School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
May/June 2011

Endowing engineering faculty

A recent gift to the School of Engineering will endow ten new professorships across SEAS’s four departmental disciplines. John Malone '63, chairman of Liberty Media and Liberty Global, donated $50 million to Yale Engineering because, he said, "In a world with diminishing resources, exploding populations, and immense complexity, only science and technology can improve the standard of living for people on a global basis. We need our nation’s best institutions to be invested in this work, and I am eager to support Yale as it continues to build top-level programs in engineering research and education." A major figure in the telecommunications and media industries and a cable television pioneer, Malone has been a leading supporter of the school, including an earlier contribution that funded the construction of the Daniel L. Malone Engineering Center that opened in 2005. Two of the ten professorships will be joint appointments with the Yale School of Management, enabling curricular initiatives that connect engineering and business.

BMGs for MEMS

Professor Jan Schroers continues to exploit the unique properties of bulk metallic glasses (BMG) for a wide range of applications, which now includes miniature resonators for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Schroers, who earlier showed that the stronger-than-steel and more-durable-than-silicon materials could be molded like plastics with nanoscale detail, has now developed a process of blow molding that may provide a whole new toolbox for MEMS designers. "The ability to fabricate 3-D shells has long been on the wish list for MEMS designers," says Schroers. "The problem with these small devices is that they operate in their resonance frequency and, as resonators, dissipate energy."

MEMS designers take advantage of materials with high-quality factors, which dissipate energy more slowly than other materials. But certain geometries also have inherently high-quality factors, such as the wine-glass shape of the 3-D microshells. While MEMS designers are proficient at working in planes, there has been little advancement in designing with the ideal concave or cylindrical structure Schroers has now demonstrated can be achieved with blow molding of BMGs.

Appropriate technology for the developing world

New to the engineering curriculum this year, a course called Appropriate Technology aims to bring enabling technologies to the developing world. The course is a collaborative effort between professor John Morrell and graduate student Joseph Zinter, recipient of an Associates in Teaching award from the Graduate School. By including both engineering and political science/economics majors, the course brings the diverse perspectives needed for technology design with sensitivity to social, political, engineering, and educational constraints. "Solving problems is incredibly hard in developing countries because the people who understand the constraints—the locals—don’t always understand what's technically possible and vice versa," says Morrell. This year the class is tackling the problem of mechanical power transmission. Their goal is to design a universal power interface capable of connecting any power source (e.g., bicycle or small engine) to any implement (e.g., flour mill or corn sheller).