ME Assistant Professor Shorya Awtar has been selected for the 2011 Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP). This program, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and administered by American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), offers fellowships to university faculty to conduct research at Air Force research facilities in the summer. The objectives of the Summer Faculty Fellowship Program are to: (1) stimulate professional relationships among SFFP fellows and the scientists and engineers in AFRL Technical Directorates and other Air Force research facilities; (2) elevate the awareness in the U.S. academic community of Air Force research needs and foster continued research at SFFP fellows’ institutions; and (3) provide the faculty opportunities to perform high-quality research at AFRL Technical Directorates and other Air Force research facilities.
As part of this program, Shorya will spend 10 weeks during the summer at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH. While there, he will work in the Controls System Division within the Air Vehicles Directorate on the design, modeling, and controls of flapping-wing Micro Air Vehicles (MAV).
Additionally, Shorya has also been invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering’s 2011 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium to be held at the Google Headquarters (Mountain View, CA) in September. The Frontiers of Engineering program brings together through 2-1/2 day meetings a select group of emerging engineering leaders from industry, academe, and government labs to discuss pioneering technical work and leading edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. The goal of the meetings is to introduce these outstanding engineers (ages 30-45) to each other, and through this interaction facilitate collaboration in engineering, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across fields, and establishment of contacts among the next generation of engineering leaders. The focus topics for this year’s symposium are – Additive Manufacturing, Engineering Sustainable Buildings, Semantic Processing, and Neuroprosthetics.
Shorya Awtar joined the Mechanical Engineering department in 2007, after working in the industry for three year. Prior to that, he received his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur, his M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his Sc.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology. Shorya’s research interests lie in the design of novel machines, instruments, and mechatronic systems that deliver high performance at low costs. He is technology development effort includes high-dexterity minimally invasive surgical tools, ultra-precision motion systems for nanometrology and nanomanufacturing, high scanning speed MEMS devices, and novel actuation and sensing schemes.
