MIE Professor Kenneth Brezinsky has been elected a Fellow of the inaugural class of Fellows by The Combustion Institute (CI). The Combustion Institute is a non-profit, educational and scientific society founded in 1954. It promotes and disseminates research activities in all areas of combustion science and technology for the advancement of many diverse communities around the world.Fellows are “members of the international combustion community recognized by their peers as distinguished for outstanding contributions to combustion, whether it be in research or in applications. Fellows are active participants in The Combustion Institute, as evidenced by the publishing of papers in CI affiliated journals, attendance at the International Symposia on Combustion, and/or attendance at CI Section meetings.” The first Fellows Selection Committee…

Registration is open for UIC’s Robotics Summer Camp. Hosted by the College of Engineering, the summer camp is set for June 25 to July 6, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the college’s Engineering Research Facility, 842 W. Taylor St, Chicago IL 60607. It is open to qualified middle and high school students with an interest in robotics technology. The summer camp is an opportunity for students to learn in a research laboratory environment and get hands-on experience with state-of-art robotics technology. During the two-week session, students will build a self-driving four-wheeled Mecanum car kit, which has four independently driven wheels via DC motors and gear reducers. They will install sensors needed for a self-driving car, ultrasonic range/obstacle sensor, line…

What was thought to be impossible, was just proven to be possible!Researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) used an atomic resolution transmission electron microscope available at UIC to prove that up to eight metallic elements can be perfectly mixed into a single phase or structure  in nanoparticle morphology with dimensions below hundred nanometer.. These nanoparticles produced by thermal shock at the University of Maryland defy the previous thoughts that immiscible multielement atoms cannot be perfectly mixed at subnanoscale. Their results are published in the paper "Carbo-Thermal Shock Synthesis of High Entropy Alloy Nanoparticles" in the journal Science.The general area of research is related to a new class of materials that…

Graduates from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) are bringing more to the workforce than a degree. Many are bringing a wealth of research knowledge and leadership experience, too.Barak Stoltz is one example of the leaders earning degrees from MIE. He’s an active member of UIC’s chapters of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and Engineering World Health (EWH). Additionally, he won the Maurice Prize as well as the Illinois Space Grant Scholarship. He had the opportunity to conduct research under the direction of MIE Professor Alexander Yarin for more than two years, and landed an internship with SpaceX. In June, he will start working for the Elon Musk-founded SpaceX in Hawthorne, California.  Before he graduates…

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at Argonne National Laboratory have designed a new lithium-air battery that works in a natural air environment and still functioned after a record-breaking 750 charge/discharge cycles. Their findings are reported in the journal Nature.“Our lithium-air battery design represents a revolution in the battery community,” said Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and co-corresponding author of the paper. “This first demonstration of a true lithium-air battery is an important step toward what we call ‘beyond lithium-ion’ batteries, but we have more work to do in order to commercialize it.”Lithium-air batteries — believed to be able to hold up to five times more energy than the lithium-ion batteries that power our phones,…

Lithium-metal batteries — which can hold up to 10 times more charge than the lithium-ion batteries that currently power our phones, laptops and cars — haven’t been commercialized because of a fatal flaw: as these batteries charge and discharge, lithium is deposited unevenly on the electrodes. This buildup cuts the lives of these batteries too short to make them viable, and more importantly, can cause the batteries to short-circuit and catch fire.Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a solution to this problem in the form of a graphene-oxide coated separator that, when placed in between the two electrodes of a lithium-metal battery, prevents uneven plating of lithium and allows the battery to safely function for…