JPL's Advanced Technologies Group and NDEAA Lab

EDUCATION OUTREACH

The JPL's Advanced Technologies Group is proactively seeking cooperation with universities both by direct collaboration with the department professors and technical staff as well as through the JPL Educational Affairs Department including Faculty Fellow, Interns, Summer Students, SURF, and many others. The universities, professors and students that worked at the JPL's NDEAA Lab or participated in a joint program with the Advanced Technologies Group include:

UCLA
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dept.
The research collaboration between the JPL's Advanced Technologies Group and this Department of UCLA has been mostly with Professor Ajit Mal.

• Professor Ajit Mal - Cooperative efforts with Professor Ajit K. Mal have been on going since 1987. The results of this cooperation has been documented in numerous publications (more than 60) and presented in many national and international conferences. In 1993, Prof. Mal has been a JPL Summer Faculty Fellow at the NDE&AA Lab.

The emphasis of the cooperation of Prof. Mal and Dr. Bar-Cohen has been on ultrasonic NDE of composite materials and adhesive bonded joints. Particularly, they investigated the leaky Lamb wave (LLW) phenomenon (pioneered by Dr. Bar-Cohen) analytical modeling, experimental corroboration and the LLW application to the characterization of flaws and determination of the elastic properties. One of the former students of Prof. Mal, Dr. Shyh-Shiuh Lih, became a member of the NDE&AA Team between 1995 to 1997. Dr. Lih received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA and worked afterward as a Postdoc under Prof. Mal's supervision

• Professor Gregory Carman - In 1994, a cooperative effort has taken place with Prof. Carman in the area of smart structures and advanced actuators. This effort started with his appointment as a JPL's Summer Faculty Fellow at the NDE&AA and afterward in a joint research for the Pluto Fast Fly-by project (currently called Pluto Express) to develop an inchworm (Burleigh Instruments) that operates at cryogenic temperatures.

UCLA - Integrated Manufacturing Engineering (IME) Dept.
Under the Integrated Manufacturing Engineering Dept. graduate program, students were offered the opportunity to participate in on-going research that has relevance to the IME Dept. goals and requirements. Local research institutes, industry and small companies are offering the students different subjects of research which need the student interest and the department approval. Two of the IME student groups participated in such JPL's NDE&AA research tasks:

• Low Mass Muscle Actuators (LoMMAs) - This task is sponsored by the Telerobotic program under the management of Dr. Charles Weisbin at JPL and Dave Lavery at NASA HQS. Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, is the Principal Investigator and Dr. Tianji Xue is the Co-PI of this task. The UCLA program manager is Prof. Tomas Hahn

and the students worked under the supervision of Leonardo Israeli of the IME Department. The students that were involved with this task are:

1. Brian Lucky
2. Cinkiat Abidin
3. Marlene Turner
4. Harry Mashhoudy

FIGURE CATION: The LoMMAs UCLA IME team at the JPL's NDE & AA Lab: From left to right, Dr. Tianji Xue, Marlene Turner, Harry Mashhoudy, Brian Lucky, Cinkiat Abidin and Dr. Y. Bar-Cohen

• Real-Time NDE of Composite Materials Using Leaky Lamb Waves (LLW) - This task is sponsored by the University of Texas, El Paso, under a contract from AFOSR. The students developed a system that acquires LLW dispersion data in real-time and integrated it with the JPL's LLW data processing and inversion software. The students that were involved with this task are:

1. Sue Kersey
2. Cedric Daksla
3. Anatoly Blanovsky

Materials Science Dept.

• IME team at the JPL's NDE & AA Lab: From left to right, Leonardo Israeli, Sue Kersey, Cedric Daksla and Dr. Y. Bar-Cohen.

  Recently, cooperative effort has been initiatived with Prof. Qibing Pei in the area of Electroactive Polymers.

The NDE UCLA

University of Texas, El Paso (UTEP)
FAST Center
This collaboration has been initiated in 1994 and the key individuals that are involved include Dr. Roberto Osegueda (Director of FAST Center) and Dr. Soheil Nazarian (NDE expert). This effort is in under a contract from AFOSR and the emphasis is on NDE of composite materials using plate waves. Further, efforts are underway to develop laser ultrasonics technology as well as to organize a Workshop on the subject of Intelligent NDE.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Through the Work & Study program of Caltech, undergraduate students are working part time (no more than 20-hours a week) at the NDE&AA lab. Since 1993, four students worked at the lab and participated in different tasks and experiments including the development of software for the LLW data acquisition and the modeling of ultrasonic motors.
Since 1992, efforts are being explored to formalize a technical collaboration in the area of NDE with Prof. G. Ravichandran and in the area of actuation technology with Prof. Wilfred Iwan.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Ultrasonic motors are being modeled theoretically and the results are corroborated experimentally. This joint effort started in 1995 and the MIT principal investigator is Professor Nesbitt Hagood. Between 1995 and 1997, this effort was funded by the NASA Telerobotics program, under the Planetary Dexterous Manipulators Task which was managed by Dr. Paul Schenker, JPL. The JPL Principal Investigator for the ultrasonic motor development was Dr. Y. Bar-Cohen.

Postoctoral Scholars
The following individuals have been Postdocs at the NDEAA Technologies
Dr. Atish Sen, "Piezoelectric Actuators," JPL Postoctoral Scholar, June 1993 - Sept. 1994
Dr. Tianji Xue, "Electroactive Polymers", Caltech Postoctoral Scholar, June 1996 - April 30, 1998
Dr. Sean Leary, "Electroactive Polymers", Caltech Postoctoral Scholar, March 1997 - July 12, 2000
Dr. Stewart Sherrit, "Ultrasonic/Sonic Drilling and Coring," Caltech Postoctoral Scholar, Sept. 1998 - April 16, 2001
Dr. José-María Sansiñena, "Electroactive Polymers", Postoctoral Scholar, January 10, 2000 - May 11, 2001
Dr. Virginia Olazabal, "Electroactive Polymers", January 10, 2000 - August 15, 2001 (initially as a Research Affiliate and from August 3, 2000 as a Caltech Postoctoral Scholar)
Dr. Mircea Badescu, USDC, Caltech Postoctoral Scholar, Feb. 20, 2004 - Feb. 4, 2005
Dr. Jack Aldrich, Fast and Quite Ultrasonic Drill, Caltech Postoctoral Scholar, Nov. 28, 2004 - May 26, 2006

Dr. Virginia Olazabal	Dr. José-María Sansiñena	Dr. Stewart Sherrit

Dr. Mircea Badescu (right) with Dr. Sherrit (left) at Mount Hood, OR	Dr. Jack Aldrich

JPL Educational Affairs (Coordinator, Rebecca Custer)
This program is sponsored by the JPL's Educational Affairs Dept. (Richard Ashe, Manager of the Minority Program). Minority Intern Students are hired through this program during the summer for 10 weeks.

1997
Minority Education Initiatives
Mr. Munoz, who is an Electrical Engineering 1997 UTEP graduate, worked at the NDEAA lab on establishing foundations of a piezopump concept. Mr. Munoz (right) is shown in the following figure, at the NDEAA Lab working with the NDEAA scientists Dr. Xiaoqi Bao (left) and Dr. Tianji Xue (middle).
FIGURE CAPTION: Mr. Ivan Munoz (right) is shown in the NDEAA Lab working with the scientist Dr. Xiaoqi Bao (left) and Dr. Tianji Xue (middle).

1998
Minority Education Initiatives
Lawrence Cole is an Electrical Engineering student from Florida A&M University. His task has been involved with the development of surface wiper of solar cells using electroactive polymers. He worked on the development of an imaging algorithm that allows effective simultaneous operation of multiple wipers to remove dust from a solar panel simulating the Nanorover array.
Leon Norris is a Computer Science/Electrical Engineering student from Morehouse College. His efforts concentrated on the design and development of a model for a walking robot that is actuated by electroactive polymers. The polymer will be used to simulate the action of muscles.

FIGURE CAPTION: Lawrence Cole and Leon Norris shown working under the Guidance of Dr. Sean Leary.

1999
SURF Student
Stacey Walker is a Physics major at the University of Texas, Dallas. SURF Student - Her task has been involved with the investigation of high intensity ultrasonics in liquid media, the formation of cavitation, heat, and streaming effects as a function of the ultrasonic frequency. Potential applications include exploration of such planets as Europa as well as various medical diagnostics and treatment tools.

FIGURE CAPTION: Stacey Waller is shown working on high power ultrasonics.

Minority Education Initiatives
Lawrence Cole is an Electrical Engineering student from Florida A&M University. As Summer Intern - His task has been involved with the development of a generic electronic circuitry for the drive of electroactive polymers, This task was done in support of the LoMMAs task to develop planetary applications for EAP actuators. He worked under the guidance of Dr. Sean Leary, one the NDEAA Lab scientists

FIGURE CAPTION: Lawrence Cole is shown working on the EAP drive circuitry.

2000
Summer Intern
Ana Gjesdal was a senior student at Crescenta Valley High School, CA. She assisted the NDEAA scientists Dr. Stewart Sherrit and Dr. Ben Dolgin investigating rates of drilling in rocks of various hardnesses as well as preparing rock tailings for further analysis.


FIGURE CAPTION: Ana is shown working with the ultrasonic/sonic driller/corer acquiring rock tailings.

2001
Intern Student
Giovanni Pioggia -- February 2 - May 7, 2001 Giovanni Pioggia was an Electronic Engineer from University of Pisa, Italy. He worked at the NDEAA Laboratory during the last period of his PhD studies. The objective of his work is to use electroactive polymer actuators to endow expressivity in an android head. His efforts at the NDEAA lab involved improvement of the performance of the head as well as developing new actuators, electronics and control algorithms.
Minority Education Initiatives


Jose Rivera -- May 29, 2001 - July 24, 2001 As Summer Intern - he was involved with the characterization of electroactive polymers. Specifically, he conducted measurements of the spectral characteristics of Ionomeric Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMC).


Tao Stettler -- June 26, 2001 - August 25, 2001 Tao Stettler is ALVA student who worked as a Coop at the NDEAA lab. He assisted in conducting measurements related to the operation of the ultrasonic drill and the optimization of its operation thru various combinations of on/off time durations.


2003
SURF Student
Lauren Wessel -- July - Sept 26, 2003
Lauren Wessel is a Mechanical Engineering major at the California Institute of Technology working with us through the SURF program. For 10 weeks during the summer of 2003, she worked with Dr. Stewart Sherrit on the Ultrasonic/Sonic Gopher project. She developed a computer model to study the heat flow in ice being drilled by the Gopher. She also worked on optimizing the design of the Gopher by comparing the performance statistics of various free-masses over a range of excitation frequencies.

Summer Intern
Sherman Hsu-Kuang Tu -- June 16 - Aug. 29, 2003
Sherman Tu is a Electrical Engineering major at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. He worked under the guidance of Dr. Stewart Sherrit for a period of 9 weeks during the summer of 2003. His task involved producing Solidworks graphics of a Rover and a Lander for integration with designs of instruments and devices in future proposals, aquisition of resonance data of piezoelectric samples, and designing a colpitts oscillator circuit with high power amplifier for hardware frequency tracking.

2004
Academic Part Time (APT)
James Wincentsen - Nov. 17, 2003 to June 9, 2004
James Wincentsen is a mechanical engineer student at California Polytechnic University Pomona. James worked with Dr. Xiaoqi Bao to design a radial loaded USDC drill and with Dr. Shyh-Shiuh Lih to build components for a multifunctional ferrosource device. James also worked with Dr. Stewart Sherrit on a robotic application for the USDC, in which anchoring drill bits were mated to the Lemur robot headed by Brett Kennedy. James is currently working for the Mechanical Engineering section.

Summer Intern
Susan Bley - from June 14, 2004 to August 20, 2004
Susan Bley is a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Tulsa. As a summer intern she helped Dr. Jiunn Jeng Wu with a brazing task involving the simultaneous separation, seaming and sealing of a container that is hoped to be used as the process for bringing a sample from Mars to earth. Susan documented the various aspects of the process and the results of the experiments. She also worked with Dr. Xiaoqi Bao on measuring the temperature, force, and power measurements for a hammering drill mechanism.

2005
Intern and Academic Part Time (APT)
Randy Stark - June 21, 2004 to Feb. 18, 2005
At the JPL’s NDEAA Lab, Randy Stark started as an intern and in September 2004 he switched to an APT. During this period, he was a senior student at California Polytechnic University, Pomona studying Mechanical Engineering. His worked on design and fabrication for many different projects. Specifically, he assisted Dr. Xiaoqi Bao is making various types of Ultrasonic transducers; Dr. Stewart Sherrit in the design of the sample pod for the Jupiter Icy Moon Lander; and Dr. Mircea Badescu with the manufacturing of several horn designs for the Ultrasonic Ice drill, "Gopher". Randy left the NDEAA lab towards his becoming a full time employee of JPL in March 2005 as a Manufacturing engineer upon the completion of his Bachelors degree.

Christopher M. Jones, California Polytechnic University, Pomona - Feb. 7, 2005 to present



SURF Student
Vanessa Heckman June 20 to August 26, 2005
Vanessa Heckman is a Mechanical Engineering major at the California Institute of Technology. During the summer of 2005 she worked at our lab as a SURF Student for 10 weeks. She worked mostly under the guidance of Dr. Stewart Sherrit and Dr. Mircea Badescu on the development of a method of accelerating fatigue tests. She was involved in all aspects of the test fixture development including designing models in SolidWorks, performing stress analysis in MATLAB and ANSYS, and performing experiments.


2006
Summer Space Grant Student
Steve Kassab - Purdue University, June 12 to August 18, 2006
Steve Kassab is an Aerospace Engineering student from Purdue University. He worked with Dr. Mircea Badescu on the design and development of a bit rotation mechanism to support the operation of the USDC and enhance its drilling rate and penetration depth. Baseline data was acquired on a non-rotary USDC system to provide future comparison to the recently designed rotational system.

Intern and Academic Part Time (APT)
James Scott, California Polytechnic University, Pomona - Nov. 13, 2006 to present

Minority Education Initiatives (shown in the photo from left to right Dean, Joel and Dylan)
Byron Dean Pershall, Faculty advisor, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), June 19 to August 25, 2006
Dean served as a Faculty advisor for Dylan J Maho and Joel V Armour, supervising and participating in their technical tasks by relating their circuit design, fabrication, and troubleshooting experiences to the educational material they have studied. At SIPI, Dean is an Electronics Technology and Mathematics Instructor . Previously, for 20 years he was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.

Dylan J Maho, Electrical Engineering student, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), June 19 to August 25, 2006
Dylan Maho specialized in the hardware of the Operation Amplifier along with Dr. Jack Aldrich and Dave Natzic. He also assisted in the integration of LabView programming to incorporate interferometer testing of the performance of PZT stacks. Further, he participated in the studies of the requirements to establish a Mars yard for robotics competitions at SIPI.

Joel V Armour, Electrical Engineering student, Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI), June 19 to August 25, 2006
Joel Armour worked with Dr. Jack Aldrich along with Dave Natzic on the integration and fabrication of current sensor boxes and an operational amplifier. The two items were developed to drive the USDC and optimize its performance. He also assisted Dr. Aldrich and Chris Jones in testing SIM piezoelectric stacks.

2007
Summer Space Grant Student
Will Biederman, University of Washington, Seattle - June 11 to August 17, 2007
Will Biederman is an Electrical Engineering major at the University of Washington in Seattle. As a Space Grant intern in the Summer of 2007, Will was involved with the improvement and optimization of the novel wireless power transmission system using acousto-electric feedthru to meet the 1kW transmission goal. This task is seeking to address the need of future NASA missions and other projects that will require the transmission of power into a metallically isolated area.

2008
Academic Part Time (APT)
Christopher M. Jones, California Polytechnic University, Pomona - Feb. 7, 2005 to May 30, 2008
During his over 3 years of work at the NDEAA Lab he contributed in a variety of ways. Initially, he was responsible for fabricating various parts but increasingly took responsibilities of a manufacturing engineer and made many design suggestions to save cost and time. He became evolved with the design and testing in most of the major tasks of the NDEAA Lab ranging from sample acquisition to working for the space interferometery mission. In his third year, he became involved with developing software and setting up hardware for data acquisition doing characterization analysis and automated lifetime testing of PZT and other actuators.





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Related Homepages
NDEAA Technologies Lab Webhub
Advanced Actuators - Ultrasonic motors
Advanced Actuators - Electroactive polymers
Ultrasonic/Sonic Driller/Corer (USDC)