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Two Mechanical Engineering Professors Awarded ADVANCE Grants

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Dr. Sarah Bergbreiter and Dr. Kenneth Kiger

Profs. Sarah Bergbreiter and Kenneth Kiger received ADVANCE Interdisciplinary and Engaged Research Seed Grants to collaborate with university faculty in other fields on promising research projects. The goal of the program is to team up female junior faculty with more senior faculty colleagues to try and broaden their research ties and foster interdisciplinary collaborations. 

The university is partnering with the National Science Foundation to facilitate this growth.  Each team received $20,000 to fund preliminary research with the goal of securing more funds to continue the research.  

Dr. Bergbreiter’s project, “Insect and Robot Locomotion with Heavy Loads,” with Profs. Barbara Thorne and Jeffrey Shultz in entomology, will focus on how insects handle heavy loads by watching how their legs move and by measuring the forces they exert on the ground.  Dr. Bergbreiter hopes to apply this knowledge to small robots carrying heavy payloads of items such as sensors and batteries. 

Dr. Kiger will work with Anya Jones in aerospace engineering on “Scaling of the Sediment Transport and Unsteady Aerodynamics of an Impinging Jet in Air and Water” to understand how laboratory testing may be used to develop better full-scale models of transport.  

To learn more about this grant and other ADVANCE projects visit their website.

Published June 6, 2012