems, including twisted bilayer MoS2 and few-layer black phosphorus, and how the “breathing” behaviors of coupled nanomaterials are influenced by each other which leads to new opportunities in chemical and biological sensing.

Sengxi Huang | Electrical Engineering

For centuries, universities have contributed meaningfully to society through innovation, discovery, and educating future generations. In universities around the world, students and faculty are utilizing their intellectual resources and human capacity to tackle global challenges such as poverty, hunger, health, equality, and climate change. Unfortunately, sometimes in the pursuit to help others, we forget to reflect on the ethical issues that our actions may cause during and after international engagement. Come talk with me about ethical challenges in university-community international development and discuss how we can shift perceptions among university stakeholders from thinking of university international development as philanthropic to one of mutual respect and reciprocity.

Caitilin Grady | Civil Engineering and Rock Ethics Institute

A traditional science classroom spends the first few weeks teaching students how scientists do their work and the rest of the class telling them what scientists already know. Current reforms in STEM education promote engaging students in the practices of researchers to make sense of disciplinary content. Since most K-12 teachers have little experience in research, this creates a serious challenge. However, teacher professional development workshops based on authentic research projects can build teachers capacity to teach in this way, and can serve as effective broader impacts programs for federally funded research grants.

Matthew Johnson | Center for Science and the Schools

Animals move with remarkable agility and robustness, which is unparalleled by current physical (robot) systems. Major conceptual breakthroughs are needed to synthesize an engineering ‘blueprint’ of animal locomotion. Emphasizing the senses of touch and vision, I will draw on control tasks in running and flying insects to describe how animals implement feedback control. Throughout I will highlight opportunities for multidisciplinary collaborations at the intersection of material science, biomechanics, neurogenetics, mathematics and robotics.

Jean-Michel Mongeau | Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering