Professor Lorenzo Valdevit
Director
Lorenzo Valdevit is a Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine and the Director of the Institute for Design and Manufacturing Innovation (IDMI). He received an M.S. (Laurea), from the University of Trieste (Italy) in Materials Engineering in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2005. He has more than 15 years of experience in design, modeling, manufacturing and characterization of architected materials and multifunctional structures.
Professor Valdevit works in the general area of mechanics of materials, developing analytical, numerical and experimental techniques across multiple length scales. His primary research goal is the optimal design, modeling, fabrication and experimental characterization of architected materials and structures with unprecedented combinations of properties. Some of Professor Valdevit’s key research accomplishments have been the development and optimization of multifunctional sandwich panels for thermo-structural applications, the mechanical characterization, numerical modeling and optimal design of ultralight hollow micro-lattices and 2D and 3D shape-reconfigurable materials and the development of novel topology optimization algorithms for the optimal design of architected materials with complex unit cell designs.
Office: 949-824-4938
valdevit@uci.edu
Professor Marc J. Madou
Associate Director
Research Thrust Leader for Scalable Micro/Nano-Manufacturing
Marc Madou is Chancellor’s Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of California, Irvine. He received his B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry in 1973, his M.Sc. in Physical Chemistry in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Semiconductor Electrochemistry, Solid-State Physics Laboratory in 1978 from Rijksuniversiteit Ghent, Belgium. He has received numerous awards throughout his career and Honorary Professorships at many prestigious universities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.
Professor Madou’s research interests are miniaturization science (MEMS and NEMS) with emphasis on chemical and biological applications. His current projects include polymer actuators (for drug delivery), C-MEMS and CD based fluidics. Besides miniaturization techniques and materials choices, scaling laws are considered.
Office: 949-824-6585
mmadou@uci.edu
Professor Regina Ragan
Associate Director
Regina Ragan is an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of California, Irvine. She earned her B.S. degree in Material Science and Engineering from UCLA in 1996, an M.S. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1998 and completed her Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2002.
Dr. Ragan’s research involves the exploration and development of novel material systems for nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. Her research group uses self-assembly to fabricate one-dimensional and zero-dimensional organic/inorganic nanostructure arrays. The correlation of material interfaces with electron transport along the lateral axis of nanowires and transport through a molecule/metal nanowire junction is being studied to understand how these components will behave in nanoscale devices.
Office: 949-824-2541
rragan@uci.edu
Professor Tim Rupert
Associate Director
Research Thrust Leader for Characterization, Qualification and Metrology
Tim Rupert is an Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He earned his B.S. and an M.S.E. degrees at Johns Hopkins University in 2007 and completed his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011. He won a 2013 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, a 2015 U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program grant, and this year, a Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the Department of Defense’s Army Research Office.
Prof. Rupert’s research is in nanostructured materials with an emphasis on developing novel fabrication processes, experimental characterization techniques, and atomistic models to investigate the complex relationships between micro/nano-structure and mechanical and physical properties in nanostructured metals. A key technological goal is to design novel alloys with unique combinations of properties.
Office: 949-824-4937
trupert@uci.edu
Professor Mohammad Al Faruque
Research Thrust Leader for Design & Control for Manufacturing
Mohammad Al Faruque is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. He received his B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2002 and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Aachen Technical University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany in 2004 and 2009, respectively. Al Faruque is the recipient of the IEEE CEDA Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award 2016. He served as an Emulex career development chair from October 2012 until July 2015.
His current research is focused on system-level design of embedded systems and Cyber-Physical-Systems (CPS) with special interests on CPS design automation, model-based design, multi-core systems, and CPS security. He received the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award 2016, the 2016 DATE Best Paper Award, the 2015 DAC Best Paper Award, the 2009 ICCAD Best Paper Award, and the 2016 NDSS Distinguished Poster Award among many other distinguished awards.
Office: 949-824-1909
alfaruqu@uci.edu
Professor Aaron Esser-Kahn
Research Thrust Leader for Soft Materials Manufacturing
Aaron Esser-Kahn is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and The Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology at the University of California, Irvine. He received he undergraduate degree from California Institute of Technology in 2004, his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 2009 and completed his Postdoctoral studies in 2011 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign.
He is the Principal Investigator of the Esser-Kahn Group, dedicated to exploring the intersection of biology, chemistry and materials science. This collaboration/research group is active in a number of outreach activities on the UCI campus and throughout Orange County, California, promoting the twin philosophies of learning by doing and that science isn’t “hard” to understand.
Office: 949-824-4936
aesserka@uci.edu
Professor Wendy Liu
Research Thrust Leader for Bio Materials Manufacturing
Wendy Liu is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.
Professor Liu’s research is focused on understanding how microenvironmental cues regulate cell behavior in order to better understand and treat diseases of the cardiovasculature. The goals of her laboratory are to (1) develop tools using materials and microfabrication to manipulate the multicellular microenvironment, (2) utilize these technologies to understand how the physical and adhesive microenvironment regulate cell behavior, particularly those involved in atherosclerosis and the foreign body response to vascular implants, and (3) to design novel biomaterial systems for cardiovascular devices and tissue engineering with improved biocompatibility and integrated tissue function.
Office: 949-824-1682
wendy.liu@uci.edu
Professor Julie Schoenung
Thrust Leader for Hard Materials Manufacturing
Julie M. Schoenung is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in materials engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in ceramic engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Schoenung was recently selected to be the recipient of the 2018 ASM Edward DeMille Campbell Memorial Lectureship and the 2016 Acta Materialia Holloman Award for Materials & Society. She was recently appointed as an Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, and has served for many years as a Key Reader for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A. In 2016, she was elected as a Fellow of Alpha Sigma Mu, the materials honor society. In 2012, she was elected as an ASM Fellow and selected as a recipient of the Chime Bell Award, Hubei Province, China.
Dr. Schoenung’s research activities seek to provide fundamental insight into structure-processing-property mechanistic relationships in various material systems. Innovative synthesis and consolidation processes are combined to fabricate materials that exhibit unique behavior, providing new knowledge into the mechanisms that govern the observed behavior. Dr. Schoenung also has many years’ experience studying the materials-selection process and green engineering design.
Office: 949-824-4333
julie.schoenung@uci.edu
Benjamin Dolan
Technical Director
Benjamin Dolan is the Technical Director of the IDMI and Director of RapidTech at UCI. He has more than 15 years of experience in the development and use of technology for advanced manufacturing, specifically 3-D printing as it applies to undergraduate education and product development. Mr. Dolan has assisted hundreds of companies, large and small, in bringing their products to market and has played a key role in manufacturing education and training for UCI students and members of the Orange County Community.
Office: 949-824-4267
dolanb@uci.edu
Don Fruta
Administrative Analyst
Don Fruta is the Administrative Analyst of the IDMI at UCI. He is a seasoned administrative professional specializing in marketing and operations in the veterinary dermatology industry for over ten years. He manages administrative projects and day-to-day operations of the department, as well as serves as Executive Assistant to the Director, Professor Valdevit. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, Mr. Fruta manages and maintains the IDMI website and social media updates to keep content accurate, timely and informative.
Office: 949-824-4105
dfruta@uci.edu