Congratulations to the recipient of the ITherm Achievement Award for 2016, Suresh Garimella (R. Eugene & Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering).

Purdue's Spring 2016 Commencement took place on Friday, May 13. There were 251 Mechanical Engineering seniors who received their Bachelor of Science; 63 received their Masters of Science; and 13 received doctorates. Congratulations to all, and have fun changing the world!

Rebecca Kramer, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, has received a Young Investigator Research Program grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Playing with toy dinosaurs is one thing -- but designing your own dinosaur in a computer, and having it digitally converted to an easy-to-assemble cardboard model? That's the goal of the CardboardiZer system, developed by the C Design Lab at Purdue University. This system allows novice designers to convert static three-dimensional objects into moving robotic versions made out of cardboard, wood and sheet metal. "We are taking inanimate objects and making them come alive," said Karthik Ramani, the Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University.

Scott Tingle (MSME '88) will join the crew of the International Space Station in 2017. NASA announced that, starting in September 2017, Tingle will live aboard the ISS for two consecutive expeditions. Tingle has a masters degree from Purdue in mechanical engineering, with a specialty in fluid mechanics and propulsion.

Professor Shirley J. Dyke and PhD candidate Chul Min Yeum have been awarded the 2015 Hojjat Adeli Award for Innovation in Computing.

This award is in recognition for the manuscript authored by them and entitled "Vision based Automated Crack Detection for Bridge Inspection” published in the top-ranked journal Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering in May 2015.

For their senior design project, a group of Purdue mechanical engineers created a prosthetic foot and ankle joint for 13-year-old Alex Morgan, an athletic East Tipp middle schooler who is missing a bone in his lower leg.

Purdue mechanical engineering graduate Chris Barman (BSME '94) is now in charge of Electrical and Electronics for the NAFTA region of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, overseeing the entire lineup of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram Truck, and Fiat. During a recent visit to Purdue, she described how her time with the Women in Engineering Program, Society of Women Engineers, and engineering sorority Phi Sigma Rho helped her decide on a career in the automotive industry. She also encourages current students to consider cars just as high tech as smartphones, websites, and rocket engines -- and with autonomy and connectivity, the automotive industry is the high tech field of the future.

Nanotechnology has enabled medical treatments that were unthinkable just a decade ago. Thanks to a tiny fabricated device called a Lab on a Chip, scientists can now target and capture individual tumor cells, using only a blood sample from a cancer patient. This can potentially be a game-changer -- not just for diagnosing cancer, but potentially for testing individualized therapies on those cells in a laboratory, before using them on a patient in real life. Cagri Savran is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, conducting research at the Birck Nanotechnology Center.

Xiulin Ruan, associate professor of mechanical engineering, has been named the 2016 Outstanding Engineering Graduate Student Mentor.