In early November, Cooper mechanical engineering students Brandon Bunt BSE’22 MME, Maya Grutman ME’24, Calder Leppitsch ME’24, Daniel Zaretsky ME’24, Benjamin Meiner ME’24, Jason Chen ME’24, Christos Potamianos ME’25, and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kamau Wright, Associate Professor of Mechanical and C.V. Starr Distinguished Professor Dirk M. Luchtenburg, and Adjunct Professor Robert Dell attended and presented research at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2023 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE) in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

IMECE is ASME's largest research and development conference focused primarily on mechanical engineering but encompasses perspectives from many engineering disciplines. IMECE is a place for students to present their technical research and expertise, while learning from and connecting with thousands of peer researchers at a global level. 

At the conference, Brandon Bunt presented in the Heat Transfer and Thermal Engineering session, titled, “Technique Development for Thermophysical Characterization.” Brandon presented his research on “Developing a Low-Cost Instrumented Heat Transfer Apparatus for Measuring Thermal Conductivity Using Steady-State Methods” advised by Professor Wright and Professor and Chair of Chemical Engineering, Ben Davis.

In addition, Professor Wright presented research on “Plasma Liquid Gas (PLG) Systems, Establishing a Plasma Dielectric Barrier Discharge-Mode with Liquid Electrodes for Energy Conversion” in the Energy Session, titled, “Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion Systems.” The research was co-authored by cooper undergraduate student Christos Potamianos ME’25 and graduate students JP Patton ME’23, Juntao Cui, Nikolas Arsenlis, Daniel Kim, and Jordan Klahr. Wright presented on a system he developed utilizing liquid electrodes but focused on treating gases, as a new experimental approach, with potential benefits in energy conversion. Co-author Christos Potamianos was also in attendance during the session.

Calder Leppitsch, Benjamin Meiner, Jason Chen, and Daniel Zaretsky presented their research on “Part 1: Gyroscopic Control of Robotic Smart Vehicles Using So(3)” in a technical session on Engineering Education Projects, Novel Manufacturing, and Robotics. The research was also co-authored by Eunkyu Kim ME’24. The students were advised but Professor Luchtenburg in collaboration with Thomas J. Impelluso and Thorstein Ravneberg Rykkje from the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. 

Maya Grutman presented in the Sustainable Energy Systems for Heating and Cooling session on “A Municipal Waste Heat Dissipation Modular Approach for Open Field Heated Agriculture” co-authored by Christopher Mignano ME’21 MME’23 and advised by Adjunct Professor Robert Dell.

“ASME IMECE is a great opportunity for mechanical engineering undergraduate students to learn about the world of important research that goes into engineering standards and decision making in industry. This year's conference in New Orleans had a great atmosphere and a solid showing of engineers and researchers from around the world. I would recommend to all students that presenting your research is a great way to practice your public speaking skills and make connections with people you don't expect!” – Calder Leppitsch ME’24.

“The ASME Conference provided opportunities for interesting exchanges with colleagues and students about research and professional development. It has been great to facilitate and advance research on plasma systems with liquid electrodes, and experimentation in heat transfer. I am happy that I was able to leverage some synergism in teaching and research, for example through the new course I developed, titled Plasma Engineering, which directly helped the research and inclusion of students in the work presented at ASME. While at the conference, in addition to presenting and participating in research sessions, I was also happy to attend the keynote session on architectures for deep space missions, and tour the NASA Michoud Assembly facility in New Orleans, LA which some call America’s “Rocket Factory”. This site is preparing the Artemis II Moon Rocket, which will pave the way for Artemis III, humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years, and the first time a woman and person of color will (~2025) land on the surface of the moon.” – Dr. Kamau Wright