News
A gathering to celebrate Karthik's promotion as a scientist-entrepreneur at Amber Indian Cuisine in Middleton (July 10, 2024)
Best wishes, Karthik!
Senior Design Project Demonstration Fall 2023
Engineering EXPO 2018
Engineering EXPO 2017
Engineering EXPO 2016
The Engineering Expo is a three day event held anually at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Engineering. This event is open to the public and engages students from elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in hands-on learning activities. The Expo is designed to unite students, industry, and the community by inspiring innovation and ingenuity in the minds of future generations. Exhibits from Fortune 500 companies, engineering student organizations, individuals, and research groups provide fun activities and learning activities throughout the College of Engineering on all three days.
Eriten's Research group works closely with the UW-Madison Material Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) to produce a fun and exciting exhibit for the Engineering Expo that explores the world of micro/nanoscale mechanics. Recently, Eriten's Research group was awarded 2nd Place for their exhibit at the 2016 Engineering Expo, led by Cole Hess. For this exhibit a representation of the Hysitron Nanoindentor was constructed so that students could do their own indentation tests on macro-scale materials, including Oreo crackers and PlayDough. By using this hands-on approach with common materials, students were able to learn about material strength, ductility, energy dissipation, and characteristics of composite materials in a fun way that was easy to understand and helped to educate the public our research here on campus. A picture of this exhibit is shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Engineering Expo Exhibit. The figure above shows students learning about the testing device that they would soon use to conduct experimenting with. The device, shown in blue, was designed to represent a nanoindentor, and the volunteer in the middle is, Cole Hess, a member of Eriten's Research Group.
MASLO
One important goal of the Tribology and Nonlinear Dynamics Laboratory is to educate others about the research that is being conducted. We aim to broaden the impact of our research to people not only across the state but also across the world, helping to promote the Wisconsin Idea. This outreach plan will be achieved through the use of the online platform called MASLO, or Mobile Access to Supplemental Learning Objects. This program is an open source mobile learning development platform. It was developed by a division of the University of Wisconsin-Extension program. This program will be used to post tutorials, which are related to the experimentation and testing that is conducted in this laboratory. These tutorials will be geared towards college professors and students, as well as high school science teachers and AP students who were interested in the field of tribology. The MASLO tutorials are currently under development, but an example of a MASLO document is shown below in Figure 2. Also, for more information on MASLO, you can click here.
Figure 2: MASLO Learning Platform Example. The figure shown above is an example of what the MASLO program will look like when running on an iPhone or mobile device.
Engineering Summer Program
Professor Melih Eriten also participates in academic outreach programs such as the Engineering Summer Program (ESP), where he is a program instructor. The ESP is a UW-Madison summer program that is designed for high school students from groups traditionally under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This program has a course curriculum that involves math, engineering, science, and technical communications. The ESP also helps participants to gain a better understanding of the field of engineering through structured programming such as industry site visits, cultural enrichment activities, and faculty mentoring. Figure 3 shows the participants of the 2013 Engineering Summer Program.
Figure 3: ESP Participants. The figure shown above is a picture of the participants of the 2013 Engineering Summer Program, which Dr. Melih Eriten is a program instructor.
