Blog posts

ES 240 Problem Set #8, Problem #20 - Green's function of biharmonic operator is not positive definite

Submitted by John Peter Whitney on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 04:44

Fall 2007

Professor Vlassak mentioned that last year every single person did a finite element project. He said he wanted to see more theory projects, so I decided to take him up on that.

I was browsing around one day and happened upon an article that explained that while the Green's function of the laplacian was positive definite, the biharmonic operator's Green's function is not. Physically, this has significance.

Howard Stone won the first Batchelor Prize

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 03:36

mechanician

Batchelor Prize

Howard Stone, of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has won the first Batchelor Prize. The newly established Prize is sponsored by Cambridge University Press and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. The award of US$25,000 will be presented at the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM), taking place in Adelaide in August 2008. Howard is iMechanica user number 96.

Recruiting PhD students for Cell Mechanics Lab at Rensselaer

Submitted by Vesna Damljanovic on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 00:58

Full support is available for 2 PhD students in cellular mechanics group in Biomedical Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The applicants should have mechanics, materials or soft matter physics background, with some experimental experience at micro-scales. Experience with any of the following is considered a
plus: computational mechanics, cell/tissue culture, microscopy, image analysis, photonics.

program ranking of universities

Submitted by Yonggang Huang on Thu, 12/06/2007 - 11:55

The Chronicle of Higher Education just published its ranking of all programs (fields) of universities in the States.

http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity

This ranking is based on the productivity (publications, citations, grants and awards, nothing else), rather than people perceptions (department head's evaluations) as US News and World Report.

Of course one should never take any ranking very seriously, but it is interesting to take a look at this website.

ES 240 Problem Set #8, Problem #20 - Project Description

Submitted by bfinio on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 20:40

ES 240

student

semester project

I work in the Microrobotics lab here at Harvard, where we focus on the construction of biomimetic insect-sized microrobots. Traditional machining techniques are insufficient to create parts on this small scale, so we utlize laser-machined composite materials (such as carbon fiber), which are relatively rigid, and thin polymer films, which are relatively flexible. These materials can be sandwiched together in sheets to create compliant flexure joints, analagous to macro-scale revolute joints.

2 PhD OPENINGS IN COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS IN BARCELONA

Submitted by Marino Arroyo on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 21:41

job

Two four-year doctoral fellowships at the LaCàN Research group (http://www-lacan.upc.es/), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Barcelona, Spain).

These two fellowships, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education ("beca FPI"), coverfull tuition, a monthly stipend and provide funds for short international research stays. The starting date is expected in the Summer-Fall 2008.