Transforming Mobility

Just under a year after the College of Engineering and Dean Richard Corsi launched the Next Level research vision, on March 16 the college hosted the 2023 Next Level Research Showcase to highlight 2022's award recipients, including their advancements in research and lessons learned.  

The Conversation asked a panel of transportation experts at UC Davis what's involved in California's rapid transition to reducing air pollination and cutting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

A new study from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor Christina Harvey uses modeling and aerodynamics to describe how gulls can change the shape of their wings to control their response to gusts or other disturbances. The lessons could one day apply to uncrewed aerial vehicles or other flying machines.

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.

Ultra-high temperature ceramic materials can withstand extreme heat loads, which makes them ideal for building hypersonic vehicles and platforms, but they can be difficult to process reliably.

In less than a decade, your taxi might come from the sky instead of the street. Once a hallmark of science fiction, flying taxis have become the cutting edge of aerospace engineering thanks to researchers like UC Davis’ Seongkyu Lee, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Lee’s group is conducting groundbreaking aeroacoustics research to lay the computational groundwork to make air taxis a reality.

In a new perspective article for the journal One Earth, Sabbie Miller, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, Professor John Harvey, director of the Pavement Research Center at UC Davis and colleagues at ETH Zurich and Imperial College London break down the greenhouse emissions challenges facing the cement industry and present a strategy to get to zero emissions.

Caltrans and the UC Davis Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology (AHMCT) Research Center today released two reports highlighting ways to prevent rare but often deadly collisions involving wrong-way drivers.