For her doctoral research at the University of Michigan, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor Christina Harvey and her colleagues found that most birds can morph their wings mid-flight to flip back and forth between flying smoothly like a passenger plane and flying acrobatically like a fighter jet.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Vinod Narayanan and Assistant Professor Jonathon Schofield and Biological and Agricultural Engineering Adjunct Professor Zhongli Pan are among nine groups of UC Davis faculty to receive a proof-of-concept grant this year, which helps scientists advance compelling research and innovations toward commercial applications.
With a new grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office, Narayanan and his team of collaborators will develop 3D-printed high-temperature, high-pressure receivers for solar-thermal energy that can be used to generate power or for renewable industrial process heat.
On a wet and windy Sunday in Kansasville, Wisconsin this April, the First Nations Rocketry team at UC Davis launched and recovered a high-powered rocket and won the First Nations Launch High-Powered Rocket Competition moon challenge for the second year in a row.
Since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, scientists, engineers and clinicians have been producing and sharing insight at a rapid rate to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic. So far, research on Covid-19 has led to an understanding of the biology of SARS-CoV-2, how the virus interacts with the immune system, the clinical manifestations, effects of long covid, vaccine development, treatment and prevention strategies, among others.
Nine mechanical and aerospace engineering students from two research teams at UC Davis experienced zero gravity this December as they successfully tested two spaceflight technologies aboard two parabolic flights.
A few miles away from West Sacramento at UC Davis, a team of engineers, scientists and designers led by Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Valeria La Saponara is researching ways to apply mycelium to other human problems.
Over the next four years, UC Davis students will be designing the car of the future as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s EcoCAR Electric Vehicle (EV) Challenge. The competition challenges students to convert a Cadillac LYRIQ EV into an autonomous, next-generation battery-electric vehicle with vehicle-to-everything connectivity so it can interact with devices and the environment.
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor Seongkyu Lee’s group will apply their expertise in predicting rotorcraft noise to help industry leader Supernal identify noise sources in their aircraft designs and recommend strategies to reduce it.
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has awarded a team of researchers from the University of California campuses at Berkeley, Davis and Merced a two-year grant to simulate urban air mobility in the San Francisco area, and to draft regulations for this highly complex form of travel.
