Harrison Kim (PhD ME '01) will join the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 2005 as an assistant professor in the College of Engineering.
Kim's appointment is with the Systems and Entrepreneurial Engineering program, a new program designed to kindle the entrepreneurial spirit among its engineers. He says he's excited about working with the innovative new course of study. "It's a bit of a departure from the traditional ME program," he says. "However, I believe that this new interdisciplinary and systems engineering area reflects the way our research community is evolving."
After earning his PhD, Kim worked as a senior consultant for Samsung Data System, a leading business-IT consulting firm in Korea, before joining the Automotive Research Center at U-M in 2003 as a research fellow. He holds a joint appointment as a research fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. His general research interests are in the area of large-scale product development and product planning, and he has recently expanded his research into uncertainty and reliability in decision-based system design frameworks.
Kim says his work at the ARC has been a foundation for his research and academic career. "For a large-scale system such as an automobile, there needs to be a systems perspective to develop a product that fulfills the performance requirements of decision makers....I'm indebted to my advisor, Professor Panos Papalambros, for his vision of large-scale system design. Also to the late Nestor Michelena (Associate Research Scientist in ME, who passed away in December 2002). I can proudly say that I had two best advisors in our design research community across the globe."
Kerr-Jia Lu (PhD ME '04, MS ME '99) has joined the faculty of George Washington University in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Her appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering began in fall 2004.
Lu teaches mechanical design and introductory mechanics courses. She says she accepted the position with George Washington University because of the size of its engineering program, which allows for close interaction between students and faculty. And its location "provides great opportunities for collaboration with many nearby federal research labs. I'm looking forward to inspiring my students and to developing exciting research here."
She will continue her research in the area of nature- and bio-inspired designs, smart structures and compliant mechanism synthesis, which she began while she was a graduate student at U-M and research assistant to Professor Sridhar Kota. In the Compliant Systems Design Laboratory, Lu developed and implemented a systematic approach for morphing compliant mechanisms involving discrete/continuous optimization, finite element analysis and basic pattern recognition methods. She also developed a novel parameterization scheme using load paths to represent various structural topologies and ensure structural connectivity.
Teaching isn't new to Lu, who served as a graduate student instructor for three ME courses while at U-M: Design and Manufacturing III (ME 450); Mechanism Design (ME 551); and Design for Manufacturability (ME 452). "I learned a lot from those experiences and found helping the students learn very fulfilling. That's part of the reason why I decided to pursue a career in academia."