As an engineer at 3M, Andrew Penning was pretty happy with his job -- but he felt he could do more. With an online master's in mechanical engineering from Purdue, he found new opportunities to advance his career into research and development.

The beautiful colors of a butterfly come from tiny patterned features that reflect light at certain wavelengths. David Cappelleri's lab has duplicated this feat in mobile microrobots smaller than a human hair, using a micro-3D-printing technique called two-photon polymerization.

With all public gatherings cancelled, we want to recognize the ME graduate students and faculty who received recognition from the College of Engineering.

Eckhard Groll, head of the School of Mechanical Engineering, provides some updates on how the school is adapting to serve students now, and in the future.

For a time, Jonathan Ore thought his childhood dream of obtaining a PhD was dashed. But Purdue's online master's in mechanical engineering gave this working professional exactly what he needed. He loved it so much, that he came to campus to complete a PhD.

No one 'makes' things better than Boilermakers, and no one has a better custom manufacturing facility than the Bechtel Innovation Design Center. Under the direction of Miko Cakmak, the BIDC is now producing personal protective equipment for local hospitals.

Residential buildings account for 20% of total energy consumption in the United States. If these homes were retrofitted with smart systems, which only condition the air if people are present, we would save 24-42% of these energy costs. David Warsinger published this research in the Journal of Building Engineering.

Congratulations to our ME faculty whose promotions have been approved by Purdue's Board of Trustees. Promoted to Full Professor are Arezoo Ardekani, Hector Gomez, and Fu Zhao. Promoted to Associate Professor are Ilias Bilionis, Marcial Gonzalez, Carlo Scalo, and Kejie Zhao.

Andres Arrieta has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, their most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. His project is "The Mechanics of Hierarchically Multistable Metastructures."

As cell phones and other electronics get smaller and more powerful, dissipating heat becomes a vital issue. Prof. Xiulin Ruan's lab focuses on the nanoscale, where many principles of heat transfer are still unknown. Using machine learning, they have discovered that certain configurations of materials called "superlattices" conduct heat in unexpected ways.