Podcast episode features our work on infant skull fracture

In a recent episode of the podcast Just Science, Dr. Brittany Coats was interviewed about our collaborative DOJ Grant (2016-DN-BX-0160) on predicting infant skull fracture due to impact.  Contributors on the project include MMM Lab member, Jun Yan “Jimmy” He.  Check it out! Listen to podcast Just Science is a podcast hosted by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE), which “is committed to improving the practice and strengthening the impact of forensic science through rigorous technology corroboration, evaluation, and adoption; effective knowledge transfer and education; and comprehensive dissemination of best practices and guidelines to...

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New $3M grant from DOD

University of Utah Mechanical Engineering professors Bart Raeymaekers, Ashley Spear, Tim Ameel, Wenda Tan, and Owen Kingstedt have received a $3M grant from the Department of Defense to continue research efforts on metal-based additive manufacturing. The grant is a collaboration with Colorado School of Mines and Carnegie Mellon University. To access the original news article, click here....

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New Funding from DOE NEUP

A $776k grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) will enable a team of researchers from the University of Utah and Utah State University to benchmark microscale ductility measurements for reactor-grade metals. The team members include Owen Kingstedt (PI), Jiyoung Chang, Ashley Spear, and Ryan Berke. The team members will leverage their combined expertise in physical experimentation, modeling, and microfabrication to identify best practices for scaling mechanical measurements made on microscale-thickness specimens to the macroscale....

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Raeymaekers and Spear receive $3M award from DOD

Professors Bart Raeymaekers and Ashley Spear, in collaboration with researchers from the Colorado School of Mines, have received a $3M award from the DoD to create a new manufacturing platform that will help advance economic and workforce resilience in response to changes in Defense spending. Specifically, this project focuses on networking past, present, and potential Defense-supported manufacturers with research and development centers via a centralized, artificially intelligent database. This platform will enable the manufacturers to efficiently use additive manufacturing (AM) processes (a.k.a. “3D printing”) to shorten product development cycles, expand their product mix, and enter new non-Defense related markets,...

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MMM Lab to Participate in $15M NASA Space Technology Research Institute

Researchers in the MMM Lab will participate in a NASA-funded Space Technology Research Institute (STRI), which will receive $15M over the next five years. The Institute for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design (US-COMP) is a multidisciplinary team of 22 faculty members led by Greg Odegard  (Michigan Tech), Mike Czabaj (University of Utah), Richard Liang (Florida State), and John Hart (MIT). The purpose of US-COMP is to develop and deploy a carbon nanotube-based, ultra-high strength, lightweight aerospace structural material by relying largely on computational design. A full press release can be found here....

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Coats and Spear receive $591K grant from U.S. DOJ to study skull fracture

Profs. Brittany Coats (PI) and Ashley Spear, along with collaborator Prof. Susan Margulies from the University of Pennsylvania, have received a $591K grant from the U.S. Dept. of Justice for infant skull fracture research.  The three-year award, titled “Skull fracture patterns from head impact in infants”, will develop and validate a computational toolset for predicting skull fracture patterns in infants. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that approximately 686,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect during 2012. The highest percentage of these children are between birth and 3 years of age, and are more likely to experience a recurrence...

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Spear, Czabaj, Fletcher Receive $952K NSF Grant

(From article originally posted on ME webpage) Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professors Ashley Spear and Michael Czabaj and Associate Professor Tom Fletcher from the School of Computing have been awarded a four-year grant from the NSF for $952K to study open-cell metallic foams. The University of Utah team, led by Spear, will partner with a firm that specializes in manufacturing such foams. The grant is jointly funded by two NSF programs, Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) and Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI), and is entitled “DMREF/GOALI: Novel 3D Experiments, Simulations, and Optimization for...

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Czabaj and Spear Selected for Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowships

ME Assistant Professors Michael Czabaj and Ashley Spear have each been selected for the 2016 Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP).  This program, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), offers fellowships to university faculty to conduct research at Air Force research facilities in the summer. The objectives of the program are: To stimulate professional relationships among U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program participants and the scientists and engineers at Air Force research facilities. To enhance the research interests and capabilities of faculty (both new and experienced researchers) in the U.S. academic community....

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