Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) at Penn Engineering
05/12/2026
Celebrating the MEAM Undergraduate Student Awardees!
This year, ten undergraduates are recognized by the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and MEAM faculty for their service, creativity, scholarship and more.
Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners!
04/30/2026
Happy “Hey Day” to our juniors! 🥳
Hey Day is an annual Penn tradition celebrating the transition of juniors to seniors with red shirts, straw hats and canes.
Meet Polaire, a MEAM Senior Design team building an HVAC inspection robot.
Polaire is built to allow operators to remotely inspect HVAC components inside the ductwork, allowing workers to see if there’s mold, particulate matter or components that need repair. With magnetic wheels, the robot can navigate both vertical and horizontal sections of ductwork. Ultimately, the plan is to also have a sensing suite, allowing works to view temperature and humidity through a camera on the robot.
MEAM Senior Design Day is Monday, April 13, 2026.
01/13/2026
In case you were wondering what fall on campus looks like on 35mm film 👀
Photos taken on MEAM’s inaugural photo walk in November 2025, with a Nikon FG on Kodacolor 200.
Would you join us on a photo walk in spring? 🌸
01/08/2026
Mentally it’s spring semester, the labs are full, the weather is warm and the cherry blossoms are blooming. 🌸
11/03/2025
Thanks for showing up for MEAM’s first-ever Photo Walk! We strolled down Locust Walk, visited the Biopond, and ended on the South Street Bridge for golden hour against the Philadelphia skyline.
While we wait for our film to get developed, enjoy these two shots from the biopond and the bridge 🫶
Members of the Turner Research Group are searching for the coffee shop with the best “coffee number.” Every Thursday, members will venture out to a new café within walking distance of Penn’s campus. After their visit, they’ll rate the shop on taste, price and atmosphere.
📍This week’s visit was to , just over the Schuylkill River. Where should they head to next?
Introducing the Tool Room Lathe, one of the most used and versatile machines in the Precision Machining Laboratory (PML). Voiceover is done by Jason Pastor, MEAM Senior Coordinator of Instructional Labs.
05/23/2025
Mitchell Fogelson (ENG ‘17, GEN ‘18) is reaching new heights— literally. On a NASA-funded Zero-G flight, he is testing deployable space structures designed for use in microgravity. This experience is the culmination of his Ph.D. work at Carnegie Mellon University and reflects his background in hands-on learning.
Fogelson’s spirit of exploration began at Penn Engineering, where he earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, as well as in Robotics. He recalls, “It has to be the wind-turbine lab in MEAM 347” as his most memorable moment. “The joy of these labs, particularly the playful competition they fostered, created an exploratory environment where you could fail safely and push boundaries.”
Now the founder of Beyond Reach Labs, Inc., Fogelson is developing robust solutions for extreme environments, ranging from microgravity to remote Earth-bound settings.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
05/13/2025
Students in MEAM 6230, Learning and Control for Adaptive and Reactive Robots, finished out the semester with a poster session on students’ projects themed around learning, locally reshaping and controlling dynamical systems for safe, adaptive, reactive and compliant robot control. 🤖
