July 08, 2011

Summer Lecture Series: TBA.  

June 24, 2011

Summer Lecture Series: Sophoria Westmoreland.   The second summer lecture series lecture.

June 10, 2011

Summer Lecture Series: Mohammad Alizadeh.   The first summer lecture series lecture.

March 10, 2011

Faculty Mentoring Brown-Bag Lunch with Sarah Bergbreiter.   The third Faculty Mentoring lunch was hed with Dr. Bergbreiter on March 11.

March 2, 2011

Grand Opening of the NEW ME/RE Graduate Student Lounge.   The newly-renovated graduate student lounge has launched on March 2. Thanks to the hard work of the MEGA officers and support of the Graduate Office and the administration of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, a new, larger space was found for gradaute students. The freshly painted room provides space for students to relax outside of their office. There is space to both socialize and there will eventually be a table for hosting meetings. The kickoff was held at the same time as the MEGA elections. Those who came were treated to refreshments and a good social atmosphere.

February 16, 2011

Qualifying Exam Workshop.   The second Qualifying Exam Workshop was held on February 16. A panel of students who had already passed their quals gave their perspective on the process and answered questions about the exam. 18 students from both RE and ME participated, representing 13 different advisors. Participant Adam Kareem said the worksop was "definitely helpful" and the topic that "helped the most was the timeline."

November 2, 2010

Faculty Mentoring Brown-Bag Lunch with Elisabeth Smela.   The second Faculty Mentoring Brown-Bag Lunch was held on November 2, 2010 with Dr. Elisabeth Smela. Students were able to have candid talks with Dr. Smela about her experiences as a faculty member and suggestions on how to succeed as a graduate student at the University of Maryland.

September 23, 2010

Faculty Mentoring Brown-Bag Lunch with Santiago Solares.  On September 23, 2010, MEGA launched the first of a series of faculty mentoring brown bag lunches. These events aim at providing an interesting opportunity for students to interact with faculty members from the department on multiple topics: Master or Ph.D. topics, advice on being a successful graduate student or faculty member, career paths, and positive/negative aspects of a career in Academia.  The first event hosted Dr. Solares as our first guest and 7 graduate students. Dr. Solares kindly shared his experience and answered a wide range of questions from students. His insights included the advantages of an experience in industry and advice to be a successful faculty member. More faculty mentoring brown bag lunches are coming during the semester. An email announcing the next event will be sent to all graduate students in the department. Stay tuned!

September 22, 2010

Qualifying Exam Workshop. On September 22, 2010, MEGA hosted the first Mechanical and Reliability Engineering Qualifying Exam Workshop. The workshop was attended by nine students who will be taking their qualifying exam this semester. One RE and three ME graduate students who have already taken and passed their qualifying exams shared their experiences and suggestions on the qualifying exam process, followed by a question and answer session.  Topics covered ranged from how to prepare for questions in the exam to how to schedule time to how to get enough sleep. The workshop  was well received by the attendees; many commented that the workshop should be held every semester. Sophie Dan Wang said that the workshop “helps reduce the pressure before the QE. I would definitely recommend it to other graduate students in my lab.”  Rubyca Jaai remarked that the workshop “gave me an idea of the different things I could expect from the committee. I was worried about coming up with an entirely new idea in 10 days but hearing from others certainly helped me calm down.” MEGA is looking at building on the success of the Qualifying Exam Workshop by hosting workshops on topics such as preparing  for the dissertation proposal, so stay tuned for more!

September 17, 2010

The ME/RE Annual Summer Picnic. On Friday, September 17th the Department of Mechanical Engineering and MEGA hosted the annual ME/RE Summer Picnic at Calvert Park. More than 130 faculty, staff, students, and researchers along with their family and friends showed up to enjoy mingling, food, and music. Some of the featured food included grilled burgers, sausages, hot dogs, and chicken, as well as a variety of vegetarian and Kosher foods. Games included frisbee, basketball and soccer. A raffle was held for free A. James Clark School of Engineering t-shirts. If you did not get a chance to make this year's picnic, we hope to see you next summer. Special thanks to all the faculty, staff, and graduate students who helped make the picnic a success !

August 26, 2010

The new graduate student orientation is coming up on August 26th from 9am to 11:30am. Welcome to the New Graduate Students!

August 13, 2010

The Summer Lecture Series. “Fluid Dynamics: The Science Nature uses to Create Art”by Christine Ikeda. 

August 6, 2010

The Summer Lecture Series.  "Mimicking how the fly hears" by Haijun Liu. 

July 23, 2010

The Summer Lecture Series. “Evaluation of Impact of Low-Medium Current Densities on Thermal Fatigue Reliability of Solder Interconnects”  by Preeti Chauhan. 

Special thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring this event.

July 9, 2010

The Summer Lecture Series.  “Energy Storage: Technologies and Applications” by Kyle Gluesenkamp and Magnus Eisele.

Special thanks to Schlumberger for sponsoring this event.

June 18, 2010

The Summer Lecture Series.  "Near-grazing dynamics of impacting structures with nonlinear interaction forces and application to atomic force microscopy" by Ishita Chakraborty. 

Summer, 2010

Summer Seminars. The Summer Lecture Series will meet every other Friday this summer at noon in the DeWalt Seminar Room and will feature a talk by one of your fellow graduate students in the department. Pizza and soda will be provided.

May 4, 2010

Mechanical Engineering Launches Graduate Student Association

The official launch for the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Association (MEGA) was on April 30, 2010 with 36 students in attendance. The officers of MEGA were introduced: Christine Ikeda (President & GSG Representative), Gilad Sharon (Vice President), Aaron Gerratt (Secretary & GSG Representative), Danielle Chrun (Treasurer), Bavani Balakrisnan (Social Chairperson), Ren Liu (Recruiting Chairperson & GSG Representative), Sophie Wang (Web Manager), George Gateau III (Corresponding Secretary), Nick Vlajic (Summer Lecture Series Coordinator & Student Representative on the Search Committee for new department chair), Kyle Sullivan (Board Member at Large), Koustav Sinha (CALCE Representative), and Amarildo DaMata (Advisor).