memsIndustry Affiliates Program.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering welcomes the opportunity to work with Industry, particularly through programs that involve our students.

Joining the MEMS Industry Affiliates Program provides your organization:

• a direct line of communication with MEMS faculty
• a source of faculty expertise for sponsored research or collaborative proposal development, including Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant applications
• priority access to undergraduate and graduate students for internships and employment
• opportunities to solve research and technology problems through creative arrangements such as senior design projects or student group design challenges

Benefits to students:

• become better engineers through real world experience
• motivated by real projects and working with engineers in industry
• students make better career choices

Recent Student/Industry Interaction:

• Lockheed Martin is working with a team of mechanical engineering seniors to design a spin chute and a landing gear testing rig for an aerospace application.
• Michelin, of Greenville, SC, has sponsored a student design team to work on tire tread fabrication and is providing materials and supplies for testing. Michelin also provided students with a tour of their fabrication facility.
• Fallbrook Technology of San Diego, CA is working with a student team to design a shifting mechanism for a continuously variable bicycle transmission.
• SAIC of Pittsburgh, PA, has been working with Pratt students for multiple years on projects such as the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles, and a national underwater autonomous vehicle competition. SAIC has provided hardware, funding and technical expertise. Students have participated in a wide range of problem-oriented hands-on projects.

Recent Faculty/Industry Interaction:

• Professor Earl H. Dowell is collaborating with Clear Science Corporation on a STTR grant titled "Computational Models for Nonlinear Aeroelastic Systems."
• Professors Kenneth C. Hall and Robert Kielb are collaborating with GE Global Research on a project titled "Turbomachinery, Aeroacoustics, and Aeromechanics Research."
• Senior Research Scientist Robert Kielb is collaborating with GE Aviation, NASA-Glenn and N&R Engineering on a project titled "Probabilistic analysis of the GE57 Fan with Aerodynamic and Structural Coupling."
• Assistant Professor Stefano Curtarolo is collaborating with Honda Motor Company ona project titled "Classical and Quantum mechanical Investigation of Carbon Nanotube Growth Out of Metal-Alloys Nanoparticles."