J. Mike Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, UT Austin

Congratulations to Arumugam Manthiram who has received the 2027 Gold Medal Award from ASM International! Manthiram receives this honor for innovative contributions to the development of sustainable, low-cost materials for batteries and fuel cells with commercial impact, through profound fundamental understanding and novel chemical synthesis and processing approaches.

Assistant prof. Maryam Tilton has been selected for the 2026 Butler-Williams Scholars Program sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

This is a competitive NIH/NIA program for early-stage investigators in aging research. For Tilton, this is a valuable opportunity to engage with NIA program leadership, program officers, and scientists, learn more about NIA’s mission and long-term scientific priorities, and build relationships within the national aging research community.

A team of researchers including professor Chih-Hao Chang have developed a new way to print 3D nanostructures to be published in Nano Letters.

Extreme Ultraviolet lithography uses a series of mirrors, tin, and UV to print semiconductors onto silica, which become the transistors that drive our computers, phones, whatever device you’re using to read this.

But EUV lithography printers are usually priced at more than $200 million and are the size of a room, out of reach for academic researchers.

Texas Engineers used a table-top version of this printer to develop a new kind of printing technique that shrinks the time it normally takes to finish processing from days to minutes.

Minutes Instead of Days: New 3D Printing Device and Technique Could Speed Up Semiconductor Research Researchers developed a way to print 3D nanostructures that could be used in medicine, quantum computing and novel materials.

Congratulations to Mojan Esmaeillou, an MechE graduate research assistant who won the Health Innovations Award from the McCombs School of Business Texas Venture Labs Pitch Competition. She wins for RealCooL technology in collaboration with professors Chris Rylander and Marissa Nichole Rylander!

Congratulations to Alexander Marras, the 2026 recipient of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor from the Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin!

As this semester comes to a close we want to also celebrate our five retiring faculty members. Thank you to Jonathan Bard, Joseph Beaman, David Bogard, Janet Ellzey, and Eric Fahrenthold for your service and leadership to the department.

ME undergrads: You’re invited to a summer networking social on Wed., July 29 in Houston with ChE students, ChE alumni & Phillips 66 recruiters. Free food and drinks will be provided from 5-7pm at The General Public.
RSVP at: https://bit.ly/HOUSocial_July29

Last week our MechE seniors showed off their final class products at the Capstone Project Showcase. Congrats to all of our team winners in the presentation, poster, and product categories! We want to thank all of our team sponsors, faculty advisors, session chairs and guests who came out to support this showcase.

Professor Junmin Wang has been elected as an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Distinguished Lecturer!

Additionally, Wang was appointed to the Board of Directors of American Automatic Control Council (AACC), an association of nine member societies that represent the United States to the world control community.

Capstone Project Showcase
April 27th, Engineering Teaching Center

The mechanical engineering capstone project allows students to apply engineering design methodology to solve open-ended problems submitted by a range of sponsors. In this showcase, teams from the Spring 2026 semester will present their final projects in both a poster competition and oral presentation. We welcome you to join us in supporting and celebrating the accomplishments of all our teams!